Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  "It's interesting to hear it repeated."

  "I will come soon enough to the interesting part but we are almost back at the house."

  "Come," Peter told her, and led her past the stables to the swimming pool pavilion.

  The surface of the heated pool steamed softly, and lush tropical plants were in odd contrast to the wintry scene beyond the glass walls.

  They sat side by side on a swing seat, close enough to be able to talk in subdued tones, but the intense mood was broken for the moment.

  She took off her hat, scarf and jacket, and tossed them onto the cane chair opposite, and she sighed as she settled back against the cushions.

  "I understand from Sir Steven that he wants you to go into the bank." She slanted her eyes at him. "it must be difficult to be so sought after."

  "I don't think I have Steven's reverence for money."

  "It's a readily acquired taste, General Stride, she assured him. "One that can become an addiction." At that moment the children of both Stride brothers arrived in a storm of shouted repartee and laughter, which moderated only marginally when they realized that Peter and the Baroness were in the swing seat.

  Steven's youngest son, bulging over the top of his costume with puppy-fat and with silver braces on his front teeth, rolled his eyes in their direction and in a stage whisper told Melissa-Jane, Je t'aime, ma cliMe, swoon!

  swoon!" His accent was frighteningly bad and he received a hissed rebuke and a shove in the small of the back that hurled him into the deep end of the pool.

  The Baroness smiled. "Your daughter is very protective-" she turned slightly to examine Peter's face again or is it merely jealousy?" Without waiting for an answer she went straight on to ask another question. Against the background of shouts and splashes, Peter thought he had mis-heard.

  "What did you say?" he asked carefully, certain that his expression had revealed nothing, and she repeated.

  "Does the name Caliph mean anything to you?" He frowned slightly, pretending to consider, while his memory darted back to the terrible micro-seconds of mortal combat, of smoke and flame and gunfire and a dark-haired girl in a scarlet shirt screaming: "Don't kill us! Caliph said we would not die. Caliph-" And his own bullets stopping the rest of it, smashing into the open mouth. The word had haunted him since then, and he had tried a thousand variations, looking for sense and meaning, considering the possibility that he had mis-heard. Now he knew he had not.

  "Caliph?" he asked, not knowing why he was going to deny it, merely because it seemed vital that he keep something in reserve, that he were not carried headlong on the torrent of this woman's presence and personality. "It's a Mohammedan title I think it literally means the heir of Mohammed, the successor to the prophet."

  "Yes." She nodded impatiently. "It's the title of a civil and religious leader but have you heard it used as a code name?"

  "No. I am sorry, I have not.

  What is the significance?"

  "I am not sure, even my own sources are obscure and confused." She sighed, and they watched Melissa-Jane in silence. The child had been waiting for Peter's attention, and when she had it she ran lightly out along the springboard and launched herself, light as a swallow in flight, into a clean one-and-a-half somersault, entering the water with hardly a ripple and surfacing immediately with fine pale hair slick down across her face, immediately looking again for Peter's approval.

  "She's a lovely child," said the Baroness. "I have no children.

  Aaron wanted a son but there was not one." And there was real sorrow in the green eyes that she masked quickly. Across the pool Melissa-Jane climbed from the pool and quickly draped a towel around her shoulders, covering her bosom which was now large enough and yet so novel as to provide her with a constant source of embarrassment and shy pride.

  "Caliph," Peter reminded the Baroness quietly, and she turned back to him.

  "first heard the name two years ago, in circumstances I shall never forget-" She hesitated. "May I take it that you are fully aware of the circumstances surrounding my husband's kidnapping and murder? I

  do not wish to repeat the whole harrowing story unless it is necessary."

  "I know it," Peter assured her.

  "You know that I delivered the ransom, personally."

  "Yes."

