Year of the Golden Ape (6 page)

^{He left the yard at six in the evening to go back to the Hotel Atlantic, the most expensive hostelry in Hamburg. 'I want to think about what you have told me alone,' he told Hahnemann when the director suggested a night on the town. 'Make a few notes. I'm not a great night-clubber ...' It all fitted in with the image Hahnemann was filing away of a rather austere Englishman who travelled the world but was only really at home on his Yorkshire estate.}

^{'And no estimates yet,' Ross repeated as they shook hands. 'I don't want any communication from you until I see my way ahead. When I'm ready, I'll need estimates fast...'}

^{'You give us the time limit.' Hahnemann grinned. 'Lots of night work and strong black coffee. Incidentally, we did build a twin ship to the
Chieftain
for Harper, a tanker called the
Challenger..
.'}

^{'You may hear from me - inside two or three months.' Ross was stepping into his waiting car. He did not wave or look back, and the last view Hahnemann had of the elegant Englishman was of the back of his head as the car swept away through the gates.}

^{Paul Hahnemann was not a gullible man. He had been intrigued when Ross first phoned him from London, warning him that on no account must Hahnemann try and get in touch with him: the matter was highly confidential. It was not too unusual, the discreet enquiry, but Hahnemann was a careful man. He checked just before Ross's arrival at his office.}

^{He put in a call to Ross Tankers in London and asked to speak to Mr Arnold Ross. Miss Sharpe, Ross's personal assistant, took the call. Mr Ross was away abroad, she explained. Could she help? Who was speaking? Hahnemann said no, the call was personal, and put down the phone. Of course Mr Ross was abroad -he was in Hamburg, just leaving the Hotel Atlantic on his way to the Wilhelm Voss shipyard.}

^{'Money for old rope...'}

^{Judy Brown replaced the phone after making the Hamburg call and studied her nail varnish critically. She would have to make another application before she went out with Des this evening. She looked round the Maida Vale flat critically; what a dull creep this man Ross was; everything ordinary, dull. The furniture, the decoration. Soulless. She even wondered whether it was one of those flats you could hire by the week for fun with the girl friend while the wife was away. And who the hell was Miss Sharpe?}

^{The job was a bit odd, but Judy Brown had her own ideas about that. As a temporary secretary she was used to funny jobs, funny people, and this was definitely one of the funnier ones. She looked again at the typed sheet of questions she had relayed over the phone, questions Ross had dictated to her. Something to do with a ship called the
Mimosa
proceeding from Latakia and bound for Milford Haven, wherever that might be.}

^{She'd had to ask the questions when she phoned Hamburg, wait for Ross to answer, then ask the next question. And call herself Miss Sharpe. Daft. A kid could have done it. But the pay was good.}

^{Ross had hired her from an agency and then promised her an extra twenty pounds if she did exactly as he asked. The money would arrive by post tomorrow, Friday, if she did the job properly.}

^{'You come here each day at 9.30 and leave at 4.30 for the whole week,' Ross had told her. 'There may be some phone calls - make a note of them and leave it on the table. If my wife comes she may have some dictation for you.'}

^{'Nothing else?' Judy had asked.}

^{Ross, tall and thin, stooped and wearing thick pebble spectacles, had hesitated. 'Don't let my wife know about my trip to Hamburg. She doesn't know I'll be there.' He had snickered. 'Business. You know?'}

^{Judy knew. More like having it off with a foreign bit. But she still didn't see how the Hamburg call fitted in. That was on Thursday. She came each day and there were no phone calls, no sign of Mrs Ross. On Friday, the day after the Hamburg call, Ross phoned her. 'That extra money - look inside Burke's Peerage...' He broke the connection before she could say anything, rude bugger. She found the big red book, opened it, and tucked inside the front cover was a brand new twenty-pound note.}

^{Evening came and still no phone calls, no Mrs Ross, thank God. A right old bag, Judy guessed. She collected her wages from the agency and bought a new shade of nail varnish. Money for old rope.}

