Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

  ‘Ann,’ Jehangir nodded; but by now he’d been expecting something like that. ‘What happened to that box, do you know?’

  I said: ‘The man who opened it, he doesn’t really appreciate that class of wine. So he – laid it down, as it were. His grandchildren’s grandchildren might find it, but not until then.’

  Jehangir’s mouth twitched, but he said gravely: ‘Splendid. If one doesn’t understand these rare vintages, one shouldn’t touch them. I suppose we are talking about Mr Kapotas?’

  I nodded.

  Jehangir went on: ‘But that makes things even more expensive: we’re up to … to ninety dollars a bottle, now. I hope and believe that I’m a good trader – so does everyone in Beirut – but that’s going a bit high for even my customers.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ Ken said, ‘that nothing less than twelve thousand is any practical use to us.’

  ‘Just to get your plane out of the pawn-shop? If you wait a few days it’ll fall back into your lap. The court can’t keep up the pretence of this order for long. It may cost you a couple of hundred dollars in legal fees, but you might well recover that, too. Or were you wanting to get Mr Aziz out of Miss Braunhof-Spohr’s affairs entirely?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Ken admitted.

  ‘It’s very noble of you.’

  Ken smiled bleakly and said: ‘I was thinking that you wouldn’t be buying just the stock but also, as you might say, the goodwill.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Jehangir nodded slowly. ‘That puts it very nicely. But you don’t seem to have considered that I’ve already bought quite a lot of goodwill in connection with this cargo. Possibly more than you have. I don’t think my name is on any of those documents Mr Case carries?’

  He looked at me and the best I could do was shrug.

  Jehangir beamed at me. ‘I thought not.’ Then Janni came back with a sombre expression and no wad of notes. Jehangir waved him to a seat. ‘You can’t win them all, can you?’

  He was looking at Ken, but I said: ‘That’s what my mother told me. What d’you suggest now?’

  ‘That I contact Mr Aziz and see what we can work out. Then I contact you. Will you be at the hotel?’

  ‘We’d better be, hadn’t we?’

  ‘Good. Would you care to leave the manifest and so forth with me? – It might speed things along.’

  ‘I’m not in that much of a hurry.’

  Jehangir gave me one of his quick grins. ‘Now, I must think about the third race.’

  I stood up, but Janni was on his feet first. His English might be lousy, but he was a good enough fighter to smell the change of mood. He just stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  Ken stood up slowly, his face clenched tight. Jehangir grinned at him, too, and said: ‘You will still have a delivery fee, of course. It will cover a few days in Beirut and any legal fees. And you will get the plane back – unless Castle does, first.’

  Ken said quietly: ‘What happened to your leg?’

  Jehangir tapped his thigh gently, getting a muffled tinny noise. ‘They do a very good job, these days. Light alloy with a glass-fibre socket moulded exactly to your stump so it can be held on by pure suction; brilliant. I actually had this fitted in England, at Roehampton. Oh yes – I lost the original to a bit of stray firing in the 1958 troubles.’

  Ken nodded. ‘Not something that’s still going around, then.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Jehangir looked at him carefully. ‘No, I don’t think so’.

  As we walked away I said: ‘Never try to blackmail a gambler: he’s accustomed to risking the odds.’

  ‘Who told you that? No, don’t say it.’ His face was still stiff. ‘The bastard. The swindling sod.’

  ‘Hell, you said yourself the guns had probably been mostly paid for. Why should he spring another twelve thousand?’

  ‘You took all the risks without being paid for them. I was just standing up for your rights.’

  ‘Yes? Well, if my rights happen to feel tired, you just leave ’em lay. D’you think we should let him have those guns?’

  ‘Why? – d’you want them for yourself?’

  The gate to the path across the course was open so we walked out through the men raking the sand smooth again, along with a few punters who’d seen the light after just two races. But there were still twice as many hurrying in the opposite direction.

  I said: ‘I’d trust me with them more than I would him. Anyway, if he doesn’t unpack the things fast, it wouldn’t be much of a trick to trace them back to us.’

  Ken shrugged: ‘He’s just another middleman. He’s not charging up El Hamra shouting “Liberty!” with an M3 and a tin leg. They probably aren’t even for this country.’

