The Sweeney 03

by Ian Kennedy-Martin

  A pregnant silence for a moment, then Hijaz’s voice came across so low it sounded like someone else’s. ‘You’ve found the killer of Ibn Haffasa? You are definite?’

  ‘He was following Almadi. I guess it was close.’

  ‘Where are you speaking from?’ The question sharp, as if Hijaz was suddenly in a Hell of a hurry.

  Regan lifted the scotch and took a sip of it. He looked out through the open window of the elegant room. He couldn’t see the villa from where he sat, but it was less than five hundred yards away. He sipped his drink, knowing it was not possible to hear the sound of somebody sweat, but in this case it was easy to imagine it.

  ‘Where are you speaking from? Where is the Haffasa killer?’ Hijaz’s voice now higher and desperate.

  Regan, again silence for a full fifteen seconds and another slug of scotch. Then he said, ‘Right chummy, get yourself a piece of paper and pencil. But first get this. You learn nothing until you’ve made me a happy man. Right?’ he snapped the word. ‘I resign the role of Number One Asshole. That’s how I’ve been treated by you and your pals. You give me answers, you’ll get the address. Part two is you don’t give the answers to me, you give them to my superiors in London. Or maybe he already has some of them, in which case you tell him to release them. Following all this?’

  A half-strangled grunt at the end of the phone which Regan took as an affirmative.

  ‘I think I’ve worked it out. It’s political. It’s big. It’s got nothing to do with a guy going around blackmailing people. That’s bullshit. This I suspect is governments, high ranking politicians, that kind of area. And I, for reasons I don’t know, was kicked into the middle of it. You listening to this?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Hijaz said, all attentive.

  ‘But now I have the ace. Here come the questions. Phone the answers to Superintendent Maynon, Flying Squad, New Scotland Yard, 01-230-1212. He’ll check your answers. I can’t do that from here. Question number one. Who was the guy in the red Jaguar who tried to kill me...’

  ‘I can tell you now.’

  ‘I said tell Maynon. He’d check your answers. I can’t.’ Regan said sharply. ‘Question two. What was the British Special Branch involvement in this case? Tell Maynon to release the truth to me. That seems to me to be a very grey area. No subtleties, no more fucking fiction or elaborations. I want the real story from whatever source it comes from, you or him.’

  ‘These are things I do not know about...’ Hijaz’s voice seemed more frightened now than worried, a definite shift. Regan wondered about that.

  ‘You’re going to find out about that. Question three. What were those installations this morning? What’s the deal Almadi’s doing with the French Government? Why is the deal so important that first Haffasa was murdered to try and stop it, and Almadi had a similar fate in store?’

  ‘I can answer these questions if you come to Hotel du Cap.’

  ‘Question four. Who in Hell are you, Hijaz? You’re no Bahraini cop. I know cops world-wide. I’m saying you’re not a fucking cop, so what are you?’

  The voice very low, almost a whisper. ‘Come to the Hotel du Cap.’

  ‘Speak to Maynon. Sort it out among yourselves. Tell him I’ll phone him in two hours from now. To get my answers. Tell him if I suspect for one moment he’s not telling me the truth, I’ll put the phone down, and you won’t get your killer. Clear?’

  Regan didn’t wait for the answer. He put the phone down.

  He killed the two hour wait with three more scotches and some out-of-date English newspapers in the hotel lobby. He read the old stories, but his mind was somewhere else, not working out anything cogent, but imagining the wires humming all over London. Calls between Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office, the House of Commons, maybe the Cabinet, maybe the Prime Minister, the lines hot with query and outrage, and maybe mystery. He had a sense now of the outline without seeing the vital detail, he could see the trees but not the woods. It was a political caper, the intrigue and aggravation of it smelled of camarillos at the highest level. A level so high that it had been computed to be beyond his ken, except that he was a top Yard cop whom they’d dropped into it. Their choice, not his. What was clear was that no one, from the second that he’d walked into his ACC’s office at the Yard, had levelled with him. Well, now they must pay. If they wanted the guy who killed Haffasa, the going rate was the truth. The time had come to tell him the story, and the curious thing was that whatever the narrative, however complex or oblique or mad with subterfuge, the interesting thing was that he knew as soon as he heard the story which was the truthful one, he’d recognize it.

