Cuban force. With this we will consolidate your position. When it is secure we will be ready for the next step.' 'What will that be?' Abebe asked.
'The emperor must be eliminated,'Ramsey told him. 'To prevent a royalist backlash.' 'Execution?' 'Executions are too public and too emotional.' Ramsey shook his head. 'He is a sick old man. He will simply die, and then...' 'And then an election?' Abebe interjected, and Ramsey looked at him sharply.
Only when he saw the cynical smile on the Ethiopian's thick purple lips did he smile thinly.
'You startled me, comrade,' Ramsey admitted. 'For a moment I thought you were serious. The very last thing we want is an election before we have chosen the new president and the form of government. Nowhere have the masses ever been capable of governing themselves; even less have they been able to choose the persons who should govern them. It is our duty to make that choice for them. later, much later, after you are declared president of a Marxist socialist government, we will hold a controlled and orderly election to confirm our choice.' 'I will need you in Addis, comrade,' Abebe told him. 'I will need your guidance and the strong right hand of Cuba to see the struggle through the dangerous and exciting days ahead.' 'I will be there, comrade,' Ramsey promised him. 'Together, you and I will show the world how a revolution should be conducted.'
There were always risks, Ramsey thought, but they had to be weighed carefully against the possible rewards. Then all possible precautions must be taken to minimize those risks.
It was time for Red Rose to be given access to the child, just as she had been given time to make the initial bonding after Nicholas's birth. She had been allowed then to feel the child feeding at her breast, and to come to know every exquisite detail of the tiny body, but that had been three years ago, and the bond would be weakening. Ramsey had used the threat video, the photographs and the reports from clinic and nursery school to reinforce her maternal instincts. However, three years was a long time, and he sensed that his control over Red Rose was weakening.
She must be rewarded for delivering the authentic Siemens radar report, and taught that co-operation was the only possible avenue open to her. On the other hand, she must not be stimulated to attempt some wild endeavour. She was a strong and wilful personality. She possessed a dangerous spirit, a core ofstrength that Ramsey sensed would be difficult to shatter. She could be cowed, but could she ever be completely subjugated? He was not yet certain. She had to be played with extreme delicacy.
She must not be tempted to believe that this meeting with Nicholas was an indication of leniency. She must be taught that she was held in the trap by bands of steel.
Ramsey had considered all the possible adverse reactions that the visit might generate. The most likely was that Red Rose might conceive some foolhardy idea of escaping with the child or planning a rescue.
He had taken precautions against this. The hacienda was remote. It was the property of a member of the Spanish Communist Party who was on a visit to New York with all his family. Ramsey had moved a section of KGB staff in to cover the meeting.
There were twelve guards strategically placed in and around the hacienda.
All of them were armed. The weapons had come in the diplomatic bag to Madrid, along with the two-way radios and the drugs that might be needed if Red Rose became dangerously hysterical on seeing her son.
He had chosen Spain for the meeting for a good reason. Red Rose must never be allowed to know where Nicholas was being kept. Ramsey was fully aware of the power and 2eo influence of the Courtney family. If Red Rose went to her father, and they knew where the child was being held, then they might hire mercenaries or prevail upon the South African security services to mount some kind of kidnap attempt.
She must be led to believe that Nicholas was being held here in Spain.
It was quite logical, of course. Nicholas had been born here. She knew Ramsey was Spanish. The last time she had seen the boy was in Spain. She had no reason to think that he had been transferred to another country, especially not across the Atlantic Ocean.
They had come in on the Aeroflot flight from Havana to London and transferred to Iberian Airways from Heathrow. After the meeting, Adra and the child would return the same way with two KGB bodyguards, while Ramsey flew south to Ethiopia.
Ramsey stood at the shuttered window in the bell-tower of the hacienda.
Through the slats he looked down at the red-tiled roof that was mellowed and spotted with a century's accumulation of lichen and mosses. The building was of traditional design. Its thick white plastered walls were built around a central courtyard. In the centre of the lawned courtyard was a swimming-pool. An ornamental date palm stood at each corner of the pool.
