Year of the Golden Ape (4 page)

^{For several weeks Winter had known he was being watched. He made a few discreet enquiries, a little money changed hands. He learned that the men who shadowed him were Arabs, and since he had never done anything to arouse Arab hostility, he assumed someone was considering making him a proposition. The name of Ahmed Riad was mentioned.}

^{Riad, he had heard, had some link with Sheikh Gamal Tafak, although they had never been seen together in public. By this time Winter's opinion of the West was simple and brutal: it had lost the will to survive. When the sheikhs first cut off the oil the West depended on for its very existence, the European so-called leaders had panicked, scuttling round like headless chickens in a desperate attempt to scoop up all the oil they could find, paying any price the sheikhs cared to fix at their OAPEC (Organisation of Arab Petrol-Exporting Countries) meetings, receiving the sheikhs in their various capitals like Lords of Creation. Seeing the writing on the wall, Winter took his decision - he must make one great financial killing and get to hell out of it.}

^{One million dollars was the sum he had decided on - even with inflation it should last out for the rest of his life. And in the 1970's that kind of money could come from only one source - from the sheikhs themselves. So when Ahmed Riad met him in November, Winter was more than receptive to his approach - providing Riad would pay him one million dollars. From where Riad sat on the Tangier rooftop, Winter appeared to be anything but receptive after thirty minutes' discussion.}

^{'You are asking me to undertake an operation most men would find impossible, Riad,' Winter said coldly.}

^{Riad, wearing western clothes, was a hard-faced, plump little man with sweat patches under the armpits of his linen suit. He sat facing the sun, an arrangement Winter manoeuvred by the simple process of hauling out a certain chair when the Arab arrived. It was not only the heat which was making him sweat: he was uncomfortable in the presence of the Englishman.}

^{Earlier Winter had compelled him to explain what was needed by refusing to discuss terms until he knew exactly what he had to do. Riad had lied convincingly, assuring Winter he would be in complete command of the operation, that LeCat, who had already been approached, would be his subordinate. The plan was, he said, to bring pressure on Britain and America to stop more arms being sent to Israel. A British ship would be hi-jacked off the West Coast of America, would be taken to an American port, and there the demand that no more arms be sent to Israel would be made. The British crew of the seized ship would be hostages until the demand was met.}

^{It was a shrewd piece of power-play, Winter saw at once. The Americans would hesitate to take a strong line with the lives of another country's men apparently at stake - and if they tried to take a strong line the British government would intervene. 'There is, of course, no question of actually harming the hostages . . .' Riad went on. And this, too, made sense: certain Arab statesmen were trying to drive a wedge in between Britain and America, so the last thing they would wish to do would be to antagonise Britain.}

^{'Your idea - LeCat's idea- of how to hi-jack a ship is, of course, a joke,' Winter pointed out at one stage. He outlined his own idea which had occurred to him while he was listening. The flicker in Riad's eyes told Winter he had just scored a major point. This was the moment when he told the Arab, 'You are asking me to undertake an operation most men would find impossible ... so the fee must be reasonable,' Winter continued.}

^{'Reasonable?' Riad blinked in the sun. They had said this man was a hard negotiator.}

^{'From my point of view,' Winter said coldly. 'Otherwise it is not worth the risk. The fee for my controlling this operation will be one million dollars.'}

^{That is impossible!' Riad half-rose out of his chair.}

^{'Are you going?' Winter enquired bleakly.}

^{'It is quite impossible,' Riad repeated, sinking back slowly into his chair. 'We could not even discuss a sum like that...'}

^{'I agree. I'm not prepared to discuss it myself. Accept it - or forget the whole idea.'}

^{'You insult me . . .' Riad was perched at the edge of his chair as though on the verge of imminent departure. 'You are like all Westerners used to be - before they discovered they would die without oil, our oil...'}

^{'It's not your oil. Your ancestors just happened to pitch their tents in the right place. We had to find and dig it out for you.' Winter poured some more black coffee and then left the pot in the middle of the table. 'If you want more coffee, there's some in the pot...'}

^{They must need me badly he was thinking. Arab pride had lately become overweening; had, in fact, reached the stage where only Arab pride existed as far as the sheikhs were concerned. A dangerous combination - supreme economic power allied with fierce pride. Couldn't the West see this ?}

^{'We are prepared to pay you a fortune for your cooperation,' Riad said stiffly. 'We are prepared to pay you the sum of six hundred thousand dollars. Not one cent more.'}

^{'If you think my figure of one million is negotiable, forget it.' Winter's manner was icy and Riad, who had been staring into the unblinking brown eyes, looked away. To Riad, a shrewd man, it was beginning to get through: Winter meant what he said.}

^{'You cannot fix the figure just like that,' the Arab said with a show of spirit. 'We are employing you! It is up to us to fix the fee...'}

^{'That's right.'}

^{'I beg your pardon ?'}

^{'It's up to you to decide what you can afford.' The Englishman
paused as the Arab's eyes flickered at the implication that he might be short of funds. 'On the other hand, I don't believe you. To your masters one million is something they could lose on the way to the bank and not bother to go back for —'}

^{'It is a fortune ..'}

^{'To you, Riad ...'}

^{'You insult me again .. .'}

^{'Then get to hell off this rooftop and leave me alone,' Winter said viciously. 'I'm beginning to wonder whether I want to get mixed up in this thing - the risks are enormous.'}

^{The viciousness of the outburst startled Riad. He had the feeling that Winter himself was about to leave the rooftop, and Riad was horribly conscious of Gamal Tafak's last words to him.}

