Diamondhead

by Patrick Robinson

  But ahead of him was only darkness, and he decided to go to bed. Back down in his cabin he took off his jacket and shoes, locked the door, and crashed under a couple of blankets. The ship was warm, and he slept almost immediately, awakening at around two thirty, after three and a half hours.

  The night was still dark, but the ship was rolling less than it had been after they passed the Rosslare ledge. Mack climbed out of bed and stared through the starboard side window. About a mile off their beam he could see the light on Strumble Head, the first rocky point on the British mainland, a famous old lighthouse flashing four times with a seven-second gap, stark in the night on this Pembrokeshire headland.

  Mack knew the ship was due to dock in a half hour, but his old seaman’s instincts caused him to consult the complimentary map of the Welsh coastline, which Stena placed in all first-class cabins. On any ship, Mack Bedford always assumed he was either driving or navigating, and he didn’t want any mistakes; he needed to check his bearings. He was the everlasting lieutenant commander.

  He went back to bed, resolving to sleep again at least until it was light. He heard the ship dock but then drifted off until six. He stripped off his shirt and shaved, dressed, and walked along to the car deck. He’d been on this ship long enough, and he did not wish to be remembered by anyone, in any way.

  He drove straight off the ferry, over the wide steel bridge, and onto the British mainland. He drove down the long exit road from the ship, and up ahead there were tall sheds, plainly a customs checking area. There were also two kiosks, with uniformed security men standing out front. There was only one other car near him, the rest having plainly rushed out of the ship in the small hours.

  Mack slowed down and saw the man look at his license plate. “Irish passport, sir?”

  “Right here,” said Mack, waving the one that belonged to Patrick O’Grady.

  “Straight on, sir,” he replied, without even looking. Mack Bedford thus entered the United Kingdom with a minimum of fuss and total anonymity. He planned, in a few days, to leave the United Kingdom in much the same way. But right now he needed to reach London, and the gunsmith, as fast as this fine-tuned, McArdle-guaranteed Irish automobile would take him.

  He climbed the steep cliff face from Fishguard Harbor on the new road, and then turned right, away from the ocean, onto the A40. He drove quickly at this time in the morning, on a long, winding road, almost deserted except for ferry traffic coming the other way. He sped through the spectacular farmland of West Wales, passing villages named in the ancient native language with about three hundred letters and hardly any vowels.

  At seven he passed Wolf’s Castle, an extraordinary jagged-rock fortress set high on a hill, silhouetted against the sky. It took another hour to reach the M4 motorway, which runs all the way through South Wales, past the old coal mining valleys, and then on to London, a fast three-hour drive, from end to end of Great Britain’s busiest highway.

  Mack crossed the Severn Bridge at nine and stopped for breakfast at the first service area he found. He gassed up the car and then went inside to order a couple of English sausages, toast, and scrambled eggs. He lingered for a couple of cups of coffee, carefully studying a London A-Z guide. He located the gunsmith’s street, and hit the M4 again, running hard, due east toward the capital.

  The map had proved extremely useful because it confirmed that he did not need to move into London. He could stay outside, possibly at one of the many hotels that surround the airport out here on the M4. He could deal with the gunsmith from here. Southall, where Mr. Kumar lived, was less than five miles from the airport.

  This was all extremely good news, because hotels next to big international airports are the most impersonal organizations in the world. Everyone’s in transit, everyone’s in a hurry, and no one has much time for anyone else. For pure anonymity, they were the perfect answer. All Mack had to do was find one.

  He took the London Heathrow exit and turned left, the wrong way for the terminals. Within a half mile he found precisely what he needed, a big commercial hotel, owned by an American chain, with shuttle service to the terminals, running, by the look of the congested forecourt, every ten minutes.

  A doorman opened his car door and inquired, “Are you staying, sir?”

  Mack nodded his assent. He walked inside and took a large single room for a week, told them he’d be paying in cash, and handed over two thousand British pounds.

  The receptionist counted it and told him, unnecessarily, “No problem.” He handed Mack the card key to Room 543, and asked if he needed help with the bag.

  Mack declined and was told the boy would bring his car keys to the room when the doorman had parked it.

  As it happened the boy was at the room before Mack and was waiting for him. Mack gave him a fiver and took the keys. He removed his shaving kit and other toiletries from the bag and placed them in the bathroom. Then he re-created his Jeffery Simpson persona, and almost immediately went out again.

  He followed the map and found Merick Street in nearby Southall, one of the western suburbs of London with a largely Indian and Pakistani population. The place was as busy as downtown Bombay on this Monday morning, and Mack had no trouble locating a hardware store.

  There he purchased a workman’s toolbox, metal, eighteen inches long, a foot high and a foot wide, with a central handle set into the lid. Inside were folding racks, built for hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches.

  “Very fine box, sir,” said the Indian in the store. “Very fine indeed. Good box for excellent workman.”

