The Cobra

by Frederick Forsyth

  The discussion ran its course, with many questions but few answers.

  “And what do you want from us, Prime Minister?” This came from Defence Staff.

  “Your advice, gentlemen. Can it be done and should we take part?”

  The three military men were the first to nod. Then Secret Intelligence. Finally, the cabinet secretary. Personally, he loathed this sort of thing. If it ever blew up in their faces . . .

  Later that day, after Washington had been told and the Prime Minister had offered his guests a roast beef lunch, a reply came from the White House. It said “Good to have you aboard” and asked that a U.S. emissary be received in London and offered some early help in the form of advice, nothing more at this stage. A photo came with the transmission. As the after-lunch port circulated, so did the photograph.

  It bore the image of a onetime Tunnel Rat named Cal Dexter.

  WHILE MEN conversed in the wilds of Colombia and the orchards of Buckinghamshire, the man code-named the Cobra had been busy in Washington. Like the chief of the SAS across the Atlantic, he, too, was concerned with a plausible cover story.

  He established a charity to bring succor to Third World refugees and in its name took a long lease on a shabby and obscure warehouse in Anacostia, a few blocks from Fort McNair. This would house the offices on the top floor, and beneath that several floors of used clothing, fly sheets, tarpaulins, blankets and tents.

  In reality, there would be little office work in the traditional sense. Paul Devereaux had spent years railing against the transformation of the CIA from a very hard-nosed spy agency into a vast bureaucracy. He loathed bureaucracy, but what he did want, and was determined to have, was a communications center to rival anyone else’s.

  After Cal Dexter, his first recruit was Jeremy Bishop, retired like himself, but one of the most brilliant communications and computer aces ever to serve at Fort Meade, Maryland, HQ of the National Security Agency, a vast complex of eavesdropping technology known as the “Puzzle Palace.”

  Bishop began to devise a comms center into which every scintilla of information about Colombia and cocaine acquired by thirteen intel-gathering agencies would be patched by presidential decree. For this, a second cover story was needed. The other agencies were told the Oval Office had ordered the preparation of a report to end all reports on the cocaine trade, and their cooperation was mandatory. The agencies grumbled but acquiesced. A new think tank. Another twenty-volume report that no one would ever read. What else was new?

  And there was the money. Back in the CIA’s SEE (Soviet/East Europe) division, Devereaux had come across Benedict Forbes, a former Wall Street banker who had been co-opted to the Company for a single operation, found it more exciting than trying to warn people about Bernie Madoff and stayed. That was in the Cold War. He, too, was now retired, but he had forgotten nothing.

  His specialty had been covert bank accounts. Running secret agents is not cheap. There are expenses, salaries, bonuses, purchases, bribes. For these, monies must be deposited with facilities for withdrawal by both one’s own agents and foreign “assets.” These facilities will require covert identification codes. This was Forbes’s genius. No one ever traced his little nest eggs and the KGB tried very hard indeed. The money trail can usually lead to the traitor.

  Forbes began to draw down the allotted dollars from a bewildered Treasury and place them where they could be accessed as and when needed. In the computer age, this could be anywhere. Paper was for dodos. A few taps on a computer could release enough for a man to retire—so long as they were the right taps.

  As his HQ was being established, Devereaux sent Cal Dexter on his first overseas assignment.

  “I want you to go to London and buy two ships,” he said. “It seems the Brits are coming in with us. Let us use them. They are rather good at this. A shell company is being set up. It will have funds. It will be the titular purchaser of the ships. Then it will disappear.”

  “What kind of ships?” asked Dexter. The Cobra produced a single sheet of paper, which he had typed himself.

  “Memorize and burn. Then let the Brits advise you. The paper contains the name and private number of the man to contact. Commit nothing to paper, and certainly not to a computer or a cell phone. Keep it in your head. It’s the only private place we have left.”

  Though Dexter could not know it, the number he would call would ring in a large green-and-sandstone block on the side of the Thames at a place called Vauxhall Cross. Those inside never called it that: only the “office.” It was the HQ of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.

