Wild Justice

“I have been doing a lot of talking,” he smiled at Peter.

“I’m going to let you have a chance now, Peter. You know her a little, you have learned a lot more about her in the last hour. Can you guess what she did?” Peter began to shake his head and then it crashed in upon him with sickening force, and he stared at Parker, the pupils of his eyes dilating with the strength of his revulsion.

“I think you have guessed.” Parker nodded. “Yes, we can imagine that by this stage she was becoming a little impatient herself The

Baron was taking a rather long time to die.”

“Christ, it’s horrible.”

Peter grunted, as though in pain.

“ From one point of view, I agree.” Parker nodded. “But if you look at it like a chess player, and remember she is a player of Grand

Master standard, it was a brilliant stroke.

She arranged that the Baron be kidnapped. There are witnesses to the fact that she insisted on the Baron accompanying her that day. He was feeling very bad, and he did not want to go sailing, but she insisted that the sun and fresh air would be good for him. He never took his bodyguard when he went sailing. There were just the two of them. A very fast cruiser was waiting offshore-” He spread his hands.

“You know the details?”

“No,” Peter denied it.

“The cruiser rammed the yacht. Picked the Baron out of the water,

but left the Baroness. An hour later there was a radio message to the coast guard they went out and found her still clinging to the wreckage.

The kidnappers were very concerned that she survived.”

“They may have wanted a loving wife to bargain with,” Peter suggested swiftly.

“That is possible, of course, and she certainly played the role of the bereaved wife to perfection. When the ransom demand came it was she who forced the Board of Altmann Industries to ante up the twenty-five million dollars. She personally took the cash to the rendezvous alone.” Parker paused significantly.

“She didn’t need the money.”

“Oh, but she did,” Parker contradicted. “The Baron was not in his dotage, you know, His hands were still very firmly on the reins and the purse strings. Magda had as much as any ordinary wife could wish for, furs, jewellery, servants,

clothes, cars, boats pocket money, around two hundred thousand dollars a year, paid to her as a salary from Altmann Industries. Any ordinary wife would have been well content but she was not an ordinary wife. We must believe she had already planned how to carry forward her dreams of unlimited power and it needed money, not thousands but millions. Twenty-five million would be a reasonable stopgap, until she could get her pretty little fingers on the big apple. She drove with the cash, in thousand-Swiss-franc bills, I understand; she drove alone to some abandoned airfield and had a plane come pick it up and fly it out to Switzerland. Damned neat.”

“But-” Peter searched for some means of denial. But the Baron was mutilated. She couldn’t-“

“Death is death, mutilation may have served some obscure purpose. God knows,

we’re dealing with an Eastern mind, devious, sanguinary perhaps the mutilation was merely to make any suspicion of the wife completely farfetched just as you immediately used it to protect her.” He was right, of course. The mind that could plain and execute the rest of such a heinous scheme would not baulk at the smaller niceties of execution. He had no more protest to make.

“So let us review what she had achieved by this stage.

She was rid of the Baron, and the restrictions he placed upon her.

An example of these restrictions, for we will find it significant later: she was very strongly in favour of Narmco banning the sale of all weapons and armaments to the South African Government. The Baron,

ever the businessman, looked upon that country as a lucrative market.

There was also the South African sympathy for Zionism. He overruled her, and Narrnco continued to supply aircraft, missiles and light armaments to that country right up until the official UN resolution to enforce a total arms embargo, with France ratifying it. Remember the

Baroness’s anti south African attitude. We come to it again later.

“She was rid of the Baron. She was rid of her Russian control,

well able to maintain a small army to protect herself. Even her former

Russian masters would hesitate to take revenge on her. She was a

French Grande Dame now.

She had gained significant working capital twenty-five million for which she was not accountable to another living human being. She had gained an invincible power base at Altmann Industries. Although she was still under certain checks and safeguards-from the Board of

Directors, yet she had access to all its information-gathering services, to its vast resources. As the head of such a colossus she had the respect of and sympathy of the French Government, and as a fringe benefit limited but significant access to their intelligence systems. Then there was the Mossad connection: was she not the heir to

Aaron Altmann’s position-” Peter suddenly remembered Magda speaking (if her sources” and never identifying them. Was she really able to use the French and Israeli intelligence as her own private agencies? It seemed impossible. But he was learning swiftly that when dealing with

Magda Altmann, anything was A possible as Kingston Parker had pointed out, she was not an ordinary person but Parker was speaking again.

“There was a period then of consolidation, a time when she gathered up the reins that Aaron had dropped. There were changes amongst the top management throughout Altmann Industries as she replaced those who might oppose her with her own minions. A time of planning and organizing, and then the first attempt to govern and prescribe the destiny of nations. She chose the nation which most offended her personal view of the new world she was going to build. We will never know what made her choose the name of Caliph-“

“You have to be wrong.” Peter squeezed his eyelids closed with thumb and forefinger.

“You just don’t know her.”

“I don’t think anybody knows her, Peter,”

Kingston Parker murmured, and fiddled with his pipe. “I’m sorry, we are going pretty fast here. Do you want to back up and ask any questions?”

“No, it’s all right.” Peter opened his eyes again. “Go on,

will you, Kingston?”

“One of the most important lessons that Baroness

Altmann had learned was the ease with which force and violence can be used, and their tremendous effect and profitability. Bearing this lesson in mind, the Baroness chose her first act as the new ruler of mankind, and the choice was dictated by her early political convictions, those convictions formed at her father’s knee and at the

Communist Party meetings that she had attended as a precocious child in

Paris. There is a further suggestion that the choice was reinforced by the Altmann banking corporation’s interests in South African gold sales, for by this time the Baroness had tempered her socialist and communist leanings with a good healthy dollop of capitalistic self-interest. We can only guess, but if the scheme to bring out forty tons of gold and a black-based government-in-exile had succeeded,

it would not have taken very long for Caliph to gain control of both government and gold-” Parker shrugged]. We just cannot say how ambitious, even grandiose, those plans were. But we can say that

Caliph, or the Baroness, recruited her team for the execution of the plan with the skill she brought to anything she handled.” He broke Off,

and smiled.

“I think all three of us remember the taking of Flight 070 vividly enough not to have to go once more over the details.

Let me just remind you that it would have succeeded, in fact it had actually succeeded, when Peter here made his unscheduled move that brought it all down. But it succeeded. That was the important thing. Caliph could afford to congratulate herself. Her information was impeccable.

She had chosen the right people for the job. She even knew the name of the officer who would command the antiterrorist force which would be sent to intervene, and her psychology had been excellent. The execution of the four hostages had so shocked and numbed the opposition that they were powerless -the cup had been dashed from her lips by one man alone. Inevitably her interest in that man was aroused. Possibly with feminine intuition she was able to recognize in him the qualities which could be turned to her own purpose. She had that indomitable streak in her make-up that is able to recognize even in the dust of disaster that material for future victory-” Parker shifted his bulk,

and made a small deprecatory gesture. ” - I hope this will not seem immodest if I bring myself into the story at this stage. I had been given the hint that something like Caliph existed. In fact this may not have been her first act after the killing of Aaron Altmann. Two other successful kidnappings have her style one of them the OPEC

ministers in Vienna but we cannot be sure. I had been warned and I

was waiting for Caliph to surface. Dearly I would have loved a chance to interrogate one of the hijackers-“

“They would have had nothing to tell you,” Peter objected brusquely. “They were merely pawns, like the doctor we captured in Ireland.” Parker sighed. “Perhaps you are right, Peter.

But at the time I believed that our only lead to Caliph had been severed. Later when the thing had been done and I had recovered from the shock of it, it suddenly occurred to me that the lead was still there stronger than ever. You were that lead, Peter. That was why I

recommended that your resignation be accepted. If you had not resigned, I would have forced you out anyway, but you played along superbly by resigning-” He smiled again. I have never thanked you for that.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Peter grimly. “I like to be of service.”

“And you were. Almost immediately you were on the loose, the

Baroness began making her approach. First she collected every known fact about you. Somehow she even got a computer run on you. That’s a fact. An unauthorized run was made on the Central Intelligence computer four days after your resignation. She must have liked what she got, for there was the Narmco offer through conventional channels. Your refusal must have truly excited her interest, for she used her connections to have herself invited down to Sir Steven’s country house.” Parker chuckled. “My poor Peter, you found yourself without warning in the clutches of one of history’s most accomplished enchantresses. I know enough about the lady to guess that her approach to you was very carefully calculated from the complete information that she had on you. She knew exactly what type of woman attracted you. Fortunately, she fitted the general physical description-“

“What is that?” Peter demanded. He was unaware that he had a specific type of physical preference.

“Tall, slim and brunette,” Parker told him promptly.

“Think about it,” he invited. “All your women have been that.” He was right, of course, Peter realized. Hell, even at thirty-nine years of age it was still possible to learn something about yourself.

“You’re a cold-blooded bastard, Kingston. Did anybody ever tell you that?”

“Frequently.” Kingston smiled. “But it’s not true, and compared to Baroness Altmann I am Father Christmas.” And he became serious again. “She wanted to find out what we at Atlas know about her activities. She knew by this stage that we had our suspicions, and through you she had an inside ear. Of course, your value would deteriorate swiftly the longer you were out of Thor but you could still be useful in a dozen other ways. As a bonus you could be expected to do a good job at Narmco. All her expectations were fulfilled, and exceeded. You even thwarted an assassination attempt on her life-” Peter lifted an eyebrow in inquiry.

On the road to Rambouillet that night. Here we are only guessing,

but it’s a pretty well-informed guess. The Russians had by this time despaired of returning her to the fold. They had also suspicions as to her role as Caliph. They decided on a radical cure for their onetime star agent. They either financed and organized the assassination attempt themselves, or they tipped off Mossad that she had murdered

Aaron Altmann. I would be inclined to believe that they hired the killers themselves because the Mossad usually do their own dirty work. Anyway, with NKVD or Mossad as paymasters, an ambush was set up on the Rambouillet road and you drove into it. I know you don’t like coincidence, Peter, but I believe it was merely coincidence that you were driving the Baroness’s Maserati that night.”

“All right,” Peter murmured. “If I swallow the rest of the hog, that little crumb goes down easily enough.”

“That attempt severely alarmed the Baroness. She was not certain who had been the author. I think she believed it was

Atlas Command, or at the very least that we had something to do with it. Almost immediately after that you were able to confirm our interest in her, and our knowledge that Caliph existed. I invited you to America, Colin brought you to meet me, and when you returned you either told her about it, or in some way confirmed her suspicions of

Atlas Command and Kingston Parker. I am guessing again but how close am I, Peter? Be honest.” Peter stared at him, trying to keep his face expressionless while his mind raced. That was exactly how it had happened.

“We were all hunting Caliph. You saw no disloyalty in discussing it with her.” Parker prompted him gently, and Peter nodded once curtly.

“You believed that we had common goals,” Parker went on with deep understanding and compassion. “You thought we were all hunting Caliph.

That is right.”

“She knew I had been to America to see you before I

told her. I don’t know how but she knew,” Peter said stiffly. He felt like a traitor.

“understand” Parker said simply. He reached across the table and once again placed his hand on Peter’s shoulder.

He squeezed it while he looked into Peter’s eyes, a gesture of affirmation and trust. Then he laid both hands on top of the table.

“She knew who was the hunter then, and she knew enough about me to know I was dangerous. You were probably the only man in the world who could reach me and do the job but you had to be motivated. She picked the one and only lever that would move you. She picked it unerringly just as she had done everything else. It would have worked in one stroke she would have gotten rid of the hunter, and she would have acquired a top-class assassin.

When you had done the job, you would have belonged to Caliph for all time. She would have used you to kill again and again, and each time you killed you would be more deeply enmeshed in her net. You really were a very valuable prize, Peter. Valuable enough for her to find it worthwhile to use her sexual wiles upon you.” He saw the lumps of clenched muscle at the corner of Peter’s jaw, and the fire in his eyes.

“You are also a very attractive man, and who knows but she felt the need to combine business and pleasure? She is a lady with strongly developed sexual appetites.” Peter felt a violent urge to punch him in the face. He needed some outlet for his rage. He felt belittled,

soiled and used.

“She was clever enough to realize that the sex was not enough of a hold to force you to commit murder. So she took your daughter, and immediately had her mutilated just as at Johannesburg she had executed hostages without hesitation. The world must learn to fear Caliph.”

There was no smile on Parker’s face now.

“I truly believe that if you had not been able to deliver my head by the deadline, she Would not have hesitated to carry on to the next mutilation, and the one after that.” Again Peter was assailed by a wave of nausea as he remembered that shrivelled white lump of flesh with the scarlet fingernail floating horribly in its tiny bottle.

“We were saved from that by the most incredible piece of luck.

The Provo informer,” said Parker. “And again the understandable eagerness of the Russians to cooperate with us. It is a wonderful opportunity for them to hand us their problem. They have let us have an almost full account of the lady and her history.”

“But what are we going to do about it?” Colin Nobleasked. “Our hands are tied. Do we just have to wait for the next atrocity do we have to hope we will get another lucky break when Caliph kills the next Arab prince, or machine-guns the Shah’s sister?”

“That will happen unless they push through the OPEC decision,” Parker predicted levelly. “The lady has converted very easily to the capitalist system now that she owns half of Europe’s industry. A reduction in the Oil price would benefit her probably more than any other individual on earth and at the same time it will also benefit the great bulk of humanity. How nicely that squares all her political and personal interests.”

“But if she gets away with it-” Colin insisted, what will be her next act of God?”

“Nobody can predict that,” Parker murmered, and they both turned their heads to look at Peter Stride.

He seemed to have aged twenty years. The lines at the corners of his mouth were cut in deeply like the erosion of weathered granite.

Only his eyes were blue and alive and fierce as those of a bird of prey.

“I want you to believe what I am going to say now, Peter.

I have not told you all this to put pressure on you, Parker assured him quietly. “I have told you only what I believe is necessary for you to know to protect yourself if you should elect to return to the lion’s den. I am not ordering you to do so. The risks involved cannot be overestimated. With a lesser man I would term it suicidal.

However, now that you are forewarned, I believe you are the one man who could take Caliph on her own ground. Please do not misunderstand what I mean by that. I am not for a moment suggesting assassination.

In fact I expressly forbid you to even think in that direction. I

would not allow it, and if you acted independently, I would do my utmost to see that you were brought to justice. No, all I ask is that you keep close to Caliph and try to outguess her. Try to expose her so we can lawfully act to take her out of action. I want you to put out of your mind the emotional issues those hostages at Johannesburg,

your own daughter try to forget them, Peter. Remember we are neither judge nor executioner-” Parker went on speaking quietly and insistently, and Peter watched his lips with narrowed eyes, hardly listening to the words, trying to think clearly and see his course ahead but his thoughts were a children’s carousel, going around and around with fuss and fury but returning with every revolution to the one central conclusion.

There was only one way to stop Caliph. The thought of attempting to bring someone like Baroness Magda Altmann to justice in a French court was laughable. Peter tried to force himself to believe that vengeance had no part in his decisions, but he had lived too long with himself to be able to pull off such a deceit. Yes, vengeance was part of it and he trembled with the rage of remembrance, but it was not all of it. He had executed the German girl Ingrid, and Gilly

O’Shaughnessy and had not regretted the decision to do so. If it was necessary for them to die then surely Caliph deserved to die a thousand times more.

And there is only one person who can do it, he realized.

Her voice was quick and light and warm, with just that fascinating trace of accent; he remembered it so well, but had forgotten the effect it could have upon him. His heart pounded as though he had run a long way.

“Oh, Peter. It’s so good to hear your voice. I have been so worried. Did you get my cable?”

“No, which cable?”

“When I heard that you had freed Melissa-Jane. I sent you a cable from Rome.”

“I didn’t get it but it doesn’t matter.”

“I sent it to you via Narmco in

Brussels.”

“It’s probably waiting for me there. I haven’t been in touch.”

“How is she, Peter?”

“She is fine now-” He found it strangely difficult to use her name, or any form of endearment. He hoped that the strain would not sound in his voice. “But we went through a hell of a time.”

“I know. I understand. I felt so helpless. I tried so hard, that’s why I was out of contact, Peter but day after day there was no news.”

“It’s all over now,” Peter said gruffly.

don’t think SO” she said swiftly. “Where are you calling from?”

“London.”

“When will you come back?”

“I telephoned Brussels an hour ago. Narmco wants me back urgently. I am taking a flight this afternoon.”

“Peter, I have to see you. I’ve been too long without you but, (Mon Dieu, I have to be in Vienna tonight. Wait, let me see,

if I sent the Lear to fetch you now we could meet, even for an hour.

You could take the late flight from Orly to Brussels and I could go on to Vienna with the Lear please, Peter. I missed you so. We could have an hour together.” the sub managers -of the airport met Peter as he disembarked from the Lear and led him to one of the VIP lounges above the main concourse.

Magda Altmann came swiftly to meet him as he stepped into the lounge and he had forgotten how her presence could fill a room with light.

She wore a tailored jacket over a matching skirt, severe gunmetal grey and tremendously effective. She moved like a dancer on long graceful legs which seemed to articulate from the narrow waist and

Peter felt awkward and heavy footed for the awareness that he was in the presence of evil sat heavily upon him, weighting him down.

“Oh, Peter. What have they done to you?” she asked with quick concern flaring in those huge compassionate eyes.

She reached up to touch his cheek.

The strain and horror of the last days had drawn him out to the edge of physical endurance. His skin had a greyish, sickly tone against which the dark new beard darkening his jaws contrasted strongly. There were more fine silver threads at his temples, gull’s wings against the thicker darker waves of his hair, and his eyes were haunted. They had sunk deeply into their sockets.

“Oh, darling, darling,” she whispered, low enough so that the others in the room could not hear her, and she reached up with her mouth for his.

Peter had carefully schooled himself for this meeting. He knew how important it was that he should not in any way betray the knowledge he had. Magda must never guess that he had found her out. That would be deadly dangerous. He must act completely naturally. It was absolutely vital, but there was just that instant’s remembrance of his daughter’s pale wasted fever-racked features, and then he stooped and took Magda’s mouth.

He forced his mouth to soften, as hers was soft and warm and moist, tasting of ripe woman and crushed petals. He made his body welcoming as hers was melting and trusting against his and he thought he had succeeded completely until she broke from his embrace and leaned back, keeping those slim strong hips still pressed against his. She studied his face again, a swift probing, questioning gaze, and he saw it change deep in her eyes. The flame going out of them leaving only a cold merciless green light, like the beautiful spark in the depths of a great emerald.

She had seen something; no there had been nothing to see. She had sensed something in him, the new Awareness.

