by Greg Iles
"Got money?"
"All I need."
"Right," said the driver. "Get in, then."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I30 Pm. Horn House, Northern Transvaal, RSA Seated in his motorized
wheelchair on the north lawn, Alfred Horn chewed an Upmann cigar while
Robert Stanton, Lord Granville, paced nervously around him, gulping from
an enormous Bloody Mary. For an hour the young Englishman had been
ranting about "corporate expansion." The corporation he referred to was
the illegal and wholly invisible one which carried on the lucrative
drug- and currencysmuggling operations he had administered for Alfred
Horn for the past eight years. The old man had sat silent during most
of the tirade. He was curious, but not about increasing his illegal
profits. He was curious about Stanton himself.
Today the young nobleman's voice had the semblance of its usual
brashness, but something in it did not quite ring true.
He was drunk, and Horn intended to give him as much rope as he would
take.
"I don't even know why I'm trying," he lamented. "Do you realize how
much money we have lost in the past three days, Alfred? Over two
million pounds! Two million. And I have no idea why. You shut down
our entire European operation without a word of explanation."
"To whom do I owe explanations?" Horn rasped.
.Well ... to no one, of course. But Alfred"certain people might get
angry if we don't resume operations very soon.
We have commitments."
A faint smile touched Horn's lips. "Yes," he said softly.
"I'm curious, Robert, this gold that is scheduled to anive day after
tomorrow. Why is it coming by ship? Normally those deliveries are made
by air."
This question surprised Stanton, but he recovered quickly.
"The final leg will still be made by air," he said. "By helicopter. I
don't know why, Alfred. Perhaps the currency export restrictions were
tightened at Colombia's airports.
Perhaps it was easier to take the gold out by ship. Who knows?"
"Indeed." Horn glanced at the thin face of Pieter Smuts.
"Tell me, Robert, do you miss England? You've been with us a month
now."
Stanton took a huge swallow of his Bloody Mary. "Glad to be away from
the bloody place. It's winter there, isn't it?
Though I must admit I'd like to get down to Jo'burg for a weekend.
Not much female companionship to choose from here. I don't have the
fancy for dark meat Smuts has. I suppose it's an acquired taste."
Stanton grinned. "There's always the pretty new Fraulein, of course,
our own Aryan princess.
Horn's solitary eye burned into Stanton's face. "You will keep your
distance from Frau Apfel, Robert," he said sharply. "Is that absolutely
clear?"
"Wouldn't dream of it, old boy. Not my type at all." The young
Englishman tried to look nonchalant, but he could not remain cool under
the smoking gaze of Horn's security chief. "Would you mind terribly not
doing that, Smuts?" he said irritably. "Gives me the galloping
creeps."
Smuts continued to stare like a wolf at the edge of a dying fire.
After several moments, Horn said, "It won't be long now, Robert, and
everything will be back to normal. I have some business to take care of
first, that is all. It's a matter of security."
Security, Stanton thought contemptuously. In two days you're going to
find out about bloody security. He slipped on a pair of Wayfarer
sunglasses to hide his eyes while he considered his remarkable position.
Three months ago, two very powerful people had decided they wanted
Alfred Horn dead.
One was a ruthless Colombian drug baron who wanted access to Phoenix's
European drug markets. His motivegreed-Stanton clearly understood. The
other was a rather terrifying gentleman from London named Sir Neville
Shaw.
Stanton knew nothing about his motive. All he knew was that both Shaw
and the Colombian had asked him to assassinate Alfred Horn. With his
own hands! Stanton had refused, of course. He didn't want to murder
the old man.
Horn had made him rich-something his worthless title had never done. But
the terrible pressure to kill the old man had not relented. The
Colombian had threatened Stanton's life, a threat Stanton could afford
to ignore as long as he lived under Horn's protection. Sir Neville Shaw
had also begun with threats. I'll bury your title under a mountain of
dirt and blood, he'd said. Stanton had laughed. He didn't give two
shits about his title. Even as a child he had sensed that the name
Granville was held in quiet, profound contempt among most of the British
peerage. That was one reason he'd turned to the life he had, and also
why, upon his father's death, he had accepted the aid and protection of
Alfred Horn.
But then Shaw had changed tactics. Kill Horn, he'd said, and the Crown
will allow you to keep the companies you own and operate under Horn's
supervision. Stanton had paused at,that. Because the time was long
past for Alfred Horn to pass on his empire to a younger man. For five
years Stanton had been the majority stockholder of Phoenix AG, yet not
one decision regarding the administration of the giant conglomerate had
been made by him. His father had played a similar role before him, but
his father had been allowed to make decisions-his father had been
trusted. Robert was a mere figurehead, almost a joke. Yes, the time
for change had come. Yet Stanton could not do the dirty work himself;
even if he succeeded in killing Horn, Pieter Smuts would tear him limb
from bloody limb. No, the old man would have to be killed in such a way
that Smuts and his security force died with him. Stanton had pondered
this problem for a week, after which time he had hit upon a rather
brilliant plan. He would simply bring together the two parties who
shared a common goal. On a day trip to London he had communicated his
plan to Shaw, then left the devious mI-5 chief to work out the details.
