by Wilbur Smith
‘Caliph,’ Peter reminded the Baroness quietly, and she turned back to him.
‘I first heard the name two years ago, in circumstances I shall never forget—’ She hesitated. ‘May I take it that you are fully aware of the circumstances surrounding my husband’s kidnapping and murder? I do not wish to repeat the whole harrowing story – unless it is necessary.’
‘I know it,’ Peter assured her.
‘You know that I delivered the ransom, personally.’
‘Yes.’
The rendezvous was a deserted airfield near the East German border. They were waiting with a light twin-engined aircraft, a Russian-built reconnaissance machine with its markings sprayed over—’ Peter remembered the meticulous planning and the special equipment used in the hijacking of 070. It all tallied. ‘– There were four men, masked. They spoke Russian, or rather two of them spoke Russian. The other two never spoke at all. It was bad Russian—’ Peter remembered now that the Baroness spoke Russian and five other languages. She had a Middle European background. Peter wished he had studied her intelligence file more thoroughly. Her father has escaped with her from her native Poland when she was a small child. ‘– Almost certainly, the aircraft and the Russian were intended to cover their real identity,’ she mused. ‘I was with them for some little time. I had forty-five million Swiss francs to deliver and even in notes of large denomination it was a bulky and heavy cargo to load aboard the aircraft After the first few minutes, when they realized that I had no police escort, they relaxed and joked amongst themselves as they worked at loading the money. The word “Caliph” was used in the English version, in a Russian exchange that roughly translates as “He was right again” and the reply “Caliph is always right”. Perhaps the use of the English word made me remember it so clearly—’ She stopped again, grief naked and bleak in the green eyes.
‘You told the police?’ Peter asked gently, and she shook her head.
‘No. I don’t know why not. They had been so ineffectual up to that time. I was very angry and sad and confused. Perhaps even then I had already decided that I would hunt them myself – and this was all I had.’
That was the only time you heard the name?’ he asked, and she did not reply immediately. They watched the children at play – and it seemed fantasy to be discussing the source of evil in such surroundings, against a background of laughter and innocent high spirits.
When the Baroness answered, she seemed to have changed direction completely.
There had been that hiatus in international terrorism. The Americans seemed to have beaten the hijacking problem with their Cuban agreement and the rigorous airport searches. Your own successful campaign against the Provisional wing of the IRA in this country, the Entebbe raid and the German action at Mogadishu were all hailed as breakthrough victories. Everybody was beginning to congratulate themselves that it was beaten. The Arabs were too busy with the war in the Lebanon and with inter-group rivalries It had been a passing thing’ She shook her head again. ‘But terrorism is a growth industry – the risks are less than those of financing a major movie. There is a proven sixty-seven per cent chance of success, the capital outlay is minimal, with outrageous profits in cash and publicity, with instant results—and potential power not even calculable. Even in the event of total failure, there is still a better than fifty per cent survival rate for the participants.’ She smiled again, but now there was no joy and no warmth in it. ‘Any businessman will tell you it’s better than the commodity markets.’
The only thing against it is that the business is run by amateurs,’ Peter said, ‘or by professionals blinded by hatred or crippled by parochial interests and limited goals.’
And now she turned to him, wriggling around in the canvas swing seat, curling those long legs up under her in that double-jointed woman’s manner, impossible for a man.
‘You are ahead of me, Peter.’ She caught herself. ‘I am sorry, but General Stride is too much to say, and I have the feeling I have known you so long.’ The smile now was fleeting but warm. ‘My name is Magda,’ she went on simply. ‘Will you use it?’
‘Thank you, Magda.’
‘Yes.’ She picked up the thread of conversation again. ‘The business is in the hands of amateurs – but it is too good to stay that way’
‘Enter Caliph,’ Peter guessed
‘That is the whisper that I have heard; usually there is no name. Just that there was a meeting in Athens, or Amsterdam or East Berlin or Aden – only once have I heard the name Caliph again But if he exists already he must be one of the richest men in the world, and soon he will be the most powerful.’
‘One man?’ Peter asked.
‘I do not know. Perhaps a group of men – perhaps even a government. Russia, Cuba, an Arab country? Who knows yet?’
‘And the goals?’
‘Money, firstly. Wealth to tackle the political objectives – and finally power, raw power.’ Magda Altmann stopped herself, and made a self-deprecating gesture. ‘This is guesswork again, my own guessing – based only on past performance. They have the wealth now, provided by OPEC and – myself amongst others. Now he or they have started on the political objectives, a soft target first. An African racist minority government unprotected by powerful allies. It should have succeeded. They should have won an entire nation – a mineral-rich nation – for the price of a dozen lives. Even had they failed to gain the main prize, the consolation prize was forty tons of pure gold. That’s good business, Peter. It should have succeeded. It had succeeded. The Western nations actually put pressure on the victims, and forced them to accede to the demands – it was a trial run, and it worked perfectly, except for one man.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Peter softly, ‘as afraid as I have ever been in my life.’
