Hostage Tower
Introducing UNACO – the United Nations Anti Crime Organisation – an elite team of agents who battle the world’s deadliest criminals. When the mission looks impossible, the world calls upon UNACO.The most ingenious criminal in the world has come up with his most spectacular exploit, to kidnap the mother of the president of the United States and hold her and the Eiffel Tower to ransom.He hires for his team:• a top weapons expert, who can steal and use the newest, most secret military equipment• the best cat burglar, who can scale any heights• a man whose extraordinary strength and ingenuity will conquer any obstacle.Faced with this audacious crime of the century, the world’s top politicians can only turn to UNACO and its team.
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JOHN DENIS
Alistair MacLean’s UNACO Hostage Tower
Contents
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
EPILOGUE
By Alistair MacLean
ALISTAIR MACLEAN’S HOSTAGE TOWER
Copyright
About the Publisher
Lorenz van Beck had three hours to kill. For a man to whom killing came easily, it was time enough. But on that fine, pastel-golden Paris day, van Beck had nothing to kill but time.
Van Beck wandered through the leafy shades of the Ile Saint-Louis and basked in the dappled darts of sunlight that sought out his square, unsmiling face beneath its cap of spiked grey hair. He was hatless, and dressed in a dark suit of heavy broadcloth, his waistcoat buttoning high to bunch up the small-knotted, unimpressive tie. He looked, unsurprisingly, like a businessman.
With a muttered sigh, van Beck turned to business, choosing the Musée Rodin and the Musée de Cluny for modern art, porcelain and glass. He noted recent additions, their placings and lighting, their security surveillance. He made jottings in a notebook: enter by this or that window; copy key to door 2, 9, 15; how big, how small, how friendly, the curator’s guards; proximity to sewers, access roads; MO – bombs? Gas?
Occasionally he wrote down a name, one of a thousand – ten thousand – thieves, killers, weapons men, explosives men, biologists, hit-men, stunt-men, drivers, pimps … the freelance employees of Lorenz van Beck, international fence extraordinary. Against a particularly splendid loan collection of Venetian glass he set another name – a well-known name, titled, respected – a lady, you could say, of some quality. Not an employee, but a client.
Van Beck flipped back through the pages of the notebook to the diary section, and checked the client appointment he had fixed that day. He cast an eye at the gold watch chained to his waistcoat, sniffed the expensively musty air of the museum once again – what delicious odours wealth created! – and strolled to the car he had rented under a false name and driving licence at the Gare d’Austerlitz. He retrieved a shabby leather case with an obstinate clasp from the front seat, locked the car, and abandoned it. It would later, he knew, be reported missing, but the matter did not greatly concern van Beck.
He made his way by taxi to another car rental office in the Boulevard Haussmann, where the pretty secretary recognized him as Marcel Louvain, and drove to Rambouillet by way of Versailles, stopping at the palace to sit in the lengthening garden shadows and eat warm bread and rough Ardennes pâté. The Rambouillet bell-tower boomed the first chime of six o’clock as Lorenz van Beck pushed open a creaking internal door and clumped into the darker silence of the church …
The bell notes reverberated through the empty nave. Van Beck peered into the gloom, grunted, and plodded to the second in a group of confessional boxes set in the furthest shadowy corner. He pushed through the dingy red curtain, lowered his bulk on to the chair, cleared his throat, and sniffed in the direction of the confessional grille. A polite cough came from the scarcely discernible figure on the other side.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ van Beck mumbled.
‘In nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sanc –’ the priest began, and was rudely interrupted by van Beck’s derisive chuckle.
‘This was your idea, Smith,’ he said, ‘but I’m a sensitive man, and play-acting becomes neither of us. Say what you have to say, and let me go.’
‘I rely, as always, van Beck,’ Smith returned in his dry, precise voice, ‘on your absolute discretion.’
‘And I on your consuming lust for making money illegally.’
The vaguely outlined head nodded agreement. ‘Though you do me a small injustice,’ Smith said. ‘I am fascinated more by crime than by money, as you well know. For me, stealing ten dollars from the coffee fund in the desk of the secretary to the Director of Fort Knox is worth all the jackpots in Las Vegas … in the world.
‘I have made crime my life’s study, my life’s work. It is the ultimate excitement, van Beck. No other physical experience can match it.’
‘Ja, ja,’ the Bavarian sighed, ‘so you have said, so you have said, Mister Smith. So you’re different from me … huh? I can fence anything from the Mona Lisa to a uranium mine. I could find customers for the Taj Mahal or Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony. I’ve even sold his own gold back to the Director of Fort Knox. But I’m a peasant. You’re an artist. What do you want?’
‘A team.’
‘To do what?’
‘You know better than that, van Beck,’ Smith rapped.
‘OK, OK.’ Van Beck was silent. ‘How many?’
‘Three,’ Smith replied.
Van Beck wrote the figure in his dog-eared notebook. ‘Any preferences?’ he enquired.
‘None.’
‘So tell me.’
Smith’s urbane voice dropped to a sibilant hiss. ‘One – a weapons expert. The best. Tough … resourceful … professional.’ Van Beck’s blunting pencil stump dug into the cheap paper.
‘Two – a thief. Again, the best. I have to steal two and a half million rivets and somebody’s mother.’ Smith giggled. ‘The best thief you know, van Beck. Daring, totally unafraid.’