  The name on the about-to-be-burned sheet was Medlicott. The man who would answer would be the deputy chief, and his name was not Medlicott. But the use of that word would tell “Medlicott” who was talking: the Yankee visitor who really was named Dexter.

  And Medlicott would propose Dexter go to a gentlemen’s club in St. James’s Street to join a colleague named Cranford whose real name was not Cranford. They would be three at that lunch, and it was the third man who knew all about ships.

  This byzantine routine had stemmed from the daily morning conference inside the office two days earlier. At the close of business, the chief had remarked:

  “By the way, there is an American arriving in a couple of days. The PM has asked me to help him. He wants to buy ships. Covertly. Anyone know anything about ships?”

  There was a pause for cogitation.

  “I know a fellow who is the chairman of a major Lloyd’s broker in the City,” said the controller, Western Hemisphere.

  “How well do you know him?”

  “I broke his nose once.”

  “That’s usually quite intimate. Had he upset you?”

  “No. We were playing the wall game.”

  There was a slight chill. The phrase meant both men had gone to the ultra-exclusive school called Eton College, the only place where the bizarre and seemingly no-rules wall game was played.

  “Well, take him to lunch with your shipping friend and see if the brokerage can help him buy ships on the quiet. It might make a tidy commission. Compensation for the broken nose.”

  The meeting broke up. Dexter’s call duly came, from his room at the discreet Montcalm Hotel. “Medlicott” passed the American to his colleague “Cranford,” who took the number and said he would call back. And he did, an hour later, to set up lunch the next day with Sir Abhay Varma at Brooks’s Club.

  “And I’m afraid suits and ties are required,” said Cranford.

  “No problem,” said Dexter. “I think I can knot a tie.”

  Brooks’s is quite a small club on the west side of St. James’s Street. Like all the others, it has no nameplate for identification. The received wisdom is that if you are a member or invited, you know where it is, and if you are not it doesn’t matter, but it is usually identified by the potted shrubs that flank the door. Like all St. James clubs, it has its character and patronage, and that of Brooks’s tends to be senior civil servant and occasional spook.

  Sir Abhay Varma turned out to be the chairman of Staplehurst & Company, a major brokerage specializing in shipping and situated in a medieval alleyway off Aldgate. Like Cranford, he was fifty-five, plump and jovial. Before he put on the weight during all those City Guild dinners, he had been an amateur champion-rated squash player.

  As per custom, the men confined conversation at the lunch table to small talk—weather, crops, how was the flight—and adjourned to the library for coffee and port. Unheard by anyone else, they were able to relax under the gaze of the painted Dilettantes on the wall above them and talk business.

  “I need to buy two ships. Very quietly, very discreetly, the purchase concluded by a shell company in a tax haven.”

  Sir Abhay was not in the slightest fazed. It happened all the time. For tax reasons, of course.

  “What kinds of ships?” he asked. He never queried the American’s bona fides. He was vouched for by Cranford, and that was good enough. After all, they had been at school to
gether.

  “I don’t know,” said Dexter.

  “Ticklish,” said Sir Abhay. “I mean, if you don’t know. They come in all roles and sizes.”

  “Then let me level with you, sir. I want to take them off to a discreet shipyard and have them converted.”

  “Ah, a major refit. Not a problem. What are they supposed to end up as?”

  “Is this between ourselves alone, Sir Abhay?”

  The broker glanced at the spook as if to ask what kinds of chaps does this chap think we are?

  “What is said in Brooks’s, stays in Brooks’s,” murmured Cranford.

  “Well, each is to become a floating base for U.S. Navy SEALs. Harmless to look at, not so harmless inside.”

  Sir Abhay Varma beamed.

  “Aha, rough stuff, eh? Well, that clarifies things a bit. A total conversion. I’d advise against tankers of any kind. Wrong shape, an impossible cleaning job and too many pipes. Same with an ore carrier. Right shape but usually vast, bigger than you want. I’d go for a dry-bulk carrier, a grain ship, surplus to owner’s requirements. Clean, dry, easy to convert, with deck covers that come off to let your chaps in and out fast.”

