by Iles, Greg
When she reached the top of a long rise, she caught sight of Horn House in the distance. She gasped. Fleeing the house earlier, she had not looked back. But now she saw the whole estate laid out before her like a postcard photograph, stark and stunning in its originality. She had never seen anything like it, not in magazines, not even on television. Horn House—a building that from inside gave the impression of a classical Mediaeval manor with ornate rooms and endless hallways—was actually an equilateral triangle. A triad of vast legs surrounded a central tower that rose like a castle keep above the three outer legs. Crowning this tower was a glittering copper-plated dome. The observatory, Ilse remembered. Hexagonal turrets stood at each vertex of the great triangle. She half expected to see archers rise up from behind the tessellated parapets.
With a sudden shiver, she realized that Horn House was exactly what it appeared to be-a fortress. On the seemingly endless plain, the massive citadel stood on top of a hill set in the centre of a shallow, circular bowl created by gradually ridged slopes on all its sides. Anyone approaching it would have to cross this naked expanse of ground beneath the gaze of the central tower.
Ilse pressed down her apprehension and set off across the asphalt, using the observatory dome as her homeward beacon. She was quickly brought up short by a deep, dry gully. She’d crossed a shallow defile earlier, but nothing like this. She must have crossed it at another point on her way from the house. Easing herself carefully down over the rim, she climbed down into the dusty ravine.
Smuts had christened this dry creek bed “the wash” and it served as the first barrier in the impregnable security screen which the Afrikaner had constructed around his master’s isolated redoubt. If Ilse had known what lay between her and Horn House, she would have hunkered down in the Wash and refused to take another step. The Afrikaner had used all his experience to turn the grassy bowl between the Wash and his master’s fortress into a killing zone from which no intruder could escape alive.
Every square metre of the circular depression was protected by Claymore mines, explosive devices containing hundreds of steel balls that, when remotely detonated, blasted outward at an angle and cut any living creature to pieces in a millisecond. Concrete bunkers, each armed with an M-60 machine gun, studded the inner lip of the huge bowl. Each was connected to the central tower by a network of underground tunnels, providing a secure means of directing fire and reinforcing the bunkers in the event of casualties. But the linchpin of Horn House’s defences was the “observatory”. The nerve entire security complex, the great copper dome housed closed-circuit television monitors, radar screens, satellite communications gear, and the pride of Smuts’s arsenal—a painstakingly machined copy of the American Vulcan mini-gun, a rotary cannon capable of pouring 6,600 armour-piercing rounds per minute down onto the open ground surrounding Horn House.
None of these precautions was visible, of course; Pieter Smuts knew his job. The Claymore mines—designed to be spiked onto the ground surface—had been waterproofed and hidden beneath small mounds of earth. The bunkers had sheets of sun-scorched sod laid over their outward faces. Even the Vulcan gun slept silently behind the retractable telescope cover of the “observatory”, waiting to be aimed not at the heavens, but at the earth.
Oblivious to the matrix of death that surrounded her, Ilse fought her way up and over the far rim of the Wash, brushed herself off, and continued toward the still distant house.
With a soft buzz Alfred Horn turned his wheelchair away from his security chief and gazed across the veld. Ilse had just topped the rim of the bowl to the northeast. With her blond hair dancing in the sun, she looked as carefree as a Jungfrau picnicking in the Grunewald. Without taking his eyes from her, Horn asked, “Is the helicopter available, Pieter?”
“Yes, sir.”
Horn watched Ilse make her way across the long, shallow depression and climb the hill to the house. It took several minutes.
When Ilse spied the waiting Afrikaner, she started to avoid him, but Horn motioned her over. She stepped tentatively up to his wheelchair. “Is there any news of my husband?” she asked diffidently.
“Not yet, my dear. But there soon will be, I’m sure.”
Horn turned to Smuts. “Pieter, have one of the office girls order some clothes for Frau Apfel. They can fly them out in the helicopter. And make sure there’s something conservative.” He cast a surreptitious glance at Lord Grenville. “For tonight.”
The young Englishman stared into his drink.
