Deadlock (21 page)

'We are working on the cell principle. Only three men know each other. I insist on the tightest security. The success of an operation of this magnitude depends on it.'

'What operation,' Chabot persisted.

'Thirty people in the team altogether,' Klein replied. 'We have them in place now. All except two. I am hiring these two key personnel as soon as I leave here.'

'What operation?' Chabot asked again.

'We are going to hold up the gateway to Europe. We are going to threaten to close down a whole continent . . .' His voice was rising in pitch, he punctuated his statements with a curious chopping movement of his right hand as he went on. 'We are going to give a demonstration of the terrible explosive power at our command. There will be casualties to show we are not bluffing. We shall demand -receive - an enormous sum of money. That gigantic fortune is already available - although those who hold it have no idea what it is really for. Now! No more talk. Get on with your job. I shall collect the timers in three days. Someone will be waiting to move them to the target.
Wiedersehen!
'

Klein gestured to Hipper to join him, left the room. Chabot paused in his work for a few minutes. As he'd spoken the eyes of Klein had bulged hypnotically, had seemed to change colour. It must have been the fluo-rescents Chabot decided.

He was shaken by the vehemence of Klein's outburst, by the details of his plan. Then he shrugged. For two hundred thousand francs he should worry about the spilling of some blood. But of one thing Chabot was sure. Afterwards all hell would break loose in Europe. What a good job he had decided to leave France forever once he had his hands on the big money - to emigrate to Quebec. They'd never find him there.

'All the Luxembourg scuba divers you recruited are hidden away in Holland,' Klein told Hipper in answer to his question. 'We must have hired every thug in your tiny country.'

'Holland?' Hipper queried. 'The target is there?'

'You know better than to ask questions like that. Holland is a good staging post.'

'Ten foreigners are a lot to hide. Won't they be noticed?'

'We have taken over a camping site. They are housed in campers. Only the two who speak Dutch leave the site to fetch in supplies. It is foolproof.'

Klein omitted to mention the number hidden away on the site was larger than ten. He sensed the little man was becoming nervous, keyed up. It was a problem he had foreseen. He had to keep them all occupied until the moment for the great assault came.

'What about Chabot?' he added. 'When I spoke to you on the phone, warning you about the delivery of the timers, you did say he was restless. I don't like that.'

'He is absorbed in his work at the moment. As long as he takes his midnight walk along the gorge where the railway once ran he is manageable. How much longer do we have before the operation is mounted?'

'As long as it takes.'

20

'Action at last,' said Pete Nield, sitting in the back of the Mercedes 280E as Newman pulled up, then turned into the car park near the Blakeney waterfront. As he turned off the ignition he had no idea he was close to the spot where Tweed had parked the same car while he waited for the Bomb Disposal team to do its job.

A brisk breeze was blowing off the sea into Norfolk and the village had a deserted look. Harry Butler, seated beside Newman, replied to Nield over his shoulder.

'Patience is what you need a little more of in this job -I've told you before. Newman knows what he's doing.'

'Don't dispute it - but hanging round in King's Lynn for days got on my wick.'

'Sorry about that,' Newman commented, adjusting the field-glasses hanging from a loop round his neck. 'I had to go to Brighton to check up on Dr Portch - that's where he came from before he bought the practice in Cockley Ford. We'll be going there to look around tonight. I'm going along to chat with the skipper of that coaster. Why don't the two of you pop into the bar on the front, have a jar. I want to appear to be on my own . . .'

The coaster, moored next to the tall silo, was unloading a cargo of soya bean meal. Newman could see faint white dust rising as the dock crane worked. He had been to Blakeney the day before, had learned a lot chatting to the barman in the pub facing the small harbour.

He wore a deerstalker hat, a windcheater, corduroy trousers tucked into rubber knee-length boots. Standard gear for a bird-watcher. The coaster's skipper, a certain Caleb Fox, was leaning against the sea wall, taking a swig from a hip flask. He hastily pocketed it when Newman arrived.

'Gusty sort of day,' Newman remarked. 'What's the weather going to do?'

'Piss down this afternoon. We'll be unloaded by then -God willin'.'

'Bob Newman.' He held out his hand. The skipper took hold with slithery limp fingers. Like shaking hands with a fish. There was the smell of brandy on his breath.

'Caleb Fox,' he said after staring sideways at Newman. Fox. The name suited him. A small, wide-shouldered man, he stooped like a man accustomed to dipping his head aboard ship and his eyes were foxy. 'Them's pretty powerful binoculars,' he observed. 'Mighty expensive, I reckon. The camera, too.'

'You need good equipment for bird-watching. Soya bean meal your main cargo?'

'Sick of the sight of the stuff. Runs a shuttle, we does. Across to Europort, Rotterdam, pick up our ration from one o' the big container jobs comin' up from Africa, then back here.'

'Sounds a bit boring.'

'Bloody borin'. But when you're past fifty and shippin' is in a bad way, you takes what you can get. I used to sail a ten-thousand-ton freighter. Those were the days. Dead and gone, they are.'

'How big is the coaster?'

'Seven hundred tonner.' Fox spat over the wall. 'A pea-boat compared with what I once 'ad. A man needs money, a lot of it to be 'appy in this vale of sorrows.

'You live alone?'

"Ow did you know that?'

Sudden hostility, suspicion. The foxy eyes closed to mere slits, stared at Newman for a few seconds, then looked away.

'I didn't. You just sounded lonely.'