Of course, she would have been searching for it. She needed only the barest confirmation the quirk of expression on his mouth, the new wariness in his eyes, the slight stiffness and reserve in his body all of which he thought he had been able to control perfectly.

“Oh, I am glad you are wearing blue now.” She touched the lapel of his casual cashmere jacket. “It does suit you so well, my dear.” He had ordered the jacket with her in mind, that was true but now there was something brittle in her manner.

It was as though she had withdrawn her true self, bringing down an invisible barrier between them.

“Come.” She turned away, leading him to the deep leather couch below the picture windows. Some airport official had been able to find flowers, yellow tulips, the first blooms of spring, and there was a bar and coffee machine.

She sat beside him on the couch, but not touching him, and with a nod dismissed her secretary. He moved across the room to join the two bodyguards, her grey wolves, and the three of them remained out of earshot, murmuring quietly amongst themselves.

“Tell me, please, Peter.” She was still watching him, but the cold green light in her eyes had been extinguished she was friendly and concerned, listening with complete attention as he went step by step over every detail of Melissa-Jane’s kidnapping.

It was an old rule of his to tell the complete truth when it would serve and it served now, for Magda would know every detail. He told her of Caliph’s demand for Kingston Parker’s life, and his own response.

“I would have done it,” he told her frankly, and she hugged her own arms and shuddered once briefly.

“God, such evil can corrupt even the strongest and the best-” and now there was understanding softening her lips.

Peter went on to tell her of the lucky tip-off and the recovery of

Melissa-Jane. He went into details of the manner in which she had been abused, of her terror and the psychological damage she had suffered and he watched Magda’s eyes carefully. He saw something there,

emphasized by the tiny frown that framed them. He knew that he could not expect feelings of guilt. Caliph would be far beyond such mundane emotion but there was something there, not just stagey compassion.

“I had to stay with her. I think she needed those few days with me, he explained.

“Yes. I am glad you did that, Peter.” She nodded, and glanced at her wristwatch. “Oh, we have so little time left,” she lamented.

“Let’s have a glass of champagne. We have a little to celebrate. At least Melissa-Jane is alive, and she is young and resilient enough to recover completely.” Peter eased the cork and when it popped he poured creaming pate yellow Dam Perignon into the flutes, and smiled at her over the glass as they saluted each other.

“It’s so good to see you, Peter.” She was truly a superb actress;

she said it with such innocent spontaneity that he felt a surge of admiration for her despite himself. He crushed it down and thought that he could kill her now and here.

He did not really need a weapon. He could use his hands if he had to, but the Cobra parabellum was in the soft chamois leather holster under his left armpit. He could kill her, and the two bodyguards across the room would gun him down instantly. He might take one of them, but the other one would get him. They were top men. He had picked them himself. They would get him.

“I’m sorry we will not be together for very long,” he countered,

still smiling at her.

“Oh, cheri. I know, so am I.” She touched his forearm, the first touch since the greeting embrace. “I wish it were different. There are so many things that we have to do, you and I, and we must forgive each other for them.” Perhaps the words were meant to have a special significance; there was a momentary flash of the warm green fire in her eyes, and something else perhaps a deep and unfathomable regret.

Then she sipped the wine, and lowered the long curled lashes across her eyes, shielding them from his scrutiny.

“I hope we will never have anything terrible to forgive. For the first time he faced the act of killing her. Before it had been something clinical and academic, and he had avoided considering the deed itself. But now he imagined the impact of an explosive Velex bullet into that smooth sweet flesh. His guts lurched, and for the first time he doubted if he were capable of it.

“Oh, Peter, I hope so. More than anything in life, I hope that.”

She lifted her lashes for a moment, and her eyes seemed to cling to his for an instant, pleading for something forgiveness, perhaps. If he did not use the gun, then how would he do it, he wondered. Could he stand the feeling of cartilage and bone snapping and crackling under his fingers, could he hold the blade of knife into her flat hard belly and feel her fight it like a marlin fights the gleaming curved hook of the gaff?

The telephone on the bar buzzed, and the secretary picked it up on the second ring. He murmured into it.

“Oui, oui. D’accord.” And hung up. “Madam Baronne, the aircraft is refuelled and ready to depart.”

“We will leave immediately, she told him, and then to Peter, “I am sorry.”

“When will I see you?” he asked.

She shrugged, and a little shadow passed over her eyes.

“It is difficult. I am not sure I will telephone you. But now

I must go Peter. Adieu, my darling.” When she had gone, Peter stood at the windows overlooking the airfield. It was a glorious spring afternoon, the early marguerites were blooming wild along the grassy verges of the main runways, like scattered gold sovereigns, and a flock of black birds hopped amongst them, probing and picking for insects,

completely undisturbed by the jet shriek of a departing Swissair flight.

Peter ran his mind swiftly over the meeting. Carefully identifying and isolating the exact moment when she had changed. When she had ceased to be Magda Altmann and become Caliph.

There was no doubt left now. Had there ever been, he wondered, or had it merely been his wish to find doubt?

Now he must harden himself to the act. It would be difficult,

much more difficult than he had believed possible.

Not once had they been alone, he realized then always the two grey wolves had hovered around them. It was just another sign of her new wariness. He wondered if they would ever be alone together again now that she was alerted.

Then abruptly he realized that she had not said “Au revoir, my darling” but instead she had said “Adieu, MY darling’.

Was there a warning in that? A subtle hint of death for if Caliph suspected him, he knew what her immediate reaction must be. Was she threatening, or had she merely discarded him, as Kingston Parker had warned that she would?

He could not understand the desolate feeling that swamped him at the thought that he might never see her again except through the gunsight.

He stood staring out of the window, wondering how his career and his life had begun to disintegrate about him since first he had heard the name Caliph.

A polite voice at his shoulder startled him and he turned to the airport sub-manager. “They are calling the KLM flight to Brussels now, General Stride.” Peter roused himself with a sigh and picked up his overcoat and the crocodile skin Hermes briefcase that had been a gift from the woman he must kill.

here was such a volume of correspondence and urgent business piling the long desk in his new office that Peter had an excuse to put aside the planning of the preemptive strike against Caliph.

To his mild surprise he found himself enjoying the jostle and haggle, the driving pace and the challenge of the market place. He enjoyd pitting wits and judgement against other sharp and pointed minds, he enjoyed the human interaction and for the first time understood the fascination which this type of life had exerted over his brother Steven.

“Three days after arriving back at his desk, the Iranian Air Force made their first order of the Narmco Kestrel missiles. One hundred and twenty units, over a hundred and fifty million dollars” worth. It was a good feeling, and could grow stronger, could finally become addictive, he realized.

He had always looked upon money as rather a nuisance, those degrading and boring sessions with bank managers and clerks of the income tax department, but now he realized that this was a different kind of money. He had glimpsed the world in which

Caliph existed, and realized how once a human being became accustomed to manipulating this kind of money, then dreams of godlike power became believable, capable of being transmuted into reality.

He could understand, but could never forgive, and so at last,

seven days after his return to Brussels, he forced himself to face up to what he must do.

Magda Altmann had withdrawn. She had made no further contact since that brief and unsatisfactory hour at Orly Airport.

He must go to her, he realized. He had lost his special inside position which would have made the task easier.

He could still get close enough to kill her, of that he was certain. just as he had the opportunity to do so at Orly.

However, if he did it that way it would be suicidal. If he survived the swift retribution of her guards, there would be the slower but inexorable processes of the law. He knew without bothering to consider it too deeply that he would be unable to use the defence of the Caliph story. No court would believe it. It would sound like the rantings of a maniac without the support of Atlas or the Intelligence systems of America and Britain. That support would not be forthcoming of that he was certain, If he killed Caliph they would be delighted, but they would let him go to the guillotine without raising a voice in his defence. He could imagine the moral indignation of the civilized world if they believed that an unorthodox organization such as Atlas was employing assassins to murder the prominent citizens of a foreign and friendly nation.

No. He was on his own, completely. Parker had made that quite clear. And Peter realized that he did not want to die. He was not prepared to sacrifice his life to stop Caliph not unless there was no other way. There had to be another way, of course.

As he planned it he thought of the victim only as Caliph never as Magda Altmann. That way he was able to bring a cold detachment to the problem. The where, the when, and the how of it.

He had complicated the task by replanning her personal security,

and his major concern when he did so had been to make her movements as unpredictable as possible. Her social calendar was as closely guarded as a secret of state, there were never any -forward press reports of attendance at public or state events.

If she were invited to dine at the tlysee Palace, the fact was reported the day after, not the day before but there were some annual events that she would never miss.

Together they had discussed these weaknesses in her personal security.

“Oh, Peter you cannot make a convict of me.” She had laughed in protest when he mentioned them. “I have so few real pleasures you would not take them from me, would you?” The first seasonal showing of

Yves St. Laurent’s collections, that she would never miss or the

Grande Semaine of the spring racing season which culminates with the running of the Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp. This year she had high hopes of victory with her lovely and courageous bay mare, Ice

Leopard. She would be there. It was absolutely certain.

Peter began to draw up the list of possible killing grounds, and then crossed off all but the most likely. The estate at La Pierre Benite, for instance. It had the advantage of being familiar ground for Peter. With a soldier’s eye he had noticed fields of fire across the wide terraced lawns that dropped down to the lake; there were stances for a sniper in the forests along the far edge of the lake, and in the little wooded knoll to the north of the house which commanded the yard and stables. However, the estate was well guarded and even there the victim’s movements were unpredictable.

It would be possible to lie in ambush for the week when she was in

Rome or New York. Then again the escape route was highly risky,

through a sparsely populated area with only two access roads both easily blocked by swift police action.

No, La Pierre Benite was crossed from the list.

In the end Peter was left with the two venues that had first sprung to mind the members’ enclosure at Longchamp or Yves St.

Laurent’s premises, at 46 Avenue Victor Hugo.

Both had the advantages of being public and crowded, circumstances favouring pickpockets and assassins, Peter thought wryly. Both had multiple escape routes, and crowds into which the fugitive could blend.

There were good stances for a sniper in the grandstands and buildings overlooking the members” enclosure and the saddling paddock at

Longchamp or in the multi-storied buildings opposite No 46 in Avenue

Victor Hugo.

It would probably be necessary to rent an office suite in one of the buildings with the attendant risks, even if he used a false name,

which put the probability slightly in favour of the racecourse.

However, Peter delayed the final decision until he had a chance to inspect each site critically.

There was one last advantage in doing it this way. It would be a stand-off kill. He would be spared the harrowing moments of a kill at close range, with handgun or knife or garrotte.

There would be the detached view of Caliph through the lens of a telescopic sight. The flattened perspectives and the altered colour balances always made for a feeling of unreality. The intervening distance obviated the need for confrontation. He would never have to watch the green light go out in those magnificent eyes, nor hear the last exhalation of breath through the soft and perfectly sculptured lips that had given him so much joy quickly he thrust those thoughts aside. They weakened his resolve, even though the rage and the lust for vengeance had not abated.

If he could get one of the Thor .222 sniper rifles it would be the perfect tool for this task. With the extra long, accurized barrels designed for use with match grade ammunition and the new laser sights,

the weapon could throw a three-inch group at seven hundred yards.

The sniper had only to depress the button on the top of the stock with the forefinger of his left hand. This activated the laser and the beam swept precisely down the projected flight of the bullet. It would show as a bright white coin the size of a silver dime. The sniper looked for the spot of light through the telescopic lens of the sight,

and the moment it was exactly on the target he pressed the trigger.

Even an unskilled marksman could hardly miss with this sight, in

Peter’s hands it would be infallible and Colin Noble would give him one. Not only would Colin give him one, hell, he would probably have it delivered with the compliments of the American Marine Corps by the senior military attache of the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Yet Peter found himself drawing out the moment of action, going over his plans so often and with such a critical eye that he knew he was procrastinating.

The sixteenth day after his return to Brussels was a Friday.

Peter spent the morning on the NATO range north of the city at a demonstration of the new electronic shield that Narmco had developed to foil the radar guidance on short-range anti-tank missiles. Then he helicoptered back with the three Iranian officers who had attended the demonstration and they lunched at tpaule de Mouton, a magnificent and leisurely meal. Peter still felt guilty spending three hours at the lunch table, so he worked until eight o’clock that evening, on the missile contracts.

It was long after dark when he left through the rear entrance,

taking all his usual precautions against the chance that Caliph had an assassin waiting for him in the dark streets. He never left at the same time nor followed the same route, and this evening he bought the evening papers from a Marchand du tab ac in the Grand’ Place and stopped to read them at one of the outdoor cafes overlooking the square.

He began with the English papers, and the headlines filled the page from one side to the other; black and bold, they declared:

DROP IN PRICE OF CRUDE OIL

Peter sipped the whisky thoughtfully as he read the article through, turning to Page Six for the continuation.

Then he crumpled the newsprint in his lap, and stared at the passing jostle of spring tourists and early evening revellers.

Caliph had achieved her first international triumph.

From now on there would be no bounds to her ruthless rampage of power and violence.

Peter knew he could delay no longer. He made the go decision then, and it was irrevocable. He would arrange to visit London on

Monday morning, there was excuse enough for that. He would ask Colin to meet him at the airport, and it would be necessary to tell him of his plan. He knew he could expect full support. Then he could move on to Paris for the final reconnaissance and choice of killing ground.

There was still two weeks until the showing of the spring collections two weeks to plan it so carefully that there would be no chance of failure.

He felt suddenly exhausted, as though the effort of decision had required the last of his reserves. So exhausted that the short walk back to the hotel seemed daunting. He ordered another whisky and drank it slowly before he could make the effort.

Narmco maintained two permanent suites at the Hilton for their senior executives and other important visitors.

Peter had not yet made the effort of finding private accommodation in the city, and he was living out of the smaller of the two suites.

It was merely a place to wash and sleep and leave his clothes, for he could not shake off the feeling of impermanence, of swiftly changing circumstances by which he found himself surrounded.

My books are in storage again, he thought with a little chill of loneliness. His collection of rare and beautiful books had been in storage-for the greater part of his life, as he roamed wherever his duty took him, living out of barracks and hotel rooms. His books were his only possessions, and as he thought about them now he was filled with an unaccustomed longing to have a base, a place that was his Own and immediately he thrust it aside, smiling cynically at himself as he strode through the streets of another foreign city, alone again.

It must be old age catching up with me, he decided.

There had never been time for loneliness before but now, but now? Unaccountably he remembered Magda Altmann coming into his arms and saying quietly: “Oh, Peter, I have been alone for so long.” The memory stopped him dead, and he stood in the light of one of the street lamps, a tall figure in a belted trench coat with a gaunt and haunted face.

A blonde girl with lewdly painted lips sauntered towards him down the sidewalk, pausing to murmur a proposition, and it brought Peter back to the present.

“Merd” He shook his head in curt refusal and walked on.

As he passed the bookstall in the lobby of the Hilton, a rack of magazines caught his attention and he stopped at the shelf of women’s magazines. There would be announcements of the Paris haute couture showings soon, and he thumbed the pages of Vogue looking for mention of

Yves St. Laurent’s show instead he was shocked by the image of a woman’s face that leapt out of the page at him.

The elegant cheekbone structure framing the huge slanted Slavic eyes. The shimmering fall of dark hair, the feline grace of movement frozen by the camera flash.

In the photograph she was in a group of four people. The other woman was the estranged wife of a pop singer, the sulky expression,

slightly skew eyes and bee-stung lips a landmark on the Parisian social scene. Her partner was a freckled, boyish-faced American actor in a laid-back velvet suit with gold chains around his throat, more famous for his sexual exploits than his film roles. They were not the type of persons with whom Magda Altmann habitually associated, but the man beside her, on whose arm she leaned lightly, was much more her style.

He was fortyish, dark and handsome in a fleshy heavily built way, with dense wavy hair, and he exuded the special aura of power and confimobile manufacturing complex.

dence that befitted the head of the biggest German auto The caption below the photograph had them attending the opening of an exclusive new Parisian discotheque again this was not Magda Altmann’s habitual territory, but she was smiling brilliantly at the tall handsome German, so obviously enjoying herself that Peter felt a stinging shaft of emotion thrust-up under his ribs.

Hatred or jealousy he was not certain and he slapped the magazine closed and returned it to its rack.

In the impersonal antiseptically furnished suite he stripped and showered, and then standing naked in the small lounge of the suite he poured himself a whisky. It was his third that evening.

Since the kidnapping he had been drinking more than ever before in his life, he realized. It could exert an insidious hold when a man was lonely and in grave doubt. He would have to begin watching it. He took a sip of the smoky amber liquid and turned to look at himself in the mirror across the room.

Since he had been back in Brussels, he had worked out each day in the gymnasium at the NATO officers” club where he still had membership,

and his body was lean and hard with a belly like -a greyhound’s only the face was ravaged by strain and worry and, it seemed, by some deep unutterable regret.

He turned back towards the bedroom of the suite, and the telephone rang.

“Stride,” he said into the mouthpiece, standing still naked with the glass in his right hand.

“Please hold on, General Stride. We have an international call for you.” The delay seemed interminable with heavy buzzing and clicking on the line, and the distant voices of other operators speaking bad

French or even worse English.

Then suddenly her voice, but faint and so far away that “Peter,

are you there?” it sounded like a whisper in a vast and empty hall.

“Magda?” He felt the shock of it, and his voice echoed back at him from the receiver; there was the click before she spoke again, that switch of carrier wave that told him they were on a radio telephone link.

“I have to see you, Peter. I cannot go on like this. Will you come to me, please, Peter?”

“Where are you?”

“Les Neuf Poissons.” Her voice was so faint, so distorted, that he asked her to repeat it.

“Les Neuf Poissons The Nine Fishes,” she repeated.

“Will you come, Peter?”

“Are you crying?” he demanded, and the silence echoed and clicked and hummed so he thought they had lost contact, and he felt a flare of alarm so his voice was harsh as he asked again. “Are you crying?”

“Yes.” It was only a breath, he might have imagined it.

“Why?”

“Because I am sad and frightened, Peter. Because I am alone, Peter. Will you come, please will you come?”

“Yes,” he said.

“How do I get there?”

“Ring Gaston at La Pierre Benite. He will arrange it. But come quickly, Peter. As quickly as you can.”

“Yes.

As soon as I can but where is it?” He waited for her reply, but now the distances of the ether echoed with the sound of utter finality.

“Magda? Magda?” He found himself shouting desperately, but the silence taunted him and reluctantly he pressed a finger down on the cradle of the telephone.

“Les Neuf Poissons,” he repeated softly, and lifted the finger.

“Operator,” he said, “please get me a call to France Rambouillet

47-87-47.” And while he waited he was thinking swiftly.

This was what he had been subconsciously waiting for, he realized.

