“The choice of the victim was genius-inspired,” she said.
“But it required no special knowledge of you or your domestic arrangements. There was no secret that you had an only child, and it needed but a casual appraisal of your character to understand how powerful a lever she could be
“Magda dipped the tip of her finger into the champagne and then sucked it thoughtfully, pursing her lips and frowning slightly.
“You must understand that by this time I had faced the fact that I
was in love with you. The gift was supposed to affirm that-” She flushed slightly under her honey tan, and it was appealing and childlike. He had never seen her blush before and it twisted something in his chest.
“The book,” he remembered. “The Cornwallis Harris first edition.”
“My first love gift ever. I bought it when I finally admitted it to myself but I was determined that I would not admit it to you. I am oldfashioned enough to believe the man must speak first.”
“I did.”
“God, I’ll never forget it,” she said fervently, and they both thought of the savage confrontation the previous day which had ended incongruously in a declaration of love.
“I try to be unconventional,” he said, and she shook her head smiling.
“You succeed, mon amour, oh how you succeed.” Then she sobered again. “I was in love with you. Your distress was mine. The child was a lovely girl, she had captivated me when we met and on top of all that I felt deadly responsible for her plight. I had inveigled you into joining my hunt for Caliph, and because of that you had lost your daughter.” He bowed his head slightly, remembering how he had believed that she had engineered it. She recognized the gesture.
“Yes, Peter. For me it was the cruel lest stroke. That you should believe it of me. There was nothing that I would not have done to give her back to you and yet there seemed nothing that I could do.
My contacts with French intelligence had nothing for me. They had no inkling of how or where the child was being held and my control at
Mossad was unaccountably evasive. Somehow I had the feeling that
Mossad had the key to the kidnapping. If they were not directly involved they knew more than anybody else. I have already explained that I believed Aaron had given them the identity of Caliph. If that was so, then they must know something that could have helped you to recover your child but from Paris I was powerless to gather that information.
I had to go in person to Israel and confront my control there. It was the one chance that I could get them to cooperate. They might believe my value as an agent was worth enough to give me a lead to
Melissa-Jane-“
“You threatened Mossad with resignation?” Peter asked wonderingly. “You would have done that for me?”
“Oh, Peter, don’t you understand? I loved you and I had never been in love before. I
would have done anything for you.”
“You make me feel humble, he said.
She did not reply, but let the statement stand as though she were savouring it, then she sighed contentedly and went on. “I left everything in Paris. I have an established routine for disappearing when it is necessary. Pierre took me to Rome in the Lear; from there
I
telephoned you but I could not tell you what I was going to do. Then
I
switched identity and took a commercial flight to Tel Aviv. My task in
Israel was difficult, much more difficult than I had bargained for. It was five days before my control would see me. He is an old friend.
No! perhaps not a friend, but we have known each other a long time.
He is the deputy director of Mossad. That is how highly they value my services, to give me such an important controller, but still it took five days before he would see me, and he was cold.
There was no help they could give me, he said. They knew nothing.” She chuckled. “You have never seen me when I want something really badly, Peter. Ha! What a battle.
There is much I knew that would embarrass Mossad with her powerful allies of the West with France and Great Britain and the U.S.A. - I
threatened to hold a Press conference in New York. He became less cold, he told me that the security of the State took precedence over all personal feelings, and I said something very rude about the security of the State, and reminded him of some outstanding business which I would happily leave outstanding. He became warmer but all this was taking time, days, many days, too many days. I was going crazy. I remembered how they had found Aaron’s body, and I could not sleep at night for worrying about that lovely child. And you, oh
Peter, you will never know how I prayed to a god that I was not too sure of. You will never know how I wanted to be with you to comfort you. I wanted so desperately just to hear your voice but I could not break my cover from Tel Aviv.
I could not even telephone you, nor send you a letter She broke off. I hoped you would not believe bad things of me. You would not believe that I did not care. That I was not prepared to help you. I
could only hope that I would be able to bring you some information of value to prove it was not true but I never dreamed that one day you would believe that it was I who had taken your daughter and tortured her.”
“I’m sorry, “he said quietly.
“No, do not say you are sorry. We were both Caliph’s playthings.
There is no blame on you.” She laid her hand upon his arm and smiled at him. “It was not you alone who believed bad things. For at last I had prevailed on my Mossad control to give me some little scraps of information.
At first he denied completely that they had ever heard of
Caliph, but I risked lying to him. I told him that Aaron had told me he had reported the Caliph contact. He gave ground. Yes, he admitted.
They knew of Caliph, but they did not know who he was. I hammered on,
demanding to see my controller each day, driving him as mad as I was until he threatened to have me deported even. But each time we met I
wheedled and bullied a little more from him.
“At last he admitted, “All right, we know Caliph but he is very dangerous, very powerful and he will become more powerful God willing, he will become one of the most powerful men in the world, and he is a friend of Israel. Or rather we believe he is a friend of
Israel.”
“I bullied some more and he told me, “We have put an agent close to Caliph, very close to him, and we cannot jeopardize this agent. He is a valuable agent, very valuable but very vulnerable to Caliph. We cannot take the chance that Caliph could trace information back to him.
We have to protect our man. “Now I threatened, and he told me the agent’s code name to protect both of us should we ever have to make contact. The code-name is “CACTUS FLOWER”.”
“That was all?” Peter asked, with evident disappointment.
“No, my control gave me another name. As a sop and as a warning. The name they gave me was so close to Caliph as to be virtually the same. Again he warned me that he was giving me the name for my own protection.”
“What was it?” Peter demanded eagerly.
“Your name,” she said softly. “Stride.” Peter made an irritable gesture of dismissal. “My name is nonsensical. Why would I kidnap and mutilate my own daughter and Cactus Flower. He might as well have said, “Kentucky Fried Chicken”.”
“Now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”
Peter caught himself, realizing suddenly that he had been too quick to dismiss these scraps of information. He stood up and paced the deck of the Chriscraft with choppy, agitated steps, frowning heavily. “Cactus
Flower,” he repeated. “Have you ever heard it before?”
