Rogue Hercules

by Denis Pitts

  He was also totally corrupt and ruthless to the point at which human life, unless it was worth money, social advancement or sexual pleasure, was meaningless to him. He had killed frequently, especially during the two years he spent as a mercenary, and he made his fortune by buying and selling other mercenaries to African and Arab states, caring nothing for the causes for which they were supposed to fight, caring even less about their welfare or eventual destiny.

  Murphy was the provider.

  He sold gelignite to the IRA and Browning machine pistols to the UDA. He treated both with a cheerful impartiality and arranged the freighting and delivery with precision, but always on strictly cash terms. He could provide heavy and light tanks, missiles, howitzers, fighters, bombers and helicopter gun-ships. He had an option at this moment to sell two cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers. They were worth to him one per cent of one per cent of twelve million dollars.

  It was before dawn now and Murphy was driving at one hundred and twenty miles per hour along the autostrada from Rome to the outskirts of Naples.

  The quadruphonic stereo-deck was playing discreet jazz. Murphy was holding a white telephone in one hand, talking rapidly. There was a beautiful dark-haired girl beside him and she slept happily in the reclining seat.

  *

  The news of the disappearance of Juliet Mike Oscar from the Karachi radar screens was passed within a few minutes to the duty officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow by the Air Attaché at the Soviet Embassy, who had been monitoring the VHF frequencies at Karachi Airport.

  The Ministry, in turn, relayed the message to the one person in Moscow who had been maintaining a constant trace of the C 130 from its starting point in Taiwan, through Bangkok, and across Bangladesh, Nepal, Northern India, into Pakistani air space. It was 4.00 am, Moscow time.

  The woman who took the telephone call had been dancing and she was slightly breathless as she spoke to the duty officer. He, in turn, frowned slightly at the idea of a senior government official being in a nightclub at that hour in the morning. He had to shout over the sound of rock music which blared in the background.

  ‘Good morning, Comrade Rogov,’ he said. ‘I have further news for you. Your assumption was entirely correct.’

  ‘One moment.’ The duty officer heard her ordering an obvious drunk away from the telephone. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘The target aircraft has turned south at Karachi and is obviously not flying to Cyprus.’

  ‘As I anticipated. Its course?’

  ‘It has eluded radar surveillance.’

  There was a silence from the other end of the line. The duty officer, who was close to retirement, said, ‘Comrade, are you there?’

  ‘I am thinking.’

  A Beatles record was playing now. The duty officer continued to frown. Then the woman’s voice came on again. She was brisk and businesslike now.

  ‘Please inform Comrade Minister Gromyko and Comrade Marshal Levkov as soon as they are awake. I shall be at my desk in thirty minutes and will require a full transcript of the Karachi report.’

  ‘Very good, Comrade.’

  He heard the telephone click down and pushed a buzzer on his desk for a messenger.

  The duty officer was a communist of the old school, a survivor of various regimes who would soon accept his state pension and retire to his home village in the Urals. He disliked jazz music and young women like this one. The revolution, he decided, was a long way from succeeding.

  Thirty minutes after the duty officer in Moscow replaced his telephone receiver another telephone call was being taken, this time six thousand miles away in a large and tastefully furnished apartment which overlooked Central Park South in New York City. Three men sat around the dining table in this room drinking brandy. It was nearly midnight but the streets outside were noisy and the double-glazed windows vibrated from the throb of traffic.

  It was the eldest of these men who took the telephone call. He was tall and thin with a gaunt, cadaverous face which was enlivened only by large, intelligent brown eyes which flashed continually around the room as he listened to the caller, speaking only when he needed something repeated.

  His companions at the table were considerably smaller than he was. One had horn-rimmed glasses and fat, reddening jowls with thick, ugly lips. The other was of middle height with greying hair which appeared to be heavily brilliantined, and a razor-thin moustache which was jet black and ludicrous.

