Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  "If you can get a message to him that his identity is in jeopardy. That somebody, an enemy, has penetrated his security screen and has managed to get close to him," Peter suggested, and Steven considered it long and carefully.

  "He would react very strongly," Steven agreed. "But it would not take him very long to find out that I was lying.

  That would immediately discredit me, and as you said earlier I would be at grave risk for no good reason."

  "It isn't a lie," Peter told him grimly. "There is a Mossad agent close to Caliph. Very close to him."

  "How do you know that?" Steven asked sharply.

  "I cannot tell you," Peter said. "But the information is iron-clad. I even know the agent's code-name. I give you my word that the information is genuine."

  "In that case-" Steven thought it out again Caliph would probably already be suspicious and would be prepared to accept my warning. However, all he would do would be to ask me to give him the name pass it to him along his usual communications channel. That would be it."

  "You would refuse to pass the information except face to face. You will protest that the information is much too sensitive. You would protest that your personal safety was at stake. What would be his reaction?"

  "I would expect him to put pressure on me to divulge the name. If you resisted?"

  "I suppose he would have to agree to a meeting. As you have pointed out, it is his major obsession. But, if he met me face to face, his identity would be revealed anyway."

  "Think, Steven. You know how his mind works." It took a few seconds, then Steven's expression changed, consternation twisting his lips as though he was in pain.

  "Good God of course. If I forced him to a face-to-face meeting, I would be highly unlikely to survive it."

  "Exactly," Peter nodded.

  "If we baited it with something absolutely irresistible, Caliph would have to agree to meet you but he would make arrangements to have you silenced immediately, before you had a chance to pass on his identity to anyone else."

  "Hell, Peter, this is creepy. As you told me earlier today, I am fat and out of condition. I wouldn't be much of a match against Caliph."

  "Caliph would take that into consideration when deciding whether to meet you or not," Peter agreed.

  "It sounds like suicide," Steven persisted.

  "You just signed on to be tough," Peter reminded him.

  "Tough is one thing, stupid is another."

  "You would be in no danger until you delivered the message. Caliph would not dare dispose of you until you delivered your message," Peter pointed out. "And I give you my word that I will never call on you to go to an assignation with Caliph."

  "I can't ask for more than that, I suppose." Steven threw up his hands. "When do you want me to contact him?"

  "How do you do it the contact?"

  "Advert in the Personal column," Steven told him, and Peter grinned with reluctant admiration. Neat, efficient and entirely untraceable.

  "Do it as soon as you can," Peter instructed.

  "Monday morning, "Steven nodded, and went on studying his brother with a peculiarly intent expression.

  "What is it, Steven?"

  "I was just thinking. If only Caliph had been somebody like you, Peter."

  "huh?" For the first time Peter was truly startled.

  "The warrior king utterly ruthless in the pursuit of the vision of justice and rightness and duty."

  "I am not like that." Peter denied it.

  "Yes, you are," Steven said positively. "You are the type of man that I hoped Caliph might be. The type of man we needed." Peter had to presume that Caliph was watching him.

  After his murder of Baroness Altmann, Caliph's interest would be intense. Peter had to act predictably.

  He caught the early Monday flight back to Brussels, and before midday was at his desk in Narmco headquarters.

  Here also he was the centre of much interest and power play Altmann Industries had lost its chief executive and there were strong undercurrents and court intrigues already 4 afoot. Despite a number of subtle approaches Peter stayed aloof from the struggle.

  On Tuesday evening Peter picked up the newspaper from the news-stand in the Hilton lobby. Steven's contact request was in the small-ads section.

  Children of Israel asked counsel of the Lord, saying, shall I go up again to battle? judges. 20:23.

  The quotation that Caliph had chosen seemed to epitomize his view of himself. He saw himself as godlike, set high above his fellow men.

  Steven had explained to Peter that Caliph took up to forty-eight hours to answer.

  Steven would wait each day after the appearance of the personal announcement at his desk in his office suite in Leadenhall Street, from noon until twenty minutes past the hour. He would have no visitors nor appointments for that time, and he would make certain that his direct unlisted telephone line was un-engaged to receive the incoming contact.

  There was no contact that Wednesday, but Steven had not expected one. On the Thursday Steven paced restlessly up and down the antique silk Kirman carpet as he waited for the call. He was already wearing the jacket of his suit, and his bowler and rolled umbrella were on the corner of the ornate French ormolu desk that squatted like some benign monster beneath the windows which looked across the street at Lloyds Exchange.

  Steven Stride was afraid. He acknowledged the fact with direct self-honesty. Intrigue was part of his existence, had been for nearly all of his life but always the game had been played to certain rules.

  He knew he was entering a new jungle, a savage wilderness where those few rules ceased entirely to exist. He was going in over his head; Peter had pointed out to him that this was not his way, and he knew Peter was right. Peter was right, and Steven was afraid as he had never been in his life. Yet he knew that he was going ahead with it.

  He had heard that it was the mark of true courage to be able to meet and acknowledge fear, and yet control it sufficiently to be able to go ahead and do what duty dictated must be done.

