Kykko, the largest monastery in Cyprus, was founded in the twelfth century by the Byzantine emperors. They chose their spot well, bearing in mind that the lives of monks are supposed to be spent in isolation, meditation, and solitude.
The vast edifice stands high on a peak west of the Marathassa Valley in a situation so remote that only two roads lead to it, one from each side. Finally, below the monastery, the two roads blend into one, and a single lane leads upward to the monastery gate.
Like the emperors of Byzantium, McCready, too, chose his spot well. Danny had stayed behind in the stone hut across the valley from the hotel, watching the curtained windows of the room where Rowse slept, while Bill, on a motorcycle acquired for him locally by the Greek-speaking Marks, had ridden ahead to Kykko. At dawn, the SAS sergeant was well hidden in the pines above the single track to the monastery.
He saw McCready himself arrive, driven by Marks, and he watched to see who else came. Had any of the Irish trio appeared, or the Libyan car (they had noted its number), McCready would have been alerted by three warning blips on the communicator and would have vaporized. But only the usual stream of tourists—most of them Greek and Cypriot—trundled up the track on that May morning.
During the night the head of station in Nicosia had sent one of his young staffers up to Pedhoulas with several messages from London and a third communicator. Each sergeant now had one, aside from McCready.
At half-past eight Danny reported that Rowse had appeared on the terrace and taken a light breakfast of rolls and coffee. There was no sign of Mahoney and his two friends, or Rowse’s girl from the evening before, or any of the other guests at the hotel.
“He’s looking tired,” said Danny.
“No one said this would be a holiday for any of us,” snapped McCready from his seat in the courtyard of the monastery twenty miles away.
At twenty-past nine Rowse left. Danny reported it. Rowse drove out of Pedhoulas, past the great painted church of the Archangel Michael that dominated the mountain village, and turned northwest on the road to Kykko. Danny continued his watch on the hotel. At half-past nine the maid entered Rowse’s room and drew the curtains back. That made life easier for Danny. Other curtains were withdrawn on the facade of the hotel facing the valley. Despite the rising sun in his eyes, the sergeant was rewarded by the sight of Monica Browne doing ten minutes of deep-breathing exercises quite naked in front of her window.
“Beats South Armagh,” murmured the appreciative veteran.
At ten to ten, Bill reported that Rowse had come into sight, climbing the steep and winding track to Kykko. McCready rose and went inside, wondering at the labor that had brought these massive stones so high into the mountain peaks, and at the skill of the masters who had painted the frescoes in the gold leaf, scarlet, and blue that decorated the incense-sweet interior.
Rowse found McCready in front of the famous Golden Icon of the Virgin. Outside, Bill insured that Rowse had not grown a tail, and he gave McCready two double-blips on the communicator in the senior agent’s breast pocket.
“It seems you’re clean,” murmured McCready as Rowse appeared beside him. There was no strangeness in talking in a low voice; all around them, the other tourists conversed in whispers, too, as if afraid to disturb the calm of the shrine.
“So shall we start at the beginning?” said McCready. “I remember seeing you off at the Valletta airport on your very brief visit to Tripoli. Since then, if you please, every detail.” Rowse started at the beginning.
“Ah, so you met the notorious Hakim al-Mansour,” said McCready after a few minutes. “I hardly dared hope he’d turn up at the airport himself. Kariagin’s message from Vienna must have tickled his fancy. Go on.”
Part of Rowse’s narrative McCready could confirm from his own and the sergeants’ observations—the sallow-faced young agent who had followed Rowse back to Valletta and seen him on the Cyprus flight, the second agent at Nicosia who had tailed him until he left for the mountains.
“Did you see my two sergeants? Your two former colleagues?”
“No, never. I remain to be convinced they’re even there,” said Rowse. Together they stared up at the Madonna who, with calm and pitying eyes, stared back down at them.
“Oh, they’re here, all right,” said McCready. “One’s outside at the moment, just to see that neither you nor I was followed. Actually, they’re taking quite a lot of pleasure in your adventures. When this is all over, you can have a drink together. Not yet. So ... after you arrived at the hotel?”
