by Wilbur Smith
Von Meerbach took a sip of his coffee, savoring the intoxicating taste of freshly ground beans, as sweet as the revenge he felt percolating through his veins.
Centaine was a cousin of Leon Courtney—age: fifty-four; date of birth: August 6, 1887. Principal residence: the Lusima Estate, Wanjohi Valley, Kenya. Major shareholder in the Courtney Trading Company, whose headquarters are in Cairo, Egypt. Only child, Saffron Courtney, age: twenty-two. Until recently, serving as a driver to the British Army General Henry Maitland Wilson on the North Africa, Greece and Palestine fronts. Her present whereabouts were unknown, though he believed she had returned to Britain.
The Courtneys were of no interest to the Reich, although when the war was won and the world re-ordered to the Führer’s satisfaction, there would be no place for British imperial parasites and all their property would be forfeit.
For von Meerbach that would not be enough. He had no need of the Courtney family’s money. He was very wealthy. But he had known loss. His father was taken from him when he was a boy of ten. He died in Africa. His killer was Leon Courtney. Von Meerbach grimaced as he recalled the hideous slaughter: his father had been forced to parachute from his airship and had the misfortune to get caught in some trees before he landed. Leon found him there, wriggling like a fish on a line, and he shot him through the chest in cold blood with not a second of remorse. The murdering bastard’s accomplice was his father’s mistress, a woman who called herself Eva von Wellberg, though she was a British spy, real name Eva Barry. She ran off with Courtney and bore his daughter.
Von Meerbach stared into the distance, his eyes narrowed, and a surge of pleasure flowed through his body at the thought of the pain and destruction he would cause. A ruthless torturer and killer hid behind the impeccable cut of his suit. He would not be satisfied until he had repaid Leon Courtney in full for what he did to his family. He wanted him to die slowly and painfully, the infliction of an agonizing death being a process with which he was intimately familiar. As he died and his screams filled the air, and he begged for mercy, Courtney would know that his beloved daughter, the light of his life, had gone before him, and had suffered just as badly.
Meerbach felt an almost erotic thrill as he considered the intricacies of his plan for vengeance.
•••
Saffron had assumed that one or two decent nights’ sleep and a day in bed would be enough to get her back to her normal self. But the physical punishment she had endured during her mock interrogation had taken more out of her than she realized. Three days after the end of her ordeal she still felt as limp as a wrung-out dish cloth, and even if the swelling on her face was beginning to come down, the color of the bruises there and around her torso were, if anything, more livid. No bones had been broken, so no permanent damage had been done, but for now she was a rather battered-looking beauty.
It was almost midday, but she was dozing, with her copy of Shooting to Live lying on the bedspread, when she was woken by a knock on the door and a man’s voice asking, “Excuse me, miss . . . ?”
Saffron managed a wordless groan of acknowledgment. She turned over to face the door and saw a head peering around it.
“Mind if I come in?”
Saffron came to as three thoughts followed each other in quick succession.
That’s an American accent.
Oh my God, he’s handsome.
And then, I look awful!
She ran her hands through her hair to make it look less like a tangled, greasy, lifeless mess and replied, “May I ask who you are?”
The man walked into the room. He had a relaxed, loose-limbed gait. He wore a pale khaki uniform and his legs were long, his hips slim, and his shoulders broad. The smile that now spread across his face had a confident, almost cheeky charm.
“Hi,” he said, and Saffron could have sworn that her heart had started beating faster, though she hadn’t moved a muscle. She was wondering whether she could find an excuse to pop into the bathroom and do something to stop herself looking less like a boxer who lost the big fight when the American said, “Lieutenant Daniel P. Doherty, U.S. Navy at your service. My buddies call me Danny. Some of the folks round here seem to prefer Danny Boy. The only person who calls me Daniel is my mom.”
