Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  "It feels good to be free of my wolves for a while." Magda caught his arm as her snow birds skidded on dirty ridged ice, and after she had regained her balance she left her gloved hand there.

  Her wolves were the bodyguards that Peter had provided, the silent vigilant men who followed her either on foot or in a second car. They waited outside her offices while she worked, and others guarded the house while she slept.

  That morning, however, she had told Peter, "Today I have as a companion a gold medal Olympic pistol champion, I don't need my wolves." Narmco marketed its own version of the 9-men parabellum pistol.

  It was called "Cobra', and after a single morning in the underground range Peter had taken a liking to the weapon. It was lighter and flatter than the Walther he was accustomed to, easier to carry and conceal, and the single action mechanism saved a flicker of time with the first shot, for there was no need to cock the action. He had had no trouble obtaining a permit to carry one as a trade sample, although it was necessary to check it before every commercial flight, but it carried neatly in a quick-release shoulder holster.

  He had felt theatrical and melodramatic at first, but with a little sober thought had convinced himself that to follow on Caliph's tracks unarmed was shortening the odds against himself.

  Now it was becoming habit, and he was barely aware of the comforting shape and weight in his armpit, until Magda spoke.

  "I am close to dying from thirst," she went on, and they racked their skis and went into the jovial warmth and clouds of steam that billowed from one of the coffee shops that lined the main street.

  They found a seat at a table already crowded with young people, and they ordered glasses of steaming hot GUhuvin.

  Then the four-piece hand thumped out a popular dance tune and their table companions swarmed onto the tiny dance floor.

  Peter raised a challenging eyebrow at her and she asked with amusement, "Have you ever danced in ski boots?"

  "There has to be a first time for everything." She danced like she did everything else, with complete absorption, and her body was strong and hard and slim against his.

  It was completely dark as they climbed the narrow track above the village and went in through the electronically controlled gate in the protective wall around the chalet.

  It was somehow typical of her that she had avoided the fashionable resorts, and that externally the chalet seemed not much different from fifty others that huddled in the edge of the pine forest. There was patent relief amongst her entourage at her return, and she seemed almost defiant at their concern as though she had just proved something to herself but still she did not change from her sports clothes before disappearing into the office suite on the first floor with her two male secretaries. "I work better with men," she had explained to Peter once. As Peter dressed in slacks, blazer and silk roll neck after a scalding shower, he could still hear the clatter of the telex machine from the floor below, and it was an hour later when she called him on the house telephone.

  The entire top floor was her private domain and she was standing at the windows looking out over the snow-fuzzed lights of the valley as he entered.

  She wore green slacks tucked in aprs-ski boots, and a blouse of the same colour, a perfect match for her eyes. The moment Peter entered, she pressed a concealed switch and the curtains slid silently closed, then she turned to him.

  "A drink, Peter?"she asked.

  Not if we are going to talk."

  "We are going to talk," she said positively, and indicated the soft squashy leather armchair across from the fireplace.

  She had resisted the traditional Swiss cuckoo-clock and knotty pine decor, and the carpeting was thick Wilton to match the curtains, the furniture low and comfortable but modern, sporty and good fun, the very best made to appear natural and unaffected, blending easily with the modern art on the walls and abstract sculpture in marble and grained wood.

  She smiled suddenly at him. "I had no idea that I had found myself a gifted Sales Director for Narmco - I really am impressed with what you have done in so short a time."

  "I had to establish a plausible coven" Peter deprecated the compliment. "And I used to be a soldier the job interests me."

  "You English!" she told him with mock exasperation.

  "Always so modest." She did not seat herself but moved about the room; although never at rest, neither did she give the feeling of restlessness. "I am informed that there is to be a definite NATO testing of Kestrel after almost two years of procrastination."

  Kestrel was Narmco's medium-range ground-to-ground infantry portable missile.

  "I am further informed that the decision was made to test after you had met with some of your former colleagues."