There was a feeling of inevitability to it, the wheel could only turn it could not roll sideways. This was what had to happen.

Caliph had no alternative. This was the summons to 3.38 execution. He was only surprised that it had not come sooner. He would see why Caliph would have avoided the attempt in the cities of

Europe or England. One such attempt well planned and executed with great force had failed that night on the road to Rambouillet. It would have been a warning to Caliph not to underestimate the victim’s ability to retaliate for the rest, the problems would have been almost the same as those that Peter had faced when planning the strike against

Caliph herself.

The when and the where and the how and Caliph had the edge here.

She could summon him to the selected place but how incredibly skilfully it had been done. As he waited for the call to Rambouillet,

Peter marvelled at the woman afresh. There seemed no bottom to her well of talent and accomplishments despite himself, knowing full well that he was listening to a carefully rehearsed act, despite the fact that he knew her to be a ruthless and merciless killer, yet his heart had twisted at the tones of despair in her voice, the muffled weeping perfectly done, so he had only just been able to identify it.

“This is the residence-of Baroness Altmann.”

“Gaston?”

“Speaking,

sir.”

“General Stride.”

“Good evening, General. I was expecting your call. I spoke to the Baroness earlier. She asked me to arrange your passage to Les Neuf Poissons. I have done so.”

“Where is it, Gaston?”

“Les Neuf Poissons it’s the Baroness’s holiday island in the Iles sous le Vent it is necessary to take the UTA flight to Papeete-Faaa on Tahiti where the Baroness’s pilot will meet you. It’s another hundred miles to Les Neuf Poissons and unfortunately the airstrip is too short to accommodate the Lear jet one has to use a smaller aircraft.”

“When did the Baroness go to Les Neuf Poissons?”

“She left seven days ago, General, “Gaston answered, and immediately went on in the smooth, efficient secretarial voice to give Peter the details of the UTA flight. ” The ticket will be held at the UTA checkin counter for you, General, and I have reserved a nonsmoking seat at the window.”

“You think of everything. Thank you, Gaston.” Peter replaced the receiver, and found that his earlier exhaustion had left him he felt vital and charged with new energy. The elation of a trained soldier facing the prospect of violent action, he wondered, or was it merely the prospect of an end to the indecision and the fear of unknown things? Soon, for good or for evil, it would be settled and he welcomed that.

He went through into the bathroom and pitched the whisky that remained in his glass into the hand basing

The UTA DC 10 made its final approach to Tahiti from the east,

slanting down the sky with the jagged peaks of Moorea under the port wing. Peter remembered the spectacularly riven mountains of Tahiti’s tiny satellite island as the backdrop of the musical movie South

Pacific that had been filmed on location here. The volcanic rock was black and un weathered so that its crests were as sharp as sharks”

fangs.

They arrowed down across the narrow channel between the two islands, and the runway seemed to reach out an arm into the sea to welcome the big silver machine.

The air was heavy and warm and redolent with the perfume of frangipani blossoms, and there were luscious brown girls swinging and swaying gracefully in a dance of welcome. The islands reached out with almost overpowering sweetness and friendliness but as Peter picked his single light bag out of the hold luggage and started for the exit doors, something unusual happened. One of the Polynesian customs officers at the gate exchanged a quick word with his companion and then politely stepped into Peter’s path.

“Good afternoon, the smile was big and friendly, but it did not stretch as far as the eyes. “Would you be kind enough to step this way.” The two customs men escorted Peter into the tiny screened office.

“Please open your bags, sir.” Swiftly but thoroughly they went through his valise and crocodile-skin briefcase; one of them even used a measuring stick to check both cases for a hidden compartment.

“I must congratulate you on your efficiency,” said Peter, smiling also, but his voice tight and low.

“A random check, sir.” The senior officer answered his smile.

“You were just unlucky to be the ten thousandth visitor. Now, sir, I

hope you won’t object to a body search?”

“A body search?” Peter snapped, and would have protested further, but instead he shrugged and raised both arms. “Go ahead.” He could imagine that Magda Altmann was as much the Grande Dame here as she was in mother France. She owned the entire island group and it would need only a nod to have an incoming visitor thoroughly searched for weapons of any sort.

He could imagine also that Caliph would be very concerned that the intended victim should be suitably prepared for execution, lest he should inadvertently become the executioner.

The one customs Officer checked his arms and flanks from armpit to waist, while the other knelt behind him and checked inside the outside of his legs from crotch to ankle.

Peter had left the Cobra in the safe deposit box in the Hilton in

Brussels. He had anticipated something like this, it was the way

Caliph would work.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir. Have a lovely stay on our island.” Magda’s personal pilot was waiting for Peter in the main concourse, and hurried forward to shake his hand.

“I was worried that you were not on the flight.”

“A small delay in customs,” Peter explained.

“We should leave immediately, if we are to avoid a night landing on Les Neuf Poissons the strip is a little difficult.” Magda’s Gates

Lear was parked on the hardstand near the service area, and beside it the Norman Britten Tri Islander looked small and ungainly, a stork-like ugly aircraft capable of the most amazing performance in short take-off and landing situations.

The body of the machine was already loaded with crates and cantons of supplies, everything from toilet rolls to Veuve Cliquot champagne,

all tied down under a wide meshed nylon net.

Peter took the right-hand seat, and the pilot started up and cleired with control, then to Peter: “One hour’s flying. We will just make it.” The setting sun was behind them as they came in from the west and Les Neuf Poissons lay like a precious necklace of emeralds upon the blue velvet cushion of the ocean.

There were nine islands in the characteristic circular pattern of volcanic formation, and they enclosed a lagoon of water so limpid that every whorl and twist of the coral outcrops showed through as clearly as if they were in air.

“The islands had a Polynesian name when the Baron purchased them back in 1945,” the pilot explained in the clearly articulated rather pedantic French of the Midi. “They were given by one of the old kings as a gift to a missionary he favoured and the Baron purchased them from his widow.

The Baron could not pronounce the Polynesian name so he changed it-” The pilot chuckled. ” The Baron was a man who faced the world on his own terms.” Seven of the islands were merely strips of sand and fringes of palms, but the two to the east were larger with hills of volcanic basalt glittering like the skin of a great reptile in the rays of the lowering sun.

As they turned onto their downwind leg, Peter had a view through the window at his elbow of a central building with its roof of palm thatch elegantly curved like the prow of a ship in the tradition of the islands, and around it half-hidden in luscious green gardens were other smaller bungalows. Then they were over the lagoon and there were a clutter of small vessels around the long jetty which reached out into the protected waters Hobie-cats with bare masts, a big powered schooner which was probably used to ship the heavy stores such as dieseline down from Papeete, power boats for skiing and diving and fishing. One of them was out in the middle of the lagoon, tearing a snowy ostrich feather of wake from the surface as it ran at speed; a tiny figure towed on skis behind it lifted an arm and waved a greeting.

Peter thought it might be her, but at that moment the Tri-Islander banked steeply onto its base leg and he was left with only a view of cumulus cloud bloodied by the setting sun.

The runway was short and narrow, hacked from the palm plantation on the strip of level land between beach and hills. It was surfaced with crushed coral. They made their final approach over a tall palisade of palm trees. Peter saw that the pilot had not exaggerated by calling it a little difficult. There was a spiteful crosswind rolling in and breaking over the hills and it rocked the Tri-Islander’s wings sickeningly. The pilot crabbed her in, heading half into the wind, and as he skimmed in over the palm tops, closed the throttles,

kicked her straight with the rudders, lowered a wing into the wind to hold her from drifting and dropped her neatly fifty feet over the threshold, perfectly aligned with the short runway so she kissed and sat down solidly; instantly the pilot whipped the wheel to full lock into the crosswind to prevent a ground loop and brought her up short.

Tarfait!” Peter grunted with involuntary admiration, and the man looked slightly startled as though the feat deserved no special mention. Baroness Altmann employed only the very best.

There was an electric golf cart driven by a young Polynesian girl waiting at the end of the strip amongst the palm trees. She wore only a pa reo wrapped around her body below the armpits, a single length of crimson and gold patterned cloth that fell to mid thigh. Her feet were bare, but around her pretty head she wore a crown of fresh flowers the ma eva of the islands.

She drove the golf cart at a furious pace along narrow winding tracks through the gardens that were a rare collection of exotic plants, skilfully laid out, so that there was an exquisite Surprise around each turn of the path.

His bungalow was above the beach with white sand below the verandah and the ocean stretching to the horizon, secluded as though it were the only building on the island. 4; Like a child the island girl took his hand, a gesture of perfect innocence, and led him through the bungalow, showing him the controls for the air-conditioning, lighting and the video screen,

explaining it all in lisping French patois, and giggling at his expression of pleasure.

There was a fully stocked bar and kitchenette, the small library contained all the current best-sellers, and the newspapers and magazines were only a few days old. The offerings on the video screen included half a dozen recent successful features and Oscar winners.

“Hell, Robinson Crusoe should have landed here,” Peter chuckled,

and the girl giggled and wriggled like a friendly little puppy in sympathy.

She came to fetch him again two hours later, after he had showered and shaved and rested and changed into a light cotton tropical suit with open shirt and sandals.

Again she held his hand and Peter sensed that if a man had taken the gesture as licence the girl would have been hurt and confused. By the hand she led him along a path that was demarcated by cunningly concealed glow lights, and the night was filled with the murmur of the ocean and the gentle rustle and clatter of palm fronds moving in the wind.

Then they came to the long ship-roofed building he had seen from the air. There was soft music and laughter, but when he stepped into the light the laughter stopped and half a dozen figures turned to him expectantly.

Peter was not sure what he had expected, but it was not this gay,

social gathering, tanned men and women in expensive and elegant casual wear, holding tall frosted glasses filled with ice and fruit.

“Peter!” Magda Altmann broke from the group, and came to him with that gliding hip-swinging walk.

She wore a soft, shimmering, wheaten-gold dress, held high at the throat with a thin gold chain, but completely nude across the shoulders and down her back to within an inch of the cleft of her buttocks. It was breathtaking for her body was smooth as a rose petal and tanned to the colour of new honey. The dark hair was twisted into a rope as thick as her wrist and piled up onto the top of her head, and she had touched her eyes with shadows so they were slanting and green and mysterious.

“Peter,” she repeated, and kissed him lightly upon the lips, a brush like a moth’s wing, and her perfume touched him as softly, the fragrance of Quadrille flowering with the warmth and magic of her body.

He felt his senses tilt. With all he knew of her, yet he was still not hardened to her physical presence.

She was cool and groomed and poised as she had ever been, there was no trace at all of the confusion and fearsome loneliness that he had heard in those muffled choked-down sobs from halfway across the world not until she stepped back to tilt her head on one side,

surveying him swiftly, smiling lightly.

“Oh, cheri, you are looking so much better. I was so worried about you when last I saw you.” Only then he thought he was able to detect the shadows deep in her eyes, and the tightness at the corners of her mouth.

“And you are more beautiful than I remembered.” It was true, so he could say it without reserve, and she laughed, a single soft purr of pleasure.

“You never said that before,” she reminded him, but still her manner was brittle. Her show of affection and friendliness might have convinced him at another time, but not now. “And I am grateful.” Now she took his arm, her fingers in the crook of his elbow, and she led him to the waiting group of guests as though she did not trust herself to be alone with him another moment lest she reveal some forbidden part of herself.

There were three men and their wives: an American Democrat senator of considerable political influence, a man with a magnificent head of silver hair, eyes like dead oysters, and a beautiful wife at least thirty years his junior who looked at Peter the way a lion looks at a gazelle and held his hand seconds longer than was necessary.

There was an Australian, heavy in the shoulder and big in the gut.

His skin was tanned leathery and his eyes were framed in a network of wrinkles. They seemed to be staring through dust and sun glare at distant horizons. He owned a quarter of the world’s known uranium reserves, and cattle stations whose area was twice the size of the

British Isles.

His wife was as tanned and her handshake was as firm as his.

The third man was a Spaniard whose family name was synonymous with sherry, an urbane and courtly Don, but with that fierce Moorish rake to his thin features. Peter had read somewhere that the sherry and cognac ageing in this man’s cellars was valued at over five hundred million dollars, and that formed only a small part of his family’s investments,

His wife was a darkly brooding Spanish beauty with an extraordinary streak of chalk white through the peak of her otherwise black hair.

As soon as the group had assimilated Peter, the talk turned back easily to the day’s sport. The Australian had boated a huge black marlin that morning, a fish over one thousand pounds in weight and fifteen feet from the point of its bill to the tip of its deep sickle tail, and the company was elated.

Peter took little part in the conversation, but watched Magda

Altmann covertly. Yet she was fully aware of his scrutiny; he could see it in the way she held her hand, and the tension in her whole long slim body, but she laughed easily with the others and glanced at Peter only once or twice, each time with a smile, but the shadows were in the green depths of her eyes.

Finally she clapped her hands. “Come, everybody, we are going to open the feast.” She linked arms with the senator and the Australian and led them down onto the beach.

Peter was left to cope with the senator’s wife, and pushed her bosom against his upper arm and ran her tongue lightly over her lips as she clung to him.

Two of the Polynesian servants were waiting beside a long mound of white beach sand, and at Magda’s signal they attacked it with shovels,

swiftly exposing a thick layer of seaweed and banana leaves from which poured columns of thick and fragrant steam. Below that was a rack of banyan wood and palm fronds which suspended the feast over another layer of seaweed and live coals.

There were exclamations of delight as the aroma of chicken and fish and pork mingled with those of breadfruit and plantains and spices.

“Ah, a success,” Magda declared gaily. “If any air is allowed to enter the bake we lose it all. It burns, poof! And we are left with only charcoal.” While they feasted and drank the talk and laughter became louder and less restrained, but Peter made the single drink last the evening and waited quietly not joining the conversation and ignoring the blandishments of the senator’s wife.

He was waiting for some indication of when and from what direction it would come. Not here, he knew, not in this company. When it came it would be swift and efficient as everything else that Caliph did.

And suddenly he wondered at his own conceit, that had allowed him to walk, entirely unarmed and unsupported, into the arena selected and prepared by his enemy. He knew his best defence was to strike first,

perhaps this very night if the opportunity offered. The sooner the safer, he realized, and Magda smiled at him across the table set under the palm trees and laden with enough food to feed fifty. When he smiled back at her, she beckoned with a slight inclination of her head,

and then while the men argued and bantered loudly, she murmured an apology to the women and slipped unobtrusively into the shadows.

Peter gave her a count of fifty before he followed her.

She was waiting along the beach. He saw the flash of her bare smooth back in the moonlight and he went forward to where she stood staring out across the wind-ruffled waters of the lagoon

He came up behind her, and she did not turn her head but her voice was a whisper.

“I am so glad you came, Peter.”

“I am so glad you asked me to.” He touched the back of her neck, just behind her ear.

The ear had an almost elfin point to it that he had not noticed before and the un swept hair at her nape was silken under his fingertips. He could just locate the axis, that delicate bone at the base of the skull which the hangman aims to crush with the drop. He could do it with the pressure of thumb and it would be as quick as the knot.

am so sorry about the others,” she said. “But I am getting rid of them with almost indecent haste, I’m afraid.” She reached up over her shoulder and took his hand from her neck, and he did not resist.

Gently she spread the hand, and then pressed the open palm to her cheek. “They will leave early tomorrow. Pierre is flying them back to

Papeete, and then we will have Les Neuf Poissons to ourselves just you and I-” And then that husky little chuckle.” And thirty-odd servants.” He could understand exactly why it would be that way.

The only witnesses would be the faithful retainers of the Grande

Dame of the islands.

“Now we MUSt. go back. Unfortunately my guests are very important,

and I cannot ignore them longer but tomorrow will come. Too slowly for me, Peter but it will come.” She turned in the circle of his arms and kissed him with a sudden startling ferocity, so his lips were crushed against his teeth, and then she broke from him and whispered close to his ear.

“Whatever way it goes, Peter, we have had something of value, you and I. Perhaps the most precious thing I have had in my life. They can never take that away from me.” And then she was out of his arms with that uncanny speed and grace of movement and gliding back along the path towards the lights. He followed her slowly, confused and uncertain as to what she had meant by those last words, concluding finally that the purpose had been exactly that to confuse and unbalance him, and at that moment he sensed rather than heard movement behind him, and instantly whirled and ducked.

The man was ten paces behind him, had come like a leopard,

silently from the cover of a fall of lianas and flowering creepers beside the path; only some Minimal instinct had warned Peter and his body flowed into the fighting stance, balanced, strung like a nocked arrow, at once ready both to attack and meet attack.

“Good evening, General Stride.” Peter only just managed to arrest himself, and he straightened slowly but with each hand still extended stiffly at his side like the blade of a meat cleaver, and as lethal.

“Carl! he said. So the grey wolves had been close, within feet of them, guarding their mistress even in that intimate moment.

“I hope I did not alarm you,” said the bodyguard and though

Peter could not see the man’s expression, there was a faint mockery in his voice, If there was confirmation needed, complete and final, this was it. Only Caliph would have need of a guard on a romantic assignment. Peter knew then beyond any doubt that either he or Magda

Altmann would be dead by sunset the following evening.

before going into the bungalow he made a stealthy -prowling circuit of the bushes and shrubs that surrounded it. He found nothing suspicious but in the interior the bed had been prepared and his shaving gear cleaned and neatly rearranged. His soiled clothing had been taken for cleaning and the other clothing had been pressed and rearranged more neatly than his own unpacking. He could not therefore be certain that his other possessions had not been searched, but it was safe to presume they had.

Caliph would not neglect such an elementary precaution. ” The locks on doors and windows were inadequate, had probably not been used in years, for there had been no serpents in this paradise, not until recently. So he placed chairs and other obstacles in such a way that an intruder should stumble over them in the dark, and then he rumpled the bed and arranged the pillows to look like a sleeping figure, but took a single blanket to the long couch in the private lounge. He did not really expect an attempt before the other guests left the island,

but if it came he would confuse Caliph’s scenario as much as possible.

He slept fitfully, jerking awake when a falling palm frond rattled across the roof, or the moon threw picture shadows on the wall across the room. just before dawn he fell into a deeper sleep and his dreams were distorted and nonsensical, only the sharp clear image of

Melissa-Jane’s terror-stricken face and her silent screams of horror remained with him when he woke. The memory roused in him the cold lust for vengeance which had abated a little in the weeks since her rescue and he felt reaffirmed, possessed of a steely purpose once more,

determined to resist the softening, fatal allure of Caliph.

He rose in the slippery pearl light of not yet dawn, and went down to the beach. He swam out a mile beyond the reef, and had a long pull back against a rogue current, but he came ashore feeling good and hard and alert as he had not been in weeks.

