‘But, Mehmet dear,’ said Harmony slowly, ‘surely God doesn’t need time in a situation like this! Whatever you did, even if it was on impulse, would be His will. So why waste time thinking?’
The Turk again nodded. ‘Well, I agree. But in that case you must die. And now I’m anxious only to make you understand why. As I’ve already explained, you know too much about the affairs of Chagra and you are too competent. So you would certainly want to find out more about the two machines which were to be the Mafia’s secret weapons and I doubt if you could be prevented from trying to get them for your own use. Or rather for the use of your governments. After that you would try to interfere with nature, experiment with climate, or possibly even alter the North Atlantic drift by melting some of Greenland’s ice. The temptation would be irresistible, and you would justify everything by claiming that it was leading to progress. Whereas nature did very well without man’s so-called progress for many scores of thousands of years, if not indeed for millions, since man is a very young animal. But though young he has caused endless harm both to nature and himself. So I want to save ordinary people from the do-gooding of extraordinary people like yourselves. Now, does that make sense?’
Grant saw that Harmony was watching him with a concentration of attention which was almost painful and he knew that he must react on cue. ‘Anything makes sense which is the will of God,’ he said at last. ‘But if you are going to kill us I take it the thing will be quick. Or do you want to do another Charlie?’
The Turk shook his head and smiled slightly. ‘You will simply be snuffed out while Charlie deserved to suffer. But it is enough for you to disappear.’
‘You know,’ said Grant slowly, ‘in your own way you are as great a megalomaniac as either Charlie or Lofty.’ And then a thought crossed his mind. ‘You are also intensely vain. You think that you’re one of God’s chosen people. You wrap a load of sanctimonious nonsense up in a way which makes it sound good. But chances are that you’re an addict to something yourself. Maybe power has gone to your head.’ He pointed to the guards, using the excuse to confirm that there were only four. ‘And you haven’t the guts to deal with us yourself. You are really just a coward with a big head.’
He saw that Harmony had slipped her right hand into the lapel of her dress and he made a far-out bet that she had used her visit to the loo to re-house the knife.
The girl then leaned slightly forwards and as she withdrew the blade she moved with the speed of a wild cat. There was a glint of steel and a gasp of pain as the thing hurled across the room and buried itself to the hilt in Mehmet Ali’s breast.
Lu also moved in the same second, seizing a pair of cloisonné vases by their necks as he turned and crashed each down in turn on the forearms of two guards who had rushed forwards towards the girl. Grant in the same instant had also hurled a low teak table across the parquet floor, and as it struck the third guard on the shins his curved sword dropped to the ground while the fourth man leapt across the room with his arm raised for a death thrust. Lu’s right foot tripped him when he was almost on target and Grant felt him slither against him as he grasped the other sword. The man who had dropped it was rubbing his shin and Grant felled him with a stroke across the neck which half severed his head and left two spouting arteries to make the floor slippery with blood. He regained his feet a fraction before the fourth man while Harmony and Lu each dealt with the other two guards, the girl throwing one with a deadly judo blow while Lu expertly stabbed the other.
The odds had dramatically changed in their favour when Mehmet staggered to his feet and drew a gun from an armpit holster. Grant smiled with satisfaction as he saw that his first impression was correct, and then relaxed when the man suddenly collapsed. He was half crouching on the floor when he suddenly rapped out a command which rocked the last surviving guard and made him drop his weapon. And then Mehmet looked towards Grant, forcing a smile as he spoke. ‘The will of God is sometimes strange. But congratulations.’
His head sagged forwards against his chest, and as Lu made to walk towards him Grant experienced an unexpected intuition. ‘Stop, Lu,’ he shouted. ‘He’s still alive. Watch it.’ Mehmet was still holding his revolver, and as Grant spoke he threw two shots in rapid succession towards him. The first nicked his shoulder, but the second went wild, chipped a marble wall and ricocheted into the floor.
