Year of the Golden Ape

5

^ Larry Sullivan, thirty-two years old, was in the same age range as Winter, and the similarity between the two men did not end there. Sullivan also was a lone wolf, which was one reason why his career in naval intelligence was brought to a rather abrupt conclusion; Sullivan, with the rank of lieutenant, did not suffer fools gladly – even when they held the rank of admiral. When it was indicated to him indirectly – he hated people who indicated things indirectly – that his route up the promotion ladder was blocked permanently unless he became more-flexible, he indicated his own reaction quite directly. 'You can stuff the job,' he told his superior.

^ With his background and experience he had no trouble finding a job as an investigator with Lloyd's of London. Unlike the peacetime Navy, this unique organisation is anything but hide-bound in its methods; it has, in fact, a reputation for free-wheeling, for observing tradition in the face it presents to the public, while behind the scenes it breaks every rule in the book if that is the only way to get results. Only the British could have invented such an institution which, deservedly, has a world-wide reputation for integrity among all who deal with it. And Sullivan fitted in well.

^ A lean-faced, smiling man, lightly built and five feet nine tall, he had a thatch of dark hair which women found attractive; so much so he had postponed any idea of marriage yearly. His job was as unique as the organisation he worked for. Investigating suspect insurance claims which might amount to twenty million pounds for a single vessel, he carried no authority in the outside world. He lived by his wits.

^ He could lean on no one, give orders to no one, but this inhibition had its advantages. He was not too restricted in the methods he used – or persuaded others to use. He lived by his contacts and friendships, by getting to know people far outside the range of the shipping world. It was important to him to know police officials all over the globe, that he could phone certain Interpol officers and call them by their first names, that he attended Interpol conferences where he never stopped talking and listening. He was also one of the most persistent people who walked the face of the earth. 'Do it, get him off our backs', was a phrase often used behind his own back. Loaned by Lloyd's to their client, Harper Tankships, he started his enquiries about the whisper in January.

^ One January evening – his diary shows it was Sunday January 5 – Sullivan was in Bordeaux, checking the most efficient grapevine in the shipping world, the waterfront bars where seamen gather and gossip. His style of dress was hardly elegant: he wore a none-too-clean sweater and stained trousers under a shabby overcoat. ^ ^ Not that this choice of clothing fooled the men he talked to, but it helped them to feel less embarrassed at being seen talking to him.

^ The Cafe Bleu was the normal, sleazy waterfront drink shop which is reproduced time and again all over the world; layers of blue smoke drifting at different levels like strato-cirrus at thirty thousand feet, lantern lights blurred by smoke, an unsavoury stench compounded of alcohol and smoke and human sweat.

^ It always amazed Sullivan that men cooped up together in ships for weeks should, the moment they came ashore, rush to coop themselves up again in an atmosphere where oxygen was the least of the chemical elements present. 'Cognac,' he told the barman, Henri, 'and for a little information I could lose a little money…'

^ 'Harper Tankships – British outfit. They could be… looking forward to a little trouble, the whisper tells me.'

^ 'This whisper I do not know…' Henri leaned forward to polish the counter close to Sullivan's elbow and dropped his voice. 'You ask Georges – with the beret at the far end of the bar…'

^ Henri shrugged, finished his polishing, took the cloth down to the far end of the crowded bar where a small man wearing a black beret sat. He talked with him briefly and then came back, shrugging. 'Georges does not know your whisper either…'

^ Henri waited until Sullivan had left the bar, then he used the phone. He couldn't be sure, but he knew a man who occasionally paid to hear who was snooping round the waterfront…

^ Sullivan watched Henri making the call from the almost-closed door of the lavatory. He left the bar by the second exit. It probably meant nothing, but outside he walked close to the shut down shop-fronts, so he was walking as far away as possible from the harbour edge on the other side of the street. On a foggy evening it really is too easy to ram a knife into a man's back – when there is a ten-foot drop into fog-concealed, scummy water so conveniently at hand to dispose of the body. He visited nine more bars that night.

^ It went on, day after day as Sullivan worked his way north up the west Atlantic coast, driving from port to port, prowling the bars and the brothels night after night, asking the same questions, getting the same negative answers. But not always. There were several occasions when seamen said they might know something, said it in low tones as they glanced carefully round.

^ A meeting would be arranged, usually in daylight on the following morning, and for a quite different rendezvous. This suggestion was quite routine for Sullivan – informants did not like to tell him things which other ears might register. What was ^ ^ not routine was the outcome. No one ever kept the appointment.

^ Bordeaux… La Rochelle… Brest… Le Havre… Ostend… Antwerp.

