Thus the licensed arms dealer, a national and resident usually of his native country, sells arms to buyers after consulting his own government to be sure that the sale
is acceptable to them. Such dealers are usually large companies and hold stocks.
This is at the highest level of the private-enterprise arms business. Lower in the pond are more dubious fish. Next down the scale is the licensed dealer who does not hold a stock of weapons in a warehouse but is licensed to hold a franchise by one of the large, often government-owned or -controlled arms-manufacturing companies. He will negotiate a deal on behalf of a client and take his cut. His license depends on his toeing the line with the government whose franchise to operate he holds. This does not prevent some licensed arms dealers from occasionally pulling a fast one, though two well-established arms dealers have been put out of business by their governments when discovered doing it.
Down in the mud at the bottom sit the black-market, arms dealers. These are self-styled, since they hold no license. They may not therefore legally hold any stocks of weapons at all. They remain in business by being of value to the secret buyer, a man or organization who, not being a government or representing one, cannot clinch an intergovernmental deal; who would not be tacitly approved of by a Western government as desirable to receive arms; who cannot persuade a Communist government to support his cause on the grounds of political ideology; but who needs arms.
The vital document in an arms deal is called the End User Certificate. This certifies that the weapons purchase is being made by, or on behalf of, the End User, who almost without exception in the Western world has to be a sovereign government. Only in the case of a flat gift by a secret-service organization to an irregular army, or of a pure black-market deal, does the question of an End User Certificate not apply. Examples of the former were the arming, without payment, by the CIA of the anti-Castro forces of the Bay of Pigs, and the arming of the Congo mercenaries, also by the CIA. An example of the latter is the shipment to Ireland from various European and United States private sources of arms for the Provisional IRA.
The End User Certificate, being an international document, has no specific form, shape, or size, or specific wording. It is a written affirmation from a certified representative of a national government that either he, the bearer, or Mr. X, the dealer, is authorized to apply to the supplier government for permission to purchase and export a quantity of arms.
The vital point about the End User Certificate is that some countries carry out the most rigorous checks to ensure the authenticity of this document, while others come under the heading of "no questions asked" suppliers. Needless to say, End User Certificates, like anything else, can be forged. It was into this world that Shannon carefully entered when he flew to Hamburg.
He was aware that he could certainly not make a direct application for permission to buy arms to any European government with a chance of success. Nor would any Communist government be kind enough to donate the weapons; indeed, it would be totally opposed to the toppling of Kimba. By the same token, any direct application would surely blow the entire operation.
He was also not in a position, for the same reason, to approach one of the leading government-owned arms-makers, such as Fabrique Nationale of Belgium, for any request put to a government-owned combine in the arms-making and -selling business would be passed on to the government; similarly, he could not approach a large private arms dealer, such as Cogswell and Harrison of London or Parker Hale of Birmingham. In the same category, Bofors of Sweden, Oerlikon of Switzerland, CETME of Spain, Werner and others in Germany, Omnipol of Czechoslovakia, and Fiat of Italy were ruled out.
He also had his own peculiar buying circumstances to consider. The amount he had to spend was too small to interest the big legitimate licensed dealers who habitually dealt in millions. He could not have interested the erstwhile king of the private arms dealers, Sam Cum mings of Interarmco, who for two decades after the war ran a private arms empire from his penthouse suite in
Monaco and had retired to enjoy his wealth; nor Dr. Strakaty of Vienna, the licensee franchise holder for Omnipol across the border at Washington Street 11, Prague; nor Dr. Langenstein in Munich; nor Dr. Peretti in Rome; nor M. Cammermundt in Brussels; nor Herr Otto Schlueter in Hamburg.
He had to go farther down the scale, to the men who dealt in smaller sums and quantities. He knew the names of G?nther Leinhauser, the German, former associate of Cummings; in Paris, of Pierre Lorez, Maurice Herscu, and Paul Favier. But on consideration he had decided to go and see two men in Hamburg.
