Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

  ‘The Ministry of the Interior. It’s standard procedure. They always try to get us to pay the fare and we never do.’

  ‘Every time a British citizen gets out of jail?’

  ‘No, just whenever one is being deported.’

  ‘He’s being deported?’

  Now we were both surprised. ‘What did you expect? That’s also pretty standard for a foreigner found guilty of espionage.’

  Kapotas got back from his shopping trip just before noon, having bought a small pot of caviar, two cooks and a waiter. No champagne.

  ‘Do you know the prices?’ He stared disbelievingly at the caviar. ‘So I remembered: we have an aeroplane full of champagne.’

  ‘And a grand opening in Lebanon.’

  ‘No. That is postponed indefinitely. I got the message from London when I called at our office just now.’

  Well, it didn’t surprise me. Opening a new pad would be a pretty pricey commitment.

  Kapotas added: ‘They say, can we try and sell the champagne out here?’

  ‘Not without an import licence. And paying duty and all.’

  ‘I think the hotel has a licence to import some wines … I saw something in the file …’ He went through into the little cubbyhole of an office behind the desk and started rummaging.

  I called after him: ‘And who do we sell it to? It would take years to get rid of 144 bottles of that stuff over the counter here, so unless the Ledra Palace or the Hilton want some …’

  He came up with a piece of paper and studied it, frowning. Finally: ‘I don’t understand it. I will ring the Customs and ask.’

  He started dialling, and I drifted back to the desk and to brooding about deportation. Ken wasn’t going to like it. A pilot’s life is travelling and he can’t afford having places he can’t travel to. The big airlines even put it in your contract: getting yourself barred from a country can be a valid reason for dismissal.

  The trouble is, deportation isn’t a ‘legal’ thing, if you see what I mean. It isn’t a court decision, but a minister’s one. In some places you can appeal it through the courts, if you can invent some grounds, but it likely won’t help. And just because it isn’t a court sentence, it can last forever – or a day. All you can do is wait and hope for a change of government, policy, wind or the minister’s liver and – bingo – you’re back in favour again.

  If, of course, you’re important enough for it to be worth somebody changing his mind about you.

  Kapotas came out of the office looking almost cheerful for once. ‘They understand our problem: it is okay to bring in just one box, on this licence, as long as the others stay “airside”, if you understand that.’

  I nodded. ‘On yonder side of the barrier, in the aeroplane or a Customs store. There’s no point in unloading it and renting store space until we know we’ll get an import licence for the lot – and we’ve got a buyer waiting. So leave it on board.’

  He was ready to agree to any scheme that saved money. ‘Good, then. If you go to the airport now you will be back by half past one. You may use my car,’ he added magnanimously.

  ‘Hold on, now. I’m meeting a flight at two-ten so I shan’t be back before three anyhow.’

  ‘But we must have the champagne before then!’

  ‘Then come with me and bring the box back while I hang on there. We can use your car,’ I added magnanimously.

  Stand 8, the visiting light-aircraft park, was just about next door to the Customs supervised store, so they let us take the box out through that. They even offered to rent us a porter, but Kapotas had just found out about the duty on imported wine and gone mean again.

  ‘£3.70 a gallon! That means more than seven pounds for a box! Of course, it would be better if it was Commonwealth champagne.’

  ‘A fine old Nova Scotia blanc de blanc ’53, for instance.’

  ‘Ummm. Well …’ and after that he saved his breath for humping the box – it weighed just on fifty pounds – while I locked up the aeroplane and sorted out the paperwork. Standing out in the sun, the inside of the Queen Air was like an overheated greenhouse; it wouldn’t hurt the aircraft, but I didn’t think champagne was normally served lightly boiled. Maybe we really ought to move it into store … the hell with it; I’d probably end up paying the rental myself, on Kapotas’s past form.

  The Customs sorted through my wad of papers, down to and including a Certificat d’origine from Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne swearing that no unprofessional grape had been allowed to get its pips into the tub. I’d never seen a certificate like that before, though I’d never carried champagne before, either.

