swoop while the lights above the elevator door recorded their ascent to the very top of the building.
There they stepped out into a reception area protected by ornamental, but none the less functional screens.
A guard in military police uniform and wearing a sidearm surveyed them through the grille and checked Colin’s Atlas pass against his register before allowing them through.
The apartment occupied the entire top level of the building, for there were hanging gardens beyond the sliding glass panels and a view across the sickening canyons of space to the other tall structures farther down Island the Pan Am building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The decor was Oriental, stark interiors in which were displayed works of art that Peter knew from his previous visit were of incalculable value antique Japanese brush paintings on silk panels, carvings in jade and ivory, a display of tiny netsuke and in an atrium through which they passed was a miniature forest of Bonsai trees in their shallow ceramic bowls, the frozen contortions of their trunks and branches a sign of their great age.
Incongruously, the exquisite rooms were filled with the thunder of von Karajan leading the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra through the glories of the Eroica.
Beyond the atrium was a plain door of white oak, and Colin Noble pressed the buzzer beside the lintel and almost immediately the door slid open.
Colin led into a long carpeted room, the ceiling of which was covered with acoustic tiles. The room contained besides the crowded bookshelves and work table an enormous concert piano, and down the facing wall an array of hi-fi turntables and loudspeakers that would have been more in place in a commercial recording studio.
Kingston Parker stood beside the piano, a heroic figure, tall and heavy in the shoulder, his great shaggy head hanging forward onto his chest, his eyes closed and an expression of almost religious ecstasy glowing upon his face.
The music moved his powerful frame the way the storm wind sways a giant of the forest. Peter and Colin stopped in the doorway, for it seemed an intrusion on such a private, such an intimate moment, but it was only a few seconds before he became aware of them and lifted his head. He seemed to shake off the spell of the music with the shudder that a spaniel uses to shake itself free of water when it reaches dry land, and he lifted the arm of the turntable from the spinning black disc.
The silence seemed to tingle after the great crashing chords of sound.
“General Stride,” Kingston Parker greeted him. “Or may I still call you Peter?”
“Mr. Stride will do very nicely,” said Peter, and Parker made an eloquent little gesture of regret, and without offering to shake hands indicated the comfortable leather couch across the room.
“At least you came,” he said, and as Peter settled into the couch, he nodded.
“I have always had an insatiable curiosity.”
“I was relying on that,” Kingston Parker smiled. “Have you breakfasted?”
“We’ve had a snack,“Colin cut in but Peter nodded.
“Coffee then,” said Parker, and spoke quietly into the intercom set, before turning back to them.
“Where to begin?” Parker combed the thick greying hair back with both hands, leaving it even more tousled than it had been.
“Begin at the beginning,” Peter suggested. “As the King of Hearts said to Alice.”
“At the beginning-” Parker smiled softly. All right, at the beginning I opposed your involvement with Atlas.”
“I know.”
“I
did not expect that you would accept the Thor command, it was a step backwards in your career. You surprised me there, and not for the first time.” A Chinese manservant in a white jacket with brass buttons carried in a tray. They were silent as he offered coffee and cream and coloured crystal sugar and then, when he had gone, Parker went on.
“At that time, my estimate of you, General Stride, was that although you had a record of brilliance and solid achievement, you were an officer of rigidly oldfashioned thought. The Colonel Blimp mentality more suited to trench warfare than to the exigencies of war from the shadows the kind of wars that we are fighting now, and will be forced to fight in the future.” He shook the great shaggy head and unconsciously his fingers caressed the smooth cool ivory keyboard, and he settled down on the stool before the piano.
“You see, General Stride, I saw the role of Atlas to be too limited by the original terms of reference placed upon it. I did not believe that Atlas could do what it was designed for if it was only an arm of retaliation. If it had to wait for a hostile act before it could react, if it had to rely entirely on other organizations with all their internecine rivalries and bickerings for its vital intelligence. I needed officers who were not only brilliant, but who were capable of unconventional thought and independent action. I did not believe you had those qualities, although I studied you very carefully. I was unable to take you fully into my confidence.” Parker’s slim fingers evoked a fluent passage from the keyboard as though to punctuate his words, and for a moment he seemed completely enraptured by his own music, then he lifted his head again.
“If I had done so, then the conduct of your rescue operation of Flight 070 might have been completely different. I have been forced radically to revise my estimate of you, General Stride and it was a difficult thing to do. For by demonstrating those qualities which I thought you lacked, you upset my judgement. I admit that personal chagrin swayed my reasoned judgement and by the time I was thinking straight again you had been provoked into offering your resignation-” “I know that the resignation was referred to you personally, Doctor Parker and that you recommended that it be accepted.” Peter’s voice was very cold, the tone clipped with controlled anger and Parker nodded.
“Yes, you are correct. I endorsed your resignation.”
“Then it looks as though we are wasting our time here and now.” Peter’s lips were compressed into a thin, unforgiving line, and the skin across his cheeks and over the finely chiselled flare of his nostrils seemed tightly drawn and pa leas porcelain.
“Please, General Stride let me explain first.” Parker reached out one hand to him as though to physically restrain him from rising, and his expression was earnest, compelling. Peter sank back into the couch, his eyes wary and his lips still tight.
“I have to go back a little first, in order to make any sense at all.” Parker stood up from the piano and crossed to
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the rack of pipes on the work table between the hi-fi equipment.
He selected one carefully, a meerschaum mellowed to the colour of precious amber. He blew through the empty pipe and then tramped back across the thick carpet to stand in front of Peter.
“Some months before the hijacking of 070 six months to be precise, I had begun to receive hints that we were entering a new phase in the application of international terrorism. Only hints at first, but these were confirmed and followed by stronger evidence.” Parker was stuffing the meerschaum from a leather wallet as he spoke, now he zipped this closed and tossed it onto the piano top. “What we were looking at was a consolidation of the forces of violence under some sort of centralized control we were not sure what form this control was taking.” He broke off and studied Peter’s expression, seemed to misinterpret it for utter disbelief, for he shook his head. “Yes, I know it sounds farfetched, but I will show you the files. There was evidence of meetings between known militant leaders and some other shadowy figures, perhaps the representatives of an Eastern government. We were not sure then, nor are we now. And immediately after this a complete change in the conduct and apparent motivation of militant activity. I do not really have to detail this for you. Firstly the systematic accumulation of immense financial reserves by the highly organized and carefully planned abduction of prominent figures, starting with the ministers of OPEC, then leading industrialists and financial figures-” Parker struck a match and puffed on his pipe and perfumed smoke billowed around his head.
So that it appeared that the motivation had not really changed and was still entirely self gain or parochial political gain. Then there was the taking of 070. “I had not confided in you before and once you were on your way to Johannesburg it was too late. I could do nothing more than try to control your actions by rather heavy-handed commands. I could not explain to you that we suspected that this was the leading wave of the new militancy, and that we must allow it to reveal as much as possible. It was a terrible decision, but I had to gamble a few human lives for vital information and then you acted as I had believed you were incapable of acting.” Parker removed his
