by Robin James
Fifteen minutes later, Diana, having just rolled the only combination of dice to beat her expert opponent in a game – a double six, thus eliciting a snort of disgust from her host and a giggle from her – looked up and towards the east, where the coastline of the province of Coruña was a thin, almost invisible smudge. There was the drone of an engine coming from that direction, getting louder, quite different from the chug of the distant fishing boats which were their only neighbours. She saw, high in the sky, a black dot getting larger by the second. As it became clear what that dot was, it was also apparent that it was descending.
‘Shit, look at that,’ said Diana.
‘Helicopter. So what?’ Bonnington, still miffed by that double six – though he knew he should not be, such were the sudden reversals of backgammon – did not look up from resetting his pieces for the next game.
‘It’s closing in on us,’ Diana groaned, half a minute later. ‘If it’s them again, I’ll damn well . . .’ She failed to finish the sentence, but her host knew only too well who she meant, and sighed.
‘Jackpot,’ breathed Arsenio, eyes glued to his high-powered binoculars. ‘We’ve hit the fucking jackpot. That, my friend, is the Mirabelle, and Diana’s right there on deck, near the pool.’ Lowering the binoculars, he made a note of the cruiser’s position. Then he said, ‘Sheer off. Take a look at those fishing boats.’
‘OK.’ Hantash knew not to question the reason for that command.
Bonnington looked up from the board for the first time. ‘They’re turning away, Diana,’ he remarked. ‘There was no need to get your knickers in a twist, honey.’
The chopper had descended to less than two hundred metres. It was beginning to circle the fishing boats, some two kilometres distant.
‘It’s probably from the Ministry of Fisheries,’ Bonnington offered. He rolled his dice and they bounced across the beautifully tooled leather surface of the Asprey’s board. ‘There’s not exactly a war going on over there, but there’s serious aggravation between the Brits, the French and the Spanish boats. Overfishing claims, illegal nets – that sort of stuff.’
Diana smiled. Her relief was obvious. ‘Not to mention the Irish,’ she said, well versed in the current situation.
‘Why not? I’m half Irish myself. Your roll, I believe.’
One boat was heading away from the pack, low in the water with its heavy catch. Arsenio told Hantash to move the helicopter in close to her. She was Spanish, he saw, La Señorita Juanita, a ponderous drifter, some twenty metres long and broad of beam. There were six, sun-blackened men busy on her deck and all of them were staring at the chopper with hostile eyes – for there was indeed almost a fishing war going on out there and an intruder like the helicopter was regarded with the greatest of suspicion.
La Señorita Juanita, Arsenio saw, as his agile brain already began to form a plan, was from a place called Malpica – it was written on her weather-worn side in fading red letters, as was the name of its owners, ‘Hmnos. Pomares’, the Pomares brothers, and its registration number. He studied his map. Malpica was some eighteen sea miles to the west of La Coruña; it was a small town tucked in just before the point where the coastline went around a bend and dropped south towards Portugal. Satisfied, he told Hantash to climb to some 460 metres, then when, having circled for fifteen minutes with his eye on the now tiny trawler way below, he was satisfied that it was indeed heading for Malpica, he asked Hantash to turn inland for the town and look for some lonely spot as close as possible to it to put him down.
Arsenio’s ingenious, reckless scheme was already almost fully mapped out in his head. It called for fast action, for he had no idea when the Mirabelle might head off, or when Diana would depart in its Dragonfly. Whatever happened, he figured, it would need tonight, all day tomorrow and tomorrow night to prepare for action on the following day. The risk that his bird would by then have flown was unavoidable. But at worst what he had in mind would cost him wages for Hantash, air fares and wages for two other key men, and the cost of the helicopter hire. At best it should net him in the region of ten million pounds.
Even as Hantash was setting him down on a bleak cliff top some three kilometres from Malpica, Arsenio was finishing outlining his plan to him and issuing his instructions.
