Those in Peril (Unlocked) (45 page)

He stooped and picked Hazel up in his arms and carried her through to the bed and laid her upon it. He picked up the bedside intercom and dialled Agatha. She answered almost immediately.

‘Get the security guards to search the house and grounds for an intruder. Call the police. There has been a murder. Then we need a doctor for Hazel.’ He paused. ‘It’s an emergency.’ He stripped off Hazel’s nightdress, and wiped her face and body with a damp towel. Then he covered her with a duvet, and came under it with her, taking her in his arms. She clung to him. Her whole body was shaking and her teeth chattered. Terrible, gut-wrenching sobs came up from deep inside her. He held her and whispered endearments to her until the doctor arrived.

‘My wife has lost her daughter. It has been a terrible shock,’ Hector explained.

The doctor gave her an injection that dropped her into a deep dark hole of unconsciousness. ‘I want to take her to my clinic, and have a nurse attend her day and night until she recovers fully,’ he said.

‘Good!’ Hector agreed. ‘Things are going to happen here that she should not be involved in—’ He broke off as they heard the police sirens racing through the paddocks towards the house.

‘I will call for an ambulance right away.’

After Hazel was carried downstairs on a stretcher, Hector kissed her unconscious face and watched the ambulance drive away. Then he returned to the bathroom and covered the two pathetic heads with the white cloth. He opened the envelope and read the Arabic script on the card.

‘The blood debt is four. Two heads taken and two more to take before the debt is paid in full.’

S
even days later the Denver police recovered the decapitated body of Cayla Bannock from a storm drain at the back of the sports arena in the grounds of the university. People had called to complain of the smell. The corpse was in an advanced stage of decomposition. The undertakers sealed it in a lead sheath and then laid it in a white marble sarcophagus along with the embalmed heads of Cayla and her grandmother. The lid of the sarcophagus was engraved with both their names. A charter flight delivered it to Steam Boat Springs and a hearse carried it up to the Bannock mausoleum on Spy Glass Mountain. On the same day in South Africa the remains of Grace Nelson’s body were cremated and uncle John scattered her ashes on the Dunkeld vineyards.

Only a handful of close family and friends attended the interment on Spy Glass Mountain. The sarcophagus was placed on a pink marble plinth to the right of Cayla’s father. The priest who had baptized Cayla conducted the simple service. There were no speeches. Afterwards each of the mourners placed a single red rose upon the lid of the sarcophagus as they filed out. Simon Cooper was amongst them and he wept openly.

‘I will never know another girl like her. We were going to be married and have a home and babies. She was wonderful.’ He broke off. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bannock, I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself.’

‘I am so glad you came, Simon,’ she told him.

When Hector and Hazel were alone they walked down the lawns and sat together on the stone bench. Hector looked up at the sky. Hazel smiled sadly.

‘I’m afraid Henry isn’t going to show,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t the time to flit around in his goose persona. At the moment he has his hands too full with Cayla and Grace.’

‘You read my thoughts. I was waiting for Henry,’ Hector admitted. ‘I think this is the first time I’ve seen you smile since it all started.’

‘I am all cried out,’ she told him. ‘The weeping time is behind us. Let’s leave Henry and Cayla alone for a while so they can get to know each other again.’ She stood up and took his hand and they started down the mountain path to the house beside the lake. As they walked he kept glancing sideways at her face.
She is not like any other woman I have ever known
, he thought.
Those others would have been totally destroyed by such a cruel loss. But it is almost as if she has gained strength and resolve from it. I can see now how she has achieved so much in her short life. She is a fighter and she never gives up. She never succumbs to self-pity. She might always mourn for Cayla, but she will never let that debilitate her. She lost Henry at a critical time in her life. She misses him still but she fought on alone, and took over his legendary mantle. I feel deeply honoured to have received the gift of her love. It is my armour. With her at my side I shall never again know loneliness.

Neither of them had any appetite for dinner. They sent the dishes back to the chef in his kitchen. Hector opened a bottle of claret and they took it and the glasses down to the end of the jetty and sat with their legs dangling over the water. They drank the wine in silence and watched the moon come up over the lake. Hazel spoke first.

‘The police have not yet been able to trace the person or persons that placed those heads of my two poor darlings for us to find,’ she sighed.

‘That isn’t surprising,’ Hector replied. ‘Your security on the Houston ranch is not very tight. There are literally hundreds of service people who have access: contract gardening service teams, delivery people bringing supplies, daily hired hands, meter readers, plumbers, painters, electricians and all the others.’

‘But how could Adam have reached any of them from Africa so many thousands of miles away? Surely these people are all Americans.’

‘Plus Latinos, Europeans, Asians, Africans and other immigrants of twenty different nationalities . . . including Somalians, from Puntland.’ She turned to stare at him.

‘Somalians? How is that possible?’

