Wild Justice by Wilbur Smith

psychological capability.’
    â€˜In my view, she is the child of Bakunin and Jean Paul Sartre—’ Again Parker nodded heavily and Peter went on. ‘The anarchist conception that destruction is the only truly creative act, that violence is man recreating himself. You know Sartre said that when the revolutionary kills, a tyrant dies and a free man emerges.’
    â€˜Will she go all the way?’ Parker insisted.
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ Peter answered without hesitation. ‘If she is pressed she’ll go all the way – you know the reasoning. If destruction is beautiful, then self-destruction is immortality. In my view, she’ll go all the way.’
    Parker sighed and knocked the stem of his pipe against his big white teeth.
    â€˜Yes, it squares with what we have on her.’
    â€˜You have read her?’ Peter asked eagerly.
    â€˜We got a first-class voice print, and the computer crossmatched with her facial structure print.’
    â€˜Who is she?’ Peter cut in impatiently; he did not have to be told that the sound intensifier and the zoom video cameras had been feeding her voice and image into the intelligence computer even as she issued her demands.
    â€˜Her born name is Hilda Becker. She is a third-generation American of German extraction. Her father is a successful dentist widowed in 1959. The girl is thirty-one years old—’ Peter had thought her younger, that fresh young skin had misled him. ‘– I.Q. 138. University of Columbia 1965-68, Master’s degree in Modern Political History. Member of SDS – that’s Students for a Democratic Society—’
    â€˜Yes.’ Peter was impatient. ‘I know.’
    â€˜â€“ Activist in Vietnam war protests. Worker for the draft evasion pipeline to Canada. One arrest for possession of marijuana 1967, not convicted. Implicated with Weathermen – and one of the leaders of on-campus rioting in the spring of 1968. Arrested for bombing of Butler University and released. Left America in 1970 for further study at
Dusseldorf. Doctorate in Political Economics 1972. Known association with Gudrun Ensslin and Horst Mahler of the Baader-Meinhof. Went underground in 1976 after suspicion of implication in the abduction and murder of Heinrich Kohler, the West German industrialist—’ Her personal history was an almost classical development of the modern revolutionary, Peter reflected bitterly, a perfect picture of the beast. ‘Believed to have received advanced training from the PFLP in Syria during 1976 and 1977. No recorded contact since then. She is a habitual user of cannabis-based drugs, reported voracious sexual activity with members of both sexes—’ Parker looked up. ‘That’s all we have,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes,’ Peter repeated softly ‘She’ll go all the way.’
    â€˜What is your further assessment?’
    â€˜I believe that this is an operation organized at high level – possibly governmental—’
    â€˜Substantiate!’ Parker snapped.
    â€˜The co-ordination with U.N.O proposals sponsored by the unaligned nations points that way.’
    â€˜All right, go on.’
    â€˜For the first time we have a highly organized and heavily supported strike that is not seeking some obscure, partisan object. We’ve got demands here about which a hundred million Americans and fifty million Englishmen are going to say in unison, “Hell, these aren’t unreasonable” ’
    â€˜Go on,’ said Parker.
    â€˜The militants have picked a soft target which is the outcast pariah of Western civilization That U.N. resolution is going to be passed a hundred to nil, and those millions of Americans and Englishmen are going to have to ask themselves if they are going to sacrifice the lives of four hundred of their most prominent citizens to support a government whose racial policies they abhor.’
    â€˜Yes?’ Parker was leaning