As the helicopter took off again and headed back towards Santander, El Asesino, dressed only in a dark-blue T-shirt, jeans and white Reebok trainers, but carrying – as he always did – a great deal of cash, set off to walk along the cliff tops to Malpica, his brain racing.
7
Arsenio reached Malpica soon after two and, sticking close to the beach, kept on walking along the promenade of the rather sleepy, unimpressive little fishing town until he came to the harbour. He was hungry, and as yet the approaching dot at sea which he assumed to be La Señorita Juanita was distant enough for him to have time for a bite to eat. Behind the harbour there was a café with an assortment of tapas – tiny plates of fish, or meat, or salad, meant to be washed down with a glass of wine each. He was easy on the wine; he needed to be as alert and quick-thinking as possible.
El Asesino’s presence had excited little interest, for Malpica also catered for a certain amount of tourism – almost exclusively Spanish – and strangers were commonplace. By the time he had filled himself, La Señorita Juanita was nosing into the harbour.
Pepe Pomares spared only a glance for Arsenio, who was leaning against the sea wall of the harbour, watching as two of his crew made his drifter fast sideways against the ancient, worn and cracked harbour wall. Had Pomares been aware that this was the same man who had been in the helicopter which had been hovering over him almost two hours earlier he would have been convinced that Arsenio was an inspector from the Ministry of Fisheries. And he would have been rightly extremely concerned, for Pepe, the only survivor of the three Pomares brothers – one had drowned in a storm, the other had died of cancer – had been fishing with illegally large nets, ensuring a speedy and magnificent catch.
Arsenio studied the boat with covert interest. She was, as he had seen from the air, ideal for his purpose, just the right size and, most important of all, she was the genuine article. For the daring scheme which he had in mind, nothing but the real thing would do – a boat merely posing as a drifter would rapidly be singled out in the uproar unleashed by the kidnapping of the Princess of Wales.
Once La Señorita Juanita was made fast, the men got busy unloading their fish into trays of crushed ice which had been brought to the dockside in a battered old van. It was easy to see who the boss was, for the hefty Pepe Pomares was giving the orders. Once Arsenio had established who the skipper was, he drifted away, took a seat in the shade outside the café where he had had lunch – and waited.
An hour later, when Pomares left the harbour on foot, Arsenio was following him at a discreet distance. He did not go far. Like most fishermen Pomares lived close to the harbour, in a tiny, end-of-terrace house no different from those of his crew. It was one street back from the promenade, with a small rose garden front and back, and on two floors. The front balcony boasted a large cage containing a cockatoo, and a smaller one with a pair of budgies.
‘Sí?’ said Señora Pomares, an hour and a half later, a frown on her face as she opened her front door to a well-built stranger with a beard.
As there was no car-hire establishment in Malpica, Arsenio had taken a taxi to the larger inland town of Carbello, fifteen kilometres away, where he had rented a Seat Panda. Beforehand he had bought a slim briefcase, a clipboard, a pen and some sheets of white quarto paper, as well as a pair of blue cotton trousers, into which he had changed. He had covered a sheet of the paper with writing, and this, with blank ones beneath it, was attached to his clipboard, and the Panda was parked outside the door, when Señora Pomares stuck her nose out.
‘Mrs Pomares?’ asked Arsenio, studying his board.
‘Yes,’ she told him, suspiciously. She was a woman of about sixty with a grey, thin, worry-creased face, grey, piled hair to match,
and she was wearing a dowdy, flower-print dress.
Arsenio flashed a confidence-winning smile. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You have won a prize.’
‘Prize?’ she gaped at him. ‘But I haven’t entered any . . .’
Meanwhile he had unzipped the briefcase, and now produced a colourfully jacketed book on the art of cultivating roses. ‘No,’ he interrupted her, ‘you have not entered a competition, but my company have a lottery of all the names in each town in Spain and you have won it in Malpica. He handed her the book.’
‘Well,’ she said, turning it over in her gnarled hands – hands which might have belonged to a woman fifteen years her senior. ‘That’s very nice. But what company is it?’
‘Encyclopaedia Britannica,’ he said.
