by Gavin Lyall
‘Oh …’ he frowned into his glass. ‘It was mostly just a celebration. He did mention something he dug up in Israel, before he got picked up. He thinks it would be easier for somebody else to export it.’
‘Oh brother!’ I made it a long outward breath. ‘We really need a job smuggling something out of Israel, don’t we? Not while there’s still vacancies for night shite shovellers in Calcutta.’
Ken nodded without meaning much. ‘It may not still be in Israel – he didn’t so much say it was—’
‘He wasn’t very chatty, was he?’
‘In his business would you be? Anyway, we can’t do much about it, not without an aeroplane.’
And with Ken being barred from Israel, if that’s where the thing was. But I wasn’t going to mention his deportation until he did himself; bad form and all that.
But then he remembered the guns again. ‘The M3A1, you said? In the normal .45 calibre?’
‘Right. There were five in the box we opened, plus about two loads for each. That weighs exactly the same as a dozen bottles of Kroeger Royale, if you want to know.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘That’s ridiculous … who wants a .45 calibre gun out here? It’s almost all 9-mil. or the Russian stuff. And only two loads? – you’d fire that just learning the gun, and then there’s no more ammo this side of the American Army in Germany. They just become scrap metal. Ridiculous.’
I relit my pipe and added to the quaint, truly Cypriot atmosphere of the place. ‘That’s what I thought. But, mind, we don’t know what’s in the other eleven boxes. They might be all ammunition. They could be anything – even champagne.’
‘Yes, there’s that. What happened to Kingsley, by the way?’
‘Nobody knows, but I get the general idea that he was last seen with a Montevideo brochure in one hand and the office safe in the other.’
‘That sounds likely. But he wasn’t so stupid, was he? If you’d got picked up by the Lebanese or Cyprus cops—’
‘You mean if I do yet.’
‘Yes, but – with your reputation, who’d think of blaming Kingsley? He picked the right pilot for the job. You’ve got to admire the bugger.’
‘Have I? Show me the law.’
A woman’s voice asked over my shoulder: ‘Mr Cavitt and Mr Case?’
There were two of them, as ordered, and we scrambled awkwardly on to our feet and pulled and pushed chairs until we were all seated again, with the waiter almost perched on my shoulder like a parrot.
The smaller, darker, girl said: ‘We seem to like champagne, these days.’
It’s funny how long ‘these days’ have been going on. Ken gave her a quick sharp look and I knew she was mine. Well, it was his evening. So I just nodded over my shoulder and the waiter faded away.
The girl said: ‘I’m Nina, this is my friend Suzie.’
The’ names fitted, but they’d probably been chosen for the fit. Nina was smallish but certainly not thin under her tight primrose sweater. Neat sharp features, big dark eyes, and hair that might have been jet black even in a good light, in a loose, silky pageboy bob. Her voice was just English English without any accent that I could spot.
I said: ‘I’m Roy Case, the gentleman with the X-ray eyes is Ken Cavitt.’
Suzie said: ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ and smiled absently back at Ken’s hot stare. She was another English girl – I suppose the Sergeant had chosen them deliberately – and while she might not have been a genuine blonde, she was certainly one at heart. She had a cheery open face, a pert nose, slightly chubby arms and hands and a powerful overdose of figure more or less inside a thin silk blouse. And she positively radiated sex of the simplest kind: just bouncing about in a bed with no hangover to come.
Ken was obviously getting the same perfume; his eyes were practically licking her.
I said: ‘I must apologise for Ken: he just spent the last two years in a monastery.’
Suzie said: ‘Ooooh, how interesting,’ and went on smiling out of her big blue To Let eyes. Ken finally got his mind off her chest and back to his glass.
Then the waiter came back with the champagne and menus.
‘What d’you recommend?’ I asked Nina.
‘Kebabs. Four shish kebabs.’ Quite firmly. Ken looked disappointed – he’d obviously been dreaming of steak – but he had the sense to guess what it would taste like in a joint like this. A kebab is about the one thing no Cypriot could louse up.
I said: ‘Right, four kebabs,’ and it was the waiter’s turn to look disappointed; he’d been thinking of steaks, too.