All right, he thought grimly. Let it come. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

There was a farewell breakfast for the departing guests, on the sugary sands of the beach that had been swept smooth by the night tide pink Laurent Perrier champagne and hothouse strawberries flown in from Auckland, New Zealand.

Magda Altmann wore brief green pants that showed off her long shapely legs to perfection, and a matching “boob tube” across her small neat breasts but her belly and shoulders and back were bare. It was the body of a finely trained athlete, but drawn by a great artist.

She seemed unnaturally elated to Peter, her gaiety was slightly forced and the low purring laughter just a little too ready and with a saw-edge to it. It was almost as though she had made some hard decision, and was steeling herself to carry it through. Peter thought of them as true opponents who had trained carefully for the coming configuration like prize fighters at the weigh-in.

After the breakfast they rode up in a cavalcade of electric carts to the airfield. The senator, revved-up with pink champagne and sweating lightly in the rising heat, gave Magda an over-affectionate farewell, but she skilfully avoided his hands and shunted him expertly into the Tri Islander after the other passengers.

Pierre, Magda’s pilot, stood on the brakes at the end of the runway while he ran all three engines up to full power.

Then he let her go, and the moment she had speed he rotated her into a nose-high obstacle-clearance attitude.

The Ungainly machine itimped into the sky and went over the palms at the end of the short strip with five hundred feet to spare and

Magda turned to Peter ecstatically.

“I hardly slept last night, “she admitted, as she kissed him.

“Neither did I,” Peter told her and then he added silently” for the same reasons, I’m sure.”

“I’ve planned a special day for us,”

she went on. “And I don’t want to waste another minute of it.” The head boatman had Magda’s big forty-five-foot Chriscraft Fisherman singled up at the end of the jetty. It was a beautiful boat, with long low attacking lines that made it seem to be flying even when on its mooring lines, and loving care had very obviously been lavished upon it. The paintwork was unmarked and the stainless steel fittings were polished to a mirror finish. The boatman beamed happily when Magda commended him with a smile and a word.

“Tanks are full, Baronne. The scuba bottles are charged and the light rods are rigged. The water-skis are in the main racks, and the chef came down himself to check the icebox.” However, his wide white smile faded when he learned that Magda was taking the boat out alone.

“Don’t you trust me? “she laughed.

“Oh, of course, Baronne-” But he could not hide his chagrin at having to give over his charge even to such a distinguished captain.

He handled the lines himself, casting her off, and calling anxious last-minute advice to Magda as the gap between jetty and vessel opened.

“Ne t’kquiet pas!” she laughed at him, but he made a dejected figure standing on the end of the jetty as Magda slowly opened up both diesels and the Chriscraft came up on the plane and seemed almost to break free of the surface.

Her wake was scored deep and clean and straight through the gin-clear water of the lagoon, a tribute to the design of her hull, and then it curved out gracefully behind them as Magda made the turn between the channel markers and lined her up for the passage through the reef, and out into the open Pacific.

“Where are we going?”

“There is an old Japanese aircraft carrier lying in a hundred feet of water beyond the reef. Yankee aircraft sank her back in “forty-four It is a beautiful site for scuba diving. We will go there first-” How? Peter wondered. Perhaps one of the scuba bottles had been partially filled with carbon monoxide gas. It was simply done, with a hose from the exhaust of the diesel generator:

simply pass the exhaust gases through a charcoal filter to remove the taste and smell of unconsumed hydra carbons and the remaining carbon monoxide gas would be undetectable. Fill the bottle to 30 atmospheres of pressure then top it up with clean air to its operating pressure of

I 10 atmospheres. It would be swift, but not too swift to alarm the victim, a gentle long sleep. When the victim lost his mouthpiece, the bottles would purge themselves of any trace of the gas. That would be a good way to do it.

“After that we can go ashore on The des Oiseaux. Since Aaron stopped the islanders stealing the eggs to eat, we’ve got one of the biggest nesting colonies of terns and noddies and frigate birds in the

Southern Pacific-” Perhaps a spear gun That would be direct and effective.

At short range, say two feet, even below the surface, the spear arrow would go right through a human torso in between the shoulder blades and out through the breast bone.

And afterwards we can water-ski-” With an unsuspecting skier in the water, awaiting the pick-up, what could be more effective than opening up both those tremendously powerful diesels to the gates and running the victim down? If the hull did not crush him, the twin screws turning at 500 revolutions per minute would cut him up as neatly as a loaf of pre-sliced bread.

Peter found himself intrigued with the guessing-game.

He found himself regretting the fact that he would never know what she intended, and he looked back from where they stood side by side on the tall flying bridge of the Chriscraft. The main island was lowering itself into the water already they were out of sight of anybody who did not have a pair of powerful binoculars.

Beside him Magda pulled the retaining ribbon out of her hair, and shook loose a black rippling banner that streamed in the wind behind her.

“Let’s do this for ever,” she shouted above the wind and the boom of the engines.

“Sold to the lady with the sexy backside,” Peter shouted back, and he had to remind himself that she was one of the most carefully trained killers he would ever meet. He must not allow himself to be lulled by the laughter and the beauty and he must not allow her to make the first stroke, His chances of surviving that were remote.

He glanced back again at the land. Any minute now, he thought,

and moved as though to glance over the side, getting slightly into her rear, but still in the periphery of her vision; she shifted slightly towards him still smiling.

“At this state of the tide there are always amberjack in the channel. I promised the chef I would bring him a couple of them kicking fresh, she explained. “Won’t you go down and get two of the light rods ready, cheri? The feather lures are in the forward starboard seat locker.”

“Okay,“he nodded.

“I’ll throttle back to trolling speed when I make the turn into the channel put the lines in then.”

OK.”

“ And then on an impulse. “But kiss me first.” She held up her face to him, and he wondered why he had said that. It was not to take farewell of her. He was sure of that. It was to lull her just that fraction, and yet as their lips met he felt the deep ache of regret that he had controlled for so long and as her mouth spread slowly and moistly open under his,

he felt as though his heart might break then. For a moment he felt that he might die himself before he could do it; dark waves of despair poured over him.

He slid his hand over her shoulder to the nape of her neck and her body flattened against his; he caressed her lightly, feeling for the place, and then settling thumb and forefinger a second, another second passed, and then she pulled him back softly.

“Hey, now!” she whispered huskily. “You stop that before I pile up on the reef.” He had not been able to do it with his bare hands. He just could not do it like that but he had to do it quickly, very quickly. Every minute delayed now led him deeper and deeper into deadly danger.

“Go!” she ordered, and struck him a playful blow on the chest.

“We’ve got time for that later all the time in the world. Let’s savour it, every moment of it.” He had not been able to do it, and he turned away. It was only as he went down the steel ladder into the cockpit of the Chriscraft that it suddenly occurred to him that during the lingering seconds of that kiss the fingers of her right hand had cupped lovingly under his chin. She could have crushed his larynx,

paralysing him with a thumb driven up into the soft vulnerable arch of his throat at the first offensive pressure of his thumb and forefinger.

As his feet hit the deck of the cockpit another thought came to him. Her other hand had lain against his body, stroking him softly under the ribs. That hand could have struck upwards and inwards to tear through his diaphragm his instincts must have warned him. She had been poised for the stroke, more so than he was; she had been inside the circle of his arms, inside his de fences waiting for him and he shivered briefly in the hot morning sun at the realization of how close he had been to death.

The realization turned instantly to something else, that slid down his spine cold as water down a melting icicle. It was fear, not the crippling fear of the craven, but fear that edged him and hirdened him. Next time he would not hesitate he could not hesitate.

He was instinctively carrying out her instructions as his mind raced to catch up with the problem. He lifted the lid of the seat locker. In the custom-fitted interior were arranged trays of fishing gear, swivels of brass and stainless steel in fifty different sizes;

sinkers shaped for every type of water and bottom; lures of plastic and feathers, of enamel and bright metal; hooks for gigantic bill fish or for fry and in a separate compartment in the side tray a bait knife.

The knife was a fifty-dollar Ninja with a lexan composition handle, cheque red and moulded for grip. The blade was seven inches of hollow ground steel, three inches broad at the hilt and tapering to a stiletto point. It was a brutal weapon, you could probably chop through an oak log with it, as the makers advertised. Certainly it would enter human flesh and go through bone as though it were Cheddar cheese.

It balanced beautifully in Peter’s fist as he made one testing slash and return cut with it. The blade hissed in the air, and when he tested the edge too hurriedly it stung like a razor and left a thin line of bright blood across the ball of his thumb.

He kicked off his canvas sneakers, so the rubber soles did not squeak on the deck. He was dressed now in only a thin cotton singlet and boxer type swimming trunks, stripped down for action.

He went up the first three rungs of the ladder on bare silent feet, and lifted his eyes above the level of the flying bridge.

Magda Altmann stood at the controls of the Chriscraft, conning the big vessel into the mouth of the channel, staring ahead in complete concentration.

Her hair still flew in the wind, snaking and tangling into thick shimmering tresses. Her naked back was turned to him, the deeply defined depression running down her spine and the crest of smooth hard muscle rising on each side of it.

One leg of her pants had tucked up slightly exposing a half-moon of round white buttock, and her legs were long and sup pleas a dancer’s as she balanced on the balls of her narrow feet, raising herself to see ahead over the bows.

Peter had been gone from the bridge for less than ten seconds, and she was completely unaware, completely unsuspecting.

Peter did not make the same mistake again; he went up the ladder in a single swift bound, and the bellow of the diesels covered any sound he might have made.

With the knife you never take the chance of the point turning against bone, if you have a choice of target.

Peter picked the small of the back, at the level of the kidneys where there was no bone to protect the body cavity.

It is essential to put the blade in with all possible power; this decreases the chance of bone-deflection and it peaks the paralysing effect of impact-shock.

Peter put the full weight of his rush behind the thrust.

The paralysis is total if the blade is twisted a half-turn at the same instant that the blade socks in hilt-deep.

The muscles in Peter’s right forearm were bunched in anticipation of the moment in which he would twist the blade viciously in her flesh,

quadrupling the size and the trauma of the wound.

The polished stainless steel fascia of the Chriscraft’s control panel reflected a distorted image, like those funny mirrors of the fairground. Only at the moment that Peter had committed himself completely, at the moment when he had thrown all his weight into the killing stroke, did he realize with a sickening flash that she was watching him in the polished steel control panel; she had been watching him from the moment he reappeared at the head of the ladder.

The curved Surface of the steel distorted] her face, so that it appeared to consist only of two enormous eyes; it distracted him in that thousandth part of a second before the point of the blade entered flesh. He did not see her move.

Blinding, numbing agony shot down his right flank and arm, from a point in the hollow where his collar bone joined the upper arm, while at the same instant something hit him on the inside of his forearm just below the elbow.

The knife stroke was flung outwards, passing an inch from her hip,

and the point of the blade crashed into the control panel in front of her, scaring the metal with a deep bright scratch, but Peter’s numbed fingers could not keep hold on the hilt. The weapon spun from his grip, ringing like a crystal wine glass as it struck the steel handrail and rebounded over the side of the bridge into the cockpit behind him.

He realized that she had struck backwards at him, not turning to face him but using only the reflection in the control panel to judge her blow with precision into the pressure point of his shoulder.

Now pain had crippled him and the natural reaction was to clutch at the source of it. Instead with some reflexive instinct of survival he flung up his left hand to protect the side of his neck and the next blow, also thrown backwards, felt as though it had come from a full-blooded swing of a baseball bat. He hardly saw it, it came so fast and hard there was just the flicker of movement across his vision,

like the blur of a hummingbird’s wing, and then the appalling force of it crushing into the muscle of his forearm.

Had it taken him in the neck where it was aimed, it would have killed him instantly; instead it paralysed his other arm, and she was turning into him now effortlessly matching his bull strength with a combination of speed and control.

He knew he must try and keep her close, smother her with his weight and size and strength and he hooked at her with the clawed crippled fingers of his knife hand; they caught for a moment and then she jerked free. He had ripped away the flimsy strip of elasticized cloth that covered her breasts, and she spun lightly under and out of the sweep of his other arm as he. tried desperately to club her down with his forearm.

He saw that her face was bone-white with the adrenalin overdose coursing through her blood. Her lips were drawn back into a fixed snarl of concentration and fury and her teeth seemed as sharp as those of a female leopard in a trap.

It was like fighting a leopard; she attacked him with an unrelenting savagery and total lack of fear, no longer human, dedicated only to his total destruction.

The long hair swirled about him, at one moment flicking like a whiplash into his eyes to blind and unbalance him, and she weaved and dodged and struck like a mongoose at the cobra, every movement flowing into the next, her taunting red-tipped breasts dancing and jerking with each blow she hurled at him.

With a jar of disbelief, Peter realized that she was beating him down. So far he had managed barely to survive each blow that he caught on arm and shoulder; each time her bare feet crashed into his thigh or lower belly, each time her knees drove for his groin and jarred against the bone of his pelvis, he felt a little more of his strength dissipate, felt his reactions becoming more rubbery, just that instant slower. He had countered her attack with luck and instinct, but any instant she must land solidly and drop him, for she was never still,

cutting him with hands and feet, keeping him off balance and he had not hurt her yet, had not touched her with any of his counter-strokes.

Still there was no feeling in his hands and fingers. He needed respite, he needed a weapon, and he thought desperately of the knife that had fallen into the cockpit behind him.

He gave ground to her next attack, and the bridge rail caught him in the small of the back; at the same moment another of her strokes aimed at the soft of his throat deflected off his arm and crunched into his nose. Instantly his eyes flooded with tears, and he felt the warm salt flood of blood over his upper lip and down the back of his throat; he doubled over swiftly, then in the same movement he threw himself backwards, like a diver making a one-and-ahalf from the three-metre board. The rail behind him helped his turn in the air, and he had judged it finely. He landed like a cat on both feet on the deck of the cockpit ten feet below the bridge, flexing at the knees to absorb the shock, and flicking the tears from his eyes, wringing his arms to return blood and feeling.

As he spun into a crouch he saw the knife. It had slid down the cockpit into the stern scuppers. He went for it.

The dive had taken her by surprise, just as she was poised for the final killing stroke to the back of his exposed neck, but she swirled to the head of the ladder and gathered herself while below her Peter launched himself across the cockpit for the big ugly Ninja knife.

She went for him feet first, dropping from ten feet, and the bare soles of her feet hit him together, the impetus of her falling body enhanced by the stabbing kick that she released at the moment that she hit him.

She caught him high in the back, hurling him forward so that the top of his head cracked into the bulkhead and darkness rustled through his head. He felt his senses going, and it required all of his resolve to roll over and pull his knees swiftly to his chest, to guard himself against the next killing stroke. He caught it on his shins, and once again launched himself after the knife. His fingers felt swollen and clumsy on the rough cheque red surface of the hilt, and at the moment they touched he unwound his doubled-up body like a steel coil spring,

lashing out with both feet together.

It was a blind stroke, delivered in complete desperation.

It was the first solid blow he had landed; it caught her at the moment when she had already launched herself into her next onslaught;

both his feet slammed into her belly just below the ribs, and had the flesh there been soft or yielding it would have ended it; but she was just able to absorb the force of it with flat hard muscle though it hurled her backwards across the cockpit with the breath hissing from her lungs and the long slim body doubling over in an agonized convulsion.

Peter realized that this was the only chance that he had had, and the only one he would ever have yet his body was racked with such pain that he could hardly drag himself up onto his elbow, and his vision swam and blurred with tears and blood and sweat.

He did not know how he had managed it, some supreme exertion of will, but he was on his feet with the knife in his hand, instinctively extending the blade down the back of his right thigh to keep it protected until the moment it had to be used, crouching as he went in,

left arm raised as a shield and knowing that now he had to end it swiftly, he could not go on longer. “this was his last effort.

Then she had a weapon also. Moving so swiftly that it had happened before she was halfway across the cockpit, she had knocked the retaining clip off the boat hook that stood in the rack beside the cabin entrance.

It was eight feet of heavy varnished ash, with an ornate but vicious brass head, and she cut at him with a low swinging warning blow to hold him off while she forced air back into her empty lungs.

She was recovering swiftly, much more swiftly than Peter himself

He could see the cold killing light rekindle in her eyes. He knew he could not go on much longer, he must risk it all in one last total effort.

He threw the knife, aiming at her head. The Ninja, not designed as a throwing weapon, rolled out of line of flight, hilt foremost but still it forced her to lift the staff of the boat hook and deflect it.

It was the distraction he had wanted.

Peter used the momentum of his throw to go in under the swinging staff, and he hit her with his shoulder while her arms were raised.

Both of them reeled backwards into the cabin bulkhead, and

Peter groped desperately for a grip. He found it in the thick lustrous tresses of her hair, and he wove his fingers into it.

She fought like a dying animal with strength and fury and courage that he could never have believed possible, but now at last he could pit his superior weight and strength directly against hers.

He smothered her against his chest, trapping one arm between their bodies, while he was able to pull her head backwards at an impossible angle, exposing the long smooth curve of her throat.

And then he scissored his thighs across her, so that those lethal feet and legs were unable to reach him, and they crashed over onto the deck.

She managed with an incredible effort to swing her weight so that she landed on top of him, her breasts sliding against his chest,

lubricated by sweat and blood that dribbled down from his nose, but

Peter heaved all his remaining strength into his shoulders and rolled back on top of her.

They were locked breast to chest and groin to groin in some bizarre parody of the act of love, only the stock of the boat hook between them.

Peter twisted down hard on the rope of hair in his left hand,

pinning her head to the deck so that her eyes were only six inches from his and blood from his nose and mouth dripped onto her upturned face.

Neither of them had spoken a word, the only sound the hiss and suck of laboured breathing, the explosive grunt of a blow delivered or the involuntary gasp of pain as it landed.

They glared into each other’s eyes, and at that moment neither of them was a human being, they were two animals fighting to the death,

and Peter shifted quickly so the stock of the boat hook fell across her unprotected throat. She had not been ready for that and she ducked her chin too late.

Peter knew he could not dare to release his grip on her hair, nor the arm around her body, nor the scissors that enfolded her legs. He -could feel the steely tension of her whole body, that required all his own strength to hold. If he relaxed his grip in the slightest, she would twist away, and he would not have the strength to go on after that.

With the elbow of the hand that held her hair, he began to bear down on the ash staff of the boat hook, slowly crushing down into her throat.

She knew it was over then, but still she fought on. As she weakened Peter was able to transfer more and more of his weight onto the stock of the boat hook. Slowly blood suffused her face, turning it dark mottled plum, her lips quivered with each painful rasping breath and a little frothy saliva broke from the corners of her mouth and ran back down her cheek.

