“Make it snappy,” he said. “I don’t want to wait here for long. It’s too obvious where I’m heading for, with Ostend number plates.” He pointed down the road.

“The border is down there at one and a half kilometers exactly. I’ll give you twenty minutes while I pretend to change a tire. Then I get back to Dinant and we meet at the café.”

The Corsican nodded and let in the clutch. The drill is, if either the Belgian or French customs men have set up a flying barricade, the first vehicle stops and allows itself to be searched. Being clean, it then proceeds south to rejoin the main road, heads into Givet, turns north, and returns via the fixed customs post to Dinant. If either customs post is in operation, it cannot return back up the road within twenty minutes.

At kilometer one and a half, Shannon and Langarotti saw the Belgian post. At each side of the road a vertical steel upright had been placed, embedded in concrete. Beside the right-hand one was a small glass-and-wood booth, where the customs men could shelter while drivers passed their papers through the window. If it was occupied, there would be a red-and-white striped pole, supported by both uprights, blocking the road. There was none.

Langarotti cruised slowly past, while Shannon scanned the booth. Not a sign. The French side was trickier. For half a kilometer the road wound between the flanks of the hills, lost to sight from the Belgian posts. Then came the French border. No posts, no booth. Just a parking area on the left, where the French customs car always parks. There was nothing there. They had been gone five minutes. Shannon gestured to the Corsican to go around two more corners, but there was nothing in sight. A glimmer of light showed in the east over the trees.

“Turn her around,” snapped Shannon. “Allez.”

Langarotti pulled the truck into a tight turn, almost made it, backed up, and was off toward Belgium like a cork from a bottle of the very best champagne. From then on, time was precious. They shot past the French parking space, through the Belgian posts, and less than a mile later saw the bulk of Marc’s waiting truck. Langarotti flashed his lights, two short, one long, and Marc gunned his engine into life. A second later he was past them, rating through to France.

Jean-Baptiste turned around more leisurely and followed. If Marc drove fast, he could be through the danger area within four minutes, even heavily laden with a ton of cargo. If any customs men hove in sight during the vital five minutes, it was bad luck. Marc would try to bluff it out, say he had got lost, hope the oil barrels stood up to a thorough checking.

There were no officials there, even on the second run. South of the French parking space is a five-kilometer stretch with no turnings. Even here the French gendarmerie sometimes patrols, but there was nothing that morning. Langarotti caught up with the Belgian truck and followed it at six hundred feet. After three miles Marc turned off to the right at another parking area, and for three more miles wended his way through more back roads until he finally emerged onto a sizable main road. There was a signpost by the roadside. Shannon saw Marc Vlaminck wave his arm out of the window and point to it. The sign said GIVET in the direction from which they had come, and pointed the way they were going with the word REIMS. A muted cheer came wafting back from the truck in front.

They did the change-over on a hard concrete parking lot next to a truckers’ café just south of Soissons. The two trucks, open-doored, were backed up tight against each other, and Marc eased the five barrels from the Belgian truck to the French one. It would have taken Shannon and Langarotti together all their strength, the more so as the loaded truck was squashed on its springs, so the floors of the two vehicles were not at the same height. There was a 6-inch step-up to get into the empty truck. Marc managed it on his own, gripping each barrel at the top in huge hands and swinging it in arcs while balancing it on its lower rim.

Jean-Baptiste went to the café and returned with a breakfast of long, crisp baguette loaves, cheese, fruit, and coffee. Shannon had no knife, so they all used Marc’s. Langarotti would never use his knife for eating. He had his finer feelings. It would dishonor the knife to use it on orange peel.

Just after ten they set off again. The drill was different. The Belgian truck, being old and slow, was soon driven into a gravel pit and abandoned, the license plates and windshield sticker being taken off and thrown into a stream. The truck had originally been of French make anyway. After that, the three proceeded together. Langarotti drove. It was legally his truck. He was licensed. If stopped, he would say he was driving five barrels of lubricating oil south to his friend who owned a farm and three tractors outside Toulon. The other two were hitchhikers he had picked up.

They left the Al autoroute, took the peripheral road around Paris, and picked up the A6 south to Lyon, Avignon, Aix, and Toulon.

Just south of Paris they saw the sign to the right pointing to Orly Airport. Shannon climbed out, and they shook hands.

“You know what to do?” he asked.

They both nodded.

“Keep her under cover and safe till you get to Toulon.”

“Don’t worry, no one will find this little baby when I’ve hidden her,” said Langarotti.

“The Toscana is due in by June first at the latest, maybe before. I’ll be with you before then. You know the rendezvous? Then good luck.”

He hefted his bag and walked away as the truck headed south. At the nearby garage he used the telephone, called a cab from the airport, and was driven there an hour later. Paying cash, he bought his single ticket to London and was home in St. John’s Wood by sundown. Of his hundred days, he had used up forty-six.

Although he sent Endean a telegram on his arrival home, it was a Sunday, and twenty-four hours. went by before Endean called him at the flat. They agreed to meet on Tuesday morning.

It took him an hour to explain to Endean all that had happened since they last met. He also explained that he had used up all the money both in the cash sum he had retained in London and in the Belgian account.

“What’s the next stage?” asked Endean.

“I have to return to France within five days at the latest and supervise the loading of the first section of the cargo onto the Toscana,” said Shannon. "Everything about the shipment is legal except what’s in those oil barrels. The four separate crates of assorted uniforms and webbing should pass without any problem on board, even if examined by customs. The same goes for the nonmilitary stuff bought in Hamburg. Everything in that section is the sort of stuff a ship might normally take on as ship’s stores: distress flares, night glasses, and so on.

“The inflatable dinghies and outboard engines are for shipping to Morocco—at least, that’s what the manifest will say. Again, it’s perfectly legal. The five oil drums have to go aboard as ship’s stores. The quantity is rather excessive, but there shouldn’t be any problem despite that.”

“And it there is?” asked Endean. “If Toulon customs men examine those barrels too closely?”

“We’re busted,” said Shannon simply. “The ship impounded, unless the captain can show he hasn’t a clue what was going on. The exporter arrested. The operation wrecked.”

“Bloody expensively,” observed Endean.

“What do you expect? The guns have got to go on board somehow. The oil barrels are about the best possible way. There was always that risk involved.”

“You could have bought the submachine guns legally, through Spain,” said Endean.

“I could,” Shannon conceded, “but there would then have been a good chance the order would have been refused. The guns and the ammo together make a matching pair. That would have looked like a special order to outfit one company of men—in other words, a small operation. Madrid might have turned it down on those grounds, or examined the End User Certificate too thoroughly. I could have ordered the guns from Spain and bought the ammunition on the black. Then I would have had to smuggle the ammo on board, and it would have been a much bigger consignment. Either way, there has to be an element of smuggling, and hence of risk. So if it all goes wrong, it’ll be me and my men who go down, not you. You’re protected by a series of cut-outs.”