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Sir Abhay Varma turned out to be the chairman of Staplehurst & Company, a major brokerage specializing in shipping and situated in a medieval alleyway off Aldgate. Like Cranford, he was fifty-five, plump and jovial. Before he put on the weight during all those City Guild dinners, he had been an amateur champion-rated squash player.
As per custom, the men confined conversation at the lunch table to small talk—weather, crops, how was the flight—and adjourned to the library for coffee and port. Unheard by anyone else, they were able to relax under the gaze of the painted Dilettantes on the wall above them and talk business.
“I need to buy two ships. Very quietly, very discreetly, the purchase concluded by a shell company in a tax haven.”
Sir Abhay was not in the slightest fazed. It happened all the time. For tax reasons, of course.
“What kinds of ships?” he asked. He never queried the American’s bona fides. He was vouched for by Cranford, and that was good enough. After all, they had been at school to
gether.
“I don’t know,” said Dexter.
“Ticklish,” said Sir Abhay. “I mean, if you don’t know. They come in all roles and sizes.”
“Then let me level with you, sir. I want to take them off to a discreet shipyard and have them converted.”
“Ah, a major refit. Not a problem. What are they supposed to end up as?”
“Is this between ourselves alone, Sir Abhay?”
The broker glanced at the spook as if to ask what kinds of chaps does this chap think we are?
“What is said in Brooks’s, stays in Brooks’s,” murmured Cranford.
“Well, each is to become a floating base for U.S. Navy SEALs. Harmless to look at, not so harmless inside.”
Sir Abhay Varma beamed.
“Aha, rough stuff, eh? Well, that clarifies things a bit. A total conversion. I’d advise against tankers of any kind. Wrong shape, an impossible cleaning job and too many pipes. Same with an ore carrier. Right shape but usually vast, bigger than you want. I’d go for a dry-bulk carrier, a grain ship, surplus to owner’s requirements. Clean, dry, easy to convert, with deck covers that come off to let your chaps in and out fast.”
“Can you help me buy two?”
“Not Staplehurst, we do insurance, but of course we know everyone in the market worldwide. I’m going to put you alongside my managing director, Paul Agate. Young, but smart as paint.”
He rose and offered his card.
“Drop by the office tomorrow. Paul will see you right. Best advice in the City. On the house. Thanks for lunch, Barry. Give my regards to the chief.”
And so they descended to the street and parted.
JUAN CORTEZ finished work and emerged from the entrails of the 4,000-ton tramp steamer on which he had worked his magic. After the darkness of the lower hold, the autumn sun was brilliant. So bright he was tempted to reach for his black-fronted welder’s helmet. Instead he pulled on dark glasses and let his pupils adjust to the light.
His grimy overalls clung to him, pasted by sweat onto his near-naked body. Beneath the fabric, he wore only undershorts. The heat down there had been ferocious.
There was no need to wait. The men who had commissioned the work would come in the morning. He would show them what he had done and how to work the secret access door. The cavity behind the plating of the inner hull was absolutely impossible to detect. He would be well paid. What contraband would be carried in the compartment he had created was none of his business, and if the stupid gringos chose to stuff white powder up their noses, that was none of his business either.
His business was to put clothes on the back of his faithful wife, Irina, food on the table and school books in the satchel of his boy, Pedro. He stowed his kit in the allocated locker and made his way to the modest Ford Pinto that was his automobile. In the neat bungalow, a real credit to a workingman, in the smart private estate beneath the hill called Cerro de La Popa, there would be a long, bracing shower, a kiss from Irina, a hug from Pedro, a filling meal and a few beers in front of the plasma-screen TV. And so, a happy man, the best welder in Cartagena drove home.
CAL DEXTER knew London but not well, and that trading hub simply called the “City” or the “Square Mile” not at all. But a black cab, driven by a Cockney born and raised a mile east of Aldgate, had no trouble. He was dropped outside the door of the maritime insurance broker in a narrow backwater playing host to a monastery dating back to Shakespeare at five minutes before eleven o’clock. A smiling secretary showed him up to the second floor.
Paul Agate occupied a small office piled with files; framed prints of cargo ships adorned the walls. It was hard to imagine the millions of pounds’ worth of insurance business that came and went out of this cubbyhole. Only the screen of a state-of-the-art computer proved that Charles Dickens had not just moved out.
Later, Dexter would realize how deceptive London’s centuries-old money-market center was, where tens of billions in sales, purchases and commissions were generated each day. Agate was around forty, shirtsleeved, open-necked and friendly. He had been briefed by Sir Abhay Varma, but only just so far. The American, he was told, represented a new venture-capital company seeking to buy two dry-bulk carriers, probably surplus-to-requirement grain ships. What they would be used for he had not been told. Need-to-know. What Staplehurst would do was offer him advice, guidance and some contacts in the shipping world. The American was a friend of a friend of Sir Abhay. There would be no invoice.
“Dry bulk?” said Agate. “Ex-grain ships. You’re in the market at the right time. What, with the state of the world economy, there is quite a margin of surplus tonnage at the moment, some at sea, most laid up. But you will need a broker to avoid getting ripped off. Do you know anyone?”
“No,” said Dexter. “Who can you recommend?”
