Rhinoceros (18 page)

It had been night for several hours and outside the air was a bitter cold. He was far enough back and above
Chesil to keep his heater on. He had eaten sandwiches
purchased from a roadside cafe on his way down from
London, and occasionally drunk mineral water from a
litre bottle.

Marler, the most deadly marksman in Western Europe, was blessed with an infinite patience. It was ten o'clock,
very dark, when he saw something blazing out at sea, east of Weymouth. He focused his glasses, saw a small fishing
boat on fire. No sign of a crew.

'The decoy,' he said to himself. 'To keep coastguards
away from this area. They're coming and someone is well
organized.'

A few minutes later he swore. He had just spotted a
launch, a large vessel, packed to the gunwales with men, heading for the end of Chesil Beach near what was known
as the Swannery. Then he saw the fog rolling in from the
sea, blotting out the launch. He waited.

A few minutes later an old tourist-type bus, what his father would have called a charabanc, appeared from the
direction of Bridport. It stopped, performed a two-point turn until it faced the way it had come. The vehicle was
then parked near a point where Marler estimated the
launch would beach. It carried the legend
Topsy Tours.
The fog swallowed up the bus.

Marler lowered his window, put his hand out. A few minutes later he felt a breeze. He closed the window, sat
up erect, holding his glasses. The fog swirled, evaporated.
The bus came back into view, so did the large launch as its bow hit Chesil. He focused on it.

A big man clad in waders, an oilskin, a sou'wester hat came ashore, bent down, picked up a pebble with one hand. In the other he was holding something Marler couldn't identify. Then the big man climbed the steep bank, saw the bus. He returned to the launch, lifted a megaphone to his mouth, called out instructions in as quiet a voice as possible.

Marler couldn't hear what he said but he could see the
big man helping to unload his cargo, grabbing men by the
arm, shoving them up the bank towards the bus. Marler
studied their strange faces, agreed with his contact that this
was a right bunch of villains.

Most looked foreign, out of the Balkans. What impressed
- and worried - Marler was the military way they filed one
behind the other up to the bus, carrying floppy bags. He
took out his mobile, pressed the numbers of the police
HQ in Dorchester, numbers he'd earlier memorized from a directory in an isolated phone box.

'Police 'ere,' a bored voice said.

'I'm reporting that a gang of illegal refugees are being smuggled ashore at the Swannery end of Chesil Beach.
Send patrol cars . . .'

'Might I have your particulars, sir?' the bored voice
asked.

'You'll lose them if you don't move fast. Put me on to
a senior officer now.'

'Hold on a minute, sir. Maybe the sergeant will have a
word . . .'

'You'll lose them,' Marler fumed, but there was no one on the line.

He waited, watching a whole column leaving the launch,
climbing aboard the bus. He counted twenty men. Once
aboard their transport, the bus moved off towards Bridport.
Marler saw the big man was still waiting at the edge
of Chesil Beach. Then a second tourist bus appeared,
performed the same two-point turn, parked so it was also
facing Bridport. The fog had cleared off the water
and
Marler heard the muffled sound of engines. Two large
outboards, crowded with men, were approaching the shore
where the big man had flashed a torch twice.

'Can I help you, sir? Sergeant Haskins here. What seems
to be the trouble?'

'The trouble is you have at this moment a very large gang
of illegal refugees being brought ashore at the Swannery end of Chesil Beach. They're being taken away towards Bridport in old tourist buses with the name
Topsy Tours.'

'Did I hear you aright, sir? You did say "Topsy"?'

'Yes.'

'Funny name . . .'

'For God's sake, get patrol cars to intercept the buses.
I said they're on their way towards Bridport. . .'

'I heard that, sir. Might I ask exactly where you're
speaking from?'

'Send patrol cars or I'll report this lack of action to the Chief Constable

Marler had had enough. The motorized dinghies had
emptied their passengers with astonishing speed. They had
scrambled up the bank, were already aboard the second
bus. The big man had returned to the launch, was already steering it out to sea where presumably a freighter was
standing to until it could winch the launch aboard. Then
the freighter might well return to its pick-up point to take
aboard another assortment of talent and bring it back to
Britain.

Marler had switched off his mobile, feeling it was hope
less. The only thing he could do was to track the buses to
their destination. He manoeuvred his car back down the track on to the road leading to Bridport. He rammed his
foot down to catch them up.

A few minutes later a patrol car came towards him.
Heavens, they had reacted. Then he saw the car was
flashing its lights, waving him down. He had reduced speed when he'd seen it was a patrol car and now he
stopped. The patrol car swung over to the wrong side of the deserted road, parked its front bumper inches from
Marler's. A very young policeman got out, arrived as he
lowered his window. Marler sat very still.