The trouble with the packet of arms he sought was that it looked like what it was: a single packet of arms for a single job, and it would not need a keen military mind to realize that job had to be the taking of one building within a short period. There was not enough leeway in the quantities to kid any professional soldier that a Defense Ministry, even a small one, was behind the order.
Shannon had therefore decided to split the packet even smaller, so that at least the items sought from each dealer were consistent. A mixed package would be a giveaway.
From one of the men he was going to see he wanted 400,000 rounds of standard 9mm. ammunition, the kind that fits into automatic pistols and also submachine carbines. Such a consignment was too large and too heavy to be bought on the black market and shipped without a large amount of complicated smuggling to get it on board. But it could well be the kind of consignment needed by the police force of any small country, and was not suspicious in that there were no matching guns in the same packet and it could therefore pass under scrutiny as an order designed simply to replenish stock.
To get it, he needed a licensed arms dealer who could slip such a small order through the procedures among a batch of bigger orders. Although licensed to trade in arms, the dealer must nevertheless be prepared to do a
bent deal with a forged End User Certificate. This was where an intimate knowledge of the no-questions-asked countries came in useful.
Ten years earlier there had been vast quantities of superfluous weaponry lying about Europe in private hands, "black," i.e. illegally held, arms, leftovers from colonial wars such as those of the French in Algeria and the Belgians in the Congo.
But a series of small irregular operations and wars throughout the 1960s, notably Yemen and Nigeria, had used them up. So he would have to find a man who would use a bent End User Certificate and present it to a supplier government that asked no or few questions. Only four years earlier the most noted of these was the Czech government, which, although Communist, had continued the old Czech tradition of selling arms to all comers. Four years earlier one could have walked into Prague with a suitcase full of dollars, gone to the Omni pol headquarters, selected one's hardware, and a few hours later have taken off from the airport in one's chartered plane with the stuff on board. It was that simple. But since the Soviet takeover in 1968 the KGB had taken to vetting all such applications, and far too many questions were being asked.
Two other countries had earned a reputation of asking few questions about where the presented End User Certificate really came from. One was Spain, traditionally interested in earning foreign currency, and whose CETME factories produced a wide range of weapons, which were then sold by the Spanish Army Ministry to almost all comers. The other, a newcomer, was Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia had begun manufacturing her own arms only a few years earlier and inevitably had reached a point where her own armed forces were equipped with domestic arms. The next step was overproduction (because factories cannot be abandoned a few years after they have been most expensively started), and hence the desire to export. Being a newcomer to the arms market, with weapons of unknown quality, and eager for
foreign currency, Yugoslavia had adopted the "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies" attitude to applicants for weaponry. She produced a good light company mortar and a useful bazooka, the latter based heavily on the Czech RPG-7.
Because the goods were new, Shannon estimated a dealer could persuade Belgrade to sell a tiny quantity of these arms, consisting of two 60mm. mortar tubes and a hundred bombs, plus two bazooka ,tubes and forty rockets. The excuse could well be that the customer was a new one, wishing to make some tests with the new weaponry and then come back with a far larger order.
For the first of his orders (the 400,000 rounds of 9mm. ammunition), Shannon intended to go to a dealer Kcensed to trade with CETME in Madrid but known also not to be above putting through a phony End User Certificate. For the second, Shannon had heard the name of another man in Hamburg who had skilfully . cultivated the baby Yugoslav arms-makers at an early stage and had established good relationships with them, although he was unlicensed.
Normally there is no point in going to an unlicensed dealer. Unless he can fulfill the order out of illegally held stocks of his own, which means no export license, his only use can be in securing a bent but plausible End User Certificate for those who cannot find their own, and then persuading a licensed dealer to accept this piece of paper. The licensed dealer can then fulfill it, with government approval, from his own legally held stocks and secure an export license?or put the phony certificate to a government, with his name and guarantee backing it up. But occasionally he has one other use which makes him employable: his intimate knowledge of the state of the market and where to go at any given moment with any given requirement to have the best chance of success. It was for this quality that Shannon was visiting the second man on his Hamburg list.
