Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  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.

  Across the ormolu Louis Quatorze desk Magda was pale, tense, and she did not have to ask the question, it was in the eyes that seemed too large for her face.

  He did not have to reply to that question. He nodded once, an abrupt jerky motion, and then he dialled again and while he waited he could not take his eyes from the macabre trophy that stood in its bottle in the centre of the desk.

  "Colonel Noble." Peter snapped into the mouthpiece.

  "Tell him it's General Stride and it's urgent."

  Colin came on within a minute. ""They've taken Melissa-Jane."

  "Who? I don't understand."

  "The enemy. They've taken her."

  "Jesus God! Are you sure?"

  "Yes, I'm sure. They sent me her finger in a bottle." Colin was silent for a few seconds, and then his voice was subdued. "That's sick. Christ, that's really sick."

  "Get onto the police. Use all your clout. They must be keeping quiet on it. There has been no publicity.

  I want to be in on the hunt for these animals. Get Thor involved, find out what you can. I'm on my way now. I'll let you know what flight I am on."

  "I'll keep a listening watch at this number round the clock, Colin promised. "And I'll have a driver meet you." Colin hesitated. "Peter, I'm sorry. You know that."

  "Yes. I know."

  "We will all be with you, all the way." Peter dropped the receiver onto its arm, and across the desk Magda stood up resolutely.

  "I'll come with you to London, she said, and Peter reached out and took her hand.

  "No," he said gently. "Thank you, but no. There will be nothing for you to do."

  "Peter, I want to be with you through this terrible thing.

  I feel as though it's all my fault."

  "That's not true."

  "She's such a lovely child."

  "You will be more help to me here, said Peter firmly.

  "Try through all your sources, any little scrap of information." "Yes, very well." She accepted the decision, without further argument. "Where can I find you if I have anything?" He gave her Colin Noble's private number at Thor, scribbling it on the pad beside the telephone. "Either there or at the Dorchester," he said.

  "At least I will come with you as far as Paris," she said.

  Heathrow Airport. It was on the front page of the Evening Standard and Peter snatched a copy off the news Stand and read it avidly during the drive up to London.

  The victim was abducted At the front gate of her home in Leaden Street, Cambridge at eleven o'clock on Thursday. A neighbour saw her speak to the occupants of a maroon Triumph saloon car, and then enter the back door of the vehicle, which drove off immediately.

  "I thought there were two people in the car," Mrs. Shirley Callon, 32, the neighbour, told our correspondent, and Melissa-Jane did not seem alarmed. She appear
ed to enter the Triumph quite willingly. I know that her father, who is a senior officer in the army, often sends different cars to fetch her or bring her home. So I thought nothing about it." The alarm was not raised for nearly twenty-four hours, as the missing girl's mother also believed that she might be with her ex-husband.

  Only when she was unable to contact Major -General Stride, the girl's father, did she inform the police. The Cambridge police found a maroon Triumph abandoned in the car park at Cambridge railway station. The vehicle had been stolen in London the previous day, and immediately a nation-wide alert was put in force for the missing girl.

  Chief-Inspector-Alan Richards is the police officer in charge of the investigation and any person who may be able to provide information should telephone There followed a London number and a detailed description of Melissa-Jane and the clothes she was wearing at the time she disappeared.

  Peter crumpled the newspaper and dropped it on the front seat. He sat staring ahead, cupping his anger to him like a flame, husbanding it carefully because the heat was infinitely more bearable than the icy despair which waited to engulf him.

  Inspector Alan Richards was a wiry little man, more like a jockey than a policeman. He had a prematurely wizened face, and he had combed long wisps of hair across his balding pate to disguise it. Yet his eyes were quick and intelligent, and his manner direct and decisive.

  He shook hands when Colin Noble introduced them. "I must make it very clear that this is a police matter, General.

  However, in these very special circumstances I am prepared to work very closely with the military." Swiftly Richards went over the ground he had already covered. He had mounted the investigation from the two offices set aside for him on the third floor of Scotland Yard, with a view over chimney pots of the spires of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

  Richards had two young policewomen answering the telephone calls coming in through the number they had advertised in the Press and on television. So far they had accepted over four hundred of these. "They range from long shots to the completely crazy, but we have to investigate all of them." For the first time his expression softened. "It's going to be a long, slow process, General Stride, but we have a few more leads to follow come through." The inner office was furnished in the same nondescript Public Works Department furniture, solid and characterless but there was a kettle boiling on the gas ring, and Richards poured the tea as he went on.

  "Three of my men are taking the kidnap car to pieces.

  We are sure it is the right car. Your ex-wife has identified a purse found on the floor of the vehicle. It is your daughter's.

  We have lifted over six hundred fingerprints, and these are now being processed. It will take some time until we can isolate each and hope for an identification of any alien prints.

  However, two of these correspond to prints lifted from your daughter's room Sugar? Milk?" Richards brought the cup to Peter as he went on.

  The neighbour, Mrs. Callon, who saw the pick-up, is working on an identikit portrait of the driver, but she did not get a very good view of him. That is a very long shot." Richards sipped his tea. "However, we will show the final picture on television and hope for another lead from it. I am afraid that in cases like this, this is all we can do. Wait for a tip, and wait for the contact from the kidnappers. We do not expect the contact will be made through your ex wife but of course we have a tap on her telephone and men watching over her." Richards spread his hands. "That's it, General Stride. Now it's your turn. What can you tell us?

