Aaron wanted a son but there was not one.” And there was real sorrow in the green eyes that she masked quickly. Across the pool Melissa-Jane climbed from the pool and quickly draped a towel around her shoulders, covering her bosom which was now large enough and yet so novel as to provide her with a constant source of embarrassment and shy pride.
“Caliph,” Peter reminded the Baroness quietly, and she turned back to him.
“first heard the name two years ago, in circumstances I shall never forget-” She hesitated. “May I take it that you are fully aware of the circumstances surrounding my husband’s kidnapping and murder? I
do not wish to repeat the whole harrowing story unless it is necessary.”
“I know it,” Peter assured her.
“You know that I delivered the ransom, personally.”
“Yes.”
“The rendezvous was a deserted airfield near the East German border. They were waiting with a light twin- engined aircraft, a Russian-built reconnaissance machine with its markings sprayed over.” Peter remembered the meticulous planning and the special equipment used in the hijacking of 070. It all tallied. ” There were four men,
masked. They spoke Russian, or rather two of them spoke Russian. The other two never spoke at all. It was bad Russian-” Peter remembered now that the Baroness spoke Russian and five other languages. She had a Middle European background.
Peter wished he had studied her intelligence file more thoroughly.
Her father has escaped with her from her native Poland when she was a small child. “Almost certainly, the aircraft and the Russian were intended to cover their real identity,” she mused. “I was with them for some little time. I had forty-five million Swiss francs to deliver and even in notes of large denomination it was a bulky and heavy cargo to load aboard the aircraft. After the first few minutes, when they realized that I had no police escort, they relaxed and joked amongst themselves as they worked at loading the money. The word “Caliph” was used in the English version, in a Russian exchange that roughly translates as “He was right again” and the reply “Caliph is always right”. Perhaps the use of the English word made me remember it so clearly-” She stopped again, grief naked and bleak in the green eyes.
“You told the police?” Peter asked gently, and she shook her head.
“No. I don’t know why not. They had been so ineffectual up to that time. I was very angry and sad and confused.
Perhaps even then I had already decided that I would hunt them myself and this was all I had.”
“That was the only time you heard the name?” he asked, and she did not reply immediately. They watched the children at play and it seemed fantasy to be discussing the source of evil in such surroundings, against a background of laughter and innocent high spirits.
When the Baroness answered, she seemed to have changed direction completely.
“There had been that hiatus in international terrorism.
The Americans seemed to have beaten the hijacking problem with their Cuban agreement and the rigorous airport searches. Your own successful campaign against the Provisional wing of the IRA in this country, the Entebbe raid and the German action at Mogadishu were all hailed as breakthrough victories. Everybody was beginning to congratulate themselves that it was beaten. The Arabs were too busy with the war in the Lebanon and with inter- group rivalries. It had been a passing thing.” She shook her head again. “But terrorism is a growth industry the risks are less than those of financing a major movie. There is a proven sixty-seven per cent chance of success, the capital outlay is minimal, with outrageous profits in cash and publicity, with instant results and potential power not even calculable.
Even in the event of total failure, there is still a better than fifty per cent survival rate for the participants.” She smiled again,
but now there was no joy and no warmth in it. “Any businessman will tell you it’s better than the commodity markets.”
“The only thing against it is that the business is run by amateurs,” Peter’said, “or by professionals blinded by hatred or crippled by parochial interests and limited goals.” And now she turned to him, wriggling around in the canvas swing seat, curling those long legs up under her in that double-jointed woman’s manner, impossible for a man.
“You are ahead of me, Peter.” She caught herself. “I am sorry,
but General Stride is too much to say, and I have the feeling I have known you so long.” The smile now was fleeting but warm. “My name is
Magda,” she went on simply.
“Will you use it?”
“Thank you, Magda.”
“Yes.” She picked up the thread of conversation again.
“The business is in the hands of amateurs but it is too good to stay that way.”
“Enter Caliph,” Peter guessed.
“That is the whisper that I have heard; usually there is no name.
Just that there was a meeting in Athens, or Amsterdam or East Berlin or
Aden only once have I heard the name Caliph again. But if he exists already he must be one of the richest men in the world, and soon he will be the most powerful.”
“One man?” Peter asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps a group of men perhaps even a government. Russia, Cuba, an Arab country? Who knows yet?”
“And the goals?”
“Money, firstly. Wealth to tackle the political objectives and finally power, raw power. “Magda Altmann stopped herself, and made a self-deprecating gesture. “This is guesswork again, my own guessing based only on past performance.
They have the wealth now, provided by OPEC and myself amongst others. Now he or they have started on the political objectives, a soft target first. An African racist minority government unprotected by powerful allies. It should have succeeded. They should have won an entire nation a mineral-rich nation for the price of a dozen lives.
Even had they failed to gain the main prize, the consolation prize was forty tons of pure gold. That’s good business, Peter. It should have succeeded. It had succeeded.
The Western nations actually put pressure on the victims, and forced them to accede to the demands it was a trial run, and it worked perfectly, except for one man.”
“I am afraid,” said Peter softly, “as afraid as I have ever been in my life.”
“Yes, I am also,
Peter. I have been afraid ever since that terrible phone call on the night they took Aaron, and the more I learn the more afraid I become.”
“What happens next?”
“I do not know but the name he has chosen has the hint of megalomania, perhaps a man with visions of godlike domination-” She spread her fine narrow hands and the diamond flashed white fire. ” We cannot hope to fathom the mind of a man who could embark on such a course.
Probably he believes that what he is doing is for the eventual good of mankind. Perhaps he wants to attack the rich by amassing vast wealth, to destroy the tyrant with universal tyranny, to free mankind by making it a slave to terror. Perhaps he seeks to right the wrongs of the world with evil and injustice.” She touched his arm again, and this time the strength of those long fingers startled Peter. “You have to help me find him, Peter. I am going to put everything into the hunt, there will be no reservations, all the wealth and influence that
I control will be at your disposal.”
“You choose me because you believe that I murdered a wounded woman prisoner?” Peter asked. “Are those my credentials?” And she recoiled from him slightly, and stared at him with the slightly Mongolian slant of eyes, then her shoulders slumped slightly.
“All right, that is part of it, but only a small part of it.
You know I have read what you have written, you must know that I
