d became progressively more presentable and expensive as they neared the lawyer’s office.
Nothing to do with the business of the law moves faster than a snail’s pace in Italy—and usually the pace of an arthritic snail.
The terms had been agreed on already. With Carl Waldenberg translating, Captain Spinetti had accepted the package deal Shannon offered: £26,000 cash for the ship, to be paid in any currency or country the captain cared to name; his own first mate to be offered a minimum six-month contract as the new skipper, at a salary double that he had received as first mate; the chance for the other two men, the engineer and the deckhand, to stay on for six months at existing salary, or part company with severance pay of £500 for the deckhand and £1000 for the engineer.
Privately Shannon had already decided to persuade the deckhand to leave but to do all he could to keep the engineer, a surly Serbian who Waldenberg said could coax those engines to hell and back, who said nothing and asked less, and, best of all, whose papers were probably not in order and who therefore needed the job.
For tax reasons, the captain had long ago invested £100 in forming a small private company, Spinetti Maritimo Shipping Company. It had one hundred ordinary shares, of which he held ninety-nine and his lawyer, Signor Ponti, held one plus the position of company secretary. The sale of the MV Toscana, the company’s only asset, was therefore linked to the sale of the shipping company, Spinetti Maritimo, which suited Shannon perfectly.
What did not suit him so well was that it took five days of meetings with the lawyer before the details were in order. And that was only for the first stage.
It was a week into May, and Day Thirty-one of Shannon’s private calendar of a hundred days, before Ponti could start drawing up the contracts. As the deal was going through in Italy, and the Toscana was an Italian-registered and -resident vessel, the contract had to comply with Italian law, which is complicated. There were three contracts: that for the sale of Spinetti Maritimo and all her assets to Tyrone Holdings of Luxembourg; that which contracted Tyrone Holdings to offer Carl Waldenberg the job of captain for six months at the agreed salary; and the third guaranteeing the two other crewmen their existing salaries or severance pay. This process took four days, and Ponti’s attitude was evidently that he was breaking all speed records, although all participant parties were anxious to complete the sale as soon as possible.
Big Janni Dupree was content with life that bright May morning when he emerged from the camping-goods store, having placed the last of his orders. He had put down a deposit for the required number of haversacks and sleeping bags. Delivery had been promised for the next day, and that same afternoon he intended to pick up two large cardboard boxes full of military-style knapsacks and berets from a warehouse in East London.
Three bulky consignments of miscellaneous equipment were already on their way to Toulon. The first should have arrived, he estimated, and the other two should be in transit. The fourth would be crated and put in the hands of the shipping agent the following afternoon, which left him a week ahead of time. The day before, he had received a letter from Shannon, telling him to vacate his London flatlet and fly to Marseilles on May 15. He was to check into a given hotel in the French port and wait there to be contacted. He liked precise instructions; they left little room for errors, and if anything did go wrong, it could not be his fault. He had bought his ticket and was eager for the remaining week to pass so that he could be off. It was good to be going into action again.
When Signor Ponti had finally drawn up the necessary papers, Cat Shannon dispatched a series of letters from his Genoa hotel. The first was to Johann Schlinker to tell him that the ship that would be engaged to carry the ammunition from Spain would be the MV Toscana, owned by Spinetti Maritimo Shipping Company of Genoa. He himself would need from Schlinker details of where the arms shipment was supposed to be heading, so that the captain could draw up the appropriate manifest.
He included in his letter full details of the Toscana and had already checked with Lloyds Shipping List, to make sure the Toscana was listed there. He told Schlinker he would be contacting him within the next fifteen days.
Another letter went to Alan Baker, so that he could inform the Yugoslav authorities of the name and details of the carrying vessel, so the export license could be granted. Shannon already knew what the manifest would have to read. It would say the vessel was proceeding with her cargo from the Yugoslav port of embarkation to Lomé, the capital of Togo.
He wrote a long letter to Mr. Stein as chairman of Tyrone Holdings, instructing him to prepare the papers for a board meeting of the company in his office four days hence, with two resolutions on the agenda. One would be for the company to buy Spinetti Maritimo and all its assets for £26,000 and the other would be to issue a further 26,000 bearer shares of £1 each to Mr. Keith Brown in exchange for a certified check for £26,000.
He dashed off a line to Marc Vlaminck, telling him the pick-up of the cargo in Ostend would have to be delayed until May 20, and another to Langarotti, putting back the Paris rendezvous to May 19.
Last he sent Simon Endean a letter in London, asking him to meet Shannon in Luxembourg four days hence and to have at his disposal funds amounting to £26,000 for the purchase of the ship to carry the whole operation to the target area.
