Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

  I drifted, stopped for a cup of gritty sweet Turkish coffee, bought a pair of sunglasses, bought myself a pair of nylon socks – and then, because that seemed mean, bought Ken a pair as well. It’s funny how you never get time to buy ordinary things at home; I’m always getting my handkerchiefs in Frankfurt and my paperclips in Brussels.

  So by then I was almost up to the permanent roadblock to the Turkish quarter. I could have gone through – they don’t mind foreigners – but there didn’t seem much point right then. So I turned left and drifted towards the Paphos Gate, and once I was there it wasn’t more than five minutes to the Ledra Palace and goodbye to my resolution about spending Castle money only in Castle Hotels.

  The little old barman was just setting up for the evening, filling bowls of nuts and crisps. He did a quick double-take and said gravely: ‘It’s been a long time, Captain.’

  ‘Nearly two years.’

  ‘Whisky and … soda, is it, sir?’

  ‘And not too much ice.’

  He put a bowl of overcooked peanuts in front of me and trotted off to organise the drink. It’s a tall, dim room and the stone-tiled floor gives a slight echo that makes it seem even cooler than it is. Almost empty, now, but full enough at other times for them to have started punching out the arched french windows to make an extension into the garden. And then the old hands from all over the world will sit in there and complain that it just isn’t the same any more, and they’ll be right but they’ll still be there.

  He came back with the Scotch. ‘And Captain Cavitt – is he with you, sir?’ He’d remembered Ken’s name; not mine.

  ‘He’ll be around. Mind if I ring somebody in the hotel?’

  He put the phone in front of me and went back to the nuts and crisps and ice. I asked for Mr Jehangir’s room and got a polite voice that said it was jolly good of me to call and he’d be down as soon as he could get some togs on. Sergeant Papa must have quite an ear to spot the faint trace of accent; I wouldn’t have got it if I hadn’t been listening for it.

  I sipped my Scotch and ate a peanut and waited and … and now what? Back to Britain in a few days – but what after that? Well, for the summer we might find some charter outfit that wanted a couple of extra bods; that would build up a bit of fat against the cold. But it wouldn’t be heading us towards our own aeroplane again. For that, we needed capital – or a personal introduction to Father Christmas. And he’d have to be in a pretty good mood even for Father Christmas: Ken and I weren’t bright young things with decades of earning power ahead. At forty, we’d only got about fifteen years before a medical downcheck put all the future behind us. By then, we had to be in a position to hire others to do the flying, or …

  The woods are full of old pilots who just assumed they’d have it made before the doctor pulled the sky from under them. Or assumed they’d be dead, of course; plenty escape that way.

  On that happy note, somebody leant over me and asked: ‘Captain Case?’

  ‘I’m Roy Case. And just Mister.’

  ‘Oh splendid. Uthman Jehangir,’ and he held out a long brown hand.

  The rest of him was a lean, tanned fifty-year-old with crinkled grey hair, a square white smile with gold trimmings, a very formal blue suit and white shirt. Beirut, for sure; they all dress like bank managers over there. Of course, half of them are bank managers.

  I asked: ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘No, please, allow me.’

  Any time. So I took another Scotch and he asked for a red Cinzano and soda. Then, as he moved and sat down on the next stool, I realised he was lame in his left leg. Or no: something about the businesslike way he arranged the knee with his hand, the shiny uncreased stiffness of the shoe … an artificial leg, from above the knee.

  He lifted his glass: ‘Cheers.’ And we sipped. ‘I rang your hotel …’

  ‘I got the message. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You fly the Castle International plane, don’t you?’

  It isn’t a plane. ‘I did last, I will next, but at the moment it’s—’

  ‘Oh yes, I know about Castle going into receivership.’ He had the silly habit of flashing his white grin as a full stop at the end of each sentence, but his eyes were bright and watchful. ‘I heard that you got stuck with a cargo of champagne?’

  All the fire-warning lights in my head flashed on at once. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘D’you think the receivers could be persuaded to sell it?’