  He put through the long distance call to Scotland Yard at six p.m. Maynon came on the line, in a voice ice-cold to show his anger. ‘What is this, Regan? Are you threatening the British Government? Is it blackmail? I warn you, this is tape-recorded.’

  ‘Fine,’ Regan said gently. ‘I’ve worked out it’s more than my job’s worth. I’ve got the Haffasa killer, you’ve got some explaining. If you don’t like that, accept my resignation. Do I put the phone down, or is it a deal...?’

  ‘I warn you that it’s likely that disciplinary action will be taken against you on your return.’

  Regan’s voice hardened. ‘There’s no time left for that sort of talk, sir. Do I put the phone down, or do we talk?’

  Regan got the truth. Superintendent Maynon kept it simple, although it was a complicated story. The ramifications surprised him. It contained elements he would not have guessed at, others which were so elemental he was angry he hadn’t thought of them before. The explanations lasted about five minutes, including Regan’s terse questions of clarification. But at the end of it he was satisfied. It was too oblique a story for anyone to have made up.

  The installation that Almadi’s party and Regan had visited near Tende had been a new French atomic power station. New in every sense of the word, the installation had hardly started producing electricity and was the latest design in Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor types. The secret deal that Almadi had come to France to make had been called by leading European politicians, ‘The deal of the century’. In return for the purchase of one billion dollars of French manufactured goods, ranging from textiles to Mirage jets, the French Government were prepared to sell the Bahrainis four Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor Atomic power stations. Every leading politician in the world knew the significance of this deal. The Arabs didn’t want the nuclear power stations to generate electricity – the cheapest way to make electricity is by burning oil – the Arabs have all the oil they could ever want. The reason they were in France shopping for atomic power stations was that, as a result of the building of four atomic power stations in Bahrain by the French, the Arabs would be provided with the basic technology and materials to construct their first atomic bomb.

  Meanwhile the Israelis had secretly had the atomic bomb now for the past three years. The great powers had been unable to stop Israel from building their bomb. But the same great powers, including Russia, had agreed that they didn’t want the Arabs with a bomb. Arab politics were too volatile. The Israelis could be trusted not to start throwing the thing around, the Arabs not. That’s what the USA, Russia, England and India, four of the five world nuclear powers had decided. The fifth, the French, had been in agreement with the others for years up to that moment in history when the Arabs turned the screws on western civilization and introduced the blackmail politics of oil pricing.

  There had been two results from his blackmail. The Arabs made a lot of money and enemies. The French leaders of a nation of shopkeepers, never slow to see an opportunity for profit, spotted the paradox, rich Arabs, poor in friendship. They started to study the spectrum of Arab needs. Number one on the East’s shopping list was an atom bomb. The other nuclear powers said ‘No’, the Arabs were not to be trusted. The French decided that the Arab hierarchy, from Sadat to the young Harvard graduates who ran OPEC, currently seemed to have less screws loose than the politics of Tel Aviv; and the realpolitik of the s
ituation was that atom bombs for all in the Middle East could be argued as giving a better balance of power.

  The Arabs, according to Maynon, had approached all nuclear powers at one time or other looking for an atom power station purchase. The US, the Russians, Great Britain, India and France. They’d all turned them down flat. Then in September 1975, the French had contacted a Bahraini representative and informed him that in exchange for a billion dollar Arab deal with French industry, they would supply the very latest in nuclear power generating stations. The one condition of the sale was that the deal, up until delivery of the installation, should be kept secret.

  The Arabs are not too good at secrets. By December 1975, Israeli Intelligence knew all about it, and which Arabs were to meet which Frenchmen where, to make the deal.

