The Veteran (26 page)

To broadcast on the open channel would be to tell half the pilots heading towards Heathrow and there would be a score or more at that very moment, so he might as well take an ad in The Times. But BA airliners carry a gizmo called ACARS.

The Aircraft Communications, Addressing and Reporting System would enable him to send a message to BA (Ops) at Heathrow with some confidentiality. After that it would be thankfully out of his hands.

The CSD came back from below. It is Hugo Seymour, he said, no doubt about it. Right, said Fallen, and sent his brief message. They passed over Belgrade.

Bill Butler never received his four thirty wake-up alarm. At ten to four the phone rang. It was his duty man at Terminal Four, Heathrow. As he listened he slipped his legs from under the duvet and came awake fast. Twenty minutes later he was in his car, driving and calculating.

He knew all about decoys and anonymous denunciations.

They were almost the oldest trick in the book. First, the anonymous phone call from a public booth somewhere in the city, denouncing someone on an incoming flight as being a carrier.

It was impossible for Customs to ignore the call, even though they might be ninety per cent certain the described tourist was simply an innocent, spotted and chosen at the point of departure. The caller would of course be a gang member based in London.

The described person would have to be intercepted while unnoticed in the throng the real carrier slipped past, looking innocent as the morning dew.

But a warning from the aircraft captain? That was new. A note from one of his own passengers? Two passengers denounced as suspicious? Somewhere behind all this was the organizing brain and it was Butler’s job to pit his wits against that man and win. It could just be that this time an interfering busybody had thrown a spanner in the works.

He parked at Terminal Four and strode into the almost empty building. It was four thirty and a dozen huge jets in the livery of British Airways, which almost monopolized the fourth terminal, were heading in from Africa, the Orient and the Americas. In two hours the place would be bedlam again.

The six p.m. departures from New York, Washington, Boston and Miami, flying for seven hours downwind and adding five hours, would be meeting the flights from the east, flying for thirteen and subtracting seven. Within minutes, between six a.m. and six forty, the first hesitant off-boarded passengers would become a tidal wave. Ten members of his Knock team were also heading towards Terminal Four, weaving their way through the darkened lanes of the Home Counties. Butler needed to have his men at every stage of the disembarkation, immigration and customs hall process, but inconspicuously so. The last thing he wanted was a ‘bottle-out’.

There had been such cases. The carrier, knowing exactly what his main suitcase contained, had simply lost his nerve and refused to collect his case. The carousel had gone on turning in the baggage hall and the customs officers had gone on watching, but that last single case was never claimed. How the carrier expected to face a bitter and angry gang boss was his own business and some no doubt failed to survive the experience. Butler wanted more than an abandoned suitcase. He wanted the carrier and the consignment at least.

According to instructions from West Drayton, Speedbird One Zero was moving across the Channel towards the coast of Suffolk. Her course was to bring her north of the airport, then a long, slow curve to port would line her up with the main runway, approaching from the west. On the flight deck Adrian Fallon was back in the left-hand seat, listening to the instructions from West Drayton, on course and on schedule. The 747 was down to 15,000 feet and Fallon could see the lights of Ipswich drifting towards them.

One of his two First Officers brought him a message received on the ACARS. It politely asked for the mysterious letter to be available at the door as soon as it opened, in the hand of the CSD and ready for collection. Fallon grunted in annoyance, took the two sheets of folded paper from his top shirt pocket and gave them to the First Officer, with instructions for Harry Palfrey. They crossed the coast. Six-oh-five.

In the three cabins there was that air of expectancy that always precedes a landing. Lights were long up, breakfast trays removed and stowed, video entertainment terminated. The cabin crew now had their jackets on, distributing passengers’ jackets in First and Club. Window-seat occupants peered wearily out at the chains of lights passing beneath them.

Mr. Hugo Seymour emerged from the First Class washroom, clean, shaved, combed and emitting the fragrance of an expensive Lichfield aftershave. Back in his seat he adjusted his tie, buttoned his waistcoat and accepted his cream silk jacket, folding it across his lap for later. His crocodile attache case was between his feet.

