Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

  So we sat while he dialled an outside number on the phone, then started giving what sounded like orders. I thought I heard the name ‘St. George’.

  Mitzi sat and steamed like a leaky pressure cooker, Ken was slumped almost horizontal, chin on chest but staring out from under his dark eyebrows at Pietro’s gun. It had a thick short barrel, a long ramp foresight and the generally oversized look of a magnum calibre.

  Ken muttered. ‘.357 Combat Smith.’

  I nodded; he was probably right. The end of the butt sticking out of Pietro’s fist had the typical Smith & Wesson shape, otherwise it could just as well have been a Colt to me. A pretty daft gun, mind you. In a two-and-something-inch barrel a bullet just doesn’t have the time to work up the mph that a magnum cartridge can give, and you can hire somebody to whack your hand with a crowbar much cheaper than .357 ammunition costs.

  For all that, Pietro looked as if you could mount a siege gun on him and he’d absorb the recoil.

  Aziz finished his phoning, stood up and smiled tentatively at us. ‘Now I really must join my other guests. I hope it will not be long before I have good news and you can go, but meanwhile …’ he shrugged delicately and gave Pietro more orders. ‘I have told him that you may help yourself to more drinks – but only one person to stand up at a time. You understand the problem, I am sure.’

  He smiled once more, went out – and locked the door behind him. The click of the big key made me wince – and then I realised what it must do to Ken.

  His face was pale, the muscles at his mouth and jawline bunched in white knots and his hands squeezing the sharp chair-arms.

  I had to say something. ‘Nice comfortable place we’ve got here,’ I gabbled. ‘All we want to drink, for free, feminine company, plenty to read, we’ll be out of here in half an hour and I’ve spent longer waiting to be served in some bars.’

  He took a deep breath and relaxed a fraction.

  Mitzi said: ‘But how can he do these things? We should go to the police straight away.’

  I shook my head. ‘This is the Middle East, love, and he’s an important man. We’re small-scale; we’ve got no family behind us.’

  ‘They cannot have gangsters like him,’ and she flicked her hand at Pietro.

  ‘A bodyguard. Everybody who’s anybody has them. Aziz must have three or four; they’re as much status symbols as chandeliers. This is a gun-toting area. Your father knew that.’

  ‘But they searched me – and locked us up!’

  Ken stiffened again. I said quickly: ‘They’d say they searched us for guns, of course. It may not be an offence anyway. As for shutting us up – so prove it. Like another drink yet?’

  She shook her head and relapsed into broodiness. When we were all quiet, Pietro walked across and sat down behind the big desk and laid the pistol in front of himself, within easy grab.

  I said: ‘Is your name Aziz or do you just work here?’

  It took him a moment to realise I was speaking to him. Then he just grunted. I’d been pretty certain he didn’t speak English, but wanted to be sure as I could.

  I stood up carefully; Pietro put his hand on the gun – not nervously, just as a gesture. I waved my empty glass and looked thirsty and he nodded at the cupboard, and I went over and found myself a Scotch and a vacuum flask of chilled water.

  That put me about ten feet from the desk, and the size of the desk itself made it another five feet to Pietro so I wasn’t going to try throwing a drink in his face.

  I just said conversationally to Ken: ‘Nice big desk that. You could play table tennis across it.’

  He looked up and there was a tiny light in his eyes. I went back and sat down and sipped. And studied the situation.

  The desk was planted diagonally across a corner and well out from it. Ken was sitting a bit in front but almost in line with its length; nearly in line at the other end was the drinks cupboard and floor-to-ceiling shelves of expensive-looking books.

  I left it for ten minutes and the room grew quiet and cool, almost cold, around us. Ken had his eyes shut and looked as if he was dozing.

  Then I stood up, and Pietro put his hand back on the gun. I said: ‘Can I get a book to read? Book – livre – libro—’ I pointed at the shelves. ‘What’s the Arabic for “book”?’

  ‘Koran?’ Mitzi suggested uselessly.

  ‘For God’s sake.’ I walked over and patted a row of books. ‘May I?’