'Pushin' it a bit, weren't we, sir?'

'It isn't a built-up area.'

A second, equally young policeman arrived, a portly
man who had the look of a man conscious of his impor
tance. He was holding something, bent down to peer in
at Marler.

'I'd like you to switch off your engine.'

Marler did so. Then he sat with his arms folded and
tried to look expressionless.

'Been drinkin', 'ave we, sir?'

'Yes, this. And only this.'

Marler reached down for the bottle of mineral water.
He held it up for the portly policeman to get a good
look.

'Would you object to being breathalysed? The alterna
tive is to accompany us to the station.'

Marler took a deep breath, reached out, took the noz
zle. He blew into it with all his strength. Portly took
out the breathalyser, studied it. The meter registered
nothing.

'Thank you, sir. You can proceed now, when we've
moved our car.'

'May I suggest,' Marler said politely, 'that you get in
touch urgently with your Dorchester HQ?'

'Good night, sir . . .'

It was 3 a.m. when Marler arrived back at Park Crescent.
He wondered where the time had gone. He was also
surprised to find everyone waiting for him in Tweed's office. Paula, Newman, Butler, Nield and Mark were
drinking coffee. Marler accepted a cup gratefully from
Monica.

'You've done a good job,' Tweed began. 'Thank you
for calling me on your way back. You must have found the police down there frustrating.'

'I could have strangled them.'

'Don't worry. As soon as you went off the line I phoned
Roy Buchanan at the Yard, passed to him all your infor
mation. He's phoning the Chief Constable down there
- has done - and called me back. They've sent up a
helicopter to comb the area you mentioned in search of those two buses.'

'Doubt if they'll find them. From Bridport there are
three or four different routes they could have taken.'

'I agree. If you can stand it I'll tell you what's been
happening up here while you were down there
...'

Marler listened, adopting his usual stance of leaning against a wall. After he'd drunk his coffee he lit a king-
size.

'This is developing into an international conflagration.
All over Europe and now it's started in the States.'

'We watched a bit on TV,' Monica interjected. 'The pics were frightful and Washington thinks there are other cities
targeted. They're trying to guess which ones.'

'I have Keith Kent coming in any moment,' Tweed
told her. 'You remember Keith, the brilliant analyst of movements of large sums of money, often secretly. It
occurred to me all this is being financed by a fortune,
a huge one. Thugs like to be paid for their dirty work. Never mind the slogans "Down With Capitalism". Then there's the transport to move them over long distances.
What Marler has told us shows that is going on. So who
is paying out these vast sums? And why?'

The phone rang. Monica told Tweed that Keith Kent
had arrived and he asked her to tell him to come up
right away.

'Poor devil,' commented Mark. 'It's the middle of the
night.'

'He's an owl,' Tweed said. 'Works best through the early
hours . . .'

Keith Kent walked in. Of medium height, he was slim
and clad in an expensive business suit. In his late thirties,
he was clean-shaven, had thick dark hair and grey eyes
which concentrated on the person he was talking to. Tweed
introduced him to Mark, then asked him who could be
financing the carnage.

'My best bet,' Kent replied, sitting down, crossing his legs, 'is the Zurcher Kredit Bank.'

'What?' Tweed was taken aback. 'It's a Swiss bank.'
'Used to be. Thank you, Monica,' he said as she handed
him a cup of coffee. 'I'll need this. I happen to have spent a lot of time scrutinizing that bank. I have a strange story
to tell you.'

Going back to the late 1790s, Mayer Amschel Rothschild was establishing the banking business, which was to grow
into a colossus, in the Frankfurt Judengasse.

The Judengasse was the ghetto Jews were confined to
and operated from. Enter Salomon Frankenheim, in his
teens. Not a Jew, he had studied the Jewish faith, their
rituals, their way of life. He then applied to Mayer for a job.
Mayer put him through his paces, realized Frankenheim
was a mathematical genius, took him on.

Frankenheim learned every trick of the Rothschild tech
nique of trading. He was not thirty when he left Rothschild,
slipped out of the Judengasse, formed what was to become
the Frankenheim Dynasty in Paris.

Time passed. Frankenheim married, produced three sons.
After their father's death they were running Frankenheim
banks in Paris, Vienna and Rome, all of which were
prospering.

More time passed until after several generations 1925
arrived. All the Frankenheims were long-lived but by then
the head of the dynasty, Joseph, had no sons. Who was
to take over, this highly successful, all-powerful and very secretive organization?