When he arrived in the Hansa city, Shannon stopped by the Landesbank to find his £5000 was there already. He took the whole sum in the form of a banker’s check made out to himself and went on to the Atlantic Hotel, where his room was booked. Deciding to give the Reeperbahn a miss, and being tired, he dined early and went to bed.
Johann Schlinker, whom Shannon confronted in his small and modest office the next morning, was short, round, and jovial. His eyes sparkled with bonhomie and welcome, so much so that it took Shannon ten seconds to realize the man could be trusted as far as the door. The pair of them spoke in English but talked of dollars—the twin languages of the arms marketplace.
Shannon thanked the arms dealer for agreeing to see him and offered his passport in the name of Keith Brown as identification.
The German flicked through it and handed it back. “And what brings you here?” he asked.
“You were recommended to me, Herr Schlinker, as a businessman with a high reputation for reliability in the business of military and police hardware.”
Schlinker smiled and nodded, but the flattery made no impression. “By whom, may I ask?”
Shannon mentioned the name of a man in Paris, closely associated with African affairs on behalf of a certain French governmental but clandestine service. The two had met during one of Shannon’s previous African wars, and a month earlier Shannon had looked him up in Paris for old times’ sake. A week ago Shannon had called the man again, and he had indeed recommended Schlinker to Shannon for the kind of merchandise he wanted. Shannon had told the man he would be using the name Brown.
Schlinker raised his eyebrows. “Would you excuse me a minute?” he asked and left the room. In an adjoining booth Shannon could hear the chatter of a telex.
It was thirty minutes before Schlinker came back. He was smiling. “I had to call a friend of mine in Paris on a business matter,” he said brightly. “Please go on.”
Shannon knew perfectly well he had telexed to another arms dealer in Paris, asking the man to contact the French agent and get a confirmation that Keith Brown was all right. Apparently the confirmation had just come back.
“I want to buy a quantity of nine-mm. ammunition,” he said bluntly. “I know it is a small order, but I have been approached by a group of people in Africa who need this ammunition for their own affairs, and I believe if those affairs go well there would be further and much larger shipments in the future.”
“How much would the order be?” asked the German.
“Four hundred thousand rounds.”
Schlinker made a moue. “That is not very much,” he said simply.
“Certainly. For the moment the budget is not large. One is hoping a small investment now might lead to greater things later on.”
The German nodded. It had happened in the past. The first order is usually a small one. “Why did they come to you? You are not a dealer in arms or ammunition.”
“They happened to have retained me as a technical adviser on military matters of all kinds. When the question of seeking a fresh supplier for their needs arose, they asked me to come to Europe for them,” said Shannon.
“And you have no End User Certificate?” the German asked.
“No, I’m afraid not. I hoped that sort of thing could be arranged.”
“Oh, yes, it can,” said Schlinker. “No problem there. It takes longer and costs more. But it can be done. One could supply this order from stocks, but they are held in my Vienna office. That way there would be no requirement for an End User Certificate. Or one could obtain such a document and make the application normally through legal channels.”
“I would prefer the latter,” said Shannon. “The delivery has to be by ship, and to bring that sort of quantity through Austria and into Italy, then on board a ship, would be hazardous. It enters an area I am not familiar with. Moreover, interception could mean long terms in prison for those found in possession. Apart from that, the cargo might be identified as coming from your stocks.”
Schlinker smiled. Privately he knew there would be no danger of that, but Shannon was right about the border controls. The newly emergent menace of the Black September terrorists had made Austria, Germany, and Italy highly nervous about strange cargoes passing through the borders.
Shannon, for his part, did not trust Schlinker not to sell them the ammunition one day and betray them the next. With a phony End User Certificate, the German would have to keep his side of the bargain; it would be he who presented the bent certificate to the authorities.
“I think you are perhaps right,” Schlinker said at last. “Very well. I can offer you nine-mm. standard ball at sixty-five dollars per thousand. There would be a surcharge of ten percent for the certificate, and another ten percent free on board.”
Shannon calculated hastily. Free on board meant a cargo complete with export license, cleared through customs and loaded onto the ship, with the ship itself clearing the harbor mouth. The price would be $26,000 for the ammunition, plus $5200 surcharge.
“How would payment be made?” he asked.
“I would need the fifty-two hundred dollars before starting work,” said Schlinker. “That has to cover the certificate, which has to be paid for, plus all personal traveling and administrative costs. The full purchase price would have to be paid here in this office when I am able to show you the certificate, but before purchase. As a licensed dealer I would be buying on behalf of my client, the government named on the certificate. Once the stuff had been bought, the selling government would be extremely unlikely to take it back and repay the money. Therefore I would need total payment in advance. I would also need the name of the exporting vessel, to fill in the application for export permit. The vessel would have to be a scheduled liner or freighter, or a general freighter owned by a registered shipping company.”
Shannon nodded. The terms were steep, but beggars cannot be choosers. If he had really represented a sovereign government, he would not be here in the first place.
