Free Goodbye California by Alistair MacLean Page B

intangible: it has to be seen, and the bigger thebetter: and all self-respecting eccentrics with the proper monetary qualifications invariably settled on the same symbol: a home that would properly reflect the uniqueness of the owner. Kubla Khan had built his own Xanadu and, as he had been incomparably wealthier than any run-of-the-mill billionaire, what was good enough for him was good enough for them.
    Von Streicher’s choice of location had been governed by two powerful phobias: one of tidal waves, the other of heights. The fear of tidal waves stemmed from his youth, when he had read of the volcanic eruption and destruction of the island of Thera, north of Crete, when a tidal wave, estimated at some 165 feet in height, destroyed much of the early Minoan, Grecian and Turkish civilizations. Since then he had lived with the conviction that he would be similarly engulfed some day. There was no known basis for his fear of heights but an eccentric of good standing does not require any reason for his whimsical beliefs. He had taken this fearful dilemma with him on his one and only return to his German birthplace, where he had spent two months examining the architectural monuments, almost exclusively castles, left behind by the mad Ludwig of Bavaria, and on his return had settled for what he regarded as the lesser of two evils – height.
    He didn’t, however, go too high. He selected a plateau some fifteen hundred feet high on a mountain range some fifty miles from the ocean, andthere proceeded to build his own Xanadu which he later christened ‘Adlerheim’ – the home of the eagle. The poet speaks of Kubla Khan’s pied-à-terre as being a stately pleasure dome. Adlerheim wasn’t like that at all. It was a castellated neo-Gothic horror, a baroque monstrosity that came close to being awe-inspiring in its total, unredeemed vulgarity. Massive, built of north Italian marble, it was an incredible hodge-podge of turrets, onion towers, crenellated battlements – and slit windows for the use of archers. All it lacked was a moat and drawbridge, but Von Streicher had been more than satisfied with it as it was. For others, living in more modern and hopefully more enlightened times, the sole redeeming feature was to be seen from the battlements, looking west: the view across the broad valley to the distant coastal range, Streicher’s first break-water against the inevitable tidal wave, was quite splendid.
    Fortunately for the seven captives in the rear of the second of two vans grinding round the hairpins up to the castle, they were doubly unable to see what lay in store for them. Doubly, because in addition to the van body being wholly enclosed, they wore blindfolds as well as handcuffs. But they were to know the inside of Adlerheim more intimately than even the most besotted and aesthetically retarded admirer of all that was worst in nineteenth-century design would have cared to.
    The prisoners’ van jolted to a stop. Rear doors were opened, bandages removed and the sevenstill-handcuffed passengers were helped to jump down on to the authentically cobbled surface of what proved to be a wholly enclosed courtyard. Two guards were closing two massive, iron-bound oaken doors to seal off the archway through which they had just entered. There were two peculiarities about the guards. They were carrying Ingram submachine guns fitted with silencers, a favourite weapon of Britain’s elite Special Air Service – despite its name, an Army regiment – which had two rare privileges: the first was that they had access to their own private armoury, almost certainly the most comprehensively stocked in the world, the second being that any member of the unit had complete freedom to pick the weapon of his own particular choice. The popularity of the Ingram was testimony to its effectiveness.
    The second idiosyncrasy about the two guards was that, from top of burnous to sandal-brushing skirts of robe, they were dressed as Arabs – not the