The Dark Crusader. Alistair MacLean

      

      THE DARK CRUSADER

      Alistair MacLean

       Copyright

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Previously published in paperback by HarperCollins 2008 and by Fontana 1963

      First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1961

      Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1961

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

      Cover photograph © Stephen Mulcahey

      Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008337414

      Ebook Edition © 2020 ISBN: 9780007289257

      Version: 2020-06-15

       Dedication

       To Douglas and Violet

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Prologue

      I Tuesday 3 a.m.–5.30 a.m.

      II Tuesday 8.30 a.m.–7 p.m.

       III Tuesday 7 p.m.–Wednesday 9 a.m.

       IV Wednesday 3 p.m.–10 p.m.

       V Wednesday 10 p.m.–Thursday 5 a.m.

       VI Thursday noon–Friday 1.30 a.m.

       VII Friday 1.30 a.m.–3.30 a.m.

       VIII Friday 3.30 a.m.–6 a.m.

       IX Friday 6 a.m.–8 a.m.

       X Friday 10 a.m.–1p.m.

       XI Friday 1 p.m.–6 p.m.

       XII Saturday 3 a.m.–8 a.m.

       Epilogue

       About the Author

       By Alistair MacLean

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      A small dusty man in a small dusty room. That’s how I always thought of him, just a small dusty man in a small dusty room.

      No cleaning woman was ever allowed to enter that office with its soot-stained heavily curtained windows overlooking Birdcage Walk: and no person, cleaner or not, was ever allowed inside unless Colonel Raine himself were there.

      And no one could ever have accused the colonel of being allergic to dust.

      It lay everywhere. It lay on the oak-stained polished floor surrounds that flanked the threadbare carpet. It filmed the tops of bookcases, filing cabinets, radiators, chair-arms and telephones: it lay smeared streakily across the top of the scuffed knee-hole desk, the dust-free patches marking where the papers or books had recently been pushed to one side: motes danced busily in a sunbeam that slanted through an uncurtained crack in the middle of a window: and, trick of the light or not, it needed no imagination at all to see a patina of dust on the thin brushed-back grey hair of the man behind the desk, to see it embedded in deeply trenched lines on the grey sunken cheeks, the high receding forehead.

      And then you saw the eyes below the heavy wrinkled lids and you forgot all about the dust: eyes with the hard jewelled glitter of a peridot stone, eyes of the clear washed-out aquamarine of a Greenland glacier, but not so warm.

      He rose to greet me as I crossed the room, offered me a cold hard bony hand like a gardening tool, waved me to a chair directly opposite the light-coloured veneered panel so incongruously let into the front of his mahogany desk,and seated himself, sitting very straight, hands clasped lightly on the dusty desk before him.

      ‘Welcome home, Bentall.’ The voice matched the eyes, you could almost hear the far-off crackling of dried ice. ‘You made fast time. Pleasant trip?’

      ‘No, sir. Some Midlands textile tycoon put off the plane to make room for me at Ankara wasn’t happy. I’m to hear from his lawyers and as a sideline he’s going to drive the B.E.A. off the European airways. Other passengers sent me to Coventry, the stewardesses ignored me completely and it was as bumpy as hell. Apart from that, it was a fine trip.’

      ‘Such things happen,’ he said precisely. An almost imperceptible tic at the left-hand corner of the thin mouth might have been interpreted as a smile, all you needed was a strong imagination, but it was hard to say, twenty-five years of minding other people’s business in the Far East seemed to have atrophied the colonel’s cheek muscles. ‘Sleep?’

      I shook my head. ‘Not a wink.’

      ‘Pity.’ He hid his distress well and cleared his throat delicately. ‘Well, I’m afraid you’re off on your travels again, Bentall. Tonight. Eleven p.m., London Airport.’

      I let a few seconds pass to let him know I wasn’t saying all the things I felt like saying, then shrugged in resignation. ‘Back to Iran?’

      ‘If I were transferring you from Turkey to Iran I wouldn’t have risked the wrath of the Midlands textile industry by summoning you all the way back to London to tell you so.’ Again the faint suggestion of a tic at the corner of the mouth. ‘Considerably farther away, Bentall. Sydney, Australia. Fresh territory for you, I believe?’

      ‘Australia?’ I was on my feet without realizing I had risen. ‘Australia! Look, sir, didn’t you get my cable last week? Eight months’ work, everything tied up except the last button, all I needed was another week, two at the most –’

      ‘Sit down!’ A tone of voice to match the eyes, it was like having a bucket of iced water poured over me. He looked at me consideringly and his voice warmed up a little to just under freezing point. ‘Your concern is appreciated, but needless. Let us hope for your own sake that you do not underestimate our – ah – antagonists as much as you appear to underestimate those who employ