Best Kept Secret

colleague will accompany you, Mr Clifton, to where the crate will be unloaded.’
    Sebastian and the young officer walked out of the customs shed to see a crane lowering its hoist into the
Queen Mary’s
hold. Twenty minutes later, the first piece to appear was a
massive wooden crate Sebastian had never seen before. It was lowered slowly on to the dockside, coming to rest at loading bay six.
    A group of dockers removed the hoist and chains from around the crate, so the crane could swing back and gather up its next piece of cargo, while the crate was transferred by a waiting forklift
truck into shed No. 40. The whole process had taken forty-three minutes. The young officer asked Sebastian to return to the office, as there was some paperwork to be completed.

    The police car turned on its siren, overtook the Sotheby’s van on the road from London to Southampton and indicated to the driver that he should pull into the nearest
layby.
    Once the van had come to a halt, two officers stepped out of the police car. The first approached the front of the van, while his colleague made his way to the rear. The second officer took a
Swiss army knife from his pocket, opened it and thrust the blade firmly into the back left-hand tyre. Once he heard a hissing sound, he returned to the police car.
    The van driver wound down his window and gave the officer a quizzical look. ‘I don’t think I was breaking the speed limit, officer.’
    ‘No you were not, sir. But I thought you should know you have a puncture in your left-hand rear tyre.’
    The driver got out, walked to the back of the van and stared in disbelief at the flat tyre.
    ‘You know officer, I never felt a thing.’
    ‘It’s always the same with slow punctures,’ said the officer, as a white Bedford van drove past them. He saluted, said, ‘Happy to have been of assistance, sir,’
then joined his colleague in the patrol car and drove off.
    If the Sotheby’s driver had asked to see the policeman’s warrant card, he would have discovered that he was attached to the Metropolitan Police in Rochester Row, and was therefore
miles outside his jurisdiction. But then, as Sir Alan had discovered, not many officers who’d served under him in the SAS were currently working for the Hampshire police force, and were also
available at short notice on a Sunday morning.

    Don Pedro and Diego were driven to Ministro Pistarini international airport. Their six large suitcases went through customs without being checked, and they later boarded a BOAC
aircraft bound for London.
    ‘I always prefer to travel on a British carrier,’ Don Pedro told the purser as they were shown to their seats in first class.
    The Boeing Stratocruiser took off at 5.43 p.m., just a few minutes behind schedule.

    The driver of the white Bedford van swung on to the dock-side and headed straight for shed No. 40 at the far end of the docks. No one in the van was at all surprised that
Colonel Scott-Hopkins knew exactly where he was going. After all, he’d carried out a recce forty-eight hours before. The colonel was a details man; never left anything to chance.
    When the van came to a halt, he handed a key to Captain Hartley. His second-in-command got out and unlocked the shed’s double doors. The colonel drove the van into the vast building. In
front of them, in the middle of the floor, stood a massive wooden crate.
    While the engineer locked the door, the other three went to the back of the van and removed their equipment.
    The carpenter placed the ladder up against the crate, climbed up and began to remove the nails that kept the lid in place with a claw hammer. While he went about his work, the colonel walked to
the far end of the shed and climbed into the cab of a small crane that had been left there overnight, then drove it across to the crate.
    The engineer removed the heavy coil of rope from the back of the van, then made a noose at one end before throwing it over his shoulder. He stood back and waited to perform the hangman’s
duties. It took the carpenter eight minutes to remove all the nails from the thick lid on the top of the packing case, and when he’d completed the task he climbed back down the ladder and
placed the lid on the floor. The engineer took his place on the ladder, the coil of rope still hanging over his left shoulder. When he reached the top step, he bent down, lowered himself into the
box and passed the thick rope securely under each arm of
The Thinker
. He would have