You won’t get a Danny Boy from me, Saffron thought. I’m not giving in that easily. And besides, my heart is with Gerhard, even though it has been so long since we loved each other, and this war is stripping raw my soul.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Doherty,” she said, hoping that she had managed to keep her voice and expression composed. “That was a thorough briefing. My name is Saffron Courtney. My friends call me Saffy. As a civilian, I have no rank. I’m a simple ‘Miss.’”
Doherty saw the simple wooden chair that most visitors chose, said, “May I?” and before Saffron could respond, he spun it around so that the seat faced him and the back was toward Saffron. He straddled the chair with his arms across the top and his chin propped on one fist as he looked at her.
He had lovely eyes, Saffron saw, so dark brown they were almost black, but they were warm and welcoming, and it was all she could do to tear hers away. She hardly noticed that he was talking.
“I have a rank, Miss Courtney, but you’re one step ahead of me, because you’ve got a medal for gallantry. George Medal, am I right?”
“Yes . . .” she said, concentrating on anything but his eyes. “How did you know?”
“Well, you’ve made quite a name for yourself round here. I arrived when you were still in the hole, getting the Gestapo treatment. Word was, you’d been in a day. Anyhow, a couple of your instructors took me up to the Morar Hotel, said you guys had a private room there.”
“It’s more like a private zoo, some nights,” Saffron replied.
Doherty laughed. “Well, the animals were all talking about you. Someone was starting a sweepstake on how long you’d last. No one had gone above thirty-six hours. I told ’em, ‘Hell, I say she lasts forty-eight.’ Turns out I was the closest, so I won.”
“How much was the pot?”
“Seven pounds, nine shillings and sixpence.”
Saffron nodded, impressed by the size of his win. “Congratulations. You’re a rich man.”
“I know. Figured I owed you a thank you.”
“You’re welcome. What else did the animals say about me?”
“Oh, you know, that you came from Africa, and your daddy had a big old business empire, and that you were . . .” He stopped, like a man who had seen a landmine where he was about to tread.
“I was what?” Saffron asked.
Doherty tried to shrug it off. “Oh, nothing . . .”
“Come on, Lieutenant Doherty, you’re not getting away with that. You were going to say something?”
Doherty sighed. “Damn my big Irish mouth . . . And beautiful. That was the missing word: beautiful.”
Saffron had been enjoying the flirtatious battle that had passed between them. Doherty had cheered her up more than any of her other visitors. Now that good mood was punctured, her spirits deflated and she suddenly felt on the verge of tears as she swallowed hard and murmured, “Oh. I see . . . and then you come here and find me like this.”
Doherty leaned forward, a look of concern on his face and a much gentler, less cocksure tone to his voice, “Hey . . . hey . . . Please, Miss Courtney, don’t say that. For one thing, I didn’t come here as a sightseer. And two, well, even if that was the reason I came to see you, take it from me, Miss Courtney, it would not have been a wasted journey. Sure, you’ve been dinged up some, but hell, you look like a goddamn movie star from where I’m sitting.”
He sounded as though he meant it, but Saffron could not believe that was possible. “Really?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Doherty leaned back again and let out a long, low whistle as he examined her with frank appraisal. “Hell, if David O. Selznick had ever seen you, he’d have said, ‘Screw Vivien Leigh, this is our Scarlett O’Hara!’”
Saffron gave a rueful lau
gh. “I know you don’t mean it, but that’s very sweet.”
Doherty’s playfulness vanished and a seriousness replaced it. “One thing you should know about me, Miss Courtney . . . If I say something, I always mean it.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve been in England a few months and, you know, people here don’t say what they mean, or mean what they say. Sometimes they mean the exact opposite. Took me a while to work out, if an Englishman says, ‘I say, old boy, we really must have lunch,’ he doesn’t want to get something to eat, chew the fat, maybe drink a couple of beers. He never wants to see you again as long as he lives.”
Saffron laughed. “That’s so true!”
“But me, I’m American. If I say I want to see you it’s because I want to see you. And if I don’t, you’d best get the hell off my land.”
“Well, you’re safe with me, Lieutenant. I’m African, and we take the same view as you. We tell it like it is where I come from.”