  "The whole world runs on the old boy system-" Peter chuckled, "you should know that."

  "And you are on old boy terms with the Iranians?" She cocked her head at him.

  "That was a small stroke of luck. Five years ago I was on a staff college course with their new military adviser."

  "Luck again." She smiled. "Isn't it strange that luck so often favours those who are clever and dedicated and who move faster than the pack?"

  "I have had less luck in other directions, Peter pointed out, and immediately there was no trace of laughter left upon her lips nor in the emerald eyes, but Peter went on.

  "So far I have been unsuccessful with the contact we spoke about on our last meeting-" They had discussed the possibility of access to the Atlas computer link, of requisitioning a printout on'Caliph'from the Central Intelligence bank, if there was one programmed.

  "As I explained, there was the one remote possibility of access, somebody who owed me a favour. He was of no help. He believes that if there is a "Caliph" listing, it's blocked and buzzed." Which meant that any unauthorized requisition would sound an alarm in intelligence control.

  "We'd trigger a Delta condition in Atlas if we put in a printout requisition."

  "You did not give him the name?" Magda asked sharply.

  "No. No names, just a general discussion over dinner at Brooks's but all the implications were there."

  "Do you have any further avenues ?"

  "I think so. One more, but it's a last resort," Peter said.

  "Before we come to that, though, perhaps you can tell me if you have anything further from your sources."

  "My sources-" Magda had never made more explicit descriptions, and Peter had instinctively known not to pry.

  There was a certain finality to the way she said it. "My sources have been mostly negative. The seizure of the Netherlands Embassy in Bonn was unconnected with Caliph. It was exactly what it purported to be South Moluccan extremists. The hijackers of Cathay Airlines and Transit Airlines were both enthusiastic amateurs, as evidence the methods and the outcome " She smiled drily and drifted back across the room to touch the Hundedwasser collage that hung on the side wall, rearranging the hang of the frame in an essentially feminine gesture. There is only one recent act that has the style of Caliph."

  "Prince Hassled Abdel Hayek?" Peter asked, and she turned to face him, thrusting out one hip with her hand upon it, the nails very red against the light-green cloth and the marquise cut diamond sparkling.

  "What did you make of it?" she asked. The Prince had been shot dead, three bullets of .22 calibre in the back of the head while asleep in his rooms on the Cambridge campus. A nineteen-year-old grandson of King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, not one of the particular favourites of the king, a bespectacled scholarly youth who seemed content to remain outside the mainstream of palace power and politics.

  There had been no attempt at abduction, no sign of a struggle, no evidence of robbery the young Prince had no close friends nor apparent enemies.

  "It does not seem to have reason or motive," Peter admitted.

  "That's why I thought of Caliph."

  "The deviousness of Caliph-" Magda turned away and her haunches rippled under the elastic of her green slacks.

  There was no ruck line of panties
, and her buttocks were perfect spheres, with the shadow of the deep cleft between them showing through the thin material. Peter watched her legs as she paced, realizing for the first time that her feet were long and narrow as her hands, fine and graceful bones in perfect proportion.

  "If I told you that Saudi Arabia last week made clear to the other members of OPEC that, far from supporting a rise in the price of crude, she will press for a five per cent reduction in the world price at the organization's next meeting-" Peter straightened up in his chair slowly and Magda went on softly " and that she will be supported by Iran in her proposal. If I told you that, what would you think?"

  "The King has other, more favoured grandchildren grandsons and sons as well, brothers, nephews" Seven hundred of them," Magda agreed, and then went on musing. "The Shah of Iran has children that he divorced one wife to obtain-"

  "The Shah paid his hundred-million-dollar ransom promptly to save his oil minister during the Carlos abduction what would he do for his own children?" Peter stood up now, unable to stay still with the itch of new ideas.

