He nodded and smiled – and, taking a cheap seaman’s cap from his bag, he pushed it into his pocket and left the room.
After he was gone, Pope pushed a chair under the door knob and climbed onto the nearest bed, his gun out and in his hand, his body shielding the other bed.
“Rest,” he said. “We’ll get some food sent up later.”
“Here?” she asked, indicating the second bed. “I wanted a bath and though I might use the other…”
Pope shook his head. “Use this bath in here. Then that bed. No lights on and stay away from the window.”
His tone of voice said the matter wasn’t up for discussion, so Holly went into the cramped old fashioned bathroom, turned on the tap and stood watching the lukewarm brown water trickle down onto the stained enamel.
Quayle found the warehouse, much where he expected it to be, behind the chandler’s shop in Piraeus. He was pleased, because the description he’d been given six years ago by a man now dead matched perfectly the man standing in front of him: Greek, fat and unshaven, his jowls wobbling under his porcine little eyes. His open-necked shirt had sweat stains under the arms and, as Quayle leant over the desk, he could smell his odour.
“Constantine?”
The Greek looked up and saw a big man in a scruffy jacket and a sailor’s cap, squeezing something in his hand. The accent was French, guttural and harsh, the sound of the Marseilles docks. He looked at the hand and noticed the ugly purple scar.
“Who are you?” he asked, leaning back importantly on his seat. Behind him, a younger man leant indolently on a packing case, his hair brushed back in a parody of James Dean.
“That is not important. I need blank passports. I am told that you are a man who can help when one has such a need.”
“Oh, who told you that?”
“A man,” Quayle answered cagily.
Constantine pondered the risks for a moment – but his greed got the better of him. “I might know someone who could help you. But these things cost money. You have money?”
“How much?”
“Hundred thousand drachma each.”
“Merde! I will give you that for six.”
“If you are short of money, used are cheaper. I have a friend who can make a few changes, take a photo…”
“Non. New ones.”
“Six for four hundred thousand. Used,” said Constantine. “I don’t have that many new ones. My last offer. Take it or leave it.”
Quayle instinctively knew he was telling the truth.
“I will pay that if you can deliver now. European passports!”
Constantine raised an eyebrow. Behind him, the sharp looking youth eased onto his feet.
“Take a seat,” he said, standing ponderously and wiping the sweat from his face. “I will get your merchandise.” A few minutes later, he was back with a brown paper bag. “The money,” he said.
“Let me see,” Quayle answered.
Constantine held open the bag and took out the contents out. Quayle was relieved to see four British and two EEC passports.
Constantine shrugged. That was when Quayle knew it was only just starting. This had been all to easy. The old sell it, then get it back up the street trick. Stuff it, he thought. Lets get it over with.
Throwing Constantine a handful of notes, he scooped up the passports and jammed them into the bag.
“Constantine. I am going to leave now. If your little pretty boy follows me or tries it on, I will break his fingers. Then I will come back and break yours.” He smiled charmingly, the hard tense French sailor gone, and a more worldly and considerably more threatening character emerging.
“Who are you?”
“Never mind. But I owe you one. You sold out a friend of mine once. I don’t forget that kind of thing.”
With the bag in his left hand, he leant forward, took the Greek’s hand in his right and began to apply pressure. The cords of muscle in his hands and arms rose up in hard ridges.
Constantine gave a girlish shriek and, as the smooth hard man leapt across the floor to his boss’s aid, Quayle let go the fat hand, dropped low and caught the foot flying for his groin, pulling it up and twisting. As the man flailed to fight back, Quayle heard his face hit the hard floor with a satisfying thud and put the boot in twice, hard, into his kidneys.
Still holding the bag, Quayle looked at Constantine. “Get the message?”
The Greek nodded quickly, his jowls wobbling.
Quayle walked quickly from the warehouse and, once in the alley, reversed the jacket he was wearing and pulled the plastic brim off the cap. Now he was wearing a beret and the dark blue sailor’s jacket was a muddy fawn. Hailing a taxi, he told the driver to drop him at Parliament Square. There he would disappear into the thousands of tourists and make his way to the bank where he kept his Athens funds. Like most intelligence men who had spent time in the field, he had appropriated funds over the years – the slush payments, the bribe money – and secreted it in accounts dotted around the world. One never knew when one would need it. He took twenty thousand pounds and another two passports from the safe deposit box and, ten minutes later, was in a call box phoning a contact from long ago. The man told him that he would have the ammunition and be in the café opposite the hotel in two hours. Quayle then crossed the street into a large store and, now in just shirt sleeves, began buying a few things for the team: shaving gear, clothing, toiletries, several hats of different sizes, sun glasses and two or three overnight bags to hold it all. His last stop was the Olympic Airlines office where he bought three tickets on the afternoon flight to Milan.
When he arrived back at the hotel, he was in a creamy silk shirt and sporting a Panama hat.
