“My God Marco, it’s absolutely beautiful!” she said, waving her hand around her.
“Thank you,” he said, genuinely pleased, “I like it very much. My retreat. Come take a glass with us.”
“You don’t live here all the time then?” she asked, taking the glass and settling into one of the chairs, near enough to rest a hand on Quayle’s knee.
“Unfortunately no. I have business interests in Barcelona. I come here to rest, to think, to live like one should live!”
Quayle gave a dry laugh. “And very occasionally when a friend asks him to…”
“Paa!” Marco dismissed the very idea with a regal wave of his hand, but looked at Quayle with a half smile. “This man is like a brother,” he said to Holly, explaining as best he could. “He wants my heart, I rip it out and give it to him!”
Quayle left just after dark, Marco escorting him to the gates because there were Rottweiler guard dogs loose in the grounds, their armed handlers having arrived the hour before. “A Mallorcan man. He owes me a debt of honour,” Marco said indicating the armed men. “She will be safe. Now go and do what you have to do.”
Quayle took the dark road back to Palma and caught the midnight flight to Lisbon.
*
She was a fifty thousand ton French-registered general freighter, bound on the midnight tide for Newcastle with a load of tinned sardines, wine and machinery parts. The dock worker said he could find the mate in a café nearby, and that he was a man one could deal with. Quayle thanked him , pulling his filthy reefer jacket about his shoulders, and went to find the man he would need to get him aboard the ship.
He was pleased. With airport surveillance systems and logging cameras, the classic way of entering Britain was becoming more difficult. But the smaller ports were still simple, and that would mean he could save the other full identities for another time.
He found the café by following the rock and roll music which flooded out onto the street. Pushing his way past a group at the door, he moved to the small bar where a woman was heating a small jug of milk under a steam jet. She ignored him for a while, until a flustered waitress took the milk, and then smiled at him.
“Expresso and cognac por favor.”
She took a pre-poured glass of the brandy from under the counter and handed it to him.
“The mate from the Mariella. He is here?” he asked in bad Spanish. She pushed his coffee toward him and pointed to a table directly behind him.
“That big Dutchman in the red jacket. It is he.”
Quayle thanked her and, carrying his coffee and brandy in one hand, approached the table where the man sat with two others.
Without being invited, he took a seat and looked across at the man. “I’m looking for a berth,” he said in French, pushing his papers across. Then he gulped the brandy in one mouthful, following it with a sip of the black coffee.
“Sorry,” the man replied. “We are full. Now if you...”
“One trip only, if you know what I mean,” Quayle said with exaggerated emphasis. “My wife mustn’t know I am back or poof... into the court I go.”
“Not my problem,” the Dutchman replied, turning to his friend to pick up the conversation. “Now fuck off, will you?”
“What’s it worth?” Quayle asked.
“What?”
“Don’t fuck about. What’s it worth? Sign me on for one trip, tonight My papers are in order. I want to get back and see my son. It’s worth money to me and no risk to you. How much?”
The mate looked at him. The other two had fallen silent.
“A thousand. American,” he answered softly.
“Three hundred now, and another three hundred at Newcastle,” Quayle countered. “There are other ships.”
The man looked at him, picked up the papers for a second, studied them and then nodded. “OK. Be aboard by ten.” And he held out his hand for the money. The Captain normally got half – but this was double the normal rate, and the Captain never needed to know.
Quayle paid and left immediately, walking back to the first restaurant and slinging his bag on the floor. Here he ordered his first meal in two days. He ate hungrily, the oily fish and potatoes satisfying, then eventually looked at his watch and moved back down to the docks and the rusty hulk of the Mariella. Once aboard, he was shown to a bunk in a smelly, cramped – but thankfully empty –crew cabin by a smiling young seaman, who gleefully pointed out the pin-ups stuck to the bottom of the upper bunk by the previous occupant. Just what I need, Quayle thought dryly.
*
Sir Gordon Tansey-Williams occupied a corner office suite on the third floor of Century House. The building appeared from the outside to be merely another pre-war edifice. There were no splendid columns or lobbies or atriums. That was for their new building, planned for the riverside location. This was a simple five floor brick and concrete building that looked as if it should house an ageing and suitably dusty insurance company. Callers to the front door were met by a polite but firm porter, who declined entrance to any unauthorised people. Behind him the real security began, with high tensile steel card access doors, cameras and surveillance systems. The walls and basement had been strengthened to blast standards and all the windows were made with one-way armoured glass, coated in an emulsion that prevented electronic eavesdropping by computer wizards. In the basement was a complicated electronic scrambler that increased the difficulties of listening in. Also in the basement
