Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (219 page)

They were Thor men, picked fighting men, men he had trained himself. There was one bullet left in the Browning.

He knew he was not going to make it but he made a try for the entrance to the stairway, his only escape route.

He ran along the top of the stone wall like a tightrope artist,
and he snapped the single remaining bullet at the running men to distract them.

The crackle of passing shot dinned in his head, and he flinched and missed his footing. He began to fall, twisting sideways away from the edge of the precipice but then the bullets thumped into his flesh.

He heard the bullets going into his body with the rubbery socking sound of a heavyweight boxer hitting the heavy punch bag, and then he was flung out over the wall into the bottomless night.

He expected to fall for ever, a thousand feet to the desert floor below, where already the helicopter was shooting a hundred-foot fountain of fire into the air to mark Caliph's funeral pyre.

There was a narrow ledge ten feet below the parapet where a thorny wreath of desert scrub had found a precarious hold. Peter fell into it, and the curved thorns hooked into his clothing and into his flesh.

He hung there over the drop, and his senses began to fade.

His last clear memory was Colin Noble's bull bellow of command to the five Thor guards.

"Cease fire! Don't shoot again!" And then the darkness filled
Peter's head.

In the darkness there were lucid moments, each disconnected from the other by eternities of pain and confused nightmare distortions of the mind.

He remembered being lifted up through the hatchway of an aircraft,
lying in one of the light body-fitting Thor stretchers, strapped to it tightly, helpless as a newborn infant.

There was the memory of the inside cabin of Magda Altmann's Lear jet. He recognized the hand-painted decoration of the curved cabin roof. There were plasma bottles suspended above him; the whole blood was the beautiful ruby colour of fine claret in a crystal glass, and when he rolled his eyes downwards he saw the tubes connected to the thick bright needles driven into his arms but he was terribly tired,
an utter weariness that seemed to have bruised and crushed his soul and he closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, there was the roof of a long brightly lit corridor passing swiftly in front of his eyes.

The feeling Of motion, and the scratchy squeak of the wheels of a theatre trolley.

Quiet voices were speaking in French, and the bottle of beautiful bright blood was held above him by long slim hands that he knew so well.

He rolled his head slightly and he saw Magda's beloved face swimming on the periphery of his vision.

"I love you," he said, but there was no sound and he realized that his lips had not moved. He could no longer support the weariness and he let his eyelids droop closed.

"How bad is it?" he heard Magda's voice speaking in that beautiful rippling French, and a man replied.

"One bullet is lying very close to the heart we must remove it immediately." Then the prick of something into his flesh searching for the vein, and the sudden musty taste of Pentothal on his tongue,
followed by the abrupt singing plunge back into the darkness.

He came back very slowly out of the darkness, conscious first of the bandages that swathed his chest and restricted his breathing.

The next thing he was aware of was Magda Altmann, and how beautiful she was. It seemed that she must have been there all along while he was in the darkness. He watched the joy bloom in her face as she saw that he was conscious.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for coming back to me, my darling." Then there was the room at La Pierre Benite, with its high gilded ceilings and the view through the tall sash windows across the terraced lawns down to the lake. The trees along the edge of the water were in full leaf, and the very air seemed charged with spring and the promise of new life. Magda had filled the room with banks of flowers,
and she was with him during most of each day.

"what happened when you walked back into the boardroom at Altmann
Industries?" was one of the first questions he asked her.

"Consternation, cheri." She chuckled, that husky little laugh of hers. "They had already divided the spoils." The visitor came when
Peter had been at La Pierre benite for eight days, and was able to sit in one of the brocaded chairs by the window.

Magda was standing beside Peter's chair, ready to protect him from over-exertion physically or emotionally.

Colin Noble came into the room like a sheepish St. Bernard dog.

His right arm was strapped and carried in a sling across his chest. He touched it with his good hand.

"If I'd known it was you and not Sir Steven I'd never have turned my back on you," he told Peter, and grinned placatingly.

Peter had stiffened, his face had transformed into a white rigid mask. Magda laid her hand upon his shoulder.

"Gently, Peter,"she whispered.

"Tell me one thing Peter hissed. "Did you arrange the kidnapping of Melissa-Jane?" Colin shook his head. "My word on it.

Parker used one of his other agents. I did not know it was going to happen." Peter stared at him, hard and unforgiving.

"Only after we had recovered Melissa-Jane, only then I knew that
Caliph had planned it. If I had known I would never have let it happen. Caliph must have known that.

That is why he did not make me do it." Colin was speaking quickly,
urgently.

"What was Parker's object?" Peter's voice was still a vicious hiss.