  We reached the main gate just before they shut it for the third race, and stood on the pavement waving at taxis.

  Ken said thoughtfully: ‘What d’you think he will do next?’

  ‘Talk to Aziz. He’s got to.’

  ‘And we just wait?’

  ‘No, we ring Aziz first.’

  ‘Us? Ring Aziz?’ He stared at me. ‘And what do we tell him?’

  ‘Promise not to laugh? Why not the truth?’

  Chapter 18

  It was six o’clock, almost sundown, when we met Aziz by the souvenir counter in the airport lounge. I suppose we shouldn’t have expected him to come alone; the party of the second part was a short, brisk fifty-year-old with a big beak, gold-rimmed spectacles, tufts of white hair sticking out like awnings over his ears, blue suit and smart black briefcase. He could have gone a step further and worn a placard saying LAWYER around his neck, but he didn’t need it

  Aziz was in weekend dress, which to him meant a grey silk suit and a cravat instead of a tie. He introduced us to the lawyer, keeping an expressionless expression on his face.

  The lawyer – I hadn’t caught his name – said: ‘I have told Monsieur Aziz that this is highly irregular.’

  Ken said: It can’t be too irregular for a man to see some property he’s had the court attach. There must be a legal presumption that he could get to own it.’

  Aziz grunted, shrugged, and said: ‘Enfin, let us go and see it, then.’

  I said: ‘I want to make a short statement first.’

  ‘Who is your legal adviser?’ the lawyer asked.

  ‘I’m advising myself and if that means I’ve got a fool for a client then you should worry. Statement: the aeroplane and its cargo belong to Castle Hotels, not to Mitzi Braunhof-Spohr, not to her father’s estate, not to me. She didn’t even pay me for the ride here, so no money’s involved. She’s already flown out and there’s nothing to stop me going, too, and then you can fight it out with Castle and good luck. Statement ends.’

  The lawyer consulted himself on how much of this to believe and what to advise if so. Aziz was staring blankly at a case of that filigree white silver and turquoise jewellery that you find all over the Middle East; he hadn’t shown any surprise at hearing that Mitzi had gone.

  Finally the lawyer said: ‘You wish to disassociate yourself from these proceedings?’

  ‘I’m disassociated already. Now I’d like to show Mr Aziz the property he’s had attached.’

  Aziz looked at the lawyer with a slight shrug of Why Not? So we showed various papers and passports to the Immigration control and got ourselves let out airside through a back door.

  As we reached the hangar by the Queen Air, Ken said: ‘I think Mr Aziz might find he wants to stop being legally represented from here on.’

  Both of them stared at him, the lawyer with legal steam coming out of his ears. I said quickly: ‘Let’s say we show Mr Aziz first and he can call for legal advice as soon as he wants to.’

  Aziz and the lawyer looked at each other, suddenly smelling something more than the jet exhaust drifting down the breeze.

  I said: ‘I can’t exactly hijack him, can I?’ and walked over and unlocked the Beech, climbed up into a sauna bath atmosphere, opened another button on my shirt and sat down in the rear seat. After
a few moments, Aziz climbed in behind me.

  ‘Well, there it is,’ and I waved a hand at the stacked boxes.

  He moved carefully forward, a little alarmed at the way the small aeroplane swayed under his feet, and lowered himself gently into a seat facing the boxes.

  ‘But you must not leave such wine in a heat like this!’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, I just fly these things around. Unloading and Customs and so on isn’t my business—’ Ken came past me – ‘but if you like, we’ll see how it’s getting on.’

  I found my pipe-cleaning penknife, opened the sharp blade, and passed it to Ken. He got the top box clear of the tie-down straps and slashed the paper-tape bindings, then ripped open the staples.

  Of course, if it wasn’t sub-machine guns we were going to look right bloody fools. And it wasn’t but we didn’t.

  We got eighteen assorted types of automatic pistol plus spare magazines and ammunition in screws of newspaper.

  ‘Oh dear me,’ Ken said in a tea-party voice. ‘This wine really has gone off. Changed completely, wouldn’t you say?’

