Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  He lit a cigarette and gazed out of the rain-blurred window panes, hardly aware of the muttered complaints and misgivings of his companion. What they should have done was crop the brat's fingers and bottle all of them to send to her father at intervals, and then they should have held a pillow over her face and buried her in the vegetable garden or weighted her and dumped her out beyond the hundred fathom line of the Irish Sea that way they would not have had to bother with a doctor, and the nursing Everything else had been done with professional skill, starting with the contact they had made with him in the favela of Rio de Janeiro, where he was hiding out in a sleazy one-room shack with the half-caste Indian woman, and down to his last fifty quid.

  That had given him a real start, he thought he had covered his tracks completely, but they had him made.

  They had the passport and travel papers in the name of Barry, and they did not look like forgeries. They were good papers, he was sure of it, and he knew a lot about papers.

  Everything else had been as well planned, and swiftly delivered.

  The money a thousand pounds in Rio, another five thousand the day after they grabbed the brat, and he was confident that the final ten would be there as it was promised. It was better than an English gaol,

  the "Silver City" as the Brits called their concentration camp at the Maze. That was what Caliph had promised, if he didn't take the job.

  Caliph, now that was a daft name, Gilly O'Shaughnessy decided for the fiftieth time as he dropped the stub of his cigarette into the dregs of his teacup and it was extinguished with a sharp hiss. A real daft name, but somehow it had the ability to put a chill on the blood, and he shivered not only from the cold.

  He stood up and crossed to the kitchen window. It had all been done with such speed and purpose and planning everything so clearly thought out, that when there was a lapse it was more troubling.

  Gilly O'Shaughnessy had the feeling that Caliph did nothing without good reason then why had they been ordered to back themselves into this dangerously exposed bottleneck, without the security of multiple escape routes, and to sit here and wait?

  He picked up the cyclist cape and tweed cap. "Where are you going?" the doctor demanded anxiously. "I'm going to take a shufti,"Gilly O'Shaughnessy grunted as he pulled the cap down over his eyes.

  "You're always prowling around," the doctor protested.

  "You make me nervous." The dark Irishman pulled the pistol from under his jacket and checked the load before thrusting it back into his belt.

  "You just go on playing nursemaid," he said brusquely. "And leave the man's work to me." The small black Austin crawled slowly up the village street, and the rain hammered on the cab and bonnet in tiny white explosions that blurred the outline, giving the machine a softly focused appearance, and the streaming windscreen effectively hid the occupants.

  It was only when the Austin parked directly in front of Laragh's only grocery store and both front doors opened that the curiosity of watchers from behind the curtained windows all down the street was satisfied.

  The two members of the Irish constabulary wore the service blue winter uniform with darker epaulettes. The soft rain speckled the patent leather peaks of their caps as they hurried into the shoP.

  "Good morning, Maeve, me old love," the sergeant greeted the plump red-faced lady behind the counter.

  "Owen O'Neill, I do declare-" She chuckled as she recognized the sergeant there had been a time, thirty years before, when the two of them had given the priest some fine pickings at the confessional. "And what brings you all the way up from the big city?" That was a generous description of the quaint seaside resort town of Wicklow, fifteen miles down the road.

  "The sight of your blooming smile-2 They chatted like old friends for ten minutes, and her husband came through from the little storeroom when he heard the rattle of teacups.

  "So what is new in Laragh, then?" the sergeant asked at last.

  "Any new faces in the village?"

  "No, all the same faces. Nothing changes in Laragh, bless the Lord for that." The shopkeeper wagged his head. "No, indeed only new face is the one down at the Old Manse, he and his lady friend-" he winked knowingly but seeing as how he's a stranger, we aren't after counting him." The sergeant ponderously delved for his notebook, opened it and extracted a photograph from it;

  it was the usual side view and full face of police records. He held the name covered with his thumb as he showed it to them.

  "No." The woman shook her head positively. "Himself down at the manse is ten years older than that, and he does not have a mustache."

  "This was taken ten years ago," said the sergeant.

  "Oh, well, why didn't you say so." She nodded. "Then that's him.

  That's Mr. Barry for certain sure."

  "The Old Manse, you say." The sergeant seemed to inflate visibly with importance, as he put the photograph back into his notebook. "I'm going to have to use your telephone now, dear."

  "Where will you be after telephoning?" The shopkeeper asked suspiciously.

  "Dublin," the sergeant told him. "It's police business."

  "I'll have to charge you for the call," the shopkeeper warned him quickly.

  "There," said the wife as they watched the sergeant making his request to the girl on the village switchboard. "I told you he had the look of trouble, didn't I? The first time I laid eyes on him I knew he was from up in the North, and carrying trouble like the black angel."

  Gilly O'Shaughnessy kept close in under the stone wall, keeping out of the slanting rain and out of the line of sight of a casual watcher on the slope beyond the river. He moved carefully and quietly as a tomcat on his midnight business, stopping to examine the earth below the weakened or tumbled places in the wall where a man could have come over, studying the wet drooping weeds for the brush marks where a man might have passed.