Rowse skipped through to the moment he first saw Mahoney and his two cronies.
“Wait a minute, the girl. Who is she?”
“Just a vacation pickup. An American race-horse breeder waiting for the arrival of three Arab stallions she bought last week at the Hama yearling sales in Syria. Monica Browne. With an “e.” No problem, just a dining companion.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Sam. Quite sure. Just a civilian. And a very pretty one, as it happens.”
“So we noticed,” muttered McCready. “Go on.”
Rowse narrated the arrival of Mahoney and the suspicious glances his companion had intercepted across the terrace.
“You think he recognized you? From that filling station forecourt?”
“He couldn’t have done,” said Rowse. “I had a wool cap down to my eyes and stubble all over my face, and I was half-hidden by the petrol pumps. No, he’d stare like that at any Englishman as soon as he heard the accent. You know how much he hates us all.”
“Maybe. Go on.”
It was the sudden appearance of Hakim al-Mansour and the nightlong interrogation by Frank Terpil that really interested McCready. He made Rowse stop a dozen times to clarify tiny points. The Deceiver was carrying a hard-cover book on Cypriot Byzantine churches and monasteries. As Rowse talked, he made copious notes in the book, writing over the Greek text. No mark appeared from the point of his pencil—that would only come later when the chemicals were applied. To any bystander, he was just a tourist making notes on what he saw around him.
“So far, so good,” mused McCready. “Their arms shipment operation seems to be on hold, ready for some “go” order. Mahoney and al-Mansour turning up at the same hotel in Cyprus is too much to mean anything else. What we have to know is when, where, and how. Land, sea, or air? From where and to where? And the carrier—truck, air freight or cargo ship?”
“You’re still sure they’ll go ahead? Not call the whole thing off?”
“I’m sure.”
There was no need to tell Rowse why he was sure. Rowse had no need to know. But there had been another message from the Libyan doctor who attended Muammar Qaddafi. It would be a multipackage shipment, when it came. Some of the weapons would be for the Basque separatists, the ETA. More would be for the French ultra-Left group, the Action Directe. Another consignment for the small but lethal Belgian terrorists, the CCC. A large present for the German Red Army Faction—at least half, no doubt, to be used on bars frequented by U.S. servicemen. More than half the shipment was for the IRA.
It was reported that one of the IRA’s tasks would be the assassination of the American ambassador to London. McCready suspected that the IRA, mindful of its fund-raising operations in America, would farm that job out—probably to the Germans of the Faction, successors to the Baader-Meinhof gang, who were diminished in numbers but still deadly and prepared to take contract work in exchange for arms.
“Did they ask where you would want the shipment for the American terror group, if they agree to sell?” McCready asked Rowse.
“Yes.”
“And you told them?”
“Anywhere in Western Europe.”
“Plans for getting it to the States?”
“Told them what you said. I’d remove the consignment, which is quite small in bulk, from wherever they delivered it to a rented garage known only to me. I’d return with a camper van or mobile home, with hidden compartments behind the walls. Drive the van north through Denmark, on the ferry to Sweden, up to Norway and take it on one of the many freighters crossing to Canada. Just another tourist on a wildlife-watching vacation.”
“They like that?”
“Terpil did. Said it was neat and clean. Al-Mansour objected that it would mean crossing several national frontiers. I pointed out that in the holiday season, camper vans pour across Europe, and that at each stage I would say I was picking up my wife and kids at the next capital’s airport after they flew in. He nodded several times.”
“All right. We’ve made our pitch. Now we have to wait and see if you’ve convinced them. Or if their greed for revenge against the White House will outweigh natural caution. It has been known.”
“What happens next?” asked Rowse.
“You go back to the hotel. If they swallow the American scheme and include your package in the shipment, al-Mansour will contact you, either personally or by courier. Follow his instructions to the letter. I’ll only close in on you for a situation report when the coast is clear.”
“And if they don’t swallow it?”
“Then they’ll try to silence you. Probably ask Mahoney and his boys to do the job as a sign of good faith. That’ll give you your chance at Mahoney. And the sergeants will be close by. They’ll move in to pull you out alive.”
