He based his plan on three facts about war in Africa that he had learned the hard way. One is that the European soldier fights well and with precision in the dark, provided he has been well briefed on the terrain he can expect, while the African soldier, even on his own terrain, is sometimes reduced to near helplessness by his fear of the hidden enemy in the surrounding darkness. The second is that the speed of recovery of the disoriented African soldier—his ability to regroup and counterattack—is slower than the European soldier’s, exaggerating the normal effects of surprise. The third is that firepower and hence noise can bring African soldiers to fear, panic, and headlong flight, without consideration of the smallness of the actual numbers of their opponents.
So Shannon ba
sed his plan on a night attack of total surprise in conditions of deafening noise and concentrated firepower.
He worked slowly and methodically and, being a poor typist, tapped out the words with two forefingers. At two in the morning the occupant of the bedroom next door could stand no more and banged on the wall to ask plaintively for a bit of peace so that he could get to sleep. Shannon concluded what he was doing five minutes later and packed up for the night. There was one other sound that disturbed the man next door, apart from the clacking of the typewriter. As he worked, and later as he lay in bed, the writer kept whistling a plaintive little tune. Had the insomniac next door known more of music, he would have recognized “Spanish Harlem.”
Martin Thorpe was also lying awake that night. He knew he had a long weekend ahead, two and a half days of monotonous and time-consuming poring over cards, each bearing the basic details of one of the forty-five hundred public companies registered at Companies House in the City of London.
There are two agencies in London which provide their subscribers with such an information service about British companies. These are Moody’s and the Exchange Telegraph, known as Extel. In his office in ManCon House, Thorpe had the set of cards provided by Extel, the agency whose service ManCon took as a necessary part of its commercial activities. But for the business of searching for a shell company, Thorpe had decided to buy the Moody’s service and have it sent to his home, partly because he thought Moody’s did a better information job on the smaller companies registered in the United Kingdom, and partly for security reasons.
After his briefing from Sir James Manson on Thursday, he had gone straight to a firm of lawyers. Acting for him, and keeping his name to themselves, they had ordered a complete set of Moody’s cards. He had paid the lawyer £260 for the cards, plus £50 for the three gray filing cabinets in which they would arrive, plus the lawyers’ fee. He had also engaged a small moving firm to send a van around to Moodies, after being told the set of cards would be ready for pickup on Friday afternoon.
As he lay in bed in his elegant detached house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, he too was planning his campaign—not in detail like Shannon, for he had too little information, but in general terms, using nominee shareholders and parcels of voting stock as Shannon used submachine guns and mortars. He had never met the mercenary and never would. But he would have understood him.
Shannon handed his completed project to Endean at three on Friday afternoon. It contained fourteen pages, four of them diagrams and two of them lists of equipment. He had finished it after breakfast and had enclosed it in a brown folder. He was tempted to put “For Sir James Manson’s Eyes Only” on the cover, but had resisted. There was no need to blow the affair wantonly, and he could sniff a good contract in the offing if the mining baron offered the job to him.
So he continued to call Endean Harris and to refer to “your associates” instead of “your boss.” After taking the folder, Endean told him to stay in town over the weekend and to be available from Sunday midnight onward.
Shannon went shopping during the rest of the afternoon, but his mind was on the references he had already seen in Who’s Who to the man he now knew employed him, Sir James Manson, self-made millionaire and tycoon.
He had an urge, partly from curiosity, partly from the feeling that one day he might need the information, to learn more about Sir James Manson, about the man himself and about why he had hired a mercenary to make war in Zangaro on his behalf.
The reference from Who’s Who that stuck in his mind was the mention of a daughter Manson had, a girl who would now be in her late teens or just turned twenty. In the middle of the afternoon he stepped into a phone booth off Jermyn Street and called the private inquiry agents who had traced Endean from their first meeting in Chelsea and identified him as Manson’s aide.
The head of the agency was cordial when he heard his former client on the phone. Previously, he knew, Mr. Brown had paid promptly and in cash. Such customers were valuable. If he wished to remain on the end of a telephone, that was his affair.
“Do you have access to a fairly comprehensive newspaper cuttings library?” Shannon asked.
“I could have,” the agency chief admitted.
“I wish to get a brief description of a young lady to whom there has probably at one time been a reference in society gossip columns somewhere in the London press. I need very little, simply what she does and where she lives. But I need it quickly.”
There was a pause on the other end. “If there are such references, I could probably do it by phone,” said the inquiry agent. “What is the name?”
“Miss Julie Manson, daughter of Sir James Manson.”
The inquiry agent thought it over. He recalled that this client’s previous assignment had concerned a man who turned out to be Sir James Manson’s aide. He also knew he could find out what Mr. Brown wanted to know within an hour.
The two men agreed on the fee, a modest one, and Shannon promised to mail it in cash by registered mail within the hour. The inquiry agent decided to accept the promise and asked his client to call him back just before five.
Shannon completed his shopping and called back on the dot of five. Within a few seconds he had what he wanted. He was deep in thought as he walked back to his hotel and phoned the writer who had originally introduced him to “Mr. Harris.”
“Hi,” he said gruffly. “It’s me, Cat Shannon.”
“Oh, hello, Cat,” came the surprised reply. “Where have you been?”
“Around,” said Shannon. “I just wanted to say thanks for recommending me to that fellow Harris.”
“Not at all. Did he offer you a job?”
Shannon was cautious. “Yeah, a few days’ worth. It’s over now. But I’m in funds. How about a spot of dinner?”
“Why not?” said the writer.
“Tell me,” said Shannon, “are you still going out with that girl you used to be with when we met last?”
“Yeah. The same one. Why?”