^{'We need that Englishman, Ahmed - an Englishman can operate in the West without suspicion. Our own spies watching oil movements are shadowed everywhere by Western security services. And it is a British ship which must be involved. You must persuade him - if you have to negotiate for a week and in the end offer him the full amount...'}

^{A week ? They had been sitting on this rooftop for little more than half an hour and already Riad was trembling inwardly with fury and fear - fury at the way he was being treated, fear at the thought he might lose the Englishman.}

^{'I can go up to seven hundred thousand,' he said.}

^{'You can indeed . . .' Winter stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer. 'And you can catch the first plane back to Jeddah and tell them you have failed.'}

^{'I control this negotiation ...'}

^{Winter glanced at him without speaking - to show how absurd he thought the idea was.}

^{'I must consult a certain committee...'}

^{Winter glanced at his watch, took out his wallet and put money on the table to pay for the coffee.}

^{'You cannot expect this to be decided in an hour ...'}

^{Winter stood up, buttoned his jacket.}

^{'A million. That was the top figure ...'}

^{The negotiation had lasted exactly thirty-five minutes.}

^{* * * *}

^{Arrangements were concluded about payment into a Beirut bank; Winter was quite certain that no bank in the western world would be safe, once this operation was concluded. He was provided with one hundred thousand dollars for immediate expenses, given a Paris number where he could contact LeCat. He flew to Paris the next day.}

^{On November 3 he spent an acrimonious morning with the ex-OAS terrorist in a Left Bank flat, tearing up all LeCat's plans and substituting his own. LeCat, a clever and resourceful man when working to a plan put before him, was not capable of originating the plan itself. 'You are playing at pirates,' Winter told him roughly when the Frenchman pushed his own plan for seizing a British cargo ship - plenty of them called at Victoria in Canada and sailed away again. 'This idea of yours of colliding with a vessel at sea is pure moonshine. In any case, the vessel we hi-jack must be an oil tanker. It has a compact crew, about thirty men, ample fuel supplies aboard, but above all it provides a platform we can land the helicopter on while the tanker is at sea ...'}

^{Winter checked over the terrorist team LeCat had assembled, which included a number of men he had known during the
Pêcheur's
smuggling operation days. He didn't like some of them, vicious thugs who would have done better to die in Algeria, but it was too late to start switching things around: zero hour for the hi-jack was January. 'Just make sure you keep them under control,' he told the Frenchman. 'No harm must come to the hostages.'}

^{'Riad has already told me that,' the Frenchman replied with his eyes half-closed.}

^{Winter left Paris the following day and flew to London. First he checked the transfer of twenty-five thousand dollars from a Paris bank to a City bank which he had arranged before leaving Paris. The money had arrived, he collected a cheque book, and armed with this he took a taxi to Mount Street where the Mayfair estate agents live. He found the property he was looking for in an agent's window, a glossy photograph advertised as 'Fine Old Manor House, East Anglia. Six Months' Lease'. After a brief discussion with the agent, he hired a car and drove to East Anglia where he put up for the night at King's Lynn.}

^{Next day the local sub-agent showed him over the property. As
he had hoped, it was exactly what he wanted. The house itself, Cosgrove Manor, was surrounded with parkland, and the twenty acres of isolated grounds concealed it completely from the road. He concluded the deal at once, explaining that his family would be coming over from Australia in the next few weeks. The six months' rent he paid in advance with a cheque drawn on the London bank in the name of George Bingham.}

^{The following morning he drove back to London, reserved a room at Brown's Hotel in Albemarle Street, again in the name of George Bingham, and then took a cab to the world-famous shipping organisation, Lloyd's of London. Wearing a tweed suit and rimless glasses, he posed as a writer researching a book on the oil crisis.}

^{After making certain enquiries about shipping movements, he consulted the
Shipping Register,
a remarkable publication produced daily which records the present positions of all vessels at sea. It took him several hours to check on ships moving up and down the West Coast of America, but when he left the building he was fairly sure he had found his target ship. The following day he flew by Polar Route direct to Los Angeles, and there he caught another plane on to San Francisco.}

^{Joseph Walgren, the fifty-year old ex-accountant who had helped LeCat with the hi-jack of the armoured truck in Illinois eight months before, an incident Winter knew nothing about, was waiting for him. In response to a cable from LeCat, the American met Winter off the plane at the International airport. There was an immediate disagreement over the modest-priced hotel Walgren suggested for the Englishman.}

^{'It's too cheap,' Winter said firmly as the American drove him into San Francisco. 'If you stay at a very expensive place the police in any country assume you are respectable. I'll take a room at the Huntingdon on California Street.. .'}

^{For three days he ran Walgren, an energetic character, into the ground. Constantly on the move, Winter drove round the city familiarising himself with its layout, driving as far out as Oleum, the oil terminal, scouring Marin County north of the city and then, when Walgren thought he had finished, the Englishman hired a launch and explored the coastline of the Bay. Before he left the city - and a somewhat limp Walgren - Winter gave him certain instructions which included involving the American in a brief trip to Mexico. He also provided him with a large sum of money. On the fourth day Winter left for Canada.}

^{He paid a brief visit to the trawler
Pêcheur,
still moored at a dock in the port of Victoria. Brief as it was, he took the time to make sure the Canadian Port Authority were happy about the vessel's continued presence, and he found that LeCat had handled the problem satisfactorily. Using the Frenchman as an agent, Arab money had not only purchased the
Pêcheur
from the French Syndicate of Marseilles businessmen - it had also formed the World Council of Marine Biological Research with headquarters on the rue St Honore in Paris, a body nominally headed by a Frenchman, Bernard Oswald.}