Thus the present plan; thus the ship. All that remained now was the
execution.
"Drunk already, are you?" Smuts goaded in his flat voice.
For once Stanton looked the Afrikaner dead in the eye.
"Just thinking," he said. "You should try it sometime, old
sport."
Ilse Apfel stood on a gentle swell of grass and stared across the vast
high-veld. She had fled Horn House after the nightmare in the X-ray
room, running as far and as fast as she could. No one had stopped her,
but Linah had followed at a respectful distance, pausing whenever Ilse
did, keeping pace like a distant shadow. After Ilse's panic had carried
her nearly two miles from the house, she'd calmed smoothed out a place
in the rough grass to rest.
Alfred Horn had spoken the truth at dinner, si On this empty plateau
there was simply nowhere to. Not without a map, a gun, and a good
supply Far to her left, scrawny, humped cattle grazed. Beyond them a
pair of reddish horses pranced in the sun. A black haze hung low in the
distance, touching the brown horizo& Though Ilse did not know it, th
e
black smoke rose from the coal-fueled cookstoves of a small native
kraal, or village.
Such smoke marked most native dwellings from Capetown to the Bantustan
of Venda. In winter it was worse. Then the dark palls hung perpetually
over the settlements, blocking out the sun. In South Africa electricity
is a selectively p@, vided commodity.
Ilse looked down at the sun-baked earth. What hope had she here, so far
from Germany? What chance did her childm have? Hans was on his way
here now, if Horn could be believed . And from Smuts's questions in the
X-ray session, shorn thought there was a chance Hans's father might be
coming too. She hoped so. Even from Hans's rare comments about Dieter
Hauer, Ilse had gleaned that he was a highly respected, even feared,
police officer. But what could he do against men like Pieter Smuts?
Again!
Jiirgen Luhr, who had slashed a helpless policeman before her eyes?
She thought of Alfred Horn. Lord Grenville was right about one
thing-the old man had taken to her. Ilse had enough experience with men
to recognize infatuation, and Horn had definitely fallen for her. And
here, she realized, his infatuation might be the key to very survival.
And to her child's survival. She wonder what madness the old man had
planned for tonight. From what Stanton had told her of Horn's business
dealings, meetings could augur no good for anyone. Still. she c not
very well refuse to attend-not if she wanted ate herself further with
Horn. And she might le@ thing that could help her escape.
Pulling a long blade of grass from the ground and started back toward
the house. She had wandered afield than she'd thought. Linah was no
longer in sig before Ilse had covered fifty meters, she confronted thing
she had not seen on her way out: a shimmering stretch of hot asphalt
running off through the grass and scrub. A @? Her heart quickened with
hope. Then she saw the plane. Three hundred meters to her right, on a
round asphalt runway, Horn's sleek Lear-31A. Ilse sighed hopelessly,
and continued west.
a long rise, she caught sight of Horn House about away. She gasped.
Fleeing the house earlier, she had not looked back. But now she saw
the whole estate laid out before her like a postcard photograph, stark
and stunning in its originality. She had never seen anything like it,
not in .)magazines, not even on television. Horn House-a building #kat
from inside gave the impression of a classical manor Med with ornate
rooms and endless hallways-was actually an equilateral triangle. A
triad of vast legs surrounded a central tower that rose like a castle
keep above the three outer legs. Crowning this tower was a.glittering
copper-plated dome. The observatory, Ilse remembered. Hexagonal
turrets ked each vertex of the great triangle. She half expected to see
archers rise up from behind the tessellated parapets.
With a sudden shiver, she realized that Horn House was exactly what it
appeared to be-a fortress. On the seemingly ureless plain, the massive
citadel stood ofi a hill set in center of a shallow, circular bowl
created by gradually rig slopes on all its sides. Anyone approaching it
would have to cross this naked expanse of ground beneath the gaze of the
central tower.
Ilse pressed down her apprehension and set off across the asphalt, using
the observatory dome as her homeward beacon.
She was quickly brought up short by a deep, dry gully. She d crossing a
shallow defile earlier, but nothing s. She must have crossed it at
another point on her from the house. Easing herself down over the rim,
carefully into the dusty ravine.
Smuts had christened this dry creek bed "the wash and it served as the
first barrier in an impregnable security screen which the Afrikaner had
constructed around his master's isolated redoubt. If Ilse had known
what lay been her and Horn House, she would have hunkered down he Wash
and refused to take another step. The Afrikaner used all his experience
to turn the grassy bowl between the Wash and his master's fortress into
a killing zone from which no intruder could escape alive.
