Shah-Mak

by Alan Williams

  ‘His Highness has expressed his wish to entertain you tonight.’

  ‘Me? But he won’t even remember me!’

  Shiva Steiner smiled, dead eyed. ‘My dear Sarah, you do not suppose that we have gone to all this trouble and expense without first being sure of at least the basic details? Your last remark suggests, I hope, merely a degree of modesty on your part? Not, I trust, a sudden lack of self-confidence?’

  He leaned forward to touch her knee, but she flinched away. ‘You have nothing to fear. His Highness has also expressed to me, personally, that he found you a most agreeable and attractive person.’

  ‘Nothing to fear!’ she repeated, and glanced again through the rear window: the car was there, waiting, 100 yards behind. ‘And what about those Security people? You’re really telling me that they’re following us just in case we’re attacked by a few beggars?’ She was sitting forward, her fingernails digging into the deep leather seat.

  ‘Calm yourself, my dear.’ Steiner had not even bothered to follow her glance back through the window. ‘We have come so far — you really must trust me.’

  Again she remembered Mrs Braintree’s words on the Embassy stairs — ‘Get out while you’ve still got your skin!’

  She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. She looked out at the troops. A few of them were looking back at the car. ‘Shouldn’t we be going?’

  ‘You in a hurry?’

  ‘But won’t they recognize us — recognize me?’

  Steiner’s, voice was as caressing as ever. ‘They cannot see in through the windows. Even if they could, they are only soldiers. Why should they be interested in you, except to dream about you at night?’ He gave a guttural order to the driver, who started the engine.

  She watched as they passed the stationary grey car on the other side of the street. It pulled out and did a swift U-turn a moment later. The Fleetwood was driving deliberately slowly. Two hundred yards from the entrance to the square Steiner murmured something and the driver almost stopped.

  Without looking at her, Shiva Steiner pointed towards a narrow side street leading between two tall concrete buildings.

  ‘That is Passam Street,’ he said. She peered over his shoulder and saw the name on a plaque in Arabic and Roman script. ‘Your friend, Captain Packer, will be waiting for you at the corner from midnight tonight.’ He added something to the driver and the car speeded up.

  Sarah sank back into her corner, and for several minutes they drove again in silence.

  ‘Sarah, it is time I explained to you the final, and perhaps the most important, detail of this whole operation. It concerns the method by which His Highness will die.’ He paused. ‘When you first agreed to this plan, did Charles Pol ever discuss this aspect of the affair with you?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She was trying to control her breathing and found it hard to speak. ‘He promised me that there wouldn’t be any blood. That’s all he said.’ She was very frightened.

  Steiner nodded. ‘Monsieur Pol was quite correct. We have all agreed that you should be spared any unnecessary unpleasantness. Fortunately, there are new techniques which are both simple and highly effective.’

  Her voice was a whisper. ‘Poison?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. However, we cannot risk having you offer His Highness something to eat or drink. He follows the ancient tradition here of employing a taster at all times of the day and night. So we have decided on an anal suppository.’

  She swallowed hard, saying nothing.

  ‘It is an almost universal practice among the French,’ Steiner went on, ‘for taking most common medicines, including aspirins and sedatives. But for some reason the Anglo-Saxons — including the Americans — find it disgusting, despite the fact that, as a method, it works much faster.’

  ‘You want me to stick it up his arse, you mean?’

  ‘Precisely.’ Shiva Steiner sounded relieved. ‘You must merely think of yourself as a nurse, or even a woman doctor. They have to perform far more disagreeable tasks every day of their working lives.’

  ‘I’m not a nurse or a doctor!’

  ‘No. But not even the most famous doctor in the world could command a fee a fraction as great as that which you are being paid for tonight’s work.’

  Sarah closed her eyes, as Steiner’s soothing voice continued. ‘The only real skill you will have to employ will be in the matter of timing. Like most experienced men of his age, the Ruler often enjoys diversions from the usual sexual play. But I have no doubt that you will handle this aspect of the situation correctly. Whatever His Highness suggests, it is essential that you neither resist nor show the least reluctance. If you do, he will merely throw you out. And that would be a pity. A pity for us all.’

