Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (186 page)

"You are certain?" Parker persisted.

"Yes," Peter snapped. "Nobody else." Except Magda, only Magda. He pushed the thought aside angrily.

"All right, so we must accept that the Baroness was the target but was it an assassination or an abduction attempt?

That could be significant. If it was assassination, it would indicate that it was the elimination of a rival agent, that the Baroness was probably also a Mossad agent, recruited by her husband. On the other hand, an abduction would suggest that the object was monetary gain. Which was it, Peter?"

"They had blocked the road-" he said, but not completely he remembered. "And the police impersonator signalled me to stop-" or at least to slow down, he thought, slow down sufficiently to make an easy target before they started shooting " and they did not open fire until I made it clear that I was not going to stop." But they had been ready to begin shooting at the instant Peter made the decision to send the Maserati through the roadblock. The intention of the two machine-gunners had seemed evident.

I would say the object was to seize the Baroness alive."

"All right," Parker nodded. "We will have to accept that for the time being." He glanced at Colin. "Colonel Noble?

You had a question?"

"Thank you, Doctor. We haven't heard from Peter in "what terms he was approached by Narmco or the Baroness.

Who made the first contact?"

"I was approached by a London firm who specializes in A making top executive placements. They came directly from the Narmco Board-" And I turned them down flat, he thought. It was only later at Abbots Yew'I see." Colin frowned with disappointment. "There was no question of a meeting with the Baroness?"

"Not at that stage."

"You were offered the sales appointment no mention of any other duties, security, industrial intelligence "No, not then." later?"

"Yes. When I met the Baroness, I realized her personal security arrangements were inadequate. I made changes."

"You never discussed her husband's murder?"

"Yes, we did "And?"

"And nothing." Peter was finding it difficult to improvise answers, but he used the old rule of telling as much of the truth as possible.

"There was no mention by the Baroness of a hunt for her husband's murderers? You were not asked to use your special talents to lead a vendetta?" Peter had to make a swift decision. Parker would know of his leak to the British military attache in Paris the bait he had so carefully placed to attract Caliph. Of course Parker would know: he was head of Atlas with access to the Central Intelligence computer. Peter could not afford to deny it.

"Yes, she asked me to relay any information which might point to her husband's murderers. I asked G.2 in Paris for any information he might have. He couldn't help me." Parker grunted. "Yes. I have a note that G.2 filed a routine report but I suppose her request was natural enough." He wandered back to his work table to glance at a pad on which was scribbled some sort of personal shorthand.

"We know of eight sexual liaisons that the Baroness formed prior to her marriage, all with politically powerful or wealthy men. Six of them married men-" Peter found himself trembling with anger so intense that it surprised him. He hated Parker for talking like this of Magda.

With a huge effort he kept his expression neutral, the hand in his lap was relaxed and the fingers spread naturally, though he felt a driving desire to bunch it and drive it into Parker's face. all these affairs were conducted with utmost discretion. Then during her marriage there is no evidence of any extra-marital activity.

Since the Baron's murder there have been three others, a minister in the French Government, an American businessman head of the world's second largest oil company-" He dropped the pad back on the desk and swung back to face Peter. "And recently there has been one other." He stared at Peter with a bright penetrating gaze. "The lady certainly believes in mixing business with pleasure. All her partners have been men who are able to deliver very concrete proof of their affections. I think this rule probably applies to her latest choice of sexual partner." Colin Noble coughed awkwardly, and shifted in his chair, but Peter did not even glance at him, he went on staring impassively at Kingston Parker. He and Magda had made very little secret of their relationship still it was bitterly distasteful to have to discuss it with anybody else.

"I think that you are in a position now to gather vital intelligence. I think that you are very near the centre of this nameless and formless influence I think that you will be able to make some sort of contact with the enemy, even if it is only another military brush with them. The only question is whether or not you find any reason, emotional or otherwise, that might prevent you fulfilling this duty?" Kingston Parker cocked his head on one side, making the statement into a question.

