Ultimatum (8 page)

43 St Peter’s Road, Fulham, was an old Victorian terraced house somewhat in need of repair. It belonged to a maiden lady, Miss Katherine Morley, who took in lodgers – ‘guests’ she preferred to call them – provided they were what she thought of as ‘the right sort of people’.

She was in the kitchen when she heard the clack of the letter-box lid and the postman’s double ring. The ring was her private arrangement with him. She liked to get to the letter-box before her guests. She put down the butter dish, wiped her hands, went to the box and cleared it. Among the mail was a buff-coloured envelope addressed to
J.
P.
Leroux
et
Cie.
The name of the sender was on the flap: Benallan Steamship Company Ltd, Fenchurch Street, London
EC
3.

Miss Morley looked at the letter with respect. She’d no idea the nice young Frenchman – Jean Paul Leroux – who’d come to her a week ago, was a ‘company’. But then he was a quiet, reserved sort of man. Not one to talk about himself or put on airs and graces. A girl with a French accent had telephoned to make the reservation some time before his arrival, saying that he was coming from Paris. Miss Morley asked him who’d recommended her. The wife of a business acquaintance in Paris, he’d said. She had stayed at number 43 some time ago. Unfortunately, he could not recall her maiden name. Miss Morley couldn’t either but since several young French women had stayed with her over the years – and Mr. Leroux, though French, was a charming well-spoken man and obviously a gentlemen – she’d had no hesitation in taking him in for the week or ten days he expected to be in London.

Miss Morley placed the letters on the hall table, went
back to the kitchen and got on with preparing the breakfast.

Later that morning Jean Paul Leroux took a taxi from Trafalgar Square where he’d arrived by underground.

As was his custom he paid off the taxi shortly before it reached the Aldwych, walking the remainder of the way to 39 Spender Street.

It was his third visit to the premises of the Middle Orient Consolidated Agencies Ltd since landing at Heathrow on October 20th. He rang the bell, went in through the front door, exchanged greetings with Hanna Nasour, Najib Hamadeh and Ibrahim Souref, hung up his raincoat and umbrella and accepted Hanna’s offer of coffee. She poured the coffee and passed him the mug. ‘Any news, Zeid?’

‘Yes. The letter came this morning.’ He felt more than heard the impact of his announcement.

There was a long silence, broken by the girl. ‘When do you leave Fulham?’

‘It’ll be a few days yet. I told Miss Morley I’d be returning to Paris soon. I’ll have to move in with you then, Ibrahim. Okay?’

The man with the mournful face sitting on the edge of the desk said, ‘Fine. If you don’t mind a stretcher.’

Zeid looked round the office with dubious eyes. The premises were poorly lit, sparsely furnished. There was a musty smell of long ago, an atmosphere of decay and neglect. Where they were in the front office there was a monk’s bench, a table, some chairs, an old Royal
typewriter
, a stationery cabinet, two typists’ desks, two
four-drawer
steel filing cabinets, telephone directories – but no telephone – ‘in and out’ baskets with letters in them, a wall calendar from which gazed a breasty, sultry young lady, a number of newspapers and some periodicals. The shelves along one wall were stacked with pattern books, specimens of silks and damasks, brocades and other Oriental cloths. There were two doors at the back of the front office.
One opened into a stockroom with modest stacks of Persian and Turkish rugs, and bundles of carpet samples on shelves along the back wall. The other gave on to an open
passageway
which led to an outside cloakroom, and a backyard with coal shed and garbage bins. There was a gas ring on a table, near it a corner cupboard.

Zeid put down the empty mug. ‘I’ve some telephoning to do, Najib. Can’t be from a call-box. Can we go to Sandra’s?’

‘Of course. She’ll be at work now.’

In the Strand they took a taxi to Rupert Street off the Bayswater Road where Najib’s sister Sandra rented a two-roomed apartment. Hamadeh, a regular visitor, had a key and knew the porter who was seldom about. They went into the apartment where Zeid got busy on the phone.

First he rang Morrison, Dean and Fletcher’s officer in Fenchurch Street. The switchboard operator put him through to the clearing department and after some delay he got hold of the right clerk. ‘J. P. Leroux et Cie of Paris here,’ said Zeid. ‘We want you to clear a consignment of carpets ex Athens in the
Student
Prince.
The goods are in transit shed 14, Millwall Docks. I’ll call this afternoon with the bill of lading and manifest, and arrange payment. How long will clearance take?’