  "And the King of Saudi-Arabia is an Arab. You know how Mohammedans are about sons and grandsons." Magda came to stand so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her flesh through the narrow space between them, and her perfume subtly underlined the ripe sweet woman's smell of her body, disturbing him, but strangely heightening his awareness. "Perhaps King Khalid has also been reminded of his own mortality."

  "All right." Peter hunched his shoulders and frowned in concentration. "What are we suggesting? That Caliph has struck another easy formula? Two men who control the economic destiny of the Western world? Two men who make decisions at the. personal level, who are not answerable to cabinets or causes or governments?"

  "Men who are therefore vulnerable to personal terrorism, who have records of appeasement to terrorist pressure." Magda paused. "The old truths are still good. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." Both the Shah and the King will be no strangers to the fear of the assassin's blade.

  They will understand the law of the knife, because they have always lived by it."

  "Hell, you have to admire it." Peter shook his head.

  "There is no need to take and hold hostages. No need for exposure. You kill one obscure member of a large royal family, and you promise that there will be others, each one more important, closer to the head."

  "Both families have a high profile. The Shah loves the bright lights. He's up at Gstaad right this moment. It would need only a sniper up in the treeline to pick one of his children. His sister Shams is in Mauritius now. As for the King's family any time you want to drop into the Dorchester you'll find one of his sons or grandsons sipping coffee in the public lounge. They are soft targets, and there are plenty of them. You might even have to kill two princelings; or three but secretly the world will feel that they had it coming to them anyway. There will not be oceans wept for men who have themselves held the world to ransom." Peter's frown smoothed away, and he grinned wryly. "Not only do you have to admire it you've got to have a sneaking sympathy for the object. A dead brake to the crippling inflation of the world, a slowing of disruptive imbalance in trade." And Magda's expression was fierce as he had never seen it before. "That is the trap, Peter. To see the end only, and to harden yourself to the means. That was the trap that Caliph set with the taking of 070. His demands coincided with those of the Western powers, and they placed additional pressure on the victim. Now, if we are correct and Caliph is pressuring the oil dictators for a moderation of their demands, how much more support can he expect from the Western capitalist powers?"

  "You are a capitalist," Peter pointed out. "If Caliph succeeds you will be one of the first to benefit."

  "I am capitalist, yes. But before that I am a human being, and a thinking human being. Do you really believe that if Caliph succeeds now that this will be the last we hear of him?"

  "Of course not." Peter spread his hands in resignation.

  "Always his demands will be harsher with each success he must become bolder."

  "I think we can have that drink now," Magda said softly, and turned away from him. The black onyx top of the coffee table slid aside at her touch to reveal the array of bottles and glasses beneath.

  "Whisky, isn't it?" she asked, and poured a single malt Glenlivet into one of the cut glass tumblers. As she handed it to him their fingers touched and he was surprised at how cool and dry her skin felt.

  She poured half a flute glass of white wine and filled it with Perrier water. As she replaced the wine bottle in the ice bucket, Peter saw the label. It was Le Montrachet 1969.

  Probably the greatest white wine in the world, and Peter had to protest at the way in which she had desecrated it.

  "Alexander Dumas said it should be drunk only on bended knee and with head reverently bared-"

  " He forgot the mineral water," Magda purred with throaty laughter. "Anyway you can't trust a man who employed other people to write his books for him." She lifted the adulterated wine to him. "Long ago I decided to live my life on my own terms. To hell with Messrs Dumas and Caliph."

  "Shall we drink to that?" Peter asked, and they watched each other over the rims. The level of Magda's glass had not lowered and she set the glass aside, moving across to adjust the bowl of hothouse tulips in the chunky free-form crystal bowl.

  "If we are right. If this is Caliph at work then it disturbs the instinctive picture I had formed of him." Peter broke the silence.

  "How?" she asked without looking up from the flowers.

  "Caliph it's an Arabic name. He is attacking the leader of the Arab world."