"I have never let my private life interfere with my duty, Doctor, Peter said quietly.

"No," Kingston Parker agreed. "That is true. And I am sure that now you know a little more about Baroness Altmann you will appreciate just how vital is our interest in that lady."

"Yes, I do." Peter had his anger under control completely.

"You want me to use a privileged relationship to spy on her.

"Is that correct?"

"Just as we can be sure she is using the same relationship to her own ends-" Parker broke off as an odd thought seemed to occur. "I do hope I have not been too blunt, Peter. I haven't destroyed some cherished illusion." Now Parker's attitude was dismissive. The interview was over.

"At my age, Doctor a man has no more illusions." Peter rose to his feet. "Do I report to you direct?"

"Colonel Noble will make the arrangements for all communications." Kingston Parker held out his hand. "I would not have asked this of you if I had a choice." Peter did not hesitate, but took the hand. Parker's hand was cool and dry. Although he made no show of it, Peter could sense the physical power in those hard pianist's fingers.

"I understand, sir," said Peter and he thought grimly, and even if that is also a lie, I'm going to understand pretty damned soon.

Peter made the excuse of tiredness to avoid the gin rummy game, and pretended to sleep during most of the long trans-Atlantic flight. With his eyes closed he tried to marshal his thoughts into some sort of pattern, but always they seemed to come around full circle and leave him chasing his tail. He could not even achieve any about his feelings and loyalties to Magda Altmann.

cer taint They seemed to keep changing shape every time he examined them, and he found himself brooding on irrelevancies.

"Sexual liaisons" what a ridiculously stilted expression Parker had used, and why had it angered Peter so much?

Eight liaisons before marriage, six with married men, two others since marriage all wealthy or powerful. He found himself trying to flesh out these bare statistics, and with a shock of bitter resentment imagined those faceless, formless figures with the slim smooth body, the tiny, perfectly shaped breasts, and the long smoky fall of shimmering hair. He felt somehow betrayed, and immediately scorned himself for this adolescent reaction.

There were other more dire questions and chances that Kingston Parker had raised, the Mossad connection, the six missing years in Magda's life and yet he came back again to what had happened between them. Was she capable of such skilful deception, or was it not deception? Was he merely suffering from hurt pride now, or somehow unbeknown to him had she been able to force him into a more vulnerable position? Had she succeeded in making him fall in love with her?

How did he feel about her? At last he had to face that question directly and try to answer it, but when they landed again he still had no answer, except that the prospect of seeing her again pleased him inordinately and the thought that she had deliberately used him to her own ends and was capable of discarding him as she had done those others left him with an aching sense of dismay. He dreaded the answer for which he had to search, and suddenly he remembered her suggestion of an island to which they could escape together. He realized then that she was a victim of the same dread, and with a clairvoyant shudder he wondered if they were somehow preordained to destroy each other.

There were three separate messages from her at the Dorchester. She had left the Rambouillet number, each time. He telephoned immediately he reached the suite.

"Oh, Peter. I was so worried. Where were you?" And it was hard to believe her concern was faked, and it was even harder to discount the pleasure when, the following noon, she met him at Charles de Gaulle Airport herself instead of sending a chauffeur.

"I needed to get out of the office for an hour," she explained, and then she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and pressed herself against him. "That's a lie, of course. I came because I couldn't wait the extra hour to see you." Then she chuckled huskily. "I am behaving shamelessly, I can't imagine what you must think of me!" They were with a party of eight that evening, dinner at Le Doyen and then the theatre at the Palais de Chaillot.

Peter's French was still not up to Moli&e, so he took his pleasure in surreptitiously watching Magda, and for a few hours he succeeded in suppressing all those ugly questions; only on the midnight drive back to La Pierre Brute did he begin the next move in the complicated game.