  The signature of contracts was to take place outside France. The first suggestion was that the initial accord should be signed in London. Sheikh Ibn Ben Haffasa was to check into the Wellington Clinic to hold a series of meetings with the French and sign the initial papers. The British Government was aware of all this, was aware of the French deal with the Arabs, regretted it, but realistically there was nothing they could do about it. They could stop the papers being signed in London, but that would delay nothing. The papers could be signed at the Malta Hilton or the Excelsior, Rome.

  Israeli Intelligence, on the other hand, had different ideas. It informed the Iranian Ambassador in Washington that any Arab individual who tried to sign any nuclear power station deal with the French, would be assassinated. This gave certain Arab individuals food for thought. Haffasa decided to ignore the thought. He arrived in the Wellington Clinic, London on February 7th. On March 11th the man, who now sported a moustache and whom Maynon was identifying as a member of Israeli Intelligence, made his short but impressive visit to Haffasa’s suite.

  Had the British Special Branch been looking after Haffasa’s security? That was one of Regan’s questions.

  ‘I’ve talked to the head of SB,’ Maynon answered. ‘They were notionally looking after Haffasa. The fact is the British Government was not that keen on Haffasa’s presence or business in England. The SB, I gather, had two guys on his security. They were obviously out for a quick one in St. John’s Wood, centre of the British pub industry, when chummy arrived with the M38.’

  Regan said nothing but agreed, could see it falling into place. Why the ACC had stuck him on the case. The logical outcome of the murder at the Clinic should have been an enquiry into the SB – were they there or were they not? And if not, why? The Deal of the Century was going on and they knew about it – there should have been an armed man in every toilet. Except that the head of the SB had got feedback from English politicos that they were cool on the whole frog-wog deal. ‘Who was the guy in the red Jag?’

  ‘Some Arab Intelligence outfit,’ Maynon answered. ‘A low rating for those types, poor marks. I can only assume that the Jag driver thought you were present at the Wellington that morning as a killer returning to the scene of the crime, or some such...?’

  ‘Some such...’ Regan mused. ‘Yeah. When you think of the lack of finesse, lack of expertise of the attack, it smells like an Arab IU.’

  The Chief Superintendent had given him the answers. ‘Mr. Maynon, the Haffasa killer is in a villa. It’s called Cap au Vent, Avenue Lille, St. Jean-Cap Ferrat. I’m in a hotel about five hundred yards away, La Reserve. There are eight other men in the villa. My guess is they’re all armed. I think we can take it they’re all part of an Israeli Intelligence Unit.’

  ‘Phone that man called Hijaz. Tell him the address. That was the deal,’ Maynon instructed.

  Regan signed off with a couple of noncommittal pleasantries. He would be back in London soon. He didn’t quite carry out Maynon’s orders to the letter. He got the hotel switchboard to call the police prefecture at Antibes, who referred him to the Nice HQ. He talked to Inspector Guignard and told him about the men and the villa. Then he phoned Hotel du Cap and talked to Hijaz, gave him the address and also informed him that he’d given details to Guignard. Implicit in Regan’s decision to talk to Guignard was that he felt he still could not trust Hijaz not to do something illegal or dangerous or stupid.

  Hijaz didn’t seem pleased at the variation in the deal, Guignard being told the news before himself. Maybe he’d had the idea of dropping the first Arabic atom bomb on a villa in Cap Ferrat before the French realized what was happening.

  The raid was timed for eight p.m. exactly. There was still light, though low cloud was piling up around the pinnacles of the mountain backdrop, and beginning to slide down on the coast. Guignard probably calculated he had half an hour to get in, and to get out of the villa with its incumbents. Then it would be dark. If the Israelis put up resistance till night fell, Guignard must know there was a chance he’d lose some of them under cover of darkness.

  It would be a technical arrest though basically all Guignard wanted was to interrogate them, put the fresh-grown moustache man on a twenty-four hour hold while Regan and Scotland Yard assembled an extradition order. The French police probe would go no further than that. There was no intention of pressing a criminal fugitive charge on the other seven for giving asylum to the killer.

