Winter had the foremast removed from the trawler and a platform built over one of the three fish-holds. On this platform an Alouette helicopter could land and take off with ease. LeCat grumbled about the expense, but the French Syndicate chiefs over-ruled him, which did not increase his affection for Winter.
The Pecheur made further trips to Naples without incident. No one was worried about the presence of the helicopter on the main deck after Winter had casually mentioned to an Italian Customs man that this was the new fishing technique – the helicopter was used to seek out fish shoals from the air. Then the rival smuggling organisation, the Italian Syndicate, struck.
The Pecheur was within twenty miles of the Italian coastline when Winter saw through field-glasses a powerful motor vessel approaching at speed. It was full of armed men and made no reply to Pecheur's wireless signals. Winter, a skilled pilot – no one ever knew where he acquired the skill – took off in the machine with the most resourceful of LeCat's ex-OAS associates, Andre Dupont. Flying over the Italian Syndicate vessel the first time, Dupont dropped smoke bombs on its deck. On the second run, while Winter held the machine in a steady hover barely fifty feet above the smoke-obscured deck, Dupont dropped two thermite bombs. The vessel was ablaze within seconds; within minutes the armed smugglers had taken to their small boats. When Winter landed again on the Pecheur he had to exert the whole force of his personality to stop LeCat ramming the helpless boatloads of men. The Frenchman was giving the order to the Pecheur's captain as Winter came back on to the bridge.
'Change course! Head straight for them! Ram them!' 'Maintain previous course,' Winter told the captain quietly. 'The object of the exercise,' he informed LeCat, 'is to let them see it is unprofitable to tangle with us. Those people are Sicilians – kill them and you start a vendetta. They'll have enough trouble getting home as it is.' He started walking off the bridge, then turned at the doorway to speak to the captain. 'If you don't maintain course,' he said pleasantly, 'I'll break your arm.,.'
The incident was significant on two counts. It set a precedent Winter was later to utilise on a far vaster scale, and it pointed up the vast chasm that opened between LeCat and Winter where human life was concerned. To the Englishman, killing was abhorrent, to be avoided at all costs unless absolutely unavoidable. To the Frenchman it was a way of life, something you did with as little compunction as cleaning your teeth.
A few months later, sensing that so much success could not continue for ever, Winter withdrew from the smuggling operation. Settling himself in Tangier, he proceeded to enjoy the profits he had made; staying at one of the two best hotels, he shared his luxury suite with first an English girl, later with a Canadian girl. To both of them he explained at the outset that marriage was an excellent arrangement for other people, and it was while he was relaxing that the first oil crisis burst on the world in 1973.
Winter observed with some cynicism the way the Arab sheikhs ordered Europe about, telling foreign ministers what they could and could not have, and he admired their gall. What he did not admire was world reaction, the scramble for oil at any price, and personally he would have dealt with the new overlords in a very different manner.
His judgement that the smuggling operation could not last for ever was vindicated when LeCat, having extended the operation to the south coast of France, was caught with a consignment in Marseilles. He was arrested, but only after a flying chase through the streets of the city when he managed to break the leg of one gendarme and fracture the skull of another. He was tried, given a long prison sentence and incarcerated in the Sante in Paris. Later, Winter heard the Frenchman had been released in mysterious circumstances. He shrugged his shoulders, never expecting to see LeCat again.
Winter, who knew his Mediterranean, did hear that the Pecheur ^ which put out to sea before LeCat's arrest, later sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar for an unknown destination. What he did not know was that LeCat, using Arab funds this time, had bought the vessel off the French Syndicate. The trawler made the long Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean, passed through the Panama Canal, and then made its way up the Californian coast to the port of Victoria in Canada. It had been anchored in Canadian waters less than a month when the approach was made to Winter.
' For several weeks Winter had known he was being watched. He made a few discreet enquiries, a little money changed hands. He learned that the men who shadowed him were Arabs, and since he had never done anything to arouse Arab hostility, he assumed someone was considering making him a proposition. The name of Ahmed Riad was mentioned.
' Riad, he had heard, had some link with Sheikh Gamal Tafak, although they had never been seen together in public. By this time Winter's opinion of the West was simple and brutaclass="underline" it had lost the will to survive. When the sheikhs first cut off the oil the West depended on for its very existence, the European so-called leaders had panicked, scuttling round like headless chickens in a desperate attempt to scoop up all the oil they could find, paying any price the sheikhs cared to fix at their OAPEC (Organisation of Arab Petrol-Exporting Countries) meetings, receiving the sheikhs in their various capitals like Lords of Creation. Seeing the writing on the wall, Winter took his decision – he must make one great financial killing and get to hell out of it.
' One million dollars was the sum he had decided on – even with inflation it should last out for the rest of his life. And in the 1970's that kind of money could come from only one source – from the sheikhs themselves. So when Ahmed Riad met him in November, Winter was more than receptive to his approach – providing Riad would pay him one million dollars. From where Riad sat on the Tangier rooftop, Winter appeared to be anything but receptive after thirty minutes' discussion.
^ 'You are asking me to undertake an operation most men would find impossible, Riad,' Winter said coldly.
^ Riad, wearing western clothes, was a hard-faced, plump little man with sweat patches under the armpits of his linen suit. He sat facing the sun, an arrangement Winter manoeuvred by the simple process of hauling out a certain chair when the Arab arrived. It was not only the heat which was making him sweat: he was uncomfortable in the presence of the Englishman.
^ Earlier Winter had compelled him to explain what was needed by refusing to discuss terms until he knew exactly what he had to do. Riad had lied convincingly, assuring Winter he would be in complete command of the operation, that LeCat, who had already been approached, would be his subordinate. The plan was, he said, to bring pressure on Britain and America to stop more arms being sent to Israel. A British ship would be hi-jacked off the West Coast of America, would be taken to an American port, and there the demand that no more arms be sent to Israel would be made. The British crew of the seized ship would be hostages until the demand was met.
^ It was a shrewd piece of power-play, Winter saw at once. The Americans would hesitate to take a strong line with the lives of another country's men apparently at stake – and if they tried to take a strong line the British government would intervene. 'There is, of course, no question of actually harming the hostages…' Riad went on. And this, too, made sense: certain Arab statesmen were trying to drive a wedge in between Britain and America, so the last thing they would wish to do would be to antagonise Britain.
^ 'Your idea – LeCat's idea- of how to hi-jack a ship is, of course, a joke,' Winter pointed out at one stage. He outlined his own idea which had occurred to him while he was listening. The flicker in Riad's eyes told Winter he had just scored a major point. This was the moment when he told the Arab, 'You are asking me to undertake an operation most men would find impossible… so the fee must be reasonable,' Winter continued.