  He did not feel like a brave man.

  The telephone rang once, too loud, too shrill and every nerve in his body jumped taut and he found himself frozen, paralysed with fear in the centre of the beautiful and precious carpet.

  The telephone rang again, the insistent double note sounded in his ears like the peal of doom, and he felt his bowels filled with the hot oily slime of fear, hardly to be contained.

  The telephone rang the third time, and with an enormous effort he forced himself to make the three paces to his desk.

  He lifted the telephone receiver, and heard the sharp chimes of the interference from the public telephone system.

  Stride: he said. His voice was strained, high and almost shrill, and he heard the drop of the coin.

  The voice terrified him. It was an electronic drone, inhuman, without gender, without the timbre of living emotion, without neither high nor low notes.

  "Aldgate and Leadenhall Street,"said the voice.

  Steven repeated the rendezvous and immediately the connection was broken.

  Steven dropped the receiver onto its cradle and snatched up his bowler and umbrella as he hurried to the door.

  His secretary looked up at him and smiled expectantly.

  She was a handsome grey-haired woman who had been with Steven ten years.

  "Sir?" She still called him that.

  I'm popping out for half an hour, May," Steven told her.

  "Look after the shop, there is a dear." And he stepped into his private elevator and rode down swiftly to the underground garage where his Rolls was kept, together with the private vehicles of his senior executives.

  In the elevator mirror he checked the exact angle of his bowler, a slightly raffish tilt over the right eye, and rearranged the bloom of the crimson carnation in the buttonhole of the dark blue Savile Row suit with its faint and elegant chalk stripe. It was important that he looked and acted entirely naturally during the next few minutes.

  His staff w
ould remark on any departure from the normal.

  In the garage he did not approach the dark-maroon Rolls-Royce which glowed in the subdued lighting like some precious gem. Instead he went towards the wicket gate in the steel roll-up garage door, and the doorman in his little glassed cubicle beside the door looked up from his football pools coupons, recognized the master and leaped to his feet.

  "Afternoon, guy." Good day, Harold. I won't be taking the car.

  just stepping out for a few minutes." He stepped over the threshold of the gate, into the street and turned left, down towards the junction of Leadenhall Street and Aldgate. He walked fast, without seeming to hurry. Caliph spaced his intervals very tight, to make it difficult for the subject to pass a message to a surveillance unit. Steven knew he had only minutes to get from his office to the call box on the corner. Caliph seemed to know exactly how long it would take him.

  The telephone in the red-framed and glass call box started to ring when he was still twenty paces away. Steven ran the distance.

  "Stride," he said, his voice slightly puffed with exertion, and immediately the coin dropped and the same electronic droning voice gave him the next contact point. It was the public call box at the High

  Street entrance to Aid ate tube station. Steven confirmed and the voice troubled him deeply, it sounded like that of a robot from some science fiction movie. It would not have been so bad if he had felt human contact.

  The two receiving stations, neither of which was predictable, and the distances between them, had been carefully calculated to make it only just possible to reach them in time, to make it impossible for the call to be traced while the line was still open. Caliph or his agent was clearly moving from one call box to the next in another part of the city. Tracing them even a minute after he had left would be of no possible use in trying to establish identity.

  The voice distorter that Caliph was using was a simple device no bigger than a small pocket calculator. Peter had told Steven that it could be purchased from a number of firms specializing in electronic surveillance, security and counter-measure equipment. It cost less than fifty dollars, and so altered the human voice phasing out all sound outside the middle range that even the most sophisticated recording device would not be able to lift a useable voice.

  print to compare with a computer bank memory. It would not even be able to determine whether the speaker was a man, a woman or a child.

  Steven had an unusually clear path to the station, and found himself waiting outside the call box in the crowded entrance to the station while a young man in paint-speckled overalls, with long greasy blond hair, finished his conversation. Caliph's system allowed for prior use of the chosen public telephone, and as soon as the scruffy youth finished his leisurely chat, Steven pushed into the booth and made a show of consulting the directory.

  The phone rang, and even though he was expecting it, Steven jumped with shock. He was perspiring now, with the walk and the tension, and his voice was ragged as he snatched the receiver.

  "Stride," he gulped.

  The coin dropped and Caliph's impersonal tones chilled him again.

  "Yesr :1 have a message." Yes?"

  "There is danger for Caliph."

  "Yesr "A government intelligence agency has put an agent close to him, close enough to be extremely dangerous."

  "Say the source of your information."

  "My brother. General Peter Stride." Peter had instructed him to tell the truth, as much as was possible.

  "Say the government agency involved."

  "Negative. The information is too sensitive. I must have assurance that Caliph receives it personally."

  "Say the name or position of the enemy agent."

  "Negative.

  For the same reasons." Steven glanced at his gold Cartier tank watch with its black alligator strap. They had been speaking for fifteen seconds he knew the contact would not last longer than thirty seconds. Caliph would not risk exposure beyond that time. He did not wait for the next question or instruction.

  "I will pass the information only to Caliph, and I must be certain it is him, not one of his agents. I request a personal meeting."