  Mack was not certain he looked like an excellent workman in his Jeffery Simpson disguise—more like an unemployed bank clerk. Nonetheless, he smiled and paid the sixty-two pounds for the toolbox, which he thought, privately, was plenty of money.

  Outside he aimed the Ford Fiesta into a maze of side streets, searching for the address on the piece of paper handed to him by Liam O’Brien. Eventually, he found it, a wide residential avenue, nicer than any other street in the area, and he turned into number 16, which was a big double-fronted Victorian house in its own grounds.

  The garden was overgrown, and the wide driveway was greatly narrowed by overhanging trees. But the house was in excellent repair, with white trim around the windows and a jet-black pair of front doors, glossy, recently repainted.

  Mack rang the bell and was shown in by a uniformed Indian butler. “Whom shall I say has called?” he asked.

  “Tommy McArdle,” replied Mack.

  A few minutes later the butler returned and announced that Mr. Kumar would like his visitor to go down to the workroom. He was led along a short hallway to a padded leather door, which the butler opened and then led him down to a bright workshop.

  There was a central table and three working bays around the outside, each one of which was illuminated by a shaded light slung low over a workbench covered in dark-red baize. It looked a lot more like a jeweler’s workroom than an arms factory.

  A tall, slender Indian came toward Mack and held out his hand. “I’m Prenjit Kumar,” he said. “I hope I can be of service. You come recommended by a man who was once among my finest customers.”

  Mack Bedford stared at him. Mr. Kumar was dressed in dark-blue pants, with a dark-blue sweater over a white shirt. He wore a green apron and carried a small jeweler’s glass in his left hand. He had eyes that were almost jet black. Mack put him at around forty-five.

  “I presume you are here to purchase a firearm, Mr. McArdle,” said the Indian. “And before we even start I must ask you how you intend to pay for it. I take no checks, and I accept no credit cards. I also leave no trails for anyone who might be interested. No rifle or handgun leaves here with any form of identifying marks, which is against the law. However, I am more concerned with the well-being of my clients than foolish English bureaucracy.”

  Mack liked what he was hearing. He liked it very much. Liam O’Brien had been a stroke of luck. Kumar was a professional, the definition of which is, in its purest form, a person
involved with the total elimination of mistakes. Professionalism has nothing to do with money. Well, not much anyway.

  “Mr. Kumar,” said Mack, “I am happy with all that you have said. Of course, I realized you would need to be paid in cash.”

  “Then I imagine we have reached the point where you tell me what you need,” said the gunsmith.

  “I require a sniper rifle, but I am uncertain precisely what type. Also, I am in a real hurry, so I must accept your recommendation.”

  “Range?”

  “Around 100 yards, no more than 150.”

  “Single-shot bolt action or a five-round feed magazine?”

  “Single-shot bolt will be fine. I do not expect to fire more than twice.”

  “Silencer?”

  “If possible. And a telescopic sight.”

  “Six-by-twenty-four 2FM?”

  “Perfect.”

  “I can give you shot grouping of less than 40 centimeters over 800 meters, 7.62-millimeter caliber with a muzzle velocity of 860 meters per second.”

  “That’s outstanding. What kind of rifle will it be?”

  “I’m thinking of an Austrian-built SSG-69. A lot of people have tried to build a better sniper rifle, but in my opinion no one’s ever improved it. The British SAS used it for years; some of them still do.”

  “Will it take long to get?”

  “Mr. McArdle, I am assuming you will want this rifle tailored to your precise measurements, and perhaps shortened, while retaining its accuracy?”

  “That is what I need.”

  “The time is a matter for you. I can only go so fast with a precision instrument like this.”

  At this point Mack Bedford produced his very fine toolbox. “My biggest problem may be that it has to fit in here,” he said.

  Mr. Kumar was in no way disturbed. He opened the box and produced a tape measure, swiftly measuring each dimension.

  “The SSG-69 is sufficiently long, but it will restrict you to a hardened, cold-forged 13-inch barrel. On a rifle like this, it’s a perfectly adequate length.”

  Mack nodded, understanding the language.

  “I do have two of those rifles here, and I could probably begin work immediately. Let me measure you right now.” He handed the former SEAL a black rod.

  Mack took up his shooting stance, right hand on the spot where the trigger ought to be. The gunsmith measured him down his left arm length, and then measured the distance between his right shoulder and his trigger finger, across the hypotenuse formed by Mack’s elbow and forearm.

  “Yes, that ought not to be too much trouble,” he said. “The stock on these rifles is made from some form of cycolac, which I will cut out and remove. That will leave you with an aluminum stock, formed by two struts with a wide, fitted shoulder rest. I presume you favor your left eye?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, Mr. McArdle. You may leave the rest to me. I am presuming you will want high-velocity bullets that explode on impact—chrome, slim entry point? Are you intending a head shot?”