In Economy the Canadian hippie shifted wearily and longed for a cigarette. Being in the aisle seat he could see nothing through the portholes and did not try.

The Higgins family four rows back was fully awake and ready for landing. Between her parents Julie was carefully telling Pooky of all the wonders she would be seeing in her new homeland. Mrs. Higgins was packing the last of her paraphernalia into her carry-on bag. The ever-neat Mr. Higgins had his plastic attache case on his knees, hands folded on top. He had done his duty and felt the better for it.

On the seat-back the little white aeroplane finally jerked its way round the curve until its nose was pointing at Heathrow.

The ensuing figures declaimed twenty miles to touchdown. It was six twelve.

From the flight deck the crew could see the still dark fields of Berkshire below them and the lights that illuminated Windsor Castle. The undercarriage went down; the flaps eased down in sequence to the full twenty-five degrees required. To a ground observer Speedbird One Zero appeared to be drifting, almost motionless, across the last miles to the concrete; in fact she was still flying at 170 knots, but slowing and dropping.

Adrian Fallon checked all his instruments yet again and acknowledged the instruction from Heathrow Tower that he was clear to land. Ahead of him a Boeing out of Miami had just cleared the runway and ten miles behind him was a Northwest carrier out of Boston. But their passengers would be going to Terminal Three. As for British Airways’ dedicated Terminal Four, he would be the first of the morning. As his wing passed over the Welsh Harp reservoir he went through 1,000 feet and the airspeed moved easily towards the 138 knots landing speed.

At six eighteen Speedbird One Zero touched down.

Ten minutes later Adrian Fallon brought the huge jetliner to a final stop next to the mobile passenger tunnel, applied the parking brake and let the First Officer close her down. Power went from the main engines to the APU, causing a second-long flicker of the cabin lights, which then resumed burning brightly. Below him the cabin staff at the front end watched the gaping maw of the passenger tunnel move towards them and, as it clamped onto the side of the airliner, hauled back the door.

Standing immediately outside was a young man in the coveralls of the airport’s technical staff. He spotted Harry Palfrey and raised an eyebrow.

“CSD?”

“The note?”

The young man nodded. Palfrey palmed him the two sheets of folded paper and he was gone. The CSD turned back with his practised beam to the First Class passengers waiting behind him.

“Goodbye sir, and I hope you enjoyed the flight.”

They began to file past him. The eighth to go was the impeccable Mr. Hugo Seymour, his sheer grooming singling him out at this dishevelled hour as very definitely one of the quality. Harry Palfrey genuinely hoped that some silly man in the back had not caused him any inconvenience.

After the First Class cabin was clear came the Club Class passengers, some from the rear, others tumbling down the stairs from the upper cabin. Right down the hull of the Boeing the Economy Class travellers, upright and jostling for space even with ten minutes left to wait, longed for their release like cattle from a pen.

The Immigration Hall is cavernous at that hour and the line of passport control officers waited behind their desks for the sea of humanity to come. Above and to one side is a mirrored wall, but it is a two-way mirror with a room behind it. Bill Butler stood in that room looking down.

There were ten passport officers below him, two for UK and European Union passports, eight for the rest of the world. One of his assistants had briefed them all. There was always cooperation between Immigration and Customs, and anyway the briefing had given another boring morning a little extra buzz.

Of the First Class passengers only four were British, the rest Thai or Australian. The four UK citizens took only seconds to pass the necessary desk, and as the third received his passport back the immigration officer lifted her head slightly and nodded at the mirror. Bill Butler had the written note in his hand. Cream silk suit, only one. Hugo Seymour. He spoke quickly to a small communicator in his hand.

“Coming out now. Cream silk suit. Crocodile attache case.”

Ranjit Gul Singh was a Sikh. He was also a Master of Arts from Manchester University and an officer of Customs and Excise, on attachment to The Knock. An observer that morning would have spotted his first qualification but not the other two. He was in the passage behind passport control, with a dustpan on a long handle and a brush. He took the message in a small earpiece no larger than a hearing-plug in his right ear. Seconds later a cream suit swished past his lowered head.