‘Ah.’ She studied him. ‘You want to sell me some books, is that it? Well, thank you, no.’ She tried to give him the book back, but he refused to take it.
‘You keep that, whatever happens,’ he told her. ‘You don’t have to buy anything. In fact, I want to give you, absolutely free, a brand-new video recorder.’
‘What’s that for, then?’
‘You have children, Mrs Pomares?’
‘Long since grown up and left, with children of their own.’
‘You live alone, with your husband, then?’ Arsenio was oozing charm – had he wanted to lead a less dishonest life, he would surely have made a first-class salesman.
‘I do – but I don’t see what business that is of yours, I . . .’
‘The children’s encyclopaedia wouldn’t interest you, then. But the adult one surely would. It comes in sixty-four wonderful, full-colour video tapes. Which is why we give you a video absolutely for nothing – so that you can enjoy them,’
‘But, I’m sorry, I’m not interested in any encyclopaedia. Here, please take your book back.’
He ignored her offer. ‘How can you know that my fine collection is not something that you would be proud to have in your house, and be fascinated by as you view it, until you’ve looked at a tape? Do you have a video machine, Mrs Pomares?’
‘No.’ She was beginning to turn stony.
‘But you have a telly, right?’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do for you. Tomorrow evening – it can’t be today, because I’m waiting for fresh supplies – tomorrow evening I’m going to bring you a video machine and one of the tapes. My technician will set it up for you. You and your husband watch the tape together. If you like what you see, I’ll draw up a contract for the rest. It will cost you less than five thousand pesetas a month.’ He produced a broad, friendly, honest smile. ‘If you don’t want the tapes, you just keep the video recorder. How does that sound?’
‘What, free, a video recorder?’
‘You heard correctly, Mrs Pomares.’ He zipped up his briefcase, and began to turn away. ‘Your husband will be here tomorrow evening, I take it?’
‘He’s just come back from a fishing trip. He doesn’t go away again for a few days.’
‘Good. Then you two decide, tomorrow evening, OK? No obligation whatsoever and, like I said, you keep the machine if you don’t sign. OK? Do we have a deal, Mrs Pomares? Of course we do.’
Seconds later he was getting into his Panda with a friendly wave, leaving the woman staring after him with a surprised and puzzled expression on her face.
As he drove away, El Asesino glanced at his watch; there was still plenty of time to carry out stage two of the operation. He was well pleased with stage one. The Pomares woman would most certainly let him into her home the following evening. Now to get hold of an estate agent and find an isolated house to rent. Anywhere would do, so long as it was away from prying eyes.
A headquarters from which to run Operation Diana.
8
Hantash had been supplied by Arsenio with a list of ten men to begin trying to contact that afternoon as soon as he arrived back in Barcelona. Arsenio did not need ten men for the operation – he wanted five, including Hantash – but given the nature of these people, their various nationalities and the fact that most of them lived under false names, they were not going to be that easy to contact.
As it was, Hantash managed to reach only three. The first of these had not been far away. He was in Madrid and he hopped on a plane to Barcelona right away to arrive in the Las Ramblas flat by ten-thirty that night. He was a big, tough German called Felix Springer. No relation of the newspaper and magazine magnate Axel Springer, he was around forty. When in his early twenties, he had been one of the Baader–Meinhof terrorist group at the time of the infamous Schleyer kidnap and murder. When the German group disbanded, Springer began to operate as a freelance, as Arsenio had done for many years, and the two had met when working together for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Like the other two men, who would not arrive until the following day, the German had not been told what the mission was to be; the fact that he had been asked to come to Barcelona to join El Asesino for what had been described to him over the telephone by Hantash as ‘an interesting little enterprise’ was quite enough for him.