Below the long graceful fronds of each palm hung bunches of ripening yellow fruit.
From his position in the tower Ramsey could survey not only the courtyard, but also the fields and vineyards surrounding the hacienda. However, he was concealed by the wooden shutters. There were vehicles concealed in the walled lanes that divided the vineyards. They were ready to react to his radio command and cut off any escape-route. Ramsey had placed eight guards around the estate and at windows overlooking the courtyard. One of these was armed with a sniper's rifle, and another with a dart-gun, but he did not really believe there would be a call for them.
What with air fares and the personnel involved, the entire operation had been extremely costly. However, he had been able to use guards and vehicles from the Russian embassy in Madrid, and the owner of the hacienda had not required any payment. Ramsey felt again that sour bum in his stomach when he thought of the parsimony of the finance section and the time that he had to spend filling in expense-sheets and justifying each item to one of the accountants.
How could an accountant ever understand the necessities and priorities of field-operations? How much more could be achieved without this continuous audit to which he was subjected? What price could they place on a nation brought into the fold of Soviet socialism?
The soft crackle of the radio interrupted these unpleasant speculations.
'Da? Yes?' He spoke Russian into the microphone.
'This is Number Three. The vehicle is visual.' That was the guard at the far end of the lane on the south side of the estate.
Ramsey crossed to the southern window in the tower. He could see the pale yellow dust of the approaching car spreading over the vineyards.
'Very well.' He went back to his original position, and nodded to the female signals clerk from the embassy. She sat at the electronic console, with the directional microphone trained down into the courtyard. Every word or sound uttered in the courtyard would be recorded, and the meeting would be filmed on videotape.
, There were, of course, voice-activated microphones and concealed cameras in every room of the hacienda that Red Rose might enter, including the toilets and bathroom. Ramsey had requisitioned this equipment from the embassy in Madrid. The voice-prints and up-to-date photographs would be a nice little spinoff from the main object of the operation.
The car came into view as it turned into the gates of the estate. It was a blue Cortina with diplomatic plates, and it drew up at the front door of the hacienda.
Isabella Courtney was the first to alight, followed by the female embassy guard who had escorted her from the airport. Isabella paused on the paved driveway and looked up at the shuttered windows of the tower, almost as though she sensed his gaze upon her. Ramsey picked up his binoculars and studied her upturned face.
She had changed quite dramatically in the years since he had last seen her.
There were few vestiges of the silly flighty girl remaining. She was a mature woman now. There was poise and determination in the way she carried herself. Her features seemed to have firmed. She was thin, too thin. There were dark smudges below her eyes. Even from this distance he could make out the first faint chiselling of life's hardship and care at the corners of her mouth, and a new hard line to her jaw. There was a tragic air about her, a sense of suffering that appealed to him. She was not as pretty, but considerably more attractive and interesting than he remembered her.
Quite unexpectedly the thought that this was Nicholas's mother occurred to him, and in the next instant he felt a stab of pity for her. The treachery of his emotion made him angry, and he crushed down the sense of pity. He could not remember ever having such a soft and enervating feeling towards a subject before, not even when they were in the interrogation-cells below the Lubyanka, or on the torture-racks in the Congo jungle. His anger turned upon himself, and then upon her. She was responsible for inducing that momentary weakness. He shielded his anger, the way he might cup his hands around a match-flame on a windy night.
Isabella thought she had gliuapsed an obscure movement beyond the shuttered window in the high tower, but it must have been her imagination.
The woman who had escorted her touched her arm and said in only slightly accented English: 'Come. We will go in.' Isabella lowered her gaze from the bell-tower to the carved teak front door just as it swung open. There was another female waiting for them. Isabella buttoned the jacket of her grey business-suit as though it might protect her like a coat of mail. She drew back her shoulders and went in through the doorway.
The interior was
