by Wilbur Smith
"The book," he remembered. "The Cornwallis Harris first edition."
"My first love gift ever. I bought it when I finally admitted it to myself but I was determined that I would not admit it to you. I am old-fashioned enough to believe the man must speak first."
"I did."
"God, I'll never forget it," she said fervently, and they both thought of the savage confrontation the previous day which had ended incongruously in a declaration of love.
"I try to be unconventional," he said, and she shook her head smiling.
"You succeed, mon amour, oh how you succeed." Then she sobered again. "I was in love with you. Your distress was mine. The child was a lovely girl, she had captivated me when we met and on top of all that I felt deadly responsible for her plight. I had inveigled you into joining my hunt for Caliph, and because of that you had lost your daughter." He bowed his head slightly, remembering how he had believed that she had engineered it. She recognized the gesture.
"Yes, Peter. For me it was the cruel lest stroke. That you should believe it of me. There was nothing that I would not have done to give her back to you and yet there seemed nothing that I could do.
My contacts with French intelligence had nothing for me. They had no inkling of how or where the child was being held and my control at Mossad was unaccountably evasive. Somehow I had the feeling that Mossad had the key to the kidnapping. If they were not directly involved they knew more than anybody else. I have already explained that I believed Aaron had given them the identity of Caliph. If that was so, then they must know something that could have helped you to recover your child but from Paris I was powerless to gather that information.
I had to go in person to Israel and confront my control there. It was the one chance that I could get them to cooperate. They might believe my value as an agent was worth enough to give me a lead to Melissa-Jane-"
"You threatened Mossad with resignation?" Peter asked wonderingly. "You would have done that for me?"
"Oh, Peter, don't you understand? I loved you and I had never been in love before. I would have done anything for you."
"You make me feel humble, he said.
She did not reply, but let the statement stand as though she were savouring it, then she sighed contentedly and went on. "I left everything in Paris. I have an established routine for disappearing when it is necessary. Pierre took me to Rome in the Lear; from there I telephoned you but I could not tell you what I was going to do. Then I switched identity and took a commercial flight to Tel Aviv. My task in Israel was difficult, much more difficult than I had bargained for. It was five days before my control would see me. He is an old friend.
No! perhaps not a friend, but we have known each other a long time.
He is the deputy director of Mossad. That is how highly they value my services, to give me such an important controller, but still it took five days before he would see me, and he was cold.
There was no help they could give me, he said. They knew nothing." She chuckled. "You have never seen me when I want something really badly, Peter. Ha! What a battle.
There is much I knew that would embarrass Mossad with her powerful allies of the West with France and Great Britain and the U.S.A. - I threatened to hold a Press conference in New York. He became less cold, he told me that the security of the State took precedence over all personal feelings, and I said something very rude about the security of the State, and reminded him of some outstanding business which I would happily leave outstanding. He became warmer but all this was taking time, days, many days, too many days. I was going crazy. I remembered how they had found Aaron's body, and I could not sleep at night for worrying about that lovely child. And you, oh Peter, you will never know how I prayed to a god that I was not too sure of. You will never know how I wanted to be with you to comfort you. I wanted so desperately just to hear your voice but I could not break my cover from Tel Aviv.
I could not even telephone you, nor send you a letter She broke off. I hoped you would not believe bad things of me. You would not believe that I did not care. That I was not prepared to help you. I could only hope that I would be able to bring you some information of value to prove it was not true but I never dreamed that one day you would believe that it was I who had taken your daughter and tortured her."
"I'm sorry, "he said quietly.
"No, do not say you are sorry. We were both Caliph's playthings.
There is no blame on you." She laid her hand upon his arm and smiled at him. "It was not you alone who believed bad things. For at last I had prevailed on my Mossad control to give me some little scraps of information.
At first he denied completely that they had ever heard of Caliph, but I risked lying to him. I told him that Aaron had told me he had reported the Caliph contact. He gave ground. Yes, he admitted.
They knew of Caliph, but they did not know who he was. I hammered on, demanding to see my controller each day, driving him as mad as I was until he threatened to have me deported even. But each time we met I wheedled and bullied a little more from him.
"At last he admitted, "All right, we know Caliph but he is very dangerous, very powerful and he will become more powerful God willing, he will become one of the most powerful men in the world, and he is a friend of Israel. Or rather we believe he is a friend of Israel."
"I bullied some more and he told me, "We have put an agent close to Caliph, very close to him, and we cannot jeopardize this agent. He is a valuable agent, very valuable but very vulnerable to Caliph. We cannot take the chance that Caliph could trace information back to him.
We have to protect our man. "Now I threatened, and he told me the agent's code name to protect both of us should we ever have to make contact. The code-name is "CACTUS FLOWER"."
"That was all?" Peter asked, with evident disappointment.
"No, my control gave me another name. As a sop and as a warning. The name they gave me was so close to Caliph as to be virtually the same. Again he warned me that he was giving me the name for my own protection."
"What was it?" Peter demanded eagerly.