The evening of May 13 was soft and cool, and several hundred miles along the same coastline Jean-Baptiste Langarotti was driving his truck westward from Hyères on the last stretch into Toulon. He had the window down and sniffed the smell of conifer and maquis coming off the hills to his right. Like Dupree in London, who was preparing that evening to fly to Marseilles, like Vlaminck in Ostend, who was putting the final touches to his fifth and last oil drum of guns, Langarotti was content with life.
He had in the back of the truck the last two outboard engines, bought for cash and equipped with underwater exhaust attachments for silent running. He was on his way back to Toulon to deliver them to the bonded warehouse. Already in the warehouse of Maritime Duphot were three inflatable black dinghies, each crated and unopened, and the third engine. Also there were four large crates of assorted clothing that had arrived over the past two weeks from London in his own name. He too would be ready on time.
It was a pity he had had to move from his hotel. A chance encounter with an old underworld friend as he left the doorway three days ago had forced him to make a quick excuse and move out the following morning. He was now in a new hotel and would have informed Shannon of this, except he did not know where Shannon was. It made no difference. In forty-eight hours, on May 15, he would keep his rendezvous with his chief at the Plaza-Surène hotel in Paris.
The meeting in Luxembourg on May 14 was surprisingly short. Shannon was not present. That morning he had taken delivery from Endean of the £26,000 purchase price for the ship. Just before the board meeting he had met Mr. Stein in his office and handed over to him the documents for the sale of the Spinetti Maritimo Shipping Company and its vessel, the Toscana, along with a certified check for £26,000, payable to Tyrone Holdings SA.
Thirty minutes later, Mr. Stein emerged from the board meeting and handed Shannon 26,000 ordinary bearer shares in Tyrone Holdings. He also showed him an envelope which contained the documents concerning the sale of the ship to Tyrone, and Tyrone Holdings’ check in the name of Signor Alessandro Spinetti. He sealed the envelope, which was addressed to Signor Giulio Ponti at his Genoa office, and gave it to Shannon. The last document he handed over was a board decision to appoint Herr Kurt Semmler managing director of Spinetti Maritimo Shipping Company.
Two days later, in the Italian lawyer’s office, the deal was finished. The check for the purchase of the Toscana had cleared, and Tyrone Holdings legally owned 100 percent of Spinetti Maritimo. In respect of this, Signor Ponti dispatched by registered mail the 100 ordinary shares in Spinetti Maritimo to the company office of Tyrone in Luxembourg. As a separate matter, Signor Ponti accepted a package from Shannon and locked it in his vault for safekeeping. He took two sample signatures from Shannon, in the name of Keith Brown, to be able later to certify the authenticity of any letter from Shannon regarding disposal of the package. Unknown to Ponti, the package contained the 26,994 controlling shares of Tyrone.
Carl Waldenberg received his captaincy and his six-month contract, and the Serbian engineer was kept on. One month’s salary was paid to each man in cash, and the remaining five months’ pay for each was placed in escrow in the hands of Signor Ponti.
The Italian deckhand was persuaded without difficulty to take his £500 severance pay, plus a bonus of £100, and left the crew. Semmler was installed as managing director.
Shannon had had a further £5000 transferred from Brugge to his credit in Genoa, and with this he had covered the two salaries of the crewmen who were remaining with the Toscana. Before he left Genoa on May 18, he handed the rest over to Semmler and gave him his briefing.
“How about the two replacements for the crew?”
“Waldenberg is seeing to it already,” Semmler told him. “He reckons this port is crawling with men available for recruitment. He knows the place inside out. He also knows what we need. Good hard men, the kind who ask no questions and do what they are told, particularly if they know there is a bonus at the end of it. Don’t worry. He’ll have a good pair before the end of the week.”
“Right. Fine. This is what I want. Get the Toscana ready for sea. A complete engine overhaul and servicing. Port dues paid up, papers in order with the new captain’s name. Manifest prepared for Toulon to pick up general cargo for Morocco. Get her fueled and supplied. Take on enough stores for the crew plus a further dozen men. Extra freshwater, beer, wine, cigarettes. When she’s ready, take her to Toulon. You have to be there by June first, at the latest. I’ll be there with Marc, Jean-Baptiste, and Janni. Contact me through the shipping agent, Agence Maritime Duphot. They’re in the port area. I’ll see you then. Good luck.”
seventeen
Jean-Baptiste Langarotti was alive, in part, at least, because of his ability to sense danger before it came looking for him. The first day he reported to the Paris hotel, he just sat quietly at the appointed hour in the residents’ lounge and read a magazine. He gave Shannon two hours, but the mercenary leader did not show up.
On the off chance, the Corsican inquired at the reception desk, for although Shannon had said nothing about