by Wilbur Smith
‘Every time you let a militant walk away from a strike you immediately create the conditions for further strikes, to free the captive.’
‘I have the clearance for condition Delta,’ Parker reiterated with a trace of acid in his tone now, ‘but I am making it clear that it will be used only with the greatest discretion. We ate not an assassination unit, General Stride.’ Parker nodded to an assistant off-screen. ‘I am going through to the South Africans now to explain Atlas.’ The image receded into darkness.
Peter Stride leapt up abruptly and tried to pace the narrow aisle between the seats, but there was insufficient headroom for his tall frame and he flung himself angrily into the seat again.
Kingston Parker stood up from his communications desk in the outer office of his suite in the west wing of the Pentagon. The two communications technicians scurried out of his way and his personal secretary opened the door to his inner office.
He moved with peculiar grace for such a large man, and there was no excess weight on his frame, his big heavy bones lean of flesh. His clothes were of fine cloth, well cut – the best that Fifth Avenue could offer – but they were worn almost to the point of shoddiness, the button-down collar slightly frayed, the Italian shoes scuffled at the toes as though material trappings counted not at all with him. Nevertheless he wore them with a certain unconscious panache, and he looked ten years younger than his fifty three, only a few silver strands in the thick bushy mane of hair.
The inner office was Spartan in its furnishings, all of it U.S. Government issue, utilitarian and impersonal, only the books that filled every shelf and the grand piano were his own. The piano was a Bechstein grand and much too large for the room. Parker ran his right hand lightly across the keyboard as he passed it – but he went on to the desk.
He dropped into the swivel chair and shuffled through the dozen intelligence folders on his desk. Each of them contained the latest computer print-outs that he had requested. There were personal histories, appraisals, and character studies of all the personalities that had so far become involved in the taking of Speedbird 070.
Both the ambassadors – their pink files signified the highest security ratings, and were marked ‘Heads of Departments only’. Four other files in lower echelon green were devoted to the South African Government personalities with decision-making capabilities in an emergency. The thickest file was that of the South African Prime Minister – and once again Parker noted wryly that the man had been imprisoned by the pro-British government of General Jan Smuts during World War II as a militant opponent of his country’s involvement in that war. He wondered just how much sympathy he would have for other militants now.
There were files for the South African Ministers of Defence and of Justice, and still slimmer green files for the Commissioner of Police and for the Assistant Commissioner who had been given the on-site responsibility of handling the emergency. Of them all only the Prime Minister emerged as a distinct personality – a powerful bulldog figure, not a man easily influenced or dissuaded, and instinctively Kingston Parker recognized that ultimate authority rested here.
There was one other pink file at the bottom of the considerable stack, so well handled that the cardboard cover was splitting at the hinge. The original print-out in this file had been requisitioned two years previously, with quarterly up-dates since that time.
‘STRIDE PETER CHARLES’ it was headed – and reclassified ‘Head of Atlas only’.
Kingston Parker could probably have recited its contents by heart – but he untied the ribbons now, and opened it in his lap.
Puffing deliberately at his pipe he began to turn slowly through the loose pages.
There were the bare bones of the subject’s life. Born 1939, one of twin war-time babies of a military family, his father killed in action three years later when the armoured brigade of guards he commanded was overrun by one of Erwin Rommel’s devastating drives across the deserts of North Africa. The elder twin brother had inherited the baronetcy and Peter followed the well-travelled family course, Harrow and Sandhurst, where he must have disconcerted the family by his academic brilliance and his reluctance to participate in team sports – preferring the loner activities of golf and tennis and long-distance running.
Kingston Parker pondered that a moment. They were pointers to the man’s character that had disconcerted him as well. Parker had the intellectual’s generalized contempt for the military, and he would have preferred a man who conformed more closely to his ideal of the brass-headed soldier.
Yet when the young Stride had entered his father’s regiment, it seemed that the exceptional intelligence had been diverted into conventional channels and the preference for independent thought and action held in check, if not put aside completely – until his regiment was sent to Cyprus at the height of the unrest in that country. Within a week of arrival the young Stride had been seconded, with his commanding officer’s enthusiastic approval, to central army intelligence. Perhaps the commanding officer had already become aware of the problems involved in harbouring a wonder-boy in the tradition-bound portals of his officers’ mess.
For once the military had made a logical, if not an outright brilliant, choice. Stride in the sixteen years since then had not made a single mistake, apart from the marriage which had ended in divorce within two years. Had he remained with his regiment that might have affected his career – but since Cyprus Stride’s progress had been as unconventional and meteoric as his brain.
In a dozen different and difficult assignments since then, he had honed his gifts and developed new talents; rising against the trend of reduced British expenditure on defence, he had reached staff rank before thirty years of age.
At NATO Headquarters he had made powerful friends and admirers on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the end of his three-year term in Brussels he had been promoted to major-general and been transferred to head British Intelligence in Ireland, bringing his own particular dedication and flair to the job.