  Pietro frowned slightly, as if he was thinking, then nodded heavily. I smiled graciously and began reading titles. It seemed to be solid history of the Middle East, and I do mean solid. A lot was in English, the rest in French or German, but I was picking for size rather than language. I took one or two down, pretended to glance at them, then chose a nice leather-bound volume a bit smaller than the average encyclopedia format. I think it was about Schliemann at Mycenae; anyway, it was in German. I opened it up and turned around.

  As I moved, Pietro put his hand on the Smith, then took it away again. I didn’t look at him. ‘Hey, listen to this,’ I said to Mitzi, and peered at the title page. ‘I am not going to say Go or anything like that, but go when I shut the book. How d’you like that?’

  ‘What?’ She genuinely thought I’d got my brain caught in the wringer.

  I grinned at her, slammed the book shut and skimmed it across the desk top. Ken was moving as it left my hand; he hit the floor on his knees and caught the revolver in mid-air. I heard the hammer come back with a firm snap.

  Then Ken was back in the middle of the room to give himself space and Pietro was lifting slowly to his feet with a disbelieving expression. He took a step and looked at Ken and then another step.

  Ken just spread his feet slightly and waited, the gun cocked but pointing loosely at the floor. Pietro took another step around the desk and his mouth worked a bit and he was walking through mud into the barbed wire and machine guns. Ken didn’t make any move and he had no expression. A machine gun doesn’t need one.

  Pietro took a pace and there was suddenly a glitter of sweat across his forehead. The room was as quiet as an icicle but Pietro could hear thunder. His mouth came open and he tried to move his foot and did – by millimetres, like a man learning to walk again after a stroke, while the sweat bulged out on his forehead and dribbled down his face. And then he locked solid. For a moment his face showed he was trying to move forward, then some part of him snapped and he just stood there.

  Ken lifted his left arm slowly and pointed to a chair and Pietro turned and took two exhausted steps and collapsed into it. Then, like a contracting muscle, his big square body turned slowly on its side and drew up into the foetal position.

  He was no friend of mine, but I think that’s the part I’d rather have missed.

  Ken said: ‘Touché,’ and let the Smith’s hammer silently down.

  The door was impossible. It was built of seasoned timber at least a couple of inches thick and stiffened with ornate ironwork like an old castle. It was probably just Aziz’s passion for the past – he could hardly have planned his study as a dungeon – but it came to the same thing for us.

  Ken was behind the desk finding the cords to the strip of high curtain and pulling it back. Sure enough, there was a shallow window there but no way of opening it.

  ‘We could stack up a few things and bust out through that,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the, rush? Don’t you want to wait and talk to the nice Mr Aziz again, like he promised?’

  He grinned and started jerking at the desk drawers. ‘Okay, I’ll stay if you think he’d be offended.’

  Mitzi was just standing there, a little dazed by what had happened. ‘But how,’ she demanded, ‘did you know that Mr Case would—’

  ‘All those years on the halls,’ Ken said. ‘You never heard of Cavitt and Case, Astounding Telepathic Acrobats? … The un-trusting bastard’s locked most of these drawers.’

  ‘Don’t bust ’em,’ I warned. ‘And don’t leave prints. We don’t want to give him any legal squawk at all
.’

  He bounced the heavy pistol in his hand. ‘You think he’ll worry about that?’

  ‘The most you can do is kill him. He’ll still be a big man in a big family.’

  He looked down at the gun and said sadly: ‘Yes … they don’t change things as much as you think.’ He glanced at Pietro, then laid the pistol down and started sorting through the one drawer he’d got open.

  Mitzi said: ‘But must we wait? Why do you not shoot at the door to make it open?’

  ‘And spoil the party?’ I asked. ‘Anyway, that only works on TV Ken tried it once in Isfahan.’

  He chuckled. ‘Yes – bloody thing jammed the lock so solid they were still trying to open the door by its hinges when we left town.’

  ‘Which admittedly wasn’t all that much later,’ I added.

  The phone rang.

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, and Ken took his hand off it. ‘He’ll probably take it on an extension somewhere – and anyway, we wouldn’t understand a word. But good news or bad, he’ll come in here after.’ The ringing stopped and we all stared at the phone.

