Hudson shook his head. ‘They fucked up. I don’t know why. All I know is that Grebo’s man waited for the full two minutes in the road, but the guys didn’t come out. He left.’ Hudson lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘That was the agreed plan. I know Cavendish put a team in and cleaned the building totally. We lost one guy and the other is probably on his way to The Intelligence Bureau in Pakistan.’ It was there that the alleged questioning of MI6 suspects was carried out in order to bypass the interrogation laws in Great Britain. ‘No doubt they’ll get the truth from him.’
‘How will that affect us?’ Deveraux showed a little concern.
Hudson shook his head. ‘It won’t; the guys were hit-men. They only know their own names. The Brits will get nothing out of the one who survived.’
He sounded supremely confident, which made Deveraux feel a little more comfortable.
‘So what are we going to do about Cavendish?’ he asked the CIA man.
‘We’re going to leave it. It might be a good idea to let him have his head for a while. We’ll just have to be extra vigilant and extremely careful.’ He stood up, ready to leave. ‘We’ve got a good operation here, John, and we’ve got to keep the lid screwed down tight. We have to be patient. The Chapter has to keep running for the sake of all those poor kids out there,’ he said cynically.
Deveraux chuckled and stood up. ‘And for the sake of the twenty million bucks you put in you offshore account last year.’ He reached across the desk and shook Hudson’s hand. ‘Keep me informed, Randy.’
Hudson nodded. ‘You bet.’
He walked out of the office and left Deveraux wondering if the operation was becoming too unwieldy, too big and with too many fingers in the pie. But he had also put twenty million dollars into an offshore account and decided you don’t earn that kind of money without taking a few risks.
The M.V. Odessa inched its way towards the quayside as two dockers stood waiting for the heaving lines to be tossed over to them. Once this was done, they pulled out the large ropes that would tether the ship and dropped the loops over their respective bollards. Their job now done they waited while two crewmen on the deck of the ship, one fore and one aft, waited for the captain’s signals from the bridge before taking up the slack on the capstan winches.
The ship stopped and the capstan winches groaned beneath the deck lights as the slack in the hawsers was taken up. When all was secure, the ship’s captain moved the bridge telegraph to ‘stop engines’ and handed over control of the bridge to the duty officer. He then went down to his cabin and waited the arrival of the local Customs Officer who would inspect the ship’s manifest and then do a physical check of the ship’s cargo holds.
Marcus watched the arrival of the M.V. Odessa with a growing feeling of excitement, tinged with anticipation. He was concealed in the dark recesses of some timber stacks that were waiting to be loaded on to lorries during daylight hours. He didn’t know what cargo the Odessa was carrying beneath her decks, but he suspected that she was carrying something else that was worth a great deal more than the cargo that would be declared on her manifest.
Marcus had been sent up to Kings Lynn by Cavendish. He had even been furnished with a British Ports Authority Pass and a reason for visiting the docks. But all Marcus had been asked to do was observe and do nothing else. He had been given the name of three ships; two of which had already docked and unloaded an enormous quantity of timber on to the quayside and departed. The third ship on Marcus’s list, the Odessa was not due to dock until midnight because of the tide. And it was the unearthly hour of its expected arrival that intrigued Marcus.
He glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost midnight. He had no idea how long it would be until the crew bedded down for the night, but he had decided to chance his luck and get on board for a look in the cargo holds.
Marcus had got over his wounds from his previous escapade. His ankle hadn’t given him any trouble and his shoulder had suffered only a minor peppering; nothing much at all. He was quite confident he no longer had to worry about them.
He saw a single gangway hauled up to the ship and a man in uniform immediately hurried up on to the deck. Someone was waiting for him and the two of them disappeared into the accommodation block at the stern end of the Odessa.
Marcus walked out from the timber pile, crossed the quayside and clambered up the gangway on the ship’s deck. Without stopping to think of what he should do next, he opened one of the doors set into the bulkhead and stepped inside.
Marcus had chosen that moment to go on board because it was time least likely that anyone would have any suspicion of strangers going on to the ship, so long as it was done with a sense of purpose. All Marcus had to do now was to learn as much as he could about the cargo and get himself off the ship while most of the crew were sleeping.
He made his way down to the lower decks by following a common sense approach and using stairs, or ladders as they were known on ships, which went down until he came to a long alleyway that ran forward.
Although it was the middle of the night, the bulkhead lights were on and he could see a closed, watertight door at the far end of the alleyway. He made his way to this and swung the handles down, pulled the door open and stepped inside. He swung the handles up to secure the door and took his Maglite torch out of his pocket.
Marcus knew he wouldn’t be able to break open any crates inside the holds without attracting attention and letting the crew know there was someone in the cargo hold causing damage. And Cavendish had been quite specific as to what he expected Marcus to do, and that was to learn as much as possible and then get out.
After about thirty minutes, Marcus had seen as much as he was likely to. All of the crates that he could actually examine closely were identified by labels and serial numbers, which were painted on the sides of the crates. It meant nothing to Marcus but he dutifully made a note of what information there was in a small notebook.
Marcus was getting to the end of the hold when suddenly the door at the far end opened and all the lights came on. He spun round and immediately dropped into a crouch, keeping well behind the stack of crates.
He heard two men talking to each other and risked taking a look, but such was the way that the crates were stacked that he was unable to see who they were. As the two men walked along the stacks, their voices dropped to a murmur, but as they came closer to where Marcus was hiding their voices grew louder.
Marcus inched his way along the crate wall and peered carefully round the edge. He could now see the Customs officer who had gone on deck the moment the gangway had been put in place. He assumed the seaman with him was the ship’s captain, although he had no way of knowing. He was wearing a seaman’s cap with gold braid round the peak, and on his shoulder epaulettes were four gold stripes.
The Customs officer tapped a crate with his knuckle.
‘This one,’ he asked, ‘with the X in the serial number?’
The captain nodded and said something which Marcus presumed meant ‘yes’.
‘How many?’
‘Four.’
The Customs officer seemed satisfied. ‘Tomorrow afternoon, on the quayside, I’ll sign them off.’ He tapped a clipboard he was carrying with the tip of his pen. ‘It all seems in order.’ He then tucked the clipboard under his arm and turned on his heel. It seemed to catch the captain unawares and he was left standing there for a moment. A minute later and the hold was in darkness once again.
Marcus knew he had just seen a crooked Customs officer verify the crates containing the drugs were on board and had identified those he would attend to the following day. He had a vague notion that ships’ cargoes had to be cleared officially by the Customs and Excise people before they were allowed to be offloaded on to the quayside. And he had no doubt that they did a thorough and excellent job in the main. But here was a classic case of smuggling with the collusion of the authorities; in this case the bent officer. All Marcus had to do now was to get off the ship, notify Cavendish and get himself back to the Duke’s Head hotel for a good night’s sleep.