Deaken frowned between the two men.
“Check it, tonight if you can” ordered Azziz.
As Grearson moved to the telephone bank Azziz said to Deaken, “What’s your wife like?”
“What?”
“Describe her.”
Inexplicably Deaken felt embarrassed. “Blonde,” he said. “She wears it short. Brown eyes. Doesn’t use a lot of makeup-doesn’t have to. Quite short, about five foot five. Slim, too.”
From the table from which the lawyer had taken the telex sheet, the Arab handed Deaken a photograph. Deaken’s eyes flooded when he saw her and he blinked. She was holding herself stiffly upright, legs tightly together, shoulders squared. There was a school photograph of Karen like that, back in the apartment. Except that there she was smiling.
“You knew,” said Deaken, looking up to Azziz.
“Putting her in the picture doesn’t mean she’s a victim… it could have been done to support your story.”
“Does she look like an accomplice?” said Deaken. “Look at it! Does she?”
Azziz took the photograph back. “No,” he admitted after a pause.
“I want her back safely,” said Deaken. “Just like you want your son back.”
Azziz smiled, for the first time. “If all it means is stopping a small arms shipment, it’ll be easy.”
At 2 A.M. the Bellicose cleared the Strait of Gibraltar. Edmunson was the officer of the watch. He ordered the freighter’s course twenty degrees to port and entered the reading in the rough log. He was conscious of the ship heaving in the more exposed North Atlantic, but knew from the forecast that the swell was moderate. If the weather held, it was going to be an easy, uneventful voyage.
A thousand miles away, from the yacht in Monte Carlo harbour, Grearson put down the telephone from his fifth call.
“France,” he announced to the waiting men.
6
They had only bothered with sandwiches and coffee, served and then immediately removed by hovering stewards. In the beginning Azziz and Grearson had talked across him but now they included him in the conversation and listened to his opinions.
“Marseilles is convenient,” said the Arab.
“Paris thinks the ship has left already; we shan’t know until the port office opens in the morning,” said Grearson.
“1 thought you said you couldn’t ship direct,” said Deaken.
Grearson hesitated. “The End-User certificate was arranged through Portugal,” he said.
“The what?”
“End-User certificate,” repeated the other lawyer. “It’s the official documentation, stipulating the destination of any shipment for the benefit of the authorities.”
“How does it work for this consignment?”
“They’ve been sold to a Portuguese arms company, with the Azores given as the port of unloading. During the voyage they will be resold to one of our other companies and the ship advised at sea of a different destination.”
“And not more than one or two Portuguese officials know of the transaction?” anticipated Deaken.
“It’s a system that works,” said Azziz. He looked attentively at Deaken as if expecting criticism. The South African said nothing.
“I’m still not happy about excluding the authorities from the kidnap,” said Grearson, picking up the Polaroid photograph which lay between them and staring down at it.
“I didn’t consider there was a choice,” said Deaken.
“Nor I,” said Azziz.
“But I think we could do more,” said Deaken, pleased as first one, then a jumble of ideas occurred to him. He reached forward for the picture. “Cornflowers and daisies,” he said, indicating the vases of flowers visible on the table and sideboard.
“So what?” said Azziz.
“Underberg’s appointment with me was for eleven. He was early, by fifteen minutes. The call came from Karen at about eleven thirty… What time was the boy snatched?”
“About eleven thirty,” said Azziz.
Deaken nodded. “ ‘Just after you left,’ “ he recited. “That’s what Karen said, when she called. By the time they grabbed your son, they’d already had Karen for over an hour.”
Grearson shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“The distance,” said Deaken. “They had to put the boy and Karen together. And Geneva is…” He paused, making a quick calculation. “… Over a hundred and fifty miles from Zurich.” He turned to Azziz. “I want a map. And compasses,” he said.
The look of annoyance from Azziz, a man who normally gave orders and never took them, was momentary. He gave the instruction to a steward.
Deaken smiled, happy with the way his mind was working at last-it had been a long time. To Grearson he said, “What’s the first thing the authorities would do, told of a kidnap like this?”
The American lawyer didn’t reply immediately. Then he said, “Seal the borders.”
“Right,” said Deaken.
The steward returned with maps and compasses from the navigation room and handed them to Azziz. The Arab passed them immediately to Deaken.
“They wouldn’t have taken any chances with the speed limit,” guessed Deaken. “That’s thirty-seven miles in the cities, sixty-two outside…” Deaken found the map and squinted over it. “Basel,” he said, looking up.
“Why?” demanded Grearson.
“A good road to the nearest crossing,” said Deaken. “Not more than five or six towns where they would have to slow. Let’s say they averaged fifty miles per hour. Zurich is fifty-three miles from Basel
…” To Azziz he said, “How long were the bodyguards unconscious?”
“They estimate an hour.”
“Which fits. Just time for them to get across the border.”
“There seems to be a lot of supposition,” protested Grearson.
“Not too much,” insisted Deaken, poring over his maps. “If Tewfik was the important one, then Karen would have been taken north. There’s a motorway from Geneva to Lausanne and then again from Bern to Zurich. It would have been an extended route, but worth it for the speed. What time was the photograph delivered at the port office?”
“Six,” said Grearson at once. “I checked. It was personally delivered, not part of the normal postal run…” Seeing the expectancy on Deaken’s face, Grearson said, “No, they couldn’t remember what the messenger looked like; there’s always a lot of activity in the office at that time of the evening. And there are frequently personal deliveries for Mr Azziz.”
Deaken went back to his maps, of northern France now. “I was specifically told what flight to catch from Geneva. The reservation had already been made when Underberg gave me the ticket,” he said. “You had to be expecting me. So you had to have the photograph already. Too long by road… too uncertain. So it must have been flown down…” He shook his head. “I don’t think they’d have risked crossing back into Switzerland. If the alarm had been raised, the photograph would have been disastrous for them…” He stabbed the compass point into the map.
“Strasbourg!” he said. “No borders to cross and a good airport… Why don’t we see if there was a flight from Strasbourg to Nice, say around five o’clock?”
Azziz nodded at once and Grearson went back to the telephone. It took only nine minutes. “KLM 382,” he said. “From Strasbourg at 1400. Landed Nice at 1655, on schedule.”