Officer Singh watched the businessman disappear into the men’s lavatories halfway down the passage. He addressed his left sleeve in a low mumble.

“He’s gone straight into the men’s washroom.”

“Follow him, see what he does.”

The Sikh entered the washroom, flicking odd pieces of litter into his dustpan. The man in the cream suit was not entering a cubicle but washing his hands. Gul Singh produced a cloth and began to wipe out the bowls and the handbasins. The other occupant took no notice of him. The Sikh kept himself busy at his lowly task, but he checked to see if there was anyone hidden in the cubicles. Was this a rendezvous, a handover? He was still wiping and cleaning when the businessman dried his hands, picked up his attache case and left. No contact had taken place. He told Bill Butler.

At that moment one of the passport officers at the desks for non-UK citizens nodded a shabby-looking hippie past him and raised his eyes to the mirrored wall. Butler took the signal and made a call on his communicator. In the passage leading to the customs hall a young woman who appeared to have disembarked from the aeroplane but had not, and who appeared to be adjusting her shoe, straightened up, noted the jeans and denim shirt ahead of her and began to follow.

Hugo Seymour had emerged into the passage to find himself no longer alone but in a throng of Economy Class passengers. He’s killing time, thought Bill Butler, losing himself in the mass. But why the stand-out-a-mile suit? That was when the anonymous call came. Butler took the report from the switchboard on his communicator.

“American-sounding voice,” said the operator. “Tagged a Canadian hippie in jeans and denim shirt, long shaggy hair, wispy beard, but he’s carrying a cargo in his haversack. Then hung up.”

“We’re onto him,” said Butler.

“That was quick, boss,” said the admiring switchboard operator.

Butler was striding down passages unknown to the public to take up position behind another two-way mirror, but this time in the customs area, specifically the Nothing to Declare Green Channel. If either of the suspects headed for the Red Channel, that would be a real surprise.

He was pleased the anonymous call had come through. It conformed to pattern. The hippie was the decoy, the obvious type. The respectable businessman would have the consignment. Not a bad trick, but this time, thanks to a dutiful citizen with insomnia, sharp eyes and a nosy disposition, it was not going to work.

The luggage from Bangkok was coming onto Carousel Six and over two hundred people were already grouped around it. Most had acquired trolleys from the ranks at the end of the hall. Among the passengers stood Mr. Seymour. His real hide hard-frame case had been one of the first to appear but he had not been there. The rest of the First Class passengers were gone. The hide case had already circled twenty times, but he made no eye contact with it, gazing instead at the delivery mouth by the wall whence the cases emerged from the baggage handling area beyond.

Ten yards away stood the hippie, Donovan, still waiting for his big black haversack. Just approaching the carousel, pushing not one but two trolleys, was Mr. Higgins with his wife and daughter. Julie, on her first foreign journey, had insisted she wanted a trolley of her own for her single case and Pooky.

Piece by piece, the circulating bags were identified by their owners, hauled off the carousel and manhandled onto trolleys. The long shuffling column through the Green Channel had begun and was now swelled by travellers from two other Jumbo jets, mainly Americans and some British returning from Caribbean vacations via Miami.

A dozen uniformed customs men, looking deceptively bored, some in the carousel hall, others inside the channel, watched.

“There it is, Daddy!”

Several passengers looked round and smiled indulgently. There was no mistaking Julie Higgins’s case. It was a medium-sized Samsonite, garishly decorated with decals of her favourite cartoon characters: Scooby-doo, Shaggy, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Almost at the same time her parents’ two holdall grips came along and the ever-neat John Higgins carefully stacked them so they would not fall off.

The hippie spotted his haversack, swung it onto his shoulders, disdained a trolley and began to stride to the Green Channel. Mr. Seymour finally retrieved his hide suitcase, laid it on a trolley and followed. In the Green Channel Bill Butler stood behind his mirror and watched the tired, pre-dawn crocodile of humanity parading past the glass. Inside the carousel hall an idle porter spoke briefly into his sleeve.

“Hippie first, coming now, silk suit ten yards behind.”