  “Can you help me buy two?”

  “Not Staplehurst, we do insurance, but of course we know everyone in the market worldwide. I’m going to put you alongside my managing director, Paul Agate. Young, but smart as paint.”

  He rose and offered his card.

  “Drop by the office tomorrow. Paul will see you right. Best advice in the City. On the house. Thanks for lunch, Barry. Give my regards to the chief.”

  And so they descended to the street and parted.

  JUAN CORTEZ finished work and emerged from the entrails of the 4,000-ton tramp steamer on which he had worked his magic. After the darkness of the lower hold, the autumn sun was brilliant. So bright he was tempted to reach for his black-fronted welder’s helmet. Instead he pulled on dark glasses and let his pupils adjust to the light.

  His grimy overalls clung to him, pasted by sweat onto his near-naked body. Beneath the fabric, he wore only undershorts. The heat down there had been ferocious.

  There was no need to wait. The men who had commissioned the work would come in the morning. He would show them what he had done and how to work the secret access door. The cavity behind the plating of the inner hull was absolutely impossible to detect. He would be well paid. What contraband would be carried in the compartment he had created was none of his business, and if the stupid gringos chose to stuff white powder up their noses, that was none of his business either.

  His business was to put clothes on the back of his faithful wife, Irina, food on the table and school books in the satchel of his boy, Pedro. He stowed his kit in the allocated locker and made his way to the modest Ford Pinto that was his automobile. In the neat bungalow, a real credit to a workingman, in the smart private estate beneath the hill called Cerro de La Popa, there would be a long, bracing shower, a kiss from Irina, a hug from Pedro, a filling meal and a few beers in front of the plasma-screen TV. And so, a happy man, the best welder in Cartagena drove home.

  CAL DEXTER knew London but not well, and that trading hub simply called the “City” or the “Square Mile” not at all. But a black cab, driven by a Cockney born and raised a mile east of Aldgate, had no trouble. He was dropped outside the door of the maritime insurance broker in a narrow backwater playing host to a monastery dating back to Shakespeare at five minutes before eleven o’clock. A smiling secretary showed him up to the second floor.

  Paul Agate occupied a small office piled with files; framed prints of cargo ships adorned the walls. It was hard to imagine the millions of pounds’ worth of insurance business that came and went out of this cubbyhole. Only the screen of a state-of-the-art computer proved that Charles Dickens had not just moved out.

  Later, Dexter would realize how deceptive London’s centuries-old money-market center was, where tens of billions in sales, purchases and commissions were generated each day. Agate was around forty, shirtsleeved, open-necked and friendly. He had been briefed by Sir Abhay Varma, but only just so far. The American, he was told, represented a new venture-capital company seeking to buy two dry-bulk carriers, probably surplus-to-requirement grain ships. What they would be used for he had not been told. Need-to-know. What Staplehurst would do was offer him advice, guidance and some contacts in the shipping world. The American was a friend of a friend of Sir Abhay. There would be no invoice.

  “Dry bulk?” said Agate. “Ex-grain ships. You’re in the market at the right time. What, with the state of the world economy, there is quite a margin of surplus tonnage at the moment, some at sea, most laid up. But you will need a broker to avoid getting ripped off. Do you know anyone?”

  “No,” said Dexter. “Who can you recommend?”

  “Well, it’s a quite a tight world, we all know each other. Within half a mile, there’s Clarkson, Braemar Seascope, Galbraith or Gibson’s. They all do sales, purchases, charters. For a fee, of course.”

  “Of course.” An encrypted message from Washington had told him of a new account opened in the British Channel island of Guernsey, a discreet tax haven that the European Union was trying to close down. He also had the name of the bank executive to contact and the code number required to release funds.

  “On the other hand, a good broker will probably save a ship buyer more than the fee. I have a good friend at Parkside and Company. He would see you right. Shall I give him a call?”

  “Please do.”

  Agate was on the phone for five minutes.

  “Simon Linley’s your man,” he said, and wrote an address on a scrap of paper. “It’s only five hundred yards. Out of here, turn left. At Aldgate, left again. Follow your nose for five minutes, and ask. Jupiter House. Anyone will tell you. Good luck.”