  "The rendezvous was a deserted airfield near the East German border. They were waiting with a light twin-engined aircraft, a Russian-built reconnaissance machine with its markings sprayed over." Peter remembered the meticulous planning and the special equipment used in the hijacking of 070. It all tallied. " There were four men, masked. They spoke Russian, or rather two of them spoke Russian. The other two never spoke at all. It was bad Russian-" Peter remembered now that the Baroness spoke Russian and five other languages. She had a Middle European background.

  Peter wished he had studied her intelligence file more thoroughly.

  Her father has escaped with her from her native Poland when she was a small child. "Almost certainly, the aircraft and the Russian were intended to cover their real identity," she mused. "I was with them for some little time. I had forty-five million Swiss francs to deliver and even in notes of large denomination it was a bulky and heavy cargo to load aboard the aircraft. After the first few minutes, when they realized that I had no police escort, they relaxed and joked amongst themselves as they worked at loading the money. The word "Caliph" was used in the English version, in a Russian exchange that roughly translates as "He was right again" and the reply "Caliph is always right". Perhaps the use of the English word made me remember it so clearly-" She stopped again, grief naked and bleak in the green eyes.

  "You told the police?" Peter asked gently, and she shook her head.

  "No. I don't know why not. They had been so ineffectual up to that time. I was very angry and sad and confused.

  Perhaps even then I had already decided that I would hunt them myself and this was all I had."

  "That was the only time you heard the name?" he asked, and she did not reply immediately. They watched the children at play and it seemed fantasy to be discussing the source of evil in such surroundings, against a background of laughter and innocent high spirits.

  When the Baroness answered, she seemed to have changed direction completely.

  "There had been that hiatus in international terrorism.

  The Americans seemed to have beaten the hijacking problem with their Cuban agreement and the rigorous airport searches. Your own successful campaign against the Provisional wing of the IRA in this country, the Entebbe raid and the German action at Mogadishu were all hailed as breakthrough victories. Everybody was beginning to congratulate themselves that it was beaten. The Arabs were too busy with the war in the Lebanon and with inter-group rivalries. It had been a passing thing." She shook her head again. "But terrorism is a growth industry the risks are less than those of financing a major movie. There is a proven sixty-seven per cent chance of success, the capital outlay is minimal, with outrageous profits in cash and publicity, with instant results and potential power not even calculable.

  Even in the event of total failure, there is still a better than fifty per cent survival rate for the participants." She smiled again, but now there was no joy and no warmth in it. "Any businessman will tell you it's better than the commodity markets."

  "The only thing against it is that the business is run by amateurs," Peter'said, "or by professionals blinded by hatred or crippled by parochial interests and limited goals." And now she turned to him, wriggling around in the canvas swing seat, curling those long legs up under her in that double-jointed woman's manner, impossible for a man.

  "You are ahead of me, Peter." She caught herself. "I am sorry, but General Stride is too much to say, and I have the feeling I have known you so long." The smile now was fleeting but warm. "My name is Magda," she went on simply.

  "Will you use it?"

  "Thank you, Magda."

  "Yes." She picked up the thread of conversation again.

 
"The business is in the hands of amateurs but it is too good to stay that way."

  "Enter Caliph," Peter guessed.

  "That is the whisper that I have heard; usually there is no name.

  Just that there was a meeting in Athens, or Amsterdam or East Berlin or Aden only once have I heard the name Caliph again. But if he exists already he must be one of the richest men in the world, and soon he will be the most powerful."

  "One man?" Peter asked.

  "I do not know. Perhaps a group of men perhaps even a government. Russia, Cuba, an Arab country? Who knows yet?"

  "And the goals?"

  "Money, firstly. Wealth to tackle the political objectives and finally power, raw power. "Magda Altmann stopped herself, and made a self-deprecating gesture. "This is guesswork again, my own guessing based only on past performance.

  They have the wealth now, provided by OPEC and myself amongst others. Now he or they have started on the political objectives, a soft target first. An African racist minority government unprotected by powerful allies. It should have succeeded. They should have won an entire nation a mineral-rich nation for the price of a dozen lives.