“Well, I’m sure glad to hear there’s someone round here thinks like that.”
Saffron relaxed a little.
“So, tell me, Lieutenant Doherty, where are you from and what brings you all the way up here to Arisaig House?”
“Guess I’ll start with the second question, because it’s a shorter answer. I’m here because there are folks in Washington who are mighty curious about this Baker Street set-up and they’re asking themselves, ‘Maybe we should do something like that?’ A few of us have come over to, you know, case the joint.”
“Ooh, gangster talk . . .” Saffron smiled. “You should speak to Captain Fairbairn. He’s a great admirer of Al Capone. He believes we can learn a lot about the effective use of a Tommy Gun from Capone and his mob.”
It was Doherty’s turn to grin. “Yeah! I met Fairbairn and his buddy . . . what’s his name?”
“Sykes.”
“That’s the one. Say, aren’t they a pair? They look like a couple of harmless old geezers and I’ll be damned if they don’t know more ways of killing people than anyone on God’s green earth.”
“So you’re in the same business we are.”
“Not yet . . .” Doherty shrugged. “But potentially.”
Saffron nodded. “Fair enough, I won’t ask you any more. I know the form. But what about where you come from? Tell me a bit about that.”
“Whoa . . . how long have you got?”
“Hmm, let me see . . . I don’t appear to have any appointments planned for the immediate future.”
“Well, I’m meeting some of the guys from the occupied nations in half an hour—Norwegians and Czechs, I think—so I’ll keep it quick.”
Please don’t! Saffron thought. Please take all the time in the world.
“So . . . I was born and raised on a cattle ranch outside a small town called Thermopolis in the great state of Wyoming.”
“A genuine cowboy!”
“Guess so.”
“How did you end up in the Navy?”
“I joined in thirty-five. Times were hard, real hard . . . you know, the Great Depression and all that. I’m the youngest of four boys and I was in my senior year at high school, had no idea what to do. All I knew was the ranch couldn’t give me work or money. One day a recruiting officer from the U.S. Navy came through town. He said the Navy was the best way yet invented for a young man to see the world, and get an education, a fair wage and three square meals a day doing it. I figured, what have I got to lose?”
“Your home, your family?”
“I didn’t lose ’em. They’re still there. But I did get educated at Annapolis—that’s our Naval Academy. I got a great job. I went to California, to Hawaii, now to England and Scotland . . . and the chow was pretty good, too. Till I got to England, anyways.”
“Do you ever miss home?”
“Sure, sometimes . . . You?”
Saffron nodded and said, “Will you think me very rude if I ask, where is Wyoming?”
“Nope . . . and I’ll even tell you, if you tell me where I could find Czechoslovakia.”
Good question . . . Saffron closed her eyes, imagined a map of Europe and said, “Until Herr Hitler trampled all over it and turned it into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, you could find Czechoslovakia due east of Germany, directly underneath Poland . . . And before you ask, Poland is, or was, due east of Germany, directly above Czechoslovakia.”
Saffron sat back on her pillows, feeling smug about both her geography and wit.
“OK, then, Miss Smart Alec . . . Wyoming is most of the way over to the west of the States, and most of the way up from the south. If you head any further north you get to Montana, and then the border with Canada . . . You know where Canada is, right?”
Saffron frowned and made a play out of thinking hard before she replied, “Mmm, I think so . . . more or less.”
For a second, Doherty hesitated.
Ha! He’s worried that I might not have been joking!
He carried on. “So, anyway, the Rockies run right through Wyoming. Where I live, it’s hill country, kind of at the foot of the Big Horn range. Golly, I wish I had the words to describe it . . . It’s kinda like this part of Scotland, I guess, except it rains about as much every day over here as we get in a year. And it’s wilder back home, and a damn sight hotter—in summer, leastways—and about twelve hundred miles from the sea.
“Anyways, I grew up on the Blue Creek Ranch, about twenty miles outside town. It covers damn near two thousand acres and to me it’s . . . well, it’s just the most beautiful place in the world.”