Newman had the impression it was the brandy which was talking, that had he come along earlier Fox would not have said a word. Now he was wondering whether he had talked too much. About what? Fox's right hand reached towards his hip, then withdrew and rested on the wall. Something odd, Newman felt.

A man needs money, a lot of it.
. . Newman could have sworn Fox had brightened up for a few seconds when he uttered the words. The skipper, reassured by Newman's reply, started talking about his favourite topic. Himself.

'You're right, lives on me own. Got a small place at Brancaster. That's along the coast - towards King's Lynn. You look well fixed, Mister, if you don't mind me saying so.'

There was a question behind the statement. Fox darted another sidelong glance at his visitor. Newman replied carefully.

'I'm a writer. I've been lucky. Brings me in a good income.' He changed the subject. 'What's that funny rattling noise?'

Fox pulled at his greasy peaked cap. 'It's the wind shaking the riggin' against the metal mast of that boat over there, the one beached on the sandbank. Rubbish they are, rich men's toys. All fibreglass and aluminium. Not real boats at all.'

'Well, I think I've changed my mind about pushing off across the marshes,' Newman remarked. 'Don't like the look of those clouds coming in.'

Told you, didn't I? Goin' to piss down . . .'

Newman retraced his steps back to the waterfront pub. Butler and Nield sat at a window table, two glasses of beer in front of them. Newman walked to the bar, ordered a small Scotch, downed it, glanced at the two men and made his way back to the Mercedes.

His two companions came strolling along five minutes later, climbed back into the car. Nield again occupied a rear seat and spoke as Newman turned on the ignition.

'Found out something interesting talking to the landlord. That skipper you were chatting with is a pal of - guess who? Dr Portch from Cockley Ford.'

'I know,' Newman said as he turned out of the car park and left Blakeney Quay behind. 'He told me the same thing yesterday when I came here on my own. Not a popular character, Dr Portch. Except with the skipper of that coaster, Caleb Fox . . .'

'Why did we come to Blakeney?' asked Harry Butler,

'Because of Tweed's experience up here. There were two places where things happened. Blakeney and Cockley Ford. And that barman told me yesterday the coaster was due in here today from Rotterdam with another cargo of that soya stuff. Also that the skipper knew Dr Portch. Obvious conclusion: have a look at Caleb Fox.'

'And our next move?'

'Visit the other place this evening, Cockley Ford. You and I, Harry, had better get kitted up before we pay the village a call. Denims and windcheaters. We're going in as two SAS types, the couple Tweed invented for protection when he went there.'

'You can play the part,' Butler pointed out. 'You had SAS training when you did that series of articles on them. But what about me?'

Newman glanced at his passenger's sturdy frame, tall build. 'You won't have any trouble looking the part. Box and Cox. I'll be the gabby one, do the talking. You play the silent partner.'

'And where do I come into this?' Nield called out.

'You come into it all right. You'll follow us in Tweed's Cortina parked back at Tuesday Market. Give me one of those compact walkie-talkies you brought, carry another yourself. You park half-way up the side road leading to Cockley Ford. If I call you come like a bat out of hell. Flash that fake warrant card in your wallet. You're police. Special Branch.'

'Sounds as though you're expecting trouble,' Nield commented hopefully.

'I just don't know what Harry and I may be walking into. When Tweed first mentioned Dr Portch the name rang a bell. I checked the newspapers two years ago in the British Museum reading room. Then, as you know, I went to Brighton where Portch came from. I was right. And that Caleb Fox made a mistake.'

'Which was?'

'The sort of mistake Tweed is good at spotting. The
absence
of something. During our whole conversation he never once mentioned that bomb placed on Paula Grey's doorstep. Funny, that. While I was in that bar the locals were talking about nothing else.'

'And Dr Portch? You said you were right about him,' Nield recalled.

'He could be a two-time murderer - who got away with it in both cases.'

Newman drove back along the coast road - the A149 -towards King's Lynn. Nield, studying the map of Norfolk, pointed out it would be quicker to cut inland via Fakenham.

'I know,' Newman agreed, 'but I want to take a
shufti
at the place where Caleb Fox hangs out, Brancaster.'

The wind was rising, beating against the side of the Mercedes. A nor'easter coming in off the sea. The cloud bank had blotted out the sky and it was half-dark when the rain began to hammer down. Newman turned off the main highway to the right down a wisp of a road.

A winding road, it stretched across a flat area of sedge-land, wild and desolate. Beyond the sea was a dark belt flecked with white-capped rollers. They hadn't seen a soul since leaving the highway as they arrived at a crude car park, no more than a rectangle of flattened earth. Newman stopped the car, Close to the sea was a large isolated two-storey building. Two men with golf bags over their shoulders ran for shelter.

'While I remember,' Newman said, 'slight change of plan for this evening. Nield, you take my Mercedes - Tweed arrived at Cockley Ford in it that night he had his weird visit there. It might look funny if Butler and I turned up in the same car. So, we'll take the Cortina. Now, raincoats on. Time for us to stretch our legs, Harry. Pete, you stay dry and watch the car.'

'Suits me. You're going to get soaked.'

He was right, too, Newman thought as he walked with Butler towards the building and the sea. The nor'easter had increased in fury, forcing them to push against it as rain drenched down.

'What's this in aid of? Not that I mind a bath,' Butler enquired.

"Trying to find someone I can ask about Caleb Fox. Should be someone who knows inside that building. It's a golf clubhouse . . .'

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started but the wind continued to buffet them. They reached a board-walk which ran past the clubhouse down a slope to the edge of one of many creeks snaking away to the dark and distant belt.