The whole business was over in less than a minute but all three remembered the things which might still matter.
A television lens might still be watching their every movement and escape into the crowds might mean running into a trap.
Mehmet Ali had died before sending the telephone call to rub out a still possible Mafia opposition. So they must still try to find the list of names. Though time and safety had almost run out.
And at least two sophisticated weapons had not only to be discovered but destroyed, while the drug cache also remained a priority.
It was now an open bet how the old woman would react when she discovered the death of her top man. Nor would any of them have cared to guess mob reaction by the locals if the truth leaked out. And one guard remained alive to trigger off reaction.
Harmony put a finger to her mouth and both men watched intently as she mouthed a plan. Lip-reading was even more difficult for Lu than for Grant, but the girl made her message short. ‘Stay put. Back in ten minutes. Going to my room.’
Lu lit another slender cheroot and then, lifting Mehmet’s gun, shot the guard dead. Which, thought Grant dryly, solved at least one problem. Both men were now on the alert, with every sense tingling, and staring through a slit in the blinds Grant saw that the crowd in the square had again begun to thin out, though four men still stood in the centre beside a blob on the dust which he knew to be Charlie’s head. The old lady’s sedan-chair was also approaching and suddenly Grant knew that time had really run out. She would arrive before Lu’s cheroot was half finished and probably only Harmony could now save the situation.
The girl returned as the old lady began to walk towards the entrance foyer. She seemed tired, and Harmony decided to take her by surprise. She, more than the men, knew the old woman. In a way they had even become friends, and Harmony guessed that she could solve everything by one quick blitz upon a creature whose wits were now dulled by both drugs and physical fatigue.
She ran down the steps, smiling and with her arms out as though in ecstasy. She had changed, Grant saw, into a fresh gown exactly similar to the one which had been ripped to pieces in the patio. And the thought again crossed his mind that this girl probably carried a spare for almost everything. She believed in reducing risk to near zero.
But she looked incredibly beautiful, and the late afternoon sunshine seemed to paint her hair golden as she stopped beside the Goddess and knelt upon the ground. Her voice carried as clear as a bell, and although she used English, Grant knew that enough people present would understand and translate for the others. But it was one of the most dramatic off-the-cuff bluffs which Grant had ever witnessed.
‘Your blessings, Mother. Because Mehmet’s scientists have proved that I carry his child.’ She pointed backwards towards Grant who was now standing with Lu on the bottom stop, both men again waiting for cues and playing everything by ear.
The old woman’s eyes lit up with surprise. And then she broke into a broad smile of satisfaction as she translated into dialect before laying her hands on the girl’s head and blessing her.
‘But more, Mother,’ said Harmony. ‘Mehmet Ali has asked me to take you with us. He wants to pass three days in prayer, so no one must enter your home. He will then follow us to the world outside and begin the work which matters.’ She glanced at the four men who still stood beside the arms of the sedan-chair. ‘Carry the Goddess to the helicopter,’ she said excitedly. ‘The Goddess has had a vision and told Mehmet Ali how she has been called to save the world and this valley from disaster. Remember, Mother?’ She turned again to the old woman and touched her gently on the shoulder. ‘Remember that wonderful
vision where everyone alive stood up to meet you when you came down from the heavens and blessed people of every race beside those far-away blue waters.’
The Goddess stared stupidily, and then smiled hesitantly as Harmony again began to laugh with an infectious gaiety which made everyone smile. ‘I remember, child,’ she said. ‘But where did you say we must go?’
Harmony spoke rapidly to the chair-bearers. ‘Take her to the flying machine. And fast. It is Mehmet Ali’s wish that she move fast.’
The Goddess hesitated for only a moment as she reentered the sedan, but Harmony began to sing an Eastern song which drowned the voice of the old woman when she tried to answer a question.
Grant then stepped forwards and Harmony wrapped her arms around his neck while she spoke rapidly to the crowd. ‘And my man is coming with us. But we shall come back with the next full moon. So sing and pray for us.’