  Sarah still said nothing. After a few minutes, Steiner’s voice reached her again, full of cajoling reassurance. ‘There is one thing I should add, my dear. You will be given two of these suppositories. The poison belongs to the same group as cyanide and acts very quickly. He will be dead within thirty seconds. Before that there may be violent spasms, but even if he is lying on top of you he will not be able to hurt you, nor will he be able to make any sound. He will be unconscious almost at once.’

  ‘What is the second one for?’ she asked.

  ‘It is merely a reserve — in cast you drop or mislay the first one. Of course,’ he went on gently, ‘if something were to go seriously wrong, and you were to be apprehended, you could always use it on yourself.’

  She shrank back into her corner again and watched the palm-shaded villas sliding past them as they drove through the suburbs, with the Ford Falcon still behind them.

  ‘It is no business of mine,’ Steiner added, ‘to advise you to kill yourself. I am merely giving you the option.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. And at what time is my presence required at the Palace?’

  ‘His Highness is dining early with a delegation of Japanese industrialists. He does not expect to be late. I have received instructions to have you driven to the roadblock at 11.30. From there you will be escorted to his private apartments. Just one other thing…’ He paused, as though unexpectedly embarrassed. ‘Of course — I rely entirely on your judgement in this matter. But it is possible — in this heat, perhaps — that your period might be premature?’

  ‘No.’ She gave a sharp humourless laugh. ‘And what if it had been?’

  ‘It might have been awkward. For you, I mean.’

  They did not speak again until they reached the house.

  CHAPTER 35

  Ryderbeit and Packer took off from Beirut International Airport at 6.42 p.m. local time. Customs and Immigration formalities had once again been leisurely and affable; the official who had inspected the Fieseler Storch was obviously more interested in the plane than in anything it might be carrying.

  Their only visible luggage was a paper carrier bag containing two bottles, of Scotch and arak, which Ryderbeit had bought at the duty-free shop. For the moment, these worried Packer rather more than the two MI6 carbines, with six clips of ammunition each, screwed down under the main tail-strut.

  Packer guessed that somewhere along the chain of command at the airport, and probably fairly high up, the right words had been said, the right money exchanged; for the Lebanon was still in a state of civil war, and the Fieseler Storch did not look like just another playboy’s toy.

  Among the shoals of brightly coloured small aircraft in the area reserved for private planes, it stood out like an old cutlass on a dinner table. As a museum piece, it was still camouflaged — sky-blue on the underneath, desert-brown on its sides and roof and the top of its high wings — though someone had tactfully painted out the black indented crosses on the wingtips and the swastikas on the tail.

  Ryderbeit had spent a quarter of an hour inspecting her, unscrewing the cowlings and groping around in the engine until his hands and arms were smeared with fresh oil. His silence seemed to indicate a morose, professional satisfaction.

  There
was a fifteen-minute delay before they reached final clearance for take-off, while they waited for a jumbo and a DC 10 to come in. The cockpit, which was the size of the front seat of a sports car, was fitted with a large modern radio that took up most of Packer’s leg room, in the rear observation seat. The screws looked brand-new. And Packer guessed that it had been installed in the last forty-eight hours.

  Just before take-off, Ryderbeit reached back for the carrier bag 286 and took a long drink of whisky from the bottle. His eye looked back at Packer and crinkled. ‘Take it easy, soldier. Most times you fly commercial airways you don’t see the pilot — nor do you see him the night before or the morning after. But that doesn’t mean to say you haven’t got a piss artist up front.’ He cackled. ‘I’ve known pilots — real respectable ones — who’d no more fly without a bottle than without radar. Most of them are never drunk, never sober. Me, if I don’t have a drink I fly lame.’

  The engine was not anxious to start, and Ryderbeit talked to it in a mixture of English and Afrikaans as though it were some new pet. To Packer the controls appeared remarkably few and simple. An American voice finally came over the radio: ‘German bird-dog, you are cleared for take-off. But shake it up — we’ve got a Pan-Am 747 coming in on your tail.’

