Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

  Chapter 19

  It was dark when we got outside again and the field was a maze of grounded stars: the yellow-whites of the runway, the greens of the threshold, the dim blues of the taxiways and occasional red obstruction warnings. And back and beyond, the rich windows of Beit Mery and the other hilltops twinkled lazily in the rising air.

  It had turned busy, too; the air was full of burnt paraffin and the heaving roar of taxiing jets. We kept close to the buildings: it’s when you get noise all around you that you can walk into something, though there aren’t as many spinning propellers as once, thank God.

  I left the Queen Air’s door open so I could go out and check the navigation lights, turned them on, let Ken finish off the cockpit check while I put the straps back around the champagne boxes.

  I felt, rather than heard, the first foot on the steps. Before I could move, Janni was up and inside, grinning from a fighting crouch that was more from choice than the height of the cabin. I backed off a step and turned sideways to keep my chin to myself.

  More scuffling, slower this time, and the aircraft tilted a little as Jehangir came aboard. A slim automatic glinted in the dull cabin light.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said calmly. ‘Are we ready to start unloading?’

  More swaying and a third person stuck a sharp moustached face around the edge of the doorway. Beneath it was a customs uniform,

  I said: ‘Monsieur Aziz won’t like it.’

  ‘No—’ he shook his head firmly ‘—that’s done with. I tried to ring him, only to find he was here at the airport. So I realised you must have rung him yourself. And I hurried down.’ Pausing only to change out of the pink rig into dark trousers and shirt, a short dark jacket. The total effect was almost black – maybe intentionally.

  He leant a forearm on the rear seat back and pointed the gun across it. ‘How, by the way, did you persuade Aziz to lift the order?’

  Over my shoulder, Ken said: ‘Truth. Faith moves mountains but truth moves financiers.’ He was close behind me and I hoped he’d remember where he was – in a small, fragile aeroplane – before he started a gunfight. Also where I was, of course.

  ‘Ah,’ Jehangir smiled. ‘I really didn’t need Aziz poking into my business.’

  I said: ‘Your name didn’t come into it. Yet.’

  ‘Well … Now let’s get on with it. Stand aside, please.’

  I turned, stared hard at Ken, and sat down in a seat facing forward at the stacked boxes. Ken shrugged briefly and sat on the other side of the gangway.

  Janni came forward, undid the straps, and hunched his way aft with a box. He dumped it in the doorway, came back for another. A third. The aeroplane settled a little on the main wheels.

  ‘Three is one-fifty pounds,’ Ken said softly, ‘and two blokes back there is another three hundred and Janni must be nearly two hundred himself. Six-fifty already. One more?’

  ‘Could be two. Mind if I go first?’

  ‘I was going to suggest it.’

  Janni came forward and lifted the next box, then spotted that it had been opened and called to his boss. Jehangir took a step forward and peered.

  ‘Oh dear, so you had to get inquisitive.’ He glanced back at his tame customs officer.

  I said: ‘We did say it was the truth that moved Monsieur Aziz.’

  Jehangir suddenly chuckled. ‘I wish I could have seen that little prig’s expression. Never mind. A diligent customs officer would obviously open some for a random check. Janni!’

  He stepped back and Janni moved past us with the box. As he went the aeroplane tilted up behind him like a seesaw. 700 pounds aft of the centre of the main wheels and nothing ahead of it was just too much. The nosewheel lifted and the tail headed for the tarmac.

  I threw myself into the cockpit, ramming myself on to the controls, as far forward as I could get. Behind me there was a crash as Janni dropped the box, a crunch as the door-steps touched the ground and a scream as the customs officer fell off them.

  Maybe he made the difference, maybe it was also, Ken backing in behind me. She slowed, the tail bumper touched gently, then the whole caboodle swung back on its nosewheel with a slam that lifted my gold filling.

  But nosewheels are built for slamming; tails aren’t.

  Ken shouted: ‘Drop the gun! Drop it!’

  He had both hands on the Smith, pointing straight up the gangway between the seats. I couldn’t see what at.

  Then he fired.

