The Factory (15 page)

Millington, who was slight and dark-skinned and with his language ability easily able to pass for an Arab, sighed and looked at his watch. Then he gazed from the West Beirut hotel verandah where he was sitting across in the direction of the dividing line which cut the city in half, towards the area from which today's contact was supposed to be coming. Already almost an hour late, Millington calculated. Perhaps he wouldn't come at all now: wasted effort upon wasted effort.

The agreed identification was that Millington sit with a copy of an Arab newspaper looped through the carrying strap of a camera at this particular table. He'd already been there for more than the delayed hour, drunk three glasses of
arak
and didn't want any more and was tempted to remove the newspaper, to occupy himself by reading it. Five minutes later he was glad he hadn't.

The man didn't come from the direction Millington anticipated but from behind, from the hotel itself. There was no noise of an approach: just the awareness of a presence behind him.

‘I am told you are a businessman seeking things to buy,' said the man, using the agreed introduction.

‘At the right price,' said Millington, completing the passwords.

The man smiled, sat down and said: ‘We always try to fix the right price.'

Samuel Bell acknowledged, as he'd acknowledged emptily before, that he'd let things – everything – drift on long enough. It had to stop. Now. He had to do something decisive about his marriage and his relationship with Ann. And take some more positive action to trace within the department the leak that was ruining so many of their operations: risking their very existence. If he couldn't then he would finally have to call in the external investigation branch, despite the likely personal cost. The Factory, its survival, was more important than the embarrassment of his drinking and of his affair being discovered and of his being invited to resign the Director Generalship. His difficulty was determining what that positive action should be, beyond the unsuccessful traps and snares he'd already laid. He knew what to do about his marriage, though.

Bell was glad Pamela was there when he got to their north London home: they already led virtually separate lives, never bothering to tell each other where they would be.

‘I'll have one, too,' she said as Bell went immediately to the drinks tray. She didn't bother to look up from her magazine.

Bell returned with her whisky, which she reached out to take still without looking away from what she was reading. He remained standing in front of her and said: ‘I've decided I want a divorce.'

‘What!' Pamela came up at last, smiling at him in disbelief. She was a blonde, brightly pretty woman, always perfectly dressed, made up and coiffured.

‘We've talked about it enough!' said Bell impatiently. ‘We might as well get it over with.'

‘But I've got the money,' she reminded him. The cars and the London house and the apartment in France were all provided and maintained from Pamela's trust-fund inheritance.

‘What's that got to do with it?' asked Bell curiously.

‘I don't want a divorce,' announced Pamela. ‘I like things the way they are. I don't want to go through all the legal nonsense and I certainly don't like any of the men with whom I'm sleeping sufficiently well to marry them. So we'll stay as we are.'

‘As the law stands I don't need your agreement,' said Bell. ‘I can go ahead and begin proceedings on the grounds that the marriage has irreparably broken down. And God knows, it's certainly done that!'

‘You haven't understood, have you?' complained the woman. ‘I'll cut you off without a penny! Is your little tart prepared to live with you in some squalid terraced house in some squalid terraced suburb? Practically all your salary goes on whisky!'

If he had to call in the investigatory branch and was found to be lacking in leadership, which was an accusation that could be levelled against him, he wouldn't even have that salary, Bell realized.

The man told Millington to call him Peter and said he knew sources from which anything could be bought. He had a gold tooth which shone when he smiled, which he did frequently, and wore a very creased but well-tailored lightweight suit.

‘I'm interested in a particular product,' said Millington. ‘I want guns, ammunition. Explosives, too. Rocket launchers, if they're available.'

‘Who are you?' demanded Peter. ‘What do you want them for?'

‘That's none of your business, any of it.'

‘You expect me to trust you, a complete stranger!'

‘How else can it be, meeting for the first time?'

‘My colleagues are cautious people.'

‘I'm a cautious man,' said Millington.

‘The sort of things you want would be expensive: fifty, sixty thousand dollars, if they could be obtained. Do you have that sort of money?'

‘Do you think I'd be here if I didn't?'

‘I would think, if you have that sort of money, that you would already have your suppliers: that you wouldn't have to come shopping like this,' challenged Peter.

The other man had seized the opening, thought Millington hopefully. He said: ‘Where I get my money from … why I deal like this … is something else that need not concern you.'

Peter smiled and the tooth glittered. ‘I see!' he said. ‘So it's straight crime, not religion or fanaticism. Or perhaps you're setting yourself up as a middleman, intending to sell on for a much better price than you pay.'

Millington said nothing, staring expressionlessly across the table at the other man. He wondered how far he could stretch the obvious greed. And whether there was benefit anyway.

Peter finally broke the silence. ‘I need proof that you can pay.'

‘I guessed you would,' said Millington. From his pocket he took a pay-to-bearer cheque, a money draft that could be cashed by anyone simply by presentation at a bank, in the sum of $100,000.

The other man's tongue came anxiously out over his lips. He said: ‘You will have to come into East Beirut with me, to meet my colleagues.'

‘No,' refused Millington at once. East Beirut probably qualified as the kidnap capital of the world: a religious dispute which had begun as a doubtful conflict between Christian and Muslem had degenerated into a territorial war of protection rackets and extortion between rival gangs, as so many religious disputes did.

‘Then we can't do business,' said Peter with attempted finality.

Millington shrugged with finality of his own. ‘So be it,' he said. ‘Then we don't do business: I'll deal with somebody else. You think I'm stupid enough to expose myself over there? Go away, Peter! You're an amateur and I don't do any sort of business with amateurs.'

The contemptuous rejection had just the sort of effect Millington intended. The other man flushed at the dismissal and said: ‘No! Wait! I need to consult.'

Millington looked at his watch again, in further obvious dismissal. ‘I won't be here after tomorrow. You make your mind up soon, OK?'