  Then I said to Mitzi: ‘My guess is somebody’s been searching your rooms at the St George. Will they have found it?’

  She hesitated a moment, then shook her head slowly. ‘No.’

  ‘Is it in the hotel safe?’

  Again a hesitation, again: ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I doubt if they could have got that opened, but probably they’ll know you didn’t use it. And I don’t think they’ve had time to find where Ken and I are staying … Now he’s got to come back and ask again.’

  The phone tinged once. Ken stood up and said softly: ‘Places for the Second Act, please.’

  We should have thought of Aziz bringing a second man – another bodyguard – if the next step was to ‘ask’ us again. For those sort of games you need two.

  But it didn’t make much difference. As they froze in the doorway, Ken was up on his feet, the Smith held in both hands and sighting down it at Aziz’s belly. ‘Step inside and tell your friend to close the door.’

  The new bodyguard was taller, leaner, older, but his sports jacket and trousers had the same greasy shabbiness of Pietro’s suit. Some sort of caste system, I suppose. He glanced at Aziz, who told him something – the right something, since he pushed the door shut and just stood there.

  Ken said: ‘Tell him to give his gun to Roy. And if he wants to try and be clever, that’s fine with me.’

  Aziz passed it on, part of it, anyway. I walked across behind Ken and took the second gun. This cove was a little more humble about his personal artillery: all he had was a standard Colt Police .38 with a six-inch barrel, which was very much more my idea of a gun to hold if the voting got noisy. Not too easy to conceal, but they don’t bother too much about that in Beirut anyway.

  Aziz was staring puzzled at Pietro, who was still curled up and if he wasn’t quite sucking his thumb, he might as well have been. ‘What happened to—’

  Ken said quietly: ‘You locked me in.’ The Smith was back pointing at Aziz’s middle.

  He may have gone a bit paler. ‘I assured you it was only a temporary—’

  ‘You locked the door.’ Ken’s voice was still quiet but his hands were white on the gun.

  Aziz said: ‘But of course, it was only—’

  ‘You locked the door.’

  ‘I am telling you—’

  ‘You locked the door.’ The statement had gone beyond meaning, now. Aziz twitched his head side to side, looking for help, a way out, just an explanation.

  I said: ‘Hold it, Ken. Let me talk to him. I’m loaded, too.’

  For a long moment Ken just stared fixedly down the gun at the fat man’s stomach. Then he let his hands drop. Aziz let out a shaky breath.

  I said: ‘We’ll be leaving soon, so you’d better organise a car to get us down the hill.’ I jerked my head at the telephone. ‘We’ll have to trust whatever you tell them, but you’ll come out to see us off, so if you want to arrange a shoot-out …’ I shrugged.

  Aziz nodded and went to the phone arid gave a few brief orders, looked up at me.

  ‘When we’re out of here,’ I said, ‘You’re back in charge again. What sort of deal are you offering Mitzi now?’

  His thin face ran through a kaleidoscope of expressions: relief, suspicion, amusement. Then he spread his hands. ‘Just as before: a fifty-fifty share, as I arranged with Professor Spohr, when you find the sword. But meanwhile, I must have the document for security.’

  Ken snapped: ‘You’ll get it shoved up—’

  ‘Hold it, hold it.’ Then I shook my head at Aziz. ‘No, I’m sorry. I might have voted for that before, but then you changed your way of doing business. You got a bit too crude and insensitive …’

  He winced; that must be one of the worst insults you can hand a French-angled Lebanese. Let him suffer.

  I went on: ‘I think we’re prepared to accept that you did back the Professor—’

  ‘I can prove it,’ he said. ‘Of course, the documents are not here, but …’

  ‘Let’s just say we accept it. And so, when and if Miss Spohr finds the sword, she will make sure you are fully refunded and, on top of that, properly rewarded.’ I looked at Mitzi. ‘Okay?’

  At that moment, her ideas about proper rewards were running to lighted matches under fingernails, but she managed a brief grunt of: ‘Ja.’

