“What are you doing here at this time of night?” Simenon asked in broken English as Farrell was offering up his passport, driver’s license, and port pass without waiting to be asked for them.
“Well, it’s like this, mate,” Farrell explained when he saw the security officer release his grip from his pistol’s butt in order to take his documents. “My boss back in Morpeth is something of a hard case. He’s getting tired of being told containers we’re supposed to be picking up here have gone missing. It’s not helpin’ that the insurance companies who have to pay up every time that happens are starting to suspect we’re the ones who are nicking the cargo. That’s why I’m here. My boss wants to make sure the ship our next consignment is on gets loaded straight off the boat and onto my trailer without anyone here being given a chance to lose it.”
Though that was not the way things were handled, it wasn’t Simenon’s responsibility to point this out to the Brit. Nor was he in a mood to waste his breath trying to, not at this time of the morning. As long as the man’s papers were in order and he was authorized to be in the port, Simenon saw no reason why he couldn’t allow the Englishman to stay where he was. The foreman responsible for overseeing the berthing and unloading of the ship due to berth along the stretch of quay they were on later in the day could handle that.
Having done all he intended to do at the moment, after handing Farrell back his documents and returning to his patrol car, Simenon informed Vanderloo there was nothing they needed to be concerned with before resuming his usual rounds.
It took some doing, a fair number of phone calls between him, his boss back in the UK, and the port authority, and several hours, but Sean Farrell managed to secure the container he’d been sent to fetch and clear it through customs. He was sitting in a line of other trucks that were waiting to be checked through at the last gate and exit the port when he couldn’t help but notice another truck, painted red and yellow in exactly the manner as his, was entering the yard. The idea Charles Mills, the owner of Northumberland Haulage, would send two trucks to Antwerp to fetch the only container he was aware they had due in here was simply too incredible for Farrell to fathom. Only when the second truck bearing the same livery as his pulled even and he was able to get a good look at the driver and a second man in its cab did Farrell realize what was going on.
Not knowing what else to do, Farrell threw the door of his truck open, stepped down onto the running board, and yelled at the pair of security officers at the gate who were inspecting the documents of another trucker farther up the line.
“Hey! Hey! You,” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he pointed at the other red and yellow truck that was speeding away. “Stop that truck.”
The startled officers at the gate didn’t have the time or the ability to do so, even if they understood what the problem was before the truck had passed into the port complex. They were, however, able to find out what had Farrell in a tizzy. Despite being unsure what was going on, they knew enough to put out a warning to all security personnel scattered about the port and manning the points of access to stop the speeding red and yellow truck that was now rampaging its way through the port area in search of a quick exit.
Henry Delvauxe, a newly assigned officer with the Antwerp Port Authority, was the first to spot the truck in question and bring it to a halt simply by using his patrol car to block the intersection created by stacks of containers. Exiting the car, he signaled the two men seated in the truck’s cab to climb down using his left hand while gripping the handle of his pistol with his right, just as Maurice Simenon had done earlier that morning when confronting Farrell.
The two men in this truck, however, were not nearly as accommodating as the veteran British driver had been. To Delvaux’s astonishment, the passenger of the truck pulled an AK-47 he’d been holding just out of sight under the truck’s dashboard, leaned out the window of the passenger’s door, and let rip with a burst.
Only the haste with which the truck’s passenger had fired and the notoriously wicked climb AKs were known for when fired on full auto saved Henry Delvaux that day. Without having to give the matter a whit of thought, he knew he was sadly overmatched. So instead of foolishly standing his ground and engaging in a firefight he had no chance of winning, the Belgian security officer dived for cover behind a stack of containers.
The driver of the truck had no intention of waiting around for help to come to Delvaux or for his partner to take his time and aim before he fired again. Even before the gunman had ducked back into the cab, the driver slammed down on the accelerator, causing the truck to lurch forward and push Delvaux’s patrol car out of the way with ease, allowing the pair to continue their search for another way out of the port. As much as they were being paid to infiltrate the port using valid authorized economic operator certificates and a fallacious bill of lading that would have allowed them to exit the port hauling the container Sean Farrell had in tow, neither man was willing to give up his life for the people who’d sent them to steal a container that held a cargo more valuable monetarily than all the other contents of the containers it had been shipped with from Singapore combined.
2
The annoying chirp of a mobile phone was at odds with the soft, rhythmic patter of rain on canvas. In addition to waking him from a sound, peaceful sleep, it reminded Andy that repeated warnings to Tommy and Spence not to bother him whenever he traded his custom-tailored suits for the uniform of a Roman primus pilus centurion were not enough to keep them from reminding him of his twenty-first-century responsibilities. Grunting, he gently rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the fingertips of one hand even as he was reaching over to the small, rough-hewn camp table next to his cot and blindly groped about in search of the annoying mobile with his other one.
Without bothering to sit up, Andy clicked on the talk button as he was raising the mobile to his ear. “This had better be good,” he muttered, making no effort to keep his ire in check.
Karen Spencer’s voice struck Andy as being simply too bright and cheery for this time of morning as well as his current mood. “I’ve had a call from the owner of a haulage company in Northumberland who wants us to look into a problem he’s been having in Belgium.”
“I do hope for your sake this isn’t something that could have waited until Monday.”
“If I thought it could have waited until Monday, I would have told you on Monday when you decided to rejoin the modern world,” Spence shot back without hesitation in a calm, self-assured tone of voice.
Rather than being annoyed by her response, Andy couldn’t help but grin. Since returning from her coup in Milan, Karen Spencer had been a different girl. It was more than the way she dressed now, or grooming habits that were, as Tommy put it, “so un-Spence.” The young woman he’d come to depend on now possessed a degree of self-confidence that made her more than a key asset to Century Consultants. She had gone from being totally forgettable to someone who, in Andy’s eyes at least, was more than just attractive.
“Tell me, what’s so bloody important about this haulage company that you had to wake me up at…” Pulling his mobile away from his ear, Andy looked at the time showing at the top of its screen. “Do you realize what time it is?”
“Is it really that early?” Spence asked mockingly. “Golly, good gosh. I never would have guessed.”