‘Yes, I am also, Peter. I have been afraid ever since that terrible phone call on the night they took Aaron, and the more I learn the more afraid I become.’
‘What happens next?’
‘I do not know – but the name he has chosen has the hint of megalomania, perhaps a man with visions of godlike domination—’ She spread her fine narrow hands and the diamond flashed white fire. ‘– We cannot hope to fathom the mind of a man who could embark on such a course. Probably he believes that what he is doing is for the eventual good of mankind. Perhaps he wants to attack the rich by amassing vast wealth, to destroy the tyrant with universal tyranny, to free mankind by making it a slave to terror. Perhaps he seeks to right the wrongs of the world with evil and injustice.’
She touched his arm again, and this time the strength of those long fingers startled Peter. ‘You have to help me find him, Peter I am going to put everything into the hunt, there will be no reservations, all the wealth and influence that I control will be at your disposal.’
‘You choose me because you believe that I murdered a wounded woman prisoner?’ Peter asked. ‘Are those my credentials?’ And she recoiled from him slightly, and stared at him with the slightly Mongolian slant of eyes, then her shoulders slumped slightly.
‘All right, that is part of it, but only a small part of it. You know I have read what you have written, you must know that I have studied you very carefully. You are the best man available to me, and finally you have proved that your involvement is complete. I know that you have the strength and skill and ruthlessness to find Caliph and destroy him – before he destroys us and the world we know.’
Peter was looking inwards. He had believed that the beast had a thousand heads, and for each that was struck off a thousand more would grow – but now for the first time he imagined the full shape of the beast, it was still in ambush, not clear yet, but there was only a single head. Perhaps, after all, it was mortal.
‘Will you help me, Peter?’ she asked.
‘You know I will,’ he answered quietly. ‘I do not have any choice.’
She flew in the brilliance of high sunlight reflected from snowfields of blazing white, jetting through her turns with flowing elegance, carving each tur
n with a crisp rush of flying snow, swaying across the fall line of the mountain in an intricate ballet of interlinked movement.
She wore a slim-fitting skin suit of pearly grey, trimmed in black at the shoulders and cuffs, she was shod with gleaming black Heierling snowbirds, and her skis were long, narrow, black Rossignol professionals.
Peter followed her, pressing hard not to lose too much ground, but his turns were solid Christies without the stylish fallback unweighting of the jet turn which gave her each time a fractional gain.
The dun he ran like a stag of ten
But the mare like a new roused fawn
Kipling might have been describing them, and she was a hundred yards ahead of him as they entered the forest.
The pathway was barred with the shadows of the pines, and sugary ice roared under his skis as he pushed the narrow corners dangerously fast. Always she was farther ahead, flickering like a silver-grey wraith on those long lean legs, her tight round buttocks balancing the narrow waist and swinging rhythmically into the turns, marvellous controlled broadsides where the icy roadway denied purchase, coming out fast and straight, leaning into the rush of the wind, and her faint sweet laughter came back to Peter as he chased. There is an expertise that must be learned in childhood, and he remembered then that she was Polish, would probably have skied before she was weaned, and suppressed the flare of resentment he always felt at being outclassed by another human being, particularly by the woman who was fast becoming his driving obsession.
He came round another steeply banked turn, with the sheer snow wall rising fifteen feet on his right hand and on his left the tops of the nearest pines at his own level, so steep the mountain fell away into the valley.
The ice warning signs flashed past, and there was a wooden bridge, its boards waxen, opalescent with greenish ice. He felt control go as he hit the polished iron-hard surface. The bridge crossed a deep sombre gorge, with a frozen waterfall skewered to the black mountain rock by its own cruel icicles, like crucifixion nails
To attempt to edge in, or to stem the thundering rush across the treacherous going, would have invited disaster, to lean back defensively would have brought him down instantly and piled him into the sturdy wooden guide rails. At the moment he was lined up for the narrow bridge Peter flung himself forward so that his shins socked into the pads of his boots, and in a swoop of terror and exhilaration he went through, and found that he was laughing aloud though his heart leaped against his ribs and his breathing matched the sound of the wind in his own ears.
She was waiting for him where the path debouched onto the lower slopes. She had pushed her goggles to the top of her head, and stripped off her gloves, both sticks planted in the snow beside her.
‘You’ll never know how much I needed that.’ She had flown into Zurich that morning in her personal Lear jet. Peter had come in on the Swissair flight from Brussels, and they had motored up together. ‘You know what I wish, Peter?’
Tell me,’ he invited.
‘I wish that I could take a whole month, thirty glorious days, to do what I wish. To be ordinary, to be like other people and not feel a moment’s guilt.’
He had seen her on only three occasions in the six weeks since their first meeting at Abbots Yew. Three too brief and, for Peter, unsatisfying meetings.
Once in his new office suite at the Narmco headquarters in Brussels, again at La Pierre Bénite, her country home outside Paris, but then there had been twenty other guests for dinner. The third time had been in the panelled and tastefully decorated cabin of her Lear jet on a flight between Brussels and London.