Watching her die was the most horrible thing Peter had ever had to do. He shifted cautiously, going for the few extra ounces of weight which would force the heavy wooden Stock down that last eighth of an inch and crush in her throat, and she recognized the moment in her eyes.

She spoke for the first time. It was a croak slurred through swollen and gaping lips.

“They warned me.” He thought he had mis-heard her, and he checked the final thrust downwards which would pinch out the last spark of life. “I couldn’t believe it.” The faintest whisper, only just intelligible. “Not you.” Then the last resistance went out of her, her body relaxed, the complete acceptance of death at last. The fierce green light went out in her eyes, replaced at the very end with a sadness so heavy that it seemed to acknowledge the ultimate betrayal of all goodness and trust.

Peter could not force himself to make the final thrust downwards that would end it. He rolled off her and flung the heavy wooden stock across the cockpit. It crashed into the bulkhead and he sobbed as he crawled painfully across the deck, turning his back to her completely,

knowing that she was still alive and therefore still as dangerous as she had ever been yet no longer caring. He had gone as far as he could go. It didn’t matter any more if she killed him; something in him even welcomed the prospect of release.

He reached the rail and tried to drag himself onto his feet,

expecting at any moment the killing blow into the nape of his neck as she attacked him again.

It did not come, and he managed to get onto his knees, but his whole body was trembling violently so that his teeth chattered in his jaws and every strained and bnlised tendon and muscle screamed for surcease. Let her kill me, he thought, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now.

Half supporting himself on the rail, he turned slowly and his vision swam and flickered with patches of darkness and little shooting stars of crimson and white flame. Through the swirl of senses at the end of their usefulness, he saw that she was kneeling in the centre of the cockpit, facing him.

Her naked torso was splattered and smeared with his blood and the smooth tanned skin oiled with slippery sweat of near death. Her face was still and swollen and inflamed, wreathed in a great tangle of matted and disordered hair.

There was a flaming livid weal across her throat where the stock had crushed her, and as she fought for breath her small pert breasts lifted and dropped to the painful pumping of her chest.

They stared at each other, far beyond speech, driven to the very frontiers of their existence.

She shook her head, as though trying desperately to deny the horror of it all, and at last she tried to speak; no sound came and she licked her lips and lifted one slim hand to her throat as though to ease the pain of it.

She tried again, and this time she managed one word.

“Why?” He could not reply for fully half a minute, his own throat seemed to have closed, grown together like an old wound.

He knew that he had failed in his duty and yet he could not yet hate himself for it. He formed the words in his own mind, as though he were trying to speak a foreign language, and when he spoke his voice was a stranger’s broken and coarsened by the knowledge of failure.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said.

She shook her head again, and tried to frame the next question.

But she could not articulate it, only one word came out, the same word again.

“Why ?” And he had no answer for her.

She stared at him, then slowly her eyes filled with tears; they ran down her cheeks and hung from her chin like early morning dew on the leaf of the vine.

Slowly she pitched forward onto the deck, and for many seconds he did not have the strength to go to her, and then he lurched across the deck and dropped to his knees beside her; he lifted her upper body in his arms suddenly terrified that he had succeeded after all, that she was dead.

His relief soared above the pain of his battered body as he felt her breathing still sawing through her damaged throat, and as her head rolled against his shoulder he realized that fat oily tears still welled out from between her closed eyelids.

He began to rock her like a child in his arms, a completely useless gesture, and only then did her words begin to make any sense to him.

“They warned me, “she had whispered.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she had said.

“Not you.” He knew then that had she not spoken he would have gone through with it. He would have killed her and weighted her body and dropped it beyond the 1,000-fathom line but the words, although they did not yet make sense, had reached deep into some recess of his mind.

She stiffed against his chest. She said something, it sounded like his name. It roused him to reality. The big Chriscraft was still roaring blindly through the channels and reefs of the outer passage.

He laid her back gently on the deck, and scrambled up the ladder to the flying bridge. The whole of that horrific conflict had taken less than a minute, from his knife-stroke to her collapse under him.

The steering of the Chriscraft was locked into the automatic pilot and the vessel had run straight out through the channel into the open sea. It reinforced his knowledge that she had been ready for his attack. She had been acting that total concentration in steering the vessel, luring him into the attack while the Chriscraft was on automatic pilot and she was ready to throw that backward blow at him.

It did not make sense, not yet. All that he knew was that he had made some terrible miscalculation. He threw out the switch of the automatic steering, and shut down both throttles to the idle position before disengaging the main drive. The diesels bur bled softly, and she rounded up gently into the wind and wallowed beam-on to the short steep blue seas of the open ocean.

Peter took one glance back over the stern. The islands were just a low dark smudge on the horizon, and then he was stumbling back to the ladder.

Magda had dragged herself into a half sit ting: position, but she recoiled swiftly as he came to her an this time he saw fear pass like cloud shadow across her eyes.

“It’s all right,” he told her, his own voice still ragged. Her fear offended him deeply. He did not want her ever to be afraid of him again.

He took her up in his arms, and her body was stiff with uncertainty, like that of a cat picked up against its will, but too sick to resist.

“It’s all right,” he repeated awkwardly, and carried her down into the saloon of the Chriscraft. His own body felt battered as though his very bones were bruised and cracked, but he handled her so tenderly that slowly the resistance went out of her and she melted against him.

He lowered her onto the leather padded bench, but when he tried to straighten up she slid one arm around his neck and restrained him,

clinging to him.

“I left the knife there,” she whispered huskily. “It was a test.”

“Let me get the medicine chest. “He tried to pull away.

“No.” She shook her head and winced at the pain in her throat.

Don’t go away, Peter. Stay with me. I am so afraid.

I was going to kill you if you took the knife. I nearly did.

Oh, Peter, what is happening to us, are we both going mad?” She held him desperately and he sank to his knees on the deck and bowed over her.

“Yes,” he answered her, holding her to his chest. “Yes, we must be going mad. I don’t understand myself or any of it any more.”

“Why did you have to take the knife, Peter? Please you must tell me. Don’t lie, tell me the truth, I have to know why.”

“Because of Melissa-Jane because of what you had done to her.” He felt her jerk in his arms as though he had struck her again. She tried to speak but now her voice was only a croak of despair, and Peter went on to explain it to her.

“When I discovered that you were Caliph, I had to kill you.” She seemed to be gathering herself for some major effort, but then when she spoke it was still in that scratchy broken whisper. “Why did you stop yourself, Peter?”

“Because-” He knew the reason then. Because I

suddenly I knew that I loved you. Nothing else counted.” She gasped and was silent again for nearly a minute.

“Do you still think that I am Caliph?“she asked at last.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more except that I

love you. That’s all that matters.”

“What happened to us, Peter?” She lamented softly. “Oh God, what has happened to us?”

“Are you Caliph,

Magda?”

“But Peter, you tried to kill me. That was the test with the knife. You are Caliph.” On Magda’s direction Peter took the

Chris craft in through a narrow passage in the coral reef that surrounded The des Oiseaux, while the seabirds wheeled about them in a raucous cloud, filling the air with their wingbeats.

He anchored in five fathoms in the protected lee, and then called the main island on the VHF radio, speaking to the head boatman.

“The Baronne has decided to sleep on board overnight,” he explained. “Don’t worry about us.” When he went down to the saloon again Magda had recovered sufficiently to be sitting up. She had pulled on one of the terry to welling track suits from the clothes locker, and she had wound a clean towel around her throat to protect it and to hide the fierce fresh bruise that was already staining her skin like the squeezed juice of an overripe plum.

Peter found the medicine box in a locker above the toilet bowl of the heads, and she protested when he brought two Temprapain capsules for the pain, and four tablets of Brufin for the swelling and bruising of her throat and body.

“Take them,” he commanded and held the glass while she did so.

Then he carefully unwrapped the towel from her throat and lightly rubbed a creamy salve into the bruise with his fingertips.

“That feels better already,” she whispered, but now she had lost her voice almost entirely.

“Let’s have a look at your stomach.” He pushed her down gently on her back on the long padded bench and unzipped the top of the to welling suit to the waist. The bruise where he had kicked her had spread from just below her small pale breasts to the tiny sculpted navel in the flat hard plane of her belly; again he massaged the soothing cream into her skin and she sighed and murmured with the comfort of it.

When he finished she was able to hobble, still painfully doubled over, to the heads. She locked herself in for fifteen minutes while

Peter tended his own injuries, and when she emerged again she had bathed her face and combed out her hair.

He poured two crystal oldfashioned glasses half full of Jack

Daniel’s Bourbon and he handed one to her as she sank onto the padded bench beside him. “Drink it. For your throat,” he ordered, and she drank and gasped at the sting of the liquor and set the glass aside.

“And you, Peter?” she husked with sudden concern. “Are you all right?” Just one thing,” he said. “I’d hate you to get really mad at me.” Then he smiled, and she started to chuckle but choked on the pain and ended up clinging to him.

“When can we talk?” he asked her gently. “We have to talk this out.”

“Yes, I know, but not yet, Peter. Just hold me for a while.” And he was surprised at the comfort that it afforded him.

The warm woman shape pressed to him seemed to ease the pain of body and of mind, and he stroked her hair as she nuzzled softly against his throat.

“You said you loved me, “she murmured at last, making it a question. Seeking reassurance, as lovers always must.

“Yes. I love you. I think I knew it all along, but when I

learned that you were Caliph, I had to bury it deep. It was only there at the end I had to admit to myself.”

““I’m glad,” she said simply.

“Because you see I love you also. I thought I would never be able to love. I had despaired of it, Peter. Until you. And then they told me you would kill me. That you were Caliph. I thought then I would die having found you and then lost you. It was too cruel, Peter. I had to give you the chance to prove it wasn’t true!”

“Don’t talk,” he commanded. “Just lie there and listen.

There is nothing wrong with my voice, so I will tell it first.

The way it was with me, and how I knew you were Caliph.” And he told it to her, holding her to him and speaking softly, steadily. The only other sounds in the cabin were the slap of the wavelets against the hull and the subdued hum of the air-conditioning unit.

“You know everything up to the day Melissa-Jane was taken, all of it. I told you all of it, without reservation and without lying, not once-” He started, and then he went on to tell her in detail of the hunt for Melissa-Jane.

I think something must have snapped in my mind during those days.

I was ready to believe anything, to try anything to get her back. I

would wake up in the night and go to the toilet and vomit with the thought of her hand in a glass jar.” He told her how he had planned to kill Kingston Parker to meet Caliph’s demands, exactly how he intended doing it, the detailed how and where, and she shuddered against him.

“The power to corrupt even the best,” she whispered.

“Don’t talk-” he admonished her, and went on to tell her of the tip-off that had led them at last to the Old Manse in Laragh.

“When I saw my daughter like that, I lost what little was left of my reason. When I held her and felt the fever and heard her scream with lingering terror, I would have killed-” He broke off and they were silent until she protested with a small gasp and he realized that his hand had closed on her upper arm and his fingers were biting into her flesh with the force of his memories.

“I’m sorry.” He relaxed his grip, and lifted the hand to tuch her cheek. “Then they told me about you.” to “Who?” she whispered “The

Atlas Command.”

“Parker?”

“Yes, and Colin Noble.”

“What did they tell you?”

“They told me how your father brought you to Paris when you were a child. They told me that even then you were bright and pretty and special-” He began to recite it for her. ” When your father was killed-” and she moved restlessly against his chest as he said it you went to live with foster parents, all of them members of the party, and in the end you were so special that they sent somebody to take you back to Poland. Somebody who posed as your uncle-“

“I believed he was-” She nodded. For ten years I believed it. He used to write to me-” She stopped herself with an effort, was silent a moment and then, “he was all I ever had after Papa.”

“You were selected to go to Odessa,” Peter went on, and felt her go very still in his arms, so he repeated it with the harshness unconcealed in his tone, to the special school in

Odessa.”

“You know about Odessa?” she whispered. “Or you think you know but nobody who has never been there could ever really know.”

“I know they taught you to-” He paused, imagining again a beautiful young girl in a special room overlooking the Black Sea, learning to use her body to trap and beguile a man, any man. They taught you many things.”

He could not make the accusation.

“Yes,“she murmured. “Many, many things.”

“Like how to kill a man with your hands.”

“I think that subconsciously I could not bring myself to kill you, Peter. God knows you should not have survived. I loved you, even though I hated you for betraying me, I could not really do it-” She sighed again, a broken gusty sound.

And when I thought that you were going to kill me it was almost a relief. I was ready to accept that, against living on without the love that I thought I had found.”

“You talk too much.” He stopped her.

“You’ll damage your throat further.” He touched her lips with his fingers, to silence her, and then went on. “And at Odessa you became one of the chosen, one of the elite.”

“It was like entering the church,

a beautiful mystic thing-” she whispered. “I cannot explain it. I

would have done everything or anything for the State, for what I knew was right for “Mother Russia”.”

“All of this is true?” He marvelled that she made no effort to deny it.

“All of it,” she nodded painfully. “I will never lie to you

Peter. I swear it.”

“Then they sent you back to France to Paris?” he asked, and she nodded.

“You did your job, even better than they had expected you to do it. You were the best, the very best. No man could resist you.” She did not answer, but she did not lower her eyes from his. It was not a defiance but merely a total acceptance of what he was saying.

“There were men. Rich and powerful men-” His voice was bitter now. He could not help himself. “Many, many men. Nobody knows how many, and from each of them you gathered harvest.”

“Poor Peter,” she whispered. “Have you tortured yourself with that?”

“It helped me to hate you, “he said simply.

“Yes, I understand that. There is nothing that I can give you for your comfort except this. I never loved a man until I met you.” She was keeping her word. There were no more lies nor deceptions now. He was certain of it.

“Then they decided that you could be used to take over control of

Aaron Altmann and his Empire-“

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head.

“I decided on Aaron. He had been the only one man who I had not been able to-” Her voice pinched out and she took a sip of the bourbon and let it trickle slowly down her throat before she went on. “He fascinated me. I had never met a man like that before. So strong,

such raw power.”

“All right,” Peter agreed. “You might even have grown tired of the other role by then-“

“It’s hard work being a courtesan—2

She smiled for the first time since he had begun speaking, but it was a sad self mocking smile. “You went about it exactly the right way. First you made yourself indispensable to him. Already he was a sick man, beginning to need a crutch, somebody he could trust entirely.

You gave him that-” She said nothing, but memories passed across her eyes, changing the green shadows like sunlight through a deep still pool.

And when he trusted you there was nothing you could not supply to your masters. Your value had increased a hundredfold.” He went on talking quietly while outside the day died in a fury of crimsons and royal purples, slowly altering the light in the cabin and dimming it down so that her face was all that existed in the soft gloom. A pale intense expression, listening quietly to the accusations, to the recitation of betrayals and deceits. Only occasionally she made a little gesture Of denial, a shake of her head or the pressure of fingers on his arms. Sometimes she closed her eyes briefly as though she could not accept some particularly cruel memory, and once or twice an exclamation was wrung from her in that strained and tortured whisper.

“Oh God, Peter! It’s true!” He told her how she had gradually developed the taste for the power she was able to wield as Aaron

Altmann’s wife, and how that flourished as Aaron’s strength declined.

How she at last even opposed the Baron on some issues.

“Like that of supplying arms to the South African Government,”

Peter said, and she nodded and made one of her rare comments.

“Yes. We argued. That was one of the few times we argued.” And she smiled softly, as though at a private memory that she could not share even with him.

He told her how the taste of power and the trappings of power gradually eroded her commitment to her earlier political ideals, how her masters slowly realized they were losing their hold over her and of the pressures they attempted to apply to force her back into the fold.

“But you were too powerful now to respond to the usual pressures.

You had even succeeded in penetrating Aaron’s Mossad connections,

and had that protection.”

“This is incredible!” she whispered. “It’s so close, so very close that it is the truth.” He waited for her to elaborate, but instead she motioned him to continue.

“When they threatened to expose you to the Baron as a communist agent, you had no choice but to get rid of him and you did it in such a way that you not only got rid of the threat to your existence but you also achieved control of Altmann Industries, and to put the cherry on the top of the pie you got yourself twenty-five million in operating capital.

You arranged the abduction and killing of Aaron Altmann, you paid yourself the twenty-five million and personally supervised its transfer, probably to a numbered account in Switzerland-“

“Oh God,

Peter!” she whispered, and in the dark of the cabin her eyes were fathomless and huge as the empty cavities of a skull.

“Is it true?” Peter asked for confirmation for the first time.

“It’s too horrible. Go on please.”

“It worked so well that it opened up a new world of possibilities for you. just about this time you truly became Caliph. The taking of Flight 070 was possibly not the first stroke after the kidnapping of Aaron Altmann there may have been others. Vienna and the OPEC ministers, the Red Brigade activities in Rome but 070 was the first time you used the name Caliph. It worked, except for the dereliction of duty by a subordinate officer.”

He indicated himself. “That was all that stopped it and that was how

I attracted your attention originally.” Now it was almost totally dark in the cabin and Magda W

reached across and switched on the reading light beside them,

adjusting the rheostat down to a soft golden glow. In its light she studied his face seriously as he went on.

By this time you were aware through your special sources, probably the Mossad connection and almost certainly through the French SID, that somebody was onto Caliph. That somebody turned out to be Kingston

Parker and his Atlas organization, and I was the ideal person to firstly confirm that Parker was the hunter and secondly, to assassinate him. I had the special training and talents for the job, I

could get close to him without arousing his suspicions, and I needed only to be sufficiently motivated-“

“No,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes from his face.

“It holds together,” he said. “All of it.” And she had no reply.

“When I received Melissa-Jane’s finger, I was ready for anything—”

“I think I am going to be sick.”

“I’m sorry.” He gave her the glass and she drank the shot of dark liquor it contained,

gagging a little on it. Then she sat for a few moments with her eyes closed and her hand on her bruised throat.

“All right? “he asked at last.

“Yes. All right now. Go on.”

“It worked perfectly except for the tip-off to the hideout in Ireland. But nobody could have foreseen that, not even Caliph.”

“But there was no proof!” she protested. “It was all conjecture. No proof that I was Caliph.”

“There was,” he told her quietly. “O’Shaughnessy, the head of the gang that kidnapped

Melissa-Jane, made two telephone calls. They were traced to

Rambouillet 47-87-47.” She stared at him wordlessly.

“He was reporting to his master to Caliph, you see.” And he waited for her reply. There was none, so after a minute of silence he went on to tell her the arrangements he had made for her execution the sites he had chosen at Longchamp race course and in the Avenue

Victor Hugo, and she shuddered as though she had felt the brush of the black angels” wings across her skin.

“I would have been there,” she admitted. “You chose the two best sites. Yves has arranged a private showing for me on the sixth of next month. I would have gone to it.” Then you saved me the trouble. You invited me here.