  I said carefully: ‘I saw those boxes loaded aboard, already sealed, of course, at Rheims. I’ve got all the paperwork, certificat d’origine and so forth, all clear and complete. As I say, I just fly where people tell me.’

  Ken said: ‘A man must want this sort of stuff pretty bad if he goes as far as slapping a court order on it.’

  ‘Mad keen, he must be. I’m glad I’m disassociated.’

  ‘Me too. Somehow it doesn’t seem quite nice, does it?’

  Aziz was up on his feet, crouched under the low ceiling and having throat attacks because that was where his heart was. At last he managed to sputter: ‘You knew what was there!’

  ‘Not precisely true,’ I said. ‘But anyway, I’ve advised myself not to say anything until I’ve consulted with myself and as it’s Saturday I’ve gone fishing.’

  Aziz glared, and the sweat was trickles, not drops, on his face. ‘You are trying to blackmail me!’

  ‘Everybody says that to us,’ Ken complained. ‘D’you want your lawyer in now?’

  Aziz plumped back into his seat and the whole aircraft shuddered. But his voice – and his thinking – were under control again. ‘All I need to do is report this to the police and pfft – you are in jail.’

  ‘There’s much in what you say,’ I agreed. ‘But the police will never believe Ken and I were doing this freelance, on our own. The money’s too big, the paperwork’s too good. They’ll be looking for somebody at this end, in Beirut.’

  Aziz said: ‘But I am not connected with this at all. They know—’

  ‘Except for that court order,’ Ken said. ‘When a real court takes a proper look at that, what’ll they find? – that you got an injunction on an aeroplane and cargo that had nothing at all to do with the debt you claim Bruno Spohr owed you.’

  Aziz was getting a little warm again. ‘By its nature, an interim injunction is a delaying tactic; this is understood. It is to create time, it is not expected to be a final judgment.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ Ken said, ‘but the court’s still going to ask you what all this was about.’

  I said: ‘And you’re going to say: the sword of King Richard, Coeur de Lion.’

  ‘And the court will say,’ Ken took it up, ‘“You mean not about these dozen boxes of modern weapons we see before us?’”

  I said: ‘And then the court will hand down its verdict.’

  ‘Which will be ha-ha-ha,’ Ken said.

  ‘So we’ll see you at the six-in-the-morning slop-out,’ I said. ‘And meantime, give our regards to Messrs Hilton, Sheraton and Coca-Cola, will you?’

  Gradually it grew quiet; it was a slack time at the airport. And dim; the sun was probably down by now, though that was behind the hangar from us. Inside the Beech was a gentle twilight, cooling now as the breeze drifted through.

  Then Aziz said softly: ‘Yes, it is blackmail – but very good blackmail. I will get the order lifted immediately – as soon as I can contact the judge.’ He looked at Ken’s suspicious eyebrows. ‘An hour, or less.’

  I said: ‘Fine. And the deal stays the same: when and if we find the sword, you get at least twelve thousand dollars and I hope much more.’

  Both were staring at me, but Ken spoke first: ‘Where did you get that idea? Hell, where did you get that money?’

  ‘It’s still what Mr Aziz is entitled to.’ I nodded to him. ‘You carry on. I’ll look after your interests.’

  He stood up carefully. ‘I believe you will. I think you are a man of honour.’ He edged back and down the steps and away.

  Ken said: ‘And I think you’re a man who’s left his mind in his other suit. We’re not giving that conniving bastard—’

  ‘Always leave ’em laughing. Once he lifts that court order he’s just about proved his innocence – but we’ve still got the cargo. It just needs one anonymous phone call to the Customs here – or Cyprus – and …’ I shrugged. ‘I’m just trying to make him believe he could still have something to lose; a vague promise on twelve thousand is the most he’d believe from me. We’ll never see that sword, anyhow.’

  He nodded slowly, then chuckled. ‘What I like about you as a man of honour is you don’t bring work home at weekends. What now?’

  ‘File a flight plan and take off as soon as we’re cleared. Let’s get the stuff back in the boxes.’ The pistols were heaped on one of the passenger seats in a foam of torn paper.

  Ken picked up a Browning 9 mm and worked the slide: nothing in it. ‘It still doesn’t add up. We’ve got five or six makes of pistol here, three or four calibres. I just don’t understand it … What d’you say we open one more box? Just to see?’

