He had his straps off and one of the MI6s in his hand before the engine died; opened the flimsy door and jumped down, crouching under cover of the wing, with the gun snapped on to fully automatic — capable of firing all thirty rounds in 1.5 seconds — sweeping the muzzle round in a swift arc. Packer followed, with the same movements.
Two men were already beating out the flaming beacons, and two more were approaching with hurricane lamps. There was a high container truck parked on the dunes about thirty yards away, above the salt-pan on which they had landed. One of the men came forward and shook them both by the hand. He did not smile. ‘We have little time. The aircraft will go to the truck.’ It sounded like the voice which had talked them down on the radio.
Packer and Ryderbeit slung the MI6s over their shoulders and joined the four men behind the wings of the Storch, and they began pushing it towards the truck.
The time was 10.54 p.m.
CHAPTER 38
Sarah had been able to eat little for dinner. At nine o’clock she went up to her room and tried to sleep. At ten o’clock she had a shower and began to prepare herself. Shiva Steiner sent her up a vodka martini which she found disappointingly weak. All evening Steiner had appeared unusually fussy and anxious and had twice given her the same warning. ‘Sarah, it is most important that you do not have too much to drink. The Ruler detests people who are drunk.’
Sarah would have liked very much to get drunk. Instead, she took twenty milligrams of Valium and tried to avoid thinking of what lay ahead. But tonight her imagination was unusually busy, playing — against her will — on the persistent and repulsive theme of what it was going to feel like to slip a poisoned suppository up the anus of a man she did not even know. Her upbringing had left her with a lingering revulsion against the mechanics of the human body.
She wondered, with a slight shiver, as she squeezed the tube of glue along the edge of her false eyelashes, whether he was hairy. She had once seen a man on the beach, in Turkey, who had tufts of hair on his shoulders and down his spine, and thick black hair sprouting out of the edges of his bathing trunks, and the sight had sickened her. The Ruler came from a tribe very close to the Turks.
She wondered, too, what he would want to do to her.
Her mind, with malicious curiosity, wondered how she would react if he insisted on subjecting her to some outlandish Oriental perversion; she realized with dismay how relatively inexperienced she was. The Ruler, Steiner had told her, was a worldly man who would want diversions — he would certainly not be satisfied, as poor Owen Packer was, with conventional coitus.
Again she tried not to think about it, but the thought was imperative: how was she going to manoeuvre him into a position where she could insert one of those odious little waxy grey, bullet-shaped objects which Steiner had given her earlier in the evening, disguised in two Estée Lauder lipsticks. She could already imagine several mishaps, any of which would cause immediate disaster.
She would have to secrete at least one of the lipsticks under the pillow, and bring it out while he was already mounting her, her hands all the time caressing him against her will, her fingertips having to explore and locate the exact point of entry, and then carry out the act of murder with a deft precision which must allow for no margin of error. The least hesitation, the smallest degree of clumsiness, would alert him at once — he would grab the lipstick out of her fingers and summon the guards.
What would happen then was something she wanted to think about even less than the idea of probing with her index finger to find the rubbery ring of the Serene Imperial sphincter.
It was essential, Steiner had emphasized, that the poison be inserted as deep as she could reach, so that it was drawn up into the rectum. From that moment the convulsions would start and he would be totally incapacitated. It was the few seconds beforehand that would be critical.
She felt slightly sick as she removed the varnish from her fingernails, and cut each of them almost to the quick; then checked herself again in the mirror, and put a spare pair of pants in her bag, along with her wallet and passport and cosmetic purse, her silver pill box from Asprey’s containing her Valium, and the two lipsticks.
At 10.30 precisely Steiner appeared, alone, and escorted her down a side staircase, on to the sandy forecourt in front of the garage. He hardly spoke, except to ask her if she had everything she needed — her passport, in particular. She knew she would not be returning here, and Steiner had assured her that her luggage would reach Beirut safely. It was not a detail that greatly concerned her now.
As she stepped out into the muggy darkness, her mind seized on small irrelevant details. She noticed that Steiner was oddly dressed: instead of one of his impeccable suits, he looked as though he were going out on some hunting party — olive-green smock shirt and baggy matching trousers tucked into green rubber-soled boots.
The Fleetwood sedan was waiting on the forecourt. Steiner showed her in and said nothing as he closed the door on her. The engine was already running and the driver pulled away a second later, between the marble gateposts, on to the empty coast road into the capital. After a couple of miles she noticed that the familiar Ford Falcon
