‘Satisfied?’ The Admiral’s eyes were wary.
‘Force X?’ Grant drawled.
The Admiral shrugged his shoulders helplessly. ‘Facts or supposition?’
‘Both.’
‘Then supposition first. It is correct that several highly placed people have referred throughout the last century to a world force which can sometimes bend governments or direct policies. Disraeli did refer to it. Douglas Reed gave more than a hint in at least one of his post-war books, From Smoke to Smother, I think, and there were a few guarded references even at the beginning of the Second World War when know-alls began to speculate about why in heck the thing had happened.
‘Then, of course, thriller-writers did cash in on it but when we come to hard facts it is a different matter. The Mafia is no sort of rumour. And its operations were Big Business. Still are. Though it was never world-wide. Three continents at most.’
He hesitated. ‘Nuts like A1 Capone and the like can be ignored. Their gangs were strictly small-time. But it is always possible that a global organization used both them and others about which we know even less.
‘According to your own report this man Zero said, quote: It is remarkable how death of a world leader can upset the markets, unquote.
‘It is also fact and not supposition that the arms race brings millions to a few high-ups. So I daresay it can be argued that these same high-ups have a vested interest in seeing that it continues: and that, for example, there is no Soviet-American hook up. Or that if a Moscow-Washington Axis did build to arrange that China will still keep the cold-hot-cold-war-pot boiling.
‘On balance we in ADSAD believe that there is such an organization and we called it Force X because it was an unknown quantity.
‘But the name “Zero” has figured on several reports over the last fifteen years. Though that means nothing if the title has been handed down for a century to half a dozen different men: which your experience suggests might be the case.
‘Your description of the woman’s death also corresponds with what we suspect about method. And you did report that Zero’s technique was based on terror and multi-dollar cheques: either: or.
‘We further believe that he recruits staff through blackmail and that they are hand-chosen from key points both in government and business. In short, David, that he operates like any other intelligence agency with no scruples. But probably with more ability, since it seems that he seldom makes mistakes.
‘And, finally, we suspect that he operates in every continent without exception. Anything else?’
Grant drained the last of his Clanrana, the least-known but finest whisky liqueur in Scotland. ‘I’ll think up something for tomorrow, sir,’ he smiled. ‘Right now that’s enough to be going on with.’
Chapter Six – ‘If I were you I’d treat her carefully’
‘You owe your life to nothing but sheer good luck.’
Professor Juin called a meeting after breakfast and Grant knew that he had worked through most of the night to report on Zero’s medicated bullet.
‘The bullet is about the size of a .22 but moulded from a mixture of chemical and a soluble plastic substance which enables it to penetrate skin and so forth without disintegrating,’ the Professor continued. ‘And this is what was left. Less, of course, a small quantity used in analysis. But you are alive only because it embedded within a mass of scar tissue deep in the muscles overlying your shoulder-blade.’
And Grant remembered the stab wound he had collected five years earlier in Katanga, the infection which had followed and the area of induration which still sometimes bothered him.
Juin nodded agreeably. ‘If it had finished in a healthy area your blood supply would quickly have absorbed it all. As it is, the missile penetrated normal muscle and fat for only a short distance before burying itself in this plug of deep scar tissue. But, even so, enough was rubbed off, and absorbed, to give an almost instantaneous reaction which knocked you off balance. You can imagine,’ he added softly, ‘what your end might have been if the whole thing had disintegrated as expected and been absorbed at normal speed by a decent blood supply. Fortunately this scar tissue had practically no circulation at all. And so you are alive. The explanation is simple.
‘But to make doubly sure I checked against your nerve gas and the one could not possibly have affected the other.’
‘How’s his general condition?’ The Admiral was never at his best in the morning and his manner was unusually abrupt.
‘Normal. No sign of damage to anything and Dr. Grant can continue to use this unique gas weapon with safety to himself.’
‘Well, listen to this, David. I’ve been in touch with Paris off and on since dawn, and half the potential suspects who might have rigged that tape in your flat have vanished. Two neighbours have disappeared: ostensibly on holiday. Jacqueline de Massacré applied for sick leave on the day you were coffined. Colonel Fengsted died of an alleged stroke last evening and the concierge of the block was killed by a bus three days ago. So there’s a clean-out for you. And to round matters off the funeral-parlour mortician is a card member of the Communist Party.’ He stood up and scowled. ‘I’m heading for the hills. Want to think. See you coffee-time. But take my tip and cover every single goddam angle your combined ingenuity can contrive. If David Grant is going to come out of this lot alive he’ll need more than gas.’
Grant nodded. The old man hated complications, and a straightforward job had suddenly become fogged by too many possibilities. Apart from that, the death of Fengsted would have hit him hard.
The Professor cautiously rolled a cigarette, flicked some crumbs of tobacco from his knee and pointed to the door. Work must still go on. ‘Seven drachms this time, Monsieur David.’
The second exposure to a high dose was successful, and Juin began to suspect that tolerance once acquired might be more permanent than had at first been expected. Two more glass containers were being flown north that afternoon and he would personally show Grant how to fit them inside the heels of his shoes.
