LITMIR.BIZ

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stage was a passable imitation of McCafferty’s voice, said, ‘I don’t believe we’ve met, have we?’

      ‘Good, Jagger, good,’ Smith exulted. ‘I have not had the honour of Colonel McCafferty’s acquaintance, and it’s my intention to keep it that way. You’ve done well. Already, you’ve exceeded my expectations.’

      He turned to Stein and pressed congratulations on him, too, which the little doctor was compelled modestly to accept. The transformation had, in all truth, been a miracle of plastic surgery.

      Stein then mentioned that Jagger was curious about the nature of the assignment he was to carry out as McCafferty, but Smith advised Jagger not to worry; he would be told all in a few weeks. Meanwhile, he was to immerse himself in the role, for he would periodically be examined in his mastery of it by Dunkels. ‘I need hardly have to explain,’ Smith purred, ‘that I shall be most displeased if all the hard work and expense I have gone to proves to be wasted. If you are found ultimately incapable of performing this task, I assure you that you will not survive long enough to ponder your failure.’

      Jagger flushed as far as the stretched pink tissue of McCafferty’s face would permit, and made as if to rise from the wheelchair, but Stein and the nurse eased him back down. Stein protested that Smith was being unfair, and could unsettle Jagger’s psychological acceptance of the permanent loss of his identity.

      Smith dismissed the possibility with an airy wave of his hand, and reassured Jagger of his confidence in the ringer’s powers. He repeated that Jagger would learn everything he needed to know before long. ‘You, on the other hand, my dear Doctor,’ Smith said to Stein, ‘will not be told the details of the plan. When it becomes a fait accompli, the whole world will know. In the meantime, I am paying as much for your silence as for your undoubted medical skill.’

      Stein smiled and inclined his head. Smith need have no fears for his discretion, Stein promised, nor would he seek information from Jagger when the ringer was in full possession of the facts. ‘Then we understand each other, Doctor,’ Smith replied, a satisfied smile on his face.

      Stein beamed back at him. Probably no other man alive, he reflected, had ever double-crossed Mister Smith and collected a large fee from him at the same time.

      No other man, true. But a woman had …

      … and her name was Sabrina Carver.

      She had been a member of Smith’s Eiffel Tower commando team, but in reality (and undetected by Smith) had helped bring about his destruction there, for she was also a valued agent of UNACO. Sabrina knew the identity of only one other UNACO field operative – and it was not Joe McCafferty.

      Philpott had made it a corner of UNACO’s game-plan to keep his agents anonymous and apart. It protected the agents, and it shielded UNACO, since a captured operative could denounce only himself or herself, or the headquarters staff. And everyone knew who the headquarters staff were; their names were published in official UN documents. Philpott’s only truly secret weapons were his agents, which he employed in every UN member state. A full roster of their names would make a priceless intelligence weapon, and surprising reading, especially to the agents themselves.

      When circumstances absolutely required it, Philpott paired agents into a team for a ‘need to know’ one-to-one relationship. Sometimes, teams stayed together – if both members survived. Certain operatives were never twinned, either from disinclination, or because they were politically or strategically sensitive. McCafferty was in the strategically sensitive category.

      Philpott drew his field staff from all classes, colours and creeds, and if he had to pair an agent, he took what sometimes seemed to Sonya Kolchinsky to be an almost perverse delight in matching polar opposites.

      For example, Joe McCafferty, who now had to be twinned, was an honest and straightforward career airman, a fiercely patriotic American and a high-ranking officer with an outstanding reputation, both in the Pentagon and in the American Secret Service.

      Whereas Sabrina Carver, whom Philpott had selected as McCafferty’s partner, was an international jewel thief.

      Her fee for the Eiffel Tower job (reluctantly agreed by Philpott) had been the proceeds of an astonishing raid on the Amsterdam Diamond Exchange, which she had carried out to impress Smith into hiring her for his team. Philpott’s ruthless efficiency, and proven success with UNACO, frequently collided head-on with his conscience when the delicate question arose of the head of an anti-crime squad actually aiding and abetting his own pet criminals. Luckily, his conscience invariably fell at the first fence.

      UNACO’s finances, never more than grudgingly yielded by the UN member countries, depended on results, and there was very little that Malcolm Philpott would not do to obtain those results. Particularly when he was forced to deal with criminal monsters like Smith.

      Philpott gave Swann his instructions on Sabrina’s role of shadow to Joe McCafferty. ‘There’s to be only a one-way “need to know” this time,’ he emphasised. ‘Sabrina must know about McCafferty, but he is not to know about her, unless I expressly order it. Clear?’

      Swann left to bring in Sabrina for briefing, and Sonya complained that the situation was still far from clear to her, even if Swann understood it. ‘He doesn’t,’ Philpott declared, ‘but he’ll do as he’s told. The point is that Joe will be a front-line target and won’t want to be bothered with looking after a “twin”. At the same time, he won’t appreciate feeling that we’ve set someone to watch him.

      ‘But I reckon that if Smith does have designs on Air Force One, then Joe will be able to use all the help he can get, and I’ll deal with his outraged manhood when the whole thing’s over.’

      Philpott looked gravely at Sonya, and ventured a weary smile. ‘It could be bad,’ he said slowly. ‘The worst we’ve ever had to face. If Smith launches an action against Air Force One and half a dozen oil sheikhs, I don’t have to tell you that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, anyone except our people aboard that Boeing can do about it.’

      As the long-serving and respected correspondent of the Soviet newspaper Isvestia in Central Europe, Axel Karilian enjoyed an enviably high standard of living in a luxury apartment block near the centre of Geneva. He had resisted all attempts by the Swiss to plant domestic staff in his flat to spy on him, so it was Karilian himself who answered the imperious ring at his doorbell in the early hours of the morning. He recognised his visitor as medium- to top-ranking in the KGB.

      ‘They did not tell me you were coming,’ Karilian said in greeting.

      ‘I did not tell them I was going,’ his visitor said coldly. Karilian revised his estimate; there had clearly been a purge in the Gorski Prospekt, and his uninvited caller, code-named Myshkin, was now indisputably top-rank. Karilian produced whisky and cigars, vodka and cigarettes being reserved strictly for lower-order guests.

      ‘This man Smith,’ the KGB high-flier said, ‘interests us. So does his project, whatever it may turn out to be. We will refer to it in vague terms, please, since –’ he pantomimed a listening device ‘– we cannot be too careful.’

      Karilian protested, in suitably oblique language, that the apartment was ‘clean’, but Myshkin waved him to silence. ‘It will be as I say,’ he ordered. Karilian shrugged and nodded.

      ‘We consider the project,’ Myshkin went on, ‘to be of the utmost significance to us.’ Karilian suddenly felt a thrill of unease steal over him; despite Myshkin’s denial, Moscow had obviously penetrated Smith’s security; they knew his target.

      ‘An international incident of extreme gravity can be created from the Smith project,’ Myshkin was saying, ‘one which will cause maximum embarrassment to a certain person who is not precisely our closest friend.’

      Karilian inclined his head at the blatant clue, while excitement gripped his innards. The reference must be to Warren G. Wheeler, President of the United States of America – and Karilian had found out sufficient details of Air Force One’s future schedule to be certain now that Smith’s target was the OPEC ministers. Nothing else fitted

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