A great deal of the credit for containing the sweep of Irish terrorism through Britain was his, and his in-depth study of the urban guerrilla and the mind of the militant, although classified departmentally, was probably the definitive work on the subject.
The Atlas concept was first proposed in this study, and so it was that Stride had been on the short list to head the project. It seemed certain the appointment would be made – the Americans had been impressed with his study and his friends from NATO had not forgotten him. His appointment was approved in principle. Then at the last moment there had developed sudden and intense opposition to the appointment of a professional soldier to head such a sensitive agency. The opposition had come from both Whitehall and Washington simultaneously, and had prevailed.
Kingston Parker knocked out his pipe, and carried the file across the room and laid it open on the music rack of the piano. He seated himself at the keyboard and, still studying the printout sheets, began to play.
The stream of music, the lovely ethereal strains of Liszt, did not interrupt his thoughts but seemed to buoy them brightly upwards.
Parker had not wanted Stride, had considered from the very first that he was dangerous, sensing in him ambitions and motivations which would be difficult to control. Parker would have preferred his own nominees – Tanner, who now commanded the Mercury arm of Atlas, or Colin Noble – and had expected that Stride would have declined a command so far below his capability.
However, Stride had accepted the lesser appointment and headed Thor. Parker suspected that there was unusual motivation in this, and had made every effort to study the man at first hand. On five separate occasions he had ordered Stride to Washington, and focused upon him the full strength of his charisma and personality. He had even invited him to stay with him in his New York home, spending many hours with him in deep far-ranging discussions – from which he had developed a prudent respect for the man’s mind, but had been able to reach no firm conclusions as to his future in Atlas.
Parke
r turned a page of the character appraisal. When he looked for the weakness in an opponent, Parker had long ago learned to start at the groin. With this man there was no evidence of any unnatural sexual leanings. Certainly he was not homosexual, if anything too much the opposite. There had been at least a dozen significant liaisons with the opposite sex since his divorce. However, all of these had been discreet and dignified. Although three of the ladies had been married, none of them were the wives of his subordinates in the armed services, nor of brother officers or of men who might be able to adversely affect his career. –
The women he chose all had certain qualities in common – they all tended to be tall, intelligent and successful. One was a journalist who had her own syndicated column, another was a former fashion model who now designed and marketed her clothes through her own prestigious outlets in London and on the continent. Then there was an actress who was a leading female member of the Royal Shakespeare Company – Parker skimmed the list impatiently, for Parker himself had no sympathy nor patience with a man who succumbed to the dictates of his body.
Parker had trained himself to be totally celibate, channelling all his sexual energies into pursuits of the mind, while this man Stride, on the other hand, was not above conducting two or three of his liaisons concurrently.
Parker moved on to the second area of weakness. Stride’s inheritance had been decimated by the punitive British death duties – yet his private income even after savage taxation was still a little over twenty thousand pounds sterling a year, and when this was added to his salary and privileges as a general officer, it enabled him to live in good style. He could even indulge in the mild extravagance of collecting rare books – and, Parker observed acidly, the greater extravagance of collecting rare ladies.
However, there was no trace of any illicit hoard – no Swiss bank accounts, no deposits of gold bullion, no foreign properties, no shares in off-share companies held by nominees – and Parker had searched diligently for them, for they would have indicated payments received, perhaps from foreign governments. A man like Stride had much to sell, at prices he could set himself – but it seemed he had not done so.
Stride did not smoke; Parker removed the old black briar from his own mouth, regarded it affectionately for a moment. It was his one indulgence, a harmless one despite what the surgeon-general of the United States had determined, and he took the stem firmly between his teeth again.
Stride took alcohol in moderation and was considered knowledgeable on the subject of wine. He raced occasionally, more as a social outing than as a serious punter, and the odd fifty pounds he could well afford. There was no evidence of other gambling. However, he did not hunt, nor did he shoot – traditional pursuits of the English gentleman. Perhaps he had moral objections to blood sports, Parker thought, though it seemed unlikely, for Stride was a superlative marksman with rifle, shotgun and pistol. He had represented Britain at the Munich Olympics as a pistol shot, winning a gold in the fifty metre class, and he spent at least an hour every day on the range.
Parker turned to the page of the print-out that gave the man’s medical history. He must be superbly fit as well – his body weight at the age of thirty-nine was one pound less than it had been at twenty-one, and he still trained like a front-line soldier. Parker noticed that he had logged sixteen parachute jumps the previous month. Since joining Atlas he had no opportunity or time for golf, though when he was with NATO Stride had played off a handicap of three.
Parker closed the folder and played on softly, but neither the sensual polished feel of cool ivory beneath his fingertips nor the achingly lovely lilt of the music could dispel his sense of disquiet. Exhaustive as the report was, yet it left unanswered questions, like why Stride had downgraded himself to accept the command of Thor – he was not then kind of man who acted ill-advisedly. Yet the most haunting questions that nagged at Parker were just how strong were his qualities of resilience and independent thought, just how strongly was he driven by his ambitions and that penetrating intellect – and just how great a threat such a man would present to the evolution of Atlas into its ultimate role.
