by Wilbur Smith
At last she came to sit in his lap, and made a show of taking his pulse.
"The patient is much improved, "she announced; "is now probably strong enough for Phase Three of the cure."
"Which is?"he asked.
"Peter cheri, even if you are English, you are not that dense. "And she wriggled her bottom in his lap.
They made love in the warm sunlight, on one of the foam mattresses, with the trade wind teasing their bodies like unseen fingers.
It began in banter and with low gurgles of laughter, little gasps of rediscovery, and murmurs of welcome and encouragement then suddenly it changed, it became charged with almost unbearable intensity, a storm of emotion that sought to sweep all the ugliness and doubt. They were caught up in the raging torrent that carried them helplessly beyond mere physical response into an unknown dimension from which there seemed no way back, a total affirmation of their bodies and their minds that made all else seem inconsequential.
"love you," she cried at the very end, as though to deny all else that she had been forced to do. "I have loved only you." It was a cry torn from the very depths of her soul.
It took a long time for them to return from the far place to which they had been driven, to become two separate people again, but when they did somehow they both sensed that they would never again be completely separated; there had been a deeper more significant union than just that of their two bodies, and the knowledge sobered them and yet, at the same time, gave them both new strength and a deep elation that neither had to voice it was there, and they both simply knew it.
They slid the big inflatable Avon dinghy over the stern, and went ashore, pulling the rubber craft above the high-water level and mooring it to one of the slanting palm holes.
Then they wandered inland, picking their way hand in hand between the seabird nests that had been crudely scraped in the earth. Half a dozen different species of birds were breeding together in one sprawling colony that covered most of the twenty-acre island. Their eggs varied from as big as that of a goose's, to others the size of a pullet's and speckled and spotted in lovely free-form designs.
The chicks were either grotesquely ugly with bare parboiled bodies or were cute as Walt Disney animations. The entire island was pervaded by an endless susurration of thousands of wings and the uproar of squawking, screeching, feuding and mating birds.
Magda knew the zoological names of each species, its range and its habits, and its chances of survival or extinction in the changing ecosystems of the oceans.
Peter listened to her tolerantly, sensing that behind this chatter and studied gaiety she was steeling herself to answer the accusations that he had levelled at her.
At the far end of the island was a single massive takamaka tree, with dense green foliage spreading widely over the fluffy white sand.
By now the sun was fiercely bright and the heat and humidity smothered them like a woollen blanket dipped in hot water.
They sought the shade of the takamaka gratefully, and sat close together on the sand staring out across the unruffled waters of the lagoon to the silhouette of the main island, five miles away. At this range and angle there was no sign of the buildings nor of the jetty, and Peter had an illusion of the primeval paradise with the two of them the first man and woman on a fresh and innocent earth.
Magda's next words dispelled that illusion entirely.
"Who ordered you to kill me, Peter? How was the command given? I must know that before I tell you about myself."
"Nobody,"he answered.
"Nobody? There was no message like the one you received ordering you to kill Parker?"
"No."
"Parker himself or Colin Noble? They did not order you to do it or suggest it?"
"Parker expressly ordered me not to do it. You were not to be touched until you could be taken in jeopardy."
"It was your own decision?" she insisted.
"It was my duty."
"To avenge your daughter?" He hesitated, would have qualified it, then nodded with total self-honesty. "Yes, that was the most part of it, Melissa-Jane, but I saw it also as my duty to destroy anything evil enough to envisage the taking of 070, the abduction of Aaron Altmann and the mutilation of my daughter."
"Caliph knows about us. Understands us better than we understand ourselves. I am not a coward, Peter, but now I am truly afraid."
"Fear is the tool of his trade," Peter agreed, and she moved slightly, inviting physical contact. He placed one arm about her bare brown shoulders and she leaned lightly against him.
"All that you told me last night was the truth, only the inferences and conclusions were false. Papa's death, the lonely years with strangers as foster-parents of that period my clearest memories are of lying awake at night and trying to muffle the sound of my weeping with a false blanket. The return to Poland, yes, that was right, and the Odessa school all of that. I will tell you about
Odessa one day, if you truly want to hear it ?"
"I don't think I do" he said.
"Perhaps you are wise; do you want to hear about the return to Paris?"
"Only what is necessary."
"All right, Peter. There were men.
That was what I had been selected and trained for. Yes, there were men-" She broke Off, and reached up to take his face between her hands, turning it so she could look into his eyes. "Does that make a difference between us, Peter?"
"I love you, "he replied firmly.
She stared into his eyes for a long time looking for evidence of deceit, and then when she found none, "Yes. It is so. You really mean that." She sighed with relief and laid her head against his shoulder, speaking quietly with just that intriguing touch of accent and the occasional unusual turn of phrase.
"I did not like the men, either, Peter. I think that was why I chose Aaron Altmann. One man, yes I could still respect myself-" She shrugged lightly. "I chose Aaron, and Moscow agreed. It was, as you said, delicate work. First I had to win his respect. He had never respected a woman before. I proved to him I was as good as any man, at any task he wished to set me. After I had his respect, all else followed-" She paused and chuckled softly. Life plays naughty tricks.