  At the farthest corner of the garden, he stepped up onto the leaning main stem of an apple tree to see over the wall, wedging himself against the lichen-encrusted stone, so that the silhouette of his head did not show above the wall.

  He waited and watched for twenty minutes, with the absolute animal patience of the predator, then he jumped down and went on around the perimeter of the wall, never for a moment relaxing his vigilance, seemingly oblivious to the discomfort of the cold and the insistent rain.

  There was nothing, not the least sign of danger, no reason for the nagging disquiet but still it was there. He reached another vantage point, the iron gate that led into the narrow walled alley, and he leaned against the stone jamb, cupping his hands to protect match and cigarette from the wind, and then shifting slightly so he could see through the crack between wall and gate and cover the walled lane, and the road beyond as far as the bridge.

  Once again he assumed the patient watching role, closing his mind against the physical discomfort and letting his eyes and his brain work at their full capacity.

  Not for the first time he pondered the unusual system of signals and exchanges of material that Caliph had insisted upon.

  The payments had been made by bearer deposit certificates, in Swiss francs, sent through the post to his Rio address and then to his collection address in London.

  He had made one delivery to Caliph, the bottle and its contents and two telephone calls. The delivery had been made within two hours of grabbing the girl, while she was still under the effects of the initial shot of the drug. The doctor Dr. Jameson, as Gilly O'Shaughnessy liked to think of him had done the job in the back of the second car. It had been waiting in the car park at Cambridge railway station, a little green Ford delivery van with a completely enclosed rear compartment. They had moved the girl from the maroon Triumph to the Ford in the covering dusk of the autumn evening, and they had parked again in the lot of a roadside cafe on the A10 while Dr. Jameson did the job.

  All the instruments had been ready for him in the van, but he had botched it badly, his hands shaking with nerves and the need for liquor. The brat had bled copiously
, and now the hand was infected.Gilly O'Shaughnessy felt his irritation rising sharply when he thought of the doctor. Everything he touched seemed to turn to disaster.

  He had delivered the bottle to a pick-up car that had been exactly where he was told it would be, and it had dipped its headlights in the prearranged signal. Gilly had hardly stopped, but merely drawn up alongside and handed the bottle across, then driven straight into the West, and caught the early morning ferry long before any general alarm was out for the girl.

  Then there were the telephone calls. They worried Gilly O'Shaughnessy as much as anything else in this whole bloody business.

  He had made the first call immediately they reached Laragh. It was an international call, and he had to say one sentence: "We arrived safely." And then hang up. A week later a call to the same number, and again only one sentence: "We are enjoying ourselves." And then immediately break the connection.

  Gilly remembered how each time the girl on the local exchange had called him back to ask if the contact had been satisfactory and each time she had sounded puzzled and intrigued.

  It was not the way Caliph had worked up until then, it was leaving a trail for the hunters to follow and he would have protested if there had been somebody to protest to, but there was only the international telephone number, no other way of contacting Caliph. He decided as he stood by the gate that he would not make the next telephone call to that number which was due in four days" time.

  Then he remembered that was the day the hand was due and he would probably receive his orders for delivery of the hand when he made the call but he didn't like it. Not even for the money and suddenly his mind went back to an incident long ago.

  They had wanted to pass false information to the English, details of an intended operation which would in fact take place at a different place and a different time.

  They had fed the detailed but duff information to a young unreliable Provo, one who they knew would not hold out under interrogation, and they had put him in a safe house in the Shankhill Road and that was where the English took him.

  Gilly O'Shaughnessy felt a little electric prickle run down his spine like ghost-fire, and that feeling had never let him down before never. He looked at his cheap Japanese wristwatch; it was almost four o'clock, and evening was lowering on the hills of grey and cold green.

  When he looked up again, there was movement on the road.

  From the top of the hill a vehicle was following the curve of the road, down towards the bridge. It was a small black saloon car, and it went out of sight behind the hedge.

  Gilly O'Shaughnessy watched for it to reappear without particular interest, still worrying about those two telephone calls. Trying to find the need for them, why Caliph should want to take that chance.

  The small black car turned onto the bridge, and came directly down towards the Manse, but the light was wrong and Gilly could make out only the shape of two heads beyond the rhythmically flogging windscreen wipers.

  The car began to slow up, coming down almost to walking speed, and Gilly straightened up instinctively, suddenly completely alert as he peered through the slit.

  There was the pale blur of faces turned towards him, and the car slowed almost to a halt. The nearest side window was lowered slowly and for the first time he could see clearly into the interior. He saw the peak of the uniform cap, and the silver flash of a cap badge above the straining white face. The ghost-fire flared up Gilly

  O'Shaughnessy's spine and he felt his breath suddenly scalding his throat.

  The small black car disappeared beyond the corner of the stone wall, and he heard it accelerate away swiftly.

  Gilly O'Shaughnessy whirled with the cape ballooning around him and he ran back to the house. He felt very cold and sure and calm now that the moment of action had come.

