by Wilbur Smith
"This is a speciality of Les Neuf Poissons. You will eat it nowhere else in the world." She selected small deep-sea crustaceans from a steaming creole sauce of spices and coconut cream and at the end of the meal she peeled chilled grapes from Australia with those delicate fingers, using the long shell-pink nails with the precision of a skilled surgeon to remove the pips and then placing them between his lips with thumb and forefinger.
"You spoil me,"he smiled.
"I never had a doll when I was a little girl," she explained, smiling.
A circular stone staircase led to the beach fifty feet below the dining-room and they left their shoes on the bottom step and walked bare-footed on the smooth, damp sand, compacted as hard as cement by the receding tide. The moon was a few days past full, and its reflection drew a pathway of yellow light to the horizon.
"Caliph must be made to believe that he has succeeded," Peter said abruptly, and she shivered against him.
:"I wish we could forget Caliph for one night." We cannot afford to forget him for a moment."
"No, you are right. How do we make him believe that?"
"You have to die, He felt her stiffen. or at least appear to do so. It has to look as though I killed you."
"Tell me, "she invited quietly.
"You told me that you have special arrangements for when you want to disappear."
"Yes, I do."
"How would you disappear from here if you had to do so?" She thought for only a moment. "Pierre would fly me to
Bora-Bora. I have friends there. Good friends. I would take the island airline to Tahiti-Faaa on another passport and then a scheduled airline in the same name to California or New Zealand."
"You have other papers?" he demanded.
"yes, of course." She sounded so surprised by the question, that he expected her to ask." doesn't everybody?"
"Fine, he said. "And we'll arrange a suspicious accident here. A scuba diving accident, shark attack in deep water, no corpse.."
"What is the point of all this, Peter?"
"If you are dead Caliph is not going to make another attempt to have you killed. "GoodV she agreed.
"So you stay officially dead until we flush Caliph out," Peter told her, and it sounded like an order but she did not demur as he went on. "And if I carry out Caliph's evident wishes by killing you, it's going to make me a very valuable asset I will have proved myself, and so he will cherish me.
It will give me another chance to get close to him. At least it will give me a chance to check out a few wild hunches."
"Don't let's make my death too convincing, my love. I am a great favourite of the police on Tahiti," she murmured.
"I'd hate to have you end up under the guillotine at Tuarruru."
Peter woke before her and raised himself on one elbow over her to study her face, delighting to find new planes and angles to her high broad cheekbones, gloating in the velvety texture of her skin, so fine that the pores were indefinable from farther than a few inches. Then he transferred his attention to the curve of her eyelashes that interlocked into a thick dark palisade seeming to seal her eyelids perpetually in sleep yet they sprang open suddenly, the huge black pools of her pupils shrinking rapidly as she focused, and for the first time he realized that the irises were not pure green but were flecked and shot through with gold and violet.
The surprise of finding him over her changed slowly to pleasure, and she stretched her arms out over her head and arched her back, the way a lazy panther does when it rouses itself. The satin sheet slid down to her waist and she prolonged the stretch a little longer than was necessary, a deliberate display of her body.
"Every other morning of my life that I woke without you there was wasted," she murmured huskily, and raised her arms still at full stretch to him, folding them gracefully around his neck, still holding her back arched so that the prominent dark-red nipples brushed lightly against the crisp dark mat of curls that covered his own chest.
"Let's pretend this will last for ever," she whispered, with her lips an inch from his, and her breath was rich as an overblown rose,
heavy with the smell of vital woman and rising passion; then her lips spread softly, warmly against his and she sucked his tongue deeply into her mouth, with a low moan of wanting and the hard slim body began to work against his, the hands breaking from his neck and hunting down his spine, long curved nails pricking and goading him just short of pain.
His own arousal was so swift and so brutally hard that she moaned again, and the tension went out of her body, it seemed to soften and spread like a wax figure held too close to the flame, her eyelids trembling closed and her thighs falling apart.
"So strong-" she whispered, deep in her throat and he reared up over her, feeling supreme, invincible.
"Peter, Peter," she cried. "Oh yes like that. Please like that."
Both of them striving triumphantly for the moment of glory when each was able to lose self and become for a fleeting instant part of the godhead.
Long afterwards they lay side by side in the enormous bed, both of them stretched out flat upon their backs, not touching except for the fingers of one hand intertwined as their bodies had been.
"I will go away-" she whispered, but not now. Not yet." He did not reply, the effort was beyond him, and her own voice was languorous with a surfeit of pleasure.
"I will make a bargain with you. Give me three days more. Only three days, to be happy like this. For me it is the first time. I have never known this before, and it may be the last time-" He tried to rouse himself to deny it, but she squeezed his fingers for silence and went on.
" It may be the last," she repeated. "And I want to have it all. Three days, in which we do not mention Caliph, in which we do not think of the blood and striving and suffering out there. If you give me that I will do everything that you want me to do. Is it a bargain, Peter? Tell me we can have that."
"Yes. We can have that."
"Then tell me you love me again, I do not think I can hear you say it too often."
because I have to, He said it often during those magic days, and she had spoken the truth, each time he told her she accepted with as much joy as the last time, and always each seemed to be within touching distance of the other.
