Scoundrel

as the six occupied counties of Northern Ireland. The death of a few Brits in that wild damp island could hardly count for much in il Hayaween’s wider world, and certainly not at a time when the Arab world had found a new champion to flaunt Islam’s banner in the face of the hated Americans.

And perhaps Halil sensed his interest was raising an unhealthy curiosity in me for he suddenly waved a dismissive hand. “Look at the boat,” he said off-handedly, “and tell me your opinion.” It seemed my suggestion of using a power-boat had not met his approval and so, under the silent gaze of Shafiq, Halil and his two bodyguards, I clambered about Corsaire. I did not have nearly enough time to make a proper survey, but I decided she was a handy craft, well made and well maintained. Her mainsail was furled inside her aluminium mast, while her vast genoa was stored below to keep it from the ravages of sunlight. Her hull was fiberglass and her deck was teak. A sturdy inflatable dinghy was folded away in an aft locker, together with an electric-powered pump to inflate it. She was a sensibly designed boat, and the only feature I disliked was her engine which, though capable enough at sixty horsepower, was fuelled by gasoline, but at least the motor banged into healthy life as soon as I connected the batteries and turned the ignition key.

I poked and pried through the accommodations below. Many of the French owner’s belongings were still aboard; thus in the aft cabin I discovered a sweater, a half-bottle of brandy hidden behind the pilot books, a copy of Playboy, two tins of sardines, a can of sugar, a sleeping bag, the top half of a bikini and a broken pair of sunglasses. I lifted the main cabin sole to find the bilge filled with flexible water tanks between which was the decaying body of a rat; clearly the source of the boat’s foul stench. Rat poison lay in white chunks on top of the shiny keel-bolts. I lifted the stinking remains of the rat and, to Shafiq’s shuddering disgust, carried it topside where I chucked it into the harbor.

“You like the boat?” Halil asked me.

“I’d prefer a diesel engine.”

“Why?”

“Gasoline fumes explode. Diesel is safer. But she’ll do.” The engine compartment was well ventilated and equipped with an automatic fire-extinguisher slaved to a gas-alarm so that, even in the unlikely event of a fuel-fire, Corsaire would probably survive. “She’s not a bad boat.” I spoke unfairly for she was better than that; she was an elegant, nicely built craft and, judging from her broad beam and deep cabin, she would probably prove a stable sea boat. She had clearly been equipped for long voyages because she had a single sideband radio mounted with the expensive instruments above her chart table.

“You can take her to America?” Halil asked me. He was sitting in the center cockpit, close to the big destroyer wheel.

“Sure,” I said cheerfully, “as long as she’s prepared properly.”

“Meaning what?” Halil was suspicious.

“For a start I need to get her out of the water and have her hull scrubbed down. She’ll want a couple of layers of good anti-fouling paint. Then she’s got to be equipped and stocked for a three-month voyage. I’m told there are two Irish lads going with me, so I’ll need food for them and—”

“Make a list,” Halil interrupted me.

“She needs a liferaft, charts…”

“Make a list,” he said impatiently.

“And there’s paperwork!” I warned him. “I’ll need a bill of sale, a Tunisian clearance permit, insurance papers—”

“Make a list!” he snapped at me again.

Shafiq laid a tremulous hand on my arm. “Paul. It might be wisest if you just made the list? And we shall send for you when the boat is ready.”

“Why can’t I prepare the boat?” I asked. “I’m sailing it!”

“We shall prepare it,” Halil answered, flat and unyielding. “Make a list, Mr. Shanahan.”

So that night I slept on board Corsaire and next morning made the list. It was a huge one, encompassing not just the victuals needed to carry three men across the Atlantic, but also the safety equipment and chandlery that would complete Corsaire’s inventory. Halil came at sunset and glanced through my handwritten pages. Most of the items were obvious: food, water, fuel, sleeping bags and navigational equipment; but some of the items made him frown. “Glassfiber mats? Resin? White paint?”

“That’s how I hide the gold. By making a false floor under the cabin sole.”

“Water tanks? Three-inch flexible piping?”

“We’ll be hiding the gold where the present water tanks are placed, so we’ll need new ones specially shaped for their areas. You don’t want a customs agent wondering why we’ve got tube tanks in a square locker. And I need the tubing to run the water aft.”

“Lead weights?”

“We’re altering the boat’s trim, so she’ll need rebalancing.” I had mixed the lies with the truth so easily, but then I was as practiced at that game as il Hayaween, maybe more so. We all have our secrets, which is why trust is such a rare coin.

“It will all be ready,” he promised carelessly.

I slept on board Corsaire one more night. Next morning I again offered to stay and help prepare the boat, but Halil was adamant that my presence in Monastir would arouse suspicion. It would be better, he insisted, if I waited at my home in Belgium. “I shall send you a message when the shipment is ready.”

“How long will that be?”

“It might take a month to collect the coins. Maybe more, maybe less.” He spoke carelessly, yet I remembered Brendan Flynn assuring me that the gold was already safely collected, and Michael Herlihy enjoining haste on me so that the deadly Stinger missiles could be deployed in Ireland as an Easter present for the Brits. Halil’s offhand words only added more dissonance to the cacophony of strange noises that surrounded the Stingers.

Yet the nervous world was already full of discordant sounds. In Iraq and Saudi Arabia the sabers rattled, and on the West Bank and in Jordan the Palestinians ululated for their coming victory beneath the crescent flags of Islam, while in Northern Ireland the drab-green helicopters clattered through the wet gray skies. Everywhere, it seemed, the world was preparing for war. I flew home to Nieuwpoort.

ONCE BACK IN BELGIUM I SLEPT OFF THE JETLAG OF TWO Atlantic flights, then told Hannah that I was closing down Nordsee Yacht Delivery, Services and Surveying.

“You’re doing what?” Hannah asked.

“I’m tired of working, Hannah. I need a rest. I’ve decided I’ll buy a sailboat and become a sea-gypsy.”

“This is Sophie’s doing, yes?” Hannah had never approved of Sophie and clearly believed my ex-lover had left me with addled brains. “But what of the Rotterdam surveys?” The Flemish mind could hardly encompass such irresponsibility. To abandon work for pleasure!

“I’ll do the trawlers.” They were two boats in Rotterdam that I had agreed to survey, and I needed such work while I was waiting for Halil’s summons, but once that summons arrived I wanted to be ready to leave instantly.

“And what about that Mr. Shafiq?” Hannah asked suspiciously.

“If you mean will I do his delivery job? Yes.”

“You’ll want me to send him an estimate? Put dates in the diary?” She waited with pencil poised, though really her efficiency was a mask for curiosity. Hannah was dying to know who Shafiq was, and why I had flown halfway round the world for him, but I could explain none of it to Hannah. That old world of IRA men and Libyans and midnight boat deliveries and gunfire in dry valleys was something she knew nothing about, and I intended to keep it that way. I also intended to make my fortune in these next few weeks, but that too must stay secret from her. I really was retiring, I really was going out of business, but I could not tell Hannah any of it.

Instead I gave her custody of the cat, closed down my bank accounts and began searching for my boat. I was looking for something very specific, a forty-four-foot boat which was registered in America but for sale in Europe, and to find her I faxed messages to yacht brokers in half a dozen countries and searched the small advertisements