Kirsty, relishing this entirely unexpected and welcome change in her life – for she needed excitement every bit as much as her lover – was in buoyant mood as she rustled up a steak for the hungry German. She rather liked his rugged looks, and she was bubbly towards him, smiling a lot, joking. She meant nothing by this beyond a welcoming friendliness, but she had failed to consider – and she was wearing a revealing blouse and mini-skirt – what sort of effect her amiable attitude might have on the man. Had either she or Hantash told Springer what her relationship was with Arsenio, then he would certainly have made no move in her direction. But neither of them thought to, and she was merely introduced as Kirsty. So when she went off to bed alone, having treated Springer to the sweetest of smiles – and then Hantash showed him where he was to sleep, in a single bed in a small room with him – the German entirely misinterpreted Kirsty’s friendliness. He was sure she had been showing out to him – and that was entirely, albeit unwittingly, her fault.
It was a very warm night. Kirsty had drunk three vodka tonics, plus some wine with her meal and when, after midnight, she went to bed, she was very tired. She stripped back the sheet – there was no need for one in Barcelona at that time of year – took all of her clothes off, flopped gratefully on to the bed and immediately fell asleep.
The first she knew of the fact that there was someone else in her room was when Springer’s big hand closed over her breast. He was also naked. Her bare body, vaguely visible in the light from a street lamp creeping through a crack in the curtains, he took as confirmation that he was making no mistake in this intrusion. Hantash had gone down for a drink in the still busy Las Ramblas and the German had seized the opportunity immediately, only five minutes after Kirsty had retired. He assumed that Kirsty was awake and eagerly awaiting him.
Heavy with sleep, she half awoke to find Springer’s big erection digging into the top of the side of her thigh and his other hand slipping flatly over her stomach, its fingers sliding into her pubic bush. Thinking he was Arsenio, she reached for his hard-on and fisted it. It was only when she completely woke up and he grunted something guttural in German that she realized the appendage did not belong to her lover – it was too thick – and that in any case Arsenio was not in the house.
She screamed. Shocked, Springer clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked, without slackening his hand.
Releasing his penis, she thumped him solidly in the testicles with the side of her closed fist. Letting go of her mouth, he groaned, rolled away from her and doubled up.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled at him as she dragged the sheet over herself.
‘But I thought you, I thought you . . .’ he gasped, clutching his testicles in both hands.
‘You must be crazy, Felix. Don’t you know I’m Arsenio’s woman?’
‘Arsenio’s
?’ He turned his head to her. ‘Ah, shit. Shit. I am sorry. I was thinking that you was, you was hot for – what is it – a poking, you know?’
Now that she realized the man was not trying to rape her, she saw the funny side. The way he had expressed himself made her want to giggle – an impulse she stifled. ‘You’d better get out of here,’ she told him.
Still holding himself, he sat up and swung his legs off the bed. ‘You will not tell him?’ he asked her. ‘It was really some big mistake. I do not mess with my friends, their womens, you know?’
‘I’ll only tell him if I want you dead,’ she said, only her head and the tips of her fingers visible over the sheet.
‘But you do not want this thing?’
‘I won’t tell him, clown. Now get your arse out of here and let me sleep.’
She even watched that faintly illuminated, heavily muscled bare backside with a certain amount of prurient interest as the German hurried from her bedroom. Then, a smile on her face, she slipped the sheet off, turned on her side and went straight back to sleep. She had been lucky that she was Arsenio’s girlfriend – for Felix Springer had a history of rape and, excited as he had been, would almost certainly have raped her had she not been.
Kirsty made certain the following day, as each of the other two of Arsenio’s little gang showed up, to tell them that she was the boss’s girl and so it was strictly hands off. The first to arrive was the Irishman Tim Shannon, who had left a contact number in Dublin after parting with Arsenio in London only a few days ago after the escape. The second, who turned up at lunch-time, was an extremely useful Syrian gentleman whose name was Salim Kasar. Forty-two years old – Arsenio wanted experienced men with him, not young hotheads – Kasar at the age of twenty had been a trainer of terrorist methods in Libya when such different factions as the Red Army, the PLO, even the IRA, had been training together. He did regular heavy exercise and was as fit as any man half his age. He was also, as were all four of Arsenio’s recruits – even the Irishman, whose remarks often failed to bear this out – highly intelligent.