“Sorry to be so long,” Shepherd apologized as he got in and pulled the door closed after him.
“Does that mean we have a deal?” the driver asked.
“Something you should know, first. Those men were trying to kill me.”
“I didn’t think they had news of an inheritance,” the driver quipped. He put the cab in gear and drove off, the wipers slapping noisily at the windscreen. “By the way, I’m Spencer, Spencer Quait.”
“Smith,” Shepherd replied. “Walt Smith.”
Spencer drove south on Craven to Victoria Embankment, the broad boulevard that snaked along the Thames, then east toward the waterfront into ever-narrowing streets until the stately granite buildings gave way to a russet landscape of abandoned warehouses that lined the approaches to Blackwall Tunnel.
Dusk had fallen by the time the taxi started down a cobbled hill that twisted steeply through thickening fog to an expanse of dilapidated wharves. The decaying timbers rumbled in protest as the taxi proceeded across the dock, stopping next to a lone houseboat lashed to the tarred pilings. The decrepit vessel had a low-slung cabin with canted sidewalls and a rusted pipe rail that ran atop the gunwale. It listed slightly to port, tugging gently at the mildewed hausers, which matched the color of her hull.
“There she is,” Spencer said as they got out of the taxi into the rain. “A coat of paint, a tune-up, and I’ll sell her for twice what I paid; maybe more. In the meantime, she’s all yours.”
“You don’t live here?”
“Not on your life. I have me a flat in Woolwich. That’s on the south bank, just through the tunnel.”
Shepherd’s head filled with the strong odor of creosoate and salt as he followed Spencer up a rickety gangway that swayed over the brackish water.
The slight cabbie opened the padlock, grasped the paint-encrusted hasp, and slid back the door. His hand found the light switch and turned it. Nothing happened. He grunted in disgust. “I must’ve thrown the main last time. Don’t go way.”
He hurried down the gangway and across the dock to an equipment shed that leaned against a power pole, making his way in the darkness to the electrical panel. Shepherd remained on deck until the lights inside the barge came on, then entered cautiously, half expecting to find Applegate waiting for him. He was greeted instead by the bored meow of a battle-scarred tomcat who shouldered past him into the main cabin. It was cluttered with packing crates, cartons of books, overstuffed furniture, a table, and a captain’s chair. The bed was in an alcove opposite the galley. Shepherd was browsing through cupboards stocked with canned provisions when Spencer entered the cabin behind him.
“Two nights payable in advance,” he announced.
Shepherd put a twenty pound note in his hand and studied him for a long moment before releasing it. “How do I know you still won’t tell the authorities where I am?” he finally asked.
“Because I’m a man of my word.”
“Just ask anyone who’s done business with you, right?” Shepherd said, with a thin smile.
Spencer’s eyes flashed with indignation; he whirled to a cabinet, opened a drawer, and removed a pistol.
Shepherd froze at the sight of it.
“I wouldn’t be giving you this if I was planning to go to the police, now would I? Come along, take it,” Spencer insisted, seeing the terror in Shepherd’s eyes. “There are a lot of nasties on the waterfront; too many for my taste. Having this about gives me peace of mind when I’m here working on her. I imagine it might do the same for you.”
Shepherd sighed with relief.
The cabbie gave him a set of keys and left.
Shepherd bolted the door after him then, mentally and physically exhausted, he fell face down on the bed and was asleep before the sound of the departing taxi had faded.
20
“The mad dog American and English whore are leading a barbaric crusade against the Arab world!” Muammar el-Qaddafi shouted, the twisted veins at his temples throbbing. He stood amid the rubble of his headquarters building, a bulletproof vest strapped around his torso.
A crowd of reporters who had been bused from their hotel surrounded him. Behind them, medical teams scurried to care for bombing victims who were being dug out from the rubble and loaded aboard helicopters that would take them to Al Fatah University Hospital.
“They are the two Hitlers behind this act of state-sponsored terrorism!” Qaddafi ranted on, purposely using the phrase from the president’s speech. “But they paid for their crimes! Their bombers were destroyed!” He paused dramatically, then cupped a hand over his mouth and leaned to an aide. “Are the children ready?” he whispered calmly — in sharp contrast to his rhetoric.
The aide nodded and, on cue, two gurneys appeared from within the collapsed walls of Qaddafi’s home. Each contained a heavily bandaged child.
“The Americans are murderers! Child murderers!” he roared, gesturing to the young boys whom he had never seen before in his life. Then he strode toward his tent, which despite several near-misses was still standing.
A phalanx of bodyguards closed in, barring the reporters from pursuing or asking questions, and herded them back onto the buses.
The public relations charade over, Qaddafi entered his tent, where General Younis was waiting along with Reza Abdel-Hadi, head of the SHK, the Libyan secret police. An Akita heeled at his side sprang to a standing position, its tail unmoving and tightly curled.
Moncrieff sat in a chair nearby, still fuming at being left behind by Larkin. He and Katifa had been fished out of the harbor by a navy patrol boat.
The tent was in shambles: books and papers littered the woven floor mats; the steel tent poles had been knocked askew, causing the billowing fabric to sag to the ground in several places; a support cable on one of the light fixtures had snapped and the long fluorescent hovered overhead like a ghostly apparition.
The blue cast of the lighting perfectly suited Qaddafi’s mood. “Anything we can do about this?” he asked, having acquired two essentially useless bombers.
“No, sir,” Moncrieff grunted. “The Americans delivered. We didn’t.”
“But it was Abu Nidal’s doing,” Qaddafi protested halfheartedly. “Why should we be penalized?”
“No hostages, no ANITA,” the Saudi replied with finality. “That was the deal.”
“But the Americans may never even locate the hostages, let alone get their hands on them.”
“Then again they might…” Abdel-Hadi observed, letting the sentence trail off mysteriously. The SHK chief was a sullen, malevolent man in his mid-fifties. Dark, dispassionate eyes hid behind blue-veined lids that rarely blinked. SHK stood for Sahim Hiya Khurriye, literally Preserver of Life and Liberty; and Abdel-Hadi carried out his mission with legendary ruthlessness. “Especially if we help them,” he concluded.
“What are you suggesting?” Qaddafi asked, intrigued.
Abdel-Hadi prompted Younis with a crisp nod.
“Moncrieff and the Palestinian woman weren’t the only ones we pulled from the sea last night,” the general explained. “We netted one of Nidal’s people too.”
The previous evening, the young Palestinian had managed to shed the heavy cartridge belts that were dragging him to the bottom of Tripoli harbor, but the gunboat was gone by the time he surfaced. A Libyan patrol boat plucked him from the oily waters along with Moncrieff and Katifa.