  Inside the aeroplane, the noise was like a grenade. I leant over Ken’s shoulder. At the far end – about eight feet away – Janni was picking himself off a scatter of champagne boxes, Jehangir was clinging to the last seat, looking as surprised as hell.

  As I watched, he lurched and his left leg slid eighteen inches out of his trouser cuff. He stared at it. The leg rolled a little, the foot at an impossible angle.

  Ken said: ‘Now lose that gun!’

  Jehangir let it fall, lowered himself on to the seat-arm, grabbed his leg and hauled it back into his trouser. ‘You know what this will cost me?’

  ‘Would your stomach have been cheaper? Now get the hell off this aeroplane.’

  Janni was on his feet, giving Ken a vicious glare, then helping the master up. Holding his leg more-or-less in place. Jehangir shuffled to the door. Janni helped him on to the steps.

  Jehangir turned for one last word. Ken took it instead: ‘I’ll tell you something: I was so rushed back then, I couldn’t remember which leg was which.’

  Jehangir vanished. When we felt their weight go off the steps, Ken moved back to watch them. ‘Wind her up. I’ll do the chocks and pitot head.’

  I was calling for taxi clearance before I’d got the second engine started.

  Ken dropped into the right-hand seat as we turned across the front of the main terminal. ‘I got the cargo back forward but not tied down. Shouldn’t be bumpy tonight, though.’

  ‘How’s the door?’

  ‘Bit bent at the top, but it latches.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t expect his damn leg to come right off. Wonder what it counts as? Can’t be grievous bodily harm, can it?’

  ‘I expect the French have a word for it.’ We got to the run-up area off runway 18 as a big jet started its takeoff. The line of lights crawled, walked, ran and slanted steeply into the dark sky.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, request takeoff.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, hold at run-up.’

  I’d been listening to the tower long enough to get a picture of what was going on around, which included a Pan Am flight established on the approach. They’d let us go after that had landed.

  I ran up the engines briefly, did a perfunctory mag and pitch check. Out low beyond the city two new stars sparkled alive; Pan Am’s landing lights.

  The tower said: ‘Whiskey Zulu, cancel takeoff. Return to parking ramp and shut down.’

  Ken glared at the little cabin speaker. ‘The hell with that. Just Jehangir pulling one of Aziz’s tricks.’

  I flipped off the brakes and pushed open the throttles. ‘Beirut Tower, Whiskey Zulu: your transmission faint and intermittent but understand clear to takeoff. Rolling.’

  The Tower screamed: ‘Whiskey Zulu, negative! Return to ramp!’

  ‘You’re still indistinct, but thanks and good night.’

  A deep but tense American voice broke in: ‘What the hell’s going on down there? Is that runway clear or not?’

  ‘Stand by, Pan Am,’ the Tower soothed him. ‘Whiskey Zulu, return to … no, where are you, Whiskey Zulu?’

  ‘Whaddaya mean, stand by? D’you think I’m in a Goddamn balloon? I’m past the outer marker!’

  The Queen Air broke ground, I snapped up the wheels and banked steeply right, over the sea, and left them to sort it out between themselves.

  I levelled out at 5,000 and put in the autopilot; it could have done the climb for me, but I was still new enough to this aeroplane to want to handle the controls more than was strictly necessary.

  Outside, the night was dar
k, moonless, crystallising as we got away from the dust and haze of the coastline. And still: no cloud, just a southwest wind with no sense of ambition.

  Ken said: ‘Nicosia in time for a late dinner, then. What after that?’

  ‘Back to the Castle. Then either Kapotas gets the okay from London for us to fly the aeroplane home, or we cable the bank and buy our own tickets.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’

  ‘So we’re stuck there till Monday anyhow.’

  After a moment he said: ‘What about Mitzi – and the sword?’

  ‘What about it? We haven’t a blind idea where it is except probably still Israel. We did our best for Mitzi, but now it’s time to resign from the crusade and get back into something profit-making.’

  He was quiet for a while. Then: ‘Did you know I was deported from Israel?’

  ‘The Consulate said.’

  ‘I meant to tell you myself. So we couldn’t go to Israel anyway … but I’d like to have found King Richard’s sword.’

