Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

It was an extraordinary sight by day, the road twisting and turning until the final lap, and suddenly the castle was there, grafted on to the mountainside like a lump of coal in a snowman’s face. The narrow track widened to form a quadrangle and car-park, and facing Smith’s visitors was a drawbridge over a leafy chasm. This led to a corridor and entrance hall, shut off from the world outside by a huge, arched doorway and carved double doors. The drawbridge and entrance portal occupied much of the width of that end-facing wall, for Castle Windischgraetz was long but slim of girth, bent round to fit the contours of the cliff.

The lofty walls supported peaked slate roofs, also built on to the rock face. The wooded cliff towered above the castle and, most impressive of all, outlined it against the gaping maw of a cave reaching into the heart of the mountain, its mouth curving like a black halo over the tallest point of the building. The roof slates rose in pyramid turrets, and under them sat rows of darkened windows in the rough-weathered stone of the walls.

The castle of Windischgraetz stood fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, the eyrie of an eagle, impregnable, almost unapproachable, since the days of Charlemagne.

Smith’s hostages were marshalled across the drawbridge and into an interior courtyard where twin cannon guarded another stone entranceway. There Smith ordered the blindfolds and bonds removed, and the captives taken to the trophy room. Sheikh Zeidan was carried up the stairs by two burly crewmen, and his wheelchair slung in after him.

Smith stood outside with the big iron key in his hand.

‘Go to the radio room,’ he instructed Fayeed, ‘and wait for a contact from Dunkels. He should be on his way by now. I’ll entertain our guests for a while, but let me know as soon as you hear word of his movements.’

Achmed hurried away and Smith turned the key noiselessly in the lock. Two guards came up behind him, sub machine-guns once more at the port.

Hemmingsway remarked sourly that he hoped Smith had come to state his terms. Assuredly, Smith said, he had. Fairman asked how long Smith planned to hold them, and Smith assumed they would be freed once the ransom for their release was in his hands.

‘Ah,’ Hamady breathed, ‘so it is a ransom.’

‘Naturally,’ Smith said. ‘Did you think I had you kidnapped merely for the pleasure of sharing your company?’

‘We were wondering, perhaps,’ Zeidan observed heavily, ‘whether it might not have something to do with our status as OPEC emissaries. That your motives could be, shall I say, more overtly political than merely mercenary.’

Smith, who was enjoying himself, took the insult without flinching.

‘Your exalted positions, Sheikh, bear only commercial value for me,’ he sneered. ‘In some ways I detest what you stand for, your stranglehold over our Western oil supplies, your greed and primitive cruelty to your peoples … but I am neither politician nor moralist, Your Excellency. I regard you as medieval robber barons, ripe for plucking. That you should be relieved of some of your enormous wealth is, I suggest, long overdue. I regret the presence of a blameless American among you, and I regard the crew members of the President’s toy as no more than passing nuisances. I have other plans for Miss Carver. From you gentlemen,’ indicating the seated Arabs, ‘I require nothing but money – in kind.’

‘What kind of money in what kind of kind?’ Hemmingsway demanded.

Smith studied him in surprise.

‘Perhaps you do wish to speak for them – haggle for them, Mr Hemmingsway. So be it. The ransom is fifty million dollars.’

Hemmingsway swallowed with difficulty and licked his dry lips.

‘And in what form?’

‘In cut diamonds,’ Smith replied firmly. ‘They are so pretty – and so eminently negotiable, don’t you think?’

Mackie-Belton prevailed upon a high-ranking and discreet Bahraini police officer to provide McCafferty with clothing suitable for what the American would only describe as ‘a somewhat colder climate’. Swann phoned with the message that a jet was already en route for the Gulf island to pick him up and take him to Rome.

‘With a few extras,’ Basil explained. ‘Passport, documentation; armaments for you and Miss Carver and the agent, Cooligan; field glasses, communicators – that sort of thing. Everything’ll be stowed in a haversack on board the plane. All you have to do is walk off with it at Leonardo da Vinci, Rome. The jet’ll be in Bahrain well before dawn. Good luck, Mac.’

‘Thanks, Basil,’ McCafferty replied, and before Swann could hang up slipped in a request for money. ‘Cleaned out, you see,’ he explained.

Rarely for him, Swann chuckled.

‘Why not try the consul?’ he suggested, and broke the connection.

‘This,’ said Mackie-Belton later, returning from another ego-bruising session with the Arabian lady and brandishing five hundred dollars, ‘is getting to be a nasty habit.’

At 0300, the consul ruefully said goodbye to the Arabian lady, and at 0330 McCafferty received a call from the Bahraini police captain telling him that Siegfried Dunkels had left the island.

‘Going where?’ Mac asked hopefully.

He could almost hear the policeman smirk.

‘First stop Athens – then Zagreb.’

Just at that time, Philpott was unavailable to give instructions, having received a summons to a distinctly acid meeting with the UN’s dour and heavy-humoured Secretary General, so Mac was airborne when the order came from UNACO to divert his aircraft to Yugoslavia and lie in wait for the German …

When Smith next visited the hostages, he brought armed guards with him again, and three more guerillas hauling tripods and a large electric battery.

‘I thought you needed a little more illumination,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and even if you don’t, I do.’

The men rigged up the equipment, and poured photo-floodlight into the room. Fayeed sidled in behind them with a Polaroid camera, and Smith posed the hostages, OPEC men in front, crew members behind, against a totally neutral section of wall, removing trophies, pictures, furniture … anything which could lead to an identification of the locale.

After checking that no member of the group was making an unauthorised signal with fingers or eyes, Smith nodded to Achmed, who clicked away and produced several reasonable prints. Smith approved four pictures, and instructed Achmed to send them immediately by courier to Trieste and Dubrovnik.

‘They must catch the first editions of the morning newspapers,’ he emphasised, ‘–together with details of the ransom demands. And don’t forget – one to the Associated Press agency as well. I want this to hit the States, too. It is, after all, their aeroplane.’

Fairman muttered something at this sally, and Smith inclined his ear with a sympathetic smile.

‘If I caught what you said correctly, Colonel,’ he said pleasantly, ‘you were offering your opinion that Air Force One could be located by satellite sensing-devices. Am I right?’

Fairman nodded grudgingly.

‘I thought so,’ Smith continued, ‘and I’m sorry to disappoint you. The engines were covered in dry ice as soon as the tarpaulins were laid. They cooled off within a few moments. The aircraft cannot, I regret to say, be detected. Now–’ addressing all of them ‘–you will doubtless be relieved to hear that I have no intention of compelling you to spend the night in these uncomfortable surroundings.

‘Achmed will show you to the quarters which have been prepared for you. I am afraid some of you will be doubling up; I can only hope that the partners allocated to you are acceptable. Achmed?’

Once more the hostages were led out, and the only trouble Achmed encountered was when he tried to separate Sabrina and Feisal. He had wanted her for himself; the fate of the boy did not concern him.