"He had three separate objects. Firstly, to convince you that he was not Caliph. that's why his first order was to have you kill Parker himself. Of course, you never would have got near him. Then you were allowed to recover your daughter. It was Caliph himself who gave us
O'Shaughnessy's name and where to find him. Then you were turned onto
Magda Altmann-" Colin glanced at her apologetically. "Once you had killed her, you would have been bound to Caliph by guilt."

"When did you learn this?" Peter demanded.

"The day after we found Melissa-Jane. By then there was nothing I
could do that would not expose me as Cactus Flower all I could do was to pass a warning to Magda A through Mossad."

"It's true, Peter," said
Magda quietly.

Slowly the rigidity went out of Peter's shoulders.

"When did Caliph recruit you as his Chief Lieutenantr he asked,
his voice also had altered, softened.

"As soon as I took over Thor Command from you, He was never certain of you, Peter, that was why he opposed your appointment to head of Thor and why he jumped at the first chance to have you fired.

That was why he tried to have you killed on the Rambouillet road. Only after the attempt failed did he realize your potential value to him."

"Are the other Atlas unit commanders Caliph's lieutenants Tanner at
Mercury Command, Peterson at Diana?"

"All three of us. Yes!" Colin nodded, and there was a long silence.

"What else do you want to know, Peter?" Colin asked softly. "Are there any other questions?"

"Not now." Peter shook his head wearily.

"There will be many others later." Colin looked up at Magda Altmann inquiringly. "Is he strong enough yet?" he asked. "Can I tell him the rest of it?" She hesitated a moment. "Yes," she decided. "Tell him now."

"Atlas was to be the secret da get in the sleeve of Western civilization a civilization which had emasculated itself and abased itself before its enemies. For once we would be able to meet naked violence and piracy with raw force.

Atlas is a chain of powerful men of many nations banded together,
and Caliph was to be its executive chief. Atlas is the only agency which transcends all national boundaries, and has as its object the survival of Western society as we know it. Atlas still exists, its structure is complete only Caliph is dead. He died in a most unfortunate air accident over the or dan valley but Atlas still exists. It has to go on, once that part which Caliph has perverted is rooted out.

It is our hope for the future in a world gone mad." Peter had never heard him speak so articulately, so persuasively.

"You know, of course, Peter, that you were the original choice to command Atlas. However, the wrong man superseded you although nobody could know he was the wrong man at that time. Kingston Parker seemed to have all the qualities needed for the task but there were hidden defects which only became apparent much later." Colin began enumerating them, holding up the fingers of his uninjured arm.

"Firstly, he lacked physical courage. He became obsessed with his own physical safety grossly abusing his powers to protect himself.

"Secondly, he was a man of unsuspected and overbearing ambition,
with an ungoverned lust for raw power. Atlas swiftly became the vehicle to carry him to glory. His first goal was the Presidency of the United States. He was using Atlas to destroy his political opponents. Had he succeeded in achieving the presidency, no man can tell what his next goal would have been." Colin dropped his hand and balled it into a fist.

"The decision to allow you to reach the rendezvous with Kingston
Parker on the cliffs above Jericho was made by more than one man in more than one country." Colin grinned again, boyishly, disarmingly.

"I did not even know it was you. I believed it was Steven Stride,
right up until the moment I turned my back on you!"

"Tell him," said
Magda quietly, "Get it over with, Colin.

He is still very weak."

"Yes," Colin agreed. "I'll do it now.

Yesterday at noon, your appointment to succeed Doctor Kingston Parker as head of Atlas Command was secretly confirmed." For Peter it was as though a door had at last opened, a door so long closed and locked, but through it now he could see his destiny stretching out ahead of him;
clearly he could see it for the first time.

"You are the man best suited by nature and by training to fill the void which Kingston Parker has left." Even through the weakness of his abused body, Peter could feel a deep well of strength and determination within himself which he had never before suspected. It was as though it had been reserved expressly for this time, for this task.

"Will you accept the command of Atlas?" Colin asked.

"What answer must I take back with me?" Magda's long fingers tightened on his shoulder, and they waited while he made his decision.

It came almost immediately. There was no alternative open to him,
Peter knew that it was his destiny.

"Yes, , he said clearly. "Tell them I accept the responsibility."

It was a solemn moment, nobody smiled nor spoke for long seconds, and then: "Caliph is dead," Magda whispered. "Long live Caliph." Peter
Stride raised his head to look at her, but his voice when he replied was so cold that it seemed to frost upon his lips.

"Never," he said, "call me that again, ever." Magda made a small gesture of acquiescence, of total accord, then she stooped to kiss him on the mouth.