  All three men were criminals. They were exceedingly powerful criminals. They were made all the more powerful because they had achieved the level of respectability in society which is brought by absolute wealth, by the shrewd investment of that wealth, and by the creation around them of legends, most of which are totally apocryphal. They delighted in being called leaders of the Mafiosa; they could afford to do so because they also basked in the knowledge that they were above the law.

  The name of the man who took the telephone call was Pietro Ragnelli. He was sixty-five years old and he was a millionaire several times over from the proceeds of prostitution and extortion but mainly, like his two colleagues, from the illegal importation and sale of addictive drugs.

  He had been in his time a considerable hoodlum and bully. But of recent years, particularly since the acquisition of vast sums of cash and with his elevation to near film star status by the press and television networks, he had cultivated a pose of quiet, thoughtful affability. He had spent several thousand dollars, for instance, on speech therapy to replace the rasping accent of Hells Kitchen with a curious, toneless, mid-American accent which was more menacing.

  He waited for a few minutes before speaking. His eyes were closed and he drummed his fingers on the edge of the table.

  ‘Well now, gentlemen,’ he said very quietly. ‘It is fortunate that you are here. I am sorry that I have to use a social occasion for such a purpose, but I am afraid that at least one person has to die in the next few hours and, as you will recall, we have covenanted together not to put out any contracts except by mutual agreement.’

  The others watched him. Their expressions did not change.

  ‘This death, or these deaths, will take place out of the territory of the United States which may make what I am going to say somewhat superfluous in terms of our agreement. However, one of them is certain to take place on Italian soil and this, I believe, is within the spirit of the agreement.’

  The two men nodded quietly.

  ‘I will explain,’ said Ragnelli. ‘As you know, I have invested substantial sums of money in the purchase of war-surplus aircraft and weapons through completely legal nominee companies in the Bahamas, Nicaragua, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. This has been a profitable investment and it has the unspoken approval of the State Department, the Department of Defence and the United States Treasury, all three of whom have gained in one way or another from these transactions.

  ‘Unfortunately, this good relationship has now been jeopardised by the action of one man. Let me explain further. It has been a basic policy of my operation that the surplus weapons are sold strictly according to International Law. In other words, gunrunning is not allowed, no matter what the temptation.

  ‘Two years ago I appointed as an agent a young man named James Murphy. He has handled much of my European operation with great flair and success and has done well financially from his work.’

  Ragnelli placed his finger-tips on the table in front of him.

  ‘Murphy has now decided to break the rules and put me at risk. Using a position of trust and using my contacts, Murphy has managed to steal one of my aircraft, to fill it with weapons and to arrange for it to fly with those weapons to Rhodesia which is, as you know, the subject of a strict International arms embargo.’

  He paused. For a moment he was playing the Supreme Court judge.

  ‘It will not be easy, gentlemen, for me to explain this to those in authority. In the past twenty-four hours I have tried to stop the flight of this aircraft at various points along its ro
ute. Tragically, my representative arrived too late in Pakistan to stop it from taking off from Karachi. My assumption is that Murphy is in radio contact with this aircraft and the immediate task is to persuade him to divert it to any country except Rhodesia. Thereafter, with your approval, Murphy will die and so, I fear, will the crew of the aircraft.’ Ragnelli slammed his hands on the table. His colleagues said nothing, just looked at him.

  ‘It is important that others should not be led into such misguided behaviour,’ he said. ‘I take it I have your approval?’

  ‘It’s okay with me,’ said the horn-rims. He poured a brandy. ‘Mind you, I always said you should put your money into movies.’

  ‘Go on ahead,’ said the second one.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ragnelli. ‘I am fortunate that one of my very best operatives is in Naples at this very moment. And so is Murphy.’

  *

  The sea was no longer a mill-pond. There were waves now, and whitecaps. A strong crosswind had forced the captain to climb to one hundred feet and, even at that height, he needed all his skill to hold the aircraft in level flight. The wind was uneven and capricious and tried all the time to tip Juliet Mike Oscar on to her side.

