Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (194 page)

The wind whipped and clawed him, and Gilly O'Shaughnessy's body flopped forward bonelessly onto the wheel, jamming it at a critical moment, so that while Peter used one hand to shove him backwards, the side of the Austin touched the stone wall with a screech of rending metal and a shower of orange sparks. Peter wrenched her back into the road, and she began a series of uncontrolled broadsides, swinging wildly from side to side, touching the wall with another jarring shock,
then swinging back sideways to bounce over the verge, then back again.

She was going over, Peter knew it, and he would be crushed under the metal roof and smeared along the abrasive surface of the macadam road. He should jump now, and take his chances but grimly he stayed with the crazed machine, for Melissa-Jane was in her and he could not leave.

She survived one more skid, and ahead Peter had the glimpse of a barred wooden gate in the wall. Deliberately he turned the front wheels into the direction of the next skid, no longer trying to counteract it, but aggravating it
steering directly for the gate, and the Austin smashed into it.

A wooden beam cartwheeled over Peter's head, and a scalding cloud of steam from the shattered radiator stung his face and hands, and then the Austin was into the open field, bouncing and thudding over the rocks that studded it, the drag of soft muddy earth slowing her, and the steep slope of the hillside against her within fifty feet the front end dropped heavily into a drainage ditch, and the little car shuddered to a halt, canted at an abandoned angle.

Peter slipped over the side and landed on his feet. He jerked open the rear door and a man half fell from the cab.

He dropped onto his knees in the mud, blubbering incoherently and Peter drove his right knee into his face. Bone and cartilage crunched sharply and there was the crackle of breaking teeth.

His voice was cut off abruptly and, as he dropped, Peter chopped him with the stiffened blade of his right hand, a controlled blow judged finely to immobilize but not to kill, and before the unconscious body dropped, Peter had gone in over it, He lifted his daughter out of the
Austin, and the frail wasted body felt unsubstantial in his arms, and the heat of fever and infection burned against his chest.

He was possessed by an almost uncontrollable desire to crush her body to him with all the strength of his arms, but instead he carried her as though she was made of some precious and fragile substance,
stepping carefully over the uneven rocky surface of the field to where the helicopter was settling cumbersomely out of the darkness.

The Thor doctor was still aboard her; he jumped clear before the helicopter touched and ran towards Peter in the brilliant glare of the landing lights.

Peter found he was crooning so. "It's all right now, darling.

It's all over now. It's all finished, my baby I'm here, little one"

Then Peter made another discovery. It was not sweat running down his cheeks and dripping from his chin, and he wondered unashamedly when last it was he had wept.

He could not remember, and it did not seem important, not now, not with his daughter in his arms.

Synthia came down to London, and Peter relived some of those horrors from their marriage.

"Everybody around you always has to suffer, Peter.

"Now it's Melissa-Jane's turn." He could not avoid her, nor her martyred expression, for she was always at Melissa-Jane's bedside.

While he bore her recriminations and barbed accusations, he wondered that she had ever been gay and young and attractive. She was two years younger than he was but she already had the shapeless body and greying mind that made her seem twenty years older.

Melissa-Jane responded almost miraculously to the antibiotics, and although she was still weak and skinny and pale, the doctor discharged her on the third day, and Peter and Cynthia had their final degrading haggling and bargaining session which Melissa-Jane settled for them.

mummy, I'm still so afraid. Can't I go with Daddy just for a few days?" Finally Cynthia agreed with sighs and pained airs that left them both feeling a little guilty. On the drive down to Abbots Yew,
where Steven had invited them for as long as was necessary for
Melissa-Jane's convalescence, she sat very quietly beside Peter, her left hand still in the sling and the finger wearing a small neat white turban. She spoke only after they had passed the Heathrow turn off on the M4.

"All the time I knew you were going to come. I can't remember much else. It was always dark and giddy making things kept changing.

"I'd look at a face and it would fade away, and then we'd be somewhere else-"

"It was the drug they were giving you," Peter explained.