Nina lifted her glass. ‘Well, here’s to us.’
We all drank, and Suzie said: ‘Ooooh, lovely,’ in a practised way. Myself, I’m no connoisseur of champagne, but my guess is that if they’d aged this another twenty-four hours it would have made a big difference. I stirred my glass with a fork.
Nina asked: ‘Don’t you like champagne?’
‘I prefer the taste to the bubbles. Somebody once gave me a glass of a 1911, I think it was, and that was exactly what the angels have for teabreaks. And it was practically flat.’
‘I remember,’ Ken said. ‘It was that Portuguese mining man in Monte. I thought the stuff tasted like mushroom soup.’
I shrugged and sipped; without the bubbles I’m not sure there was any taste at all.
Nina asked: ‘Have you just arrived in Cyprus?’
I nodded.
‘Have you been here before?’
Ken said: ‘A few dozen times.’
She lifted her thin dark eyebrows. ‘What business are you in?’
I said: ‘We’re pilots.’
Suzie said automatically: ‘Oooh, how interesting.’
‘In the RAF?’ asked Nina.
I shook my head. ‘Just civil.’
‘Which airline?’
‘Our own,’ Ken said. ‘From time to time.’
‘Oooh,’ said Suzie, almost waking up. ‘Do you really have your own airline?’
‘Sure. It’s just that we can’t remember where we put it.’
Nina was frowning slightly. Even if Sergeant Papa hadn’t briefed her, she’d priced us pretty accurately. Ken had simply added a black uniform tie to his white shirt and twill trousers rig. I had on a white shirt, for once, and the trousers of my blue uniform. Not the jacket with its three stripes that mean nothing except impressing customers without quite annoying four-stripe airline captains. In fact the only expensive thing about us was our wristwatches: Ken’s Rolex and my Breitling. You daren’t skimp on the tools of your trade.
‘What does – or did – your airline do?’ she asked.
I said: ‘Freight.’
‘But no monkeys, no strawberries,’ Ken added.
Suzie was looking more puzzled than asleep by now. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Three cargoes most freight airlines don’t like,’ Ken said. ‘Monkeys because they just plain stink.’
‘Why would anybody want a load of monkeys?’
I said: ‘Medical experiments.’
‘Oooh.’ She shuddered – or quivered. ‘I don’t think it’s nice to think of things like that.’
‘What’s wrong with strawberries?’ Nina asked.
Ken explained. ‘They stink, too, only differently. Haul a couple of tons of them and the aircraft’s left smelling like …’ The usual phrase aircrew use is ‘like a cheap whorehouse’ but luckily Ken remembered who he was with. ‘Well … you just can’t describe it,’ he finished feebly.
‘And the third cargo?’ Nina asked briskly.
By now Ken was wishing he hadn’t mentioned three cargoes, and so was I. I sloshed some more carbonated wine into the girls’ glasses and said: ‘Anything you might describe as political.’
Nina cocked her eyebrows again. ‘And you never carried strawberries or monkeys.’ She had a pretty good idea of what a ‘political’ cargo might be; anybody who’d spent more than a couple of weeks out here would be able to guess.
‘That’s right,’
I said.
‘But then, I don’t suppose the pilots who carry strawberries and monkeys feel they have to spend two years in a monastery.’
I said: ‘They’re less devout.’
‘I mean, it must be so difficult to keep in flying practice in a monastery. You’d keep on bumping into those stone walls.’
Ken lowered his head slightly and stared very hard at her, and for a moment I thought he was going to launch her with the champagne bottle. So did she, but her reaction was to sit upright, chin and breasts sticking out defiantly.
Just then the waiter dumped our kebabs on the table. Either his timing was lucky or he had an instinct for interrupting trouble, and a place like the Atlantis would need such instincts. Anyway, Ken relaxed and for a few minutes we just listened to each other chewing.
Suzie fed as if she was going to hibernate the rest of the year; Ken worked slower, savouring each piece as if it was the best food he’d tasted in two years – which it likely was; Nina just filed it away as so much protein. In fact it wasn’t too bad; just a bit burned.
