With Pepe leading, they crossed to the starboard side of the ship, where two men were gingerly extracting a cigar-shaped missile from a fibreglass cylinder. This time Jonathan had no need of Langbourne's expertise. He had seen the demonstration films. He had heard the tales. If the Micks ever get their hands on these, you're dead, the bomb-happy sergeant major had promised. And they will, he added cheerfully. They'll nick them off Yankee ammo dumps in Germany, they'll buy them for a bloody fortune off the Afghans, the Izzies or the Pals; or whoever else the Yanks have seen fit to hand them out to. They're supersonic, man-packed, they're three to a carton, they're Stingers by name and they're Stingers by nature....
The tour continued. Light anti-tank guns. Field radios. Medical gear. Uniforms. Ammunition. Meals Ready to Eat. British Star-streaks. Boxes made in Birmingham. Steel canisters made in Manchester. Not everything could be examined. There was too much stuff, too little time.
"Likee?" Roper asked Jonathan quietly.
Their faces were very close. The expression on Roper's was intense and strangely victorious, as if his point were somehow proved.
"It's good stuff," Jonathan said, not knowing what else he was supposed to say.
"Bit of everything in each shipment. That's the trick. Boat goes astray, you lose a bit of everything, not all of something. Common sense."
"I suppose it is."
Roper wasn't hearing him. He was in the presence of his own accomplishment. He was in a state of grace.
"Thomas?" It was Langbourne, calling from the aft end of the hold. "Over here. Signing time."
Roper went with him. On a military clipboard, Langbourne had a typed receipt for turbines, tractor parts and heavy machinery as per attached schedule, inspected and certified to be in good order by Derek S. Thomas, managing director for and on behalf of Tradepaths Limited. Jonathan signed the receipt, then initialled the schedule. He gave the clipboard to Roper, who showed it to Moranti, then passed it back to Langbourne, who handed it to Pepe. A cellular telephone lay on a shelf beside the door. Pepe picked it up and dialled a number from the piece of paper that Roper was holding out to him. Moranti stood a little distance from them, with his hands curled to his sides and stomach out, like a Russian at a cenotaph. Pepe passed the phone to Roper. They heard the banker's voice saying hullo.
"Piet?" said Roper. "Friend of mine wants to give you an important message."
Roper handed the phone to Jonathan, together with a second piece of paper from his pocket.
Jonathan glanced at the paper, then read aloud. "This is your friend George speaking to you," he said. "Thank you for staying awake tonight."
"Put Pepe on the line, please, Derek," said the banker's voice. "I would like to confirm some nice news for him."
Jonathan handed the receiver to Pepe, who listened, laughed, rang off and clapped a hand on Jonathan's shoulder.
"You're a generous fellow!"
His laughter stopped as Langbourne drew a typed sheet of paper from his briefcase. "Receipt," he said curtly.
Pepe grabbed Jonathan's pen and, watched by all of them, signed a receipt to Tradepaths Limited for the sum of twenty-five million U. S. dollars, being the third and penultimate payment for the agreed consignment of turbines, tractor parts and heavy machinery delivered to Curaçao as per contract for onward transit on the SS Lombardy.
* * *
It was four in the morning when she rang.
"We're leaving for the Pasha tomorrow," she said. "Me and Corky."
Jonathan said nothing at all.
"He says I'm to bolt. Forget the cruise, bolt while there's still a chance."
"He's right," Jonathan murmured.
"It's no use bolting, Jonathan. It doesn't work. We both know that. You just meet yourself again in the next place."
"Just get out. Go anywhere. Please."
They lay still again, side by side on their separate beds, listening to each other's breathing.
"Jonathan, " she whispered. "Jonathan. "
TWENTY-THREE
Everything had been going swimmingly with Operation Limpet. Burr, from his grim grey desk in Miami, said so. So did Strelski, next door along from him. Goodhew, telephoning twice a day on the secure line from London, had no doubt of it. "The powers that be are coming round, Leonard. All we need now is the summation."
"Which powers?" said Burr, suspicious as ever.
"My master for one."
"Your master?"
"He's turning, Leonard. He says so, and I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. How can I go over his head if he's offering me his full support? He took me to his heart yesterday."
"I'm glad to hear he's got one."
But Goodhew, these days, was in no mood for such sallies. "He said we should stay in much closer touch. I agree with him. There are too many people about with vested interests. He said there was a whiff of something rotten in the air. I couldn't have put it better myself. He would like to go on record as one of those who wasn't afraid to track it down. I shall see he does. He didn't mention Flagship by name, neither did I. Sometimes it pays better to be reticent. But he was greatly taken by your list, Leonard. The list did the trick. It was bald, it was uncompromising. There was no getting round it."
"My list?"
"The list, Leonard. The one our friend photographed. The backers. The investors. The runners and starters, you called it."
There was an imploring note in Goodhew's voice that Burr wished he couldn't hear. "The smoking gun, for heaven's sake. The thing that nobody ever finds, you said, except that our friend did. Leonard, you're being willfully obtuse."
But Goodhew had misread the cause of Burr's confusion. Burr had known immediately which list. What he couldn't understand was the use that Goodhew had made of it.
"You don't mean you've shown the list of backers to your minister, do you?"
"Good heavens, not the raw material, how could I? Just the names and numbers. Properly recycled, naturally. They could have come from a telephone intercept, a microphone, anything. We could have filched it from the post."
"Roper didn't dictate that list or read it over the phone, Rex. He didn't put it in a letter box. He wrote it on a yellow legal pad, and there's only one of it in the world and one man who took a photograph of it."
"Don't split hairs with me, Leonard! My master is appalled, that's my point. He recognises that a summation is close and heads must roll. He feels ― so he tells me, and I shall believe him until I am proved wrong ― he has his pride, Leonard, as we all do, our own ways of avoiding unpleasant truths until they are thrust upon us ― he feels that the time has come for him to get off the fence and be counted." He attempted a valiant joke. "You know his way with metaphors. I'm surprised he didn't throw in some new brooms rising from the ashes."
If Goodhew was expecting a peal of jolly laughter, Burr did not provide it.
Goodhew became agitated: "Leonard, I had no alternative. I am a servant of the Crown. I serve a minister of the Crown. It is my duty to inform my master of the progress of your case. If my master tells me he has seen the light, I am not employed to tell him he's a liar. I have my loyalties, Leonard. To my principles as well as to him and to you. We're having lunch on Thursday after his meeting with the Cabinet Secretary. I'm to expect important news. I'd hoped you'd be pleased, not sour."