  “Possibly two, if the rifle’s sufficiently quiet.”

  “Your toolbox has ample room. I think we can oblige you in every respect. There will, of course, be no serial numbers on the rifle, which is illegal, but it is the way things like this are done. No one will ever know where you got the rifle, or who made it. Mr. Liam O’Brien liked that very much.”

  “And the price?”

  “Depends on how soon you want it, whether I need to drop everything for this one job.”

  “It’s Monday today. How about Saturday?”

  “Saturday! That would be a very great rush. If you want it then, it will cost you thirty thousand pounds. If you will give me another week, it will be twenty-four thousand. Either way, it will be half down now, and the balance when you collect the rifle.”

  “Saturday. I will pay you fifteen thousand pounds right now.”

  Mr. Kumar looked suitably impressed but not amazed. “You will not regret this, Mr. McArdle. This is a superb sniper rifle and, in the right hands, cannot miss. Also, I will engineer it to screw together very quickly with no room for error.”

  “Will it come apart just as easily?”

  “No problem. A matter of seconds.”

  Mack turned away and dug into his bag, searching for his bundles of English cash. He found them quickly and produced five stacks of fifty-pound notes, neatly bound, sixty in each. He handed them over, and then he made two more requests of Mr. Kumar.

  “Could you get me a Draeger rebreathing apparatus?”

  “Of course. Direct from Germany. How far do you intend to travel under the water?”

  “Maybe a long way. Two hours.”

  “Then you’ll need the Delphin I. It’s their best, state of the art, standard issue, U.S. Navy.”

  “Oh, really?” said Mack. “That good?”

  “The best. They’ll ship to me FedEx. Be here in two days. But it’s not cheap. Do you want it to be filled and ready to go?”

  “Of course.”

  “I only ask because some people are nervous walking around with a small tank of compressed oxygen. You’re not going to take it through an airport, are you?”

  “Christ, no!” said Mack.

  Mr. Kumar smiled. “I will get it for you, and I charge a 20 percent commission on the retail price.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Pay me when you pick up the rifle on Saturday.”

  The two men walked back to the staircase and made their way to the front door.

  “Are you from India, originally?” asked Mack.

  “Oh, yes, but I hardly remember it. My family is from a small town on the north bank of the River Ganges up near the Bangladesh border. Place called Manihari.”

  “West Bengal?”

  “How could you possibly know that?” replied Mr. Kumar, smiling.

  Mack, who like many naval officers had an encyclopedic memory for geographic facts, told him, “Well, I don’t know the exact town, but I know that West Bengal hugs the frontier with Bangladesh, and I know the Ganges floods into the Bay of Bengal.”

  “Ha, ha, ha. You’re like Sahib Sherlock of Baker Street. Very good detective.”

  Mack wasn’t too sure about Sahib Sherlock, but he found himself chuckling with the tall Bengali.

  “And how did you get here?” he asked.

  “Oh, my father emigrated here when I was only four. He was a mechanic in the army, and then he started a garage here in Southall. He still has it, and he does not approve of my business. But he drives a small Ford. I have a very large BMW. Big difference. Ha, ha, ha!”

  Mack shook the hand of the Indian gunsmith. “There’s usually bigger money for men who take bigger risks. But be careful. What time on Saturday?”

  “Come at noon. Ha, ha.”

  Raul Declerc sat in his Marseille headquarters, still depressed about the way he’d had the big fish on his line, and then failed to land it. Damn Morrison.

  It was the second time in his life that greed had been the downfall of Raul Declerc. The first had caused him to run for his life from the watchdogs of MI-6, who were wondering where the hell their two million pounds had gone. The former Col. Reggie Fortescue had thus been obliged to race from London to Dover and board a cross-Channel ferry to flee the country. He had left with a few hundred thousand pounds, but he was only forty years old, and now lived with the fact that he had brought disgrace upon himself, his family, and his regiment.

  He would never return to his native Scotland, and in the intervening three years he had spent his time looking for another big hit to make him a million. The mysterious Morrison had appeared to be that opportunity. And now Morrison had vanished, leaving Colonel Reggie to rue the day he had asked for another million.

  He knew it, and Morrison plainly knew it. Greed had yet again been Reggie’s downfall. And now, with his new French identity and his fourth cup of Turkish coffee of the morning, he racked his brain to come up with a salvage plan.


  There was only one. He had information, and, in a sense, it was priceless information. At any rate, it was to one person in all of France. He told the secretary to find him a number for the Gaullist Campaign Office in Rennes, Brittany, and then to connect him.

  It took five minutes, but the connection was made, and an automatic recorded voice came on his line saying, “Vote for Henri Foche, pour Bretagne, pour la France.” Almost immediately another voice, human, female, came on, and confirmed this was indeed Henri Foche’s campaign headquarters, and what could she do to help?