I knew that it was an invitation to die, that you knew I had become aware, that I had learned you were Caliph. I saw it in your eyes during that meeting at Orly Airport, I saw it proven by the way you were suddenly avoiding me, the way you were giving me no opportunity to do the job I had to do.”

“Go on.”

“You had me searched when I landed at Tahiti-Faaa.” She nodded.

“You had the grey wolves search my room again last night, and you set it up for today. I knew I had to strike first, and I did.”

“Yes”

she murmured. “You did.” And rubbed her throat again.

He went to recharge the glasses from the concealed liquor cabinet behind the bulkhead, and came back to sit beside her.

She shifted slightly, moving inside the circle of his arm, and he held her in silence. The telling of it had exhausted him, and his body ached relentlessly, but he was glad it was said, somehow it was like lancing a malignant abscess the release of poisons was a relief, and now the healing process could begin.

He could feel his own exhaustion echoed in the slim body that drooped against him, but he sensed that hers was deeper, she had taken too much already and when he lifted her in his arms again she made no protest, and he carried her like a sleeping child through to the master cabin and laid her on the bunk.

He found pillows and a blanket in the locker below. He slid into the bunk with her, under the single blanket, and she fitted neatly into the curve of his body, pressing gently against him, her back against his chest, her hard round buttocks against the front of his thighs, and her head pillowed into the crook of his arm, while with his other arm he cuddled her close and his hand naturally cupped one of her breasts.

They fell asleep like that, pressing closely, and when he rolled over she moved without waking, reversing their positions, moulding herself to his back and pressing her face into the nape of his neck, clasping him with one arm and with a leg thrown over his lower body as though to enfold him completely.

Once he woke and she was gone, and the strength of his alarm surprised him, a hundred new doubts and fears assailed him from the darkness, then he heard the liquid puff in the bowl of the heads and he relaxed. When she returned to the bunk, she had stripped off the terry to welling track suit and her naked body felt somehow very vulnerable and precious in his arms.

They woke together with sunlight pouring into the cabin through one porthole like stage lighting.

“My God it must be noon.” She sat up, and tossed back the long mane of dark hair over her tanned bare shoulders but when Peter tried to rise, he froze and groaned aloud.

“Qu’a tu, cheri?”

“I must have got caught in a concrete mixer,” he moaned.

His bruises had stiffened during the night, torn muscle and strained sinews protested his slightest movement.

“There is only one cure for both of us,” she told him. “It’s in three parts.” And she helped him off the bunk as though he was an old man. He exaggerated the extent of his injuries a little to make her chuckle. The chuckle was a little hoarse, but her voice was stronger and clearer and she favoured her own bruises only a little as she led him up onto the deck.

Her powers of recuperation were those of a young and superbly fit thoroughbred animal.

They swam from the diving platform over the Chriscraft’s stern.

“It’s working,” Peter admitted as the support of warm saltwater soothed his battered body. They swam side by side, both naked, slowly at first and then faster, changing the sedate breast-stroke for a hard overarm crawl, back as far as the reef, treading water there and gasping at the exertion.

“Better?” she panted with her hair floating around her like the tendrils of some beautiful water plant.

“Much better.”

“Race you back.” They reached the Chriscraft together and clambered up into the cockpit, cascading water and laughing and panting, but when he reached for her, she allowed only a fleeting caress before pulling away.

“First Phase Two of the cure.” She worked in the galley with only a floral apron around her waist which covered the dark bruises of her belly.

“I never thought an apron could be provocative before.”

“You are supposed to be doing the coffee,” she admonished him and gave him a lewd little bump and grind with her bare backside.

Her omelettes were thick and golden and fluffy, and they ate them in the early sunlight on the upper deck. The trade wind was sheep-dogging a flock of fluffy silver cloud across the heavens, and in the gaps the sky was a peculiar brilliant blue.

They ate with huge appetites, for the bright new morning seemed to have changed the mood of doom that had overpowered them the previous night. Neither of them wanted to break this mood, and they chattered inconsequential nonsense, and exclaimed at the beauty of the day and threw bread crusts to the seagulls, like two children on a picnic.

At last she came to sit in his lap, and made a show of taking his pulse.

“The patient is much improved, “she announced; “is now probably strong enough for Phase Three of the cure.”

“Which is?“he asked.

“Peter cheri, even if you are English, you are not that dense. “And she wriggled her bottom in his lap.

They made love in the warm sunlight, on one of the foam mattresses, with the trade wind teasing their bodies like unseen fingers.

It began in banter and with low gurgles of laughter, little gasps of rediscovery, and murmurs of welcome and encouragement then suddenly it changed, it became charged with almost unbearable intensity, a storm of emotion that sought to sweep all the ugliness and doubt. They were caught up in the raging torrent that carried them helplessly beyond mere physical response into an unknown dimension from which there seemed no way back, a total affirmation of their bodies and their minds that made all else seem inconsequential.

“love you,” she cried at the very end, as though to deny all else that she had been forced to do. “I have loved only you.” It was a cry torn from the very depths of her soul.

It took a long time for them to return from the far place to which they had been driven, to become two separate people again, but when they did somehow they both sensed that they would never again be completely separated; there had been a deeper more significant union than just that of their two bodies, and the knowledge sobered them and yet, at the same time, gave them both new strength and a deep IN

elation that neither had to voice it was there, and they both simply knew it.

They slid the big inflatable Avon dinghy over the stern, and went ashore, pulling the rubber craft above the high-water level and mooring it to one of the slanting palm holes.

Then they wandered inland, picking their way hand in hand between the seabird nests that had been crudely scraped in the earth. Half a dozen different species of birds were breeding together in one sprawling colony that covered most of the twenty-acre island. Their eggs varied from as big as that of a goose’s, to others the size of a pullet’s and speckled and spotted in lovely free-form designs.

The chicks were either grotesquely ugly with bare parboiled bodies or were cute as Walt Disney animations. The entire island was pervaded by an endless susurration of thousands of wings and the uproar of squawking, screeching, feuding and mating birds.

Magda knew the zoological names of each species, its range and its habits, and its chances of survival or extinction in the changing ecosystems of the oceans.

Peter listened to her tolerantly, sensing that behind this chatter and studied gaiety she was steeling herself to answer the accusations that he had levelled at her.

At the far end of the island was a single massive takamaka tree,

with dense green foliage spreading widely over the fluffy white sand.

By now the sun was fiercely bright and the heat and humidity smothered them like a woollen blanket dipped in hot water.

They sought the shade of the takamaka gratefully, and sat close together on the sand staring out across the unruffled waters of the lagoon to the silhouette of the main island, five miles away. At this range and angle there was no sign of the buildings nor of the jetty,

and Peter had an illusion of the primeval paradise with the two of them the first man and woman on a fresh and innocent earth.

Magda’s next words dispelled that illusion entirely.

“Who ordered you to kill me, Peter? How was the command given? I

must know that before I tell you about myself.”

“Nobody,“he answered.

“Nobody? There was no message like the one you received ordering you to kill Parker?”

“No.”

“Parker himself or Colin Noble? They did not order you to do it or suggest it?”

“Parker expressly ordered me not to do it. You were not to be touched until you could be taken in jeopardy.”

“It was your own decision?” she insisted.

“It was my duty.”

“To avenge your daughter?” He hesitated, would have qualified it, then nodded with total self-honesty. “Yes, that was the most part of it, Melissa-Jane, but I saw it also as my duty to destroy anything evil enough to envisage the taking of 070, the abduction of Aaron Altmann and the mutilation of my daughter.”

“Caliph knows about us. Understands us better than we understand ourselves. I

am not a coward, Peter, but now I am truly afraid.”

“Fear is the tool of his trade,” Peter agreed, and she moved slightly, inviting physical contact. He placed one arm about her bare brown shoulders and she leaned lightly against him.

“All that you told me last night was the truth, only the inferences and conclusions were false. Papa’s death, the lonely years with strangers as foster-parents of that period my clearest memories are of lying awake at night and trying to muffle the sound of my weeping with a false blanket. The return to Poland, yes, that was right, and the Odessa school all of that. I will tell you about

Odessa one day, if you truly want to hear it ?”

“I don’t think I do,

he said.

“Perhaps you are wise; do you want to hear about the return to

Paris?”

“Only what is necessary.”

“All right, Peter. There were men.

That was what I had been selected and trained for. Yes, there were men-” She broke Off, and reached up to take his face between her hands,

turning it so she could look into his eyes. “Does that make a difference between us, Peter?”

“I love you, “he replied firmly.

She stared into his eyes for a long time looking for evidence of deceit, and then when she found none, “Yes. It is so. You really mean that.” She sighed with relief and laid her head against his shoulder,

speaking quietly with just that intriguing touch of accent and the occasional unusual turn of phrase.

“I did not like the men, either, Peter. I think that was why I

chose Aaron Altmann. One man, yes I could still respect myself-” She shrugged lightly. “I chose Aaron, and Moscow agreed. It was, as you said, delicate work. First I had to win his respect. He had never respected a woman before. I proved to him I was as good as any man, at any task he wished to set me. After I had his respect, all else followed-” She paused and chuckled softly. Life plays naughty tricks.

I found firstly that I liked him, then I grew to respect him also. He was a great ugly bull of a man, but the power … A huge raw power,

like some cosmic force, became the centre of my existence.” She lifted her head to touch Peter’s cheek with her lips in reassurance. “No.

Peter, I never came to love him. I never loved before you. But I

stood in vast awe of him, like a member of a primitive tribe worships the lightning and the thunder. It was like that. He dominated my existence more than a father, more than a teacher, as much as a god but less, very much less than a lover. He was crude and strong. He did not make love, he could only rut and tup like the bull he was.” She broke off and looked seriously at him. “Do you understand that, Peter?

Perhaps I explained it badly?” No,” he assured her. “You explained it very well.”

“Physically he did not move me, his smell and the hairiness. He had hair on his shoulders and like a pelt down his back.

His belly was bulging and hard as iron-” She shivered briefly. ” But I had been trained to be able to ignore that. To switch off something in the front of my brain.

Yet in all other ways he fascinated me. He goaded me to think forbidden thoughts, to open vaults of my mind that my training had securely locked. All right, he taught me about power and its trappings. You accused me of that, Peter, and I admit it. The flavour of power and money was to my taste. I like it. I like it very much indeed. Aaron introduced me to that. He showed me how to appreciate fine and beautiful things, for he was only physically a bull and he had a wonderful appreciation of the refinements of life he made me come completely alive. Then he laughed at me. God, I can still hear the bellow of his laughter, and see that great hairy belly shaking with it.” She paused to remember it, almost reverently, and then she chuckled her own husky little laugh.

“My fine little communist lady,”” he mocked me. “Yes, Peter, it was I who was deceived, he had known from the beginning who I was. He also knew about the school at Odessa. He had accepted me as a challenge, certainly he loved me or his version of love, but he took me knowingly and corrupted my pure ideological convictions. Only then did I learn that all the information which I had been able to pass to

Moscow had been carefully screened by Aaron.

He doubled me, as I had been sent to double him. He was Mossad,

but of course you know that. He was a Zionist, you know that also.

And he made me realize that I was a Jewess, and what it meant to be that. He showed me every fatal flaw in the doctrine of Universal

Communism, he convinced me of democracy and the Western Capitalist system and then he recruited me to Mossad-” She stopped again, and shook her head vehemently.

To believe that I could have wished to destroy such a one. That I

could have ordered his abduction and mutilation Towards the end, when he was getting weak, when the pain was very bad, that was the closest

I

ever came to loving him, the way a mother loves a child. He became pathetically dependent upon me; he used to say the only thing that could lull the pain was my touch. I used to sit for hours rubbing that hairy belly feeling that awful thing growing bigger inside him each day, like a cauliflower or a grotesque foetus. He would not let them cut it. He hated them, “butchers” he called them. “Butchers with their knives and rubber tubes ”” She broke off and Peter realized that her eyes were filled with tears. He hugged her a little more firmly and waited for her to recover.

“It must have been about this time that Caliph made contact with

Aaron. Thinking back I can remember the time when he became suddenly terribly agitated. It made little sense to me then, but he held long diatribes about right-wing tyranny being indistinguishable from tyranny of the left. He never mentioned the name Caliph, I do not think Caliph had yet used that name and I do believe that Aaron would eventually have told me of the contact if he had lived. It was -the way e was,

even with in detail, me, he could be as wary and subtle as he could be overpowering. He would have told me of Caliph but Caliph saw to it that he did not.” She pulled away from Peter’s arms so she could again see his face.

“You must understand, cheri, that much of this I have learned only recently in the last few weeks. Much of it I can only piece together like a jig puzzle pardon, a jig-saw puzzle.” She corrected herself swiftly. “But this is what must have happened. Caliph contacted Aaron with a proposition.

It was a very simple proposition. He was invited to become a partner of Caliph. Aaron was to make a substantial financial contribution to Caliph’s war-chest, and to place his privileged knowledge and lines of influence at Caliph’s disposal. In return he would have a hand in engineering Caliph’s brave new world. It was a miscalculation On Caliph’s part, perhaps the only mistake he has made up to now. He had misjudged Aaron Altmann. Aaron turned him down flat but much more dangerously Caliph had made the mistake of revealing his identity to Aaron. I expect that he had to do that in an effort to convince Aaron. You see, Aaron was not a man who would indulge in a game of code names and hidden identities. That much Caliph had divined correctly. So he had to confront Aaron face to face, and when he discovered that Aaron would not join in a campaign of murder and extortion no matter how laudable the ultimate ends Caliph had no choice. He took Aaron, killed him after torturing him hideously for information that could have been useful, mainly information about his

UM I Mossad connection I imagine. Then he persuaded me to pay the ransom. He won two major tricks with a single card.

He silenced Aaron, and he gained the twenty-five million for his war-chest.”

“How did you learn this? If only you had explained to me before ” Peter heard the bitterness in his own voice.

“I did not know it when we first met, please believe me. I

will tell you how I learned it, but please be patient with me. Let me tell it as it happened.”

“I am sorry, “he said simply.

“The first time I heard the name “Caliph” was the day I delivered the ransom. I told you about that, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“So we come now to your part. I heard of you for the first time with the Johannesburg me hunt down Caliph. I found out about you, Peter. I was even able to have a computer printout on you-” She paused, and there was that mischievous flash in her eye again. “- I will admit to being very impressed with the formidable list of your ladies.” Peter held up both hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Never again,” he pleaded. “Not another word agreed?”

“Agreed.”

She laughed, and then, “I’m hungry, and my throat is sore again with all this talking.” They crossed the island again, with their bare feet baking on the sun-heated sand, and went back on board the Chris, craft.

The chef had stocked the refrigerator with a cornucopia of food,

and Peter opened a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne.

“You’ve got expensive tastes,” he observed. “I don’t know if I

can afford to keep you on my salary.”

“I’m sure we could arrange a raise from your boss,” she assured him with the twinkle in her eyes.

In tacit agreement they did not mention Caliph again until they had eaten.

There is one other thing you must understand, Peter.

I am of Mossad, but I do not control them. They control me. It was the same with Aaron. Both of us were and are very valuable agents,

possibly amongst the most valuable of all their networks, but I do not make decisions, nor am I able to have access to all their secrets.

“Mossad’s single-minded goal is the safety and security of the state of Israel. It has no other reason for existence. I was certain that Aaron had made a full report to Mossad of Caliph’s identity,

that-he had detailed the proposition that Caliph had proposed and I

suspect that Mossad had ordered Aaron to cooperate with Caliph-“

“Why?” Peter demanded sharply.

“I do not know for certain but I can think of two reasons.

Caliph must have been such a powerful and influential man that his support would have been valuable.

Then again I suspect that Caliph had pro-Israeli leanings, or professed to have those leanings. Mossad finds allies where it can,

and does not question their morals. I think they ordered Aaron to cooperate with Caliph but-“

“But?” Peter prompted her.

“But you do not order a man like Aaron to go against his deepest convictions, and under that forbidding exterior Aaron Altmann was a man of great humanity. I think that the reason for his agitation was the conflict of duty and belief that he was forced to endure. His instinct warned him to destroy Caliph, and his duty-” She shrugged, and picked up her fluted champagne glass, twisting it between those long slim fingers and studying the pinpricks of bubbles as they rose slowly through the pale golden wine. When she spoke again she had changed direction disconcertingly.

“A thousand times I had tried to discover what was so different between you and me than with the other men I have known. Why none of them could move me and yet with you it was almost instantaneous—”

She looked up at him again as though she was still seeking the reason.

Of course, I knew so much about you. You had the qualities I admire in another human being, so I was disposed favourably but there are other qualities you cannot detail on a computer printout nor capture in a photograph. There was something about you that made me ” She made a helpless gesture as she searched for the word. You made me tingle.”

“That’s a good word, Peter smiled.

“And I had never tingled before. So I had to be very sure.

It was a new experience to want a man merely because he is gentle and strong and-” she chuckled, ” just plain sexy.

You are sexy, you know that, Peter, but also you are something else-” She broke off. “No, I am not going to flatter you any more. I

do not want you to get swollen ankles-” mixing the French idiom quaintly with the English, and this time not correcting herself. She went straight on. “Caliph must have realized that I had recruited a dangerous ally. He made the attempt to kill you that night on the

Rambouillet road-“

“They were after you,” Peter cut in.

“Who, Peter? Who was after me?”

“The Russians by that time they knew you were a double agent.”

“Yes, they knew-” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “I had thought about it, of course, and there had been two previous attempts on me, but I do not think the attempt on the Rambouillet road was Russian.”

“All right, Caliph then, but after you not me,” Peter suggested.

“Perhaps, but again I do not think so. My instinct tells me they had the right target. They were after you.”

“I would have to agree,”

Peter said. “I think I was followed when I left Paris that evening-“

and he told her about the Citroin. I think they knew that I was alone in the Maserati.”

“Then we accept it was Caliph,“she stated flatly.

or Mossad, Peter murmured, and her eyes slowly widened, turning a darker thoughtful green as Peter went on.

“What if Mossad did not want an Atlas man getting close to their star agent, they didn’t want you to have an ally in your hunt for

Caliph? What if they just didn’t want me cluttering up the carefully rehearsed scenario?”

“Peter, it’s very deep water-” and there are packs of sharks.”

“Let’s leave that night on the Rambouillet road for the moment,” she suggested. “It merely complicates the story I am trying to tell you.”

“All right,” Peter agreed. “We can come back to it, if we have to.”

“The next significant move was the abduction of

Melissa-Jane,” she said, and Peter’s expression changed, becoming flat and stony.

“The choice of the victim was genius-inspired,” she said.