“Take Frau Apfel with you, Pieter,” Horn suggested. “She can provide her sizes.” He turned to Ilse with a smile. “Would you, my dear?”
Ilse hesitated a moment, then she silently followed Smuts. She didn’t know what to make of Alfred Horn’s eccentricities, but she remembered the Afrikaner’s warning against disobeying him. She would do anything to keep her unborn child off the torture table that waited in the X-ray Room.
Horn watched her walk into the house, a look of rapture on his face. Stanton observed him with growing disgust. The old fool’s past it, he thought. There’s no stopping things now. You never learned the natural law, Alfred You pass the torch to the young or you die. As Stanton drained the dregs of his Bloody Mary, he made a silent toast to Sir Neville Shaw.
3.30 P.m. Mozambique Channel, Indian Ocean
Sixty-five miles off the wooded coastline of southern Mozambique, the MV Casilda hove to in the 370-mile-wide stretch of water that separates the old Portuguese colony from the island of Madagascar. A medium-sized freighter of Panamanian registry, her holds were full of denim fabric bound for Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to the north. After unloading this cargo Casilda would sail to Beira, the great railhead and port on the Mozambique coast, where she would take on a consignment of asbestos bound for Uruguay. But just now she had other business. Strapped to the aft deck of the freighter like giant insects pinned to a display board were two Bell JetRanger HI helicopters scheduled for delivery to RENAMO, the anti-Marxist guerrillas in Mozambique. Although the choppers would eventually be delivered to their official buyers, they had a job to do first—a slight detour to take. Supplied by a very wealthy gentleman in South America, the JetRangers were configured as commercial aircraft, with the papers required for legal transfer all in order—but a military man might be quick to notice that they could be easily modified for combat duty in a pinch.
The sun-blistered man who surveyed the two helos from the shadow of the wheelhouse awning was just such a man. An Englishman, and the only white man on the entire ship, his name was Alan Burton. During the entire five-week voyage, Burton had watched over the helicopters as if they were his own. In the next two days he would have to entrust his life to them, and as he did not particularly trust any of the men he would be working with, he felt that the most he could do was be sure of the choppers. They were his lifeline. His way in—his way out.
Casilda had been lucky so far. At no port of call had any customs officials conducted more than a cursory search of her holds. If they had, they would almost certainly have discovered the two large crates secreted in the stacks of bolted denim, which contained a rather amateurish assortment of assault rifles, ammunition, and grenades. They might even have discovered the special cargo hidden in Alan Burton’s cabin, but the Englishman doubted it. He had hidden the mortar tube well. In spite of this luck, Burton was angry. The man who had contracted his services had led him to believe that his companions on this mission would know what they were about. They did not. Burton was the only man in the entire unit who knew this part of Africa, and, excepting the pilots, he was the only professional of the lot.
The Cubans were all right, but there were only two of them—the pilots. The sloppiness of the Colombians was appalling. Burton considered them a rabble—no better than bandits. From his first contact with them, serious doubts about the mission had begun to eat at his confidence. He lit a Gauloise and cursed the luck that had forced him to work under these circumstances. The company stank, but what could he do
?
He wasn’t complaining about the money—the Colombian paid cash on the barrel head and lots of it. The Cuban pilots were getting six thousand in flight pay, plus salary, and Burton’s bonus was twice that. But he had not taken this assignment for the money. He had taken it for The Deal. The Deal was a mysterious and wondrous arrangement of a kind he had never before heard—a solemn pact between a government and an exiled mercenary. The price to be paid was not money, but a treasure that only one government in the world could pay. Burton didn’t like to think about The Deal too much, for fear it would evaporate like every other precious hope in his life. Only in a few unguarded moments, on the foredeck at dawn watching the sea, had he caught himself thinking of green hills, of an old stone cottage, the smell of hothouse orchids, and sharing a pint with a man much like himself. At those times he would angrily push the visions from his mind.