  Dexter finished his coffee, shook hands and left. The directions were perfect. He was there in fifteen minutes. Jupiter House was the opposite of the Staplehurst office: ultra-modern, steel and glass. Silent elevators. Parkside was on the eleventh floor, with picture windows that showed the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral on its hill two miles to the west. Linley met him at the elevator doors and took him to a small conference room. Coffee and gingersnaps appeared.

  “You wish to buy two bulk-carrier ships, probably grain carriers?” asked Linley.

  “My patrons do,” corrected Dexter. “They are based in the Middle East. They wish for extreme discretion. Hence, a front company headed by me.”

  “Of course.” Linley was not in the slightest fazed. Some Arab businessmen had skimmed the local sheikh and did not want to end up in a very unpleasant Gulf jail. It happened all the time.

  “How big would your clients wish these ships to be?”

  Dexter knew little of marine tonnages, but he knew a small helicopter would have to be stored, with rotors spread, in the main hold. He reeled off a list of dimensions.

  “About twenty thousand tons gross, or twenty-eight thousand deadweight tons,” said Linley. He began to tap into a computer keyboard. The large screen was at the end of the conference table where both men could see it. A range of options began to appear. Fremantle, Australia. St. Lawrence Seaway, Canada. Singapore. Chesapeake Bay, USA.

  “The biggest repertoire would seem to be with COSCO. China Ocean Shipping Company, based in Shanghai, but we use the Hong Kong office.”

  “Communists?” asked Dexter, who had killed rather a lot of them in the Iron Triangle.

  “Oh, we don’t bother about that anymore,” said Linley. “Nowadays they’re the world’s sharpest capitalists. But very meticulous. If they say they’ll deliver, they deliver. And here we have Eagle Bulk in New York. Closer to home for you. Not that it matters. Or does it matter?”

  “My clients want discretion only as to true ownership,” said Dexter, “and both ships would be taken to a discreet yard for refit and renovation.”

  Linley thought but did not say: A bunch of crooks who probably want to move some extremely
dodgy cargoes, so they will want the ships reconfigured, renamed with new paperwork and put to sea unrecognizable. So what? The Far East is full of them; times are hard, and money is money.

  What he did say: “Of course. There are some very skilled and highly discreet shipyards in southern India. We have contacts there through our man in Mumbai. If we are to act for you, we shall have to have a memorandum of agreement, with an advance against commission. Once the ships are purchased, I suggest you put both on the books of a management company called Thame in Singapore. At that point, and with new names, they will disappear. Thame never talk to anyone about their clients. Where can I get hold of you, Mr. Dexter?”

  The message from Devereaux had also included the address, phone number and e-mail of a newly acquired safe house in Fairfax, Virginia, which would act as mail drop and message taker. Being a Devereaux creation, it was untraceable and could close down in sixty seconds. Dexter gave it. Within forty-eight hours, the memorandum was signed and returned. Fairfax began their hunt. It would take two months, but before the end of the year two grain ships were handed over.

  One came out of Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, the other had been at anchor in Singapore Harbor. Devereaux had no intention of keeping on the crew of either vessel. Both crews were generously paid off.

  The American purchase was easy, being so close to home. A new crew of U.S. Navy men, masquerading as merchant sailors, took over, accustomed themselves to the vessel and eased her out into the Atlantic.

  A crew of British Royal Navy men flew out to Singapore, also posing as merchant marines, took command and sailed out into the Malacca Strait. Theirs was the shorter sea journey. Both vessels headed for a small and reeking yard on the Indian coast south of Goa, a place mainly used for the slow breakup of graveyard vessels and possessed of a criminal disregard for health, safety and the danger of constantly leaching toxic chemicals. The place stank, which was why no one ever went there to examine what was going on.

  When the Cobra’s two ships entered the bay and dropped anchor, they virtually ceased to exist, but new names and new papers were discreetly logged with Lloyd’s International Shipping List. They were noted as “grain carriers” managed by Thame PLC of Singapore.