^{Antwerp... Rotterdam... Bremen ... Hamburg.}

^{'He has reached Hamburg,' Andre Dupont said as he replaced the phone in the Left Bank fiat in Paris. 'He is staying at the Hotel Berlin. I have the number, the address. He has crossed half western Europe-all the way from the Spanish border to the Baltic, almost...'}

^{'You are theatrical,' LeCat said. 'The map speaks for itself. He is in Hamburg. So, now you make another phone call to Gaston whom I sent ahead - just in case. Sullivan must be killed.'}

^{'Winter won't like that...'}

^{Andre stopped speaking as the other man stared up at him with his lips pressed together. Andre felt frightened, cursed himself for opening his mouth. It was not even comfortable staying in the same room with this man and they had been together for almost a week, tracking Sullivan's progress.}

^{'Sullivan must be killed,' the other man repeated. 'He is in Hamburg. And - like so many things - Winter will know nothing about it. The killing will be an accident, of course. A seamen's brawl in a bar - the Anglais likes to visit bars. Arrange it...'}

^{LeCat spoke as though he were arranging for the weekend's meat to be delivered. Which in a way he was. It was Saturday evening.}

^{It was Saturday evening January 11. At the Hotel Berlin Sullivan felt better after a bath. He felt better still after a drink in the bar which contained not a single seaman, very little smoke, and certainly no stench of human sweat that he could detect. For the first time in a week he felt relaxed. He felt even better after eating in the circular dining-room where the service was excellent and the food superb. And the tender fillet steak was from north Germany. It melted in his mouth while he listened to the two businessmen at an adjoining table talking in German about the oil crisis.}

^{'These swines of Arabs ... twisting the screw again ...'}

^{'No, turning off the tap again. It's that bastard, Tafak. I think they're going to have another crack at Israel...'}

^{After dinner he felt so refreshed that he decided to get on with it, to continue the search which so far had yielded him nothing positive. But was that correct ? Because he had learned something - that somewhere there was something to learn. You cannot go all the way up the Atlantic coast from Bordeaux to Le Havre, and then go on through Belgium and Holland into Germany, offering to pay for information - not without someone trying to con you, offering you some imaginary piece of information in the hope that you'll pay out good money. You can't do it - but Sullivan had just done this.}

^{As he finished his coffee he went over the past week in his mind. No one had tried to con him, no one had even tried to take advantage of his offer and - more significant still - not one person had asked him the kind of money he was offering. To Sullivan, who knew his seamen, there was only one explanation. Fear.}

^{Because of the new fifty per cent cut in oil supplies, which was strangling Europe, Sullivan had to wait an hour before a cab arrived at the Hotel Berlin to take him to the Reeperbahn. He arrived in the night club district soon after midnight. On his last visit he had seen the neon glow from a long way off, but now the glow had gone - the energy crisis had seen to that.}

^{The Reeperbahn is the Soho of Hamburg; night clubs line both sides of the street, their windows filled with photographs of provocative girls. The seamen's haunts are down the narrow side streets, little more than darkened alleys
dow
the street lights had
been switched off. Sullivan paused outside the
New Yorker,
took a deep breath. Here we go again: smoke, sweat, the lot.}

^{The smoke inside the tiny bar off the Reeperbahn was thick at midnight, so thick the seamen customers were only silhouettes. Tobacco from a dozen nations polluted the air, the background was a babble of foreign tongues. Max Dorf, the barman, had never heard of Harper Tankships. 'I don't hear so much these days, Mr Sullivan,' he explained. 'People don't talk so much any more...'}

^{'Not for five hundred dollars?'}

^{'That's a lot of money, Mr Sullivan. You wouldn't be carrying it on you ?'}

^{'Do I look stupid?'}

^{The burly seaman with the French beret sitting on the stool next to Sullivan lurched sideways, speaking German with a thick foreign accent. 'You look as stupid as they come, brother - and you just tipped my drink over . . .' He had almost knocked Sullivan from his stool but the Englishman regained his balance, stepped back, bumping into people as he cleared a space. 'So, you buy me another one,' the seaman went on as he faced Sullivan, 'before I smash your teeth down your throat...'}