The telephone call to Millington's hotel room came from Peter within two hours.

The dividing line between East and West Beirut is not straight and definitive. It meanders, following understood but winding streets and highways. Very shortly after setting out from the hotel Millington realized that Peter was guiding him along an even more twisting and confusing route, trying to make him lose his sense of direction, which he didn't. He remained exactly aware of where he was, knowing when they stopped at the bar that they were still in West Beirut, but only just: he guessed the distance into the other lawless and un-policed part of the city was less than one hundred yards.

There were four men waiting for them, in a curtained alcove at the rear of the main, smoke-filled, backgammon-clicking room. Millington was uncertain of the nationality of one of the men but guessed the other three were Lebanese. There were no introductions: one of the Lebanese, a bearded man, appeared to be the leader. Arabic coffee and
arak
were ordered and offered: Millington refused anything. There was practically a repetition of the earlier conversation with Peter on the hotel terrace with eager assurances – too eager, Millington thought – that whatever weaponry he sought was available. When the inevitable demand came from the bearded man for him to prove his ability to pay, Millington laughed and shook his head. ‘You surely didn't expect me to carry the money draft with me, did you?'

‘Then we do not know you can pay!'

Millington jerked his head towards the silent, gold-toothed Peter. ‘He saw it. He's the guarantor.'

‘That's not enough.'

‘It's got to be.' Millington came forward across the table, leaning close to the spokesman. ‘I'm becoming bored. I think you're being stupid. I didn't bring an open cheque because I didn't intend to be robbed. Just as I don't intend to be drugged and carried back into East Beirut for some futile ransom attempt, which is why I am not drinking anything. If there is an attack to get me across the dividing line by force at least two of you, maybe more, are going to be killed. And whatever the outcome of this meeting, any deal we come to is cancelled if I get back to my hotel room to discover it's been ransacked, to find the cheque. Which isn't there anyway …' He paused, then: ‘We either deal, sensibly and properly, or we don't deal at all. Understood?'

‘There should be trust and understanding between us,' said the leader of the group.

‘Rubbish!' said Millington. ‘We're crooks, cheats, both of us. I'd be a fool to trust you, just as you'd be a fool to trust me. Our protection is our both recognizing that.'

After the deal was struck and the collection arrangements made, Millington insisted that Peter guide him back to the hotel. As they picked their way through the twisting streets Peter said: ‘How did you guess the idea was to go through your room when you said you didn't have the cheque with you?'

‘It was what I would have done, in your circumstances,' said Millington.

‘Would you have really done the other thing, if they'd attacked you outside the bar? Tried to kill them, I mean?'

‘To get back to my hotel we take the third on the left along this street, go about two hundred yards, make another left and then right, to the main road. The hotel is further along, still to the right,' said Millington.

Peter stopped, frowning sideways at him. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Answering your question,' said Millington. ‘I know exactly where I am and how to get back. Having you along was my insurance, to reach the hotel. I've had a gun pointing at your back ever since we left the bar. I could not have been attacked quickly enough to prevent me firing. I'd have shattered your spine. If you hadn't died immediately you would never have walked again.'

It was one of Bell's regular nights to stay at Ann Perkins' apartment. They ate in, which they customarily did, and she cleared the dinner things while the coffee was brewing and served it away from the table, with brandies for both of them. Bell, who had drunk less than normal, was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to talk about the spy within the Factory, which he accepted at once was an appalling breach of security but it didn't seem to matter any more, as so much else didn't seem to matter. And so he did. He sat her down directly opposite and set out all the failed missions and leaked information. He stopped short of disclosing two things. One was of having sent a loyal officer to his death, wrongly believing the man to be a traitor, which was a mistake he had admitted to no one. The other was believing he'd embedded a source of his own within KGB headquarters in Moscow but of not being sure any longer, because there had been no attempted contact. Which meant, if the man had been detected, that Bell had destroyed not one but two people.

By the time he stopped talking their coffee was cold. Neither had attempted to drink any brandy. Ann said: ‘You've got to bring in an official investigation immediately. You don't have any choice.'

‘They'd probably regard our affair as a security risk. Force both our resignations,' cautioned Bell. ‘Certainly they would with me, if they realized how long I'd delayed. They wouldn't like the drinking, either.'

‘What are you saying, for God's sake?' demanded the girl angrily. ‘It's not us we're talking about. It's the department!'

‘Have you forgotten what Pamela said, about money?' asked Bell.

‘Darling!' implored Ann. ‘I'd be happy with you in a cave. Forget it. But do something quickly about the Factory. You built it up. Don't sit by and see it all destroyed.'

Millington had insisted upon a week for his arrangements, not sure even if that were sufficient. He took the first ferry from Beirut back to Cyprus the following morning and liaised with London through the secure intelligence channels in the British embassy there. All the available boats and launches at the British military base at Akrotiri were obviously official, so he had to buy a local fishing boat, which stank and leaked but which had, according to the engineer who accompanied him, a sound engine that wouldn't let them down. In the intervening days the hull was caulked and sealed by other men from the military establishment. The surveying engineer thoroughly serviced the engine.

Millington took five servicemen from the base as crew. They were told it was a security operation about which they needed to know nothing. They were to act simply as crew, remain absolutely silent to prevent revealing their identity and not consider using the guns concealed in the engine cowling and below the wheelhouse chart table until they saw Millington fire, in which case they were to shoot to kill and end any confrontation as quickly as possible.

The exchange spot had been chosen carefully during the bar encounter with the gun runners. The handover was to be at sea off Baniyas on the Syrian coast, ten miles offshore to keep them in international waters and therefore safe from either Syrian or Lebanese interception, and sufficiently far north to avoid any Israeli interference.