The Eleventh Commandment (1998) Read online

Stuart unfastened his seatbelt, but hadn’t enough strength to stand up. Tara had begun stirring, while Maggie remained resolutely asleep. He checked his pockets. They had taken his wallet and passport. He tried desperately to make some sense of it. Why should anyone go to these extremes for a few hundred dollars, some credit cards and an Australian passport? Even more strangely, they seemed to have replaced them with a slim volume of Yeats’s poems. He had never read Yeats before he met Tara, but after she had returned to Stanford he had begun to enjoy his work. He opened the book at the first poem, ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’. The words ‘ I am content to live it all again, and yet again were underlined. He flicked through the pages, and noticed that other lines had also been marked.

  As he was considering the significance of this, a tall, heavily built man appeared by his side, towering menacingly over him. Without a word, he snatched the book from Stuart’s hands and returned to the front of the plane.

  Tara touched his hand. He quickly turned to her and whispered in her ear, ‘Say nothing.’ She glanced across at her mother, who still hadn’t stirred, seemingly at peace with the world.

  Once Connor had placed the two suitcases in the hold and checked that all three passengers were alive and unharmed, he left the aircraft and climbed into the back of a BMW whose engine was already running.

  We continue to keep our side of the bargain,’ said Alexei Romanov, who was sitting next to him. Connor nodded his agreement as the BMW drove out through the wire gates and began its journey to Ronald Reagan National Airport.

  After his experience at Frankfurt, where the local CIA agent had nearly spotted him because Romanov and his two sidekicks did practically everything except publicly announce their arrival, Connor realised that if he was going to pull off his plan to rescue Maggie and Tara, he would have to run the operation himself. Romanov had finally accepted this when he had been reminded of the clause agreed by his father. Now Connor could only hope that Stuart was as resourceful as he had appeared to be when he had quizzed him on the beach in Australia. He prayed that Stuart would notice the words he’d underlined in the book he’d slipped into his pocket.

  The BMW drew up outside the upper-level Departure entrance of Washington National Airport. Connor stepped out, with Romanov a pace behind. Two other men joined them and followed Connor as he strolled calmly into the airport and over to the ticket counter. He needed them all to relax before he made his next move.

  When Connor handed over his ticket, the man behind the American Airlines desk said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Radford, but Flight 383 to Dallas is running a few minutes late, though we hope to make up the time en route. You’ll be boarding at Gate 32.’

  Connor walked casually in the direction of the lounge, but stopped when he reached a bank of telephones. He chose one with occupied booths on either side. Romanov and the two bodyguards hovered a few paces away, looking displeased. Connor smiled at them innocently, then slipped Stuart’s international phone-card into the slot and dialled a Cape Town number.

  The phone rang for some time before it was eventually answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Connor.’

  There was a protracted silence. ‘I thought it was only Jesus who could rise from the dead,’ said Carl eventually.

  ‘I spent some time in purgatory before I managed it,’ Connor replied.

  ‘Well, at least you’re alive, my friend. What can I do for you?’

  ‘First, as far as the Company is concerned, there will be no second coming.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Carl.

  Connor was answering Carl’s last question when he heard the final call for Flight 383 to Dallas. He put the phone down, smiled at Romanov again, and headed quickly for Gate 32.

  When Maggie eventually opened her eyes, Stuart leaned across and warned her to say nothing until she was fully awake. A few moments later a stewardess appeared and asked them to lower their tray tables. An inedible selection of food appeared, as if they were on a normal first-class flight.

  As he contemplated a fish that should have been left in the sea, Stuart whispered to Maggie and Tara, ‘I haven’t a clue why we’re here or where we’re going, but I have to believe that in some way it’s connected with Connor.’

  Maggie nodded, and quietly began to tell them everything she had found out since Joan’s death.

  ‘But I don’t think the people holding us can be the CIA,’ she said, ‘because I told Gutenburg that if I was missing for more than seven days, that video would be released to the media.’

  ‘Unless they’ve already found it,’ said Stuart.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Maggie emphatically.

  ‘Then who the hell are they?’ said Tara.

  No one offered an opinion as the stewardess reappeared and silently removed their trays.

  ‘Have we got anything else to go on?’ Maggie asked after the stewardess had left them.

  ‘Only that somebody put a book of Yeats’s poems in my pocket,’ said Stuart.

  Tara noticed Maggie give a start.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, looking anxiously at her mother, whose eyes were now filling with tears.

  ‘Don’t you understand what this means?’

  ‘No,’ said Tara, looking puzzled.

  ‘Your father must still be alive. Let me see it,’ said Maggie. ‘He might have left a message in it.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got it any more. I’d hardly opened it before a heavy appeared from the front of the plane and snatched it away,’ said Stuart. ‘I did notice that a few words were underlined, though.’

  ‘What were they?’ asked Maggie urgently.

  ‘I couldn’t make much sense of them.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Can you remember any of them?’

  Stuart closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. ‘”Content“,’ he said suddenly.

  Maggie smiled. ‘”I am content to live it all again, and yet again“.’

  Flight 383 did land in Dallas on time, and when Connor and Romanov stepped out of the airport another white BMW was waiting for them. Had the Mafya placed a bulk order? Connor wondered. The latest pair of thugs to accompany them looked as if they had been hired from central casting - even their shoulder holsters were bulging under their jackets.

  He could only hope that the Cape Town branch was a recent subsidiary, although he found it hard to believe that Carl Koeter, with over twenty years’ experience as the CIA’s senior operative in South Africa, wouldn’t be able to handle the latest new kid on the block.

  The trip into downtown Dallas took just over twenty minutes. Connor sat silently in the back of the car, aware that he might be about to come face to face with someone else who had worked for the CIA for almost thirty years. Although they’d never met, he knew this was the biggest risk he had taken since arriving back in America. But if the Russians expected him to honour the most demanding clause in their contract, he had to have the use of the only rifle ideal for carrying out such an assignment.

  After another silent journey they pulled up outside Harding’s Big Game Emporium. Connor slipped quickly into the shop, with Romanov and his two new shadows dogging his every step. He went up to the counter, while they pretended to take a keen interest in a rack of automatic pistols on the far side of the shop.

  Connor glanced around. His search needed to be quick, unobtrusive but thorough. After a few moments he was convinced there were no security cameras in the shop.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said a young assistant dressed in a long brown coat. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’m out here on a shooting trip, and I’d like to buy a rifle.’

  ‘Do you have any particular model in mind?’

  ‘Yes, a Remington 700.’

  ‘That should be no problem, sir.’

  ‘It may need a few modifications,’ said Connor.

  The assistant hesitated. ‘Excuse me for a moment, sir.’ He disappeared through a curtain into a back room.