“The hell they will,” thought Rowse. That would blow away London’s awareness of the plot. The Irish would scatter, and the whole shipment would reach them by another route at another time and place. If al-Mansour came for him directly or indirectly, he would be on his own.
“Do you want a warning bleeper?” asked McCready. “Something to bring us running?”
“No,” said Rowse shortly. There was no point in having one. No one would come.
“Then go back to the hotel and wait,” said McCready. “And try not to tire yourself to exhaustion with the pretty Mrs. Browne. With an ‘e.’ You might need your strength later.”
McCready then drifted away into the throng. He too knew he could not intervene if the Libyans or the Irish came for Rowse. What he had decided to do, in case the Libyan fox had not believed Rowse, was to bring in a far larger team of watchers and to keep an eye on Mahoney. When he moved, the Irish arms consignment would be moving. Now that he had found Mahoney, the IRA man was the better bet as a trace to the shipment.
Rowse completed his tour of the monastery and emerged into the brilliant sunshine to find his car. Bill, from his cover under the pines up on the hill below the tomb of the late President Makarios, watched him go and alerted Danny that their man was on his way back. Ten minutes later, McCready left, driven by Marks. On the way down the hill they gave a lift to a Cypriot peasant standing by the roadside and thus brought Bill back to Pedhoulas.
Fifteen minutes into the forty-minute drive, McCready’s communicator crackled into life. It was Danny.
“Mahoney and his men have just entered our man’s room. They’re ransacking it. Giving it a right going over. Shall I get out on the road and warn him?”
“No,” said McCready. “Stay put and keep in touch.”
“If I speed up, we might be able to overtake him,” suggested Marks.
McCready glanced at his watch. An empty gesture. He was not even calculating the miles and the speed to Pedhoulas.
“Too late,” he said. “We’d never catch him.”
“Poor old Tom,” said Bill from the back.
Unusually with subordinates, Sam McCready lost his temper. “If we fail, if that load of shit gets through, poor old shoppers at Harrods, poor old tourists in Hyde Park, poor old women and children all over our bloody country,” he snapped.
There was silence all the way to Pedhoulas.
Rowse’s key was still hanging on its hook in the reception lobby. He took it himself—there was no one behind the desk—and walked upstairs. The lock to his room was undamaged; Mahoney had used the key and replaced it in the lobby. But the door was unlocked. Rowse thought the maid might still be bed-making, so he walked right in.
As he entered, a powerful shove from the man behind the door sent him staggering forward. The door slammed shut, access to it barred by the stocky one. Danny’s long-range photographs had been sent down to Nicosia with the courier before dawn, faxed to London, and identified. The stocky one was Tim O’Herlihy, a killer from the Derry Brigade; the beefy ginger-haired one by the fireplace Eamonn Kane, an enforcer from West Belfast. Mahoney sat in the room’s only armchair, his back to the window, whose curtains had been drawn to filter the brilliant daylight.
Without a word Kane grabbed the staggering Englishman, spun him around, and flattened him against the wall. Skilled hands ran quickly over Rowse’s short-sleeved shirt and down each leg of his trousers. If he had been carrying McCready’s offered bleeper, it would have been discovered and ended the game there and then.
The room was a mess, every drawer opened and emptied, the contents of the wardrobe scattered all over. Rowse’s only consolation was that he carried nothing that an author on a research trip would not have had—notebooks, story outline, tourist maps, brochures, portable typewriter, clothes, and washkit. His passport was in his back trouser pocket. Kane fished it out and tossed it to Mahoney. Mahoney flicked through it, but it told him nothing he did not already know.
“So, Sass-man, now perhaps you’ll tell me just what the fuck you’re doing here.”
There was the usual charming smile on his face, but it did not reach the eyes.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said Rowse indignantly.
Kane swung a fist that caught Rowse in the solar plexus. He could have avoided it, but O’Herlihy was behind him and Kane was to one side. The odds were loaded, even without Mahoney. These men were not Sunday-school teachers. Rowse grunted and doubled, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.