Though they had made little progress as yet in the hunt for Caliph, Peter was still exploring the avenues that had occurred to him and had cast a dozen lines, baited and hooked
During their third meeting Peter had discussed with her the need to restructure her personal safety arrangements. He had changed her former bodyguards, replacing them with operatives from a. discreet agency in Switzerland which trained its own men The director of the agency was an old and trusted friend
They had come to this meeting now so that Peter might report back on his progress to Magda. But for a few hours the snow had seduced them both.
‘There is still another two hours before the light goes.’ Peter glanced across the valley at the village church. The gold hands of the clock showed a little after two o‘clock. ‘Do you want to run the Rheinhom?’
She hesitated only a moment. ‘The world will keep turning, I’m sure.’ Her teeth were very white, but one of them was slightly crooked, a blemish that was oddly appealing as she smiled up at him. ‘Certainly it will wait two hours.’
He had learned that she kept unbelievable hours, beginning her day’s work when the rest of the world still slept, and still hard at it when the offices of Altmann Industries in Boulevard Capucine were deserted, except her own office suite on the top floor. Even during the drive up from Zurich she had gone through correspondence and dictated quietly to one of her secretaries. He knew that at the chalet across the valley her two secretaries would be waiting already, with a pile of telex flimsies for her consideration and the line held open for her replies
‘There are better ways to die than working yourself to death.’ He was suddenly out of patience with her single-mindedness, and she laughed easily with high colour in her cheeks and the sparkle of the last run in the green eyes.
‘Yes, you are right, Peter I should have you near to keep reminding me of that.’
‘That’s the first bit of sense I’ve had from you in six weeks’ He was referring to her opposition to his plans for her security He had tried to persuade her to change established behaviour patterns, and though the smile was still on her lips, her eyes were deadly serious as she studied his face
‘My husband left me a trust—’ she seemed suddenly sad beneath the laughter’ – a duty that I must fulfil. One day I should like to explain that to you – but now we only have two hours.’
It was snowing lightly, and the sun had disappeared behind the mountains of rock and snow and cloud as they walked back through the village. The lights were burning in the richly laden shop windows and they were part of the gaily clad stream returning from the slopes, clumping along the frozen sidewalks in their clumsy ski boots, carrying skis and sticks over one shoulder and chattering with the lingering thrill of the high piste that even the lowering snow-filled dusk could not suppress.
‘It feels good to be free of my wolves for a while.’ Magda caught his arm as her snowbirds skidded on dirty ridged ice, and after she had regained her balance she left her gloved hand there.
Her wolves were the bodyguards that Peter had provided, the silent vigilant men who followed her either on foot or in a second car. They waited outside her offices while she worked, and others guarded the house while she slept.
That morning, however, she had told Peter, ‘Today I have as a companion a gold medal Olympic pistol champion, I don’t need my wolves.’
Narmco marketed its own version of the 9-mm parabellum pistol. It was called ‘Cobra’, and after a single morning in the underground range Peter had taken a liking to the weapon. It was lighter and flatter than the Walther he was accustomed to, easier to carry and conceal, and the single action mechanism saved a flicker of time with the first shot, for there was no need to cock the action. He had had no trouble obtaining a permit to carry one as a trade sample, although it was necessary to check it before every commercial flight, but it carried neatly in a quick-release shoulder holster.
He had felt theatrical and melodramatic at first, but with a little sober thought had convinced himself that to follow on Caliph’s tracks unarmed was shortening the odds against himself.
Now it was becoming habit, and he was barely aware of the comforting shape and weight in his armpit, until Magda spoke.
‘I am close to dying from thirst,’ she went on, and they racked their skis and went into the jovial warmth and clouds of steam that billowed from one of the coffee shops that lin
ed the main street.
They found a seat at a table already crowded with young people, and they ordered glasses of steaming hot Ghihwein
Then the four-piece band thumped out a popular dance tune and their table companions swarmed onto the tiny dance floor.
Peter raised a challenging eyebrow at her and she asked with amusement, ‘Have you ever danced in ski boots?’
‘There has to be a first time for everything.’
She danced like she did everything else, with complete absorption, and her body was strong and hard and slim against his.
It was completely dark as they climbed the narrow track above the village and went in through the electronically controlled gate in the protective wall around the chalet.
It was somehow typical of her that she had avoided the fashionable resorts, and that externally the chalet seemed not much different from fifty others that huddled in the edge of the pine forest.
There was patent relief amongst her entourage at her return, and she seemed almost defiant at their concern as though she had just proved something to herself – but still she did not change from her sports clothes before disappearing into the office suite on the first floor with her two male secretaries. ‘I work better with men,’ she had explained to Peter once. As Peter dressed in slacks, blazer and silk roll-neck after a scalding shower, he could still hear the clatter of the telex machine from the floor below, and it was an hour later when she called him on the house telephone.
The entire top floor was her private domain and she was standing at the windows looking out over the snow-fuzzed lights of the valley as he entered.