No word from Jimmy after 3 days. Not good. Unlikely to get him to help now, at least the easy way, and not without drawing attention. Other leads were turning up. They'd hacked Plessey's auditor, and had come up with a timeline for all the hardware, and identified a piece which was missing. And they'd identified some information on foreign sales. South Africa had nearly bought some USSes as they had been called. 'Unmanned Seabed Searchers' is what that stood for. Useless name. Liam had called them pigs, as any heavy bit of metal a man had to move ought to be called.
Only reason they hadn't was that they didn't like the size of the things. At least that was what they could tell. A local had been tapped to help with the pitching. One of the less tasteful types of arms dealer that you encountered in Africa, Jeremiah Streich, was the man. He hadn't been caught with his hand in the cookie jar yet, but you could be sure that he wouldn't have been able to buy five Bentleys and a jet if he were only supplying legitimate security needs. He was under investigation now, but probably all the leads would turn out to be truly dead ends, maybe with burned down houses there too.
Liam was to meet with him. Pretext was that he had a client looking for anti-USS capability. He'd been plonked on a flight to Johannesburg, in economy, for his sins, with his minders up in business class. That was OK. He got some shuteye in. He'd made a phone call while in London to ask to set up a meeting. Got through to a secretary of some sort. Told her that he could be found at the Hotel Bohemia, wherever that was.
Hotel Bohemia turned out to be a fairly average businessy hotel in the central business district. Streich sent someone to talk to Liam the day after he got in. No real discussion of trade. More of a briefing to let him know that life was going to get really unpleasant for him if he was involved in any funny business. That was fine by Liam. He didn't fancy meeting any of the local carnivorous wildlife.
His cover story was that his client was having a yacht built, and wanted something to counter USSes for it. It was a known dead end. No one, no matter their wealth, was ever going to be able to defeat encapsulated torpedoes from their yacht. Still, it would get him in, and start the conversation.
Word came the next day, to come out and meet Streich at a safari outpost. He was to go alone, and he'd be leaving his phone in a safe for a while for the conversation. So he'd be off the lead for a little while. A car would collect him in the morning.
He spent the evening going through his scenario. He was to reveal some knowledge of Project Cork, and try to find out about other systems out there, and who had them. He was especially to find out about control channels for them. Simple enough. Maybe this would get him sorted with the Malaysians to go home. Wherever that was.