“Don’t you now? Don’t you now?” said Mahoney without rising. “Well, normally I have other ways than words of explaining myself, but for you, Sass-man, I’ll make an exception. A friend of mine in Hamburg identified you there a couple of weeks back. Tom Rowse, former captain in the Special Air Service Regiment, well-known fan club of the Irish people, asking some very funny questions. Two tours in the Emerald Isle behind him, and now he turns up in the middle of Cyprus just when my friends and I are trying to have a nice quiet holiday. So once again, what are you doing here?”
“Look,” said Rowse. “Okay, I was in the regiment. But I quit. Couldn’t take any more of it. Denounced them all, the bastards, three years ago. I’m out, well out. The British Establishment wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire. Now I write novels for a living. Thriller novels. That’s it.”
Mahoney nodded to O’Herlihy. The punch from behind caught him in the kidneys. He cried out and dropped to his knees. Despite the odds, he could have fought back and finished at least one of them, maybe two, before going down himself for the last time. But he took the pain and slumped to his knees.
Despite Mahoney’s arrogance, Rowse suspected the terrorist chief was puzzled. He must have noticed Rowse and Hakim al-Mansour in conversation on the terrace last night, before driving off. Rowse had returned from that all-night session, and Mahoney was on the point of receiving a very big favor from al-Mansour. No, the IRA man had not turned lethal—yet. He was just having fun.
“You’re lying to me, Sass-man, and I don’t like it. I’ve heard this just-doing-my-research story before. You see, we Irish are a very literary people. And some of the questions you have been asking are not literary at all. So what are you doing here?”
“Thrillers,” wheezed Rowse. “Thrillers nowadays have to be accurate. Can’t get away with vague generalizations. Look at le Carré, Clancy—you think they don’t research every last detail? It’s the only way nowadays.”
“Is it now? And a certain gentleman from across the water that you were talking with last night—he one of your co-writers?”
“That’s between us. You’d better ask him.”
“Oh, I did, Sass-man. This morning, by phone. And he asked me to keep an eye on you. If it were left to me, I’d have the lads drop you off a very tall mountain. But my friend asked me to keep an eye on you. Which I will do, day and night, until you leave. But that was all he asked me. So just between us, here’s a little something for the old times.”
Kane and O’Herlihy waded in. Mahoney watched. When Rowse’s legs gave way, he went down to the floor, doubling up, protecting the lower stomach and genitals. He was too low for a good punch, so they used the feet. He rolled his head away to avoid brain damage, feeling the toecaps thud into his back, shoulders, chest, and ribs, choking on the wave of pain until the merciful blackness came after a kick on the back of the head.
He came to in the manner of people who have been in a road accident: first gingerly aware that he was not dead, and then conscious of the pain. Beneath his shirt and trousers, his body was one large ache.
He was lying on his face, and for a while he studied the pattern of the carpet. Then he rolled over: a mistake. He ran a hand to his face. There was one lump on the cheek below the left eye; otherwise it was more or less the same face he had been shaving for years. He tried to sit up and winced. An arm went behind his shoulders and eased him into a sitting position.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked.
Monica Browne was on her knees beside him, one arm around his shoulders. The cool fingers of her right hand touched the lump below his left eye.
“I was passing, saw the door ajar. ...”
Quite a coincidence, he thought, then dismissed the idea.
“I must have fainted and thumped myself as I went down,” he said.
“Was that before or after you wrecked the room?”
He glanced around. He had forgotten about the tumbled drawers and the scattered clothes.
She unbuttoned his shirt front. “Jesus, that was some fall,” was all she said. Then she helped him up and led him to the bed. He sat on it. She pushed him backward, lifted his legs, and rolled him onto the mattress.
“Don’t go away,” she said unnecessarily. “I have some liniment in my room.”
She was back in minutes, closing the door behind her and giving the key a swift turn. She unbuttoned his Sea Island cotton shirt and slipped it from his shoulders, tut-tutting at the sight of the four bruises, now turning a fetching blue, that adorned his torso and ribs.
He felt helpless, but she seemed to know what she was doing. A small bottle was uncorked, and gentle fingers rubbed liniment into the bruised areas. It stung. He said, “Ow.”