Even when tearing side by side across the warm. flat waters of the lagoon, leaning back with straight arms on the tow lines, skis hissing angrily and carving fiercely sparkling wings of water from the surface as they wove back and forth in a pas de deux across the streaming, creaming water, laughing together in the wind and the engine roar of the Chris-craft, Hapiti the Polynesian boatman on the flying bridge looking back with a great white grin of sympathy for their joy.
Finning gently through mysterious blue and dappled depths, the only sound the wheezing suck and blow of their scuba valves and the soft clicking and the eternal echoing susurration that is the pulse beat of the ocean, holding hands as they sank down to the long abandoned hull of the Japanese aircraft carrier, now overgrown with a waving forest of sea growth and populated by a teeming fascinating multitude of beautiful and bizarre creatures.
Flying silently down the sheer steel cliff of the canted flight deck, which seemed to reach down into the very oceanic depths, so that there was the eerie fear of suddenly being deprived of support and falling down to where the surface light blued out in nothingness.
Pausing to peer through their glass face-plates into the still gaping wounds rent into the steel by aerial bombs and high explosive, and then entering through those cruel caverns cautiously as children into a haunted house and emerging victoriously with carrier nets of trophies, coins and cutlery, brass and porcelain.
Strolling on the secluded beaches of the outer islands, still hand in hand, naked in the sunlight.
Fishing the seething tide-race through the main channel at full spring tide, and shouting with excitement as the golden amberjack came boiling up in the wake, bellies flashing like mirrors, to hit the dancing feather lures, and send the Penn reels screeching a wild prote
st, and the fibreglass rods nodding and kicking.
Out in the humbling silences of the unrestricted ocean, when even the smudge of the islands disappeared beyond the wave crests for minutes at a time, with only the creak and whisper of the rigging, the trembling pregnancy of the main sail, and the rust leas the twin hulls of the big Hobie cat knifed the tops off the swells.
Strolling the long curving beaches in the moonlight, searching for the heavenly bodies that so seldom show through the turbid skies of Europe Orion the hunter and the Seven Sisters exclaiming at the stranger constellations of this hemisphere governed by the great fixed cross in the southern heavens.
Each day beginning and ending in the special wonder and mystery of the circular bed, in loving that welded their bodies and their souls together each time more securely.
Then on the fourth day day Peter woke to find her gone, and for a moment experienced an appalling sensation of total loss.
When she came back to him he did not recognize her for a breath of time.
Then he realized that she had cut away the long dark tresses of her hair, cropped it down short so that it curled close against her skull, like the petals of a dark flower. It had the effect of making her seem even taller. Her neck like the stem of the flower,
longer, and the curve of the throat accentuated so that it became delicate and swan-like.
She saw his expression, and explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
"I thought some change was necessary, if I am to leave under a new identity. It will grow again, if you want it that way." She seemed to have changed completely herself, the languid amorous mood given way to the brisk business-like efficiency of before. While they ate a last breakfast of sweet yellow papaya and the juice of freshly squeezed limes she explained her intentions, as she went swiftly through the buff envelope that her secretary had silently laid beside her plate.
There was a red Israeli diplomatic passport in the envelope.
"I will be using the name Ruth Levy-" and she picked up the thick booklet of airline tickets, and I have decided to go back to Jerusalem.
I have a house there. It's not in my name, and I do not think anybody else outside of Mossad is aware of it. It will be an ideal base, close to my control at Mossad. I will try to give you what support I can,
try to get further information to assist you in the hunt-" She passed him a typed sheet of notepaper.
That is a telephone number at Mossad where you can get a message to me. Use the name Ruth Levy." He memorized the number while she went on talking, and then shredded the sheet of paper.
"I have modified the arrangements for my departure," she told him.
"We will take the Chris-craft across to Bora-Bora.
It's only a hundred miles. I will radio ahead. My friends will meet me off the beach after dark." They crept in through a narrow passage in the coral with all the lights on the Chris-craft doused,
Magda's boatman using only what was left of the waning moon and his own intimate knowledge of the islands to take her in.
"I wanted Hapiti to see me go ashore alive, "she whispered quietly, leaning against Peter's chest to draw comfort from their last minutes together. "I did not exaggerate the danger you might be in if the local people thought what we want Caliph to think. Hapiti will keep his mouth shut-" she assured him and will back up your story of a shark attack, unless you order him to tell the truth."
"You think of everything."
"I have only just found you, monsieur she chuckled. "I do not want to lose you yet. I have even decided to speak a word to the Chief of Police on Tahiti, when I pass through.
He is an old friend. When you get back to Les Neuf Poissons, have my secretary radio Tahiti-" She went on quietly, covering every detail of her arrangements, and he could find no emissions. She was interrupted by a soft hail from out of the darkness and Hapiti throttled the diesels back to idle. They drifted down closer to the loom of the island. A canoe bumped against the side, and Magda turned quickly in his arms, reaching up for his mouth with hers.