Her acting was magnetic, and she raised a cheer from those who were nearest when she again knelt in the dust and kissed Grant’s shoes. When she stood up her lips were smiling, but as she drew his head towards her she spat out an order. ‘Stop standing there like a stuffed bloody duck and get things going.’
She jumped ahead of the chair to clear a way through the crowds with the agility of a ballerina. ‘Make way for the Mother Goddess,’ she shouted, ‘make way,’ and somehow she found that the words fitted a Lennon-McCartney number with a powerful beat which was infectious. Grant joined her, singing at the top of his voice, but as the procession began to move towards the distant chopper his thoughts were chaotic.
Would it have enough gas?
Would the thing start?
Harmony had succeeded in almost hypnotising the crowds, but for how long would it last?
And what had happened to some of the strange figures who had been so much to the fore when they arrived: those seeming church leaders from ten or more countries, the African witch-doctors and all the rest?
‘Make way, make way,’ she was singing. And then at least one question was answered when a group of West Africans began to dance across the dust, the men stark naked and the women covered only by brief panties. It was a fantastic cameo, and Grant guessed that at least some of the men were Dinkas from the Sudan, while at least a few of the girls were from either Nigeria or Senegal. Their teeth were flashing white as they danced or sang, and it was they, finally, who generated the mass hysteria which moved the entire square into activity as the chair-bearers also began to trot when the tempo of Harmony’s song increased, until in less than ten minutes they paused beside the chopper while Grant and Lu climbed into the cockpit.
Harmony then manœuvred the old woman into position on the bottom step and both men heard her issue instructions. ‘Tell them that we are going to bring back a God-child,’ she said. ‘Tell them to destroy everything which the foreigners have built and to burn the house which holds drugs for sleep, and drugs for love, and drugs for life.’
The old woman was staring helplessly towards Harmony when the girl had another sudden inspiration as she saw blank confusion reflect in the old woman’s eyes and she turned like a snake towards the four bearers. ‘Carry her into the flying machine,’ she said curtly.
The crowd was still shuffling to the best of music which was now so loud that it almost made speech impossible, but as Grant took stock of the instrument panel and switched on he marked Harmony take up position near the door. He also got one fleeting glance of the old woman being placed in position beside a starboard rear seat, and then the bearers returned to the sedan while Lu sat beside the Mother Goddess and tried to put her at ease as he told her a few simple stories in Nepalese.
Grant began to feel more at home as he cut the throttle, tested the blades, revved up and felt the machine quiver for take off. Things were getting under control.
The girl was now standing, her arms pointing towards the crowd, and her face smiling broadly as she swayed in rhythm to the music. And then, with her never-failing sense of drama, she stopped singing and froze into immobility with her arms stiff by her sides. The crowd responded immediately to her change of mood and Grant trimmed back the throttle, even leaving the pilot’s seat to stand above her and listen to what she was saying from the entrance.
‘The Goddess was there at the beginning,’ she said, ‘and she will be there at the end. But now she must leave you until my child has been born, after which she will return and become a Buddha. But she has ordered me to give you her commands.
‘First, you will destroy every machine which foreigners have built in this place. And we shall all fly over the valley until we have seen you do it.
‘Second, you will burn the house of drugs. And we shall fly over the valley until we have seen the flames. If you do not know where the house is, then find it, because the Goddess has given you this mystery to see if you are fit to be trusted with even greater things when I return.
‘Third, you will burn every paper, every piece of cloth and every piece of furniture belonging to Mehmet Ali who has done many wicked things and now prays for forgiveness. But the Mother says that he must begin afresh with everything new. So you will burn everything which he possesses. And we shall fly over the valley until we see the fires on the square which will prove that you have obeyed her commands.’
Her voice changed and she lifted her hand in a parody of the benediction, but when she sang Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’ the crowd was hushed to total silence. The last note seemed to echo against the high mountains and to quiver in the distance while the entire mass of people from several scores of races or nationalities kneeled on the dust with eyes closed, and hands clasped in prayer.
