Simon Endean was aware that somewhere in London there had to exist the wherewithal to discover just about any piece of knowledge known to man, including the name and address of a first-class mercenary. The only problem sometimes is to know where to start looking and whom to start asking.

After a reflective hour drinking coffee in his office, he left and took a taxi down to Fleet Street. Through a friend on the city desk of one of London’s biggest daily papers, he got access to that paper’s morgue and to virtually every newspaper clipping in Britain over the previous ten years concerning mercenaries. There were articles about Katanga, the Congo, Yemen, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Sudan, Nigeria, and Rwanda; news items, commentaries, editorial feature articles, and photographs. He read them all and paid special attention to the names of the writers.

At this stage he was not looking for the name of a mercenary. There were in any case too many names— pseudonyms, noms de guerre, nicknames—and he had little doubt some of them were false. He was looking for the name of an expert on mercenaries, a writer or reporter whose articles seemed to be authoritative enough to indicate that the journalist knew his subject well, who could find his way around the bewildering labyrinth of rival claims and alleged exploits and give a balanced judgment. At the end of two hours he had secured the name he was looking for, although he had never heard of the man before.

There were three articles over the previous three years carrying the same byline, apparently that of an Englishman or American. The writer seemed to know what he was talking about, and he mentioned mercenaries from half a dozen different nationalities, neither overpraising them nor sensationalizing their careers to set spines a tingling. Endean noted the name and the three newspapers in which the articles had appeared, a fact which seemed to indicate that the writer was freelancing. A second phone call to his newspaper friend eventually produced the writer’s address. It was a small flat in North London.

Darkness had already fallen when Endean left Man-Con House, and, having taken his Corvette from the underground parking lot, he drove northward to find the journalist’s flat. The lights were off when he got there, and there was no answer to the doorbell. En-dean hoped the man was not abroad, and the woman in the basement flat confirmed that he was not. He was glad to see the house was not large or smart and hoped the reporter might be hard up for a little extra cash, as freelances usually are. He decided to come back in the morning.

Simon Endean pressed the bell next to the writer’s name just after eight the following morning, and half a minute later a voice tinkled “Yes” at him from the metal grill set in the woodwork.

“Good morning,” said Endean into the grill. “My name is Harris. Walter Harris. I’m a businessman. I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

The door opened, and he mounted to the fourth floor, where a door stood open onto the landing. Framed in it was the man he had come to see. When they were seated in the sitting room, Endean came straight to the point.

“I am a businessman in the City,” he lied smoothly. “I am here, in a sense, representing a consortium of friends, all of whom have this in common: that we all have business interests in a state in West Africa.”

The writer nodded warily and sipped his coffee.

“Recently there have been increasing reports of the possibility of a coup d’etat. The President is a moderate and reasonably good man, as things go down there, and very popular with his people. One of my business friends was told by one of his workers that the coup, if and when it came, could well be Communist-backed. Do you follow me?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Well now, it is felt that no more than a small portion of the army would support a coup unless the speed of it threw them into confusion and left them leader-less. In other words, if it were a fait accompli, the bulk of the army might agree to go along in any case, once they realized the coup had succeeded. But if it came and half failed, the bulk of the army would, we all feel sure, support the President. As you may know, experience shows the twenty hours following the strike are the vital ones.”

“What has this to do with me?” asked the writer.

“I’m coming to that,” said Endean. “The general feeling is that, for the coup to succeed, it would be necessary for the plotters first to assassinate the President. If he remained alive, the coup would fail, or might not even be tried, and all would be well. Therefore the question of palace security is vital and becoming more so. We have been in touch with some friends in the Foreign Office, and they feel it is out of the question to send a professional British officer to advise on security in and around the palace,”

“So?” The writer sipped more coffee and lit a cigarette. He reckoned his visitor was too smooth, too smooth by half.

“So the President would be prepared to accept the services of a professional soldier to advise, on the basis of a contract, on all security matters regarding the person of the President. What he is seeking is a man who could go down there, make a complete and thorough survey of the palace and all its security arrangements, and plug any loopholes in the existing security measures surrounding the President.”

The freelance nodded several times. He had few doubts that the story of the man who called himself Harris was some way from true. For one thing, if palace security was really what was sought, the British government would not be against providing the expert to advise on its improvement. For another, there was a perfectly capable firm at 22 Sloane Street, London, called Watchguard International, whose specialty was precisely that. In a few sentences he pointed this out to Harris.

Endean was not fazed in the slightest. “Ah,” he said, “evidently I have to be a little more candid.”

“It would help,” said the writer.

“The point is, you see, that HMG might agree to send an expert merely to advise, but if the advice was that the palace security troops needed extensive further training—and a crash course, at that—politically speaking a Britisher sent by the government could not do that. And if the President wished to offer the man a longer-term post on his staff, the same would apply. As for Watchguard, one of their ex-Special Air Service men would be fine, but if he were on the staff of the palace guard and a coup were tried despite his presence, there might be a question of combat. Now you know what the rest of Africa would think about a staff man from Watchguard, which most of these blacks regard as being linked to the Foreign Office in some way, doing that. But a pure outsider, although not respectable, would at least be understandable, without exposing the President to the sneer of being a tool of the dirty old imperialists.”

“So what do you want?” asked the writer.

“The name of a good mercenary soldier,” said Endean. “One with brains and initiative, who’ll do a workmanlike job for his money.”

“Why come to me?”

“Your name was recalled by one of our group from an article you wrote several months ago. It seemed very authoritative.”

“I write for my living,” said the freelance.

Endean gently withdrew £200 in £10 notes from his pocket and laid them on the table. “Then write for me.”

“What? An article?”

“No, a memorandum. A list of names and track records. Or you can talk if you like.”

“I’ll write,” said the freelance. He walked to a corner, where his desk, a typewriter, and a stack of white paper comprised the working area of the open-plan flat. Having run a sheet into his machine, he wrote steadily for fifty minutes, consulting occasionally from a set of files beside his desk. When he rose, he walked over to the waiting Endean with three sheets of quarto paper and held them out.