Patriot games - Tom Clancy [212]
The shipment had been five thousand units about two million dollars, wholesale. Not very much, really, enough to equip a city police force or a regiment of paratroopers, depending on the receiving government's orientation. Large enough to show a profit for Mr. Martens, small enough not to attract a great deal of attention. One truckload, Ryan wondered, maybe two? The pallets of boxes would be tucked into a corner of his warehouse, technically supervised by his government, but more likely in fact to be Martens' private domain
That's what Sir Basil Charleston told me at the dinner, Ryan reminded himself. You didn't pay enough attention to that South African chap So the Brits think he deals to terrorists directly? No, his government wouldn't tolerate that. Probably wouldn't, Ryan corrected himself. The guns might find their way to the African National Congress, which might not be very good news for the government they were pledged to destroy. So now Ryan had to find an intermediary. It took thirty minutes to get that file, involving a call to Marty Cantor.
The file was a disaster. Martens had eight known and fifteen suspected intermediary agents one or two in every country he sold to- of course! Ryan punched Cantor's number again.
"I take it we've never talked to Martens?" Ryan asked.
"Not for a few years. He ran some guns into Angola for us, but we didn't like the way he handled things."
"How so?"
"The man's something of a crook," Cantor replied. "That's not terribly unusual in the arms business, but we try to avoid the type. We set up our own pipeline after the Congress took away the restriction on those operations."
"I got twenty-three names here," Ryan said.
"Yeah, I'm familiar with the file. We thought he was passing arms to an Iranian-sponsored group last November, but it turned out he wasn't. It took us a couple of months to clear him. It would have been a whole lot easier if we'd been able to talk to him."
"What about the Brits?" Jack asked.
"Stone wall," Marty said. "Every time they try to talk with him, some big ol' Afrikaner soldier says no. You can't blame them, really, if the West treats them like pariahs, they're sure as hell going to act like pariahs. The other thing to remember is, pariahs stick together."
"So we don't know what we need to know about this guy and we're not going to find out."
"I didn't say that exactly."
"Then we're sending people in to check a few things out?" Ryan asked hopefully.
"I didn't say that either."
"Dammit, Marty!"
"Jack, you are not cleared to know anything about field operations. In case you haven't noticed, not one of the files you've seen tells you how the information gets in here."
Ryan had noticed that. Informants weren't named, meeting places weren't specified, and the methods used to pass the information were nowhere to be found. "Okay, may I safely assume that we will, by some unknown means, get more data on this gentleman?"
"You may safely assume that the possibility is being considered."
"He may be the best lead we have," Jack pointed out.
"I know."
"This can be pretty frustrating stuff, Marty," Ryan said, getting that off his chest.
"Tell me about it," Cantor chuckled. "Wait till you get involved with something really important-sorry, but you know what I mean. Like what the Politburo people really think about something, or how powerful and accurate their missiles are, or whether they have somebody planted in this building."
"One problem at a time."
"Yeah, that must be nice, sport, just to have one problem at a time."
"When can I expect something on Martens?" Ryan asked.
"You'll know when it comes in," Cantor promised. " 'Bye."
"Great." Jack spent the rest of the day and part of another looking through the list of people Martens had dealt with. It was a relief to have to go back to teaching class the next