“But it required no special knowledge of you or your domestic arrangements. There was no secret that you had an only child, and it needed but a casual appraisal of your character to understand how powerful a lever she could be

“Magda dipped the tip of her finger into the champagne and then sucked it thoughtfully, pursing her lips and frowning slightly.

“You must understand that by this time I had faced the fact that I

was in love with you. The gift was supposed to affirm that-” She flushed slightly under her honey tan, and it was appealing and childlike. He had never seen her blush before and it twisted something in his chest.

“The book,” he remembered. “The Cornwallis Harris first edition.”

“My first love gift ever. I bought it when I finally admitted it to myself but I was determined that I would not admit it to you. I am oldfashioned enough to believe the man must speak first.”

“I did.”

“God, I’ll never forget it,” she said fervently, and they both thought of the savage confrontation the previous day which had ended incongruously in a declaration of love.

“I try to be unconventional,” he said, and she shook her head smiling.

“You succeed, mon amour, oh how you succeed.” Then she sobered again. “I was in love with you. Your distress was mine. The child was a lovely girl, she had captivated me when we met and on top of all that I felt deadly responsible for her plight. I had inveigled you into joining my hunt for Caliph, and because of that you had lost your daughter.” He bowed his head slightly, remembering how he had believed that she had engineered it. She recognized the gesture.

“Yes, Peter. For me it was the cruel lest stroke. That you should believe it of me. There was nothing that I would not have done to give her back to you and yet there seemed nothing that I could do.

My contacts with French intelligence had nothing for me. They had no inkling of how or where the child was being held and my control at

Mossad was unaccountably evasive. Somehow I had the feeling that

Mossad had the key to the kidnapping. If they were not directly involved they knew more than anybody else. I have already explained that I believed Aaron had given them the identity of Caliph. If that was so, then they must know something that could have helped you to recover your child but from Paris I was powerless to gather that information.

I had to go in person to Israel and confront my control there. It was the one chance that I could get them to cooperate. They might believe my value as an agent was worth enough to give me a lead to

Melissa-Jane-“

“You threatened Mossad with resignation?” Peter asked wonderingly. “You would have done that for me?”

“Oh, Peter, don’t you understand? I loved you and I had never been in love before. I

would have done anything for you.”

“You make me feel humble, he said.

She did not reply, but let the statement stand as though she were savouring it, then she sighed contentedly and went on. “I left everything in Paris. I have an established routine for disappearing when it is necessary. Pierre took me to Rome in the Lear; from there

I

telephoned you but I could not tell you what I was going to do. Then

I

switched identity and took a commercial flight to Tel Aviv. My task in

Israel was difficult, much more difficult than I had bargained for. It was five days before my control would see me. He is an old friend.

No! perhaps not a friend, but we have known each other a long time.

He is the deputy director of Mossad. That is how highly they value my services, to give me such an important controller, but still it took five days before he would see me, and he was cold.

There was no help they could give me, he said. They knew nothing.” She chuckled. “You have never seen me when I want something really badly, Peter. Ha! What a battle.

There is much I knew that would embarrass Mossad with her powerful allies of the West with France and Great Britain and the U.S.A. - I

threatened to hold a Press conference in New York. He became less cold, he told me that the security of the State took precedence over all personal feelings, and I said something very rude about the security of the State, and reminded him of some outstanding business which I would happily leave outstanding. He became warmer but all this was taking time, days, many days, too many days. I was going crazy. I remembered how they had found Aaron’s body, and I could not sleep at night for worrying about that lovely child. And you, oh

Peter, you will never know how I prayed to a god that I was not too sure of. You will never know how I wanted to be with you to comfort you. I wanted so desperately just to hear your voice but I could not break my cover from Tel Aviv.

I could not even telephone you, nor send you a letter She broke off. I hoped you would not believe bad things of me. You would not believe that I did not care. That I was not prepared to help you. I

could only hope that I would be able to bring you some information of value to prove it was not true but I never dreamed that one day you would believe that it was I who had taken your daughter and tortured her.”

“I’m sorry, “he said quietly.

“No, do not say you are sorry. We were both Caliph’s playthings.

There is no blame on you.” She laid her hand upon his arm and smiled at him. “It was not you alone who believed bad things. For at last I had prevailed on my Mossad control to give me some little scraps of information.

At first he denied completely that they had ever heard of

Caliph, but I risked lying to him. I told him that Aaron had told me he had reported the Caliph contact. He gave ground. Yes, he admitted.

They knew of Caliph, but they did not know who he was. I hammered on,

demanding to see my controller each day, driving him as mad as I was until he threatened to have me deported even. But each time we met I

wheedled and bullied a little more from him.

“At last he admitted, “All right, we know Caliph but he is very dangerous, very powerful and he will become more powerful God willing, he will become one of the most powerful men in the world, and he is a friend of Israel. Or rather we believe he is a friend of

Israel.”

“I bullied some more and he told me, “We have put an agent close to Caliph, very close to him, and we cannot jeopardize this agent. He is a valuable agent, very valuable but very vulnerable to Caliph. We cannot take the chance that Caliph could trace information back to him.

We have to protect our man. “Now I threatened, and he told me the agent’s code name to protect both of us should we ever have to make contact. The code-name is “CACTUS FLOWER”.”

“That was all?” Peter asked, with evident disappointment.

“No, my control gave me another name. As a sop and as a warning. The name they gave me was so close to Caliph as to be virtually the same. Again he warned me that he was giving me the name for my own protection.”

“What was it?” Peter demanded eagerly.

“Your name,” she said softly. “Stride.” Peter made an irritable gesture of dismissal. “My name is nonsensical. Why would I kidnap and mutilate my own daughter and Cactus Flower. He might as well have said, “Kentucky Fried Chicken”.”

“Now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”

Peter caught himself, realizing suddenly that he had been too quick to dismiss these scraps of information. He stood up and paced the deck of the Chriscraft with choppy, agitated steps, frowning heavily. “Cactus

Flower,” he repeated. “Have you ever heard it before?”

“No,” she shook her head.

“Since then?”

“No,“again.

He searched his memory, trying for a sympathetic echo.

There was none.

“All right.” He accepted that as having no immediate If value.

“We’ll just remember it for now. Let’s come to my name Peter Stride.

What did you make of that?”

“It didn’t mean anything then, except as a shock.

Strangely enough I did not immediately think of you, but I thought of confusion between the kidnapper and the Victim’s dna.” Stride?” he asked. “Peter Stride? I don’t understand.”

“No, well Melissa-Jane is a Stride also.”

“Yes, of course. They didn’t give you the name

Peter Stride then?”

“No. Just Stride.”

“I see.” Peter stopped in mid-pace as an idea struck him and stared out thoughtfully to where the ocean met a blue horizon.

“But they gave me your full name later,” she interrupted his thoughts.

“When?”

“After we received the news that Melissa-Jane had been rescued. Of course, I wanted to return to Paris immediately to be with you. I was able to get onto a flight from Ben, Gurion Airport six hours after we heard the news. My heart was singing, Peter.

Melissa-Jane was safe, and I was in love.

I was going to be with you very soon. At the airport, while I was going through the security check before departure, the policewoman took me aside to the security office. My control was waiting for me there. He had rushed out from Tel Aviv to catch me before I left for home, and he was very worried. They had just received an urgent message from Cactus Flower. General Peter Stride was now definitely

Caliph -motivated, and would assassinate me at the first opportunity,

he told me. And I laughed at him but he was deadly serious. “My dear Baroness, Cactus Flower is a firstclass man. You must take this warning seriously,” he kept repeating.” Magda shrugged. “I still did not believe it, Peter. It was impossible. I loved you, and I knew you loved me although perhaps you had not yet realized that yourself. It was crazy.

But on the aircraft I had time to think. My control at Mossad has never been wrong before. Can you imagine my dilemma now how dearly I

wanted to be with you, and yet I was now terrified not that you would kill me. That did not seem important but that you would truly turn out to be Caliph. That was what really frightened me. You see, I had never loved a man before. I don’t think I could have stood it.” She was quiet for a while, remembering the pain and confusion, and then she shook her head so that the thick fall of dark shimmering hair rustled around her shoulders.

“Once I reached Paris, my first concern was to learn that you and

Melissa-Jane were safe at Abbots Yew, and then I could begin to try and find out how much substance there was in Cactus Flower’s warning but until I could count on how safe it was I could not take the chance of being alone with you. Every time you attempted to contact me, I had to deny you, and it felt as though some little part of me was dying.” She reached across and took his hand now, opened the fingers and bowed her head to kiss the palm and then held it to her cheek as she went on.

“A hundred times I convinced myself that it could not be true, and

I was on the point of going to you. Oh, Peter finally I could take it no longer. I decided to meet you at Orly that day and find out one way or the other, end the terrible uncertainty, I had the grey wolves with me, a” you remember, and they had been warned to expect trouble I

didn’t tell them to watch you,” she explained quickly, as if You were part of Caliph, you see, and it would have been the wise thing to do.

I admit that I thought of it, Peter. Have you killed, before you could kill V: me but it was only a thought and it did not go farther than that. Instead I went on with the business of living, work has always been an opiate for me. If I work hard enough I can forget anything but this time it didn’t turn out that way. I’ve said it before, but it explains so much that I will say it again. I had never been in love before, Peter, and I could not turn it off. It tormented me, and I

cherished doubts about Cactus Flower’s warning and what I had seen so clearly in the lounge at Orly Airport. It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be true I loved you and you loved me, and you just couldn’t be plotting to kill me. I almost convinced myself of that.” She laughed curtly, but it had no humour in the sound, only the bitterness of disillusion.

“I came out here-” she made a gesture that embraced sea and sky and islands to be away from the temptation of going to you. A

sanctuary where I could recover from my wounds and begin to get over you. But it didn’t work, Peter.

It was worse here. I had more time to think, to torture myself with wild speculation and grotesque theories. There was only one way.

Finally I recognized that. I would bring trying to dispel any memory of disloyalty, “but if you had tried to get at me they would have “She broke off, and let his hand fall away from her cheek. “The moment you walked into the private lounge at Orly, I saw it was true. I could sense it, there was an aura of death around you. It was the most frightening and devastating moment of my life, you looked like a different man not the Peter Stride I knew your whole face seemed to be altered and restructured by hatred and anger. I kissed you goodbye,

because I knew we could never meet again.” Remembering it her face darkened with sadness, as though a cloud shadow had passed over them.

“I even thought that I had to protect myself by” She gagged the words.

you out here and give you the chance to kill me.” She laughed again, and now there was the old husky warmth in it. “It was the most crazy thing I have ever done in my life but thank God, I did it.”

“We went right to the very brink,” Peter agreed.

“Peter, why didn’t you ask me outright if I was Caliph?” she wanted to know.

“The same reason you didn’t ask me outright if I was plotting to kill you.”

“ she agreed. “We were just caught up in the web that

Caliph had spun for us. I have only one more question, Peter cheri.

If I was Caliph, do you truly believe that I would have been so stupid as to give my telephone number at Rambouillet to the man who kidnapped

Melissa-Jane, and instruct him to ring me for a friendly chat whenever he felt like it?” Peter looked startled, “I thought-” he began, then stopped. No, I didn’t think. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Of course, you wouldn’t have done that and yet, even the cleverest criminals make the most elementary mistakes.”

“Not those who have been trained at the Odessa school,” she reminded him, and seemed immediately to regret the words, for she went on quickly. “So there is my side of the story, Peter. I may have left something out if you can think of anything, then ask me, darling, and I’ll try to fill in any missing pieces.” And so they started once again at the very beginning, and went over the ground minutely, searching for anything they might have overlooked at the first telling of it, this time exhaustively re-examining each fact from every angle, both of them applying their trained minds to the full without being able to come up with more than they already had.

“One thing we must never let out of sight for a moment is the quality of the opposition.” Peter summed it up as the sun began lowering itself towards the western horizon, its majestic progress flanked by cohorts of cumulonimbus cloud rising into towering anvil heads over the scattered islands, like silent nuclear explosions.

“There are layers upon layers, reasons behind reasons, the kidnapping of Melissa-Jane was not merely to force me to assassinate

Kingston Parker, but you as well the proverbial two birds with a third bird to follow. If I had succeeded I would have been hooked into

Caliph for ever.”

“Where do you and I go from here, Peter?” she asked,

tacitly transferring ultimate decision-making to him.

“How about home, right now,” he suggested. “Unless you fancy another night out here.” Peter found that his possessions had been discreetly moved from the guest bungalow to the owner’s significant private quarters on the north tip of the island.

His toilet articles had been laid out in the mirrored master bathroom, which flanked that of the mistress. His clothing, all freshly cleaned and pressed, was in the master’s dressing-room where there was one hundred and fifty-five feet of louvred hanging space Peter paced it out and calculated it would take three hundred suits of clothing.

There were specially designed swinging shelves for another three hundred shirts and racks for a hundred pairs of shoes although all were empty.

His light cotton suit looked as lonely as a single camel in the midst of the Sahara desert. His shoes had been burnished to a gloss that even his batman had never been able to achieve. Despite himself he searched the dressing-room swiftly for the signs of previous occupancy and was ridiculously relieved to find none.

“I could learn to rough it like this,” he told his reflection in the mirror as he combed the damp, darkly curling locks off his forehead.

The sitting-room off the suite was on three levels, and had been decorated with cane furniture and luxuriant tropical plants growing in ancient Greek wine amphoras or in rookeries that were incorporated into the flowing design of the room. The creepers and huge glossy leaves of the plants toned in artistically with jungle-patterned curtaining and the dense growth of exotic plants beyond the tall picture windows yet the room was cool and inviting, although the sound of air-conditioning was covered by the twinkle of a waterfall down the cunningly contrived rock face that comprised one curved wall of the room. Tropical fish floated gracefully in the clear pools into which the waterfall spilled,

and the perfume of growing flowers pervaded the room, and their blooms glowed in the subdued lighting.

One of the little golden Polynesian girls brought a tray of four tall frosted glasses for Peter to choose from. They were all filled with fruit and he could smell the sweet warm odour of rum mingled with the fruit. He guessed they would be almost lethal and asked for a whisky, then relented with the girl’s eyes flooded with disappointment.

“I make them myself,” she wailed.

“In that case “He sipped while she waited anxiously.

Tarfait!” He exclaimed, and she giggled with gratification, and went off wriggling her bottom under the brief pa reo like a happy puppy.

Magda came then in a chiffon dress so gossamer-light that it floated about her like a fine green sea mist, through which her limbs gleamed as the light caught them.

He felt the catch in his breathing as she came towards him, and he wondered if he would ever accustom himself to the impact of her beauty.

She took the glass from his hand and tasted it.

“Good,” she said, and handed it back. But when the girl brought the tray she refused with a smile.

They moved about the room, Magda on his arm as she pointed out the rarer plants and fishes.

“I built this wing after Aaron’s death,” she told him, and he realized that she wanted him to know that it contained no memories of another man. It amused him that she should find that important and then he remembered his own furtive search of the dressing-room for signs of a lover before him, and the amusement turned inward.

One wall of the private dining-room was a single sheet of armoured glass, beyond which the living jewels of coral fish drifted in subtly-lit sea caverns and the fronds of magnificent sea plants waved in gentle unseen currents.

Magda ordered the seating changed so they could be side by side in the low lovers” seat facing the aquarium.

do not like you to be far away any more,” she explained, and she picked special tit bits from the serving dishes for his plate.

“This is a speciality of Les Neuf Poissons. You will eat it nowhere else in the world.” She selected small deep-sea crustaceans from a steaming creole sauce of spices and coconut cream and at the end of the meal she peeled chilled grapes from Australia with those delicate fingers, using the long shell-pink nails with the precision of a skilled surgeon to remove the pips and then placing them between his lips with thumb and forefinger.

“You spoil me,“he smiled.

“I never had a doll when I was a little girl,” she explained,

smiling.

A circular stone staircase led to the beach fifty feet below the dining-room and they left their shoes on the bottom step and walked bare-footed on the smooth, damp sand, compacted as hard as cement by the receding tide. The moon was a few days past full, and its reflection drew a pathway of yellow light to the horizon.

“Caliph must be made to believe that he has succeeded,” Peter said abruptly, and she shivered against him.

:“I wish we could forget Caliph for one night.” We cannot afford to forget him for a moment.”

“No, you are right. How do we make him believe that?”

“You have to die, He felt her stiffen. or at least appear to do so. It has to look as though I

killed you.”

“Tell me, “she invited quietly.

“You told me that you have special arrangements for when you want to disappear.”

“Yes, I do.”

“How would you disappear from here if you had to do so?” She thought for only a moment. “Pierre would fly me to

Bora-Bora. I have friends there. Good friends. I would take the island airline to Tahiti-Faaa on another passport and then a scheduled airline in the same name to California or New Zealand.”

“You have other papers?” he demanded.

“yes, of course.” She sounded so surprised by the question, that he expected her to ask.” doesn’t everybody?”

“Fine, he said. “And we’ll arrange a suspicious accident here. A scuba diving accident,

shark attack in deep water, no corpse..”

“What is the point of all this, Peter?”

“If you are dead Caliph is not going to make another attempt to have you killed. “GoodV she agreed.

“So you stay officially dead until we flush Caliph out,” Peter told her, and it sounded like an order but she did not demur as he went on. “And if I carry out Caliph’s evident wishes by killing you, it’s going to make me a very valuable asset I will have proved myself, and so he will cherish me.

It will give me another chance to get close to him. At least it will give me a chance to check out a few wild hunches.”

“Don’t let’s make my death too convincing, my love. I am a great favourite of the police on Tahiti,” she murmured.

“I’d hate to have you end up under the guillotine at Tuarruru.”

Peter woke before her and raised himself on one elbow over her to study her face, delighting to find new planes and angles to her high broad cheekbones, gloating in the velvety texture of her skin, so fine that the pores were indefinable from farther than a few inches. Then he transferred his attention to the curve of her eyelashes that interlocked into a thick dark palisade seeming to seal her eyelids perpetually in sleep yet they sprang open suddenly, the huge black pools of her pupils shrinking rapidly as she focused, and for the first time he realized that the irises were not pure green but were flecked and shot through with gold and violet.

The surprise of finding him over her changed slowly to pleasure,

and she stretched her arms out over her head and arched her back, the way a lazy panther does when it rouses itself. The satin sheet slid down to her waist and she prolonged the stretch a little longer than was necessary, a deliberate display of her body.

“Every other morning of my life that I woke without you there was wasted,” she murmured huskily, and raised her arms still at full stretch to him, folding them gracefully around his neck, still holding her back arched so that the prominent dark-red nipples brushed lightly against the crisp dark mat of curls that covered his own chest.

