Year of the Golden Ape (19 page)

^{'I am a bachelor,' he remarked as he stood close to her. 'My name is LeCat. I have known a lot of women - many beautiful women
...'}

^{His approach was so ridiculous, so ham-handed, that for one wild moment she wanted to laugh in his face. Waterfront whores, she thought cynically, that's about his taste and experience. With me he doesn't quite know how to go about it, but his bashfulness won't last for long. Then she caught a whiff of his breath. My God, he's drunk...}

^{Even though he had consumed a third of a bottle of cognac, LeCat was not drunk. It was simply that his movements were a shade more deliberate than usual. Cognac he could take in generous quantities; he was still capable of hitting a moving target at a hundred yards. She moved casually sideways and stood with her back to the steward's bell. 'I was thinking of taking a bath,' she said. 'Could you please leave the cabin. Now!'}

^{'A bath?' He looked towards the adjoining bathroom. 'Take your bath - then afterwards we can have a drink together ...'}

^{'Get out of this cabin, LeCat. Get out now or I'll ask the guard to fetch Winter...'}

^{'Like myself, the guard is French. He takes his orders from me,' LeCat replied equably.}

^{The longer-term significance of this remark did not strike Betty Cordell - her mind was fixed on only one objective. Survival. She lifted her head and clasped her hands behind her back, assuming a most arrogant posture. The animal likes that, she noted: a peculiar gleam came into LeCat's eyes and he wiped his lip dry with a ringer. While he was distracted her own index finger moved towards the bell-push on the wall. 'I think Winter will probably kill you,' she said.}

^{'If you mention Winter again I will hit you . . .' There was a
look of fury in his eyes, an undertone in his voice not far from hatred. Shaken by his ferocity, she felt her control going. She took a step away from him and pressed the bell hard. 'Go and get your bath,' he told her viciously. 'Do not bother to dress when you have had it...'}

^{He was still standing close to her so she couldn't move towards the bathroom when the cabin door opened and Wrigley, the steward, came bustling in. A tall, stooped, middle-aged man with brisk movements, he carried a tray with a pot of coffee, cream, a cup and saucer. He stopped for a moment and frowned as LeCat glared at him over his shoulder, then, apparently noticing nothing wrong, he began chattering.}

^{'Fresh-made coffee, Miss Cordell - nice and strong the way you Americans drink it...' He began laying the things on the table. 'Better come and get it now while it's hot. Helps to keep up your strength under trying circumstances . . .' He glanced at LeCat. 'You may have a visitor any minute, Miss Cordell - Mr Winter was in the galley and said he'd be coming along here to see how you are getting along. Funny chap...'}

^{Wrigley paused as LeCat turned his back and left the cabin. The steward glowered and made a forked, two-fingered gesture towards the empty doorway. 'Sorry about that, Miss,' he apologised, 'sometimes my feelings run away with me...'}

^{'Thank you, Wrigley,' she murmured as she picked up the pot. 'You were just in time...'}

^{Winter heard about the incident within five minutes of its happening. Wrigley met him in the alleyway while he was returning to his galley, escorted by an armed guard, and had no hesitation in telling him about the near-rape. Winter reacted instantly. He summoned LeCat to his cabin.}

^{'I told you to leave that American girl alone...'}

^{'You want her for yourself...'}

^{Winter took three strides across the cabin and LeCat, seeing his expression, grabbed for the pistol in his shoulder holster. Winter's hand closed on the wrist, digging into the nerve centre. LeCat's hand, still holding the pistol butt he had no time to extract, felt paralysed. His limp fingers released the butt as Winter twisted the hand violently and spun the Frenchman round by the shoulder hinge until he was half-crouched with his back to the Englishman. The pain in his shoulder was acute and he dared not move for fear of breaking his arm.}

^{'You will break the arm...' LeCat gasped.}

^{'I will break the neck...'}

^{Winter trundled the bent man forward until he was close to the edge of the bunk. Releasing his grip a little, he allowed LeCat to lift his head a few inches, then he used his other hand to press the Frenchman's head down over the bunk with his throat rested on the hard wooden edge. The hard edge of the bunk rasped his victim's Adam's apple. 'One sharp movement and your neck is broken, LeCat,' Winter said softly. 'You know that, don't you?'}

^{'Mercy of God... Winter, please...'}

^{LeCat was terrified. He knew exactly what could happen, what he had done to a man in a similar position in Algeria once. A movement, one horrendous jerk, and his neck would snap. He was almost sick with terror.}

^{'If you even go near that woman again for the rest of the trip, I'll kill you.' Winter's tone was detached, almost conversational.}

^{Grasping a handful of hair, he lifted LeCat's head clear of the bunk, swung his body round and shoved him forward. Off-balance, the Frenchman cannoned hard against a bulkhead and fell on the floor. Getting up slowly, dazed by the impact, LeCat left the cabin. It hadn't made him love Winter any the more, but he felt the cause of his humiliation was the American girl. Added to his crude desire for her was a bitter hatred.}

^{Less than an hour before night fell on the Pacific, the helicopter was flown away from the
Challenger
by the only terrorist - other than Winter - who could fly the machine. Guided by continuous radio signals from the
Pêcheur,
he reached the trawler which was sailing a hundred miles south of the
Challenger.
The moment the plane landed its insignia were covered with canvas flaps specially prepared for the purpose. It didn't matter if a ship or a plane saw the machine sitting on the deck of the trawler, but it would have seemed very strange had it been spotted aboard the 50,000-ton tanker.}

^{Before it flew off, the machine had been unloaded by LeCat and
André Dupont. The escape apparatus - the Zodiac inflatable boat, the outboard motor, and the wet-suits - were all stored away in the carpenter's store under the forecastle. And during this work, carried out many hundreds of feet away from the distant island bridge, there was also unloaded a steel case weighing almost two hundred pounds which was transported with some difficulty and carried down the ladder into the cramped compartment.}

