Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ Worth stared across the table, registering the note of independence. 'I know,' he said quietly. 'Asking a lot of questions, stirring things up all down the French coast.'

^ 'Coffee? No? Perhaps just as well – it's lukewarm, anyway. As to your question, it's my job to know things. I asked you here to request you to stop stirring things up.'

^ Admiral Worth smiled, at least his mouth performed a bleak grimace which Sullivan took to be his version of a smile. 'I can't answer questions, you should know that by now. All this is off the record, of course. Official Secrets Act and all that…'

^ 'You should have said that when I came in here, I think I'm going…'

^ 'Bear with me a few minutes longer,' Worth suggested. 'You haven't changed, I see. Harper Tankships, isn't it?'

^ 'You said it was your business to know things.' Sullivan was becoming angry, but his expression remained blank. 'If you'll give me a good reason I might consider it – dropping the whole thing. I said consider it.'

^ 'We heard the whisper too – about a hi-jack, or sabotage. It was a smokescreen – to cover something else our Arab friends had in mind. Buy the 4pm edition.'

^ 'Not a ship – another plane. KLM Flight 401 from Amsterdam to Paris. Beggars got on board at Schiphol. Something special about this job – there are three senior Royal-Dutch Shell chaps aboard, including a managing director.'

^ ^ whisper you were chasing was pure camouflage – it was this plane hi-jack they were covering. It's really another demonstration of Arab power, of course…'

^ 'It's become a way of life.' Worth reverted to his salty, commander-on-the-bridge language. 'They have us by the balls and they enjoy squeezing them. Can't do anything about it – the British government is resigned to an Arab condominium over the West for as far ahead as we can see.' He stared as Sullivan stood up. 'Can we rely on you?'

^ 'You didn't think you could when we last met. I'll have to think about it. Please excuse me, but as I told you, I'm straight off the aircraft…'

^ Sullivan was fuming as he left the club. Prior to meeting Worth he had decided to drop the whole thing – after warning Harper to tighten up on security round the ^ Chieftain ^ in Genoa, although at the back of his mind he still wasn't sure. Now, if he did drop it, it would look as though he were falling in with Worth's odd request. He was still fuming when he went on to see Victor Harper.

^ Admiral Worth's view of the British government's attitude was not entirely correct at the highest levels. In the previous September there had been an unexpected change of premiership when the previous prime minister resigned due to ill health.

^ The new man, who had risen to the rank of brigadier during the Second World War, immediately took a decision which went unreported in the British press. A large area of the west coast of Scotland was declared a prohibited military zone. It was rumoured locally that a new artillery range was being set up. The curious thing was that crofters on an offshore island heard no thump of artillery shells; instead they saw frequent practice parachute landings, some of the airdrops taking place from helicopters.

^ Another event which was also not reported was the prime minister's secret meeting with General Lance Villiers, Chief of General Staff. Villiers, reputed to be the most efficient and ruthless Chief of Staff for three decades, had only one eye – his left eye had been left behind in Korea in 1952. He wore a black eye-patch and moved in a curiously stiff manner, but he possessed one of the quickest brains in the United Kingdom. His earlier career had been spent with the airborne forces.

^ Sullivan met Harper in his office at five o'clock and they talked by candlelight while snow piled up in the street outside. The chairman of Harper Tankships, a restless, energetic man of fifty with thinning hair, immediately decided he would fly to Italy the following day to sort out the security of the tanker ^ Chieftain.

^ 'Of course,' Sullivan remarked at one stage, 'it just might not be the ^ Chieftain…'

^ 'Winter – if it was Winter in Hahnemann's office – made it a bit obvious the way he examined ^ Chieftain's ^ blueprints. And I have an idea this chap is clever – don't ask me why.'

^ 'Well, for one thing he's some kind of criminal – maybe adventurer would be the better word. And yet no one has any record on him. On my way here I phoned a chap I know at Scotland Yard and he'd never heard of him.' Sullivan leaned across the desk. 'No one's got him on record, for Pete's sake. You have to be clever to keep the slate as clean as that.'

^ It was agreed that Harper would still go to Genoa. It was also agreed that if Sullivan came up with something else while Harper was away, he could collect a cheque for more funds from Vivian Herries, Harper's secretary. At the end of a long day Sullivan went home.

^ It was probably his dislike of seeming to fall in with Admiral Worth's request to drop it which kept Sullivan going the following day. Refreshed by a good night's sleep, he checked every known source he could think of. Somewhere, someone must have heard of Winter.

^ He first tried a contact in Special Branch. The contact phoned him back later in the day. 'We've never heard of your chap, Winter. Doesn't ring any bells at all. Sorry…' He went back to Scotland Yard and his friend there, Chief Inspector Pemberton, told him he had been intrigued by Sullivan's enquiry. 'So, I checked further. Not a dicky bird. Drew a complete and total blank…'

^ Exasperated, Sullivan extended the net, began phoning outside the country. His call to the FBI in Washington was answered within an hour. 'Nothing in the States. In view of what's happening everywhere, I checked with one of the intelligence services. Nothing on a man called Winter. Have you tried Interpol?' Yes, Sullivan had tried Interpol. He phoned his good friend, Peter van der Byll of the South African police. The answer was negative. In the late afternoon he went back to see the one man he had missed when he visited Lloyd's of London before he had set out for Bordeaux.

^ 'It looks as though I'll be off this job for Harper Tankships,' he told MacGillivray. 'Bloody blank wall everywhere. It's beginning to annoy me.'

^ Jock MacGillivray was one of the backroom men concerned with the genera] administration of Lloyd's. When asked what he did, he was liable to reply, 'Help to keep the place going – or maybe it helps to keep me going. Never sure which.' He leaned back in his swivel chair and tossed a cigarette to Sullivan. 'So what's the problem?'

^ 'I missed you when I came here at the beginning of the year. As to the problem, no problem as far as I can see. I've checked with just about everybody and come up with sweet nothing.'

^ 'You haven't talked to me.' MacGillivray, freckled-faced and forty, grinned. The founthead of all wisdom.'

^ 'Nothing really…' MacGillivray was consulting his diary. 'Except for the chap who came in last Friday. He was doing a series of articles on the oil crisis for an American paper. He came in a couple of months ago, apparently, working on a previous series. He was asking about Harper's ship ^ Chieftain – ^ she's in dry dock at Genoa. Said he might go and have a look at her.'

^ ^ Hahnemann's staircase in front of MacGillivray who peered at it uncertainly.

^ 'Like this…' Sullivan showed him a profile print he had worked on the previous evening in his flat, eliminating Winter's moustache with white paint. 'I doubt if he'd be wearing the bowler this time…'

^ 'He wasn't,' MacGillivray said promptly. 'He had a tweedy thing on. That's him. Who is he?'

^ 'Yes. The ^ Challenger. ^ Was she exactly like the ^ Chieftain – ^ or was there any difference between the two vessels? I said they were twins and that was it, as far as I knew. Come to think of it, he asked quite a lot about that ship.'