"It's the rush hour, Rex," said Burr gently. "You've seen them all." And then, just as gently, like a consolation to a beaten man: "My boy pulled it off, Rex. He stole the crown jewels. Names and numbers of the ships and containers, location of the Colón warehouse, waybill numbers, even the boxes they've stored the dope in." He patted his breast pocket. "I didn't signal it through; I didn't tell a soul. Not even Strelski. There's Rooke and me and you and my boy. We're the only ones who know. This isn't Flagship, Rex. This is still Limpet."
"They've taken my files," Goodhew said, not hearing again. I kept them in the safe in my room. They've gone."
Burr looked at his watch. Shave at the office. No time to go home.
* * *
Burr is calling in promises. On foot. Working the Golden Triangle of London's secret overworld ― Whitehall, Westminster, Victoria Street. In a blue raincoat borrowed from a janitor, and a paper-thin fawn suit that looks as though he has slept in it, which he has.
Debbie Mullen is an old friend from Burr's River House days. They went to the same secondary school and triumphed in the same exams. Her office is down one flight of steps, behind a blue-painted steel door marked no entry. Through glass walls, Burr can watch clerks of both sexes labouring at their screens and talking on telephones.
"Well, look who's been on holiday," says Debbie, eyeing his suit "What's up, Leonard? We heard they were taking down your brass plate and sending you back across the River."
"There's a container ship called the Horacio Enriques, Debbie, registered Panama," says Burr, allowing his native Yorkshire accent to thicken, in order to emphasise the bond between them. "Forty-eight hours ago she was berthed in Colón Free Zone, bound for Gdansk, Poland. My guess is she's already in international waters, headed for the Atlantic. We have information she's carrying a suspect load. I want her tracked and listened to, but I don't want you to put out a search request." He gave her his old smile. "It's owing to my source, you see, Deb. Very delicate. Very top secret. It's got to be all off the record. Can you be a pal and do that for me?"
Debbie Mullen has a pretty face and a way of laying the tip of her right forefinger against her teeth when she ponders; she does this to conceal her feelings, but she cannot conceal her eyes. First they open too wide, then they focus on the top button of Burr's disgraceful jacket.
"The Enrico what, Leonard?"
"Horacio Enriques, Debbie. Whoever he is. Panama registered."
"That's what I thought you said." Removing her gaze from his jacket, she delves in a tray of red-striped folders till she comes to the one she is looking for and hands it to him. It contains a single sheet of blue paper, embossed and crested and of appropriate ministerial weight. It is headed "The Horacio Enriques" and consists of one paragraph of overlarge type:
The above-named vessel, the subject of a highly sensitive operation, is likely to come to your notice while changing course without apparent reason or performing other erratic manoeuvres at sea or in harbour. All information received by your section which relates to her activities, whether from overt or secret sources, will be passed SOLELY AND IMMEDIATELY to H/Procurement Studies, the River House.
The document is stamped top secret flagship guard.
Burr hands the folder back to Debbie Mullen and pulls a rueful smile.
"Looks as though we've crossed the wires a bit," he confesses. "Still, it all goes into the same pocket in the end. Have you got anything on the Lombardy while I'm about it, Debbie, also hanging about in those waters, most likely at the other end of the Canal?"
Her gaze has returned to his face and stayed there. "You a Mariner, Leonard?"
"What would you do if I said yes?"
"I'd have to telephone Geoff Darker and find out whether you'd been telling porky-pies, wouldn't I?"
Burr is really stretching his charm. "You know me, Debbie. Truth's my middle name. How about a floating gin palace called the Iron Pasha, property of an English gentleman, four days out of Antigua headed west? Anybody been listening to her at all? I need it, Debbie. I'm desperate."
"You said that to me once before, Leonard, and I was desperate too, so I gave it to you. It didn't do either of us any harm at the time, but it's different now. Either I'll ring Geoffrey, or you'll go. It's you to choose."
Debbie is still smiling. So is Burr. He keeps his smile in place all the way down the lane of clerks until he reaches the Then the London damp hits him like a clumsy punch turns his self-control to outrage.
Three boats. All going in different bloody directions! My joe, my guns, my dope, my case ― and none of it my business!
But by the time he reaches Denham's stately office he is his outwardly dour self again, the way Denham would like him best.
* * *
Denham was a lawyer and Harry Palfrey's unlikely predecessor as legal adviser to the Procurement Studies Group in the days before it became Darker's manor. When Burr launched his bloody battle against the illegals, Denham had urged him forward, picked him up when he got hurt and sent him back to try again. When Darker made his successful putsch and Palfrey padded after him, Denham put on his hat and quietly walked back across the river. But he had remained Burr's champion. If he ever felt confident of an ally among the Whitehall legal mandarins, Denham was his man.
"Oh, hullo, Leonard. Glad you rang. Aren't you freezing cold? We don't supply blankets, I'm afraid. Sometimes I rather think we should."
Denham played the fop. He was lank and shadowy, with a schoolboy shock of hair turned grey. He wore broad-striped suits and outrageous waistcoats over two-toned shirts. Yet deep down, like Goodhew, he was some sort of an abstainer. His room should have been splendid, for he had the rank. It was high, with pretty mouldings and decent furniture. But the atmosphere was of a classroom, and the carved fireplace was stuffed with red cellophane coated in a film of dust. A Christmas card eleven months old showed Norwich cathedral in the snow.
"We've met. Guy Eccles," said a chunky man with a prominent jaw who sat reading telegrams at the centre table.
We’ve met, Burr agreed, returning his nod. You're Signals Eccles, and I never liked you. You play golf and drive a Jaguar. What the hell are you doing, muscling in on my appointment? He sat down. Nobody had quite asked him to. Denham was trying to turn up the Crimean War radiator, but either the knob had stuck or else he was turning it the wrong way.
"I've a bit of a load to get off my chest, Nicky, if it's all the same to you," said Burr, deliberately ignoring Eccles. "Time's running against me."
"If it's about the Limpet thing," said Denham, giving the knob a last wrench, "Guy might be rather good to have around." He perched himself on a chair arm. He seemed reluctant to sit at his own desk. "Guy's been hopping back and forth to Panama for months," he explained. "Haven't you Guy?"
"What for?" said Burr.
"Just visiting," said Eccles.
"I want interdiction, Nicky. I want you to move heaven and earth. This is what we were in business for, remember? We sat up nights, talking about just this moment."
"Yes. Yes, we did," Denham agreed, as if Burr had made a valid point.
Eccles was smiling at something he was reading in a telegram. He had three trays. He took the telegrams from one tray and, when he had read them, chucked them into one of the others. That seemed to be his job today.
"It is about feasibility, however, isn't it?" Denham said. He was on the arm of the chair still, his long legs stretched straight before him, his long hands thrust into his pockets.