When he arrived in the Hansa city, Shannon stopped by the Landesbank to find his ?5000 was there al-
ready. He took the whole sum in the form of a banker's check made out to himself and went on to the Atlantic Hotel, where his room was booked. Deciding to give the Reeperbahn a miss, and being tired, he dined early and went to bed.
Johann Schlinker, whom Shannon confronted in his small and modest office the next morning, was short, round, and jovial. His eyes sparkled with bonhomie and welcome, so much so that it took Shannon ten seconds to realize the man could be trusted as far as the door. The pair of them spoke in English but talked of dollars ?the twin languages of the arms marketplace.
Shannon thanked the arms dealer for agreeing to see him and offered his passport in the name of Keith Brown as identification.
The German flicked through it and handed it back. "And what brings you here?" he asked.
"You were recommended to me, Herr Schlinker, as a businessman with a high reputation for reliability in the business of military and police hardware."
Schlinker smiled and nodded, but the flattery made no impression. "By whom, may I ask?"
Shannon mentioned the name of a man in Paris, closely associated with African affairs on behalf of a certain French governmental but clandestine service. The two had met during one of Shannon's previous African wars, and a month earlier Shannon had looked him up in Paris for old times' sake. A week ago Shannon had called the man again, and he had indeed recommended Schlinker to Shannon for the kind of merchandise he wanted. Shannon had told the man he would be using the name Brown.
Schlinker raised his eyebrows. "Would you excuse me a minute?" he asked and left the room. In an adjoining booth Shannon could hear the chatter of a Telex.
It was thirty minutes before Schlinker came back. He was smiling. "I had to call a friend of mine in Paris on a business matter," he said brightly. "Please go on."
Shannon knew perfectly well he had Telexed to an-
other arms dealer in Paris, asking the man to contact the French agent and get a confirmation that Keith Brown was all right. Apparently the confirmation had just come back.
"I want to buy a quantity of nine-mm. ammunition," he said bluntly. "I know it is a small order, but I have been approached by a group of people in Africa who need this ammunition for their own affairs, and I believe if those affairs go well there would be further and much larger shipments in the future."
"How much would the order be?" asked the German.
"Four hundred thousand rounds."
Schlinker made a moue. "That is not very much," he said simply.
"Certainly. For the moment the budget is not large. One is hoping a small investment now might lead to greater things later on."
The German nodded. It had happened in the past. "The first order is usually a small one. "Why did they come to you? You are not 'a dealer in arms or ammunition."
"They happened to have retained me as a technical adviser on military matters of all kinds. When the question of seeking a fresh supplier for their needs arose, they asked me to come to Europe for them," said Shannon.
"And you have no End User Certificate?" the German asked.
"No, I'm afraid not. I hoped that sort of thing could be arranged."
"Oh, yes, it can," said Schlinker. "No problem there. It takes longer and costs more. But it can be done. One could supply this order from stocks, but they are held in my Vienna office. That way there would be no requirement for an End User Certificate. Or one could obtain such a document and make the application normally through legal channels."
"I would prefer the latter," said Shannon. "The delivery has to be by ship, and to bring that sort of quantity through Austria and into Italy, then on board a ship,
would be hazardous. It enters an area I am not familiar with. Moreover, interception could mean long terms in prison for those found in possession. Apart from that, the cargo might be identified as coming from your stocks."
Schlinker smiled. Privately he knew there would be no danger of that, but Shannon was right about the border controls. The newly emergent menace of the Black September terrorists had made Austria, Germany, and Italy highly nervous about strange cargoes passing through the borders.
Shannon, for his part, did not trust Schlinker not to sell them the ammunition one day and betray them the next. With a phony End User Certificate, the German would have to keep his side of the bargain; it would be he who presented the bent certificate to the authorities.
"I think you are perhaps right," Schlinker said at last. "Very well. I can offer you nine-mm. standard ball at sixty-five dollars per thousand. There would be a surcharge of ten per cent for the certificate, and another ten per cent free on board."