  The kitchen was empty and he crossed it in half a dozen strides, and threw open the door to the second room.

  The doctor was working over the bed and he looked up angrily.

  "I've told you to knock." They had argued this out before. The doctor still retained some bizarre vestige of professional ethics in his treatment of his patient. He might surgically mutilate the child for the money he so desperately needed, but he had protested fiercely when Gilly O'Shaughnessy had lingered at the doorway to ogle the maturing body whenever the doctor stripped it for cleansing, treatment or for the performance of its natural functions.

  The dark Irishman had halfheartedly attempted to force him to back down, but when he had encountered surprisingly courageous opposition he had abandoned his voyeuristic pleasures and had returned to the inner room only when called to assist.

  Now the child lay face down on the soiled sheets. Her blonde hair was matted and snarled into greasy tresses; the doctor's attempts at cleanliness were as bumbling and gin ineffectual as his surgery.

  The infection and the use of drugs had wasted the flesh off the tender young body, each knuckle of her spine stood out clearly and her naked buttocks seemed pathetically vulnerable, shrunken and pale.

  Now the doctor pulled the grubby sheet up to her shoulders, and turned to stand protectively over her. It was an absurd gesture, when you looked at the untidy, stained dressing that bound up her left hand and Gilly O'Shaughnessy snarled at him fiercely.

  "We are getting out."

  "You can't move her now, protested the doctor. "She's really sick."

  "Suit yourself," Gilly agreed grimly.

  "Then we'll leave her." He reached under the dripping cape, and brought out the pistol. He thumbed back the hammer and stepped up to the bed.

  The doctor grabbed at his arm, but Gilly pushed him away easily, sending him reeling back against the wall.

  "You are right, she'll be a nuisance," he said, and placed the muzzle of the pistol against the base of the child's skull.

  "No," shrieked the doctor. "No, don't do that. We'll take her."

  "We are leaving as soon as it's dark." Gilly stepped back and uncocked the pistol. "Be ready by then, "he warned.

  The two helicopters flew almost side by side, with the number two only slightly behind and higher than the leader; below them the Irish Sea was a sheet of beaten lead flecked with feathers of white water.

  They had refuelled at Caemarvon and had made good time since leaving the Welsh coast, for the wind drove them on, but still the night was overtaking them and Peter Stride fretted, glancing at his wristwatch every few seconds.

  It was only ninety miles of open water to cross, but to Peter it seemed like the entire Atlantic. Colin slumped beside him on the bench that ran the length of the hold, with the cold stump of a cheroot in the corner of his mouth in deference to the "No smoking" light that burned on the bulkhead behind the flight deck. The rest of the Thor team had adopted their usual attitudes of complete relaxation, some of them sprawled on the deck using their equipment as pillows, the others stretched out full length on the benches.

  Peter Stride was the only one tensed up, as though his blood fizzed with nervous energy. He stood up once again to peer through the perspex window, checking the amount of daylight and trying to judge the height and position of the sun through the thick cloud cover.

  "Take it easy, Colin counselled him as he dropped back into his seat. "You will give yourself an ulcer."

  "Colin, we've got to decide. What are our priorities on this strike?" He had to shout above the racket of wind and motor.

  "There are no priorities. We have only one object to get Melissa-Jane out, and out safety."

  "We aren't going to try for prisoners to interrogates"

  "Peter baby, we are going to hit anything and everything that moves in the target area, and we are going to hit them hard." Peter nodded with satisfaction. "They will only be goons anyway, you can be certain that their paymaster will not let them connect to him but what about Kingston Parker, he would want prisoners?"

  "Kingston Parker?" Colin removed the stub of cheroot from his mouth. "Never heard of him around here it's Uncle Colin
makes the decisions." And he grinned at Peter, that friendly lopsided grin, and at that moment the flight engineer crossed the cabin and yelled at Colin.

  "Irish coast ahead we'll be landing at Enniskerry in seven minutes, sir." The traffic control at Enniskerry had been apprised of the emergency. They stacked the other traffic in holding pattern above circuit altitude and cleared the two RAF. helicopters for immediate landing.

  They came clattering out of the low grey cloud and rain, and settled on the hangar apron. Immediately a police car with headlights burning in the gloom, sped out from between the hangars and parked beside the leading machine. Before the rotors had stopped turning, two members of the Irish Constabulary and a representative of the surveyor general's office were scrambling up into the camouflaged fuselage.

  "Stride." Peter introduced himself quickly. He was dressed now in Thor assault gear, the one piece fitted black suit and soft boots, the pistol on its webbing belt strapped down to his right thigh.

  "General, we've had a confirmation," the police inspector Aware told him while they were still shaking hands. "Local people have identified O'Shaughnessy from a police photograph.

  He is staying in the area all right."

  "Have they found where?"

  Peter demanded.

  "They have, sir. It's an old rambling building on the edge of the village-" He motioned the bespectacled surveyor to come forward with the file he was clutching to his chest.