"Yes, I know that. I remember the prick of the needle-"

Reflexively she rubbed her upper arm, and shivered briefly.

"But even with the drug I always knew you were going to come. I remember lying in the darkness listening for your voice. -" There was the temptation to try to pretend it had never happened, and Melissa-Jane had not spoken about it until now but
Peter knew she must be allowed to talk it out.

"Would you like to tell me about it?" he invited gently, knowing that it was essential to the healing process. He listened quietly as she spilled out drug-haunted memories, disjointed scraps of conversation and impressions. The terror was back in her voice when she spoke of the dark one.

"He looked at me sometimes. I remember him looking at me-" And
Peter remembered the cold killer's eyes.

"He is dead now, darling."

"Yes, I know. They told me." She was silent for a moment, and then went on. "He was so different from the one with grey hair. I liked him, the old one. His name was Doctor
Jameson."

"How did you know that?" Peter asked.

"That's what the dark one called him." She smiled.

"Doctor Jameson, I remember he always smelled like cough mixture and I liked him-" The one who had done the amputation, and would have taken her hand as well, Peter thought grimly.

"I never saw the other one. I knew he was there, but I never saw him."

"The other one?" Peter turned to her sharply. "Which other one,
darling?"

"There was another one and even the dark one was afraid of him. I knew that, they were all afraid of him."

"You never saw him?"

"No, but they were always talking about him, and arguing about what he would do--"

"Do you remember his name?" Peter asked, and Melissa-Jane frowned in concentration.

"Did he have a name?" Peter prompted.

"Usually they just talked about him, but, yes, I remember now.

The dark one called him "Casper"."

"Casper?"

"No, not that, not Casper.

Oh, I can't remember." Her voice had risen, a shrill note in terror that ripped at Peter's nerves.

"Don't worry about it." He tried to soothe her, but she shook her head with frustration.

"Not Casper, a name like that. I knew he was the one who really wanted to hurt me they were just doing what he told them. He was the one I was truly afraid of." Her voice ended with a sob, and she was sitting bolt upright in the seat.

"It's over now, darling." Peter swung into the verge of the road and braked to a halt. He reached for her but she was rigid in his arms and at his touch she began to shake uncontrollably. Peter's alarm flared, and he held her to his chest.

"Caliph!" she whispered. "That's his name. Caliph." And she relaxed against him softly, and sighed. The shaking stopped slowly.

Peter went on holding her, trying to control the terrible consuming waves of anger that engulfed him, and it was some little time before he realized suddenly that Melissa-Jane had fallen asleep.

It was as though uttering the name had been a catharsis for her terror, and now she was ready to begin the healing inside.

Peter laid her gently back in the seat and covered her with the angora rug before he drove on, but every few seconds he glanced across to make sure she was at peace.

Twice Peter called Magda Altmann from Abbots Yew, both times to her private number, but she was unobtainable and there was no message for him.

That was five days he had not been able to reach her, not since the Delta Strike which had freed Melissa-jane. She seemed to have disappeared completely, and Peter pondered the implications during the quiet days when he was almost always alone with his daughter.

Then Dr. Kingston Parker arrived at Abbots Yew, and Sir Steven
Stride was delighted to have as his guest such a distinguished statesman.

Kingston Parker's giant personality seemed to fill the beautiful old home. When he put himself out, his graciousness was irresistible. Steven was delighted with him, particularly when he discovered that despite Parker's image as a liberal and his well-known concern with human rights, he was also a champion of the capitalist system, and determined that his country should take more seriously its responsibilities as leader of the Western world. They both deplored the loss of the BI bomber and the delaying of the neutron bomb programme, and the restructuring of America's intelligence agencies.

They spent much of the first afternoon in Steven's redwood-panelled study exploring each other's views, and came out of it fast friends.

When they emerged, Parker completed his conquest of the Stride household by showing he shared with Patricia Stride a scholarly knowledge and love of antique porcelain.