^ They followed his progress all the way up the coast, tracked it on a map of western Europe torn from a school atlas which they had pinned to the wall of the Left Bank apartment in Paris. A phone call came in. Bordeaux. 'An Anglais… Sullivan. Asking about Harper Tankships…'

^ The forty-four year old Andre Dupont, the man who had helped Winter disable the Italian Syndicate motor-cruiser by throwing a thermite bomb, relayed the message to the older man who was short and wide-shouldered, whose cruel, moustached face was only a shadow in the dimly lit room – Paris was enduring yet another voltage reduction. LeCat took the phone.

^ 'Next time, do not mention the firm's name – you do not wish to end up in an alley with a red half-moon where your throat should be? Follow him…'

^ The names were circled on the atlas map and the dates of Sullivan's visits to each port were carefully recorded. 'He will go home from Belgium,' LeCat predicted. 'He will give up and catch the Ostend ferry. He has found out nothing.'

"… more. Winter said it was inevitable. Why do you think we are paying out all this money to keep loose mouths shut? I would handle it more cheaply – with a knife. But you know Winter…'

^

^ 'He is not going home,' Andre said. 'For a man who has had no answers to his questions he is very persistent. What if he goes to Hamburg?'

^ Mr Arnold Ross, managing director of Ross Tankers Ltd, registered in Bermuda, was an impressive figure. Over six feet tall, thin, bowler-hatted, he was faultlessly dressed in a dark business suit which looked as though it had just been collected from Savile Row. His black shoes positively glowed, his gold cufflinks showed discreetly as he shot his cuffs after taking off an overcoat which could not have cost less than three hundred guineas. Certainly he impressed Mr Paul Hahnemann, construction director of the Hamburg shipbuilding firm of Wilhelm Voss.

^ 'A fifty thousand ton tanker we would be interested to build in our yard,' he assured Mr Ross.

^ 'Cost, time of delivery – the key factors as usual,' Ross replied, staring out of a large picture window overlooking the yard. 'You do understand that this enquiry is very tentative; also that it is quite secret at this stage?'

^ 'Of course, Mr Ross. We shall use our discretion. You can give us some details of the vessel you have in mind?'

^ 'Something very like a ship you built for Harper Tankships – the ^ Chieftain…'

^ Everyone at Wilhelm Voss was impressed by Arnold Ross, the most typical of Englishmen when he spoke in his clipped voice, when he absent-mindedly pulled at his neat, dark moustache. The ^ Chieftain, ^ it appeared, was very similar indeed to the ship Ross had in mind. Blueprints of the tanker were produced, spread out on a drawing table, and Ross spent a lot of time studying them, asking questions about ^ Chieftain's ^ design and structure.

^ ^ morning and was lucky to drive home to Altona by nine in the evening, understood the reason for secrecy. Ross had implied the reason. 'For ten years we have built in Japan. The chairman thinks we should continue this policy. I want a complete scheme worked out before I tell him what I have in mind…'

^ Ross thawed a little over lunch, talked about his home in Yorkshire, about the place he kept in Belgravia for weekdays, his love of shooting. It all fitted in with Hahnemann's conception of how a certain sort of wealthy Englishman lived.

^ During the afternoon a call came through from London, from the headquarters of Ross Tankers. Again discretion was preserved: the caller merely gave her name as Miss Sharpe. Hahnemann handed the receiver to Ross who was bent over yet another blueprint of the ^ Chieftain. ^ Ross took the phone, listened, said yes and no several times, then goodbye. 'Always a crisis while I'm away,' he remarked, and went back to his blueprint.

^ 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.

^ 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.'

^ 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.

^ '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.'

^ 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.

^ '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…'

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

^ 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.

^ 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.

^ ^ 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.'

^ '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…'

^ 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…'

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

^ '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…'

^ '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.

^ 'They would have carried me out of here on a stretcher on my way to the morgue. Who is controlling this operation?'

^ 'Paris… so I heard.' The Frenchman's face twisted with pain as he stared piteously at bis limp fingers. 'I don't know who. Just Paris…' He fainted, keeling over heavily until he lay sideways on the table, his head cushioned on a pile of papers.

^ On the morning of Sunday, January 12, Sullivan phoned the home number of Pierre Voisin of Interpol. The French policeman, who had a private income and was therefore quite incorruptible financially as well as by inclination, lived in the rue de Bac; as it happened only a stone's throw from the flat where LeCat and Dupont had tracked Sullivan's progress through the ports of France.