  So finally Kapotas paid his duty and staggered away with the box still unopened, while I drifted over to the terminal for a beer and a look at the menu. The latter was a pure formality; whatever they offered, it was sure to be better than what the Castle’s new cooks did to that sheep and/or octopus.

  EL AL flight 363 was an old Viscount 800 they must have borrowed from Arkia, and late, just as you’d expect with the way they search passengers at Tel Aviv nowadays. It was pretty full, mostly with a returning old folks’ pilgrimage, each carrying a bottle of duty-free brandy and a bundle of Jerusalem walking-sticks. Then a couple of American families – and finally Ken.

  I was watching from the terminal restaurant, looking down to the tarmac. He and another man came out of the door, paused at the head of the steps, then Ken walked quickly down, carrying what looked like his old flight briefcase. The other man stayed up there, watching. Ken came across until he was almost at the immigration entrance below me, then turned and jerked a stiff two fingers at the man back on the steps. The man didn’t react. Ken vanished inside.

  Twenty minutes later he came out of the Customs hall with the briefcase and a battered brown leather grip I remembered him buying in Florence eight years before. He was wearing an old pair of khaki trousers, faded to near white, and a new white shirt. For a few moments he stood there, letting the crowd flow around him, not really looking for anything and maybe only smelling the air. To me, the scent was sweat and floor polish, but it could have meant something different to him.

  He was a couple of inches shorter than me and now thinner as well. The long lines down the side of his bony nose were cut deeper, his eyes barricaded with sun-crinkles, and for the first time there was grey in his lank black hair. But he’d been moving easily, though maybe a little warily, and he was still Ken Cavitt. And I was very glad to see him.

  He sensed, rather than saw me moving towards him and jerked around. His face was blank for a couple of seconds, and then he began to smile. That hadn’t changed.

  We shook hands, sort of politely, and I said: ‘Hello, Ken.’

  ‘Hello, matey. Nice of you to remember.’

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t got anything better to do today, so …’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ He looked me carefully up and down; I was still wearing yesterday’s smudged khaki drill trousers and shirt. ‘Millionaire dress, huh?’ He tapped my stomach. ‘And a deposit account.’

  ‘I’ll slim tomorrow.’

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  I touched my jaw carefully. ‘Got slugged last night. I’d say mugged if they’d taken anything.’

  ‘Weird.’ He looked along the terminal lobby. ‘Can we get a drink or ten in here?’

  ‘It comes wholesale back in town, but we can run some taxiing trials here first.’ I headed us towards the stairs up to the restaurant – the bar downstairs doesn’t serve spirits – then took out a packet of menthol-tipped cigarettes and offered them. ‘You still on these?’.

  ‘I gave it up. You can’t afford to have vices, inside. Somebody gets a hold and screws you.’

  I nodded and tossed the unopened packet into a wastebin alongside an airport cop, who did a double-take and then carefully ignored the bin until we were out of sight.

  I ordered two Scotches and two Keo beers – an old pattern, but only with Ken. I hadn’t drunk like that in two years.
>
  He took a bite of the Scotch and shuddered violently. ‘Christ! Is that what whisky tastes like?’

  I sipped cautiously. ‘It seems normal…’

  ‘Hell, to think I’ve spent two years dreaming of that.’ He gulped at the beer, then took another cautious sip of Scotch. ‘I guess I’ll get used to it again. Where are we staying? – the Ledra?’

  ‘Nicosia Castle.’

  He frowned. ‘Why that dump?’

  ‘It’s a bit complicated. But about your licences: I talked to the Civil Aviation people before I left London, and—’

  ‘Ah, that can wait. Just tell me how rich we are.’

  It was a moment I’d known would come, but that didn’t make it any easier. ‘Ken – we aren’t rich.’

  ‘Not quite millionaires, then. Have we still got the same aeroplane?’

  It’s funny how few British pilots say ‘plane’; I don’t myself. Somehow, it would be like calling a woman you loved ‘a good lay’.

  I said carefully: ‘We don’t have any aeroplane.’

  His face was suddenly very calm. ‘Why not?’