  Ryderbeit grinned, and the little plane began to move. They took off in less than forty yards. Packer watched the floating compass settle on to north-north-east; the altimeter needle quivering up to 2000 metres.

  It was already very cold, and very noisy. Packer pulled a thick sweater and anorak from behind his seat. It had been too hot on the ground to put them on, but up here it was like dressing inside a deep-freeze. Ryderbeit, on the other hand, seemed immune to the cold: he was still wearing his bush shirt under a light canvas jacket, khaki trousers and black suede boots, with his snow goggles pushed up on to his forehead. His hands on the controls were supple and perfectly steady; the only trace of his Italian rampage was his greenish pallor. He had shown no symptoms of tension or anxiety since waking at noon; and his one emotional outburst had been annoyance at not being able to get any Havana cigars at Beirut Airport.

  He had stuffed the weather reports into the canvas pocket of his door; they were cleared to fly only as far as Tripoli, then west to Cyprus. The long leg east across Syria and Iraq would have to be flown blind, without radar or storm alerts.

  The weather report indicated no cloud, with light south-easterly winds. Perfect conditions, Ryderbeit had said: perfect conditions, that was, for anyone wanting to go water-skiing or give an outdoor barbecue in Beirut or Limassol. It did not take into account sandstorms or mountain turbulence 500 miles to the east.

  Ryderbeit had the maps — given him by Pol — spread out on his lap. Communication was difficult except by shouting; and once they were airborne Ryderbeit’s expression had become one of serene but intense concentration. He was in a world of his own, and he loved it.

  They followed the coast for twenty minutes, until they saw the grey smudge of a city ahead. Tripoli. Ryderbeit had kept the radio switched on, in case someone in Beirut changed his mind and told them to come back, in which event he was going to do a sharp right turn into Syria. He intended to do that anyway, but he wanted to keep the Lebanese happy for as long as possible.

  He dropped to 800 metres, made a wide inland sweep as though he were about to hook round and come in over the dust-grey outskirts to the north of the city; then yelled at Packer: ‘Sit back! — we’re rolling over!’ The floor seemed to slide away, the patchy brown below tilted up until the margin of veined green-blue sea was hanging above them; then with a swooping roar the Storch levelled out, with its detachable wings swaying giddily, and the city and the sea gone behind them.

  The compass wobbled and settled down to due-east. The radio came on with a loud jabber of Arabic. Ryderbeit switched it off. From now on, whatever came over was not going to be polite, even if they could understand it.

  The altimeter had dropped to just above 300 metres. Below stretched scrubland and semi-desert, spotted with olive trees and the occasional smallholding, racing towards them at over 140 knots. Ryderbeit had said he was not worried about the Lebanese; the real danger was that the Syrians would pick up Tripoli radio, and if someone got jittery enough, they might send up a fighter. There was an air-base at Homs, he’d said, just inside the border; and the Syrians had MIG 23s — not to mention SAMs.

  But the light was already going. The sky was black and the desert ahead was turning the colour of a blood orange. Fifteen minutes after leaving their northerly course to Tripoli, the Storch sank to within 100 metres of the ground, its high-tailed shadow, with the long fixed undercarriage, rippling over the rocky sand like a great bird gliding in for the kill.

  Packer could see no signs of the frontier; nor were there any tell-tale streaks from MIG afterburners or missiles. The landscape was now flat and featureless, bare of even the few scraps of cultivation they had crossed in the Lebanon.

  Suddenly it was night: a wide deep blue-black nothing, except for the tiny green glow from the instrument panel. For the next three hours, and the next 500 miles, they were going to be flying what Ryderbeit called ‘dead blind’ — no lights, no radar, no radio, just a gyro-compass and an altimeter — in an aircraft that had been built when Ryderbeit and Packer were both in short trousers.

  Packer settled back and tried to sleep.

  CHAPTER 36

  At the moment that the Fieseler Storch was illegally crossing the Lebanese-Syrian frontier, a sand-coloured jeep with four men stopped close to the great Gorge of Darak, some eighty miles east of Mamounia.