  "The deviousness of Caliph. Was the name deliberately chosen to confuse the hunters or perhaps there are other demands apart from the oil price perhaps pressure is also being put on Khalid for closer support of the Palestinians, or one of the other extremist Arab movements. We do not know what else Caliph wants from Saudi Arabia."

  "But then, the oil price. It is Western orientated. Somehow it has always been accepted that terrorism is a tool of the far left,"

  Peter pointed out, shaking his head. "The hijacking of 070 even the kidnapping of your husband were both aimed against the capitalist society."

  "He kidnapped Aaron for the money, and killed him to protect his identity. The attack on the South African Government, the attack on the oil cartel, the choice of name, all point to a person with god-like pretensions." Magda broke the head off one of the tulips with an abrupt, angry gesture, and crushed it in her fist. She let the petals fall into the deep onyx ashtray. "I feel so helpless, Peter.

  We seem to be going round in futile circles." She came back to him as he stood by the curtained windows. "You said earlier that there was one sure way to flush out Caliph?"

  "Yes," Peter nodded.

  "Can you tell me?"

  "There was an old trick of the Indian shikari.

  When he got tired of following the tiger in thick jungle without a sight of the beast, he used to stake out a goat and wait for the tiger to come to it."

  "A goat?"

  "My Zodiacal sign is Capricorn the goat."

  Peter smiled slightly.

  "I don't understand."

  "If I were to put the word out that I was hunting Caliph, he smiled again. "Caliph knows me. The hijacker spoke my name,

  clearly, un mistakenly She had been warned. So I believe that Caliph would take me seriously enough to consider it necessary to come after me." He saw the lingering colour drain dramatically from her high cheeks, and the sudden shadow in the depths of her eyes.

  "Peter-"

  "That's the only way I'm going to get close to him."

  "Peter-" She placed her hand on his forearm, but then she could not go on. Instead she stared at him silently and her eyes were green and dark and unfathomable. He saw there was a pulse that throbbed softly in her long graceful neck, just below the ear. Her lips parted, as though she were about to speak. They were delicately sculptured lips, and she touched them with
the pink tip of her tongue, leaving them moist and soft and somehow defenceless. She closed them, without speaking, but the pressure of her fingers on his arm increased, and the carriage of her whole body altered. Her back arched slightly so her lower body swayed towards him and her chin lifted slightly.

  "I have been so lonely," she whispered. "So lonely, for so very long. I only realized how lonely today while I was with you." Peter felt a choking sensation in his throat, and the prickle of blood behind his eyes.

  "I don't want to be lonely again, ever." he had let her hair come down. It was very thick and long. It fell in a straight rippling curtain shot through with glowing lights, to her waist.

  She had parted it in the centre; a thin straight line of white scalp divided the great black wings and they framed her face, making it appear pale and childlike with eyes too large and vulnerable, and as she came towards where Peter lay the glossy sheets of hair slid silently across the brocade of her gown.

  The hem of the gown swept the carpet, and her bare toes peeped out from under it with each step. Narrow finely boned feet, and the nails were trimmed and painted with a colourless lacquer. The sleeves of the gown were wide as batwings and lined internally with sat in, the collar buttoned up in a high Chinese style.

  Beside the bed she stopped and her courage and poise seemed to desert her, her shoulders slumped a little and she clasped the long narrow fingers before her in a defensive gesture.

  "Peter, I don't think I am going to be very good at this." The throaty whisper was barely audible, and her lips trembled with the strength of her appeal. "And I want so badly to be good." Silently he reached out one hand towards her, palm upwards. The bedclothes covered him to the waist, but his chest and arms were bare, lightly tanned and patterned with dark wiry body hair. As he reached for her the muscle bunched and expanded beneath the skin, and she saw that there was no surplus flesh on his waist, nor on his shoulders and upper arms. He looked lean and hard and tempered, yet leas the lash of a bullwhip, and she did not respond immediately to the invitation, for his masculinity was overpowering.