"Your name," she said softly. "Stride." Peter made an irritable gesture of dismissal. "My name is nonsensical. Why would I kidnap and mutilate my own daughter and Cactus Flower. He might as well have said, "Kentucky Fried Chicken"."
"Now it's my turn to say I'm sorry."
Peter caught himself, realizing suddenly that he had been too quick to dismiss these scraps of information. He stood up and paced the deck of the Chris-craft with choppy, agitated steps, frowning heavily. "Cactus
Flower," he repeated. "Have you ever heard it before?"
"No," she shook her head.
"Since then?"
"No,"again.
He searched his memory, trying for a sympathetic echo.
There was none.
"All right." He accepted that as having no immediate If value.
"We'll just remember it for now. Let's come to my name Peter Stride.
What did you make of that?"
"It didn't mean anything then, except as a shock.
Strangely enough I did not immediately think of you, but I thought of confusion between the kidnapper and the Victim's dna." Stride?" he asked. "Peter Stride? I don't understand."
"No, well Melissa-Jane is a Stride also."
"Yes, of course. They didn't give you the name
Peter Stride then?"
"No. Just Stride."
"I see." Peter stopped in mid-pace as an idea struck him and stared out thoughtfully to where the ocean met a blue horizon.
"But they gave me your full name later," she interrupted his thoughts.
"When?"
"After we received the news that Melissa-Jane had been rescued. Of course, I wanted to return to Paris immediately to be with you. I was able to get onto a flight from Ben, Gurion Airport six hours after we heard the news. My heart was singing, Peter.
Melissa-Jane was safe, and I was in love.
I was going to be with you very s
oon. At the airport, while I was going through the security check before departure, the policewoman took me aside to the security office. My control was waiting for me there. He had rushed out from Tel Aviv to catch me before I left for home, and he was very worried. They had just received an urgent message from Cactus Flower. General Peter Stride was now definitely Caliph -motivated, and would assassinate me at the first opportunity, he told me. And I laughed at him but he was deadly serious. "My dear Baroness, Cactus Flower is a firstclass man. You must take this warning seriously," he kept repeating." Magda shrugged. "I still did not believe it, Peter. It was impossible. I loved you, and I knew you loved me although perhaps you had not yet realized that yourself. It was crazy.
But on the aircraft I had time to think. My control at Mossad has never been wrong before. Can you imagine my dilemma now how dearly I wanted to be with you, and yet I was now terrified not that you would kill me. That did not seem important but that you would truly turn out to be Caliph. That was what really frightened me. You see, I had never loved a man before. I don't think I could have stood it." She was quiet for a while, remembering the pain and confusion, and then she shook her head so that the thick fall of dark shimmering hair rustled around her shoulders.
"Once I reached Paris, my first concern was to learn that you and Melissa-Jane were safe at Abbots Yew, and then I could begin to try and find out how much substance there was in Cactus Flower's warning but until I could count on how safe it was I could not take the chance of being alone with you. Every time you attempted to contact me, I had to deny you, and it felt as though some little part of me was dying." She reached across and took his hand now, opened the fingers and bowed her head to kiss the palm and then held it to her cheek as she went on.
"A hundred times I convinced myself that it could not be true, and I was on the point of going to you. Oh, Peter finally I could take it no longer. I decided to meet you at Orly that day and find out one way or the other, end the terrible uncertainty, I had the grey wolves with me, a" you remember, and they had been warned to expect trouble I didn't tell them to watch you," she explained quickly, as if You were part of Caliph, you see, and it would have been the wise thing to do.
I admit that I thought of it, Peter. Have you killed, before you could kill V: me but it was only a thought and it did not go farther than that. Instead I went on with the business of living, work has always been an opiate for me. If I work hard enough I can forget anything but this time it didn't turn out that way. I've said it before, but it explains so much that I will say it again. I had never been in love before, Peter, and I could not turn it off. It tormented me, and I cherished doubts about Cactus Flower's warning and what I had seen so clearly in the lounge at Orly Airport. It couldn't be, it just couldn't be true I loved you and you loved me, and you just couldn't be plotting to kill me. I almost convinced myself of that." She laughed curtly, but it had no humour in the sound, only the bitterness of disillusion.
"I came out here-" she made a gesture that embraced sea and sky and islands to be away from the temptation of going to you. A sanctuary where I could recover from my wounds and begin to get over you. But it didn't work, Peter.
It was worse here. I had more time to think, to torture myself with wild speculation and grotesque theories. There was only one way.
Finally I recognized that. I would bring trying to dispel any memory of disloyalty, "but if you had tried to get at me they would have "She broke off, and let his hand fall away from her cheek. "The moment you walked into the private lounge at Orly, I saw it was true. I could sense it, there was an aura of death around you. It was the most frightening and devastating moment of my life, you looked like a different man not the Peter Stride I knew your whole face seemed to be altered and restructured by hatred and anger. I kissed you goodbye, because I knew we could never meet again." Remembering it her face darkened with sadness, as though a cloud shadow had passed over them.