  In the quiet dusk the jeep showed no lights. The four men descended swiftly, their rubber-soled boots making no sound on the rocky slope up to the edge of the precipice. They wore grey denim battle-dress and walked in pairs, two carrying what looked like pieces of drainpipe attached to a tripod, the other two lugging a heavy metal box.

  When they reached the edge, one of them signalled with his hand and the tripods were set down on the ground. No spoken orders were given. From the black abyss in front of them came a cold dead hush, broken by the whine of distant wind. The pale rim of the sky still showed the jagged treeless horizon.

  The man who had given the signal now raised a pair of night-glasses and scanned the far side of the gorge, turned and swept them over the rugged ground ahead. Against the fading light he could just distinguish a blurred pillar of sandstone, with two black threads curving down into the darkness of the gorge. There was no trace of life.

  He looked at his watch. They were not to act until it was completely dark, he had been told: which would be in five or ten minutes — no more.

  The other three were adjusting the tripods and rangefinders. One of them had opened the steel box and carefully, silently, arranged the pear-shaped bombs in rows between the two mortars; then they lay flat and waited.

  They waited eight minutes. The sky was now black and full of stars: a good night, the men thought, because the moon was low and thin. They were all watching the same spot, on the sheer, faintly discernible ridge of cliff ahead, when a light blinked twice. The leader swung the glasses round to the foot of the sandstone pillar. There was no answering light, but a quick moth-like movement.

  Half a minute later a second, feebler light flickered over the ridge ahead and meandered down to the edge of the invisible footbridge. Here it paused while four more lights joined it from above; then the five of them began wobbling out over the chasm.

  The leader with the night-glasses nodded. Two of the soldiers reached out and each picked up a mortar bomb. They rested on their elbows and held the bombs over the mouths of both barrels. The man with the glasses followed the luminous second hand of his watch; after fifty seconds, the cluster of lights had progressed a third of the way across, swaying visibly. He waited another thirty seconds. The lights had passed the lowest dip of the bridge and began to climb, more slowly now. He raised his right hand.

  The group on the bridge was within
fifty feet of the rock base when he brought his hand down with a quick slicing movement. The two commandos dropped the bombs into the barrels of the mortars. In the silence there was a rattle of metal, then two almost simultaneous clonks and a whistle of air. A couple of seconds later a pair of flashes appeared on the sandstone pillar ahead, followed by a loud double crack that bounced off the opposite cliff with a long rolling echo.

  The leader had his glasses up and gave a rapid order. One of the men fed his mortar again, while the other made a slight adjustment to his rangefinder. The explosions now came in fast succession, amplified by the walls of the gorge, until they sounded like an artillery barrage. The lights on the bridge had paused for a moment, then began hurrying forwards and upwards.

  All four men were feeding the mortars now, watching the bursts of light on the top of the sandstone pillar. The leader had dropped in the ninth bomb and ducked down, when the four torches on the bridge appeared to glide sideways, then drift down into darkness where they spread out like fireflies and vanished. Above the booming echoes, a thin scream rose from the depths, with an answering bark from the walls of the gorge. Then silence.

  The four men had already grabbed up the mortars and ammunition case, and were trotting back towards the jeep. A bullet cracked into the rock a few feet from them, and a second ripped through the jeep’s canvas hood, as they clambered aboard and bounced away, without lights, into the darkness of the desert.

  In the back the leader switched on a powerful shortwave radio.

  Eighty miles away, in his office in the turret of his marble mansion, Shiva Steiner received the transmission. Dr Zak had departed to his Maker.

  CHAPTER 37

  For the last two hours they had been flying at treetop level, although there were no trees. There was also no moonlight, but the stars had a brilliance that was reflected in a weird glow off the broken naked landscape.

  Ryderbeit had consumed a quarter of the whisky by the time they had crossed Iraq, flying terrifyingly low until they reached the mountains that formed the natural barrier with the Ruler’s kingdom. Here they had climbed steeply, with the little plane bouncing and lurching in the treacherous upcurrents, while Ryderbeit’s fingers slid swiftly, surely over the controls, his lips moving in the dim light from the instrument panel, soothing, coaxing the little antique machine up through the winding corridor of a pass which marked the highest and most remote point of the frontier.