^ Sullivan gripped the receiver a little tighter. With Voisin you could never be sure; sometimes he hinted at things. 'And what does that mean?' he asked.

^ 'It is your profession-to go round asking questions, sometimes, dangerous questions. You are all right?'

^ 'Yes, I'm all right.' Sullivan was still unsure. 'Sorry to bother you at home, but this is urgent – to me. Have you ever heard of an Englishman called Winter? Like the season…'

^ 'No, never.' This time there was no pause. 'But I could check for you – this morning, as a matter of fact. We have a bit of a flap on, as your countrymen say, so I have to go into the office. The records people will be there too.' Voisin chuckled. 'It is an outrage, is it not – Frenchmen working at the weekend? These are difficult days, with our Arab friends, and so forth…'

^ Sullivan gave him the number of the Hotel Berlin and put down the receiver with a frown. Really, you could never tell whether or not Voisin was hinting at something. That reference to 'our Arab friends'. The hired French assassin had referred to 'Arab money…'

^ It was less than a straw in the wind, but a faint theme was beginning to recur – the Arabs… Paris. He felt relieved that his oldest friend, Francois Messmer of French counter-intelligence, would be arriving in Hamburg tomorrow. And that was a strange incident. He had called Messmer at his Paris flat before phoning Voisin, and to his surprise Messmer had cut the call short, saying only that he would be at the Hotel Berlin on Monday morning. It was after the mention of the name Winter. So Messmer, at least, had heard something about him. Voisin phoned back just before lunchtime.

^ 'We have no record on the name of the English criminal you mentioned…' Voisin sounded crisper, more businesslike, as though he had adopted his official manner. 'Nothing official at all,' he added.

^ 'I mentioned it to one or two non-political friends…' His voice had a cynical tinge now. He was referring to men he knew who were without political ambition and who could, therefore, be relied on to tell the truth. 'No one has ever heard of this man. I am sorry.'

^ 'Be careful, Larry. You are always going about asking these questions some people do not wish you to ask. ^ Au revoirl'

^ Later in the afternoon of Sunday, January 12, while Sullivan was waiting in Hamburg for the arrival of Francois Messmer, while Winter had arrived at Cosgrove Manor in East Anglia, Sheikh Gamal Tafak was holding a secret meeting at the edge of the Syrian desert, two thousand miles away from Hamburg.

^ 'I can now reveal the plan,' he said quietly, 'the plan to deliver a terrible shock to the western nations…'

^ Tafak paused as he looked down the long trestle table inside the tent. Five serious-faced men in Arab dress sat round the table, the five leaders of the most extremist terrorist groups in the Middle East. Outside the wind blew off Mount Hermon, shivering the canvas like the flap-flap of a vulture's wings.

^ They did not look so dangerous, these five men. Three of them had a studious air and wore glasses; they could have been professors planning the curriculum for some new university. But all the men inside the tent – including Gamal Tafak – were on a secret Israeli list of men who must be eliminated before there could be any hope of lasting peace in the Middle East.

^ 'Before our armies engage Israel in the final war,' Tafak continued, 'we must first immobilise the West so no fresh arms can be sent to Israel as they were in 1973. To do that we need an excuse to cut off all oil from the West – all oil,' he repeated. 'That will immobilise them. But I foresee difficulty in persuading all Arab states to agree, so we must create the atmosphere in which they will have to agree. We must make the western countries scream at us, call us again Golden Apes. Then all Arab states will agree to cut off the oil.'

^ 'But how are you going to do this?' the serious-faced man on Tafak's right enquired.

^ 'By creating a terrible incident. If that does not make everyone fall into line – if, say, Kuwait, will not cooperate, then the sabotage teams you have organised will fly there and blow up the oil wells when I give the order…'

^ Gamal Tafak was, in his own way, a sincere man. He could not stand the thought that in Jerusalem Arab holy places were in the grip of the detested Israelis, but he was also ruthless, a man who was prepared to bring down the world if necessary to achieve his ends. He did not like these five men he was meeting. He even fore-saw the day when they would have to be eliminated if the new rulers in Saudi^ Arabia and Egypt were to keep their power. This is always the dilemma of the extremist; he looks over his shoulder at men even more extremist than himself. Terror is an escalating movement.

^ 'And how,' the same serious-faced man enquired, 'are you going to outrage the West when this British tanker has been seized. You have given us no details – we do not even know where the incident will take place.'

^ 'I will give you all the details when we next meet,' Tafak replied. 'But I will tell you now that it concerns a very large bomb which will destroy a city.' Tafak indulged in his liking for a theatrical departure. He stood up. 'I am talking about San Francisco.'