He had enough to worry about. He worried what would happen if the Cubans discovered what lay inside one of the elongated boxes labelled RPG. Two million rand in gold was enough money to tempt even a man of Burton’s high professional standards, and he doubted the Cuban pilots had any such pretensions. Strangely, the Colombians didn’t worry him on that score. They would know enough about the price of betraying their master to keep clear of such temptations. But their lack of combat experience did worry him. He’d heard them boasting about various violent shootouts they’d been involved in, but such hooliganism hardly qualified them to face the kind of opposition they were likely to meet in Africa. They’ll find out soon enough, he thought bitterly.
Burton expected a message today, relaying the latest situation from the target. There was supposedly an informer inside the target—an Englishman, no less—which Burton found very interesting. At least he isn’t a bloody Colombian, he thought. Burton hoped the strike order would come today. He was ready to get off the goddamn ship. As he smoked beneath the blue wheelhouse awning, a thin, deeply tanned man emerged from a hatch in the afterdeck and walked over to the helicopters. It was one of the Cuban pilots—a bright-eyed youngster named Diaz—checking the moorings of the choppers. Spying Burton, he made an OK signal with his thumb and forefinger, then disappeared back down the hatch.
Burton flipped his Gauloise over the side rail and walked out to the helicopters. Maybe a few of them know what they’re about after all, he thought. Maybe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
6.55 Pm. Horn House: The Northern Transvaal
The Learjet appeared low in the east, a fiery arrow hurtling down the vast African sky. The dying sun glittered on the metal-skinned apparition as it settled onto the freshly laid asphalt runway. It taxied to the short apron, then turned slowly until it faced back up the strip, shimmering like a bird of prey next to Horn’s helicopter.
A khaki-coloured Range Rover trundled out to meet the plane. Pieter Smuts, dressed impeccably as a major of the South African Reserve, stepped from the driver’s seat. He stood at attention, waiting for the Lear’s short staircase to drop to the tarmac. He noticed that the aircraft bore no corporate or national insignia, only numbers painted across the gracefully swept tail fin. When the jet’s door finally opened, two dark-skinned Arabs stepped out. Each carried an automatic weapon that, from where Smuts stood, appeared to be the Israeli Uzi. Hats off to the competition, he thought dryly.
The bodyguards made a great show of checking the area for potential threats. Then one of them barked some Arabic through the open hatchway. Smuts marched smartly toward the bottom of the staircase. Four Arabs filed out of the aircraft and down the steps. Two wore flowing robes and sandals, two wore Western business suits. Smuts greeted the shorter of the two robed Arabs.
“Mr Prime Minister?”
“Yes. Greetings, Mr—?”
“Smuts, sir. Pieter Smuts, at your service. If you gentlemen will follow me into the vehicle, please.”
The taller of the two robed Arabs—a man with pie-black eyes and a desert chieftain’s mustache—surveyed the vast expanse of grass and scrub around them, then smiled. “This is not so different from our own country,” he said. The other Arabs laughed and nodded. “Now,” he said, “let us go to meet the man we have come to see.”
Smuts led them to the Rover.
When they reached the main entrance of Horn House, all the servants—medical staff excluded—stood outside awaiting their arrival. This favourably impressed the Arabs, who walked disdainfully past the white-clad line and into the great marble reception hall. Almost immediately a low whirring sound drew their attention to the far side of the high-ceilinged room. A section of the wall slid swiftly back, revealing Alfred Horn sitting in his wheelchair inside a two-metre wide cubicle. On his gaunt body, the black suit and tie he wore gave him a rather funereal air. But something else about him had changed. The artificial eye was gone. Tonight Horn wore a black eyepatch in its place. Combined with the wheelchair, the eyepatch gave the wizened old man the quiet dignity of a battle-scarred war veteran.
“Guten Abend, gentlemen,” he rasped. “Would you join me in the elevator, please?”
The elevator Horn occupied led down to a basement complex one hundred metres below the house. Only from this basement could one reach a second elevator that led up into the observatory tower of Horn House. When it became obvious that only four could fit comfortably into the elevator with the wheelchair, he ordered Smuts to wait with the Arab bodyguards.
“We’ll see you in a few minutes, sir,” Smuts said.