‘A few days. We have to prepare the custom entries, process them through the Port of London Authority’s head office. You’ll receive notification from the PLA in due course that the goods are ready for collection. We can
arrange
for a haulier to pick them up.’

‘Don’t worry about the haulier. We’ll see to that,’ said Zeid. Next he dialled a Lewisham number. A man’s voice answered, ‘Speedy Removals.’

Zeid chuckled. ‘Is that so? Zeid here.’

‘Oh, hullo, Zeid. I was expecting to hear from you.’

‘Listen, Rudi. The carpets have arrived. Transit shed 14, Millwall Docks. It’s going to take a few days to clear them.’

There was a pause on the line. ‘Okay, Zeid. That’s fine. The voice had become suddenly husky.

‘You all right, Rudi?’

‘Of course. It’s just – you know – surprise. I’m okay.’

‘Fine. I’ll be in touch as soon as the goods are ready for collection. We’ll fix then when you are to pick me up. Okay?’

‘Sure. That’s okay.’

The driver of the Bedford panel van backed it up to the loading platform behind transit shed 14 in the Millwall Dock. The black van was several years old but well kept. There was nothing unusual about it except, perhaps, the absence of the name of any firm upon it. The driver got out, went into the office and gave the foreman the J. P. Leroux et Cie’s delivery order. The foreman examined it, checked through a file, found the relevant papers, handed a receipt in triplicate to the driver. ‘Sign here,’ he said. The driver signed with a flourish ‘L. E. Jones’. The foreman looked at the signature – thought to himself, he’s no Welshman, looks more like a Pakki to me – and handed over a pass which specified the goods the driver was authorized to take out of the docks.

He gave the other papers to the clerk at the desk behind him. ‘Take this lot, Bert.’ He turned to the driver. ‘He’ll show you where your load is.’

The driver followed the clerk down the shed through a maze of cargo. At the far end they found the
hessian-wrapped
bale addressed to J. P. Leroux et Cie. A fork-lift truck arrived. The clerk said, ‘That’s it, Jim.’ The driver, a small wizened man, backed and filled until the fork was under the bale. He pulled a lever and the bale lifted clear. ‘Where’s the van, then?’

The van driver pointed to the far end of the shed. ‘Down there. At the first loading platform.’

The fork-lift truck led the way, the driver and clerk following. Near the end of the shed the clerk called to two
men leaning against a stack of packing cases. ‘Give us a hand, lads. Got to get this lot into a van.’ The men moved slowly, joining the cortège with reluctance. When they reached the Bedford the driver said, ‘I’ve got a roller pallet inside.’

He slid the pallet out of the van. The fork-lift driver lowered the bale on to it. It took four of them, shoving and pushing, to get it across the tail-gate into the van.

The driver thanked them, put chocks against the pallet rollers, closed the van doors, climbed into the driving seat and drove off.

At the dock gates he showed the receipt and pass to the PLA policeman on duty. The policeman got him to open the van, and checked there was nothing inside but the bale specified in the pass. Satisfied, he said, ‘That’s all right, mate.

The driver climbed in, started up the engine and drove away.

The van made down Manchester Road towards Blackwall at a moderate pace, the man in the cab driving with extreme care. He turned into the Blackwall Tunnel, crossed under the Thames, and took a circuitous route to the east, making for Charlton. Later he swung north and then west towards Blackheath and Lewisham. It was after six in the evening when he stopped opposite the Clock Tower in Lewisham Way. A man in a raincoat carrying a brief-case climbed into the cab beside him. The van crossed over into Lee High Road, travelled down it for some distance, turned right into Kiddey Road and later left into Pimsvale Lane. The lane was a narrow cul-de-sac leading down between rows of old, weather-worn terraced houses. At its far end, almost a hundred yards beyond the last houses, stood an old brick building once used as a workshop by glass merchants. The van driver had for some months rented a part of it; a garage with a two-roomed flat above.

