Алистер Маклин: Dead Halt

Richard beckoned her toward him as he took a closer look at the crate. It was roughly four feet long and two feet wide but bore no markings of origin on any of the sides.

“Maybe it’s treasure,” Sally said behind him.

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered.

Andrew and Tony returned a minute later with a piece of driftwood they had found in a pool by the rocks. Andrew managed to wedge it under the lid and gritted his teeth as he slowly forced the lid up enough for Richard and Tony to get their fingers underneath it. He continued to lever the lid with the piece of driftwood while Richard and Andrew pulled at it with their hands. Richard gave a whoop of delight when it finally came loose under their sustained pressure. A sheet of black tarpaulin had been secured around the contents of the crate. Andrew took out his penknife and sank the blade into the tarpaulin. He sliced it open then pulled it apart. Inside was a row of wooden boxes, each roughly forty inches in length, packed between layers of polystyrene. He removed one of the boxes, noticing that there was another one underneath it. He placed the box on the sand and, using his penknife, carefully loosened the nails at one end of the box. Then, hooking his fingers under the lid, he pulled it open.

“What is it?” Sally asked, struggling to see over their shoulders.

“It’s a rifle,” Richard said, looking up slowly at Andrew. “Do you think all the boxes contain rifles?”

“Dunno,” Andrew replied, then removed another box and used his penknife to open it. It, too, contained a rifle which, like the first, was wrapped in a transparent sheet of plastic.

“What are we going to do?” Tony asked, glancing nervously at the rifles.

“We’ve got to call the cops,” Richard said. “You three wait here. I’ll ride to the nearest pay phone and call them. OK?”

Andrew nodded.

“Put the boxes back inside the crate,” Richard told the others. “And guard it with your lives.”

“You can count on it,” Andrew replied.

Richard swallowed nervously then turned and ran back up the beach to where he had left his bicycle.

“This is it, mate,” the driver said, bringing the taxi to a stop. “The Crescent Hotel.”

C.W. Whitlock peered through the rain-streaked window at the building. The paint was peeling off the whitewashed walls and the neon sign above the revolving door proclaimed the hotel’s name in garish colors.

“You sure you got the right place?” the driver asked, eyeing Whitlock’s expensive Armani suit.

“Quite sure,” Whitlock replied with a quick smile as he paid the fare.

The driver shrugged. Whitlock picked up his attaché case and climbed out into the rain, slamming the door behind him and hurrying across to the hotel entrance. Once inside the foyer he brushed the raindrops off his jacket and crossed to the reception desk. It was deserted. A middle-aged woman sat at the switchboard in the back office. She gave him a nod of acknowledgment and went back to her telephone conversation.

Whitlock placed his attaché case on the threadbare carpet at his feet and drummed his fingers impatiently on the wooden counter. He was a forty-four-year-old Kenyan with a light complexion and sharp features which were tempered by the neatly trimmed moustache he had worn since his early twenties. He had been educated in England and after graduating from Oxford had returned to Kenya where he had served in the army and the Intelligence Corps before joining UNACO as one of its first recruits.

UNACO, which had its headquarters at the United Nations Building in New York, had a total of two hundred and nine permanent staff worldwide, thirty of whom were crack field operatives who had been siphoned off from the military, police and intelligence services around the world. Each of the ten teams was designated by the prefix “Strike Force” and its intensive training included unarmed combat and the use of all known firearms. Whitlock had been the team leader of Strike Force Three since its inception but when the UNACO Director, Malcolm Philpott, had recently been forced into early retirement due to ill-health, his deputy, Sergei Kolchinsky, had been appointed the new Director, and Whitlock had accepted the post vacated by Kolchinsky. Whitlock had only taken the position to appease his wife, Carmen, who, fearing for his safety, had wanted him out of the field. It had helped to bridge the rift that had once threatened to break up their marriage. Deep down he still longed to return to the field, but he was far too professional to let his feelings interfere with his work …

“Can I help you?” the woman finally called out from the switchboard, her hand over the mouthpiece. “Mr. Swain’s room number please.”

She consulted a clipboard in front of her. “Twenty-six,” she announced, then went back to her telephone conversation.

Whitlock exhaled deeply and rapped loudly on the counter to catch her attention again. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me which floor that’s on?”

“Second,” came the nonchalant reply.

Whitlock eyed the old lift with some trepidation and decided to use the stairs instead. He found the room and knocked sharply on the door, which opened immediately.

“Hello, C.W. Come on in,” the man said, beckoning Whitlock into the room.

Dave Swain was the team leader of Strike Force Seven. A tall, burly man in his late thirties, he was a former presidential bodyguard who had spent ten years with the FBI’s Secret Service before Philpott had recruited him. The other two members of the team were Alain Mosser, a tough-talking Frenchman, also in his late thirties, who had spent several years with the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire before joining UNACO two years ago, and thirty-one-year-old Jason Geddis, UNACO’s latest recruit, who had served with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for eight years. He had only been with UNACO for four months. All three men were dressed in scruffy jeans and sweatshirts.

“When did you get in to London?” Swain asked.

“About an hour ago,” Whitlock replied. “I checked into my hotel then came straight over here.”

“Well, thanks for bringing the rain with you, C.W.,” Geddis said with a grin as he stood up to shake Whitlock’s hand.

“Always happy to oblige,” Whitlock said, then turned to Mosser. “Alain, comment vas-tu ?”

“A lot better if I didn’t have to kick my heels in this damn pigsty,” Mosser snorted.

“Why did you pick this place?” Whitlock asked Swain.

“We’ve blended in better being in a dump like this,” Swain answered.

“One Frenchman. Two Americans. Yes, we really blend in well around here,” Mosser added, shaking his head. “I will be glad to be out of here.”

“One Frenchman, one American and one Canadian,” Geddis corrected him.

“Ah, what is the difference?”

“It’s like someone calling you a Swiss or a Belgian,” Geddis told him.

“I hate to break up this geography lesson, but could we get down to business?” Whitlock cut in sharply. “What did you get from your informer?”

“We haven’t seen him yet,” Swain replied. “He cried off an hour before we were scheduled to rendezvous with him at Hyde Park this morning.”

Whitlock sat down slowly in the chair behind him. “I put my neck on the block when I told Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad to arrest Sean Farrell when he arrived back from the continent. I assured them that we would get enough evidence to put him away for life. That’s what you told me. Now what am I supposed to tell them? Let him go? Let a known IRA cell commander walk so that he can return to Europe to continue his campaign of terror against more British servicemen and their families?”