  I looked to Aziz and he looked back almost pityingly. ‘You cannot expect me to accept that, when I have the original agreement signed by Professor Spohr which—’

  ‘I haven’t seen that agreement,’ I said, ‘but it must at least imply a conspiracy to commit a crime in another country, namely Israel, and namely the illegal export of an antiquity. In a Beirut court you might get that agreement to stand, you being the Aziz ben Aziz, and you might even make it binding on the Professor’s heirs. But outside of Beirut, and depending on the texture of the paper, I very much advise you to use it to wipe your arse.’

  There was a long strained silence broken at last by Ken’s chuckle. ‘You been studying for the Bar while I was away?’

  ‘Only in them.’

  Aziz said coldly: ‘Do you expect me to trust you, then?’

  I shrugged. ‘We had to start off by trusting you.’

  Ken said: ‘Confucius he say: when pistols come in door, trust jump out of window forgetting trousers.’ So he really was feeling calmer. But I still didn’t want to leave him alone with Aziz.

  The car should be ready by now,’ I said. ‘Go and collect Eleanor.’

  He looked doubtful, or maybe disappointed. ‘Can you manage…?’

  ‘Of course. Get weaving.’

  He went out. Aziz and the new boy looked at me, and after a time Aziz asked: ‘Why was your friend so very angry?’

  ‘Yesterday morning he came out of jail after two years. Every day they locked the door on him. So then you did, too.’

  ‘Mon Dieu’ He went a bit paler. ‘That was, as you say, insensitive of me. But what else could I do?’

  ‘If you can’t think of another way of doing business then you’d better get used to being on the wrong end of a gun.’

  He thought this over, then said slyly: ‘What would you do if I told Emile to take his gun back?’

  ‘I’ve shot men before; one gets used to it. I mean me, not them.’

  He didn’t say anything more, and Emile had never looked as if he was in a volunteering mood anyway.

  Then the door opened and Ken hustled in a rather bewildered Eleanor. ‘What’s all the rush about?’ Then she sensed the stiffness in Aziz’s and Emile’s attitudes – and saw the gun in my hand. ‘Great Jesus, has the rodeo come to town?’

  ‘Just an old Lebanese business custom.’ I reassured her.

  ‘We’re leaving by the back door,’ Ken said. ‘And like now. Ready to move?’ He took his gun out of of his pocket.

  ‘Emile stays here,’ I told Aziz. ‘You come with us, so I should advise him not to sound th
e sirens.’

  Aziz told him something, then looked at Pietro, still curled up, eyes closed and far far away. In time, too. Instinctively, he lowered his voice: ‘What did you do to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He just wanted to take his gun back off Ken.’ I locked the door behind us and gave Aziz the key. As we headed down the dim corridor away from the noise of the party, I said: ‘Treat him gently. He may not be much of a bodyguard again, but I think he sort of died back then.’

  Chapter 15

  The ride down the hill, in a big metallic-grey Mercedes, was a lot smoother than the journey up. And no problems, either. I’d wondered if Aziz might call the police and have us picked up for carrying illegal firearms, stealing a car, kidnapping a chauffeur and everything short of barratry and mopery. Then I’d decided he didn’t want us in jail any more than we wanted to be there, and for once I was right.

  Nobody said much until we were standing on the steps of the St George watching the car flow away in the cold lamplight. It wasn’t even very late; not yet midnight.

  Ken stretched and said: ‘Well, one final jar before the dew falls?’ He looked around us and Eleanor and I nodded.

  Mitzi said: ‘I think I will go to bed, please.’

  ‘Your choice,’ Ken said, and we walked up into the hotel – which was still as wide awake as high noon. ‘But just as a matter of professional interest: where is that paper?’

  Mitzi turned to Eleanor. ‘You still have it?’

  ‘The document about the sword? Sure.’ And she dug in her big handbag and passed it over.

  ‘Je-sus,’ Ken said softly. ‘If the bastard had only known …’

  ‘Was that what it was all about?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘An animal searched me,’ Mitzi said bitterly, stowing away the paper and then heading for the desk to pick up her key.

  Ken looked at Eleanor. ‘Didn’t anybody try to take off your clothes?’

  ‘Didn’t they hell.’ She looked a little warm. ‘Enough of them implied the idea, though I don’t think they were looking for bits of paper. You know there was another room, smaller and darker, where they had a little brazier thing burning?’