  ‘Fifteen minutes from the shoreline, Captain. We should be clear of their radar now.’ Sweat was streaming down Harry Black’s face. He found it impossible not to hide the fear and excitement of the sea-level gamble.

  ‘Look around for any stray aircraft.’

  The co-pilot loosened his harness and clutched at a hand-grip and he looked through the side panelling.

  ‘Clear to starboard,’ he said.

  Stubbles shouted, ‘Nothing on my side.’

  ‘No vapour lines?’

  ‘Nothing. Not many people fly this way.’

  ‘Okay then, I’ll climb. Give me ten degrees of flap. I’ll take it slowly. I’d hate for them to see us now.’

  Slowly, awkwardly, the giant aircraft lifted herself from the sea and made towards a bank of clouds on the horizon.

  As they reached a thousand feet, the captain said, ‘Your controls.’ Harry’s hands slid out automatically and took the control column. They were on top of the surface wind now and she flew easily and steadily.

  The captain took off his golf cap and sunglasses and shook himself in his seat. He took a small hand towel from the bag at his side and wiped the sweat from his face.

  ‘Some bastard whispered real loud back there. Sod him. Stubbles, tell me what that imitation of a speedboat did for our fuel reserves.’

  The engineer held a slide rule in one hand and wrote a series of figures on a notepad on his knee. ‘Any moment now, Captain, and Einstein will announce his theorem. You have a fifteen minute reserve at destination which means that you have lost three per cent of your five per cent allowance which is what I would say was cutting things very fine.’

  ‘For TWA maybe,’ said Harry.

  ‘For unscheduled zero zero four, likewise.’

  Martin said thoughtfully, ‘An airframe which is carrying twenty million dollars’ worth of high explosive shit to the white man in Rhodesia is hardly likely to find a friendly face in any of the countries between here and there.’

  ‘Even for one of their American cousins?’ said Harry. ‘My visa is written all over my face.’

  ‘I don’t fancy one of your African cousins putting me and Stubbles in a bloody great stewpot,’ Martin grunted. He held up a chart. ‘Somalia, that’s one place we’ve got to avoid at all costs. They cut your balls off in Somalia.’

  ‘And fry them in a skillet while you wait,’ Harry interjected ominously.

  ‘You mean, like in Sardis? Always wanted to go to Sardis,’ shouted Stubbles.

  ‘Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique.’

  ‘Not a friendly filling station for miles.’

  ‘So we go all the way there and hope to Jesus that the weather stays clean and we don’t meet any real headwind. And may I remind you just once more that there’s a gold pot at the end of the rainbow.’

  The co-pilot muttered into his mouthpiece. ‘I sure enough hope so because we’ve lost our flying licences, that’s for sure.’

  The captain loosened his harness and stood up. He un-plugged his intercom and walked to the rear of the flight deck. The girl was nervous but smiled bravely.

  He plugged his intercom into a bulkhead jack and stroked her head.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. The chill, professional voice had disappeared.

  ‘After that flight I feel drained. I didn’t know you could fly so low.’

  ‘Wait until we get to Mozambique. We’ll be so low under their radar that I’ll reach out and pick you orchids.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘Is there a Coke in the ice-box?’

  ‘I’ll get you one.’

  ‘No, stay there. She’s still liable to bounce a little.’

  Martin climbed down the steps from the flight-deck and opened the small refrigerator. He took a can of Coca-Cola from it and pulled sharply on the ring.

  At that precise moment there was a loud ‘crack’ from the port wing behind him. The aircraft yawed suddenly. A great gush of oily black smoke was pouring from the starboard outer engine.

  *

  The African Affairs Department of the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Institute for Foreign Studies occupied three entire floors of a gaunt, granite building in the campus of Moscow University. It had a staff of three hundred men and women, many of them African graduates of the Patrice Lumumba ‘Friendship’ University.

