Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ 'Then you're not going to be using either hand for six months.' Sullivan jerked and half the hair nearly left the scalp. 'Now you bloody listen to me. I've been coming up the Atlantic coast for a week, asking questions, as well you know. You're giving me the answers…'

^ The seaman screamed as Sullivan jerked a handful of hair loose, then grabbed another handful. 'Who is after one of Harper's tankers? Who is behind this business? Someone big – the money they must be spending to stop people talking doesn't grow on trees. Whose money is it?'

^ 'Arab money…' The seaman's face had turned a grey pallor, he was gasping for breath. 'That's what I heard,' he croaked. 'Barrels of money for this operation…'

^ 'Don't know…' The seaman was close to collapse. 'So help me, God, I don't know. Some Englishman, Winter, is running the thing…'

^ 'Don't know. Never met him. Just a name 'A cunning look came into his eyes. He was getting his nerve back. 'Can I have a drink?'

^ 'Certainly…' Sullivan reached across to a side shelf and grasped a half-full bottle of wine by the neck. Smashing it on the edge of the table he thrust the jagged end towards the seaman who stared at it in horror. 'You're not telling me everything,' Sullivan informed the Frenchman in a strangely quiet voice. 'If you don't want me to use this you'll keep on talking. You tried to kill me…'

^ 'Sober as a hanging judge,' Sullivan said softly, 'the way you came at me with that knife. Who hired you to put me to sleep permanently?' He shoved the jagged bottle forward. The seaman raised his left hand, the undamaged hand, to ward off the bottle.

^ 'For God's sake… I was phoned from Paris – by a man called Dupont. I do jobs for him, this and that…' The Frenchman tried to gesture with his right hand and groaned. 'My hand is broken,' he whimpered.

^ 'They would have carried me out of here on a stretcher on my way to the morgue. Who is controlling this operation?'

^ 'Paris… so I heard.' The Frenchman's face twisted with pain as he stared piteously at bis limp fingers. 'I don't know who. Just Paris…' He fainted, keeling over heavily until he lay sideways on the table, his head cushioned on a pile of papers.

^ On the morning of Sunday, January 12, Sullivan phoned the home number of Pierre Voisin of Interpol. The French policeman, who had a private income and was therefore quite incorruptible financially as well as by inclination, lived in the rue de Bac; as it happened only a stone's throw from the flat where LeCat and Dupont had tracked Sullivan's progress through the ports of France.

^ Sullivan gripped the receiver a little tighter. With Voisin you could never be sure; sometimes he hinted at things. 'And what does that mean?' he asked.

^ 'It is your profession-to go round asking questions, sometimes, dangerous questions. You are all right?'

^ 'Yes, I'm all right.' Sullivan was still unsure. 'Sorry to bother you at home, but this is urgent – to me. Have you ever heard of an Englishman called Winter? Like the season…'

^ 'No, never.' This time there was no pause. 'But I could check for you – this morning, as a matter of fact. We have a bit of a flap on, as your countrymen say, so I have to go into the office. The records people will be there too.' Voisin chuckled. 'It is an outrage, is it not – Frenchmen working at the weekend? These are difficult days, with our Arab friends, and so forth…'

^ Sullivan gave him the number of the Hotel Berlin and put down the receiver with a frown. Really, you could never tell whether or not Voisin was hinting at something. That reference to 'our Arab friends'. The hired French assassin had referred to 'Arab money…'

^ It was less than a straw in the wind, but a faint theme was beginning to recur – the Arabs… Paris. He felt relieved that his oldest friend, Francois Messmer of French counter-intelligence, would be arriving in Hamburg tomorrow. And that was a strange incident. He had called Messmer at his Paris flat before phoning Voisin, and to his surprise Messmer had cut the call short, saying only that he would be at the Hotel Berlin on Monday morning. It was after the mention of the name Winter. So Messmer, at least, had heard something about him. Voisin phoned back just before lunchtime.

^ 'We have no record on the name of the English criminal you mentioned…' Voisin sounded crisper, more businesslike, as though he had adopted his official manner. 'Nothing official at all,' he added.

^ 'I mentioned it to one or two non-political friends…' His voice had a cynical tinge now. He was referring to men he knew who were without political ambition and who could, therefore, be relied on to tell the truth. 'No one has ever heard of this man. I am sorry.'

^ 'Be careful, Larry. You are always going about asking these questions some people do not wish you to ask. ^ Au revoirl'

^ Later in the afternoon of Sunday, January 12, while Sullivan was waiting in Hamburg for the arrival of Francois Messmer, while Winter had arrived at Cosgrove Manor in East Anglia, Sheikh Gamal Tafak was holding a secret meeting at the edge of the Syrian desert, two thousand miles away from Hamburg.

^ 'I can now reveal the plan,' he said quietly, 'the plan to deliver a terrible shock to the western nations…'

^ Tafak paused as he looked down the long trestle table inside the tent. Five serious-faced men in Arab dress sat round the table, the five leaders of the most extremist terrorist groups in the Middle East. Outside the wind blew off Mount Hermon, shivering the canvas like the flap-flap of a vulture's wings.

^ They did not look so dangerous, these five men. Three of them had a studious air and wore glasses; they could have been professors planning the curriculum for some new university. But all the men inside the tent – including Gamal Tafak – were on a secret Israeli list of men who must be eliminated before there could be any hope of lasting peace in the Middle East.

^ 'Before our armies engage Israel in the final war,' Tafak continued, 'we must first immobilise the West so no fresh arms can be sent to Israel as they were in 1973. To do that we need an excuse to cut off all oil from the West – all oil,' he repeated. 'That will immobilise them. But I foresee difficulty in persuading all Arab states to agree, so we must create the atmosphere in which they will have to agree. We must make the western countries scream at us, call us again Golden Apes. Then all Arab states will agree to cut off the oil.'

^ 'But how are you going to do this?' the serious-faced man on Tafak's right enquired.

^ 'By creating a terrible incident. If that does not make everyone fall into line – if, say, Kuwait, will not cooperate, then the sabotage teams you have organised will fly there and blow up the oil wells when I give the order…'

^ Gamal Tafak was, in his own way, a sincere man. He could not stand the thought that in Jerusalem Arab holy places were in the grip of the detested Israelis, but he was also ruthless, a man who was prepared to bring down the world if necessary to achieve his ends. He did not like these five men he was meeting. He even fore-saw the day when they would have to be eliminated if the new rulers in Saudi^ Arabia and Egypt were to keep their power. This is always the dilemma of the extremist; he looks over his shoulder at men even more extremist than himself. Terror is an escalating movement.

^ 'And how,' the same serious-faced man enquired, 'are you going to outrage the West when this British tanker has been seized. You have given us no details – we do not even know where the incident will take place.'

^ 'I will give you all the details when we next meet,' Tafak replied. 'But I will tell you now that it concerns a very large bomb which will destroy a city.' Tafak indulged in his liking for a theatrical departure. He stood up. 'I am talking about San Francisco.'