Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       About the Author

       Keep Reading …

       By Alistair MacLean

       About the Publisher

       ONE

      ‘We shall be arriving in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, in just a few minutes.’ Mellifluous, accentless, the Dutch stewardess’s voice could have been precisely duplicated on any of a dozen European airlines. ‘Please fasten your seatbelts and extinguish your cigarettes. We hope you have enjoyed your flight: we are sure you will enjoy your stay in Amsterdam.’

      I’d spoken briefly to the stewardess on the way across. A charming girl, but given to a certain unwarranted optimism in her outlook on life in general and I had to take issue with her on two points: I hadn’t enjoyed the flight and I didn’t expect to enjoy my stay in Amsterdam. I hadn’t enjoyed the flight because I hadn’t enjoyed any flight since that day two years ago when the engines of a DC 8 had failed only seconds after take-off and led to the discovery of two things: that an unpowered jet has the gliding characteristics of a block of concrete and that plastic surgery can be very long, very painful, very expensive and occasionally not very successful. Nor did I expect to enjoy Amsterdam even though it is probably the most beautiful city in the world with the friendliest inhabitants you’ll find anywhere: it’s just that the nature of my business trips abroad automatically precludes the enjoyment of anything.

      As the big KLM DC 8 – I’m not superstitious, any plane can fall out of the sky – sank down, I glanced round its crowded interior. The bulk of the passengers, I observed, appeared to share my belief in the inherent madness of flying: those who weren’t using their finger-nails to dig holes in KLM’s upholstery were either leaning back with excessive nonchalance or chattering with the bright gay animation of those brave spirits who go to their impending doom with a quip on their smiling lips, the type who would have waved cheerfully to the admiring throngs as their tumbril drew up beside the guillotine. In short, a pretty fair cross-section of humanity. Distinctly law-abiding. Definitely non-villainous. Ordinary: even nondescript.

      Or perhaps that’s unfair – the nondescript bit, I mean. To qualify for that rather denigrating description there must exist comparative terms of reference to justfy its use: unfortunately for the remainder of the passengers there were two others aboard that plane who would have made anyone look nondescript.

      I looked at them three seats behind me on the other side of the aisle. This was hardly a move on my part to attract any attention as most of the men within eyeing distance of them had done little else but look at them since leaving Heathrow Airport: not to have looked at them at all would have been an almost guaranteed method of attracting attention.

      Just a couple of girls sitting together. You can find a couple of girls sitting together almost anywhere but you’d have to give up the best years of your life to the search of finding a couple like those. One with hair as dark as a raven’s wing, the other a shining platinum blonde, both clad, albeit marginally, in mini-dresses, the dark one in an all-white silk affair, the blonde all in black, and both of them possessed as far as one could see – and one could see a great deal – of figures that demonstrated clearly the immense strides forward made by a select few of woman-kind since the days of Venus di Milo. Above all, they were strikingly beautiful, but not with that vapid and empty brand of unformed good