  ‘Me too. And the Holy Grail and Henry Morgan’s treasure and King Solomon’s mines. Not necessarily all in the same week, though.’

  ‘Screw you, too.’ But when I glanced across, he was grinning. ‘I suppose really it wasn’t our type of weapon, anyway.’

  ‘One sword, king-size, only one previous owner … Mind the store for me?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to dump the cargo.’

  He sat up. ‘Oh Christ no. I tell you, that stuff’s capital.’

  ‘It’s jail bait. We’ve been lucky so far, mostly because we’ve kept ducking and weaving, but lucky besides. Just think how many people know by now: Jehangir and Co., Aziz and Kapotas and anybody they’ve told, then Kingsley and God-knows-who in Europe.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still—’

  ‘And when we reach Nicosia we’re due for a bollocking about that takeoff from Beirut – they’re sure to have complained. If just one official gets snoopy, then kiss me good night, head warder.’

  ‘Well, maybe, but …’ he sounded wistful. ‘I mean, those pistols are all new. Average £50 apiece just on a legal sale across the counter. That’s a thousand quid before we open another box.’

  ‘Ken, we can’t arrange a legal sale. We aren’t arms dealers. We were never the bright boys who fix for stuff to go from A to B and somebody called C to carry it. We were C, pig in the middle. But at least we insisted on honest manifests and end-use certificates and all.’

  ‘An honest end-use certificate? We knew bloody well that half the stuff we carried was going to wind up in some other country.’

  ‘I’m not talking about morality, dammit, I’m talking about getting caught. Those certificates were protection.’

  ‘Were they?’ – sourly.

  ‘Mostly. And you only did two years. If they’d thought you were a freelance smuggler …’

  He nodded but said doggedly: ‘It’s still capital. Like something I’ve been investing the last two years … a chance to get started again. There must be something we can do with it – more than the fish can, anyway.’

  It’s tricky to argue with that, particularly when you agree with most of it. The fact that the load probably belonged to Jehangir, at least legally or morally – or come to think of it, not quite either – wasn’t bothering me. I wriggled back out of my seat. ‘Okay. The champagne papers’ll see us through for the unopened boxes. But the opened stuff goes out. Are you keeping the Smith?’

  ‘Just in case comrade Jehangir hasn’t switched to breeding lovebirds.’

  He had a point, there. I slid the cockpit door behind me before turning on the cabin lights.

  The escape hatch is the last full-sized window on the starboard side, just behind the wing and opposite the door. It came loose easy enough, with a blare of engine noise and wind, and the aeroplane twitched with the increased drag. I threw the submachine-guns first.

  By the time I was down to tearing up and feeding out the cardboard boxes themselves, I was frozen rigid: any air comes cold at 170 knots. Putting the hatch back in was no fun at all and once I almost lost the whole thing and how would I explain that!

  Then I went looking for any damage done by Ken’s shot. And I couldn’t find a sign, so probably it was still in Jehangir’s tin leg and it didn’t bother me if it rattled as well. But I did find the gun he’d dropped: a Mauser HSc with one up the spout, so he’d been seriously ready to shoot. But I wasn’t going to open up the hatch and refreeze just for one gun. I put on the safety and jammed it up the backside of the rear seat, in among the springs. Then shivered my way back to the cockpit.

  Chapter 20

  Nicosia did its usual speedy job of prising the landing fee out of me, then looked severe and said: There has been a complaint about your departure from Beirut.’

  I looked surprised. ‘What for? I had a clearance.’

  ‘They say—’ he glanced down at a sheet of telex paper ‘—they say the clearance was cancelled and you took off without permission.’

  ‘I was flying below the airways; don’t see how they can cancel that sort of clearance.’

  He looked at the paper again but it didn’t seem to help. ‘I do not quite understand …’

  ‘If they want to fill in a form 939 and send it to our Civil Aviation boys, then I’ll answer it. Until then they’ve got no blasted business libelling me all over the Mediterranean.’

  He frowned. He was pretty sure I’d done something, but he didn’t want to stick his neck out on behalf of what he probably regarded as a bunch of hysterical Arabs.