  Even had they failed to gain the main prize, the consolation prize was forty tons of pure gold. That's good business, Peter. It should have succeeded. It had succeeded.

  The Western nations actually put pressure on the victims, and forced them to accede to the demands it was a trial run, and it worked perfectly, except for one man."

  "I am afraid," said Peter softly, "as afraid as I have ever been in my life."

  "Yes, I am also,

  Peter. I have been afraid ever since that terrible phone call on the night they took Aaron, and the more I learn the more afraid I become."

  "What happens next?"

  "I do not know but the name he has chosen has the hint of megalomania, perhaps a man with visions of godlike domination-" She spread her fine narrow hands and the diamond flashed white fire. " We cannot hope to fathom the mind of a man who could embark on such a course.

  Probably he believes that what he is doing is for the eventual good of mankind. Perhaps he wants to attack the rich by amassing vast wealth, to destroy the tyrant with universal tyranny, to free mankind by making it a slave to terror. Perhaps he seeks to right the wrongs of the world with evil and injustice." She touched his arm again, and this time the strength of those long fingers startled Peter. "You have to help me find him, Peter. I am going to put everything into the hunt, there will be no reservations, all the wealth and influence that I control will be at your disposal."

  "You choose me because you believe that I murdered a wounded woman prisoner?" Peter asked. "Are those my credentials?" And she recoiled from him slightly, and stared at him with the slightly Mongolian slant of eyes, then her shoulders slumped slightly.

  "All right, that is part of it, but only a small part of it.

  You know I have read what you have written, you must know that I have studied you very carefully. You are the best man available to me, and finally you have proved that your involvement is complete. I know that you have the strength and skill and ruthlessness to find Caliph and destroy him before he destroys us and the world we know." Peter was looking inwards. He had believed that the beast had a thousand heads, and for each that was struck off a thousand more would grow but now for the first time he imagined the full shape of the beast, it was still in ambush, not clear yet, but there was only a single head.

  Perhaps, after all, it was mortal.

  "Will you help me, Peter?"she asked.

  "You know I will," he answered quietly. "I do not have any choice." She flew in the brilliance of high sunlight reflected from snow fields of blazing white, jetting through her turns with flowing elegance, carving each turn with a crisp rush of flying snow, swaying across the fall line of the mountain in an intricate ballet of interlinked movement.

  She wore a slim-fitting skin suit of pearly grey, trimmed in black at the shoulders and cuffs, she was shod with gleaming black Heierling snow birds and her skis were long, narrow, black Rossignol professionals.

  Peter followed her, pressing hard not to lose too much ground, but his turns were solid Christies without the stylish fallback un weighting of the jet turn which gave her each time a fractional gain.

  The dun he ran like a stag of ten But the mare like a new roused fawn Kipling might have been describing them, and she was a hundred yards ahead of him as they entered the forest.

  The pathway was barred with the shadows of the pines, and sugary ice roared under his skis as he pushed the narrow corners dangerously fast. Always she was farther ahead, flickering like a silver-grey wraith on those long lean legs, her tight round buttocks balancing the narrow waist and swinging rhythmically into the turns, marvelous controlled broadsides where the icy roadway denied purchase, coming out fast and straight, leaning into the rush of the wind, and her faint sweet laughter came back to Peter as he chased.

  There is an expertise that must be learned in childhood, and he remembered then that she was Polish, would probably have skied before she was weaned, and suppressed the flare of resentment he always felt at being outclassed by another human being, particularly by the woman who was fast becoming his driving obsession.

  He came round another steeply banked turn, with the sheer snow wall rising fifteen feet on his right hand and on his left the tops of the nearest pines at his own level, so steep the mountain fell away into the valley.

