Ultimatum by Antony Trew Read Free Book Online Page A

story?’
    ‘Yes. There seem to have been no witnesses of any fighting. But something did happen in Shed 27 that night.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘There were armed guards in the shed with these trucks. They were found the next day. All were …’
    At that stage the call was cut off and the voice of the girl on the switchboard came through. ‘I am sorry, m’sieu. There is a fault on the line.’
    ‘ Merde !’said Gamin. ‘It should be now. Listen. Please get me that number again. As soon as you can. It is urgent. Please.’
    ‘I will try, m’sieu. But it will take time. The lines to Paris are very busy. Where shall I call you?’
    ‘As before. In the bar.’ He put down the phone and stepped out of the booth.
    Two men came up to him. One tall and thin with dark glasses, the other short and stocky with shadowed jowls.
    The thin man said, ‘Monsieur Pierre Gamin?’
    ‘Yes,’ said the Frenchman.
    From an inside pocket the man produced a plastic-covered identity card. ‘Deuxième Bureau,’ he said. ‘Please come with us, m’sieu. They wish to talk to you at headquarters .’
    ‘Talk? About what?’
    The thin man shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have no idea, m’sieu.’
    Pierre Gamin was not as astonished as he tried to appear. He’d foreseen the possibility. That was why he’d given Réné St Clair of Paris Match aletter to Virginie, Gamin’s wife, for delivery that night in Paris. Inside the letter was a sealed envelope addressed to Jules Boyer.
    Réné St Clair had left Beirut on an Air France flight about the time Gamin’s first telephone call to Paris came through. The letter to Jules Boyer contained all that Pierre Gamin had intended to say in that call … and rather more.

7
    At noon the two Benz trucks belonging to D. B. Mahroutti Bros shed the escorting Citroëns. Shortly afterwards they reached the border posts at Masnaa. There, having completed the necessary formalities, they were passed through. A few kilometres on they were joined by an escort of Syrian armoured cars. These kept sufficiently far from the trucks, two ahead and two following, to allay curiosity. It was, in any event, a road on which military activity was commonplace .
    Little more than an hour after leaving the border the motorcade arrived safely in Damascus.
     
    At eight o’clock that night the Lebanese Minister of Defence, at home changing for an official dinner, received an urgent call from Damascus on a scrambler line. It was an awkward time for the Minister who was in his bath and already somewhat late, but since the caller was the Syrian Minister of Defence he at once went to the phone. In a somewhat agitated voice his caller informed him that the Mahroutti Bros’ trucks had arrived at the Military Ordinance Depot between one and two that afternoon. Later, when the packing cases were opened, it had been found that two of them contained scrap metal of the same weight as the equipment missing from them.
    The Lebanese Minister, having expressed astonishment and dismay, was quick to grasp the point. ‘So there has been substitution,’ he said.
    ‘Yes. It was evidently the purpose of the Israeli attack. Of the two packing cases that are missing one contained a warhead, the other the detonating component. I understandthey are always kept apart until the weapon is assembled for operational purposes’
    ‘So they’ve got a warhead but no delivery vehicle.’ The Lebanese Minister paused. ‘I wonder if that’s what they wanted. After all, they have the Lance missiles.’
    ‘Yes. There’s no way of knowing. It may be they were interrupted, or they took the smaller packing cases because they were more easily transported.’
    The Lebanese Minister said, ‘How would the Israelis have known which contained the warheads and detonators?’
    ‘In the same way they learnt about the consignment,’ said the Syrian Minister. ‘Their intelligence service is highly efficient. Somehow, somewhere, there has been a