  ‘Oh Jesus, no.’ But of course I was interested, though I’d far rather have sealed boxes than heaps of handguns littering up the aircraft.

  I said: ‘Well … just one. Only one.’

  He grinned and picked up my penknife.

  Why should I have been surprised that the next box had two French sub-machine guns and nine revolvers? Plus the usual minimum of ammunition, the whole weighing – I was sure – just 50 lbs. The revolvers weren’t all the same type, of course: Colts, Smiths, a single Luger and two J. P. Sauers. Add that to automatics by Colt, Walther, SIG of Switzerland, Beretta, Browning and MAB, and you had Christmas in Dallas when everyone’s opened their presents.

  Ken said slowly: ‘I thought bringing those M3’s down here was daft, but this dolly-mixture … there’s eight calibres of ammo here and nine boxes yet to open. Even a guerrilla group needs some sort of standardisation.’

  I said: ‘Give me a revolution to run and I’d swap you all the pistols for a few bazookas and Kalashnikov assault rifles.’

  ‘Sure …’ He dropped a SIG back on to the seat and rubbed his hands together: they were sticky with gun grease. ‘I mean, it doesn’t seem as if the supplier’s cheated or anything. It’s all good stuff, none of the cheap Spanish junk, and just about all of it’s new. No more than proof fired, I’d guess. And there’s some ammo for each type … You’d be better off starting up a shop than a revolution with this.’

  Suddenly that made sense. ‘Well, why not? We didn’t think Jehangir was the revolutionary type anyway, just a middleman. A shop-man.’

  ‘A shop where you buy a gun with just two loads, throw it away after because there’s no more ammo?’

  ‘It suits some customers.’

  He got up slowly and stretched as far as he could in a crouched position. ‘Yes, you forget there must be some non-political pistols out here. You mean banks?’

  ‘The last I heard there were eighty different banks in Beirut and I’m not talking about branches. The hold-up-gun concession on that could be worth having.’

  ‘Ye-es … if you shoot anybody you’ve got to sling the gun away anyhow, haven’t you? Same way, you don’t want to risk a used gun that might tie you to somebody else’s killing, so it has to be new stuff. And nothing bigger than a sub-mach
ine gun – you could hide any of it in a car.’ He shook his stooped head in admiration. ‘Lovely, lovely Mr Jehangir.’

  I stood up. ‘Let’s get it out of sight.’ I started shoving guns back into the boxes. ‘D’you still want to let Jehangir have this lot?’

  ‘I suppose not. But a hundred and twenty new pieces …’ he shook his head again. That’s capital, boy.’

  ‘It’s six years in Sand; they wouldn’t believe we’re loyal Palestinians.’

  He started to help me.

  I filed a flight plan at the tower and got a provisional okay for when the injunction was lifted. Aziz and his lawyer were still up in the deputy manager’s office, probably trying to raise the judge.

  Ken and I had another coffee – he’d had to come back to collect his bag and clear customs and so forth – and it got to be seven o’clock. Ken galloped his fingers on the table. ‘I should have started smoking again.’

  ‘Try a pipe.’ I had one of mine going, after only three matches.

  ‘Any time I want to make the match business rich I’ll send them a cheque. You look like the old lamplighter on piece rates.’

  I struck another match, then shook it out as Aziz’s lawyer and the deputy manager came up.

  The lawyer gave us both a nasty look and said in a controlled voice: ‘I think it is all arranged.’ I don’t know how much Aziz had told him, but obviously not all.

  The deputy said: ‘I understand you are not legally represented?’

  I nodded.

  ‘In affairs of this sort, an agreement between the lawyers of both sides, saying the case is settled, is usually enough. But I suppose you can agree for yourself … sign here, please.’

  I signed something.

  ‘Good. I am happy it is satisfactorily concluded.’ He smiled at the lawyer and got a stare of stony hatred in return. A bad loser, that man – though that probably made him a good lawyer, of course.

  I got on to my feet. ‘Thank Monsieur Aziz for us, please. And tell him that our agreement stands.’

  So I got a look of fresh-cut loathing, as well.