  So he coughed and nodded. ‘I will tell them if they ask. Are you staying at the Castle again?’

  ‘Where else?’

  He went away and I finished up the paperwork and went outside to find Ken.

  It was a quiet taxi ride into Nicosia town. Halfway there, Ken roused himself enough to ask: ‘How are we cashwise?’

  ‘Not terribly fit.’ The Beirut hotel hadn’t cost us much, but the flight and the bar of the St George had caused severe financial bruising. In various currencies, I had just about thirty quid left.

  Ken grunted and left it at that.

  Sergeant Papa wasn’t on duty, so we walked straight in and turned left for the bar/dining-room. At the far end, a handful of families were finishing dinner; closer up, Kapotas was sitting at a bar table working over some account books with a glass of something beside him.

  I said: ‘The phrase you’re looking for is “Welcome home”. Is that whisky after dinner again?’

  He looked up and his shoulders sagged a little. ‘I haven’t had any dinner yet. I thought you’d be in Beirut much longer. Welcome home.’

  ‘Why, thank you. We haven’t had dinner ourselves, yet. Is it edible?’

  He dropped his pen and rubbed his eyes. ‘I doubt it. And with you two back, my accounts will mean nothing – again.’ He got up and took his glass to the bar.

  Ken was already leaning on it, and Apostolos, smiling gently, was pouring our two shots. He touched up Kapotas’s glass as well and we said ‘Cheers’ and drank.

  Then Ken asked: ‘Didn’t the girls get back here?’

  Kapotas shook his head, and Ken and I looked at each other. Then he said slowly: ‘The Ledra, then? I mean, if you’ve got money you wouldn’t come … I’ll just check, I think.’

  He went out. Kapotas watched him blankly, then nodded me away to the table, where Apostolos couldn’t overhear. Then he whispered: ‘What happened over there?’

  I thought about it. ‘We went to a party, we went to the races, we met some interesting new people. I suppose that about sums it up.’

  ‘You brought back the plane?’

  I stared. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘But not the cargo?’

  ‘We-ell …’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘It’s down to just nine boxes, now,’ I said helpfully.

  He had his hands over his eyes. ‘But I thought that was what you were going for!’
/>   ‘Sorry, it wasn’t.’

  He looked at me with haunted eyes. ‘Do you know that a senior partner of Harborne, Gough is coming from London tomorrow to look at everything personally?’

  My first thought was: with only thirty quid, where the hell can we get off this island to? Turkey, maybe? I said: ‘I didn’t know. But he won’t want to open champagne boxes and count the bubbles, anyway.’

  ‘He will want to count the boxes.’

  That was a point. ‘Well … tell him you imported three boxes here and sold them off. Why’s it worth his time to come here?’

  ‘He is not coming only here: he will go on to the Lebanon to see about the new hotel there. But if I say I’ve sold them, he will want to see the money in the books!’

  ‘So put it in the books. How were you going to explain it if I’d dumped the lot in the sea anyway?’

  He studied the tabletop as if it was the Book of Kells.

  I said grimly: ‘I see: just another example of pilot error.’

  He went on watching the table. An obviously British couple walked past from the dining area and I called: ‘What’s the dinner like tonight?’

  The man looked at his wife, his shoes, the ceiling, finally said: ‘I suppose I’m not used to this Cyprus cooking, yet.’

  I said: ‘Thanks,’ and turned back to Kapotas. ‘The only thing the British hate more than being cheated is hurting the cheater’s feelings. I suppose we can get some sandwiches?’

  Kapotas looked up balefully. ‘It is not my fault this place is … Oh God, if only I could get the plane away somewhere.’

  ‘We’ll take off for Britain any time you say the word; the word is “money”, by the way.’

  ‘How much does it cost to run that machine?’

  I shrugged. ‘In direct operating costs – that’s the extra expense you get by putting it into the air – you won’t see much change from £30 an hour. And that’s not touching annual costs like pilot salaries and insurance and so on.’

  ‘My God! It uses so much petrol?’

  ‘Fuel’s still not the worst of it. Most of your hourly cost is saving up for replacement parts and overhauls.’