by Wilbur Smith
The air ticket was for this evening’s flight from Orly to Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel, the hired-car voucher was good for a single journey from there to Jerusalem, the hotel voucher was for a room in the King David Hotel in that ancient and holy city.
‘What is it, Peter?’
‘Nothing,’ said Peter, only then aware that the sickness must have shown on his face. ‘Jerusalem,’ he went on. ‘Caliph wants you in Jerusalem.’
There was one person in Jerusalem at that moment. Somebody who had been in his thoughts almost unceasingly since last he had embraced her in the darkness of Bora-Bora Island – so very long ago.
Caliph was in Jerusalem, and Magda Altmann was in Jerusalem – and the sickness was heavy in the pit of his stomach.
The deviousness of Caliph.
No, he told himself firmly. I have travelled that road already. It cannot be Magda.
The genius of Caliph, evil and effortless.
It is possible. He had to admit it then. With Caliph, anything is possible. Every time Caliph shook the dice box the numbers changed, different numbers, making different totals – but always completely plausible, always completely believable.
It was one of the basic proven theorems of his trade that a man, any man, was blinded and deafened and rendered senseless by love. Peter was in love, and he knew it.
All right. So now I have to try and free my mind and think it all over again, as though I were not besotted.
‘Peter, are you all right?’ Steven demanded again, now with real concern. It was impossible to think with Steven hovering over him. He would have to put it aside.
‘I am going to Jerusalem in your place,’ Peter said.
‘Come again, old boy?’
‘We are changing places – you and I.’
‘You won’t get away with it.’ Steven shook his head decidedly. ‘Caliph will take you on the full toss.’
Peter picked up his Hermes case and went through into the bathroom. He worked quickly with the wig and artificial moustache and then called.
‘Steven, come here.’
They stood side by side and stared at themselves in the mirror.
‘Good God!’ Steven grunted. Peter altered his stance slightly, conforming more closely to his brother.
That’s incredible. Never knew you were such a good-looking blighter,’ Steven chuckled, and wagged his head wonderingly. Peter imitated the gesture perfectly.
‘Damn it, Peter.’ The chuckle dried on Steven’s lips. ‘That’s enough. You’re giving me the creeps.’
Peter pulled the wig off his head. ‘It will work.’
‘Yes,’ Steven conceded. ‘It will work – but how the hell did you know I would be wearing a blazer and greys?’
Trick of the trade,’ Peter told him. ‘Don’t worry about it. Let’s go through the paperwork now.’
In the bedroom they laid out their personal documents in two piles, and went swiftly through them.
The passport photographs would pass readily enough.
‘You have to shave your soup-strainer,’ Peter told him, and Steven stroked his moustache with one finger, left and right – lingeringly, regretfully.
‘Is that absolutely necessary? I’d feel like I was walking around in public with no trousers on.’
Peter took the slim gold ball-point from his inside pocket and a sheaf of hotel stationery from the drawer. He studied Steven’s signature in the passport for a minute, and then dashed it off on the top sheet.
‘No’ He shook his head, and tried again. It was like Steven’s walk, cocky and confident, the ‘T’ was crossed with a flourishing sword stroke of the pen.
In sixty seconds he had it perfected.
‘With that wig on your head you could walk into my bank any day and sign for the whole damned bundle,’ Steven muttered uneasily. ‘Then go home and climb into bed with Pat.’
‘Now, there is an idea.’ Peter looked thoughtful.
‘Don’t joke about it,’ Steven pleaded.
‘Who’s joking?’ Peter went through the credit cards, club membership cards, driver’s licence and all the other clutter of civilized existence.
Steven’s mastery of his brother’s signature was not nearly as effective, but after twenty minutes’ practice was just adequate for hotel registration purposes.
‘Here is the address of a hotel on the left bank. Magnificent restaurant, and the management are very understanding if you should want to invite a young lady up to your room for a drink.’
‘Perish the thought.’ Steven looked smug at the prospect.
‘It should only be for a few days, Steven. Just keep very low. Pay cash for everything. Keep clear of the George V or the Meurice, Le Doyen and Maxim’s – all the places where they know you.’
They went carefully over the last details of the exchange of identity, while Steven shaved off the moustache and anointed the bare patch tenderly with Eau de Sauvage.
‘You’d better move now,’ Peter told him at last. ‘Wear this—’ It was Peter’s buff trenchcoat that would cover his blazer. ‘– And let’s change ties.’
Steven was ready, and he stood rather awkwardly by the door, in the tightly fitting trenchcoat.
‘Steven, can I ask you a question?’ Peter did not know why he had to know now, it had been buried so deeply for so long and yet at this moment it was deadly important to know.
‘Of course, old boy.’ Steven seemed to welcome the postponement of the moment of parting.
‘Sandhurst.’ Peter tried to keep the embarrassment out of his voice. ‘I never asked you before – but you didn’t do it, did you, Steven?’
Steven met his eyes calmly, steadily. ‘No, Peter. I did not do it. My word on it.’
Peter took his brother’s proffered right hand and squeezed it hard. It was ridiculous to feel so relieved.
‘I’m glad, Steven.’