“How long from the time I give you the money until shipment?” he asked.
“Madrid is quite slow in these matters. About forty days at the outside,” said the German.
Shannon rose. He showed Schlinker the banker’s check to prove his solvency, and promised to be back in an hour with 5200 United States dollars in cash, or the equivalent in German marks. Schlinker opted for German marks, and when Shannon returned, he gave him a standard receipt for the money.
While Schlinker was writing out the receipt, Shannon glanced through a series of brochures on the coffee table. They covered the items put on sale by another company, which evidently specialized in nonmilitary pyrotechnic goods of the kind that are not covered by the classification of “arms,” and a wide variety of items used by security companies, including riot sticks, truncheons, walkie-talkies, riot-gas canisters and launchers, flares, rockets, and the like.
As Schlinker handed him his receipt, Shannon asked, “Are you associated with this company, Herr Schlinker?”
Schlinker smiled broadly. “I own it,” he said. “It is what I am best known for to the general public.”
And a damn good cover for holding a warehouse full of crates labeled “Danger of Explosion,” thought Shannon. But he was interested. Quickly he wrote out a list of items and showed them to Schlinker. “Could you fulfill this order, for export, out of your stocks?” he asked.
Schlinker glanced at the list. It included two rocket-launching tubes of the type used by coast guards to send up distress flares, ten rockets containing magnesium flares of maximum intensity and duration attached to parachutes, two penetrating foghorns powered by compressed-gas canisters, four sets of night binoculars, three fixed-crystal walkie-talkie sets with a range of not less than five miles, and five wrist compasses.
“Certainly,” he said. “I stock all these things.”
“I’d like to place an order for the list. As they are off the classification of arms, I assume there would be no problems with exporting them?”
“None at all. I can send them anywhere I want, particularly to a ship.”
“Good,” said Shannon. “How much would that lot cost, with freight in bond to an exporting agent in Marseilles?”
Schlinker went through his catalogue and priced the list, adding on 10 percent for freight. “Four thousand, eight hundred dollars,” he said.
“I’ll be in touch with you in twelve days,” said Shannon. “Please have the whole lot ready-crated for freighting. I will give you the name of the exporting agent in Marseilles, and mail you a banker’s check in your favor for forty-eight hundred dollars. Within thirty days I expect to be able to give you the remaining twenty-six thousand dollars for the ammunition deal, and the name of the ship.”
He met his second contact for dinner that night at the Atlantic. Alan Baker was an expatriate, a Canadian who had settled in Germany after the war and married a German girl. A former Royal Engineer during the war, he had got himself involved during the early postwar years in a series of border-crossing operations into and out of the Soviet Zone, running nylons, watches, and refugees. From there, he had drifted into arms-running to the scores of tiny nationalist or anti-Communist bands of maquis who, left over from the war, still ran their resistance movements in Central and Eastern Europe—with the sole difference that during the war they had been resisting the Germans, while after it they were resisting the Communists.
Most of them had been paid for by the Americans, but Baker was content to use his knowledge of German and commando tactics to slip quantities of arms to them and take a hefty salary check from the Americans for doing so. When these groups finally petered out, he found himself in Tangier in the early 1950s, using the smuggling talents he had learned in the war and after it to bring cargoes of perfume and cigarettes into Italy and Spain from the then international and free port on the north coast of Morocco. Finally put out of business by the bombing and sinking of his ship in a gangland feud, he had returned to Germany and gone into the business of wheeler-dealing in any commodity that had a buyer and a supplier. His most recent feat had been to negotiate a deal in Yugoslav arms on behalf of the Basques in northern Spain.
He and Shannon had met when Baker was running guns into Ethiopia and Shannon had been at a loose end after returning from Bukavu in April 1968. Baker knew Shannon under his real name.
The short, wiry man listened quietly while Shannon explained what he wanted, his eyes flickering from his food to the other mercenary.
“Yes, it can be done,” he said when Shannon had finished. “The Yugoslavs would accept the idea that a new customer wanted a sample set of two mortars and two bazookas for test purposes before placing a larger order if he was satisfied. It’s plausible. There’s no problem from my side in getting the stuff from them. My relations with the men in Belgrade are excellent. And they are quick. Just at the moment I have to admit I have one other problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“End User Certificate,” said Baker. “I used to have a man in Bonn, diplomat for a certain East African country, who would sign anything for a price and a few nice, big German girls laid on at a party, the sort he liked. He was transferred back to his own country two weeks ago. I’m a bit stuck for a replacement at the moment.”
“Are the Yugoslavs particular about End Users?”
Baker shook his head. “Nope. So long as the documentation is in order, they don’t check further. But there has to be a certificate, and it must have the right governmental stamp on it. They can’t afford to be too slack, after all.”
Shannon thought for a moment. He knew of a man in Paris who had once boasted he had a contact in an embassy there who could make out End User Certificates.