  ‘Better ask them.’ Oh no, don’t for God’s sake call London! ‘I mean – ask their man here. Loukis Kapotas. He’s at the Castle most of the day.’

  He whipped out a little leather notebook with gold corners and wrote it down. Then looked up and grinned once more. ‘What marque is it?’

  ‘It says Kroeger Royale ’66.’

  ‘Splendid. Jolly good stuff. How many boxes?’

  ‘Only a dozen.’ I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy. I mean, the man might be honest or something. ‘But why do you want it?’

  ‘For resale, of course. I supply wines and spirits to … er … private houses in Beirut. And next week we have a rather sudden visit from some friends down in the Gulf. I expect you know these … er … gentlemen with their oil revenues? In their own countries they have to set a good example by being strictly Muslim, so when the weather starts boiling up and they escape to Beirut …’ he spread his hands and grinned;’… naturally they want a rest from their devotions.’

  I knew – no, I’d only heard about these private parties of oil sheikhs in the big houses of Beirut’s hillside suburbs. A lot of everything and everything of the best – at a price, of course. But when you’ve got oil derricks sprouting like weeds, what’s a bottle of Kroeger Royale to help launch the latest Swedish virgin?

  ‘But can’t you pick it up around Beirut?’

  ‘Oh, I just got caught short with the rush, and the St George and the Phoenicia won’t sell me any …’

  ‘And bankrupt stock comes cheap at any time.’

  The grin flashed on-off. ‘And that, of course. If you could persuade your Mr … er, Kapotas to sell at a reasonable figure, I’m sure you’d find your time hadn’t been wasted.’ So I could take a cut as the middleman – and he’d assume I was taking a commission from Kapotas for finding a buyer. Jehangir would normally do business that way … And why not, come to think of it?

  ‘And,’ he added, ‘the matter of getting it on to Beirut: how much would it cost for you to fly it there?’

  About 140 nautical miles, say fifty gallons there and back plus landing fees … and my fees, this time … ‘Call it a realistic sixty quid sterling.’

  He twitched his elegant shoulders. ‘Splendid. If you have a word with Mr Kapotas first, I can call him tomorrow.’ And if he could get it at four quid a bottle and resell at a minimum of ten, then he’d clear an easy £750 after all overheads … Hell, maybe the man was honest, if you see what I mean.

  ‘Fine,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ll do that right now. I wanted to be back before dinner anyway.’

  ‘Is the food any good, there?’ he asked, genuinely interested.

  ‘Last night it was terrible, but they’ve got rid of that chef already.’

  It was just on dusk when I got back to the Castle, the eastern sky turning a dark velvet blue and the first stars coming on with that odd abruptness that must be something to do with the eye of the beholder. Sergeant Papa came to attention in a slow-motion parody of his army days. ‘Good evening, Captain.’

  ‘Sergeant.’ I stayed out there on the step with him, filling a pipe and watching Regina Street switch on around us. ‘Any more news?’

  ‘Mr Kapotas talked to London again but he told us nothing. And somebody called again for the Professor. Again, I said we did not know.’

  ‘Popular, isn’t he? Seen anything of my friend Ken?’

  ‘He has not been out.’

  I nodded and lit my pipe. The first smoke puffs just hung there, dissolving before they could drift away. It was the m
oment of stillness between the day wind and the night wind. Then two young ladies who wouldn’t have known a day wind if it had jumped into bed with them click-clacked past on their high heels, on their way to work. Sergeant Papa bowed solemnly.

  ‘I have been thinking about your problem,’ he said when they’d passed. ‘I think you should go to the Atlantis Bar—’ he nodded down the street, and about fifty yards off I could see the red neon sign; ‘—and I will send somebody to meet you there. It would be … safer. And I will make sure you are not treated as tourists.’

  ‘Thanks. That sounds fine.’ It didn’t; I wasn’t looking forward to this evening much, but I didn’t want to let Ken out on his own, either …

  I said: ‘Fine,’ again and went inside to look for Ken or Kapotas.