^{A short, thick-necked man, he was swaying on his short, thick legs as he shouted the words and behind Sullivan the babble of voices stopped. Without looking round he knew everyone was looking at him, sensing trouble. A little entertainment was about to be provided: someone was going to get hurt.}

^{'You want a fight ?' the seaman demanded.}

^{'Don't make a meal of it, Frenchie,' Sullivan said sharply.}

^{The Frenchman's hand blurred and then he was holding a short, wide-bladed knife. People moved back, getting out of the way. The drunken seaman stopped swaying, sobered up in seconds, then lunged forward. Someone grunted, anticipating the penetration of the knife. There was a blur of movement, this time Sullivan's movement. Kicking the seaman's right kneecap, he jumped to one side, grabbed the Frenchman's wrist, twisted it, smashed it down on the edge of the wooden counter. The knife fell from the broken fingers and the seaman moaned.}

^{Normally a placid man, Sullivan went berserk. The seaman was
still plucking feebly at the bartop with his maimed fingers when Sullivan kicked his legs from under him, waited until he collapsed on the floor, then grabbed him by the ankles and hauled him round the end of the bar. 'Get out of the bloody way!' he yelled. They got out of his way as he swept the prone, struggling body along the floor. He opened the half-closed door at the end of the bar with a heave of his back and hauled the seaman inside Max Dorf's office.}

^{The office was empty, furnished with filing cabinet, chairs, a table covered with a mess of papers. Sullivan dropped the assassin's ankles, then heaved the Frenchman up on the table and grabbed a handful of long hair. Max Dorf came inside the office and then stopped as Sullivan shouted at him. 'Get the police - or get out...' Dorf disappeared, pulling the door shut behind him. Sullivan twisted the Frenchman's hair.}

^{'I want information,' he said grimly, 'and you're going to provide it - unless you want me to break the fingers of your other hand.'}

^{'I know nothing...'}

^{'Then you're not going to be using either hand for six months.' Sullivan jerked and half the hair nearly left the scalp. 'Now you bloody listen to me. I've been coming up the Atlantic coast for a week, asking questions, as well you know. You're giving me the answers...'}

^{'I know nothing...'}

^{The seaman screamed as Sullivan jerked a handful of hair loose, then grabbed another handful. 'Who is after one of Harper's tankers ? Who is behind this business ? Someone big - the money they must be spending to stop people talking doesn't grow on trees. Whose money is it ?'}

^{'Arab money ...' The seaman's face had turned a grey pallor, he was gasping for breath. 'That's what I heard,' he croaked. 'Barrels of money for this operation ...'}

^{'What operation? Which tanker?'}

^{'Don't know . . .' The seaman was close to collapse. 'So help me, God, I don't know. Some Englishman, Winter, is running the thing...'}

^{'Who is Winter?'}

^{'Don't know. Never met him. Just a name 'A cunning look came into his eyes. He was getting his nerve back. 'Can I have a drink?'}

^{'Certainly . . .' Sullivan reached across to a side shelf and grasped a half-full bottle of wine by the neck. Smashing it on the edge of the table he thrust the jagged end towards the seaman who stared at it in horror. 'You're not telling me everything,' Sullivan informed the Frenchman in a strangely quiet voice. 'If you don't want me to use this you'll keep on talking. You tried to kill me...'}

^{'I was drunk...'}

^{'Sober as a hanging judge,' Sullivan said softly, 'the way you came at me with that knife. Who hired you to put me to sleep permanently?' He shoved the jagged bottle forward. The seaman raised his left hand, the undamaged hand, to ward off the bottle.}

^{'For God's sake ... I was phoned from Paris - by a man called Dupont. I do jobs for him, this and that...' The Frenchman tried to gesture with his right hand and groaned. 'My hand is broken,' he whimpered.}