them brightly upwards.
Parker had not wanted Stride, had considered from the very first that he was dangerous, sensing in him ambitions and motivations which would be difficult to control. Parker would have preferred his own nominees Tanner, who now commanded the Mercury arm of Atlas, or Colin
Noble and had expected that Stride would have declined a command so far below his capability.
However, Stride had accepted the lesser appointment and headed
Thor. Parker suspected that there was unusual motivation in this, and had made every effort to study the man at first hand. On five separate occasions he had ordered Stride to Washington, and focused upon him the full strength of his charisma and personality. He had even invited him to stay with him in his New York home, spending many hours with him in deep far-ranging discussions from which he had developed a prudent respect for the man’s mind, but had been able to reach no firm conclusions as to his future in Atlas.
Parker turned a page of the character appraisal. When he looked for the weakness in an opponent, Parker had long ago learned to start at the groin. With this man there was no evidence of any unnatural sexual leanings. Certainly he was not homosexual, if anything too much the opposite.
There had been at least a dozen significant liaisons with the opposite sex since his divorce. However, all of these had been discreet and dignified. Although three of the ladies had been married,
none of them were the wives of his subordinates in the armed services,
nor of brother officers or of men who might be able to adversely affect his career.
The women he chose all had certain qualities in common they all tended to be tall, intelligent and successful. One was a journalist who had her own syndicated column, another was a former fashion model who now designed and marketed her clothes through her own prestigious outlets in London and on the continent. Then there was an actress who was a leading female member of the Royal Shakespeare Company Parker skimmed the list impatiently, for Parker himself had no sympathy nor patience with a man who succumbed to the dictates of his body.
Parker had trained himself to be totally celibate, channelling all his sexual energies into pursuits of the mind, while this man Stride,
on the other hand, was not above conducting two or three of his liaisons concurrently.
Parker moved on to the second area of weakness. Stride’s inheritance had been decimated by the punitive British death duties yet his private income even after savage aviation was still a little over twenty thousand pounds sterling a year, and when this was added to his salary and privileges as a general officer, it enabled him to live in good style. He could even indulge in the mild extravagance of collecting rare books and, Parker observed acidly, the greater extravagance of collecting rare ladies.
However, there was no trace of any illicit hoard no Swiss bank accounts, no deposits of gold bullion, no foreign properties, no shares in offshore companies held by nominees and Parker had searched diligently for them, for they would have indicated payments received,
perhaps from foreign governments. A man like Stride had much to sell,
at prices he could set himself but it seemed he had not done so.
Stride did not smoke; Parker removed the old black briar from his own mouth, regarded it affectionately for a moment. It was his one indulgence, a harmless one despite what the surgeon-general of the
United States had determined, and he took the stem firmly between his teeth again.
Stride took alcohol in moderation and was considered knowledgeable on the subject of wine. He raced occasion ally, more as a social outing than as a serious punter, and the odd fifty pounds he could well afford. There was no evidence of other gambling. However, he did not hunt, nor did he shoot traditional pursuits of the English gentleman.
Perhaps he had moral objections to blood sports, Parker thought,
though it seemed unlikely, for Stride was a superlative marksman with rifle, shotgun and pistol. He had represented Britain at the Munich
Olympics as a pistol shot, winning a gold in the fifty metre class, and he spent at least an hour every day on the range.
Parker turned to the page of the printout that gave the man’s medical history. He must be superbly fit as well his body weight at the age of thirty-nine was one pound less than it had been at twenty-one, and he still trained like a front-line soldier. Parker noticed that he had logged sixteen parachute jumps the previous month.
Since joining Atlas he had no opportunity or time for golf, though when he was with NATO Stride had played off a handicap of three.
Parker closed the folder and played on softly, but neither the sensual polished feel of cool ivory beneath his fingertips nor the achingly lovely lilt of the music could dispel his sense of disquiet.
Exhaustive as the report was, yet it left unanswered questions, like why Stride had downgraded himself to accept the command of Thor he was not the kind of man who acted ill-advisedly. Yet the most haunting questions that nagged at Parker were just how strong were his qualities of resilience and independent thought, just how strongly was he driven by his ambitions and that penetrating intellect and just how great a threat such a man would present to the evolution of Atlas into its ultimate role.
“Doctor Parker, sir,” his assistant knocked lightly and entered,
“there are new developments.” Parker sighed softly. “I’m coming,” he said, and let the last sad and beautiful notes fall from his long,
powerful fingers before he stood up.
The Hawker slid almost silently down the sky. The pilot had closed down power at five thousand feet and made his final approach without touching the throttles again. He was ten knots above the stall as he passed over the boundary fence and he touched down twenty feet beyond the chevron markings of the threshold of runway One five, instantly applying maximum safe braking. One five was the secondary crosswind runway and the Hawker’s roll-out was so short that every part of the approach and landing had been screened by the buildings of the main airport terminal from where Speedbird 070 stood at the southern intersection of the main taxiway.
The pilot swung the Hawker through 360” and backtracked sedately up runway 15, using just enough power to keep her rolling.
“Well done,” grunted. Peter Stride, crouching behind the pilot’s seat. He was almost certain that nobody aboard 070 had remarked their arrival.
“They’ve prepared a slot for us, with hook up to the electrical mains at the north-” Peter broke off as he saw the apron marshal waving them in with the bats, and beyond him a tight group of four men waiting. Three of them wore camouflage battle dress and the other the trim blue uniform, cap and gold insignia of a senior South African police officer.
The uniformed officer was the first to greet Peter as he came down the Hawker’s fold-out air-stairs.
“Prinsloo.” He shook hands. “Lieutenant-General.” He ranked
Peter, but it was a police, not a military appointment. He was a stocky man, with steel-rimmed spectacles, a little paunchy, and not less than fifty-five years of age. He had the rather heavy features,
the fleshiness of jowl and lips, that Peter had noticed so often in
Belgian and Dutch peasants during his NATO tour in the Netherlands.
A
man of the earth, dour and conservative.
“Let me introduce Commandant Boonzaier.” This was a military rank,
equivalent to that of colonel, and he was a younger man, but with the same thick accent and his features cast in the same mould. A tall man,
however, only an inch or so shorter than Peter but both of the South
Africans were suspicious and resentful, and the reason was immediately apparent.
“I have been instructed to take my orders from you, General,” and there was a subtle shift of position, the two officers ranging themselves beside Peter, but facing each other, and he was aware instantly that not all the hostility was directed at him. There had been friction between police and military already and the basic value of Atlas was underlined yet again.
A single clean-cut line of command and of responsibility was absolutely essential Peter’s mind flicked back to the shoot-out at
Larnaca Airport between Egyptian commandos and Cypriot national guardsmen, from which the hijackers of the grounded jet emerged unscathed while the airfield was littered with the burning wreckage of the Egyptian