  I found Kapotas first, sitting in the little office behind the front desk eating a plate of something and sorting through a small black cashbox. He didn’t seem to be finding tidings of great joy in either.

  ‘Have you been taking stamps out of here and not paying?’ he demanded. The box had only a handful of coins, a couple of scruffy 250-mil. notes and about half a dozen stamps in it.

  I sat on the edge of the desk. ‘No, I’ve done all my Christmas thank you letters. Is that the dinner?’

  ‘Yes.’ He stared at the end of his fork. ‘I can think of no bit of a sheep shaped like that.’

  ‘I can. Any news from London yet?’

  He pushed the plate away and shut up the box. ‘They say there is a finance house with a first charge on the plane. Now Harborne, Gough have to decide whether to default on the payments, whether to pay up and sell the plane themselves, or to keep on operating it.’

  ‘Any and either way, it’s got to get back to Britain; any news on that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, any news on my pay?’

  He didn’t look at me. ‘You should have got payment in advance.’

  ‘Now, I agree with you. But is that all the bloody help you’re going to be?’ He didn’t say anything. So I said: ‘Oh – by the way, I’ve found you a buyer for the champagne.’

  ‘Oh God.’ He leant his head on his hand and shuddered. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘I’ve heard suicide highly recommended, though never by anybody with practical—’

  ‘This is serious!’

  ‘So’s my pay.’

  He stood up shakily. ‘I need a drink.’

  So we went through to the bar and sat at a table out of earshot of Apostolos and two other couples who were anaesthetising themselves to face the dinner.

  Kapotas asked: ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘A Beiruti, Uthman Jehangir. Says he wants to sell it to visiting oil sheikhs.’

  ‘Is he … genuine?’

  ‘He’s got a poncey English accent and a nice blue pinstripe, but underneath I’d say he was just a simple old tiger-shark.’

  He suddenly remembered something. ‘Did you tell him we’d opened one box?’

  ‘Of course not. If he is after guns, that’d tell him we knew.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ He stared into his whisky. ‘But … which is he mostly likely to be after?’

  ‘Champagne or sub-machine guns? In Beirut it’s a fifty-fifty chance, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said miserably.

  ‘But if you know anybody in Beirut you could ring up and try to get the word on him. It’s a small town in that sense.’

  He cheered up a bit. ‘Yes, I can do that tomorrow.’

  ‘And sooner or later you’re going to have to tell London we can’t sell this cargo. Only don’t put the real reason in a cable or telex.’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘No, but you’re drinking whisky after dinner again.’

  ‘Oh God, so I am.’ He shook his head sadly and then drank some more anyway. ‘But why should anybody send you on a flight like this?’

  ‘There’s an obvious profit in it – probably paid for in advance and certainly not going through the company’s books. If Kingsley saw the crunch coming he might want to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the firm while he still had it.’

  ‘A man like Mr Kingsley?’

  ‘A man exactly like Mr Kingsley.’ A charming, handsome, well-dressed polite man with the morality of dry rot. Who’d come as near parking me up the creek as I’d been for ten years. So why wasn’t I more resentful? Probably because I was too busy being annoyed at myself to be surprised at him’. I’d been concentrating on getting a paid ride down here instead of looking for snags. And the bastard hadn’t even made the mistake of overpaying me for an apparently simple job. In fact, he hadn’t made the mistake of paying me at all.

  Oh well. With Ken back, things might be different.

  I asked: ‘I don’t suppose there’s any news of Kingsley himself, yet?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I see why, now. For all he knows, there’s a gun-running warrant out for him.’

  Chapter 6

  Appropriately enough, the Atlantis was below normal ground level, although probably it hadn’t been down there for three or four thousand years; it just smelt that way. We were the first into the place except for a bunch of Canadian soldiers at the bar. We squeezed past them and parked around a small round table in a corner.

  A waiter came over, lit the small night-light candle on the table and took our order for two large Scotches and two Keos.