A late flash also reported that the lapel badge with acid jet was being taken care of and Juin promised that equipment would be completed on schedule.
An afternoon hour with the micro-rockets and Magnum rated high scores and Grant faced his last day at the Big House with confidence. The next morning saw him risk a final exposure to ten drachms of Juin’s liquid gas and ended with lessons on fitting containers to the secret cavities in his shoes. He was still feeling no significant side-kick, and with such a concentration, even in the open air, effects would be deadly over a considerable area.
A dozen golden sovereigns coated with a special concentrate of cyanide were packed around a body-belt and his signet ring recharged for action. The barb rose only when the magnetized buckle of a wrist-watch strap was drawn over it and not even General Sokolnikov’s experts in Lubianka jail had tumbled to its secrets.
One thing remained, and Grant raised the question over dinner on his last night. He detested political theories and was content as a rule simply to do as he was told. But he was vaguely uneasy about the present set-up. Riodorium was on Spanish territory and could be regarded as Spain’s most important mineral asset in terms of sheer hard cash on the open international market. Yet Madrid had not been informed about the findings of America’s geologists and it was no excuse to say that they were asked only to probe for oil.
ADSAD was NATO’s intelligence organ. But had either the Director General or the Admiral authority to conceal the purpose of this mission from the leaders of member states?
Finally, and most important. America’s President was also in the picture and that suggested a degree of privilege which might not be agreed by other powers within the Western Alliance.
The Admiral stuffed a glowing wad of tobacco into the charred bowl of his briar, his cheek muscles twitching slightly as he listened with caustic disapproval. And then he relaxed. ‘Well, why not! I suppose these are fair questions.
‘In a nut-shell ther
e is no single country within NATO about whom we can say with certainty that somewhere or other there isn’t an enemy agent amongst the top men. . . . either in government or within the civil service.
‘However, America’s President is Chief of the Armed Forces and it is he and he alone who may one day face the final decision of changing an amber light to red in the face of certain emergencies. The President can be genned up on certain matters without involving subordinates, and since riodorium is at present needed primarily by the United States it is very much his affair. But I have personally insisted that since this is also an ADSAD mission I must be given freedom to operate according to my own terms of reference . . . which are to avoid global war at almost any cost.
‘Now then, global war is unthinkable as matters presently stand, because the United States, Russia and Western Europe are slowly drifting together, learning to understand one another rather better and beginning to forget some things better forgotten all round.
‘In fact a sort of delicately balanced modus vivendi has been reached. But it is based fundamentally on stalemate within the nuclear deterrent field and if anything major happened to disturb that stalemate Russia might return to old ways and play again for world domination.
‘Any outright and decisive technical advance could do this. Therefore,’ said the Admiral firmly, ‘I propose to tell no one about riodorium, because even as things presently stand rather too many people already know of the element and roughly where it comes from. I have therefore made it my own personal responsibility to remove the entire supply from the Sahara, even if the mission comes to involve the deployment of other NATO resources, and only when this has been done will the President or Director General inform Madrid and allied governments of what has taken place. Spain will then be fully compensated and the special relationship with France and Britain will not be forgotten.’
He drew thoughtfully at his pipe. ‘Juin left this morning. But I expect that scientists will eventually synthesize the thing. After which, of course, there will be no problem of supply. But as matters presently stand these eleven hundred tons must be taken safely to the States.’
Grant relaxed and cautiously rubbed his shoulder against the cushion. The stitches in Juin’s wound still prickled. ‘And now this Berber woman, sir. I don’t think Miss Sidders gave me her name.’
‘I was waiting for that one,’ said the Admiral. ‘Aniseeh Bodaida. But,’ he added gently, ‘there is more to it than that. Few people call her by anything but a nickname which can be translated into English as Miss Turquoise. Seems that she paints herself a sort of dusty blue on the desert and that she kinda likes colour. But on the Canaries and in Spain she was never seen to wear anything except shades of green which are said to be almost unique. Records say that her wardrobe is more exciting than anything Liz Taylor wore in Cleopatra and every darned thing has got a snazzy angle to appeal to suckers. She makes men gasp and women go pea-green. In fact if I were you I’d treat her carefully. Miss Turquoise is a ve-ry dynamic morsel indeed.’
Chapter Seven – ‘Sometimes life is better when it is complicated’
Grant saw her for the first time a week later when she checked in at Las Palmas snob hotel. And suddenly his long journeys from London to the Canaries via Perth, Prestwick and New York seemed worthwhile, even the nagging anxiety that Zero and Force X might still track him down.
Records had given him a photograph and it was good enough to recognize her on sight. But it had been taken with a tele lens and was two years old. Certainly it had done nothing to prepare him for a creature whose spectacular personality attracted attention even in a place well accustomed to beauty from all the continents.
Her carriage was superb, the back ram-rod straight, but every movement flowing with that easy dignity which distinguishes desert people. The muscles of her calves matched the arrogance of her neck, and the play of movement around buttocks and thighs as she swept across to Reception hinted at the strength of perfect condition. A skin-tight garment moulded breasts heavier than average, but firm and upward-thrusting as she paused by the desk. Grant had never been interested in women’s fashion, content only to know that the end point was attractive. But this woman wore clothes which would have made her sensational even at Longchamps.