His concern and warmth for Melissa-Jane and his relief at her safety were too spontaneous not to be entirely genuine.

His conquest of that young lady's affections was complete when he went down with her to the stables to meet Florence Nightingale and prove that he was also a fair judge of horseflesh.

"He's a lovely man. I think he is truly an honourable man,"
Melissa-Jane told Peter, when he went up to her bedroom to bid her goodnight "And he's so kind and funny-" Then, lest there be any question of disloyalty, "But you are still my most favourite man in all the world." Her cure and convalescence seemed almost complete, and as
Peter went down to rejoin the company he marvelled again at the resilience of young flesh and young minds.

As usual at Abbots Yew there was glittering and stimulating company at dinner, with Kingston Parker at its centre, but afterwards he and Peter exchanged a single glance down the length of Pat Stride's silver- and candle decorated table and they left them to the port and cognac and cigars and slipped out unobtrusively into the walled rose garden.

While they paced side by side on the crunching gravel pathway,
Kingston Parker stoked his meerschaum and then began to talk quietly.

Once his bodyguard coughed in the shadows where he waited just out of range of their subdued voices, but that was the only intrusion and the spring night was still and balmy. Their conversation seemed utterly incongruous in these surroundings, talk of death and violence, the use and abuse of power, and the manipulations of vast fortunes by a single mysterious figure.

"It's been five days since I arrived in England-" Kingston Parker shrugged. "One does not rush through the echoing passages of
Whitehall. There was much to discuss-" Peter knew that he had met with the Prime Minister on two separate occasions " and it wasn't just
Atlas business, I'm afraid-" Parker was one of the President's confidants. They would have taken full advantage of his visit to exchange views with the British Government. "However, we did discuss
Atlas in depth and detail. You know very well that Atlas has opponents and critics on both sides of the Atlantic. They tried very hard to squash it, and when they could not they saw to it that its power and duties were severely curtailed-" Parker paused and his pipe gurgled.

He flicked out the juices from the mouthpiece onto the gravel path.

"The opponents of Atlas are all highly intelligent concerned and informed men. Their motives and their reasoning in opposing Atlas are laudable. I find myself a little in sympathy despite myself. If you create a strike force such as Atlas, where enormous powers are placed in the hands of a single man or a small elite leadership, you could very well be creating a Frankenstein a monster more frightening than you are setting out to destroy."

"That depends on the man who controls it, Dr. Parker. I believe that they have the right man."

"Thank you, Peter." Parker turned his big shaggy head and smiled. "Won't you please call me Kingston." Peter nodded agreement, while Parker went on. "Atlas has had some spectacular successes at Johannesburg and now in Ireland but that makes it more danger--us. There will be a readier acceptance of the whole concept by the public; if Atlas asks for wider powers, it is more likely they would be granted. And, believe me, if it is to do the job it needs wider powers, Peter. I find myself torn down the centre-"

"And yet,"

Peter pointed out, "we cannot take on the most dangerous animal in the world, man the killer, we cannot do it without arming ourselves in every possible way." Kingston Parker sighed. "And if Atlas achieves those powers, who can say when they will be abused, when will the rule of force supersede the rule of law?"

"The rules have changed. The rule of law is so often powerless in the face -of those who have no respect for the law."

"There is another aspect, Peter. One that I have thought about half my life. What about the rule of unjust law? The laws of oppression and greed. A law that enslaves or deprives a man because of the colour of his face or the god he worships? If a duly constituted parliament makes racial laws or if the General Assembly of the United
Nations declares that Zionism is a form of Imperialism and must be outlawed. What if a handful of men gain control of the world's resources and legally manipulate them in a manner dictated by personal greed to the detriment of all mankind, such as the Committee of the
OPEC, the Shah and the King of Saudi Arabia-" Kingston Parker made a helpless gesture, spreading those long sensitive fingers. "Must we respect those laws? The rule of law, even unjust law, is it sacrosanct?"