Every square meter of the circular depression was protected by Claymore
mines, explosive devices containing hundreds of steel balls that, when
remotely detonated, blasted outward at an angle and cut any living
creature to pieces in a millisecond. Concrete bunkers, each armed with
an M-60 machine gun, studded the inner lip of the huge bowl.
Each was connected to the central tower by a network of underground
tunnels, providing a secure means of directing fire and reinforcing the
bunkers in the event of casualties. But the linchpin of Horn House's
defenses was the "observatory." The nerve center of the entire security
complex, the great copper dome housed closed-circuit television
monitors, radar screens, satellite communications gear, and the pride of
Smuts's arsenal-a painstakingly machined copy of the American Vulcan
mini-gun, a rotary cannon capable of pouring 6,600 armor-piercing rounds
per minute down onto the open ground surrounding Horn House.
None of these precautions was visible, of course; Pieter Smuts knew his
job. The Claymore mines-designed to be spiked onto the ground
surface-had been waterproofed and hidden beneath small mounds of earth.
The bunkers had sheets of sun-scorched sod laid over their outward
faces.
Even the Vulcan gun slept silently behind the retractable 'lllescope
cover" of the "observatory," waiting to be aimed not at the heavens, but
at the earth.
Oblivious to the matrix of death that surrounded her, Ilse fought her
way up and over'the far rim of the Wash, brushed herself off, and
continued toward the still distant house.
With a soft buzz Alfred Horn turned his wheelchair away from his
security chief and gazed across the veld. Ilse had just topped the rim
of the bowl to the northeast. With her blond hair dancing in the sun,
she looked as carefree as a Jungfrau picnicking in the Grunewald.
Without taking his eyes from her, Horn asked, "Is the helicopter
available, Pieter?"
"Yes, sir."
Horn watched Ilse make her way across the long, shallow depression and
climb the hill to the house. It took several minutes. When Ilse spied
the Ahikaner, she started to avoid the table, but Horn motioned her
over. She stepped tentatively up to his wheelchair.
"Is there any news of my husband?" she asked diffidently.
"Not yet, my dear. But there soon will be, I'm sure." Horin turned to
Smuts. "Pieter, have one of the office girls order some clothes for
Frau Apfel. They can fly them out in the helicopter. And make sure
there's something conservative."
He cast a surreptitious glance at Lord Granville. "For tonight."
The young Englishman stared into his drink.
"Take Frau Apfel with you, Pieter," Horn suggested. "She can provide
her sizes." He turned to Ilse with a smile.
"Would you, my dear?"
Ilse hesitated a moment, then she silently followed Smuts.
She didn't know what to make of
Alfred Horn's eccentricities, but she
remembered the Afrikaner's warning against disobeying him. She would do
anything to keep her unborn child off the torture table that waited in
the X-ray ROOMHom watched her walk into the house, a look of rapture on
his face. Stanton observed him with growing disgust. The oldfool's
past it, he thought. There's no stopping things now.
You never learned the natural law, Alfred You pass the torrh to the
young or you die. As Stanton drained the dregs of his Bloody Mary, he
made a silent toast to Sir Neville Shaw.
3.30 P.M. Mozambique Channel, Indian Ocean
Sixty-five miles off the wooded coastline of southern Mozambique, the MV
Casilda hove to in the 370-mile-wide stretch of water that separates the
old Portuguese colony from the island of Madagascar. A medium-sized
freighter of Panamanian registry, her holds were full of denim fabric
bound for Dares Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to the north. After
unloading this cargo Casilda would sail to Beira, the great railhead and
port on the Mozambique coast, where she would take on a consignment of
asbestos bound for Uruguay. But just now she had other business.
Strapped to the aft deck of the freighter like giant insects pinned to a
display board were two Bell JetRanger HI helicopters scheduled for
delivery to RENAMO, the antiMarxist guerrillas in Mozambique- Although
the choppers would eventually be delivered to their official buyers,
they had a job to do first-a slight detour to take. Supplied by a very
wealthy gentleman in South America, the JetRangers were configured as
commercial aircraft-with the papers required for legal transfer all in
order-but a military man might I e quick to notice that they could be
easily modified for combat duty in a pinch.
The sun-blistered man who surveyed the two helos from the shadow of the
wheelhouse awning was just such a man.
An Englishman, and the only white man on the entire ship, his name was
Alan Burton. During the entire five-week voyage, Burton had watched
over the helicopters as if they were his own. In the next two days he
would have to entrust his life to them, and as he did not particularly
trust any of the men he would be working with, he felt that the most he
could do was be sure of the choppers. They were his lifeline.
His way in-his way out.
Casilda had been lucky so far. At no port of call had any customs