Grant had seen more drama than most men, but he had probably never seen such an incredible demonstration of acting. It was incomparably dramatic. The girl’s voice was equal to the demands of Covent Garden or Milan, but her skill in improvising a situation was even greater than anything shown even by Krystelle.[8]
He leaned down to grasp her hand, and while the magic of the hymn still hypnotised the mob she leapt upwards, heaved herself into the cockpit and sat beside him in the co-pilot’s seat while he prepared for take off and Lu barred the door. ‘Gas,’ she said curtly. ‘We okay for gas?’
He pointed to the meter and paused to take in his last impression of the valley while the crowds still sat on the ground with bowed heads, their lips moving gently, and in some cases with shoulders swinging rhythmically as they prayed. ‘Seat-belts,’ he said at last. ‘Prepare for take off.’ The carnival was over, provided that the mob remembered Harmony’s last instructions and got weaving fast!
It began to move when they were about twenty feet up, and with one last wave from many hundreds of hands it turned and divided into several groups. Grant kept the machine at around five hundred feet while darkness fell. He had worked out a rapid calculation and was prepared to burn one fifth of their gas in order to check that demolition was running to schedule. The rest would take him to the plains of India where contact could soon be established with people who both moved fast and were content to cope with unexpected situations.
Darkness had begun to cover the valley when he saw one group of fifty or sixty people disappear into a hillside. Moments later they returned and withdrew for several hundred yards. Harmony was watching through night glasses and keeping him posted. She gussed that this was the station from which the Mafia controlled climate. And then she saw a man run out holding a box attached to a long flex. He stopped in the shelter of a huge rock and they could both see him press a plunger. The mountainside ripped to pieces below them, and blast rocked the aircraft while flames shot almost fifty feet into the air.
‘Number one,’ he shouted above the noise of two Rolls-Royce engines. ‘Where next?’
Harmony scanned the valley and then marked two other groups of people milling around sheds separated by upwards of a mile. One erupted in flames while they watched, and they both sensed that this must be the drug cache, because the sort of installation which would be
needed for the device which could melt an iceberg was likely to need a different explosive. Proof came minutes later, when, to port and a thousand feet below, a second building disappeared under a pall of black smoke while blast again rocked the aircraft. ‘Still want to linger?’ he asked.
The girl shook her head. ‘If they’ve done that they’ll do the rest. And there’s always the chance that Mehmet might be found. We’ve got everything except the names, and any list which Mehmet may have hidden is certain to be destroyed. So we’re back to square one.’
A shout from Lu distracted attention and they turned round to see the man bending over the old woman. ‘Excitement too much for her,’ said Grant. ‘Probably just a faint. But have a look-see.’
The girl walked slowly aft and paused beside the woman who had been a kind of friend. But she knew it was hopeless. Perhaps, after all, goddesses did, sometimes, die.
‘And now?’ asked Lu softly.
Harmony hesitated. ‘She comes from people who always use cremation. So I suggest that we land near some road in India and let the kite burn.’
‘And then?’ Lu sounded tired, but curious.
She struggled to control her voice. One part of her had been very fond of the old lady and she knew that her eyes were streaming tears. ‘I must phone my boss man to cancel operations. The snake priestesses can be forgotten. Maybe Mehmet Ali was wise when he said that we should leave the world to find its own destiny. Man seems to be getting just that little bit too clever.’
She sat down again beside Grant and he thrilled as he felt her hand light upon his forearm. Her eyes were now closed. But he knew that she was recharging her batteries, and that when they did touch down she would be ready for anything.
*
They slept that evening in Agra surrounded by the luxury of a Clarks Shiraz suite. The chopper had been left in flames near the Delhi Agra road and a hired car had taken them to a hotel which was one of Harmony’s favourites in India.
Goddesses Never Die Page 17