  Ken peered around. ‘Difficult to be colour prejudiced in a place like this.’ The room had a lighting level a bit better than a coal hole in a power strike.

  ‘Cheapest décor you can get: don’t pay your electricity bill. But it must be an improvement on Beit Oren.’

  ‘Yes, you could see some of that.’

  ‘Was it bad?’

  ‘Oh …’ Just then the waiter put our beers, two small glasses and a bottle of soda on the table; ‘… not really tough or anything, just bloody depressing. Grey stone and brown paint and bugger-all to do. No art classes and all the books in Hebrew … You name it, they haven’t got it.’ He picked up his glass. ‘Do I make the old joke about Hey this glass is dirty! No, sir, that’s your double Scotch.’

  I’d been expecting something like that. ‘Put in some soda.’ While he did, I sneaked out the tonic bottle that I’d filled with Scotch from the hotel bar. If the manager here didn’t like it, he could turn up the lights and catch me at it.

  Ken watched as I poured. ‘Nice to see your brain hasn’t gone to fat. Cheers. What are these girls like?’

  I shrugged and drank two-handed. ‘All the usual mod cons, I expect. I haven’t met them; I just passed the word through Sergeant Papa.’

  Ken chuckled. ‘That man … Did he show you his army snapshot album?’

  ‘Sure. How d’you think he got to know all those generals? – those are all real.’

  ‘He procured for them. Hell, couldn’t you guess?’

  ‘I should have done, I should have done … So let’s hope he gives us five-star service.’

  ‘It isn’t the service he gives that interests me …’ Ken smiled hungrily in the candlelight. ‘How much money have we got?’

  ‘Here and now? – something over twenty-five quid, that’s all.’

  ‘They didn’t pay you for the flight down here, yet?’

  ‘Not yet – if ever. Just a nice line about receivers not being responsible for earlier debts.’

  ‘Bastards,’ he said unemotionally. ‘What was the whole idea of sending you down here, anyway?’

  I took out my sole Dunhill pipe and began to fill it carefully. ‘They were opening a new hotel in the Lebanon – but that’s off, now. I was coming down to fly the VIP guests around a bit, and bringing a spot of cargo.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like boxes marked champagne.’

  He caught my tone. ‘Boxes marked …?’

  I looked casually around, but as far as my non-radar eyes could tell, there wasn’t anybody within hearing. ‘They sort of tur
ned out to be M3’s. New M3Al’s to be precise.’

  He frowned and stared. ‘You mean you didn’t know what you were carrying?’

  I nodded and put my pipe in my mouth.

  ‘Jesus. Delete what I said about your brain not going soft.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Still airside. Except for one box we brought through – we were going to serve it to the Professor. That’s how we know what it is.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Kapotas, the manager-accountant chap. He’s the only one.’ I hoped.

  ‘Where did it all come from?’

  So I told him about Kingsley and he vaguely remembered the man from our RAF days. Then he asked: ‘Who was supposed to take it off you in Beirut?’

  ‘I was just told to contact the hotel and they’d send round a cargo handling agent with the paperwork. There’s nothing suspicious in that.’

  He nodded agreement and finished his drinks. I banged on the table for the waiter – there was no question of ‘catching his eye’ in that blackout, short of throwing a chair at him.

  He brought over two more beers, more ‘doubles’, another soda and two menu cards: the place was supposed to be a grill as well as a bar. But I waved them away. ‘We’ll eat when the girls get here.’

  Ken got the hungry look again. ‘Where the hell have they got to?’

  ‘Spill some soda in your lap and cool down. It’s early yet.’ ‘I suppose so …’

  I did my party trick with the extra Scotch and we drank. Ken wasn’t rushing the drink, but it’s surprising how you can lose your capacity for alcohol if you’re off it for a time. And we’d had a couple at the airport, then he’d had a glass or two with the Professor, and maybe he’d treated himself at the hotel bar as well … Anyway, I’d keep an eye on it. He’d certainly hate himself in the morning if he slept through the evening.

  I asked: ‘What did the Prof want?’