I found firstly that I liked him, then I grew to respect him also. He was a great ugly bull of a man, but the power ... A huge raw power, like some cosmic force, became the centre of my existence." She lifted her head to touch Peter's cheek with her lips in reassurance. "No. Peter, I never came to love him. I never loved before you. But I stood in vast awe of him, like a member of a primitive tribe worships the lightning and the thunder. It was like that. He dominated my existence more than a father, more than a teacher, as much as a god but less, very much less than a lover. He was crude and strong. He did not make love, he could only rut and tup like the bull he was." She broke off and looked seriously at him. "Do you understand that, Peter?
Perhaps I explained it badly?" No," he assured her. "You explained it very well."
"Physically he did not move me, his smell and the hairiness. He had hair on his shoulders and like a pelt down his back.
His belly was bulging and hard as iron-" She shivered briefly. " But I had been trained to be able to ignore that. To switch off something in the front of my brain.
Yet in all other ways he fascinated me. He goaded me to think forbidden thoughts, to open vaults of my mind that my training had securely locked. All right, he taught me about power and its trappings. You accused me of that, Peter, and I admit it. The flavour of power and money was to my taste. I like it. I like it very much indeed. Aaron introduced me to that. He showed me how to appreciate fine and beautiful things, for he was only physically a bull and he had a wonderful appreciation of the refinements of life he made me come completely alive. Then he laughed at me. God, I can still hear the bellow of his laughter, and see that great hairy belly shaking with it." She paused to remember it, almost reverently, and then she chuckled her own husky little laugh.
"My fine little communist lady,"" he mocked me. "Yes, Peter, it was I
who was deceived, he had known from the beginning who I was. He also knew about the school at Odessa. He had accepted me as a challenge, certainly he loved me or his version of love, but he took me knowingly and corrupted my pure ideological convictions. Only then did I learn that all the information which I had been able to pass to Moscow had been carefully screened by Aaron.
He doubled me, as I had been sent to double him. He was Mossad, but of course you know that. He was a Zionist, you know that also.
And he made me realize that I was a Jewess, and what it meant to be that. He showed me every fatal flaw in the doctrine of Universal Communism, he convinced me of democracy and the Western Capitalist system and then he recruited me to Mossad-" She stopped again, and shook her head vehemently.
To believe that I could have wished to destroy such a one. That I could have ordered his abduction and mutilation Towards the end, when he was getting weak, when the pain was very bad, that was the closest I ever came to loving him, the way a mother loves a child. He became pathetically dependent upon me; he used to say the only thing that could lull the pain was my touch. I used to sit for hours rubbing that hairy belly feeling that awful thing growing bigger inside him each day, like a cauliflower or a grotesque foetus. He would not let them cut it. He hated them, "butchers" he called them. "Butchers with their knives and rubber tubes "" She broke off and Peter realized that her eyes were filled with tears. He hugged her a little more firmly and waited for her to recover.
"It must have been about this time that Caliph made contact with Aaron. Thinking back I can remember the time when he became suddenly terribly agitated. It made little sense to me then, but he held long diatribes about right-wing tyranny being indistinguishable from tyranny of the left. He never mentioned the name Caliph, I do not think Caliph had yet used that name and I do believe that Aaron would eventually have told me of the contact if he had lived. It was -the way he was, even with in detail, me, he could be as wary and subtle as he could be overpowering. He would have told me of Caliph but Caliph saw to it that he did not." She pulled away from Peter's arms so she could again see his face.
"You must understand, cheri, that much of this I have learned only recently in the last few weeks. Much of it I can only piece together like a jig puzzle pardon, a jig-saw puzzle." She corrected herself swiftly. "But this is what must have happened. Caliph contacted Aaron with a proposition.
It was a very simple proposition. He was invited to become a partner of Caliph. Aaron was to make a substantial financial contribution to Caliph's war-chest, and to place his privileged knowledge and lines of influence at Caliph's disposal. In return he would have a hand in engineering Caliph's brave new world. It was a miscalculation On Caliph's part, perhaps the only mistake he has made up to now. He had misjudged Aaron Altmann. Aaron turned him down flat but much more dangerously Caliph had made the mistake of revealing his identity to Aaron. I expect that he had to do that in an effort to convince Aaron. You see, Aaron was not a man who would indulge in a game of code names and hidden identities. That much Caliph had divined correctly. So he had to confront Aaron face to face, and when he discovered that Aaron would not join in a campaign of murder and extortion no matter how laudable the ultimate ends Caliph had no choice. He took Aaron, killed him after torturing him hideously for information that could have been useful, mainly information about his Mossad connection I imagine. Then he persuaded me to pay the ransom. He won two major tricks with a single card.
He silenced Aaron, and he gained the twenty-five million for his war-chest."
"How did you learn this? If only you had explained to me before " Peter heard the bitterness in his own voice.
"I did not know it when we first met, please believe me. I will tell you how I learned it, but please be patient with me. Let me tell it as it happened."
"I am sorry, "he said simply.
"The first time I heard the name "Caliph" was the day I delivered the ransom. I told you about that, didn't I?"