"I even thought that I had to protect myself by" She gagged the words "you out here and give you the chance to kill me." She laughed again, and now there was the old husky warmth in it. "It was the most crazy thing I have ever done in my life but thank God, I did it."
"We went right to the very brink," Peter agreed.
"Peter, why didn't you ask me outright if I was Caliph?" she wanted to know.
"The same reason you didn't ask me outright if I was plotting to kill you." she agreed. "We were just caught up in the web that Caliph had spun for us. I have only one more question, Peter cheri.
If I was Caliph, do you truly believe that I would have been so stupid as to give my telephone number at Rambouillet to the man who kidnapped Melissa-Jane, and instruct him to ring me for a friendly chat whenever he felt like it?" Peter looked startled, "I thought-" he began, then stopped. No, I didn't think. I wasn't thinking clearly at all. Of course, you wouldn't have done that and yet, even the cleverest criminals make the most elementary mistakes."
"Not those who have been trained at the Odessa school," she reminded him, and seemed immediately to regret the words, for she went on quickly. "So there is my side of the story, Peter. I may have left something out if you can think of anything, then ask me, darling, and I'll try to fill in any missing pieces." And so they started once again at the very beginning, and went over the ground minutely, searching for anything they might have overlooked at the first telling of it, this time exhaustively re-examining each fact from every angle, both of them applying their trained minds to the full without being able to come up with more than they already had.
"One thing we must never let out of sight for a moment is the quality of the opposition." Peter summed it up as the sun began lowering itself towards the western horizon, its majestic progress flanked by cohorts of cumulonimbus cloud rising into towering anvil heads over the scattered islands, like silent nuclear explosions.
"There are layers upon layers, reasons behind reasons, the kidnapping of Melissa-Jane was not merely to force me to assassinate Kingston Parker, but you as well the proverbial two birds with a third bird to follow. If I had succeeded I would have been hooked into Caliph for ever."
"Where do you and I go from here, Peter?" she asked, tacitly transferring ultimate decision-making to him.
"How about home, right now," he suggested. "Unless you fancy another night out here." Peter found that his possessions had been discreetly moved from the guest bungalow to the owner's significant private quarters on the north tip of the island.
His toilet articles had been laid out in the mirrored master bathroom, which flanked that of the mistress. His clothing, all freshly cleaned and pressed, was in the master's dressing-room where there was one hundred and fifty-five feet of louvred hanging space Peter paced it out and calculated it would take three hundred suits of clothing.
There were specially designed swinging shelves for another three hundred shirts and racks for a hundred pairs of shoes although all were empty.
His light cotton suit looked as lonely as a single camel in the midst of the Sahara desert. His shoes had been burnished to a gloss that even his batman had never been able to achieve. Despite himself he searched the dressing-room swiftly for the signs of previous occupancy and was ridiculously relieved to find none.
"I could learn to rough it like this," he told his reflection in the mirror as he combed the damp, darkly curling locks off his forehead.
The sitting-room off the suite was on three levels, and had been decorated with cane furniture and luxuriant tropical plants growing in ancient Greek wine amphoras or in rookeries that were incorporated into the flowing design of the room. The creepers and huge glossy leaves of the plants toned in artistically with jungle-patterned curtaining and the dense growth of exotic plants beyond the tall picture windows yet the room was cool and inviting, although the sound of air-conditioning was covered by the twinkle of a waterfall down the cunningly contrived rock face that comprised one curved wall of the room. Tropical fish floated gracefully in the clear pools into which the wat
erfall spilled, and the perfume of growing flowers pervaded the room, and their blooms glowed in the subdued lighting.
One of the little golden Polynesian girls brought a tray of four tall frosted glasses for Peter to choose from. They were all filled with fruit and he could smell the sweet warm odour of rum mingled with the fruit. He guessed they would be almost lethal and asked for a whisky, then relented with the girl's eyes flooded with disappointment.
"I make them myself," she wailed.
"In that case "He sipped while she waited anxiously.
Tarfait!" He exclaimed, and she giggled with gratification, and went off wriggling her bottom under the brief pa reo like a happy puppy.
Magda came then in a chiffon dress so gossamer-light that it floated about her like a fine green sea mist, through which her limbs gleamed as the light caught them.
He felt the catch in his breathing as she came towards him, and he wondered if he would ever accustom himself to the impact of her beauty.
She took the glass from his hand and tasted it.
"Good," she said, and handed it back. But when the girl brought the tray she refused with a smile.
They moved about the room, Magda on his arm as she pointed out the rarer plants and fishes.
"I built this wing after Aaron's death," she told him, and he realized that she wanted him to know that it contained no memories of another man. It amused him that she should find that important and then he remembered his own furtive search of the dressing-room for signs of a lover before him, and the amusement turned inward.
One wall of the private dining-room was a single sheet of armoured glass, beyond which the living jewels of coral fish drifted in subtly-lit sea caverns and the fronds of magnificent sea plants waved in gentle unseen currents.
Magda ordered the seating changed so they could be side by side in the low lovers seat facing the aquarium.
"Do not like you to be far away any more," she explained, and she picked special tit bits from the serving dishes for his plate.