“It’ll do you good, take the swelling down, help the discoloration. Roll over.”
She eased more liniment into the bruises on his shoulders and back.
“How come you carry liniment around?” he mumbled. “Do all your dining partners end up like this?”
“It’s for horses,” she said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Stop fussing—it has the same effect on stupid men. Roll back.”
He did so.
She stood over him, her golden hair falling about her shoulders. “They hit you in the legs as well?”
“All over.”
She unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers, unzipped them, and eased them down and off without a fuss. It was no strange task for a young wife with a husband who drank too much. Apart from one lump on the right shin, there were another half-dozen bluish areas on the thighs. She massaged the liniment into them. After the sting, the sensation was of pure pleasure. The odor reminded him of the days when he played Rugby at school. She paused and set the bottle down.
“Is that a bruise?” she asked.
He glanced down toward his jockey shorts. No, it was not a bruise.
“Thank God,” she murmured. She turned away and reached for the zipper at the back of her cream shantung dress. The filtered light from the curtains gave the room a low, cool glow.
“Where did you learn about bruises?” he asked.
After the beating and the massage, he was feeling drowsy. His head was drowsy, anyway.
“Back in Kentucky, my kid brother was an amateur jockey,” she said. “I patched him up a few times.”
Her cream dress slid to the floor in a pool. She wore tiny Janet Reger panties. No bra strap crossed her back. Despite the fullness of her breasts, she needed none. She turned around. Rowse swallowed.
“But this,” she said, “I did not learn from any brother.”
He thought fleetingly about Nikki back in Gloucestershire. He had not done this before, not since marrying Nikki. But, he reasoned, a warrior occasionally needs solace, and if it is offered, he would be less than human to refuse.
He reached up for her as she straddled him, but she took his wrists and pressed them back on the pillow.
“Lie still,” she whispered. “You’re far too ill to participate.”
But for the next hour or so she seemed quite content to be proved wrong.
Just before four she rose and crossed the room to open the curtains. The sun had passed its azimuth and was moving toward the mountains.
Across the valley Danny the sergeant adjusted his focus and said, “Cor, you dirty bastard, Tom.”
The affair lasted for three days. The horses did not arrive from Syria, nor any message for Rowse from Hakim al-Mansour. She checked with her agent on the coast regularly, but always the answer was “Tomorrow.” So they walked through the mountains, took picnics high above the cherry orchards where the conifers grow, and made love among the pine needles.
They breakfasted and dined on the terrace, while Danny and Bill watched in silence from across the valley and Mahoney and his colleagues glowered from the bar.
McCready and Marks stayed at their pension in Pedhoulas village while McCready organized more men from Nicosia Station and a few from Malta. As long as Hakim al-Mansour made no contact with Rowse to indicate that their prepared story had, or had not, been accepted, the key was the Irishman Mahoney and his two colleagues. They were running the IRA enterprise; so long as they stayed, the operation would not move into the shipment phase.
The two SAS sergeants were to give backup to Rowse; the rest would keep the IRA men under surveillance at all times.
On the second day after Rowse and Monica first made love, McCready’s team was in place, scattered through the hills covering every road in and out of the area from observation posts in the hills.
The telephone line to the hotel had been intercepted and tapped. The monitoring listeners were ensconced in another nearby hotel. Few of the newcomers could speak Greek, but fortunately tourists were common enough for another dozen not to arouse suspicions.
Mahoney and his men never left the hotel. They, too, were waiting for something: a visit, or a phone call, or a hand-delivered message.
On the third day Rowse was up as usual just after dawn broke. Monica slept on, and it was Rowse who took the tray of morning coffee from the waiter at the door. When he lifted the coffee pot to pour his first cup, he saw a folded wafer of paper beneath it. He put the wafer between the cup and the saucer, poured the coffee, and walked with it into the bathroom.
The message said simply, “Club Rosalina, Paphos, 11 P.M. Aziz.”
That posed a problem, Rowse mused as he flushed the fragments of the message down the toilet. Easing Monica out of the picture for the few hours it would take to get to Paphos and back in the middle of the night would not be easy.