Saffron understood how that felt. “Tell me about the ranch.”
“Shoot, where do I start? Yeah, I know . . . with the sky . . . It’s bigger there, somehow. My family’s land rises from five to around six thousand feet above sea level. The air is so clear and fresh. There are places you can look out at the mountains and see for a hundred miles in all directions, but no buildings or people anywhere.”
He could be talking about Lusima, Saffron thought. The sky, the altitude, the views that go on forever. Lusima, one of the finest estates in East Africa, named in honor of a healer and mystical seer, it was a magical kingdom in which she was Crown Princess, where she felt deep, otherworldly serenity and security.
“If you’re standing in the front porch of our ranch house, the nearest house is seven miles away,” Doherty went on. “I guess you might think that was lonely, but we’ve got all of nature for company. There are cliffs where golden eagles like to build their nests. You see them, way up in the sky, looking down at the earth, you know, searching for their next meal. At night you can hear the calling of the great horned owls. Say, have you ever gone hunting?”
“You mean, hunting foxes?”
“No, I guess I meant shooting. You know, game birds, deer, that kinda thing.”
“I’ve done both,” Saffron told him. “Ridden to hounds and shot pheasant, grouse, wild ducks, all sorts of things, really.”
“Any good at it?”
“Hmm . . . how do I answer that? I hate the British habit of false modesty, and I believe in telling the truth, but I’ve also been raised not to boast about myself.”
Doherty scratched behind one ear. “Okay-y-y, so that was like listening to a message in code, but if I’ve figured it right, what you’re saying is, you’re damn good on a horse and a crack shot, but being a nice, modest, proper young lady, you don’t like to say so . . . though you don’t like not to say so, either.”
Saffron grinned. “That’s very good, Lieutenant! You are clearly a natural cryptographer.”
“I got it right?”
“Spot on,” Saffron admitted, loving the fact that he had understood her so well. “I was given my first pony when I was barely old enough to walk. I imagine you were the same.”
“Uh-huh.” Doherty nodded.
“My darling father didn’t have any sons, so he taught me everything that he would have taught them. He had me firing air rifles from when I wa
s six or seven.”
“Me, too.”
Saffron moved onto the offensive. She looked Doherty in the eye and said, “We should put our training to the test one day . . . You should know, Lieutenant Doherty, that I am highly competitive.”
He looked her back in the eye. “Even against men?”
“Particularly against men.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. Might take you up on that challenge someday.”
“Till then, tell me more about your ranch.”
“It’s called the Blue Creek because it’s blessed by water, but the earth is kind of a deep, rich red. We’ve got a lot of pasture for the cattle and about thirty acres set aside for hay, but down by the creeks you’ll find cottonwoods, and willows growing by the water, then up in the hills there are forests of pine and juniper.”
“What kind of wildlife do you have?”
“Apart from the cattle we’ve got, let me see . . . elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, antelope—we don’t go short of venison or buckskin, that’s for sure. You see moose come by from time to time, too.
“Now, if you’ve got that much prey, you’re gonna get all the predators that hunt them, so that’s mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, coyote. Oh, and bear, almost forgot to mention them. When I was a kid, I’d go out looking for wild gooseberries and currants growing wild along the creek. Always had to keep an eye out in case a black bear had the same idea. They love a nice, juicy berry.”
“It sounds like real pioneer country.”
“Oh, it sure was. The stagecoach used to come through our land. But there were Shoshoni Indians and their ancestors living on the creek for thousands of years before the white man ever got there. When I was a kid, some folks came up from Laramie, the University of Wyoming. They started digging around, looking for prehistoric life, and damn it if they didn’t find signs of ancient camp sites and rock circles. They told my folks the remains date back ten thousand years or more. We have a couple guys work on our ranch that have Shoshoni blood in them. They say you can still see the spirit people, sprites and ogres, and the Water Ghost Woman walking down by the springs and creeks. Ha, I guess you think that’s pretty crazy.”