“I still don’t like it,” snapped Endean.

“What’s the matter?” Shannon mocked. “Losing your nerve?”

“No,”

“So cool it. All you have to lose is a bit of money.”

Endean was on the verge of telling Shannon just how much he and his employer stood to lose, but thought better of it. Logic dictated that if the mercenary was going to face prison, he would be as careful as possible.

They talked finance for another hour. Shannon explained that the payment to Johann Schlinker in full, and half to Alan Baker, along with the mercenaries’ second months’ salary, the £5000 he had transferred to Genoa to fit out the Toscana, and his own traveling, had emptied the Brugge account.

“Also,” he added, “I want the second half of my salary.”

“Why now?” asked Endean.

“Because the risks of arrest start next Monday, and I shall not be returning to London after that. If the ship is loaded without fuss, she sails for Brindisi while I arrange the pick-up of the Yugoslav arms. After that, Valencia and the Spanish ammunition. Then we head for the target. If I’m ahead of schedule, I’d prefer to kill the extra time on the high seas rather than wait in a port. From the moment that ship has hardware on board, I want her in port as little as possible.”

Endean digested the argument. “I’ll put it to my associates,” he said.

“I want the stuff in my Swiss account before the weekend,” countered Shannon, “and the rest of the agreed budget transferred to Brugge.”

They worked out that, with Shannon’s salary paid in full, there would be £20,000 of the original money left in Switzerland. Shannon explained why he needed it all.

“From now on I need a wad of big-denomination travelers’ checks in United States dollars on me all the time. If anything goes wrong from now, it can only be of a nature where a fat bribe on the spot might sort out the problem. I want to tidy up all the remaining traces, so that, if we all get the chop, there are no clues left. Also, I may need to make cash bonuses on the spot to the ship’s crewmen to persuade them to go ahead when they find out what the job really is, as they must when we are at sea. With the last half-payment for the Yugoslav arms still to come, I could need up to twenty thousand.”

Endean agreed to report all this to “his associates” and let Shannon know.

The following day he rang back to say that both transfers of the money had been authorized and the letter instructing the Swiss bank had been sent.

Shannon reserved his ticket from London to Brussels for the following Friday, and a Saturday morning flight from Brussels to Paris to Marseilles.

He spent that night with Julie, and Thursday as well, and Thursday night. Then he packed his bags, mailed the flat keys with an explanatory letter to the agents, and left. Julie drove him to the airport in her red MGB.

“When are you coming back?” she asked him as they stood outside the “Departing Passengers Only” entrance to the customs area of Number Two Building.

“I won’t be coming back,” he said and gave her a kiss.

“Then let me come with you.”

“No.”

“You will come back. I haven’t asked where you are going, but I know it has to be dangerous. It’s not just business, not ordinary business. But you will come back. You must.”

“I won’t be coming back,” he said quietly. “Go find someone else, Julie.”

She began to sniffle. “I don’t want anybody else. I love you. You don’t love me. That’s why you’re saying you won’t see me again. You’ve got another woman, that’s what it is. You’re going to see another woman—”

“There’s no other woman,” he said, stroking her hair. An airport policeman looked discreetly away. Tears in the departure lounge are not uncommon anywhere. There would be, Shannon knew, no other woman in his arms. Just a gun, the cool, comforting caress of the blued steel against his chest in the night. She was still crying when he kissed her on the forehead and. walked through into Passport Control.

Thirty minutes later the Sabena jet made its last turn over South London and headed for its home in Brussels. Below the starboard wing, the country of Kent was spread out in the sunshine. Weatherwise, it had been a beautiful month of May. From the portholes one could see the acres of blossom where the apple, pear, and cherry orchards covered the land in pink and white.

Along the lanes that trickle through the heart of the Weald, the Maythorn would be out, the horse-chestnut trees glowing with green and white, the pigeons clattering among the oaks. He knew the country well from the time years ago when he had been stationed at Chatham and had bought an old motorcycle to explore the ancient country pubs between Lamberhurst and Smarden. Good country, good country to settle down in, if you were the settling type.

Ten minutes later, one of the passengers farther back summoned the stewardess to complain that someone up front was whistling a monotonous little tune.

It took Cat Shannon two hours on Friday afternoon to withdraw the money transferred from Switzerland and close his account. He took two certified bank checks, each for £ 5000, which could be converted into a bank account somewhere else, and from that into more travelers’ checks; and the other £10,000 in fifty $500 checks that needed only countersignature to be used as cash.

He spent that night in Brussels and flew the next morning to Paris and Marseilles.

A taxi from the airport brought him to the small hotel in the outskirts where Langarotti had once lived under the name of Lavallon, and where Janni Dupree, still following orders, was in residence. He was out at the time, so Shannon waited until he returned that evening, and together they drove, in a hired car Shannon had engaged, to Toulon. It was the end of Day Fifty-two, and the sprawling French naval port was bathed in warm sunshine.

On Sunday the shipping agent’s office was not open, but it did not matter. The rendezvous spot was the pavement in front of it, and here Shannon and Dupree met Marc Vlaminck and Langarotti on the dot of nine o’clock. It was the first time they had been together for weeks, and only Semmler was missing. He should be a hundred miles or so along the coast, steaming offshore in the Toscana toward Toulon.

At Shannon’s suggestion, Langarotti telephoned the harbormaster’s office from a nearby café and ascertained that the Toscana’s agents in Genoa had cabled that she was due in on Monday morning and that her berth was reserved.

There was nothing more to do that day, so they went in Shannon’s car along the coast road toward Marseilles and spent the day at the cobbled fishing port of Sanary. Despite the heat and the holiday atmosphere of the picturesque little town, Shannon could not relax. Only Dupree bought himself a pair of swimming trunks and dived off the end of the jetty of the yacht harbor. He said later the water was still damn cold. It would warm up later, through June and July, when the tourists began to pour south from Paris. By then they would all be preparing to strike at another harbor town, not much larger and many miles away.

Shannon sat for most of the day with the Belgian and Corsican on the terrace of Charley’s bar, the Pot d’Etain, soaking up the sunshine and thinking of the next morning. The Yugoslav or the Spanish shipment might not turn up, or might be late, or might be blocked for some as yet unknown bureaucratic reason, but there would be no reason for them to be arrested in Yugoslavia or Spain. They might be held for a few days while the boat was searched, but that would be all. The following morning was different. If anyone insisted on peering deep into those oil barrels, there would be months, maybe years, spent sweating in Les Baumettes, the great forbidding fortress prison he had passed on Saturday as he drove from Marseilles to Toulon.

The waiting was always the worst, he reflected as he settled the bill and called his three colleagues to the car.