The problem was solved at midday, when fate intervened in the form of Monica’s shipping agent, who called to say that the three stallions would be arriving from Latakia in the port of Limassol that evening, and could she please be present to see them signed for and settled in their stables outside the port?
She left at four o’clock, and Rowse made life easier for his backup team by walking up to Pedhoulas village and ringing the manager of the Apollonia to say that he had to go to Paphos that evening for dinner and what, please, was the best route? The message was picked up by the listeners and passed to McCready.
The Rosalina Club turned out to be a casino in the heart of the Old Town. Rowse entered it just before eleven and soon saw the slim, elegant figure of Hakim al-Mansour seated at one of the roulette tables. There was a chair vacant next to him. Rowse slid into it.
“Good evening, Mr. Aziz. What a pleasant surprise.”
Al-Mansour inclined his head gravely. “Faites vos jeux,” called the croupier.
The Libyan placed several high-denomination chips on a combination of the higher numbers. The wheel spun, and the dancing white ball elected to fall into the slot number four. The Libyan showed no annoyance as his chips were swept away. That single throw would have kept a Libyan farmer and his family for a month.
“Nice of you to come,” said al-Mansour as gravely. “I have news for you. Good news, you will be pleased to hear. It is always so agreeable to impart good news.”
Rowse felt relieved. That morning, the fact that the Libyan had sent the message to him instead of an order to Mahoney to lose the Englishman forever among the mountains had been hopeful. Now, it looked even better.
Rowse watched as the Libyan lost another pile of chips. He was inured to the temptation of gambling, regarding the roulette wheel as the most stupid and boring artifact ever invented. But the Arabs compare only with the Chinese as gamblers, and even the cool al-Mansour was entranced by the spinning wheel.
“I am happy to tell you,” said al-Mansour as he placed more chips, “that our glorious Leader has acceded to your request. The equipment you seek will be provided—in full. There. What is your reaction?”
“I’m delighted,” said Rowse. “I’m sure my principals will put it to ... good use.”
“We must all fervently hope so. That is, as you British soldiers say, the object of the exercise.”
“How would you like payment?” asked Rowse.
The Libyan waved a deprecatory hand. “Accept it as a gift from the People’s Jamahariya, Mr. Rowse.”
“I am very grateful. I am sure my principals will be, too.”
“I doubt it, for you would be a fool ever to tell them. And you are not a fool. A mercenary, perhaps, but not a fool. So as you will now be making a commission of not one hundred thousand dollars but half a million, perhaps you will split that with me? Shall we say, fifty-fifty?”
“For the fighting funds, of course.”
“Of course.”
Retirement fund, more like, Rowse thought, then said aloud, “Mr. Aziz, sir, you have a deal. When I can pry the money out of the clients, half will come to you.”
“I do hope so,” murmured al-Mansour. This time he won, and a pile of chips was pushed toward him. Despite his urbanity, he was delighted. “My arm is very long.”
“Trust me,” said Rowse.
“Now that, my dear chap, would be insulting ... in our world.”
“I need to know about shipment. Where to collect, when.”
“And so you shall. Soon. You asked for a port in Europe. I think that can be arranged. Return to the Apollonia, and I will be in touch very soon.”
He rose and handed Rowse his remaining pile of chips. “Do not leave the casino for another fifteen minutes,” he said. “Here—enjoy yourself.”
Rowse waited for fifteen minutes, then cashed in the chips. He preferred to buy Nikki something nice.
He left the casino and strolled toward his car. Because of the narrow streets of the Old Town, parking was at a premium even late at night. His car was two streets away. He never saw Danny or Bill, who were in doorways up and down the road.
As he approached his car, an old man in blue denim and a forage cap was brushing the garbage from the gutters with a yard-broom.
“Kali spera,” croaked the old road-sweeper.
“Kali spera,” replied Rowse. He paused. The old man was one of those, finally beaten by life, who do the menial jobs all over the world. He remembered the wad of money from al-Mansour’s winnings, pulled out a large-denomination note, and tucked it into the old man’s top pocket.
“My dear Tom,” said the road-sweeper, “I always knew you had a good heart.”
“What the hell are you doing here, McCready?”
