but my support section is three hours forty behind us.”
“All right, Peter. I will get back onto them. The South African
Government convened a full cabinet meeting, and both our ambassadors are sitting in as observers and advisers. I think I am going to be obliged to tell them about the existence of Atlas.” He paused a moment.
“Here at last we are seeing Atlas justified, Peter. A single unit,
cutting across all national considerations, able -to act swiftly and independently. I think you should know that I have already obtained the agreement of the President and of your Prime Minister to condition
Delta at my discretion.” Condition Delta was the kill decision.
but again I emphasize that I will implement Delta only as a last possible resort. I want to hear and consider the demands first, and in that respect we are open to negotiation fully open-” Parker went on speaking, and Peter Stride shifted slightly, dropping his chin into the cup of his hand to hide his irritation. They were into an area of dispute now and once again Peter had to voice disagreement.
“Every time you let a militant walk away from a strike you immediately create the conditions for further strikes, to free the captive.”
“I have the clearance for condition Delta,” Parker reiterated with a trace of acid in his tone now, “but I am making it clear that it will be used only with the greatest discretion.
We are not an assassination unit, General Stride.” Parker nodded to an assistant off-screen. “I am going through to the South Africans now to explain Atlas.” The image receded into darkness.
Peter Stride leapt up abruptly and tried to pace the narrow aisle between the seats, but there was insufficient headroom for his tall frame and he flung himself angrily into the seat again.
Kingston Parker stood up from his communications desk in the outer office of his suite in the west wing of the Pentagon. The two communications technicians scurried out of his way and his personal secretary opened the door to his inner office.
He moved with peculiar grace for such a large man, and there was no excess weight on his frame, his big heavy bones lean of flesh. His clothes were of fine cloth, well cut the best that Fifth Avenue could offer but they were worn almost to the point of shoddiness, the button-down collar slightly frayed, the Italian shoes scuffed at the toes as though material trappings counted not at all with him.
Nevertheless he wore them with a certain unconscious panache, and he looked ten years younger than his fifty.
only a few silver strands in the thick bushy mane of hair.
The inner office was Spartan in its furnishings, all of it U.S.
Government issue, utilitarian and impersonal, only the books that filled every shelf and the grand piano were his own. The piano was a
Bechstein grand and much too large for the room. Parker ran his right hand lightly across the keyboard as he passed it but he went on to the desk.
He dropped into the swivel chair and shuffled through the dozen intelligence folders on his desk. Each of them contained the latest computer printouts that he had requested. There were personal histories, appraisals, and character studies of all the personalities that had so far become involved in the taking of Speedbird 070.
Both the ambassadors their pink files signified the best security ratings, and were marked “Heads of Departments only’. Four other files in lower echelon green were devoted to the South African
Government personalities with decision-making capabilities in an emergency. The thickest file was that of the South African Prime
Minister and once again Parker noted wryly that the man had been imprisoned by the pro-British government of General Jan Smuts during
World War II as a militant opponent of his country’s involvement in that war. He wondered just how much sympathy he would have for other militants now.
There were files for the South African Ministers of Defence and of justice, and still slimmer green files for the Commissioner of Police and for the Assistant Commissioner who had been given the responsibility of handling the emergency. Of them all only the Prime
Minister emerged as a distinct personality a powerful bulldog figure,
not a man easily influenced or dissuaded, and instinctively Kingston
Parker recognized that ultimate authority rested here.
There was one other pink file at the bottom of the considerable stack, so well handled that the cardboard cover was splitting at the hinge. The original printout in this file had been requisitioned two years previously, with quarterly up-dates since that time.
“STRIDE PETER CHARLES” it was headed and reclassified “Head of
Atlas only’.
A Kingston Parker could probably have recited its contents by heart but he untied the ribbons now, and opened it in his lap.
Puffing deliberately at his pipe he began to turn slowly through the loose pages.
There were the bare bones of the subject’s life. Born 1939, one of twin war-time babies of a military family, his father killed in action three years later when the armoured brigade of guards he commanded was overrun by one of Erwin Rommel’s devastating drives across the deserts of North Africa. The elder twin brother had inherited the baronetcy and Peter followed the well-travelled family course, Harrow and Sandhurst, where he must have disconcerted the family by his academic brilliance and his reluctance to participate in team sports preferring the loner activities of golf and tennis and long-distance running.
Kingston Parker pondered that a moment. They were pointers to the man’s character that had disconcerted him as well. Parker had the intellectual’s generalized contempt for the military, and he would have preferred a man who conformed more closely to his ideal of the brass-headed soldier.
Yet when the young Stride had entered his father’s regiment, it seemed that the exceptional intelligence had been diverted into conventional channels and the preference for independent thought and action held in check, if not put aside completely until his regiment was sent to Cyprus at the height of the unrest in that country. Within a week of arrival the young Stride had been seconded, with his commanding officer’s enthusiastic approval, to central army intelligence. Perhaps the commanding officer had already become aware of the problems involved in harbouring a wonder-boy in the tradition-bound portals of his officers” mess.
For once the military had made a logical, if not an outright brilliant, choice. Stride in the sixteen years since then had not made a single mistake, apart from the marriage which had ended in divorce within two years. Had he remained with his regiment that might have affected his career but since Cyprus Stride’s progress had been as unconventional and meteoric as his brain.
In a dozen different and difficult assignments since then, he had honed his gifts and developed new talents; rising against the trend of reduced British expenditure on defence, he had reached staff rank before thirty years of age.
At NATO Headquarters he had made powerful friends and admirers on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the end of his three-year term in
Brussels he had been promoted to major-general and been transferred to head British Intelligence in Ireland, bringing his own particular dedication and flair to the job.
A great deal of the credit for containing the sweep of Irish terrorism through Britain was his, and his in-depth study of the urban guerrilla and the mind of the militant, although classified depart mentally was probably the definitive work on the subject.
The Atlas concept was first proposed in this study, and so it was that Stride had been on the short list to head the project. It seemed certain the appointment would be made the Americans had been impressed with his study and his friends from NATO had not forgotten him. His appointment was approved in principle. Then at the last moment there had developed sudden and intense opposition to the appointment of a professional soldier to head such a sensitive agency.
The opposition had come from both Whitehall and Washington simultaneously, and had prevailed.
Kingston Parker knocked out his pipe, and carried the file across the room and laid it open on the music rack of the piano. He seated himself at the keyboard and, still M studying the printout sheets,
began to play.
The stream of music, the lovely ethereal strains of Liszt, did not interrupt his thoughts but seemed to buoy