  Basically the French detective and his superiors, maybe aided by a nod tipped from the Justice Ministry in Paris, just wanted the guys out of France. The killer on an arrest warrant Londonwards, the others on El Al out of Nice Airport.

  Guignard gave Regan explicit orders. Having taken a sworn statement from him at Nice HQ of positive visual identification of the killer, he then ordered Regan to stay completely clear of the area of the raid.

  Regan argued but got nowhere. At first he was angry, a natural enough reaction, especially as the phone in Guignard’s office at the Nice Headquarters kept on ringing and the French cop paid more attention to the phone than him. Then Regan relented. Guignard was taking fifteen armed men on the raid and the point he was trying to make was that he couldn’t guarantee Regan’s safety if shooting started, nor the legal position if Regan shot someone or was shot at. Regan asked if he could be in the road outside the villa. The answer was, ‘No’. He then asked if he could be on the police launch which would approach the villa from the sea side. Guignard gave another negative. He didn’t want Regan any nearer to the scene than La Reserve Hotel. Regan shrugged it off, asked if Guignard could get him a pair of binoculars. He’d oversee the thing from the layby eyrie on the road between Beaulieu and Villefranche. Guignard’s assistant produced an expensive pair of Leitz binoculars. At half past seven Guignard personally dropped Regan back at La Reserve. Regan got into the Mercedes and drove back up to the layby with the view down five hundred yards to the villa on Cap Ferrat.

  The light was going, but streetlights were twinkling on along the coast roads and avenues out on Cap Ferrat. Some neon from the Beaulieu Casino and other arcades was reflecting out across the water. Regan saw the boat at two minutes to eight coming fast round the corner from Nice and heading across Villefranche Bay and moving in directly to the villa’s mooring steps. Regan was impressed by the speed and precision with which the French cops were out of the boat, up the steps, and fanned out around the grounds of the house within seconds. They made a lot of noise on landing. Regan could hear the shouts across the narrow stretch of water.

  The villa had been quiet. Lights on in two of the lower rooms and one of the upper bedrooms. As the cops arrived from the sea and hit the lawns, lights seemed to go on all over the house, and doors were opening and people shouting, most of this drowned out by the simultaneous arrival of three gendarme cars, klaxons hee-hawing across the railway bridge on to the peninsula. Regan heard a crash. He couldn’t see the front gates from his position, but it sounded like one of the cop cars hadn’t waited for the guard to open the gates. Only seconds after the torches and shouts from the sea-borne gendarmes hit the back lawn, he could see other torches and armed uniformed cops racing round from the front of the villa.

  He heard the cra
ckle of automatic rifle fire. Several long bursts, then half a dozen isolated shorter bursts. It was impossible to work out what the firing was about, possibly Guignard’s men loosing off warning shots. There was now more light spilling from the villa as cops penetrated inside and began a sweep of each floor. Then Regan saw some of them stepping out on to a balcony on the second floor. He’d just seen two other cops on the first floor veranda. The assumption then was the gendarmerie was now throughout the house. He panned his binoculars down to the main room at the rear of the ground floor, in time to see an officer draw the curtains and slide open a long picture window. Regan saw the archetype cameo of French cops strutting about prodding the eight huge guys with their pistols, lining them up, cautioning them to keep their hands on their heads.

  The whole operation had taken less than three minutes from the arrival on the mooring steps to Regan seeing the figure of Guignard leading his group with the eight men, sandwiched in the middle of it, on to the rear lawn. A couple of police vans then appeared from around the front of the villa. The Israeli group was loaded in.

  He drove into Nice and back to the gendarmerie headquarters in Avenue de France. Guignard kept him hanging around for half an hour, then came back and organized an office from which he could phone Scotland Yard. He phoned the Yard, spoke to the Duty Officer, Squad Office, asked him to start the motions with the Home Office for extradition papers. Guignard found a bottle of scotch and gave Regan a generous helping. The French cid man also sorted out one of his sergeants to go back to La Reserve in Beaulieu, collect Regan’s bill and deliver it to the Hotel du Cap.