He lived in the flat and kept the panel van in the garage which was a convenient arrangement for a man in the
furniture removals business. For him the place had the added advantage that there were no houses adjoining the building. It stood quite alone, its back to a small field which had somehow escaped development. The driver, known to neighbours as Rudi Frankel, was a quiet reserved young man who kept himself to himself. He was regarded as a hard-working man and those inhabitants of Pimsvale Lane who’d used or recommended him to friends spoke well of his reliability and reasonable charges. He was understood to be Jewish and to have worked in Israel for some years before returning to London where he’d been born. His parents, he’d said, lived in Birmingham.

What was not known about him was that his name was not Rudi Frankel – nor for that matter ‘L. E. Jones’ – nor was he Jewish, notwithstanding his Israeli passport. Which was not surprising since forged passports were more easily come by in Beirut than most other places in the world.

When they’d parked the van, the driver and his passenger climbed out and bolted and padlocked the garage doors on the inside. They got into the back of the van, the man in the raincoat taking his briefcase with him. He examined the bale carefully, cut away the stitches at one end of the canvas ‘contents’ label, turned it back and found a loose strand of carpet weave. He pulled on it until a flexible plastic tube emerged. He unscrewed its cap and exposed the end of a multicore cable.

Frankel said, ‘Gives me the jitters, Zeid. Sure you know what you’re up to?’

‘I should know. Didn’t I put this lot together in Beirut?’ He looked up and laughed. ‘You know, Rudi, if I passed out now and you had to carry on with the job, you’d – Jesus! I don’t know. I suppose you’d be the only man in the world who’d detonated a nuclear bomb while he was sitting on it.’ He laughed again with nervous hilarity. ‘Know what the date is?’

‘Fifth of November?’

‘Yes. Funny isn’t it?’ Zeid shook with laughter.

‘It’s not funny, Zeid. It’s bloody terrifying. That’s what it is.’

‘Sure it is. But if it goes wrong we won’t know anything about it, so relax and let’s get on with the job.’

Zeid pulled several inches of multi-core cable from the tube and separated the taped leads: two brown, two green, two black, one chequered. He took a cardboard box from the briefcase and placed it on the bale. Working
methodically
, he removed the insulation from the leads and joined them to coils of identically-coloured flex, attaching the ends of these to terminals on the plastic switchboard which he took from the cardboard box. He checked the
spring-loaded
locking device on the switch before testing the circuit with an ammeter. It was fed by dry batteries in the bale. Satisfied, he carried the switchboard forward with elaborate care, Frankel paying out flex from the coils. Zeid passed the switchboard through the small window behind the driving seat and lowered it gently into the driving-cab. The two men climbed out and locked the van’s loading doors. They left the garage by an internal door which led to the staircase to the flat. Frankel double-locked that door and they went upstairs.

When they’d washed and eaten a modest meal, he slid a Skorpion 7·65mm Vzorgi into the holster of his shoulder harness and put on a denim jacket and an overcoat.

Zeid said, ‘Let’s go down to the van now. I’ll explain how the switch works and we’ll fix the phone. After that I must go. Don’t leave the garage until Ahmad arrives. Okay?’

‘Sure. Sure. I know.’ Frankel’s voice was hoarse with anxiety.

When Zeid had gone Frankel latched open the garage door leading to the staircase and got into the driver’s cab. With nervous hands he checked the plastic switchboard and laid it gingerly on the seat. He opened a cab window, made
himself as comfortable as he could and settled down to wait.

Shortly before eleven o’clock he heard gentle knocking. He climbed down from the cab and went through to the front door of the flat in stockinged feet. ‘Who’s that?’ he called through the letter-box.

‘Ahmad Daab.’

It was a familiar, expected voice. Frankel unlocked the door and a tall man wearing a duffel coat and cloth cap came in.

The new arrival took off his cap, rubbed his hands together. ‘Phoo – it’s cold. Can’t take this climate.’ He had bushy eyebrows, a mandarin moustache and an easy smile.

Frankel locked the door again. ‘Glad to see you, Ahmad. Go upstairs. Make yourself coffee. You know where the things are. I’ve drawn the curtains. Don’t put on lights in the living-room. It’s okay to use them in the kitchen and bedroom.’

The newcomer stared at him. ‘So it’s actually begun.’ His deep voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It’s difficult to believe. After all that planning and scheming. It’s finally here. How bloody marvellous.’

‘It’s more than that, Ahmad. It’s the pivotal event for our people. It has cost some lives but in the long run it’s going to save a great many.’