to lead the attack on the foundations of civilization, to shake the columns that held aloft the rule of law and society.
“I want this woman in London within twenty-four hours.
She is to be strictly guarded at all times against retaliation.
We cannot afford another blood bath like the one you led on 070.”
Peter Stride walked very erect, very tall into the echoing,
marble-columned domestic departures hall of the airport, and his men called to him as he came.
“Well done, sir.”
“Great stuff, General.”
“Way to go-” AM They were tending the released passengers, re-assembling their scattered gear, dismantling the security and communications equipment and packing it away within the hour they would be ready to pull out but now they left their tasks to crowd about him, competing to shake his hand.
The passengers realized that this must be the architect of their salvation and they cheered him as he passed slowly through the hall,
and now he was smiling, acknowledging their pitiful gratitude, stopping to talk with an old lady, and submitting to her tearful embrace.
“God bless you, my boy. God bless you.” And her body trembled against him. Gently Peter set her aside and went on, and though he smiled it was with his lips only, for there was steel in his heart.
There were Thor guards on the main administrative offices on the mezzanine floor armed with submachine guns, but they stood aside for him and Peter went through.
Colin Noble was still in his black skin-tight assault suit with the big .45 on his hip, and a cheroot clamped between his teeth.
“Take a look at this lot,” he called to Peter. The desk was covered with explosives and weapons. “Most of it’s ironcurtain stuff but God alone knows where they got these.” He indicated the double-barrelled shot pistols. “If they had these custom built, it would have cost them plenty.”
“They have got plenty,” Peter answered drily. “The ransom for the OPEC ministers was one hundred and fifty million dollars, for the Braun brothers twenty five million, for Baron
Altmann another twenty million that’s the defence budget for a nation.” He picked up one of the shot pistols and opened the breech.
It had been unloaded.
“Is this the one she used to gun down the hostages?” Colin shrugged. “Probably, it’s been fired through both barrels.” Colin was right, there were black specks of burned powder down the short smooth bores.
Peter loaded it with buckshot cartridges from the pile on the desk, and walked on down the long office with the covered typewriters on the deserted desks and the airline travel posters decorating the wall.
Along one wall the three bodies of the hijackers were laid out in a neat row, each encapsulated in its separate translucent plastic envelope.
Two Thor men were assembling the contents of their pockets personal jewellery, meagre personal effects and they were packing them into labelled plastic bags.
The body of Peter’s Number Two was against the far wall, also in his plastic body-bag, and Peter stooped over him. Through the plastic he could make out the features of the dead man’s face. The eyes were wide and the jaw hung open slackly. Death is always so undignified,
Peter thought, and straightened up.
Still carrying the shot pistol, Peter went on into the inner office, and Colin Noble followed him.
They had the girl on another stretcher, a plasma drip suspended above her, and the Thor doctor and his two orderlies were working over her quietly, but the young doctor looked up irritably as Peter pushed open the door, then his expression changed as he recognized Peter.
“General, if we are going to save this arm, I have to get her into theatre pretty damned quickly. The joint of the shoulder is shattered-” The girl rolled the lovely head towards Peter. The thick springing golden hair was matted with drying blood, and there was a smear of it across one cheek.
Now her face was completely drained of all colour, like the head of an angel carved out of white marble. The skin had a waxen, almost translucent, lustre and only the eyes were still fierce, not dulled by the painkilling drugs that they had injected into her.
I have asked the South Africans for cooperation-” the doctor went on, they have two top orthopaedic surgeons standing by, and they have offered a helicopter to fly her into the Central Hospital at Edenvale.”
Already she was being treated, even by Thor, as the major celebrity she was. She had taken her first step along the rose-strewn pathway to glory, and Peter could imagine how the media would extol her beauty they had gone berserk with extravagant praise for the swarthy ferrety-eyed Leila Khaled with her fine dark mustache they would go over the top for this one.
Peter had never known any emotion so powerful as the emotion that gripped him now.
“Get out,” he said to the doctor.
Sir? “The man looked startled.
“Get out,” Peter repeated, “all of you.” And he waited until the opaque glass door closed behind them, before he spoke to the girl in conversational tones.
“You have made me abandon my own principles, and descend to your level.” The girl watched him uncertainly, her eyes flickered to the shot pistol that Peter held dangling from his right hand.
“You have forced me, a career soldier, to disobey the orders of a superior officer in the face of the enemy.” He paused. “I used to be a proud man, but when I have done what I must do now I will no longer have much of which to be proud.”
“I demand to see the American
Ambassador,” said the girl huskily, still watching the pistol. “I am an American citizen. I demand the protection-” Peter interrupted her,
again speaking quickly. “This is not revenge. I am old and wise enough to know that revenge has the most bitter taste of all human excesses.”
“You cannot do it-” The girl’s voice rose, the same strident tones, but now shriller still with fear. “They will destroy you.” But
Peter went on as though she had not spoken. “It is not revenge, he repeated. “You, yourself, gave the reason clearly. If you continue to exist, they will come to get you back. As long as you live, others must die and they will die stripped of all human dignity. They will die in terror, the same way you murdered-“
“I am a woman. I am wounded. I am a prisoner of war,” screamed the girl, trying to struggle upright.
“Those are the old rules, Peter told her. “You tore up the book,
and wrote a new one I am playing to your rules now. I have been reduced to your level.”
“You cannot kill me,” the girl’s voice range wildly. “I still have work-“
“Colin,” Peter said quietly, without looking at the man.
“You’d better get out now.” Colin Noble hesitated, his right hand on the butt of the Browning, and the girl rolled her head towards him imploringly.
“You can’t let him do it.”
“Peter, -” Colin said.
“You were right Colin.” Peter spoke quietly. “That kid did look a lot like Melissa-Jane.” Colin Noble dropped his hand from the pistol and turned to the door. Now the girl was shrieking obscenity and threat, her voice incoherent with terror and hatred.
Colin closed the door softly and stood with his back to it. The single crash of shot was shockingly loud, and the stream of filthy abuse was cut off abruptly. The silence was even more appalling than the harrowing sounds which had preceded it. Colin did not move. He waited four, five seconds before the door clicked open and General
Peter Stride came out into the main office. He handed the shot pistol to Colin and one barrel was hot in his hand.
Peter’s handsome aristocratic features seemed ravaged, as though by a long wasting disease. The face of a man who had leapt into the abyss.
Peter Stride left the glass door open, and walked away without looking back. Despite the terrible expression
