“You talk too much.” He stopped her.
“You’ll damage your throat further.” He touched her lips with his fingers, to silence her, and then went on. “And at Odessa you became one of the chosen, one of the elite.”
“It was like entering the church,
a beautiful mystic thing-” she whispered. “I cannot explain it. I
would have done everything or anything for the State, for what I knew was right for “Mother Russia”.”
“All of this is true?” He marvelled that she made no effort to deny it.
“All of it,” she nodded painfully. “I will never lie to you
Peter. I swear it.”
“Then they sent you back to France to Paris?” he asked, and she nodded.
“You did your job, even better than they had expected you to do it. You were the best, the very best. No man could resist you.” She did not answer, but she did not lower her eyes from his. It was not a defiance but merely a total acceptance of what he was saying.
“There were men. Rich and powerful men-” His voice was bitter now. He could not help himself. “Many, many men. Nobody knows how many, and from each of them you gathered harvest.”
“Poor Peter,” she whispered. “Have you tortured yourself with that?”
“It helped me to hate you, “he said simply.
“Yes, I understand that. There is nothing that I can give you for your comfort except this. I never loved a man until I met you.” She was keeping her word. There were no more lies nor deceptions now. He was certain of it.
“Then they decided that you could be used to take over control of
Aaron Altmann and his Empire-“
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“I decided on Aaron. He had been the only one man who I had not been able to-” Her voice pinched out and she took a sip of the bourbon and let it trickle slowly down her throat before she went on. “He fascinated me. I had never met a man like that before. So strong,
such raw power.”
“All right,” Peter agreed. “You might even have grown tired of the other role by then-“
“It’s hard work being a courtesan—2
She smiled for the first time since he had begun speaking, but it was a sad self mocking smile. “You went about it exactly the right way. First you made yourself indispensable to him. Already he was a sick man, beginning to need a crutch, somebody he could trust entirely.
You gave him that-” She said nothing, but memories passed across her eyes, changing the green shadows like sunlight through a deep still pool.
And when he trusted you there was nothing you could not supply to your masters. Your value had increased a hundredfold.” He went on talking quietly while outside the day died in a fury of crimsons and royal purples, slowly altering the light in the cabin and dimming it down so that her face was all that existed in the soft gloom. A pale intense expression, listening quietly to the accusations, to the recitation of betrayals and deceits. Only occasionally she made a little gesture Of denial, a shake of her head or the pressure of fingers on his arms. Sometimes she closed her eyes briefly as though she could not accept some particularly cruel memory, and once or twice an exclamation was wrung from her in that strained and tortured whisper.
“Oh God, Peter! It’s true!” He told her how she had gradually developed the taste for the power she was able to wield as Aaron
Altmann’s wife, and how that flourished as Aaron’s strength declined.
How she at last even opposed the Baron on some issues.
“Like that of supplying arms to the South African Government,”
Peter said, and she nodded and made one of her rare comments.
“Yes. We argued. That was one of the few times we argued.” And she smiled softly, as though at a private memory that she could not share even with him.
He told her how the taste of power and the trappings of power gradually eroded her commitment to her earlier political ideals, how her masters slowly realized they were losing their hold over her and of the pressures they attempted to apply to force her back into the fold.
“But you were too powerful now to respond to the usual pressures.
You had even succeeded in penetrating Aaron’s Mossad connections,
and had that protection.”
“This is incredible!” she whispered. “It’s so close, so very close that it is the truth.” He waited for her to elaborate, but instead she motioned him to continue.
“When they threatened to expose you to the Baron as a communist agent, you had no choice but to get rid of him and you did it in such a way that you not only got rid of the threat to your existence but you also achieved control of Altmann Industries, and to put the cherry on the top of the pie you got yourself twenty-five million in operating capital.
You arranged the abduction and killing of Aaron Altmann, you paid yourself the twenty-five million and personally supervised its transfer, probably to a numbered account in Switzerland-“
“Oh God,
Peter!” she whispered, and in the dark of the cabin her eyes were fathomless and huge as the empty cavities of a skull.
“Is it true?” Peter asked for confirmation for the first time.
“It’s too horrible. Go on please.”
“It worked so well that it opened up a new world of possibilities for you. just about this time you truly became Caliph. The taking of Flight 070 was possibly not the first stroke after the kidnapping of Aaron Altmann there may have been others. Vienna and the OPEC ministers, the Red Brigade activities in Rome but 070 was the first time you used the name Caliph. It worked, except for the dereliction of duty by a subordinate officer.”
He indicated himself. “That was all that stopped it and that was how
I attracted your attention originally.” Now it was almost totally dark in the cabin and Magda W
reached across and switched on the reading light beside them,
adjusting the rheostat down to a soft golden glow. In its light she studied his face seriously as he went on.
By this time you were aware through your special sources, probably the Mossad connection and almost certainly through the French SID, that somebody was onto Caliph. That somebody turned out to be Kingston
Parker and his Atlas organization, and I was the ideal person to firstly confirm that Parker was the hunter and secondly, to assassinate him. I had the special training and talents for the job, I
could get close to him without arousing his suspicions, and I needed only to be sufficiently motivated-“
“No,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes from his face.
“It holds together,” he said. “All of it.” And she had no reply.
“When I received Melissa-Jane’s finger, I was ready for anything—”
“I think I am going to be sick.”
“I’m sorry.” He gave her the glass and she drank the shot of dark liquor it contained,
gagging a little on it. Then she sat for a few moments with her eyes closed and her hand on her bruised throat.
“All right? “he asked at last.
“Yes. All right now. Go on.”
“It worked perfectly except for the tip-off to the hideout in Ireland. But nobody could have foreseen that, not even Caliph.”
“But there was no proof!” she protested. “It was all conjecture. No proof that I was Caliph.”
“There was,” he told her quietly. “O’Shaughnessy, the head of the gang that kidnapped
Melissa-Jane, made two telephone calls. They were traced to
Rambouillet 47-87-47.” She stared at him wordlessly.
“He was reporting to his master to Caliph, you see.” And he waited for her reply. There was none, so after a minute of silence he went on to tell her the arrangements he had made for her execution the sites he had chosen at Longchamp race course and in the Avenue