  ‘We only owned half of it – and d’you have any idea what a hot lawyer costs in Israel? By the time I’d got through paying for your defence …’

  After a time, he said slowly: ‘I knew it must be adding up, but … you should have let me go down without a fuss. Came to the same thing, anyway.’

  ‘It wasn’t sentiment. The business wasn’t the aeroplane: it was you and me, and damn-all use in jail. You can get an aeroplane any time at any money.’

  ‘If you can show the bank a cargo contract … Why didn’t you tell me? You were writing.’

  ‘Didn’t think it would make two years go any faster.’

  ‘You could be right, there.’ The loudspeaker gurgled an announcement for a CSA flight to Prague, passengers please go to … Ken cocked his head to listen, then shook it, annoyed. ‘You get too used to listening for orders. So, we’re broke?’

  ‘Within a few hundred.’

  ‘D’you mind if I say “knickers”?’

  ‘Make it “cami-knickers” if you like; I don’t shock easily.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad.’ He gulped the rest of his Scotch. ‘Or should I have given it back and taken a refund?’ ‘We’ll live.’ I waved for refills.

  He stared into his empty glass, then grinned suddenly. ‘Busted. Well, we’ve been there before. More comfortable, somehow.’

  ‘And all we have to do is start again. I may have ballsed things up, but you can’t fly a business one-handed.’

  ‘I know … It’s just that you sit there on top of that mountain and bugger-all to do – not even needlework or carpentry classes – and damn few to talk to, and you think “Well, at least Roy’s making our fortune”.’

  ‘I know. Sorry.’

  ‘Ah, the hell with it. What’ve you been doing?’

  ‘A while with an air-taxi outfit, Aztecs and Comanches. Then a North Sea oil company – that’s where I got rated on the Queen Air—’

  ‘What’s so marvellous about that?’

  ‘Sorry, I hadn’t told you.’ Our drinks arrived, then I told him about Castle’s aeroplane and the firm going broke. ‘So we spend a few days here getting you back on the primrose path, then they’ll tell me to fly the aeroplane home. You come along, you can fly every inch of the way and that’s ten hours’ free practice. After that, all you have to do is take a medical and instrument rating, get a type-rating and once they’ve looked at your logbook you’ve got your licence back.’

  He nodded approvingly. ‘And you’d got all this worked out?’

  ‘I didn’t know Castle was going broke, but I knew I’d have to fly back empty anyway.’

  ‘Neat. What mark of Queen Air?’

  ‘The 65-80. Lycoming 380’s, no long-range tanks, usual ADF, VOR, ILS, weather radar that’s trying to pick up dirty pictures.’

  ‘Radar’s improved since my time. What’s the weather up to, here?’

  I told him as much as I remembered about the met situation – I hadn’t picked up a report today – as we walked out towards the taxi rank.

  He listened carefully. ‘It’s funny – it’s almost the thing you miss most, not knowing the weather, hot getting a report. You can work out a bit for yourself, when you can see the sky, but not knowing what’s really happening up there … then you feel cut off. Shut in.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ We were almost at the rank, but then the Czech Tu-104 started its takeoff and we stopped to watch, as pilots always do. It did it the old-fashioned way, getting the nosewheel off early and running nose-high for a while before sagging up into the sky.

  ‘Takes you back,’ Ken said. And it did: that was the way we’d learned to handle the early jets in the RAF, Meteors and NF14’s.

  ‘It’s an old design. When did it first come out? – ’53? – ’54?’

  ‘As a bomber, earlier than that …’ he watched it howl ponderously away to the north-west, and his eyes were screwed tight against the bright sky.

  I offered my sunglasses and he took them; he hadn’t seen too much sun in the last two years. His face had a thin, superficial tan of the exercise yard over the deeper pallor of the cell block.

  ‘I’ll buy some in town – if you can afford it.’

  I nodded and we walked on to the taxi rank. The car park was pretty much uninhabited; it was a quiet time between flights. Just one man who’d paused to watch the takeoff and was now climbing into a white Morris 1100.

  We were heading for town in the back of an old Austin A60 when Ken suddenly said: ‘Whatever happened to Linda?’