“Just keep jiggling with your car keys and tell me what happened,” said McCready as he pushed his broom.
Rowse told him.
“Good,” said McCready. “It looks like a ship. That probably means they’re tacking your small cargo onto the much larger one for the IRA. We must hope so. If yours is simply sent as a one-shot by a different route in a different container, we’re back to where we started. Left with Mahoney. But as your load is only a van-full, they may pack them all together. Any idea which port?”
“No, just Europe.”
“Go back to the hotel, and do what the man says,” ordered McCready.
Rowse drove off. Danny, on a motorcycle, went after him to ensure that Rowse had no follower other than himself. Ten minutes later, Marks arrived with the car and Bill to pick up McCready.
On the drive back, McCready sat in the rear and thought. The ship, if ship it was, would not be Libyan registered. That would be too obvious. Probably a chartered freighter, with a no-questions-asked captain and crew. There were scores of such to be found all over the eastern Mediterranean, and Cyprus was a favored country of registry.
If it was chartered locally, it would have to go to a Libyan port to take on the arms, probably to be buried beneath a perfectly normal cargo like crated olives or dates. The IRA team would probably go with it. When they left the hotel, it was vital that they be followed to the loading dock so the name of the ship could be noted for later interception.
Once noted, the plan was for the vessel to be tracked by a submarine at periscope depth. The submarine was on standby under the waters off Malta. A Royal Air Force Nimrod from the British air base at Akrotiri on Cyprus would guide the sub toward the steaming freighter, then make itself scarce. The sub would do the rest until Royal Navy surface vessels could make the intercept in the English Channel.
McCready needed the ship’s name, or at least the port of destination. With the name of the port, he could have his friends at Lloyds Shipping Intelligence find out what vessels had reserved berthings in that port and for which days. That would narrow the choice down. It could be he no longer needed Mahoney, if only the Libyans would tell Rowse.
The message to Rowse came twenty-four hours later by telephone. It was not al-Mansour’s voice but another. Later, McCready’s engineers traced it to the Libyan People’s Bureau in Nicosia.
“Go home, Mr. Rowse. You will be contacted there shortly. Your olives will arrive by ship at a European port. You will be contacted personally with arrival and collection details.”
McCready studied the intercept in his hotel room. Did al-Mansour suspect something? Had he seen through Rowse but decided on a double-bluff? If he suspected Rowse’s real employers, he would know that Mahoney and his group were also under surveillance. So was he ordering Rowse to England in order to take the watchers off Mahoney? Possibly.
In case it was not only possible but true, McCready decided to play both ends. He would leave with Rowse for London, but the watchers would stay with Mahoney.
Rowse decided to tell Monica the next morning. He had got back to the hotel from Paphos before her. She arrived from Limassol at three A.M., flushed and excited. Her stallions were in beautiful condition, now stabled outside Limassol, she told him as she undressed. She only needed the transit formalities to be completed to bring them to England.
Rowse awoke early, but she was ahead of him. He glanced at the empty space in the bed, then went down the corridor to check her room. They gave him a message at the reception desk, a brief note in one of the hotel’s envelopes.
Dear Tom,
It was beautiful but it’s over. I’m gone, back to my husband and my life and my horses. Think kindly of me, as I will of you.
Monica.
He sighed. Twice he had briefly thought she might be something other than she seemed. Reading her note, he realized he had been right at the beginning—she was just a civilian. He also had his life—with his country home and his writing career and his Nikki. Suddenly he wanted to see Nikki very badly.
As he drove back to the Nicosia Airport, Rowse guessed his two sergeants were somewhere behind him. They were. But McCready was not. Using the Head of Station in Nicosia, he had found a Royal Air Force communications flight heading for Lyneham, Wiltshire, that would get in ahead of the scheduled British Airways flight. McCready was already on it.
Just before midday, Rowse glanced out of the porthole of the plane and saw the green mass of the Troodos Mountains slipping away beneath the wing. He thought of Monica, and Mahoney still propping up the bar, and al-Mansour, and he was glad to be going home. For one thing, the green fields of Gloucestershire were a good deal safer than the caldron of the Levant.