"Yes."
"So we come now to your part. I heard of you for the first time with the Johannesburg me hunt down Caliph. I found out about you, Peter. I was even able to have a computer printout on you-" She paused, and there was that mischievous flash in her eye again. "- I will admit to being very impressed with the formidable list of your ladies." Peter held up both hands in a gesture of surrender.
"Never again," he pleaded. "Not another word agreed?"
"Agreed."
She laughed, and then, "I'm hungry, and my throat is sore again with all this talking." They crossed the island again, with their bare feet baking on the sun-heated sand, and went back on board the Chris, craft.
The chef had stocked the refrigerator with a cornucopia of food, and Peter opened a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne.
"You've got expensive tastes," he observed. "I don't know if I can afford to keep you on my salary."
"I'm sure we could arrange a raise from your boss," she assured him with the twinkle in her eyes.
In tacit agreement they did not mention Caliph again until they had eaten.
There is one other thing you must understand, Peter. I am of Mossad, but I do not control them. They control me. It was the same with Aaron. Both of us were and are very valuable agents, possibly amongst the most valuable of all their networks, but I do not make decisions, nor am I able to have access to all their secrets.
"Mossad's single-minded goal is the safety and security of the state of Israel. It has no other reason for existence. I was certain that Aaron had made a full report to Mossad of Caliph's identity, that he had detailed the proposition that Caliph had proposed and I suspect that Mossad had ordered Aaron to co-operate with Caliph-"
"Why?" Peter demanded sharply.
"I do not know for certain but I can think of two reasons.
Caliph must have been such a powerful and influential man that his support would have been valuable.
Then again I suspect that Caliph had pro-Israeli leanings, or professed to have those leanings. Mossad finds allies where it can, and does not question their morals. I think they ordered Aaron to co-operate with Caliph but-"
"But?" Peter prompted her.
"But you do not order a man like Aaron to go against his deepest convictions, and under that forbidding exterior Aaron Altmann was a man of great humanity. I think that the reason for his agitation was the conflict of duty and belief that he was forced to endure. His instinct warned him to destroy Caliph, and his duty-" She shrugged, and picked up her fluted champagne glass, twisting it between those long slim fingers and studying the pinpricks of bubbles as they rose slowly through the pale golden wine. When she spoke again she had changed direction disconcertingly.
"A thousand times I had tried to discover what was so different between you and me than with the other men I have known. Why none of them could move me and yet with you it was almost instantaneous--"
She looked up at him again as though she was still seeking the reason.
Of course, I knew so much about you. You had the qualities I admire in another human being, so I was disposed favourably but there are other qualities you cannot detail on a computer printout nor capture in a photograph. There was something about you that made me " She made a helpless gesture as she searched for the word. You made me tingle."
"That's a good word, Peter smiled.
"And I had never tingled before. So I had to be very sure.
It was a new experience to want a man merely because he is gentle and strong and-" she chuckled, " just plain sexy.
You are sexy, you know that, Peter, but also you are something else-" She broke off. "No, I am not going to flatter you any more. I do not want you to get swollen ankles-" mixing the French idiom quaintly with the English, and this time not correcting herself. She went straight on. "Caliph must have realized that I had recruited a dangerous ally. He made the attempt to kill you that night on the Rambouillet road-"
"They were after you," Peter cut in.
"Who, Peter? Who
was after me?"
"The Russians by that time they knew you were a double agent."
"Yes, they knew-" She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. "I had thought about it, of course, and there had been two previous attempts on me, but I do not think the attempt on the Rambouillet road was Russian."
"All right, Caliph then, but after you not me," Peter suggested.
"Perhaps, but again I do not think so. My instinct tells me they had the right target. They were after you."
"I would have to agree,"
Peter said. "I think I was followed when I left Paris that evening-" and he told her about the Citroen. I think they knew that I was alone in the Maserati."
"Then we accept it was Caliph,"she stated flatly.
Or Mossad, Peter murmured, and her eyes slowly widened, turning a darker thoughtful green as Peter went on.
"What if Mossad did not want an Atlas man getting close to their star agent, they didn't want you to have an ally in your hunt for
Caliph? What if they just didn't want me cluttering up the carefully rehearsed scenario?"
"Peter, it's very deep water-" and there are packs of sharks."
"Let's leave that night on the Rambouillet road for the moment," she suggested. "It merely complicates the story I am trying to tell you."
"All right," Peter agreed. "We can come back to it, if we have to."
"The next significant move was the abduction of Melissa-Jane," she said, and Peter's expression changed, becoming flat and stony.
"The choice of the victim was genius-inspired," she said.
"But it required no special knowledge of you or your domestic arrangements. There was no secret that you had an only child, and it needed but a casual appraisal of your character to understand how powerful a lever she could be.
Magda dipped the tip of her finger into the champagne and then sucked it thoughtfully, pursing her lips and frowning slightly.
"You must understand that by this time I had faced the fact that I was in love with you. The gift was supposed to affirm that-" She flushed slightly under her honey tan, and it was appealing and child-like. He had never seen her blush before and it twisted something in his chest.