‘Take care of yourself, old boy.’
‘I will,’ Peter nodded. ‘But if anything happens,’ Peter hesitated, ‘– Melissa-Jane—’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’
Why do Englishmen have such difficulty talking to each other, Peter wondered, let alone communicating affection and gratitude?
‘Well, I’ll be getting along then,’ said Steven.
‘Take a guard on your middle stump, and don’t be caught in the slips,’ Peter cautioned him with the old inanity.
‘Count on it,’ said Steven, and went out into the passage, closing the door behind him firmly, leaving his brother to think about Jerusalem.
Only the name had changed from Lod to Ben-Gurion – otherwise the Arrivals Hall was as Peter remembered it. One of the few airports on the globe which has sufficient luggage trolleys, so that the passengers do not have to fight for possession.
In the Arrivals Hall there was a young Israeli driver with the name:
Sir Steven Stride
printed in white chalk on a schoolboy’s black slate.
The driver wore a navy-blue cap with a black patent-leather peak. It was his only item of uniform, otherwise he was dressed in sandals and a white cotton shirt. His English had the usual strong American turn to it, and his attitude was casual and friendly – he might be driving the limousine today, but tomorrow he could be at the controls of a Centurion tank, and he was as good a man as his passenger any day.
‘Shalom, Shalom,’ he greeted Peter. ‘Is that all your luggage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Beserder. Let’s go.’ He did not offer to push Peter’s trolley, but chatted amicably as he led him out to the limousine.
It was a stretched-out 240 D Mercedes Benz – almost brand new, lovingly polished – but somebody had painted a pair of squinting eyes on each side of the chrome three-pointed star on the boot of the vehicle.
They had hardly pulled out through the airport gates when one of the characteristic aromas of Israel filled the cab of the Mercedes – the smell of orange blossom from the citrus orchards that lined each side of
the road.
For some reason the smell made Peter feel uneasy, a sensation of having missed something, of having neglected some vital aspect. He tried to think it all out again, from the beginning, but the driver kept up a running commentary as they pulled up the new double highway, over the hills through the pine forests towards Jerusalem, and the voice distracted him.
Peter wished he had kept the list that he had drawn up in the hotel room at Orly instead of destroying it. He tried to reconstruct it in his mind.
There were a dozen items on the plus side. The third was:
Magda told me about Cactus Flower. Would she have done so if she was Caliph?
And then directly opposite, in the ‘minus’ column:
If Magda is Caliph, then ‘Cactus Flower’ does not exist. It was an invention for some undisclosed reason.
This was the item that pricked him like a burr in a woollen sock. He kept coming back to it; there was a link missing from the logic of it and he tried to tease it loose. It was there just below the surface of his mind, and he knew instinctively that if he missed it the consequences would be dire.
The driver kept chatting, turning to glance back at him every few minutes with a cheerful demand for recognition.
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
Peter grunted. The man was irritating him – the missing item was there, just beginning to surface. He could see the shape of it. Why had the smell of orange blossom worried him? The smell of flowers? Cactus flower? There was something there, something missing from the list.
If Magda is not Caliph then—Was that it? He was not certain. ‘– Will that be all right, then?’ The driver was insisting again.
‘I’m sorry – what was that?’
‘I said, I had to drop a parcel off at my mother-in-law,’ the driver explained again. ‘It’s from my wife.’
‘Can’t you do that on your way back?’
‘I’m not going back tonight—’ The driver grinned winningly over his shoulder. ‘– My mother-in-law lives right on our way. It won’t take five minutes. I promised my wife I’d get it to her mother today.’
‘Oh, very well then,’ Peter snapped. There was something about the man he did not like, and he had lost track of the item that had been worrying him.
He felt as though he was in a chess game with a vastly superior opponent, and he had overlooked a castle on an open file, or a knight in a position to fork simultaneous check on his king and queen.
‘We turn off here,’ the driver explained, and swung off into a section of new apartment blocks, all of them built of the custard-yellow Jerusalem stone, row upon row of them, Israel’s desperate attempt to house its new citizens. At this time of evening the streets were deserted, as families gathered for the evening meal.
The driver jinked through the maze of identical-seeming streets with garrulous confidence and then braked and parked in front of one of the square, boxlike, yellow buildings.
‘Two minutes,’ he promised, and jumped out of the Mercedes, scampered around to the rear and opened the boot. There was a scratching sound, a small bump and then the lid of the boot slammed and the driver came back into Peter’s line of vision – carrying a brown paper parcel.
He grinned at Peter, with the ridiculous cap pushed onto the back of his head, mouthed another assurance through the closed window: ‘Two minutes—’ and went into the main door of the apartment.
Peter hoped he might be longer. The silence was precious. He closed his eyes, and concentrated.
If Magda is not Caliph then – then—There was the ticking sound of the engine cooling, or was it the dashboard dock? Peter thrust the sound to the back of his mind.
– then – then Cactus Flower exists. Yes, that was it! Cactus Flower exists, and if he exists he is close enough to Caliph to know of Sir Steven Stride’s threat to expose him—
Peter sat upright, rigid in his seat. He had believed that Steven Stride would be perfectly safe – until after the meeting with Caliph. That was the terrible mistake.