  "That is not possible, "droned the inhuman voice.

  "Then Caliph will be in great personal danger." Steven found courage to say it.

  "I repeat, say the name and position of enemy agent." Twenty-five seconds had passed.

  "I say again, negative. You must arrange a face-to-face meeting for transfer of this information." A single droplet of sweat broke from the hairline of Steven's temple and ran down his cheek. He felt as though he were suffocating in the claustrophobic little telephone box.

  "You will be contacted," droned the voice and the line clicked dead.

  Steven took the white silk handkerchief from his top pocket and dabbed at his face. Then he carefully rearranged the scrap of silk in his pocket, not folded into neat spikes but with a deliberately casual drape.

  He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin and left the booth. Now for the first time he felt like a brave man. It was a feeling he relished, and he stepped out boldly swinging the rolled umbrella with a small flourish at each pace.

  Peter had been within call of the telephone all that week, during the hours of involvement with the series of Narmco projects which he had put in train before his departure for Tahiti, and which all seemed to be maturing simultaneously. There were meetings that began in the morning and lasted until after dark, there were two separate day journeys, one to Oslo and another to Frankfurt, catching the early businessman's plane and back in the Narmco office before evening.

  Always he was within reach of a telephone and Steven Stride knew the number; even when he was in the NATO Officers Club gymnasium, sharpening his body to peak physical condition, or practising until after midnight in the underground pistol range until the 9-mm. Cobra was an extension of his hands either hand, left or right, equally capable of grouping the X circle at fifty metres, from any position, standing, kneeling or prone, always he was within reach of the telephone.

  Peter felt like a prize fighter in training camp, concentrating all his attention on the preparations for the confrontation he knew lay ahead.

  At last the weekend loomed, with the prospect of being boring and frustrating. He refused invitations to visit the country home of one of his Narmco colleagues, another to fly down to Paris for the Saturday racing and he stayed alone in the Hilton suite, waiting for the call from Steven.

  On Sunday morning he had all the papers sent up to his room, English and American and French German which he could read better than he spoke, and even the Dutch and Italian papers which he could stumble through haltingly, missing every third word or so.

  He went through them carefully, trying to find a hint of Caliph's activity. New abductions, hijackings or other acts which might give him a lead to some new Caliph-dominated pressures.

  Italy was in a political uproar. The confusion so great that he could only guess at how much of it was from the left and how much from the right. There had been an assassination in Naples of five known members of the Terrorist Red Brigade, all five taken out neatly with a single grenade.

  The grenade type had been determined as standard NATO issue, and the execution had been in the kitchen of a Red Brigade safe apartment in a slum area of the city. The police had no leads. It sounded like Caliph. There was no reason to believe that his "chain" did not include prominent Italian businessmen. A millionaire Italian living in his own country had to be the earth's most endangered species after the blue whale, Peter thought wryly, and they might have called on Caliph to go on the offensive.

  Peter finished the continental papers, and turned with relief to the English and American. It was a little before Sunday noon, and he wondered how he could live out the desolate hours until Monday morning.

  He was certain that there would be no reply to Steven's request for a meeting before then.

  He started on the English-language newspapers, spinning them out t
o cover the blank time ahead.

  The British Leyland Motor Company strike was in its fifteenth week with no prospect of settlement. Now there was a case for Caliph, Peter smiled wryly, remembering his discussion with Steven. Knock a few heads together for their own good.

  There was only one other item of interest in his morning's reading.

  The President of the United States had appointed a special negotiator in another attempt to find a solution to the Israeli occupation of the disputed territories in the Middle East. The man he had chosen was Dr. Kingston Parker, who was described as a personal friend of the President and one of the senior members of his inner circle of advisors, a man well thought of by all parties in the dispute, and an ideal choice for the difficult job. Again Peter found himself in agreement. Kingston Parker's energies and resources seemed bottomless.

  Peter dropped the last paper and found himself facing a void of boredom that would extend through until the following day. There were three books he should read beside his bed, and the Hermes crocodile case was half-filled with Narmco material, yet he knew that he would not be able to concentrate not with the prospect of the confrontation with Caliph overshadowing all else.

  He went through into the mirrored bathroom of the suite, and found the package that he had purchased the previous day in the cosmetic section of Galeries Anspach, one of the city's largest departmental stores.

  The wig was of good-quality human hair, not the obviously shiny nylon substitute. It was in his own natural colour, but much longer than Peter wore his hair. He arranged it carefully along his own hairline, and then set to work with a pair of scissors, trimming and tidying it. When he had it as close to his liking as possible, he began to tint the temples with "Italian Boy" hair silvering.

  It took him most of the afternoon, for he was in no hurry, and he was critical of his own work. Every few minutes he consulted the snapshot which Melissa-Jane had taken with her new Polaroid camera,

  Peter's Christmas t present to her, at Abbots Yew on New Year's Day.

  It was a good likeness of both the Stride brothers, Peter and Steven, standing full face and smiling indulgently at Melissa-Jane's command to do so.