By the time the Afrikaner’s party arrived at the second-floor conference room, Horn and his Arab guests were already seated around a great round table of polished Rhodesian teak. A large aluminum briefcase lay closed on the table before one of the business-suited Arabs. Linah had brought up chilled Perrier. Prime Minister Jalloud turned to the door and
softly addressed one of the bodyguards. “Malahim, we feel quite secure in Herr Horn’s care. We wish you to wait downstairs for us. The housekeeper will give you refreshments.”
The bodyguard melted away from the door. Smuts closed the door, locked it, then stood at attention beside it.
“Herr Horn,” Prime Minister Jalloud said uncomfortably, “Our Esteemed Leader has asked us to obtain your permission to make a video recording of this negotiation, so that he may witness what transpires here tonight. He understands if you prefer not to have your face recorded, but in that case he asks if we might make an audio recording instead.”
The room hung in tense silence. Alfred Horn laughed silently. He had four video cameras recording the meeting already. “You have video equipment in that case?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jalloud replied, worried that he might already have overstepped the bounds of propriety.
“Set it up then. By all means. In negotiations of this magnitude, it is necessary to have an accurate record.”
An audible sigh of relief went up in the conference room. At the snap of Jalloud’s fingers one of the Arabs opened the aluminium case and busied himself with a camcorder and tripod.
“I have a request of my own, gentlemen,” Horn said. “I too keep records of meetings, but I’m old-fashioned. Do you mind if my personal secretary takes notes?”
“Certainly not,” Jalloud replied courteously.
Horn pressed a button. In a few seconds the door opened to reveal a stunning young blonde wearing a severely-cut blue skirt and blouse. Ironically, the two Arabs who affected Western dress seemed most shocked by Ilse’s sudden appearance.
“As you can see, gentlemen, said Horn, “my secretary is a woman. Is that a problem?”
There were some uncomfortable glances, but Jalloud ended any discussion before it could begin. “If you wish it, Herr Horn, it is so. Let us begin.”
Ilse took a seat behind Horn, crossed her legs, and held a notepad ready to take down anything Horn might instruct her to. She ignored the Arabs completely, her attention on Horn’s eyepatch.
Jalloud said, “Herr Horn, allow me to introduce my companions. To my right is Major Ilyas Karam
i, senior military adviser to Our Esteemed Leader. He is understandably out of uniform.” The tall, mustached Arab wearing robes stood and nodded solemnly.
“To my left,” Jalloud continued, “is Dr Hamid Sabri, our nuclear physicist. Do not let his youth mislead you. In our country he is the preeminent expert in his field.” A bookish young man wearing a business suit stood and bowed his head.
“And finally,” Jalloud concluded, “All Jumah, my personal interpreter. He speaks excellent German and humbly waits to serve you.”
“Excellent,” Horn said in German. Until now they had all spoken a very uncomfortable English.
“And I,” the robed Arab said proudly, “am Abdul Salam Jalloud, prime minister of my country.”
“Of course,” Horn said. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Instantly the Arabs brought out packs of American cigarettes and lit up. Horn accepted an Upmann cigar from Smuts’s pocket supply. As Smuts lit the cigar, Horn noticed a rectangular swatch of colour emblazoned on Major Karami’s gold lighter. A solid field of blue-green—the flag of Libya. A military man to his bones, Horn thought. The homeland is never far from his mind. A quick glance at Smuts told Horn that his security chief had also noticed the lighter.
“Perhaps you gentlemen should begin by stating your requirements,” Horn suggested. “That should give us a clear idea of where we stand.”
Jalloud yielded the floor to Dr Sabri, the physicist. The bespectacled young Libyan spoke soft, precise Arabic. Jumah the interpreter translated whenever he paused for breath. “What we need,” Dr Sabri began, “is fissile material. Either highly enriched uranium (U-235) or plutonium (Pu-239). We need as much of either isotope as you can supply, both if possible. At the very least, we need fifteen kilograms of uranium or five kilograms of plutonium. By ‘highly enriched’ I mean uranium enriched to at least eighty percent purity. Anything less is useless to us. We also need triggers—either lens or krytron types—and sculpted steel support tubes.” He paused nervously. “These are our requirements,” he concluded, and resumed his seat.