“If I could get you one, a good one, from an African country? Would that work?” he asked.
Baker inhaled on his cigar. “No problem at all,” he said. “As for the price, a sixty-mm. mortar tube would run you eleven hundred dollars each. Say, twenty-two hundred for the pair. The bombs are twenty-four dollars each. The only problem with your order is that the sums are really too small. Couldn’t you up the number of mortar bombs from a hundred to three hundred? It would make things much easier. No one throws off just a hundred bombs, not even for test purposes.”
“All right,” said Shannon, “I’ll take three hundred, but no more. Otherwise I’ll go over budget, and that comes off my cut.”
It did not come off his cut, for he had allowed a margin for overexpenditure, and his own salary was secure. But he knew Baker would accept the argument as final.
“Good,” said Baker. “So that’s seventy-two hundred dollars for the bombs. The bazookas cost a thousand dollars each, two thousand for the pair. The rockets are forty-two dollars and fifty cents each. The forty you want come out at…Let’s see…”
“Seventeen hundred dollars,” said Shannon. “The whole packet comes out at thirteen thousand, one hundred dollars.”
“Plus ten percent for getting the stuff free on board your ship, Cat. Without the End User Certificate. If I could have got one for you, it would have been twenty percent. Let’s face it. It’s a tiny order, but the traveling and out-of-pocket expenses for me are constants. I ought to charge you fifteen percent for such a small order. So the total is fourteen thousand, four hundred dollars. Let’s say fourteen and a half, eh?”
“We’ll say fourteen four,” said Shannon. “I’ll get the certificate and mail it to you, along with a fifty percent deposit. I’ll pay another twenty-five percent when I see the stuff in Yugoslavia crated and ready to go, and twenty-five percent as the ship leaves the quay. Travelers’ checks in dollars, okay?”
Baker would have liked it all in advance, but, not being a licensed dealer, he had no offices, warehouses, or business address as Schlinker had. He would act as broker, using another dealer he knew to make the actual purchase on his behalf. As a black-market man, he had to accept these terms, the lower cut, and less in advance.
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to promise to fulfill an arms order, show plenty of confidence, assure the customer of the broker’s absolute integrity, take the maximum in advance, and disappear. Many a black and brown seeker after arms in Europe has had that trick played on him. Baker knew Shannon would never fall for it; besides, 50 percent of $14,400 was too small a sum to disappear for.
“Okay. The moment I get your End User Certificate, I’ll get straight onto it.”
They rose to leave.
“How long from the time you make your first approach until shipping date?” asked Shannon.
“About thirty to thirty-five days,” said Baker. “By the way, have you got a ship?”
“Not yet. You’ll need the name, I suppose. I’ll let you have it with the certificate.”
“If you haven’t, I know a very good one for charter. Two thousand German marks a day and all found. Crew, food, the lot. Take you and the cargo anywhere, and discreet as you like.”
Shannon thought it over. Twenty days in the Mediterranean, twenty days out to target, and twenty days back. A hundred and twenty thousand marks, or £15,000. Cheaper than buying one’s own ship. Tempting. But he objected to the idea of one man outside the operation controlling part of the arms deal and the ship, and being aware of the target as well. It would involve making Baker, or the man he would have to go to for the charter, virtually a partner.
“Yes,” he said cautiously. “What’s she called?”
“The San Andrea,” said Baker.
Shannon froze. He had heard Semmler mention that name. “Registered in Cyprus?” asked Shannon.
“That’s right.”
“Forget it,” he said shortly.
As they left the dining room, Shannon caught a swift glimpse of Johann Schlinker dining in an alcove. For a moment he thought the German dealer might have followed him, but the man was dining with a second man, evidently a valued customer. Shannon averted his head and strode past.
On the doorstep of the hotel he shook hands with Baker
. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “And don’t let me down.”
“Don’t worry, Cat. You can trust me,” said Baker. He turned and hurried off down the street.
“In a pig’s ear I can,” muttered Shannon and went back into the hotel.
On the way up to his room the face of the man he had seen dining with the German arms merchant stayed in his memory. He had seen the face somewhere but could not place it. As he was falling asleep it came to him. The man was the chief of staff of Provisional IRA.
The next morning, Wednesday, he flew back to London. It was the start of Day Nine.
thirteen
Martin Thorpe stepped into Sir James Manson’s office about the time Cat Shannon was taking off from Hamburg.
“Lady Macallister,” he said by way of introduction, and Sir James waved him to a seat.
“I’ve been into her with a fine-tooth comb,” Thorpe went on. “As I suspected, she has twice been approached by people interested in buying her thirty percent holding in Bormac Trading. It would seem each person used the wrong approach and got turned down. She’s eighty-six, halfway senile, and very tetchy. At least, that’s her reputation. She’s also broad Scottish and has all her affairs handled by a solicitor up in Dundee. Here’s my full report on her.”
Dogs of War Page 24