The Deceiver

confirmed, and it would have to stay that way for a while longer.

“What the hell can they mean, the twenty-fourth?” raged McCready for the tenth time. “That’s in three days! Three bloody days!”

“Mahoney’s still in place?” asked Rowse. He had just driven up to London at McCready’s insistence, and they were meeting at one of the Firm’s safe houses, an apartment in Chelsea. It was still not safe to bring Rowse to Century House—officially, he was persona non grata there.

“Yes, still propping up the bar at the Apollonia, still sur­rounded by his team, still waiting for a word from al- Mansour, still surrounded by my watchers.”

McCready had already worked out that there were only two choices. Either the Libyans were lying about the twenty-fourth—another test for Rowse, to see if the police would raid the Neuberg warehouse. In which case al- Mansour would have time to divert his ship somewhere else. Or else he, McCready, had been duped—Mahoney and his team were decoys and probably did not know it themselves.

Of one thing he was certain: No ship could get from Cyprus to Bremerhaven via Tripoli or Sirte in three days. While Rowse was motoring to London, McCready had consulted his friend at Dibben Place, Colchester, home of Lloyds Shipping Intelligence. The man was adamant. First, it would take one day to sail from, say, Paphos to Tripoli or Sirte. Allow another day for loading, more likely a night. Two days to Gibraltar, and four or five more to northern Germany. Seven days minimum, more likely eight.

So either it was a test for Rowse, or the arms ship was already at sea. According to the man from Lloyds, to dock at Bremerhaven on the twenty-fourth, it would now be some­where west of Lisbon, heading north to clear Finisterre.

Checks were being made by Lloyds as to the names of ships expected in Bremerhaven on the twenty-fourth with a Mediterranean port of departure. The phone rang. It was the Lloyds expert on a patch-through to the Chelsea safe house.

“There aren’t any,” he said. “Nothing from the Mediter­ranean is expected on the twenty-fourth. You must have been misinformed.”

With a vengeance, thought McCready. In Hakim al-Mansour, he had come up against a master of the game.

He turned to Rowse.

“Apart from Mahoney and his crew, was there anyone in that hotel who even smelted of IRA?”

Rowse shook his head.

“I’m afraid it’s back to the photograph albums,” said McCready. “Go through them over and over again. If there’s any face—anything at all—that you spotted in your time in Tripoli, Malta, or Cyprus, let me know. I’ll leave you with them. I have some errands to run.”

McCready did not even consult Century House about asking for American help. Time was too short to go through chan­nels. He went to see the CIA Station Head in Grosvenor Square, Bill Carver.

“Well, Sam, I don’t know. Diverting a satellite isn’t that easy. Can’t you use a Nimrod?”

Royal Air Force Nimrods can take high-definition pictures of ships at sea, but they tend to fly so low that they are seen themselves. Without added altitude, they have to make many passes to cover a large area of ocean.

McCready considered long and hard. If he knew the con­signment had gotten through and was firmly in the hands of the IRA, he would have wasted no time alerting the CIA to the threat to their ambassador in London, as reported by the Libyan doctor in Qaddafi’s tent.

But for weeks his concern had been just to stop the arms shipment from getting through to the final destination. Now, needing CIA help, he produced his bombshell—he told Carver of the threat.

Carver came out of his chair as if jet-propelled. “Jesus H. Christ, Sam!” he exploded. Both men knew that apart from the catastrophe of a U.S. ambassador being slaughtered on British soil, Charles and Carol Price had proved the most popular American emissaries in decades. Mrs. Thatcher would not easily forgive an organization that allowed anything to happen to Charlie Price.

“You’ll get your fucking satellite,” said Carver. “But next time you damned well better tell me earlier than this.”

It was almost midnight before Rowse went wearily back to Album One, the old days. He was sitting with a photo expert brought over from Century House. A projector and screen had been installed so that photographs could be thrown onto the screen and alterations made to the faces.

Just before one o’clock, Rowse paused.

“This one,” he said. “Can you put it on the screen?”

The face filled almost one wall.

“Don’t be daft,” said McCready. “He’s been out of it for years. A has-been, over the hill.”

The face stared back, tired eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, iron-gray hair over the creased brow.

“Lose the glasses,” Rowse said to the photo expert. “Give him brown contact lenses.”

The technician made adjustments. The glasses vanished, and the eyes went from blue to brown.

“How old is this photo?”

“About ten years,” said the technician.

“Age him ten years. Thin the hair, more lines, dewlaps under the chin.”

The technician did as he was told. The man looked about seventy now.

“Turn the hair jet black. Hair dye.”

The thin gray hair turned deep black. Rowse whistled.

“Sitting alone in the corner of the terrace,” he said, “at the Apollonia. Talking to no one, keeping himself to himself.”

“Stephen Johnson was Chief of Staff of the IRA—the old IRA—twenty years ago,” said McCready. “Quit the whole organization ten years ago, after a blazing row with the new generation over policy. He’s now sixty-five. Sells agricultural machinery in County Clare, for heaven’s sake.”

Rowse grinned. “Used to be an ace, had a row, quit in disgust, known to be out in the cold, untouchable by those inside the Establishment—remind you of anyone you know?”

“Sometimes, young Master Rowse, you can even be half­way smart,” admitted McCready.

He called up a friend in the Irish police, the Garda Siochana. Officially, contacts between the Irish Garda and their British counterparts in the fight against terrorism are sup­posed to be formal but at arm’s length. In fact, between professionals, those contacts are often warmer and closer than some of the more hardline politicians would wish.

This time it was a man in the Irish Special Branch, awak­ened at his home in Ranelagh, who came up trumps around the breakfast hour.

“He’s on holiday,” said McCready. “According to the local Garda, he’s taken up golf and departs occasionally for a golfing holiday, usually in Spain.”

“Southern Spain?”

“Possibly. Why?”

“Remember the Gibraltar affair?”

They both remembered it all too well. Three IRA killers, planning to plant a huge bomb in Gibraltar, had been “taken out” by an SAS team—prematurely but permanently. The terrorists had arrived on the Rock as tourists from the Costa del Sol and the Spanish police and counterintelligence force had been extremely helpful.

“There was always rumored to be a fourth in the party, onewho stayed in Spain,” recalled Rowse. “And the Marbellaarea is stiff with golf courses.”

“The bugger,” breathed McCready. “The old bugger. He’s gone active again.”

In the middle of the morning, McCready took a call from Bill Carver, and they went over to the American Embassy. Carver received them in the main hall, signed them in, and took them to his office in the basement, where he too had a room all set up for viewing photographs.

The satellite had done its job well, rolling gently high in space over the eastern Atlantic, pointing its Long Tom