^ 'Not officially. Officially LeCat, who was arrested in Marseilles for illegal activities, is still in the Sante – in solitary confinement. Which means no one ever sees him.' Messmer grinned sourly. 'It is rather like Dumas' man in the iron mask. Some poor devil is in solitary who is called LeCat – but from what I hear…' He shrugged.
^ They walked slowly across the snow along the lake shore. A seagull landed on the ice-bound lake and beyond the far shore the apartment blocks and hotels kept their distance. A few cyclists rode along the nearby highway. No cars – not with the fifty per cent oil cut in force.
^ 'I know nothing – he is only a name. No record, so no pictures, no fingerprints. He is like a ghost…'
^ 'Tell me about LeCat then. And any reference you have heard to Harper Tankships.'
^ 'I do not know that name. As to LeCat, there are rumours – that he has recruited a team of terrorists from his old OAS associates -the secret army organisation which revolted in Algeria, which was beaten. He had many men to choose from, of course – men in need of money who still dream of the old days when life was an adventure.' Messmer became caustic. 'He chose only from the elite – a special team of absolute bastards for this operation.'
^ 'None. No one knows anything. The word has gone out – LeCat is in the Sante. Forget him.' Messmer screwed up his monkey-like face to keep smoke out of his eyes. 'You see, my friend, everyone is embarrassed about what happened to LeCat, so they hope it will soon all be over. I have heard that the operation is vast and very expensive, that it is taking a huge sum of money to finance -who knows, maybe Arab money. They are the ones who can do these things now, not us.'
^ 'You're not saying that Paris – the French government – is behind this operation?' Sullivan asked carefully.
^ 'I don't think they know what's going to happen – I heard they put a shadow on LeCat and he shook it off. He would, of course. But they have not interfered with his efforts to recruit a team of terrible men. You know why I insisted on coming here to talk when you phoned me yesterday?'
^ 'My phone is tapped.' Messmer gave his wry smile again. 'In France it will soon be a distinction not to have your phone tapped. We are becoming a police state – and I am a policeman. I think they will make me retire soon. I was foolish enough to protest over the Tafak affair – I have been watched ever since. And that is why I came to Hamburg, Larry – I thought that someone ought to know what is happening, however little information I have given you.'
^ 'Thanks.' Sullivan looked round the view of the city. 'You know, Francois, I came all the way up the Atlantic coast asking questions and no one tried to warn me off – until I got here. I think there is something somewhere in Hamburg, but where, for God's sake?'
^ That is your problem. Tell your government we cannot all go on giving in to Arab power for ever. Although I fear they will, they will…'
^ 'It is not only the Arab allocation of oil, it is the money. We face a situation without precedent in history – and when an unprecedented situation arises which threatens to ruin the West financially, then we must consider unprecedented action…' ^ Minute of Prime Minister's comments at British Cabinet meeting the previous November.
^ On Monday January 13, Sullivan was walking along the shore of the Aussen-Alster as he talked with Francois Messmer. On the same morning Winter was at Cosgrove Manor, the house he had leased two months earlier during his flying visit to London. Twelve miles from King's Lynn, isolated inside its twenty acres of grounds, it suited his purpose perfectly. LeCat and the fifteen-man OAS terrorist team were with him. The final stage of the operation prior to action – training – was almost completed.
^ The plan of attack on the British oil tanker ^ Challenger ^ had been meticulously organised. From memory Winter had reproduced sketches of the blueprints he had seen in Paul Hahnemann's office of the ^ Challenger'?, ^ twin tanker ^ Chieftain. ^ Each of the terrorists had to study these sketches until he was thoroughly familiar with the tanker's layout. And Winter cross-examined each member of the team personally when they had studied the sketches, determined to make every man walk mentally over the vessel as though he were already on board.
^ 'The entrance to the coffer dam is through the hatch on the starboard side of the ship,' he pointed out to Andre Dupont during one of his briefing sessions.
^ 'No! It is on the port side! The helicopter landing point is on the starboard side…'
^ 'Which means you have just transposed everything on the main deck.' Winter unfolded his sketch and showed it to the Frenchman. 'Take the drawing away, start all over again, and make your own sketch …'
^ Winter had the main living-room, which was thirty-five feet long – roughly one-twentieth of the total length of the 50,000-ton tanker – cleared of all furniture and carpets. He had it well scrubbed and then with coloured chalks he reproduced a plan of the main deck. Again Winter trained each man individually, walking round the room with his student, drilling into him the position of the main features – catwalk, foremast, pipes, breakwater, helicopter landing point, loading derricks. It was the main deck he spent most time over – because this was where the helicopter would land.
^ Inevitably, men not accustomed to this kind of study became restless, so each evening he let them have a party with plenty to drink. Winter himself drank very little and he left LeCat, who consumed enormous quantities and still stayed on his feet, to look after the drinking sessions. And LeCat himself grew restless. 'Is all this necessary?' he demanded truculently one morning as they waited for the team to return from a daily run through the estate grounds. 'In the Mediterranean we just did a job…'
^ 'Not a job like this,' Winter said coldly. 'When they land on that tanker's deck they must feel they have been there before. Within five minutes of the helicopter landing we must control the ship – or we have failed. Tomorrow we must help them grasp the scale of the ship…'
^ Oil drums – symbolically enough – which had been brought to the house by truck, were placed at intervals across a vast lawn which ran away from the front of the house into the fields beyond. They were placed at intervals in two rows at right-angles to the house, each row one hundred and ten feet apart – the width of the ^ Challenger. ^ Earlier, Winter had paced out seven hundred and fifty feet from the steps of the house and he ended up with the tanker's bow in a field close to an old oak tree. Already several men were muttering about the size of the thing.
^ From the steps of the house a double row of posts was erected right out to the distant oak tree, and this marked out the catwalk. Other poles represented the derricks and the foremast; a circle of rope on the port bow located the helicopter landing point. Then Winter took the team to the roof of the house which was fifty feet above the ground. They were now standing on the bridge of the ^ Challenger, ^ staring towards the distant oak which was the bow of the ship.
^ 'It's bigger than I thought,' LeCat admitted, staring at the distant oak.
^ 'It is a steep drop to the main deck,' Armand Bazin, a younger member of the team commented with surprise as he gazed down over the edge of the parapet.
^ 'Steeper than you think,' Winter warned. 'We are fifty feet up and it's a sixty-foot drop from the island bridge of the ^ Challenger. ^ All of you go down now on to the lawn, walk along the main deck, get some idea of what it will be like. And look up at this roof -which is the bridge. It will be like looking up a cliff…'
^ They got ready to leave, but first Winter insisted on a huge cleaning-up operation. The oil drums were hidden inside a wood in the grounds. The sticks and poles which had represented catwalk and derricks and foremast were broken up and burned. Winter personally supervised a thorough scrubbing of the living-room floor to make sure that no traces were left of the chalk marks which had outlined the main deck. Furniture and carpets were put back as they had found them there.