The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 93
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for him to discern its colour or shape.
"Please don't let anything happen to her," he spoke aloud, but he did
not know to whom his plea was addressed. He thought of turning back and
making her stay with him, but he had no rights in the matter, and he
knew she would not obey him. Short of physical force, there was no way
he could impose his will upon her. He had to let her go.
"But I don't like it one little bit," he reaffirmed.
His private secretary, and the other men who worked for him, knew
exactly what he expected of them. Everything was as he required it.
Gotthold von Schiller looked around the interior of the Quonset hut with
approval. Heim had done well in the time that he had been given to
prepare the base for his boss's arrival.
His own private quarters occupied half the long portable building. They
were spartan, but sterilely clean and neat. His clothes hung in the
cupboard and his cosmetics and medicines were set out in the bathroom
cabinet. His private kitchen was fully equipped and stocked with
provisions. His own Chinese chef had flown out in the Falcon with him,
bringing everything with him that he needed to provide the meals that
his master demanded.
Von Schiller was a vegetarian, a non-smoker and a teetotaller. Twenty
years ago he had been a famous trencherman who loved the hearty food of
the Black Forest, the wines of the Rhine valley and the rich dark
tobaccos of Cuba. In those days he had been obese, with rolls of chin
sagging over his collar. Now, despite his age, he was as lean and fit
and vital as a racing greyhound.
In the autumn of his life, the pleasures were of the mind and the
emotions, more than of the physical senses.
He placed a higher value on inanimate objects than on living creatures,
either human or animal. A piece of stone carved by masons who had been
dead for thousands of years could excite him more than the soft warm
body of the most lovely young woman. He loved order and control.
Power over men and events sustained him more than did the taste of food.
Power and the possession of beautiful and unique objects were his
passions, now that his body was running down and his animal appetites
were losing their zest.
Every item of all that vast and priceless, collection of ancient
treasures that he had already assembled had been discovered by other
men. This was his chance, his last chance to make his own discovery, to
break the seals on the door of a Pharaoh's tomb and be the first man in
four thousand years to gaze upon the contents. Perhaps that Was his real
hope for immortality, and there was no price in gold and human life he
was not fully prepared to pay for it.
Already men had died in this passion of his, and he cared not that there
would be other sacrifices. No price was too high.
He checked his image in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall
opposite his bed. He smoothed the thick, coarse, dark hair. Of course it
was dyed, but that was one of his few remaining conceits. Then he
crossed the uncarpeted wooden floor of his own quarters, and opened the
door into the long conference room which would be his headquarters over
the days to come.
The persons seated there rose to their feet immedi.
lately, their attitudes servile and their expressions obsequious. Von
Schiller strode to the head of the long table and stepped up on to the
block of wood covered with carpeting that his private secretary had
placed there for him. This block went everywhere with him. It was nine
inches high. From this elevation von Schiller looked down upon the men
and one woman who waited for him. He looked them over unhurriedly,
letting them stand a while.
>From the vantage point of his block, he was taller than any of them.
First he looked at Helm. The Texan had worked for him for over a decade.
Completely reliable he was strong both physically and mentally and would
follow orders without question or qualms. Von Schiller had come to rely
on him. He could send him anywhere in the world, from Zaire to
Queensland, from the Arctic Circle to the steaming equatorial forests,
and Helm would get the job done with the minimum of fuss and with very
few unpleasant consequences. He was ruthless but discreet, and like a
good hunting dog he knew his master.
From Helm he looked at the woman. butte Kemper was his private
secretary. She ordered and directed the details of his life, from his
food to his block, from his medicine to his social calendar, No man or
woman was ever received into his presence without her prior arrangement.
She was also his communications expert. The mass of electronic equipment
that occupied one wall of the hut was her preserve. He was able to find
her way through the ether with the- infallible instinct of a homing
pigeon. From the archaic art of the keyboard and Morse code 'to burst
transmissions and random switching he had never known another person,
male or female, who could match her wizardry. She was at that perfect
age for a woman, forty, slim and blonde, with slanting green eyes over
high cheekbones, resembling the young Dietrich.
Von Schiller's own wife, Ingemar, had been an invalid for the last
twenty years, and Utte Kemper had stepped into the void she had left in
his life. Yet she was more than either secretary or wife to him.
When he had first met Utte, she had been holding a very senior position
in the technical section of the German national telecommunications
network, and moonlighting as a pornographic actress - not for the money
but for love of the job. Copies of the videos she had made at that time
were amongst von Schiller's most precious possessions, after his
collection of Egyptian antiquities. Like Helm, she had no qualms. There
was nothing she would not do to him, or allow him to do to her, to
fulfill his most bizarre fantasies. When he watched her videos and she
did some of these things to him, she was the only woman who could still
bring him to orgasm. Yet even this happened less frequently with every
month that passed, and each time the spasms of sexual release she could
evoke from his aging body were less intense.
Utte had her recording equipment set up before her on the table. It was
part of her multifarious duties to keep, accurate and complete records
of every meeting and conversation. Then von Schiller looked past these
two trusted employees to the two other men standing at the table.
Colonel Nogo he had met for the first time that morning, as he stepped
down from the Jet Ranger helicopter that had flown them down from Addis
Ababa to the base camp here on the summit of the escarpment of the Nile
gorge. He knew very little about him, except that Helm had selected him,
and was so far satisfied with his performance. Von Schiller himself was
not equally impressed. There had already been some bungling. Nogo had
allowed Quenton Harper and the Egyptian woman to slip through his
clutches. After a lifetime of operating in Africa, von Schiller placed
little trust or store in blacks and preferred to work with Europeans.
However, he realized that for the time being Nogo's services were
indispensable.
He was, after all, the military commander of the southern Gojam. No
doubt once he had served his purpose he could be taken care of Helm
would see to that. He would not have to bother himself with the details.
Von Schiller looked now at the last man at the table. Here was another
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