Halfway through, Suzie remembered that a real lady drinks red wine with meat, so I spent a few moments trying to catch a waiter and then went over to the bar and asked for a bottle of Othello. The place had filled up in the last quarter of an hour, with a dozen little nightlights twinkling through the smoky gloom, waiters weaving about on instrument landings and sweating into the food. I couldn’t see who the customers were, but their feet sounded mainly military.
I had to wait while the barman first tried to sell me a bottle of the classy Domaine d’Ahuera, then went to fetch what I’d asked for. The man alongside me at the bar seemed to be drinking alone: a broadish bloke in a well-fitting lightweight suit with those raised seams. His face was turned away from me; all I could see was the darkish hair thinning on top, the glint of spectacle earpieces.
I took the bottle back to the table. Nina glanced at the label and confirmed her private opinion of us, airline tycoonwise. But she sipped a glass politely enough and asked: ‘Are you staying at the Castle here?’
‘That’s right,’ Ken said. ‘My associate seems to have gone into the hotel business as well.’
I grinned at Suzie’s blank look. ‘It figures: all the big airlines are getting into the hotel racket – Pan Am, BEA and all. Just keeping in fashion.’
Nina said coolly: ‘Didn’t I hear that the Castle was closing down?’
Ken said: ‘Just going broke, dearie. It isn’t always the same thing.’
Suzie sighed. ‘Well, I just hope Sergeant Papa doesn’t lose his job; he’s such a nice man.’
All three of us stared at her; whatever we each thought of the Sergeant, the word ‘nice’ certainly didn’t come into it. At last Nina said: ‘Never mind, darling – the Sergeant is sure to manage somehow.’
‘He could always go back into the army,’ Ken suggested. ‘Armies have still got generals, and generals have still got—’
‘Ken!’ I snapped. He grinned at me, a little loosely, and with a faint glitter of sweat on his forehead. The steady drinking had suddenly begun to grip. Just as suddenly, he realised it. He turned to Suzie.
‘Tell you what: let’s you and me go for a little stroll in the moonlight.’
‘Moonlight?’ Nina snorted. ‘It’s probably raining like a drain out there. It was thundering when we came in.’
Down in the Atlantis we wouldn’t have heard World War Three get started.
‘Hell,’ said Ken; neither of us had brought coats. ‘Well, it’s only a few yards to the Castle.’
Suzie said plaintively: ‘But I was going to have some icecream.’
Ken stood up. ‘The nice Sergeant Papa will find us some icecream,’ he said in a controlled voice. She sighed and stood up, and then sort of rubbed herself against Ken the way a big cat might except not exactly the same way. Ken twanged like a guitar.
Suzie said: ‘Ooooh,’ in an interested tone for once. ‘Come on, dear,’ and grabbed his hand and hauled him away between the tables.
Nina gave a dramatic sigh. ‘Your friend—’ but then I was on my feet and taking several fast steps towards the bar and colliding with the man in the spectacles and natty suit.
‘Why, if it isn’t Mr Ben Iver. Shalom.’
‘Shalom’, he answered automatically, and then tried to ease past me. I leant against him like neither cat nor Suzie. His glasses gleamed as he cocked his head, and his hand dipped towards his pocket. I slapped downwards and his hand and jacket swung aside; the pocket clunked as it hit the bar stool.
By then my own hand was in my own pocket and pointing. ‘It’s raining up there, they tell me, and I expect you’ve forgotten your umbrella. Sit down and have another milk-and-honey. It’ll clear soon.’
He looked down at my pocket. ‘Shoot through your pocket and it jams,’ he said softly. ‘If it’s a revolver you won’t even get off one shot.’
‘Not if you use a Smith Bodyguard, the one with the enclosed hammer. Get off all five, most likely.’
‘Only five?’ he said, slightly mocking.
‘I don’t suppose I’ve got more than five enemies left in the world.’
A silly conversation, but it had already achieved all I wanted. He shrugged and lifted himself back on to the bar stool. ‘You’re right, I did forget my umbrella.’ By now, Ken and Suzie would be well out of sight.
‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.’ As I turned away I took my second pipe out of my pocket and shoved it in my mouth. Maybe I heard a sharp little hiss behind me.
