Colin Forbes - Double Jeopardy

'Like hell you don't – it just rammed its snout into the side of that trailer. It was overtaking as you hit the lights…'

'To change places with the blue job ahead of us. Now…' Tweed tapped his fingers on the wheel. we lose him and we're on our own, which will be more comfortable…'

'Not the same way. Please! I thought you Brits were sober, law-abiding types. You realise what would have happened had a patrol-car been nearby…'

'There wasn't one. I checked.'

The meeting place was a white power cruiser moored to a buoy on the Potomac river. Tweed had followed signposts to Fredericksburg and then, guided by Loomis, turned off down a minor road to the east. By now he had lost the blue car in an equally hair-raising performance which had ended in their tail skidding off the highway. It was very quiet and deserted as Tweed switched off the engine, climbed out and savoured the breeze coming off the water.

'That's yours?' he asked, pointing at the cruiser.

'Bought it with my – severance pay, don't you call it? – when I left the Company. Plus a bank loan I'm damned if I'll ever pay off. It gives me safety – I hope…'

'Safety?'

Tweed concealed his sense of shock. His trip to Washington was developing in a way he had never expected. First they had been followed from Dulles by an outfit which had money at its disposal. It cost a lot of dollars to employ four men to do a shadow job. And ever since he had arrived Clint Loomis, retired from the CIA, had shown signs of nervousness.

The Company doesn't like people who leave it alive.'

Loomis was dragging a rubber dinghy equipped with an out-board which had been hidden among a clump of grasses down to the river's edge. He gave a lop-sided grin as the craft floated and he gestured to his visitor to get aboard. 'I suppose it comes from all those dumbos who got out and wrote books, revealing all as the publishers' blurbs say.'

'You're writing a book?' Tweed asked as he settled gingerly inside the vessel and Loomis started up the outboard.

'Not me,' Loomis said with a shake of his head. 'And when we get to the Oasis…' He pointed towards the power cruiser, that's when we shake hands.'

'If you say so,' Tweed replied.

They crossed the smooth stretch of water and Loomis slowed the engine to a crawl as the hull loomed up. Aboard the Oasis a huge Alsatian dog appeared, running up and down the deck, barking its head off. Then it stopped at the head of the boarding ladder and stared down, jaws open, exposing teeth which reminded Tweed of a shark.

'Now we shake hands,' Loomis explained. 'That shows him you're a friend and you don't get chewed up.'

'I see,' said Tweed, careful to make a ceremony of the display of friendship. The dog backed off as he mounted the ladder without too much confidence while Loomis tied up the dinghy and followed him on deck.

'Over the side!' Loomis ordered.

The dog dived in, swimming all round the boat until it completed one circuit. Loomis stretched over the side down the ladder, hooked a hand in the dog's collar and hauled it aboard as the animal pawed and scrambled up the rungs. It stood on the deck and shook itself all over Tweed.

'Shows he likes you,' Loomis said. 'We'd better go below now that everything is safe. A beer?'

'That would be nice,' Tweed agreed, following his host down the companionway where the American handed him a towel to dry himself. He was beginning to have serious doubts as to whether he had been wise to cross the Atlantic.

'What was all that business about the dog?' he enquired.

'The swim in the river?' The American settled himself back on a bunk, his legs stretched out, his ankles crossed. For the first time he seemed genuinely relaxed. 'Waldo has been trained to sniff out explosives. So, we get back and find him alone on deck. Conclusion? No intruders aboard the cruiser – or one of two things would have happened. Waldo would be dead – or a man's body would be lying around with his throat torn out. O.K.?'

Tweed shuddered inwardly and drank more beer, 'O.K.,' he said.

'Next point. Waldo is trained to stay aboard no matter what. So the opposition uses frogmen who attach limpet mines with trembler or timer devices to the hull – devices which detonate with the vibration of a grown man's weight walking on deck. I send Waldo overboard and he swims round once without a pause. Conclusion? If there were mines Waldo would be yelping, kicking up one hell of a row when he gets the sniff of high-explosives. Now we know we're clean…'

'What a way to live. How long has this been going on? And who is going to attach the limpet mines?'

'A gun hired by Tim O'Meara who kicked my ass out of the Company when he was Director of Operations – before he transferred to become boss of the Secret Service.'

'And why would O'Meara do that?'

'Because I know he embezzled two hundred thousand dollars allocated for running guns into Afghanistan.'

In his Miinich apartment Manfred concentrated on the long-distance call. His main concern was to detect any trace of strain in the voice of his caller. Code-names only had been used.

'Tweed knows there is a selected target,' the voice reported.

'He has identified the target?'

Manfred asked the question immediately, his voice calm, almost bored, but the news was hitting him like a hammerblow. He might have guessed that in the end it would be Tweed who ferreted out the truth. God damn his soul!

'No,' the voice replied. 'Only that there is one. You might wish to take some action.'

'Thank you for informing me,' Manfred replied neutrally. `And please call me tomorrow. Same time…'

Replacing the receiver, Manfred swore foully and then comforted himself with the thought that he had detected no breaking of nerve in the voice of the man who had called him. Checking in a small notebook, he began dialling a London number.

This incident took place on the day before Tweed departed for Washington, late in the evening on the day the four security chiefs attended the conference at the Surety building in Paris.

Tweed realised he had walked into a nightmare. The question he couldn't answer to his own satisfaction was whether Clint Loomis was paranoid, suffering from a persecution complex which made him see enemies everywhere. Hence the obsession with security aboard the Oasis.

Against that he had to weigh the fact that they had been followed by four unknown- men in two cars when they left Dulles Airport. It was Loomis who changed the subject- much to Tweed's relief.

'Charles Warner came to see me two weeks ago – he was interested in O'Meara. Have you also flown to the States just to talk to me? I'd find that hard to believe…'

`Believe it!' Tweed's manner was suddenly abrupt. 'When O'Meara was CIA Director of Operations he manipulated your retirement?'

'Bet your sweet life…'

'You know his history. What is that history?'

'He was an operative in the field early on. I was the man back home who checked his reports…'

'After a period of duty at Langley he was stationed in West Berlin for several years? Correct?' Tweed queried.

'Correct. I don't see where you're leading, Tweed. That always worries me..

'Trust nter The Englishman's manner had a quiet, persuasive authority. He had to keep Loomis talking, to concentrate his mind on one topic. O'Meara's track record. 'You say you checked his reports from West Berlin. He speaks German?'

'Fluently. He can pass for a native…'

'Did he go undercover-into East Berlin?'

'That was strictly forbidden.' There was a very positive note in Loomis' reply. 'It was written into his directive…'

'Anyone else with him in this unit?'

'A guy called Lou Carson. He was subordinate to O'Meara…'

'And all the time O'Meara was in West Berlin you're convinced he obeyed the directive – under no circumstances to go over the Wall?'