¹²

^{When Sheikh Carnal Tafak moved to his secret headquarters on the first floor of a building on the outskirts of Baalbek in the Lebanon, it was partly considerations of policy which decided the Saudi Arabian oil minister to go to ground - he wanted to isolate himself until the San Francisco operation had been completed. A man who cannot be found cannot answer any questions, and there were certain statesmen in the Middle East who were already very worried by Tafak's extremist views.}

^{But that was only part of the reason. The other part was more simple and human - Tafak was frightened that he might be assassinated. There had been too many rumours that Israeli gunmen were on the move; there had even been a whisper that British and American secret service men were cooperating with the Israeli intelligence service. In Baalbek, a place he had never visited before, he felt safe.}

^{The first message he received at his new headquarters was from Winter. Within thirty minutes of seizing the
Challenger
a brief radio signal was transmitted anonymously to the United Arab Republic consulate in San Francisco.
Avocado consignment has been delivered.
Inside a locked room in the consulate Talaal Ismail reached for the phone and put in a call to a Paris number. From here the message was transmitted to Athens and on to Beirut. The man Ahmed Riad had placed in a flat in Beirut made one bad slip when he phoned Tafak. He referred to him as 'Excellency' while he was reporting the message confirming the tanker's seizure. 'No titles,' Tafak snapped and slammed down the phone as soon as he had heard the message. Not that he really believed the phone would be tapped.}

^{The girl who worked as switchboard operator in the block of flats on Lafayette Street in Beirut waited until both receivers had been replaced before she turned down the switch. Then she started attending to the incoming calls she had kept waiting.}

^{She was nervous. It was the first time she had listened in to calls for money. To pass the time of day, to listen to a woman making a furtive and erotic call to her lover while her husband was out; that was another thing. Most switchboard operators did that, or so Lucille Fahmy consoled herself. But this, she suspected, could be dangerous. And who was 'Excellency'?}

^{She went off duty half an hour afterwards, saying very little to the young man who took over her night shift. Then, clasping her handbag tight, she walked to the Café Léon. The mournful-faced man arrived less than a minute after she had sat down at a corner table.}

^{'Good evening, Lucille ...' He greeted her like an old friend, leaning close to make himself heard above the racket of the juke box which was playing the latest Tom Jones record. At six in the evening the place was filling up with Lebanese teenagers. Despite the chill in the air outside it was hot and stuffy in the Café Leon. Plenty of oil for 'heating here; oil coming out of their ears. The mournful-faced man ordered coffee and cakes.}

^{'He made a call...' Lucille had to repeat what she'd said as she lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. The first in five days. When do I get some money?' she asked.}

^{He patted his breast pocket. 'I have the fifty dollars with me. Was it a local call?'}

^{'No. To a Baalbek number. I have it in my bag.'}

^{'Give it to me.'}

^{She hesitated, then opened her bag and took out a folded banknote with the number written inside which she handed to him. Anyone watching would have assumed he was short of cash, that his girl friend was paying tonight. He slipped the folded note into his wallet, next to another note he had folded earlier. He would pay with that note - just in case someone was watching him.}

^{'Can you trace the telephone number?' she asked.}

^{Again it showed nervousness - she was talking for the sake of talking. Of course he could trace any number in the Lebanon, and find the address - because it was the address which interested him. She waited until the waiter had brought the coffee and cakes and then leaned towards him. 'It was about some avocados - he just said the avocado consignment has been delivered. Oh, and he called the man at the other end Excellency ...'}

^{'He might...' The man who had told her his name was Albert appeared to know all about it - or this was the impression he deliberately gave her - and now he understood her nervousness. Like so many people in the Middle East she was frightened of the powerful. He went on sipping his coffee, hiding his shock, his hope. It looked as though they had found Tafak.}

^{One Fleet Street newspaper in London caught a hint of a whisper of a rumour - and had a 'D' notice served on it - an edict it could not ignore, so the story went unpublished. As it happened, the story was true.}

^{The British Prime Minister had driven secretly to Lyneham air base in Wiltshire, one of Britain's remoter airfields in the Salisbury Plain area. His timing was good: as his car sped towards the airfield buildings a Trident dropped out of the grey overcast and cruised along a nearby runway.}

^{When the machine had stopped, the Prime Minister was driven close up to the aircraft, so close that it pulled up at the foot of the mobile staircase which had been hastily rushed into position. He waited inside the car as a man appeared at the top of the mobile staircase, ran briskly down the steps and climbed inside the rear of the waiting car.}

^{Had a photograph been taken of the man who stepped out of the plane he might well have been mistaken for Gen. Villiers; he was bearing a black eye-patch. But at that moment Gen. Villiers was many thousands of miles away from Britain. The secret visitor, therefore, had to be someone else. He did, in fact, look very like another general whose picture had often appeared in the pages of the world's press, a certain Israeli general.}

^{It was the afternoon of Sunday January 19, the day when Winter seized control of the
Challenger.}

^{Winter took his decision to let Betty Cordell move freely round the ship immediately after the incident with LeCat. He had been appalled to find a woman on board, knowing the character of some of the ex-OAS terrorists, and now it struck him she might be safer wandering round the ship rather than locked away in her cabin. He came to the cabin to tell her his decision. 'You can roam round the ship as much as you like, but you are to report to the officer of the watch on the bridge every hour. Understood ?'}

^{She stood quite still, studying his unusual face, the boniness of his hooked nose, the wide, firm mouth, the steady brown eyes which were so remote and disconcerting. 'Why are you doing this ?' she asked quietly.}