“Let’s pretend this will last for ever,” she whispered, with her lips an inch from his, and her breath was rich as an overblown rose,

heavy with the smell of vital woman and rising passion; then her lips spread softly, warmly against his and she sucked his tongue deeply into her mouth, with a low moan of wanting and the hard slim body began to work against his, the hands breaking from his neck and hunting down his spine, long curved nails pricking and goading him just short of pain.

His own arousal was so swift and so brutally hard that she moaned again, and the tension went out of her body, it seemed to soften and spread like a wax figure held too close to the flame, her eyelids trembling closed and her thighs falling apart.

“So strong-” she whispered, deep in her throat and he reared up over her, feeling supreme, invincible.

“Peter, Peter,” she cried. “Oh yes like that. Please like that.”

Both of them striving triumphantly for the moment of glory when each was able to lose self and become for a fleeting instant part of the godhead.

Long afterwards they lay side by side in the enormous bed, both of them stretched out flat upon their backs, not touching except for the fingers of one hand intertwined as their bodies had been.

“I will go away-” she whispered, but not now. Not yet.” He did not reply, the effort was beyond him, and her own voice was languorous with a surfeit of pleasure.

“I will make a bargain with you. Give me three days more. Only three days, to be happy like this. For me it is the first time. I

have never known this before, and it may be the last time-” He tried to rouse himself to deny it, but she squeezed his fingers for silence and went on.

“ It may be the last,” she repeated. “And I want to have it all. Three days, in which we do not mention Caliph, in which we do not think of the blood and striving and suffering out there. If you give me that I will do everything that you want me to do. Is it a bargain,

Peter? Tell me we can have that.”

“Yes. We can have that.”

“Then tell me you love me again, I do not think I can hear you say it too often.”

because I have to, He said it often during those magic days, and she had spoken the truth, each time he told her she accepted with as much joy as the last time, and always each seemed to be within touching distance of the other.

Even when tearing side by side across the warm. flat waters of the lagoon, leaning back with straight arms on the tow lines, skis hissing angrily and carving fiercely sparkling wings of water from the surface as they wove back and forth in a pas de deux across the streaming, creaming water, laughing together in the wind and the engine roar of the Chriscraft, Hapiti the Polynesian boatman on the flying bridge looking back with a great white grin of sympathy for their joy.

Finning gently through mysterious blue and dappled depths, the only sound the wheezing suck and blow of their scuba valves and the soft clicking and the eternal echoing susurration that is the pulse beat of the ocean, holding hands as they sank down to the long abandoned hull of the Japanese aircraft carrier, now overgrown with a waving forest of sea growth and populated by a teeming fascinating multitude of beautiful and bizarre creatures.

Flying silently down the sheer steel cliff of the canted flight deck, which seemed to reach down into the very oceanic depths, so that there was the eerie fear of suddenly being deprived of support and falling down to where the surface light blued out in nothingness.

Pausing to peer through their glass face-plates into the still gaping wounds rent into the steel by aerial bombs and high explosive,

and then entering through those cruel caverns cautiously as children into a haunted house and emerging victoriously with carrier nets of trophies, coins and cutlery, brass and porcelain.

Strolling on the secluded beaches of the outer islands, still hand in hand, naked in the sunlight.

Fishing the seething tide-race through the main channel at full spring tide, and shouting with excitement as the golden amberjack came boiling up in the wake, bellies flashing like mirrors, to hit the dancing feather lures, and send the Penn reels screeching a wild protest, and the fibreglass rods nodding and kicking.

Out in the humbling silences of the unrestricted ocean, when even the smudge of the islands disappeared beyond the wave crests for minutes at a time, with only the creak and whisper of the rigging, the trembling pregnancy of the main sail, and the rust leas the twin hulls of the big Hobie cat knifed the tops off the swells.

Strolling the long curving beaches in the moonlight, searching for the heavenly bodies that so seldom show through the turbid skies of

Europe Orion the hunter and the Seven Sisters exclaiming at the stranger constellations of this hemisphere governed by the great fixed cross in the southern heavens.

Each day beginning and ending in the special wonder and mystery of the circular bed, in loving that welded their bodies and their souls together each time more securely.

Then on the fourth day day Peter woke to find her gone, and for a moment experienced an appalling sensation of total loss.

When she came back to him he did not recognize her for a breath of time.

Then he realized that she had cut away the long dark tresses of her hair, cropped it down short so that it curled close against her skull, like the petals of a dark flower. It had the effect of making her seem even taller. Her neck like the stem of the flower,

longer, and the curve of the throat accentuated so that it became delicate and swan-like.

She saw his expression, and explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

“I thought some change was necessary, if I am to leave under a new identity. It will grow again, if you want it that way.” She seemed to have changed completely herself, the languid amorous mood given way to the brisk businesslike efficiency of before. While they ate a last breakfast of sweet yellow papaya and the juice of freshly squeezed limes she explained her intentions, as she went swiftly through the buff envelope that her secretary had silently laid beside her plate.

There was a red Israeli diplomatic passport in the envelope.

“I will be using the name Ruth Levy-” and she picked up the thick booklet of airline tickets, and I have decided to go back to Jerusalem.

I have a house there. It’s not in my name, and I do not think anybody else outside of Mossad is aware of it. It will be an ideal base, close to my control at Mossad. I will try to give you what support I can,

try to get further information to assist you in the hunt-” She passed him a typed sheet of notepaper.

That is a telephone number at Mossad where you can get a message to me. Use the name Ruth Levy.” He memorized the number while she went on talking, and then shredded the sheet of paper.

“I have modified the arrangements for my departure,” she told him.

“We will take the Chriscraft across to Bora-Bora.

It’s only a hundred miles. I will radio ahead. My friends will meet me off the beach after dark.” They crept in through a narrow passage in the coral with all the lights on the Chriscraft doused,

Magda’s boatman using only what was left of the waning moon and his own intimate knowledge of the islands to take her in.

“I wanted Hapiti to see me go ashore alive, “she whispered quietly,

leaning against Peter’s chest to draw comfort from their last minutes together. “I did not exaggerate the danger you might be in if the local people thought what we want Caliph to think. Hapiti will keep his mouth shut-” she assured him and will back up your story of a shark attack, unless you order him to tell the truth.”

“You think of everything.”

“I have only just found you, monsieur she chuckled. “I

do not want to lose you yet. I have even decided to speak a word to the Chief of Police on Tahiti, when I pass through.

He is an old friend. When you get back to Les Neuf Poissons, have my secretary radio Tahiti-” She went on quietly, covering every detail of her arrangements, and he could find no emissions. She was interrupted by a soft hail from out of the darkness and Hapiti throttled the diesels back to idle. They drifted down closer to the loom of the island. A canoe bumped against the side, and Magda turned quickly in his arms, reaching up for his mouth with hers.

“Please be careful, Peter,” was all that she said, and then she broke away and stepped down into the canoe as Hapiti handed down her single valise. The canoe pushed away immediately, and was lost in the dark. There was nothing to wave at, and Peter liked it better that way, but still he stared back over the stern into the night as the

Chriscraft groped blindly for the channel again.

There was a hollow feeling under his ribs, as though part of himself was missing; he tried to fill it with a memory of Magda that had amused him because it epitomized for him her quick and pragmatic mind.

When the news of your death hits the market, the bottom is going to drop out of Altmann stock.” He had realized this halfway through their final discussion that morning. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He was troubled by the complication.

“I had,” she smiled serenely. “I estimate it will lose a hundred francs a share within the first week after the news breaks.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

“Not really.” She gave that sudden wicked grin. “I

telexed a buying order to Zurich this morning. I expect to show a profit of not less than a hundred million francs when the stock bounces back.” Again the mischievous flash of green eyes “I do have to be recompensed for all this inconvenience, tu the senses pas?” And although he still smiled at the memory, the hollow place remained there inside him.

ierre flew the Tahitian police out to Les Neod Poissons in the

Tri-Islander, and there followed two days of questions and statements.

Nearly every member of the community wished to make a statement to the police, there had seldom been such entertainment and excitement available on the islands.

Nearly all of the statements were glowing eulogies to To Baronne”

delivered to the accompaniment of lamentation and weeping. Only Hapiti had first-hand information and he made the most of this position of importance, embroidering and gilding the tale. He was even able to give a positive identification of the shark as a “Dead White’ The

English name startled Peter until he remembered that the movie Jaws was in the island’s cassette video library and was undoubtedly the source of the big boatman’s inspiration.

Hapiti went on to describe its fangs as long and sharp as cane knives, and to give a gruesome imitation of the sound they made as they closed on “La Baronne” Peter would willingly have gagged him to prevent those flights of imagination, which were not supported by

Peter’s own statement, but the police sergeant was greatly impressed and encouraged Hapiti to further acts of creation with cries of astonishment.

On the last evening there was a funeral feast on the beach for

Magda. It was a moving ritual, and Peter found himself curiously affected when the women of the island, swaying and wailing at the water’s edge, cast wreaths of frangipani blooms onto the tide to be carried out beyond the reef.

Peter flew back to Tahiti-Faaa with the police the following morning, and they stayed with him, flanking him discreetly, on the drive to the headquarters of gendarmerie in the town. However, his interview with the Chief of Police was brief and courteous clearly

Magda had been there before him and if there was no actual exchange of winks and nudges, the commissioner’s handshake of farewell was firm and friendly.

“Any friend of La Baronne is a friend here.” And he used the present tense, then sent Peter back to the airport in an official car.

The UTA flight landed in California through that sulphurous eye-stinging layer of yellow air trapped between sea and mountains.

Peter did not leave the airport, but after he had shaved and changed his shirt in the men’s room he found a copy of the Wail Street Journal in the firstclass Pa nAm Clipper lounge. It was dated the previous day, and the report of Magda Altmann’s death was on Page Three. It was a full column, and Peter was surprised by the depth of the Altmann

Industries involvement in the American financial scene. The complex of. holdings was listed, followed by a resume of Baron Aaron Altmann’s career and that of his widow. The cause of death as given by the

Tahitian police was “Shark Attack” while scuba diving in the company of a friend General Peter Stride Peter was grimly satisfied that his name was mentioned. Caliph would read it, wherever he was, and draw the appropriate conclusion. Peter could expect something to happen now; he was not quite sure what, but he knew that he was being drawn closer to the centre like a fragment of iron to the magnet.

He managed to sleep for an hour, in one of the big armchairs,

before the hostess roused him for the Pan-Am Polar flight to London’s

Heathrow.

He called Pat Stride, his sister-in-law, from Heathrow Airport.

She was unaffectedly delighted to hear his voice.

Steven is in Spain, but I am expecting him home tomorrow before lunch, that is if his meetings go the way he wants them. They want to build a thirty-six hole golf course at San Istaban-” Steven’s companies owned a complex of tourist hotels on the Spanish coast ” and Steven had to go through the motions with the Spanish authorities. But, why don’t you come down to Abbots Yew tonight? Alex and Priscilla are here, and there will be an amusing house party for the weekend-” He could hear the sudden calculating tone in Pat’s voice as she began instinctively to run through the shortlist of potential mates for

Peter.

After he had accepted and hung up, he dialled the Cambridge number and was relieved that Cynthia’s husband, George Barrow, answered.

Give me a Bolshevik intellectual over a neurotic ex-wife any day,

he thought as he greeted Melissa-Jane’s stepfather warmly. Cynthia was at a meeting of the Faculty Wives Association, and Melissa-Jane was auditioning for a part in i a production of Gilbert and Sullivan by the local drama society.

“How is she?” Peter wanted to know.

“I think she is well over it now, Peter. The hand is completely healed. She seems to have settled down.-They spoke for a few minutes more, then ran out of conversation.

The two women were all they had in common.

“Give Melissa-Jane my very best love,” Peter told him, and picked up a copy of The Financial Times from a news, stand on his way to the

Avis desk. He hired a compact and while waiting for it to be delivered he searched swiftly through the newspaper for mention of Magda Altmann.

It was on an inside page, clearly a followup article to a previous report of her death. There had been a severe reaction on the London and European stock exchanges the hundred4raric drop in Altmann stock that Magda had anticipated had already been exceeded on the Bourse and again there was a brief mention of his own name in a repetition of the circumstances of her death. He was satisfied with the publicity,

and with Magda’s judgement in buying back her own stock. Indeed it all seemed to be going a little too smoothly. He became aware of the fateful prickle of apprehension down his spine, his own personal barometer of impending danger.

As always Abbots Yew was like coming home, and Pat met him on the gravel of the front drive, kissed him with sisterly affection and linked her arm through his to lead him into the gracious old house.

“Steven will be delighted,” she promised him. “I expect he will telephone this evening. He always does when he is away.” There was a buff cable envelope propped on the bedside table of the guest room overlooking the stables that was always reserved for Peter. The message originated at BenGurion Airport, Tel Aviv, and was a single word the code he had arranged with Magda to let him know that she arrived safely and without complication. The message gave him a sharp pang of wanting, and he lay in a deep hot bath and thought about her,

remembering small details of conversation and shared experience that suddenly were of inflated value.

While he towelled himself he regarded his image in the steamed mirror with a critical eye. He was lean and hard and burned dark as a desert Arab by the Pacific sun. He watched the play of muscle under the tanned skin as he moved, and he knew that he was as fit and as mentally prepared for action as he had ever been, glad that Magda was safely beyond the reach of Caliph’s talons so that he could concentrate all his energies on what his instincts told him must be the final stage of the hunt.

He went through to his bedroom with the towel around his waist and stretched out on the bed to wait for the cocktail hour in Pat Stride’s rigidly run household.

He wondered what made him so certain that this was the lead which would carry him to Caliph, it seemed so slim a chance and yet the certainty was like a steel thread, and the steel was in his heart.

That made him pause. Once again he went carefully over the changes which had taken place within him since his first exposure to

Caliph’s malignant influence; the fatal miasma of corruption that seemed to spread around Caliph like the poisonous mists from some evil swamp seemed to have engulfed Peter entirely.

He thought again of his execution of the blonde girl at

Johannesburg what seemed like a thousand years before, but with mild surprise realized was months not years ago.

He thought of how he had been prepared to kill both Kingston

Parker and Magda Altmann and realized that contact with violence was brutalizing, capable of eroding the principles and convictions which he had believed inviolate after almost forty years of having lived with them.

If this was so, then after Caliph if he succeeded in destroying him what was there after Caliph? Would he ever be the same man again? Had he advanced too far beyond the frontiers of social behaviour and conscience?

Would he ever go back? he wondered. Then he thought about Magda

Altmann and realized she was his hope for the future, after Caliph there would be Magda.

These doubts were weakening, he told himself. There must be no distractions now, for once again he was in the arena with the adversary. No distraction, no doubts only total concentration on the conflict ahead.

He stood up from the bed and began to dress.

Steven was delighted to have Peter at Abbots Yew again, as Pat had predicted.

He also was tanned from the short stay in Spain, but he had again put on weight, only a few pounds, but it would soon be a serious problem, good food and drink were two of the occupational hazards of success: the most evident but not the most dangerous temptations that face a man who has money enough to buy whatever idly engages his fancy.

Peter watched him covertly during the lunch, studying the handsome head which was so very much like his own, the same broad brow and straight aristocratic nose, and yet was so different in small but significant details, and it was not only Steven’s thick dark mustache.

All right, it’s easy to be wise afterwards, Peter told himself, as he watched his twin brother. Seeing again the little marks, which only now seemed to have meaning. The narrower set of eyes, slightly too close together, so that even when he laughed that deep bluff guffaw of his they seemed still to retain a cold cruel light, the mouth that even in laughter was still too hard, too determined, the mouth of a man who would brook no check to his ambitions, no thwarting of his desires. Or am I imagining it now? Peter wondered. It was so easy to see what you looked for expectantly.

The conversation at lunch dwelt almost exclusively on the prospects for the flat-racing season which had opened at Doncaster the previous weekend, and Peter joined it knowledgeably; but as he chatted he was casting back along the years, to the incidents that might have troubled him more if he had not immediately submerged them under an instinctive and unquestioning loyalty to his twin brother.

There was Sandhurst when Steven had been sent down, and Peter had known unquestioningly that it was unjust.

No Stride was capable of what Steven had been accused of, and he had not even had to discuss it with his brother. He had affirmed his loyalty with a handshake and a few embarrassed muttered words.

“Thank you, Peter. I’ll never forget that,” Steven had told him fervently, meeting Peter’s gaze with steady clear eye.

Since then Steven’s rise had been meteoric through the post-war years in which it seemed almost impossible for even the most able man to amass a great fortune, a man had to have special talents and take terrible risks to achieve what Steven had.

Now sitting at his brother’s board, eating roast saddle of lamb and the first crisp white asparagus shoots of the season flown in from the Continent, Peter was at last covering forbidden ground, examining loyalties which until then had been unquestioned. Yet they were straws scattered by the winds of time, possibly without significance. Peter transferred his thoughts to the present.

“Stride,” Magda’s control at Mossad in Tel-Aviv had said.

Just the two names: “Cactus Flower” and “Stride.” That was fact and not conjecture.

Down the length of the luncheon table Sir Steven Stride caught his brother’s eye.

“Wine with you, my dear fellow.” Steven lifted the glass of claret in the old salute.

“Enchanted, I’m sure.” Peter gave the correct reply, a little ritual between them, a hangover from Sandhurst days, and Peter was surprised at the depth of his regret. Perhaps Caliph has not yet succeeded in corrupting me entirely, Peter thought, as he drank the toast.

After lunch there was another of their brotherly rituals.

Steven signalled it with a jerk of the head and Peter nodded agreement. Peter’s old army duffle coat was in the cupboard below the back staircase with his Wellingtons, and he and Steven changed into rough clothing sitting side by side on the monk’s bench in the rear entrance hall as they had so often before.

Then Steven went through into the gunroom, took down a Purdey

Royal shotgun from the rack, and thrust a handful of cartridges in his coat pocket.

“Damned vixen has a litter of cubs somewhere in the bottoms,

playing merry hell with the pheasant chicks—” he explained as Peter asked a silent question. “It goes against the grain a bit to shoot a fox but I must put a stop to her haven’t had a chance at her yet-” and he led the way out towards the stream.

It was almost a formal beating of the bounds, the leisurely circuit of the estate boundaries that the two brothers always made on

Peter’s first day at Abbots Yew, another old comfortable tradition which allowed them time to have each other’s news and reaffirm the bond between them They sauntered along the riverbank, side by side, moving into single file with Steven leading when the path narrowed and turned away from the stream and went up through the woods.

Steven was elated by the success of his visit to Spain, and he boasted of his achievements in obtaining another parcel of prime seaftont property on which to build the new golf course and to extend the hotel by another five hundred rooms.