Everything was one glowing shimmer of gleaming turquoise. Almost a new colour. Like the turquoise of Asia overlaid with ice and glinting with diamonds or crystal.
The skirt was pure Chinese, split from below knee to mid-thigh and moulded to the buttocks. Yet one hardly noticed the split because it was overhung by the drooping point of a long length of chiffon which angled up from knee-level to wrap around her waist, the soft material moulding her figure as it swathed her bust and swept upwards to one shoulder, leaving the other bare before dropping behind almost like a sari, but with the end fashioned into a flap which, he later discovered, could be lifted to cover her face, a slit then showing her eyes, as the ‘demi-yashmak’ was held in position by curving limbs of gold which fitted over her ears to end in flat jewelled plates close against her skull.
But whether the mask lay against her face or dropped behind at waist-level the sheen of gold still played against her skin and emphasized the clinging effect of chiffon. And when it was in position, as he saw it that evening in the drawing-room of their hotel, he realized again the importance of a woman’s eyes, the demi-yashmak focussing attention upon brown pools of mystery, which could, in a second, swing from a spark of anger to the deep gravity of passion and love.
During the days which followed Grant learned that she travelled with twenty or more of these chiffon or silk veils and that it was easiest for her to dress when someone held an end and she twirled into it almost like a dancer, the stuff wafting into position at will as she stretched or yielded, leaned sideways or forward, until with every putting on she could contrive a new effect. Above all, it was the easiest of clothes to pack, and when one length had been dyed in several shades of colour the most breath-taking effects could be produced by overlapping the layers, flesh-filled above her self-colour skirt.
It was an outfit for any age. He was also to discover that it could blend with any background, from the deck of a bumboat to the coolness of a five-star dining-room.
Looking upwards as she signed the book her lips suddenly broke into a wide smile and she greeted the clerk in faultless Castillian Spanish. ‘Back again, little one. And ready for a long sleep in the beautiful room which was ordered three weeks ago. The voyage, as usual, was monotonous.’
The clerk smiled amiably. ‘You could have used a flying machine from El Aiun but doubtless the sea has attractions if one lives in the desert.’
The girl tossed her head insolently. ‘The desert is a place for men, Miguel. So it is better for you to remain in Gran Canaria where there is no sand to tickle your delicate skin.’
The clerk handed over a small bundle of mail. ‘Letters for the Señorita, and one prays that they will not unduly tickle her delicate temper.’
Grant smiled as he watched her eyes narrow and her lips tauten into a blenching line of anger as she snatched the mail and rapped on the counter. ‘The key of my room. And it would be wise if you remembered not to try the patience of Miss Turquoise too far. She is a little tired, a little hungry and a little needing a bath. After that she may return to listen to Miguel’s little jokes, but until then he will remember his place.’
Grant had reached the reception clerk almost unnoticed. As he coughed self-consciously the girl lifted her key and swept towards the staircase, a half-smile suddenly dimpling her cheeks as she met his stare of blatant admiration. The approach was hardly tactful, but he had impulsively decided to play a straight game with no finesse and see where it got him.
‘Sir?’
Grant pulled out his wallet and fingered a hundred-peseta note. ‘I came over for mail and to ask about boats to Port Etienne, but that young lady sure hits the eye. Hows about her, boy? Is she a local?’ He was speaking English with a lazy drawl whic
h he hoped would pass muster for some sort of American.
The clerk eyed the note indifferently. Then warmed slightly as Grant added a second. ‘A round figure, buster. Two hundred pesetas if you give me the low-down. Name and telephone number.’
‘We are forbidden by the management to give private information about guests, sir.’ The clerk had become professionally formal.
Flipping the note-case open Grant again snapped out a wad of fifties. ‘Say when,’ he grinned. A bead of sweat broke on the clerk’s cheeks when Grant laid down the sixteenth and added it to the two hundreds. ‘More than a week’s earnings there and I’ll double it if you fix a dining-room seat next to her table.’
The clerk swept the pile into his pocket. ‘She is a visitor on holiday from the Sahara. Señorita Aniseeh Bobaida Farrachi. A young lady from the interior. Suite number two on the first floor.’
‘And eating arrangements?’
The clerk hesitated. ‘It can be done, Dr. Gunten. But our dining-room steward is a thief. Maybe another five hundred.’
Grant slowly counted out five separate hundreds and doubled his original thousand. Almost fifteen pounds for a name and the chance of forcing an introduction over dinner was big money, but he would have bet an even pony that Miguel would tell the girl the whole story within the hour. There had been an air of intimacy between them which might be important. And, all things considered, why not? Conventions tend to go by the board on Gran Canaria where every male is a potential wolf and every female knows it.
He decided to put a few more cards on the table and see where it got him before morning. It might interest more than Miguel if it were known that he spoke Spanish almost as well as American. ‘Explain to the dining-room steward that Dr. Gunten will personally cut him into small pieces if he does not have the extreme pleasure of dining near Señorita Farrachi and that he will appreciate being given a call when the young lady is seated.’
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