"I couldn't tell you on the telephone-" he said in the intimate darkness and warmth of her limousine. "I had an approach from Atlas. The head of Atlas summoned me to New York. That's where I was when you called. They are also onto Caliph." She sighed then, and her hand stole into his. "I was waiting for you to tell me, Peter," she said simply, and she sighed again. "I knew you'd gone to America, and I had a terrible premonition that you were going to lie to me. I don't know what I would have done then." And Peter felt a lance of conscience driven up under his ribs, and with it the throb of concern she had known of his journey to New York, but how? Then he remembered her sources'.

"Tell me," she said, and he told her everything, except the nagging question marks which Kingston Parker had placed after her name.

The missing years, the Mossad connection with the Baron, and those ten nameless men.

"They don't seem to know that Caliph uses that name," Peter told her. "But they seem to be pretty certain that you are hunting him, and you've hired me for that purpose." They discussed it quietly as the small cavalcade of cars rushed through the night, and later when she came to his suite, they went on talking, holding each other as they whispered in the night, and Peter was surprised that he could act so naturally, that the doubts seemed to evaporate so easily when he was with her.

"Kingston Parker still has me as a member of Atlas," Peter explained. "And I did not deny it, nor protest. We want to find Caliph, and if I still have status with Atlas it will be useful, of that I am certain,"

"I agree. Atlas can help us especially now that they are also aware that Caliph exists." They made love in the dawn, very deeply satisfying love that left bodies and minds replete, and then keeping her discretion she slipped away before it was light, but they met again an hour later for breakfast together -in the Garden Room.

She poured coffee for him, and indicated the small parcel beside his plate.

"We aren't quite as discreet as we think we are, She chuckled. "Somebody seems to know where you are spending your evenings." He weighed the parcel in his right palm; it was the size of a roll of 35 men. film, wrapped in brown paper, sealed with red wax.

"Apparently it came special delivery yesterday evening." She broke one of the crisp croissants into her plate, and smiled at him with that special slant of her green eyes.

The address was typed on a stick-on label, and the stamps were British, franked in south London the previous morning.

Suddenly Peter was assailed with a terrifying sense of foreboding; the presence of some immense overpowering evil seemed to pervade the gaily furnished room.

"What is it, Peter?" Her voice cracked with alarm.

"Nothing,"he said. "It's nothing."

"You suddenly went deadly pale, Peter. Are you sure you are all right?"

"Yes. I'm all right." He used his table knife to lift the wax seal and then unrolled the brown paper.

It was a small screw-topped bottle of clear glass, and the liquid it contained was clear also. Some sort of preservative, he realized immediately, spirits or formaldehyde.

Hanging suspended in the liquid was a soft white object.

"What is it?"Magda asked.

Peter felt cold tentacles of nausea closing around his stomach.

The object turned slowly, floating free in its bottle, and there was a flash of vivid scarlet.

"Does your mother allow you to wear nail varnish now, Melissa-Jane?" He heard the question echoed in his memory, and saw his daughter flirt her hands, and the scarlet flash of her nails. The same vivid scarlet.

"Oh yes though not to school, of course. You keep forgetting I'm almost fourteen, Daddy." The floating white object was a human finger. It had been severed at the first joint, and the preservative had bleached the exposed flesh a sickly white. The skin had puckered and wrinkled like that of a drowned man. Only the painted fingernail was unaltered, pretty and festively gay.

The nausea caught Peter's throat, choking him and he coughed and retched drily as he stared at the tiny bottle.

The telephone rang three times before it was answered.

"Cynthia Barrow." Peter recognized his ex-wife's voice, even though it was ragged with strain and grief.

"Cynthia, it's Peter."

"Oh, thank God, Peter. I have been trying to find you for two days."

"What is it?"

"Is Melissa-Jane with you, Peter?"

"No." He felt as though the earth had lurched under his feet.

"She's gone, Peter. She's been gone for two nights now.

I'm going out of my mind."

"Have you informed the police?"

"Yes, of course. "The edge of hysteria was in her voice.

"Stay where you are," Peter said. "I'm coming to England right now, but leave any message for me at the Dorchester." He hung up quickly, sensing that her grief would overflow at any moment and knowing that he could not handle it now.