– Cactus Flower must stop Steven Stride reaching Caliph! Yes, of course. Christ, how had he not seen it before. Cactus Flower was Mossad, and Peter was sitting in a street of Jerusalem – Mossad’s front yard – dressed as Steven Stride.
Christ! He felt the certainty of mortal danger Cactus Flower probably made the arrangements himself. If Magda Altmann is not Caliph, then I am walking right into Cactus Flower’s sucker punch!
The damned clock kept ticking, a sound as nerve-racking as a leaky faucet.
I am in Cactus Flower’s city – in Cactus Flower’s limo—
The ticking. Oh God! It was not coming from the dashboard Peter turned his head. It was coming from behind him; from the boot which the driver had opened and in which he had moved something. Something that was now ticking away quietly.
Peter wrenched the door handle and hit the door with his shoulder, instinctively grabbing the Hermes case with his other hand.
They would have stripped out the metal partition between the boot and the back seat to allow the blast to cut through. There was probably only the leather upholstery between him and whatever was ticking. That was why he had heard it so clearly.
Time seemed to have slowed, so he was free to think it out as the seconds dropped as lingeringly as spilled honey.
Infernal machine, he thought. Why that ridiculously nineteenth-century term should occur to him now, he could not guess, a relic from the childhood days when he read Boy’s Own Paper, perhaps.
He was out of the Mercedes now, almost losing his balance as his feet hit the unsurfaced and broken sidewalk.
It is probably plastic explosive with a clockwork timer on the detonator, he thought, as he started to run. What delay would they use? Thirty seconds? No, the driver had to get well away. He had said two minutes, said it twice –
The thoughts raced through his mind, but his legs seemed to be shackled, dragging against an enormous weight. Like trying to run waist deep in the sucking surf of a sandy beach.
– It will be two minutes, and he has been gone that long—
Ten paces ahead of him there was a low wall that had been built as a flower box around the apartment block. It was knee high, a double brick wall with the cavity filled with dry yellow earth and precariously sustaining the life of a few wizened oleander bushes.
Peter dived head first over the wall, breaking his fall with shoulder and forearm, and rolling back hard under the protection of the low wall.
Above his head were the large windows of the ground-floor apartments. Lying on his side, peering up at them, Peter saw the reflection of the parked Mercedes as though in a mirror.
He covered his ears with the palms of both hands. The Mercedes was only fifty feet away. He watched it in the glass, his body braced, his mouth wide open to absorb blast shock in his sinuses.
The Mercedes erupted. It seemed to open quite sedately, like one of those time-elapse movies of a rose blooming. The shining metal spread and distorted like grotesque black petals, and bright white flame shot through it – that was all Peter saw, for the row of apartment windows disappeared, blown away in a million glittering shards by the blast wave, leaving the windows gaping like the toothless mouths of old decrepit men, and at the same moment the blast smashed into Peter.
Even though it was muted by the thick wall of the flower box, it crushed him, seemed to drive in his ribs, and the air whooshed from his lungs. The fearsome din of the explosion clamoured in his head, filling his skull with little bright chips of rainbow light.
He thought he must have lost consciousness for a moment, then there was the patter of falling debris raining down around him and something struck him a painful blow in the small of his back. It spurred him.
He dragged himself to his feet, struggling to refill his empty lungs. He knew he had to get away before the security forces arrived, or he could expect intensive interrogation which would certainly disclose the fact that he was not Sir Steven.
He started t
o run. The street was still deserted, although he could hear the beginning of the uproar which must follow. The cries of anguish and of fear.
He reached the corner and stopped running. He walked quickly to the next alley behind an apartment block. There were no street lights and he paused in the shadows. By now a dozen figures shouting questions and conjecture were hurrying towards the smoke and dust of the explosion.
Peter recovered his breath and dusted down his blazer and slacks, waiting until the confusion and shouting were at their peak. Then he walked quietly away.
On the main road he joined a short queue at the bus stop. The bus dropped him off in the Jaffa Road.
He found a café opposite the bus stop and went through into the men’s room. He was unmarked, but pale and strained; his hands still shook from the shock of the blast as he combed his hair.
He went back into the café, found a corner seat and ordered falafel and pitta bread with coffee.
He sat there for half an hour, considering his next move.
If Magda Altmann is not Caliph—he repeated the conundrum which he had solved just in time to save his life.
Magda Altmann is not Caliph! He knew it then with utter certainty. Cactus Flower had tried to stop Sir Steven Stride reaching Caliph with his denunciation. Therefore Magda had told him the truth. His relief flooded his body with a great warm glow – and his first instinct was to telephone her at the Mossad number she had given him. Then he saw the danger. Cactus Flower was Mossad. He dared not go near her – not yet.
What must he do then? And he knew the answer without having to search for it. He must do what he had come to do. He must find Caliph, and the only fragile thread he had to follow was the trail that Caliph had laid for him.
He left the café and found a taxi at the rank on the corner.
‘King David Hotel,’ Peter said, and sank back in the seat.