  The head of this department was a woman of middle height with striking auburn hair and a face of considerable beauty. Her name was Natalia Rogov. She was thirty-five years old. She had brown eyes which were slightly slanted but only vaguely oriental, and cheekbones which were high yet not so high as those of her Mongolian forefathers; her nose was slim and slightly upturned and her mouth was generous.

  Natalia Rogov was a complete anachronism in the bureaucratic hive in which she worked for fourteen hours of each day. Her soft tan suede suit was tailored by Cardin, her cosmetics were Elizabeth Arden, her handmade shoes from Rayne.

  She belonged, in appearance indeed, to the lobby of Claridges or to an apartment block on East 57th Street in Manhattan. Her body was slender and her movements supple, her breasts were ample and firm, and she preferred not to fasten the two top buttons of the silk shirts which she favoured.

  She was extremely feminine and sexually magnetic. She was an outstanding example of the newly emancipated Russian woman.

  Stalin would have had her tried and probably shot as a deviationist whore, and the prudish Krushchev would have branded her as a painted Western revisionist and made her wear black serge and lisle stockings. The present government, while frowning heavily upon those decadent western tastes and her leggy, disturbing presence at Central Committee meetings, had allowed her the maximum freedom because she had the one attribute which they crave in their young, success.

  Apart from being politically brilliant and diplomatically astute, Natalia Rogov was one of the prime architects of Soviet policy in Southern Africa.

  The Lenin Institute was a unique establishment with an unusual amount of autonomy. It was manned, throughout the twenty-four hours of each day, by teams of leading academicians and intellectuals whose task it was to make decisions affecting the future of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy throughout the world. Some were concerned with five, ten, fifty years ahead. Others were making instant decisions and recommendations on ways of taking advantage of weaknesses in the western system.

  On this particular morning, as the crew of Juliet Mike Oscar fought to kill a deadly fire three thousand feet over the Arabian Sea, Natalia Rogov had walked alone to her office through the grey first light. The aircraft was paramount in her mind, except that she saw it abstractly as a particularly critical pawn in her personal African chess game.

  While Moscow slept, she sat at her desk and talked into a dictaphone for more than an hour. She began wit
h a thorough analysis of Russian policy in Southern Africa and outlined its various successes. She dealt with United States policy in equal depth.

  ‘It has become abundantly clear that some urgent action must be taken to discredit completely the role being played by imperialist governments in regard to Rhodesia,’ she said.

  ‘The aircraft to which I have referred at the commencement of this report provides an excellent opportunity.

  ‘It is an American aircraft which has been used in Vietnam. It is owned by a company which is owned by Pietro Ragnelli who is a leading name in organised crime in the United States. Ragnelli is a close friend of influential United States politicians. (See photographs, Appendix C.) And it is flown by two Americans and a Briton.

  ‘The aircraft is carrying a large quantity of missiles ground-to-air, air-to-ground, anti-tank, together with anti-personnel bombs, heat-detonated mines and other anti-guerrilla weapons.’

  Natalia Rogov paused and lit a black cigarette. She looked at a picture of the aircraft which had been taken the previous day in Bangkok.

  ‘It is my recommendation that action be taken which will cause the maximum embarrassment to the United States Government. My assumption is that this aircraft will deliberately and illegally overfly Mozambique. I recommend that the aircraft be brought down, preferably relatively unharmed, over Mozambique territory and that the crew and the cargo should be placed on display to the press and media of the world, thus incriminating those criminals who have encouraged this flight, namely the President and the Defence Department of the United States .’

  Natalia Rogov played back the last few minutes of her dictation. She picked up the microphone. She said, ‘Please mark this “OF EXTREME URGENCY” and have it ready, five copies only, for nine o’clock this morning.’

  The sequence of events which follows immediately after the sounding of a fire warning in a multi-engined aircraft is simple, swift and singularly undramatic. A siren wails and a red light flashes. The first action of the pilot is to engage the mechanism which shuts down the supply of aviation fuel to the engine and floods it with chemical extinguishers.