  Why should anybody want to snatch your daughter?" Peter exchanged a glance with Colin Noble, and was silent as he collected his thoughts, but Inspector Richards insisted quietly: "I understand you are not a very wealthy man, General but your family? Your brother?" Peter dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. "My brother has children of his own. They would be the more logical targets."

  "Vengeance? You were very active against the Provos in Ireland. You commanded the recapture of Flight 070."

  "It's possible."

  "You are no longer connected with the army, I understand." Peter was not going to be drawn further in that direction.

  "I do not think this type of guesswork will profit us much.

  We will know the motive as soon as the kidnappers make their demands known."

  "That is true." Richards rattled his teacup, a little nervous gesture. "They could not have sent you her" He broke off as he saw Peter's expression change.

  It is horrible and terribly distressing, but we have to accept the finger as proof that your daughter is still alive and that the contact, when it comes, will be made to you. It was an expression of their earnest intention, and a threat but-" The telephone on his desk rang shrilly and Richards snatched it up.

  "Richards!" he snapped, and then listened at length, occasionally grunting encouragement to the caller. When he hung up the receiver he did not speak immediately, but offered Peter a rumpled pack of cigarettes. When Peter refused, the policeman lit one himself and his voice was diffident.

  "That was the laboratory. You know your daughter was a white cell donor, don't you?" Peter nodded. It was part of Melissa-Jane's social commitment. If she had not been tactfully dissuaded, she would have donated her blood and marrow by the bucketful.

  "We were able to get a tissue typing from the Cambridge hospital. The amputated finger matches your daughter's tissue type. I'm afraid we must accept that it is hers I cannot imagine that the kidnappers would have gone to the lengths of finding a substitute of the same type." Peter had been secretly cherishing the belief that it was a bluff. That he had been sent the fingertip from a corpse, from a medical sample, from the casualty ward of a city hospital and now as that hope died he was assailed by the cold spirit-sapping waves of despair. They sat in silence for fully a minute, and now it was Colin Noble who broke it.

  "Inspector, you are aware of the nature of the Thor Command?" "Yes, of course. There was a great deal of publicity at the time of the Johannesburg hijacking. It is an anti-terrorist unit."

  "We, are probably the most highly trained specialists in I'm sorry, General. the world at removing hostages safely from the hands of militants--"

  "I understand what you are trying to tell me, Colonel," Richards murmured drily. "But let us track down our militants first, and then any rescue attempts will be entirely under the control of the Commissioner of Police." It was after three o'clock in the morning when Peter Stride checked in with the night receptionist at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane.

  "We have been holding your suite since midday, General."

  "I'm sorry." Peter found himself slurring his words, exhaustion and nervous strain, he realized. He had only left Police Headquarters when he could convince himself that everything possible was being done, and that he could place complete trust in Chief-Inspector Richards and his team.

  He had Richards's solemn undertaking that he would be informed, no matter at-what time of day or night, as soon as there was any new development.

  Now he signed the register, blinking at the gritty swollen feeling of his eyelids.

  "There are these messages for you, General."

  "Thank you again, and goodnight." In the elevator he glanced at the mail the clerk had given him.

  The first was a telephone slip.

  "Baroness Altmann asks you to return her call to either the Paris or Rambouillet number." The second was another telephone slip.

  "Mrs. Cynthia Barrow called. Please call her at Cambridge 699 313." The third was a sealed envelope, good-quality white paper, undistinguished by crest or monogram.

  His name had been printed in capitals, very regular Win lettering, an old-fashioned copper-plate script. No stamp, so it would have been delivered by hand.

  Peter split the flap with his thumb, and withdrew a single sheet of lined writing paper, again good but undistinguished.

  There would be a stack of these sheets in any stationery department throughout the United Kingdom.

/>   The writing was the same regular, unnatural script, so that Peter realized that the writer had used a stencil to form each letter, one of those clear plastic cut-out stencils obtainable from any toy store or stationery department. A completely effective method of disguising handwriting.

  A finger you have already, next you will have the hand, then another hand, then a foot, then another foot and at last the head.

  The next package will arrive on April 20th, and there will be another delivery every seven days.

  To prevent this you must deliver a life for a life. The day Dr. Kingston Parker dies, your daughter will return to you immediately, alive and suffering no further harm, Destroy this letter and tell nnobody, or the head will be delivered immediately.

  The letter was signed with the name which had come to loom so largely in Peter's life:

  "CALIPH'

  The shock of it seemed to reach to the extremities of his soul. To see the name written. To have complete confirmation of all the evil that they had suspected, to see the mark of the beast deeply printed and unmistakable.

  The shock was made greater, almost unbearable, by the contents of the letter. Peter found that such cruelty, such utter ruthlessness, tested his credibility to its limits.

  The letter was fluttering in his hands, and he realized with a start of surprise that he was shaking like a man in high fever. The porter carrying his black crocodile valise was staring at him curiously, and it required a huge physical effort to control his hands and fold the sheet of white paper.

  He stood rigidly, as though on the parade ground, until the elevator door opened and then he marched stiffly down the passage to his suite. He gave the porter a banknote, without glancing at it, and the moment the latch clicked closed, he unfolded the sheet again, and standing in the centre of the living-room floor, scanned the stilted script again, and then again until the words seemed to melt together and lose coherence and meaning.

  He realized that for the first time in his life he was in complete panic, that he had lost all resolution and direction.