I sat down again. Nina asked: ‘And what was all that?’
‘Call it a delaying action.’
‘Who is that man?’
‘An Israeli, Mihail Ben Iver.’
‘What does he do between drinks?’
‘Ken thinks he’s in their secret service. Could be: they don’t give up easy, over there. Though I don’t know what they’re not giving up easy on right now.’ I picked up the Othello bottle and shook it: still about a third full. ‘Shall we finish this?’
She held out her glass. ‘Did your friend … was it in Israel?’
I nodded, filled our glasses, started to pack a pipe. ‘Well, what shall we talk about now?’
She stared. ‘Good God, where did you spend the last two years – in a nunnery?’
I grinned and struck the first match.
‘Or,’ she added acidly, ‘are you afraid of losing your amateur status before the next Olympics?’
‘It was more Ken’s party than mine. Now make with the light chatter.’
‘Trust me to get the one who had an accident with a bicycle saddle,’ she growled. ‘Well, the usual question you start with is How did I come to be on the game?’
‘Okay – how did you come to be on the game when you’re so ready to pick fights with the clientele?’
For some reason she didn’t throw a bottle at me. She just nodded, and her voice was suddenly gentler. ‘Yes, I don’t really know why I do it. That’s what’s so sweet about Suzie: the way she sticks with me. Would you believe she’s had two offers at good houses in Beirut in the last six months but she wouldn’t go without me? And I can just see anybody offering me a good place in Beirut.’
‘You mean you want to go on the game in Beirut?’ My second match died of surprise.
‘Haven’t you seen the money they throw around over there? A girl can do pretty well for herself if she knows the business. Oh, I don’t mean getting yourself sold off to some old goat in Saudi Arabia; that happens to some poor kids. But if you’ve got a work permit and the proper protection … Well, if I was a tennis player I’d want to play at Wimbledon, wouldn’t I?’
‘I suppose so. I’d just never thought of Beirut as the Wimbledon of … Well.’ I finally got the pipe drawing. ‘How did you get to Cyprus?’
‘I was born here; my father was in the British Army. So I can speak Greek pretty well and when I left home it seemed better to come a long way … And that’s all I’m telling y
ou about my family.’ She took a defiant swig of the wine.
‘Fair enough.’ I sipped quietly for a while.
Then she asked: ‘Have you known your friend Ken for a longtime?’
‘About twenty years. We met in the RAF, on my first squadron. Night fighters. Then we did a tour on Transport Command together, some work on tactical transport development … then we got the idea of coming out and setting up our own show.’
‘Just like that.’
‘It took a couple of years before we were really on our own: getting civilian licences, working for charter airlines to get marketing experience. Nobody would lend us money for our own aircraft until we knew the civilian ropes.’
‘What are they going to lend you after this little trouble?’
I shrugged. ‘I suppose we may have to change our style a bit. I haven’t had time to talk to Ken about it, yet.’
‘Who takes the decisions?’
‘On the operations side – the flying – I’d take Ken’s word; he’s the best pilot. But mostly it’s a straight partnership.’
She finished her glass and about a second later a waiter appeared, looking expectant.
I said: ‘D’you want any more?’
‘I don’t think so, thank you,’ she said steadily.
So I asked for the bill and he simply said: ‘Fifteen pound, please.’
When I’d got my breath back, I said: ‘Look, chum, I expected to get bitten but not swallowed whole.’
‘Fifteen pound,’ he said impassively.
Then Nina said something fast and low in Greek and without changing his expression by a millimetre, he said: ‘Ten pound.’
I paid him, said to her: ‘I know some governments who could use your touch with price control.’
She smiled briefly and stood up.
As we reached the bar I peered around, but it was solid Canadian soldiery. Ben Iver had vanished without me noticing.
She found her coat, a thin white mac, and I helped her into it. ‘Well, where would you like to go now? Ledra Palace for a last jar?’
‘Good God.’ She swung around and glared at me. ‘Are you going to screw me or not?’
I made shushing noises, but far too late. About half a dozen soldiers turned on their bar stools and looked at us – mostly at her.