‘Doctor Parker, sir—’ his assistant knocked lightly and entered, ‘– there are new developments.’
Parker sighed softly. ‘I’m coming,’ he said, and let the last sad and beautiful notes fall from his long, powerful fingers before he stood up.
The Hawker slid almost silently down the sky. The pilot had closed down power at five thousand feet and made his final approach without touching the throttles again. He was ten knots above the stall as he passed over the boundary fence and he touched down twenty feet beyond the chevron markings of the threshold of runway One Fife, instantly applying maximum safe braking. One Fife was the secondary cross-wind runway and the Hawker’s roll-out was so short that every part of the approach and landing had been screened by the buildings of the main airport terminal from where Speedbird 070 stood at the southern intersection of the main taxiway.
The pilot swung the Hawker through 360° and back-tracked sedately up runway 15, using just enough power to keep her rolling.
‘Well done,’ grunted Peter Stride, crouching behind the pilot’s seat. He was almost certain that nobody aboard 070 had remarked their arrival.
‘They’ve prepared a slot for us, with hook up to the electrical mains at the north—’ Peter broke off as he saw the apron marshal waving them in with the bats, and beyond him a tight group of four men waiting. Three of them wore camouflage battle dress and the other the trim blue uniform, cap and gold insignia of a senior South African police officer.
The uniformed officer was the first to greet Peter as he came down the Hawker’s fold-out air-stairs.
‘Prinsloo.’ He shook hands. ‘Lieutenant-General.’
He ranked Peter, but it was a police, not a military appointment. He was a stocky man, with steel-rimmed spectacles, a little paunchy, and not less than fifty-five years of age. He had the rather heavy features, the fleshiness of jowl and lips, that Peter had noticed so often in Belgian and Dutch peasants during his NATO tour in the Netherlands. A man of the earth, dour and conservative.
‘Let me introduce Commandant Boonzaier.’ This was a military rank, equivalent to that of colonel, and he was a younger man, but with the same thick accent and his features cast in the same mould. A tall man, however, only an inch or so shorter than Peter – but both of the South Africans were suspicious and resentful, and the reason was immediately apparent.
‘I have been instructed to take my orders from you, General,’ and there was a subtle shift of position, the two officers ranging themselves beside Peter, but facing each other, and he was aware instantly that not all the hostility was directed at him. There had been friction between police and military already – and the basic value of Atlas was underlined yet again.
A single clean-cut line of command and of responsibility was absolutely essential – Peter’s mind flicked back to the shoot-out at Lamaca Airport between Egyptian commandos and Cypriot national guardsmen, from which the hijackers of the grounded jet emerged unscathed while the airfield was littered with the burning wreckage of the Egyptian transport aircraft and dozens of dead and dying Cypriots and Egyptians.
The first principle of terrorist strategy was to strike at the point where national responsibilities were blurred. Atlas cut through that.
‘Thank you.’ Peter accepted command without flaunting it. ‘My back-up team will land in just over three hours’ time. We will, of course, use force only as a last resort – but if it comes to that, I will use exclusively Atlas personnel in any counter-strike. I would like to make that quite clear immediately.’ And he saw the line of the soldier’s mouth harden with disappointment.
‘My men are the élite—’
‘It’s a British aircraft, most of the hostages are British or American nationals – it’s a political decision, Colonel. But I would value your help in other areas.’ Peter turned him aside tactfully.
‘Firstly, I want you to
suggest a position where I can place my surveillance equipment – and then we will go over the ground together.’
Peter had no difficulty selecting his forward observation post. The service manager’s roomy, sparsely furnished office on the third floor of the terminal building overlooked the entire service area and the southern portion of the taxiway where the Boeing stood.
The windows had been left open when the offices were evacuated, so there was no need to change the external appearance of the room.
The overhang of the observation balcony on the floor above shaded the interior, and the office was deep enough to ensure that an observer out there in the bright glare of sunshine would not be able to see into the room, even with a powerful lens. The militants would expect surveillance from the glass control tower high above. – any deception, however trivial, was worth while.
The surveillance equipment was lightweight and compact, the television cameras were neither of them bigger than a super 8-mm home movie camera and a man could carry in one hand both of the aluminium extension tripods. However, the cameras could zoom to 800-mm focal length, and they repeated on the screens of the command console in the cabin of the Hawker, while the image was simultaneously stored on videotape.
The audio intensifier was more bulky, but no heavier. It had a four-foot dish antenna, with the sound collector in the centre. The telescopic sight could aim the intensifier at a sound source with the accuracy of a sniper’s rifle – could focus on the lips of a human being at eight hundred yards’ distance and clearly record normal conversation at that range, passing sound directly to the command console and at the same time storing it on the big magnetic tape spools.
Two of Peter’s communications team were posted here, with a plentiful supply of coffee and doughnuts, and Peter, accompanied by the South African colonel and his staff, went up in the elevator to the glass house of the control tower.