the periods of sleep had been mercifully dreamless. When her door
opened, she expected to find the tall Bantu housekeeper waiting behind
it. Instead she saw Pieter Smuts, Horn's Afrikaner security chief
Smuts's smile did not quite reach his eyes.
'I'm here to give you the threepenny tour,' he announced.
'That's not really necessary,' Ilse said uneasily. 'I'm sure I can find
my way around.'
Smuts sighed with enough resignation to indicate he would remain in the
doorway as long as he had to. After closing the door and dressing, Ilse
allowed herself to be led out of the room and down the long corridor.
The lanky Afrikaner towered above her. Again she felt like a child
being led through a museum. Smuts delivered his information in a
monotone.
'Horn House,' he said, 'stands in one of the most isolated regions of
South Africa-the northeast corner of the northern Transvaal. Boer
country. The nearest town is Giyani to the west, and the nearest
landmark to the east is the Kruger National Park. Not many -roads up
here to speak of.'
Point taken, Ilse thought bitterly.
'The estate itself is one of a kind, as you'll see when you get outside.
The residential compound encompasses twelve thousand square feet of
living space. We've got an indoor swimming pool, a gymnasium, an art
gallery, an astronomical observatory, and something quite unusual for a
private dwelling-a hospital. Because of Herr Horn's advanced age, he
suffers from a number of chronic conditions, but here he is able to
obtain optimum health care at all times. The medical complex is at the
end of this hall. We have a resident cardiologist on duty at all
times.'
'My God,' Ilse said, genuinely shocked.
'The cost of maintaining this unit out on the veld like this would
bankrupt a small town,' Smuts boasted, 'but for Herr Horn ... ah, here
we are.'
They had come to a door with no knob; brass letters on its face read
KRANKENHAUS. SMUTS pushed open the door. 'After you,' he said.
The astringent smell of alcohol and disinfectant wrinkled Ilse's nose.
She found herself in a large examining room replete with all the
paraphernalia of modern medicine. Blood chemis@ machines, centrifuges,
autoclaves, and various instruments lined the shining countertops. Two
doors were set in the opposite wall. Smuts led her to the one marked
icu.
Behind it was a fully equipped intensive care facility. Cardiac monitor
screens, a defibrillator cart, a ventilator, and two cylinders of oxygen
waited beside an electric hospital bed. Ilse wondered if Horn was in
poorer health than he appeared. 'Very impressive,'' she said, not
knowing what else to say.
Smuts nodded curtly and led her out, closing the door softly behind
them. The other door was marked only with a warning symbol-three
inverted yellow triangles inside a circle of black. Smuts opened the
door and stepped inside, motioning for Ilse to follow.
I-rhis is our X-ray unit,' he said. 'It's state of the art, but I'm
afraid our cardiologist has to do double duty as a radiographer.
He's not too happy about that, as YOu might@' The moment Ilse stepped
across the threshold, someone seized her violently from behind, pinning
her arms to her sides. Before she could scream, Smuts stuffed a
handkerchief into her mouth. The unseen attacker lifted her off her
feet, then heaved her high and dropped her heavily onto a hard surface.
An ugly, sweating black face appeared above her; powerful hands crushed
her flailing arms against the cold Formica while Smuts worked at
something she could not see. Primal terror gripped her. Even without
seeing the thick leather belts that now bound her to the table, lase
registered and identified the sensation. Restraining straps, she
thought wildly. White light speared into her brain from above.
'Be still!' Smuts shouted. 'Be still!'
Ilse drew in all the breath she could and tried to scream, but the
bunched handkerchief in her mouth choked her effort to an anguished
groan. Her throat felt near to bursting. The man panting above her was
so black he looked blue. He buckled a thick strap across Ilse's chest,
then forced her right cheek flat against the table and fastened another
strap across her head. All she could see now was a huge lead shield.
Pieter Smuts's hard, angular face floated inside a@ thick bubble window
set in its middle.
Ilse struggled to rise, but the heavy-buckled straps held her
motionless. When she tried to shift even slightly, the@ straps scoured
her flesh like sandpaper. As she lay there, chest heaving, Smuts
stepped around the lead shield. From his right hand a long cable
dropped to, the floor and snaked around the shield to the X-ray machine.
With his left hand Smuts reached up and took hold of a hammerhead-shaped
mechanism suspended above Ilse's head. The X-ray tube.
Painted a metallic orange, it hovered above Ilse like an alien being, a
deadly thing that moved silently on tracks and cables. Smuts raised the
housing to its highest position; then he returned to safety behind the
lead shield.
Two seconds later every muscle in Ilse's body constricted in terror. A
deep electrical surge, a subsonic roar shuddered through the table,
lasting three full seconds before h cease with a sharp clang.
Ilse's mouth went dry. Her from: head beaded with sweat. Just as she
realized what the sound' signaled, it came again, the heart-stopping
buzz of electricity converted into a barrage of irradiated particles and
fired through her body like invisible bullets.
lfer teeth ground furiously as she fought the leather straps. The hide
scraped her flesh raw. Again the awful sound came. Ilse heard herself
screaming, the voice tiny and shrill and meaningless inside her head.
What have I done? What do you want! Without a single word from Smuts,
she had made the mental leap from resistance to abject servitude. She
sought only to know what I was required of her, and she would comply.
Yet still the machine fired. Deeper than sound, she sensed a vibration
barely, within the realm of human perception, the vibration of
accelerated electrons focused into a beam that, even when guided by
healing hands, poured deadly poison into living cells. The sound came
