have studied you very carefully. You are the best man available to me,
and finally you have proved that your involvement is complete. I know that you have the strength and skill and ruthlessness to find Caliph and destroy him before he destroys us and the world we know.” Peter was looking inwards. He had believed that the beast had a thousand heads, and for each that was struck off a thousand more would grow but now for the first time he imagined the full shape of the beast, it was still in ambush, not clear yet, but there was only a single head.
Perhaps, after all, it was mortal.
“Will you help me, Peter?“she asked.
“You know I will,” he answered quietly. “I do not have any choice.” She flew in the brilliance of high sunlight reflected from snow fields of blazing white, jetting through her turns with flowing elegance, carving each turn with a crisp rush of flying snow, swaying across the fall line of the mountain in an intricate ballet of interlinked movement.
She wore a slim-fitting skin suit of pearly grey, trimmed in black at the shoulders and cuffs, she was shod with gleaming black Heierling snow birds and her skis were long, narrow, black Rossignol professionals.
Peter followed her, pressing hard not to lose too much ground, but his turns were solid Christies without the stylish fallback un weighting of the jet turn which gave her each time a fractional gain.
The dun he ran like a stag of ten But the mare like a new roused fawn Kipling might have been describing them, and she was a hundred yards ahead of him as they entered the forest.
The pathway was barred with the shadows of the pines, and sugary ice roared under his skis as he pushed the narrow corners dangerously fast. Always she was farther ahead, flickering like a silver-grey wraith on those long lean legs, her tight round buttocks balancing the narrow waist and swinging rhythmically into the turns, marvelous controlled broadsides where the icy roadway denied purchase, coming out fast and straight, leaning into the rush of the wind, and her faint sweet laughter came back to Peter as he chased.
There is an expertise that must be learned in childhood, and he remembered then that she was Polish, would probably have skied before she was weaned, and suppressed the flare of resentment he always felt at being outclassed by another human being, particularly by the woman who was fast becoming his driving obsession.
He came round another steeply banked turn, with the sheer snow wall rising fifteen feet on his right hand and on his left the tops of the nearest pines at his own level, so steep the mountain fell away into the valley.
The ice warning signs flashed past, and there was a wooden bridge,
its boards waxen, opalescent with greenish ice. He felt control go as he hit the polished iron-hard surface. The bridge crossed a deep sombre gorge, with a frozen waterfall skewered to the black mountain rock by its own cruel icicles, like crucifixion nails.
To attempt to edge in, or to stem the thundering rush across the treacherous going, would have invited disaster, to lean back defensively would have brought him down instantly and piled him into the sturdy wooden guide rails.
At the moment he was lined up for the narrow bridge Peter flung himself forward so that his shins socked into the pads of his boots,
and in a swoop of terror and exhilaration he went through, and found that he was laughing aloud though his heart leaped against his ribs and his breathing matched the sound of the wind in his own ears.
She was waiting for him where the path debouched onto the lower slopes. She had pushed her goggles to the top of her head, and stripped off her gloves, both sticks planted in the snow beside her.
“You’ll never know how much I needed that.” She had flown into
Zurich that morning in her personal Lear jet.
Peter had come in on the Swissair flight from Brussels, and they had motored up together. “You know what I wish, Peter?”
“Tell me,“he invited.
“I wish that I could take a whole month, thirty glorious days, to do what I wish. To be ordinary, to be like other people and not feel a moment’s guilt.” He had seen her on only three occasions in the six weeks since their first meeting at Abbots Yew. Three too brief and,
for Peter, unsatisfying meetings.
Once in his new office suite at the Narmco headquarters in
Brussels, again at La Pierre Brute, her country home outside Paris,
but then there had been twenty other guests for dinner. The third time had been in the panelled and tastefully decorated cabin of her Lear jet on a flight between Brussels and London.
Though they had made little progress as yet in the hunt for
Caliph, Peter was still exploring the avenues that had occurred to him and had cast a dozen lines, baited and hooked.
During their third meeting Peter had discussed with her the need to restructure her personal safety arrangements.
He had changed her former bodyguards, replacing them with operatives from a discreet agency in Switzerland which trained its own ryien. The director of the agency was an old and trusted friend.
They had come to this meeting now so that Peter might report back on his progress to Magda. But for a few hours the snow had seduced them both.
“There is still another two hours before the light goes.” Peter glanced across the valley at the village church. The gold hands of the clock showed a little after two o’clock.
“Do you want to run the Rheinhorn?” She hesitated only a moment.
“The world will keep turning, I’m sure.” Her teeth were very white, but one of them was slightly crooked, a blemish that was oddly appealing as she smiled up at him. “Certainly it will wait two hours.” He had learned that she kept unbelievable hours, begining her day’s work when the rest of the world still slept, and still hard at it when the offices of Altmann Industries in Boulevard Capucine were deserted,
except her own office suite on the top floor. Even during the drive up from Zurich she had gone through correspondence and dictated quietly to one of her secretaries. He knew that at the chalet across the valley her two secretaries would be waiting already, with a pile of telex flimsies for her consideration and the line held open for her replies.
“There are better ways to die than working yourself to death.” He was suddenly out of patience with her single mindedness and she laughed easily with high colour in her cheeks and the sparkle of the last run in the green eyes.
“Yes, you are right, Peter. I should have you near to keep reminding me of that. “That’s the first bit of sense I’ve had from you in six weeks.” He was referring to her opposition to his plans for her security. He had tried to persuade her to change established behaviour patterns, and though the smile was still on her lips, her eyes were deadly serious as she studied his face.
“My husband left me a trust-” she seemed suddenly sad beneath the laughter a duty that I must fulfill. One day I should like to explain that to you but now we only have two hours.” It was snowing lightly,
and the sun had disappeared behind the mountains of rock and snow and cloud as they walked back through the village. The lights were burning in the richly laden shop windows and they were part of the gaily clad stream returning from the slopes, clumping along the frozen sidewalks in their clumsy ski boots, carrying skis and sticks over one shoulder and chattering with the lingering thrill of the high pi ste that even the lowering snow-filled dusk could not suppress.
“It feels good to be free of my wolves for a while.” Magda caught his arm as her snow birds skidded on dirty ridged ice, and after she had regained her balance she left her gloved hand there.
Her wolves were the bodyguards that Peter had provided, the silent vigilant men who followed her either on foot or in a second car. They waited outside her offices while she worked, and others guarded the house while she slept.
That morning, however, she had told Peter, “Today I have as a companion a gold medal Olympic pistol champion, I don’t need my wolves.” Narmco marketed its own version of the 9-men parabellum pistol.
It was called “Cobra’, and after a single morning in the underground range Peter had taken a liking to the weapon. It was lighter and flatter than the Walther he was accustomed to, easier to carry and conceal, and the single action mechanism saved a flicker of time with the first shot, for there was no need to cock the action. He had had no trouble obtaining a permit to carry one as a trade sample, although it was necessary to check it before every