‘Canada alone has over a quarter of a million Somalians who have entered that country legally, and the US–Canadian border is wide open. Your mother’s country, South Africa, is flooded with refugees from the north of the continent. Not only Zimbabweans and Malawians but huge numbers of Nigerians and Somalians. Most of the Somalians are from Puntland and they are still under the sway of Tippoo Tip. If the police ever catch those involved in the murder of Grace and Cayla, they will be very small fish who will not even know who it was that ordered the killings.’ Hector paused and put his arm around Hazel’s shoulder. ‘So you see, my darling, this is not the end of the business. Adam has only just begun. He has thousands of underlings to send against us. It is useless to cut off the tentacles of the Beast. They grow back swiftly. I have to go back to cut off its head.’

‘Don’t you see that is exactly what he is trying to force you to do? That is why he left that taunting warning about taking two more heads. You mustn’t let him suck you in. You mustn’t go.’ She placed her hand on his forearm, and spoke earnestly and passionately. ‘If I lose you, then I have lost everything.’

‘We have no choice,’ he told her.

‘If you go, then I am going with you.’ The tone of her voice was final, brooking no argument. A short silence fell.

‘No, my sweet. I can’t let you come. You know how it was last time. We will be on the Beast’s home ground again.’

‘Send Paddy then. That’s what he’s paid for. That’s what he’s good at,’ she said.

‘I can never send another man to do what I am afraid to do myself. If I don’t go then the Beast will come after us as he has threatened.’

‘Yes, that’s the best solution. Let him come. Make him meet us on our home turf for a change. This time you can be ready for him.’ Hector stared at her in the moonlight.

‘Yes!’ he said thoughtfully, then shook his head. ‘No. He’ll never come himself. He’ll send hired assassins after us, just as he did before. There are those hordes of religious fanatics for him to call on.’

‘Then we must place irresistible temptation in his way,’ she said softly, ‘something so tantalizing that he will not be able to resist it.’

‘Are you suggesting we lay out a bait for him? It’s a clever thought.’ He nodded. ‘But what is there that will bring him personally into the open?’

‘The
Golden Goose
,’ she replied.

‘My God! You’re right,’ he whispered. ‘We know he is greedy. We know he is vindictive. We also can deduce that he is puffed up with power and self-importance by his new station in life – the Sheikh of his clan. The
Golden Goose
might be the only thing we have to bring the Beast out of his cave.’

N
ow that they had something tangible to divert them from the despair of their bereavement, both Hector and Hazel were filled with renewed energy and determination. When Hector was able to contact him, Paddy was in the final departure lounge of Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, waiting for his flight to Dubai and the Middle East.

‘Change of plans, Paddy. We want you back at the Bannock Oil headquarters in Houston as soon as you are able to get there.’

‘By Jesus, Heck! Something has brought you back to life again. I can hear it in your voice. You’re no longer the sad and sorry bastard you were when I left you a few days ago.’

‘Lock and load, my old son! You and I are hitting the warpath again,’ Hector told him, and his tone was crisp and incisive.

Hazel and Hector had debated making either Abu Zara or Taipei the base for the operation. In the end they agreed that both of these locations were too close to the lair of the Beast and were susceptible to infiltration by Adam’s agents. Finally they decided on Bannock House, the corporation headquarters in Houston. Bannock House was on Dallas Street, down the road from the Hyatt Hotel. The twenty-fifth floor at the top of the building overlooked the park. The entire floor was Hazel’s personal domain. The security was ironclad, the amenities all-embracing and the comfort hedonistic. Hazel had pondered on the code-name for the operation. She had finally decided on ‘Operation Lampos’. The Greek meaning of the word was ‘Shining Light’. Lampos was not only the name of Hector’s warhorse in the classical mythology of Virgil and Homer, but it was also the name that Cayla had chosen for her favourite palomino mare.

‘The connection to both you and Cayla is strong,’ Hazel explained. ‘But only to those who know you intimately.’

‘Operation Lampos, I like it. We have a name for it. Now we need the men for it. Paddy should be here tomorrow. Then we can discuss who else we need.’

When Hector propounded Operation Lampos to Paddy, he listened without comment and even when Hector finished speaking he did not immediately reply. He went on doodling on the notepad in front of him. At last he dropped the pencil and looked up.

‘The
Golden Goose
? Who thought this up?’ he asked, then his eyes swivelled to Hazel who had been sitting quietly at the end of the table. ‘It has a feminine flavour.’

‘Don’t you like the idea, Paddy?’ she asked.

‘I love it. It’s plain bloody brilliant.’ He guffawed happily.

‘Who do we need to bring in, Paddy?’ Hector asked.

‘The fewer the merrier,’ Paddy replied, still chuckling. ‘Dave Imbiss for a start. He is our IT geek and red-hot on planning and procurement of equipment and materials. Then we must have your old half-section, Tariq. We need a hard warrior, a born Arabic speaker who can think like the Beast, somebody who knows the enemy and the battleground intimately.’

‘Where is Tariq now?’ Hector asked. ‘Can you contact him?’

Paddy nodded. ‘Yes. Tariq and I have worked out a call sign. He is still undercover in Puntland but I can get him out very quickly.’

‘Very well. So far it’s Hazel, me, you, Dave Imbiss and Tariq. Who else do we take on board?’

‘That will do for a start. The way I see it is that the four of us, and of course Hazel, will brainstorm the basic plan. As we add refinements we may have to call in experts to deal with the details. How long do we have before the
Golden Goose
is ready to sail?’