  The ice warning signs flashed past, and there was a wooden bridge, its boards waxen, opalescent with greenish ice. He felt control go as he hit the polished iron-hard surface. The bridge crossed a deep sombre gorge, with a frozen waterfall skewered to the black mountain rock by its own cruel icicles, like crucifixion nails.

  To attempt to edge in, or to stem the thundering rush across the treacherous going, would have invited disaster, to lean back defensively would have brought him down instantly and piled him into the sturdy wooden guide rails.

  At the moment he was lined up for the narrow bridge Peter flung himself forward so that his shins socked into the pads of his boots,

  and in a swoop of terror and exhilaration he went through, and found that he was laughing aloud though his heart leaped against his ribs and his breathing matched the sound of the wind in his own ears.

  She was waiting for him where the path debouched onto the lower slopes. She had pushed her goggles to the top of her head, and stripped off her gloves, both sticks planted in the snow beside her.

  "You'll never know how much I needed that." She had flown into Zurich that morning in her personal Lear jet.

  Peter had come in on the Swissair flight from Brussels, and they had motored up together. "You know what I wish, Peter?"

  "Tell me,"he invited.

  "I wish that I could take a whole month, thirty glorious days, to do what I wish. To be ordinary, to be like other people and not feel a moment's guilt." He had seen her on only three occasions in the six weeks since their first meeting at Abbots Yew. Three too brief and, for Peter, unsatisfying meetings.

  Once in his new office suite at the Narmco headquarters in Brussels, again at La Pierre Brute, her country home outside Paris, but then there had been twenty other guests for dinner. The third time had been in the panelled and tastefully decorated cabin of her Lear jet on a flight between Brussels and London.

  Though they had made little progress as yet in the hunt for Caliph, Peter was still exploring the avenues that had occurred to him and had cast a dozen lines, baited and hooked.

  During their third meeting Peter had discussed with her the need to restructure her personal safety arrangements.

  He had changed her former bodyguards, replacing them with operatives from a discreet agency in Switzerland which trained its own ryien. The director of the agency was an old and trusted friend.

  They had come to this meeting now so that Peter might report back on his progress to Magda. But for a few hours the snow had seduced them both.

  "There
is still another two hours before the light goes." Peter glanced across the valley at the village church. The gold hands of the clock showed a little after two o'clock.

  "Do you want to run the Rheinhorn?" She hesitated only a moment.

  "The world will keep turning, I'm sure." Her teeth were very white, but one of them was slightly crooked, a blemish that was oddly appealing as she smiled up at him. "Certainly it will wait two hours." He had learned that she kept unbelievable hours, begining her day's work when the rest of the world still slept, and still hard at it when the offices of Altmann Industries in Boulevard Capucine were deserted,

  except her own office suite on the top floor. Even during the drive up from Zurich she had gone through correspondence and dictated quietly to one of her secretaries. He knew that at the chalet across the valley her two secretaries would be waiting already, with a pile of telex flimsies for her consideration and the line held open for her replies.

  "There are better ways to die than working yourself to death." He was suddenly out of patience with her single mindedness and she laughed easily with high colour in her cheeks and the sparkle of the last run in the green eyes.

  "Yes, you are right, Peter. I should have you near to keep reminding me of that. "That's the first bit of sense I've had from you in six weeks." He was referring to her opposition to his plans for her security. He had tried to persuade her to change established behaviour patterns, and though the smile was still on her lips, her eyes were deadly serious as she studied his face.

  "My husband left me a trust-" she seemed suddenly sad beneath the laughter a duty that I must fulfill. One day I should like to explain that to you but now we only have two hours." It was snowing lightly, and the sun had disappeared behind the mountains of rock and snow and cloud as they walked back through the village. The lights were burning in the richly laden shop windows and they were part of the gaily clad stream returning from the slopes, clumping along the frozen sidewalks in their clumsy ski boots, carrying skis and sticks over one shoulder and chattering with the lingering thrill of the high pi ste that even the lowering snow-filled dusk could not suppress.