«Good heavens, why? Or did you ever find out?»
«We did, and it was a nasty business. Without going into the messier parts, our lads leaned hard on our counterparts in Madrid, going so far as to threaten them with our total withdrawal where they needed us most unless they opened certain sealed records pertaining to the Basque raids. You used the word macabre; you don’t know how apt that is. We found the name Bajaratt, a sergeant—mother Spanish, father border French, accounting for the name—who had been part of the outrageous, buried assault on that mountain village. In short words, he was the soldier who cut off the head of Amaya Aquirre’s mother. She took that name for all it represented to her in horror, certainly not in honor, but for a dedicated purpose—she would never forget for a moment as long as she lived. She would become a killer as loathsome as the man she watched pulling the bayonet through her mother’s neck.»
«It’s warped in the extreme,» said Cooke, barely audible, «but so very understandable. A child assumes the mantle of a monster, fantasizing vengeance through identification. It’s not unlike the Stockholm syndrome, when prisoners of war in brutal circumstances identify with their captors. How much more so with a child… So Amaya Aquirre is Amaya Bajaratt. Yet, although denying her true surname, she never spelled out the Bajaratt.»
«We brought in a psychiatrist who specializes in children’s disorders,» added the chairman of MI-6. «He told us that a young female of ten is somewhat more advanced than her male counterpart—and since I have numerous grandchildren, I must reluctantly agree. He said that a girl of that age who’d gone through such ultimate stress and pain would have a tendency to reveal only part of herself, not all.»
«I’m not sure I follow you.»
«He put it this way, the testosterone syndrome, he called it. A male child in like circumstances might easily write ‘Death to all authority’ and sign his full name, a mark of vengeance for everyone to see, whereas the young female will behave differently, withholding complete information, for she must think ahead to the real vengeance. She must outsmart, not out-muscle her enemies… Still, she can’t help but put part of herself into the ledger.»
«I suppose that makes sense,» said Cooke, nodding. «But good God—records buried in the ground, cypress trees and backwoods rites of passage through bloodshed … mass executions, beheadings with bayonets, and a child of ten living through it all! Christ, you’re dealing with a totally committed psychopath! She wants only to see heads severed from their bodies and plummeting to the ground, as happened to her parents.»
«Muerte a toda autoridad,» said the chief of MI-6. «The heads of authority—everywhere.»
«Yes, I understood the phrase—»
«I’m afraid you can’t possibly understand the gravity of its relevance.»
«I beg your pardon?»
«For the past several years Bajaratt has lived in the Baaka Valley with the leader of a particularly violent Palestinian faction whose cause she fanatically identified with. Apparently she and her lover were married sometime last spring in one of those under-the-fruit-tree ceremonies. He was killed nine weeks ago in a raid on the beaches of Ashkelon, south of Tel Aviv.»
«Oh, yes, I remember reading about that,» said Cooke. «Killed to a man, no prisoners.»
«Do you remember the statement issued worldwide by the remaining members of the faction, namely its new leader?»
«Something about weapons, I believe.»
«Exactly. The statement read in part that the Israeli weapons that killed the ‘avenging freedom fighters’ were manufactured in America, England, and France, and that the people whose lands were stolen from them would never forget or forgive the beasts who provided those weapons.»
«We hear that rot all the time. So what?»
«So Amaya Bajaratt, adding the nom de guerre The Unforgiving, passed a message to the High Councils in the Baaka Valley; your friends or ex-friends in the Mossad picked it up, thank God. She and her comrades, have dedicated their lives to taking the ‘heads of the four great beasts.’ She herself will be the ‘lightning rod that sends out the signal.’»
«What signal?»
«As near as the Mossad can determine, it will be the sign for her hidden killers in London, Paris, and Jerusalem to strike. The Israelis believe it’s implicit in the part of the message that says ‘As the vilest of these beasts falls across the great sea, so must the others follow quickly.’»
«The vilest …? Across …? Good Lord, America?»
«Yes, Officer Cooke, Amaya Bajaratt is on her way to assassinate the President of the United States. That’s her signal.»
«That’s preposterous!»
«Her record suggests that it may not be. Professionally, she’s rarely if ever failed. She’s a pathological genius, and these are her final kills, her revenge against all ‘brutal’ authority, but now with the added dimension of a deeply personal motive—the death of her husband. She must be stopped, Geoffrey. Which is why the Foreign Office, with this organization’s full compliance, has decided that you should immediately return to your former post in the Caribbean. In your own words, there’s no one with more expertise.»
«My God, you’re talking to a sixty-four-year-old man who’s about to retire!»
«You still have contacts throughout the islands. Where they’ve been altered, we’ll provide an entrée. Frankly, we believe you can make swifter headway than anyone else we know. We’ve got to find her and take her out.»
«Has it occurred to you, old boy, that even if I left today, by the time I got there she could have skipped to heaven knows where? Forgive me, but the word balmy comes back to me.»
«As to her ‘skipping,’» said the chairman, briefly smiling, «neither the French nor we believe she’ll be going anywhere for a number of days, perhaps a week, even two.»
«Your crystal balls tell you that?»
«No, our collective common sense. The enormity of her task, as she sees it, will require a fair degree of planning, involving human, financial, and technical resources, including aircraft. She may be a psychopath, but she’s no fool; she won’t attempt to mount her quest on the U.S. mainland.»
«So where better than beyond the immediate scrutiny of the federal authorities,» said Cooke grudgingly. «Yet near enough to have access to the offshore banks and onshore personnel.»
«That’s the way we read it,» agreed the head of MI-6.
«Why did she pass that message to the Baaka councils, I wonder?»
«Her Götterdämmerung, perhaps. She wants the glory of her kills. It’s psychologically consistent.»
«Yes, well, you’ve presented me with a rather irresistible assignment, haven’t you?»
«I had hoped to.»
«Took me right through the proper stages, didn’t you? From a distant enigma with a horrible yet fascinating dossier to an immediate crisis. All the right buttons pushed.»
«Is there another way to do it?»
«Not if you’re a pro, and you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair if you weren’t.» Cooke rose to his feet, his eyes locked with those of his superior. «And now that you may assume my commitment, I’d like to make a suggestion.»
«Be my guest, old chap.»
«I wasn’t entirely candid with you a few minutes ago. I said I still stay in touch with old friends, implying a social correspondence. By and large that’s true, but it’s not complete. Actually, I’ve spent most of my annual holidays in the islands—they do draw you back, you know. And, naturally,» he continued, «former colleagues and new acquaintances of similar backgrounds will get together and reminisce.»