  ‘Linda? Oh yes, her. She was shacked up with some air traffic controller in Scotland, the last I heard.’

  ‘Damn it.’ He went depressed. ‘I was probably going to marry that girl.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what about Angela and Judy and—’

  ‘What? I didn’t know any Angela or Judy.’

  ‘You would have done, mate; you would have done.’

  He thought this over and it seemed to cheer him up a bit. ‘Maybe you’re right. Which reminds me: I hope you weren’t thinking of an early night tonight?’

  I’d been thinking of it but certainly not expecting it. ‘I’ll start organising things when we get to the hotel. Incidentally, you’ve probably got company waiting there: a certain Spohr, plus daughter.’

  ‘Professor Spohr?’ He seemed impressed. ‘That’s quick.’

  ‘Professor? Where did you meet him? – not in Beit Oren?’

  ‘Yep. He did a year. Came out about six weeks ago.’

  ‘You’re getting a better class of jailbird these days. He’s ordered champagne and caviar to be waiting for you; what did you do? – save him from drowning in the cell bucket?’

  ‘No, just that most of the time we were the only English-speaking Christians in the place.’

  ‘And you spent a year talking about Christianity? You don’t know anything except the churches have pointed tops.’

  ‘Very interesting bloke. He’s a medieval archaeologist.’

  ‘So what did he go down for?’

  ‘Well, he was excavating a site without permission—’

  ‘They don’t give you a year for that.’

  ‘They do if you pull a gun on the cops who’ve come to arrest you.’ He was twisting uneasily to look over his shoulder.

  ‘Ah. So this is just an old boys’ reunion.’

  ‘Could be.’ He was still glancing back.

  I said: ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘There’s a car …’ he said softly.

  ‘The white 1100? It was in the park with us, but this is still the normal route into town.’

  ‘Yes …’ He studied the road ahead, trying to remember. We were coming up to a big roundabout. ‘If you go right here, you come in over the river on George Grivas Street, is that right?’

  ‘I think so.’ He looked at me and I shrugged and then nodded and leant forward to tell the driver to make
the turn. ‘I know it isn’t the quickest way, but my friend wants to see something of the Engomi area.’

  So we turned right. So did the 1100.

  Ken said: ‘Would they have told Cyprus I was coming in?’

  ‘Sure to have done.’ After all, you don’t pay the airline fare to deport somebody unless you’ve made sure you won’t have to double it by bringing him back when the other place won’t take him either. ‘But the authorities here wouldn’t bother to tail you. All they have to do is check the hotel registers.’ ‘Ye-es … I’m not going back to jail, you know.’ He said it quietly, as much to himself as to me.

  I looked across, a bit surprised. ‘No reason why you should. Specially if you don’t go back to Israel.’

  He just nodded, and looked back. The white 1100 was staying about fifty yards back on a fairly empty road. If he was tailing us, it was quite an efficient job. But just his hard luck that he was behind two pathologically suspicious characters.

  We came over the river Pedieos – a steep green gorge but with only a flabby brown trickle at the bottom – and the town began to thicken up. The 1100 closed in, casually.

  Our driver slowed to make a left turn that would have brought us along Evagoras Avenue to Metaxas Square, Nicosia’s busiest junction and the closest entrance to the walled city. I tapped him on the shoulder hastily. ‘Keep going, keep going. Go down Makarios instead.’

  ‘But it’s stupid—’

  ‘It’s our money on the clock.’

  The big shoulders shrugged but we kept going. And it was stupid, an unnecessary loop, doubling back. And if the 1100 was just as stupid …

  He was. Makarios Avenue also brings you down to the Metaxas Square traffic-lights, and from a hundred yards away we could see we’d be caught by a red.

  Ken looked at me. ‘Shall we dance?’

  ‘If you like. But don’t hit him before I do; my record can stand it better.’

  We stopped and the 1100 stopped immediately behind and we were out. I heard the taxi-driver’s surprised shout dwindle away and then we had both doors of the 1100 open.

  I said: ‘It’s a nice day for a drive, but what makes you think we know the only good route on the island?’