"Please be careful, Peter," was all that she said, and then she broke away and stepped down into the canoe as Hapiti handed down her single valise. The canoe pushed away immediately, and was lost in the dark. There was nothing to wave at, and Peter liked it better that way, but still he stared back over the stern into the night as the Chris-craft groped blindly for the channel again.
There was a hollow feeling under his ribs, as though part of himself was missing; he tried to fill it with a memory of Magda that had amused him because it epitomized for him her quick and pragmatic mind.
When the news of your death hits the market, the bottom is going to drop out of Altmann stock." He had realized this halfway through their final discussion that morning. "I hadn't thought of that." He was troubled by the complication.
"I had," she smiled serenely. "I estimate it will lose a hundred francs a share within the first week after the news breaks."
"Doesn't that worry you?"
"Not really." She gave that sudden wicked grin. "I telexed a buying order to Zurich this morning. I expect to show a profit of not less than a hundred million francs when the stock bounces back." Again the mischievous flash of green eyes "I do have to be recompensed for all this inconvenience, tu the senses pas?" And although he still smiled at the memory, the hollow place remained there inside him.
ierre flew the Tahitian police out to Les Neod Poissons in the Tri-Islander, and there followed two days of questions and statements.
Nearly every member of the community wished to make a statement to the police, there had seldom been such entertainment and excitement available on the islands.
Nearly all of the statements were glowing eulogies to To Baronne"
delivered to the accompaniment of lamentation and weeping. Only Hapiti had first-hand information and he made the most of this position of importance, embroidering and gilding the tale. He was even able to give a positive identification of the shark as a "Dead White' The English name startled Peter until he remembered that the movie Jaws was in the island's cassette video library and was undoubtedly the source of the big boatman's inspiration.
Hapiti went on to describe its fangs as long and sharp as cane knives, and to give a gruesome imitation of the sound they made as they closed on "La Baronne" Peter would willingly have gagged him to prevent those flights of imagination, which were not supported by Peter's own statement, but the police sergeant was greatly impressed and encouraged Hapiti to further acts of creation with cries of astonishment.
On the last evening there was a funeral feast on the beach for Magda. It was a moving ritual, and Peter found himself curiously affected when the women of the island, swaying and wailing at the water's edge, cast wreaths of frangipani blooms onto the tide to be carried out beyond the reef.
Peter flew back to Tahiti-Faaa with the police the following morning, and they stayed with him, flanking him discreetly, on the drive to the headquarters of gendarmerie in the town. However, his interview with the Chief of Police was brief and courteous clearly Magda had been there before him and if there was no actual exchange of winks and nudges, the commissioner's handshake of farewell was firm and friendly.
"Any friend of La Baronne is a friend here." And he used the present tense, then sent Peter back to the airport in an official car.
The UTA flight landed in California through that sulphurous eye-stinging layer of yellow air trapped between sea and mountains.
Peter did not leave the airport, but after he had shaved and changed his shirt in the men's room he found a copy of the Wail Street Journal in the first-class Pa nAm Clipper lounge. It was dated the previous day, and the report of Magda Altmann's death was on Page Three. It was a full column, and Peter was surprised by the depth of the Altmann Industries involvement in the American financial scene. The complex of. holdings was listed, followed by a resume of Baron Aaron Altmann's career and that of his widow. The cause of death as given by the Tahitian police was "Shark Attack" wh
ile scuba diving in the company of a friend General Peter Stride Peter was grimly satisfied that his name was mentioned. Caliph would read it, wherever he was, and draw the appropriate conclusion. Peter could expect something to happen now; he was not quite sure what, but he knew that he was being drawn closer to the centre like a fragment of iron to the magnet.
He managed to sleep for an hour, in one of the big armchairs, before the hostess roused him for the Pan-Am Polar flight to London's Heathrow.
He called Pat Stride, his sister-in-law, from Heathrow Airport.
She was unaffectedly delighted to hear his voice.
Steven is in Spain, but I am expecting him home tomorrow before lunch, that is if his meetings go the way he wants them. They want to build a thirty-six hole golf course at San Istaban-" Steven's companies owned a complex of tourist hotels on the Spanish coast " and Steven had to go through the motions with the Spanish authorities. But, why don't you come down to Abbots Yew tonight? Alex and Priscilla are here, and there will be an amusing house party for the weekend-" He could hear the sudden calculating tone in Pat's voice as she began instinctively to run through the shortlist of potential mates for Peter.
After he had accepted and hung up, he dialled the Cambridge number and was relieved that Cynthia's husband, George Barrow, answered.
Give me a Bolshevik intellectual over a neurotic ex-wife any day, he thought as he greeted Melissa-Jane's stepfather warmly. Cynthia was at a meeting of the Faculty Wives Association, and Melissa-Jane was auditioning for a part in i a production of Gilbert and Sullivan by the local drama society.
"How is she?" Peter wanted to know.
"I think she is well over it now, Peter. The hand is completely healed. She seems to have settled down.-They spoke for a few minutes more, then ran out of conversation.
The two women were all they had in common.
"Give Melissa-Jane my very best love," Peter told him, and picked up a copy of The Financial Times from a news, stand on his way to the Avis desk. He hired a compact and while waiting for it to be delivered he searched swiftly through the newspaper for mention of Magda Altmann.