by Gavin Lyall
‘Mitzi knows the address?’
‘Yes, but she’s meeting us near here. Ten to seven.’ He glanced at his watch, but there was half an hour to go.
Then our lamb arrived. Not at all bad, though lamb’s one of the safest things to order in Israel. And a bottle of Negev wine. I sipped and chomped for a while.
Ken suddenly put his knife and fork down. ‘Mint sauce. I knew there was something missing. It’ll be worth getting back to England just for that.’
‘And they say travel broadens the mind. Mint sauce kept us out of the Common Market for ten years.’
‘Worth every minute.’
After another while, I asked: ‘What’s Gadulla getting out of this deal?’
‘Mitzi agreed to twenty per cent’
I chewed. ‘Nice of him to accept, seeing the Prof told him he could expect half.’
‘You think the letter said that?’
I tried to write the missing letter in my head. Dear Mohamed – it would be in English – Dear Mohamed, I’m sending documentation on the sword to a man in Beirut, Pierre Aziz. Get in touch with him and split the profit. But what had stopped Gadulla selling the sword already? It was worth something, even without the description. The letter must have said something else: Dear Mohamed …
I woke up. ‘Just Dear Mohamed. A handwritten letter wouldn’t say “Gadulla” or his address. That’s what Ben Iver was torturing Papa for: Gadulla’s full name!’
Ken took a bit of meat from his mouth and looked at it curiously, put it down. ‘What about the envelope?’
‘Papa wouldn’t keep it. With uncancelled stamps, it’s proof he was robbing the mail train.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘It works … How would Ben Iver expect to find who “Mohamed” is, then?’
‘Find one of us and follow.’
He looked quickly sideways, but the place was as empty as before. The family had gone, another couple had arrived. The two soldiers still at the bar.
The proprietor stood up and grinned helpfully, but I shook my head.
Ken said softly: ‘No way he can be behind us two. But when Mitzi gets here, I’ll lead her around the houses, you tail us to make sure nobody else is.’
‘Wilco.’ I chewed on. Maybe mint sauce, now I was thinking of it, would have helped. ‘How’s anybody going to pay Gadulla anyhow? The Met won’t fork out for weeks at least.’
Ken looked at his watch again, then waved to the proprietor. ‘Getting near time. Gadulla’s prepared to trust us, that’s all.’
‘The word of a white man, huh? Balls. He’s got some scheme of his own running.’
Ken shrugged. The bill arrived and he paid it. ‘Maybe he’s just honest.’
‘Ken, nobody in this is honest, starting from you and me.’
‘Two minutes.’ He stared at the table. ‘Well, all right – we’re finally getting rid of that champagne.’
The room went cold and quiet. ‘To Gadulla? You want him to have that stuff?’
‘Why not?’ he whispered fiercely. ‘I knew it would come in useful. Capital always does – and that’s all it is, just like all the other boxes we’ve carried. Only this time we got lucky and we own it. And now we can cash it in for a share of that sword.’
‘New lamps for old, hey? Ken – Gadulla was probably born a Palestinian. You know what hell do with nine boxes of guns in Jerusalem. He’ll give—’
‘Not him. He’ll sell them.’
‘To the same people. I see why you wanted the aeroplane up here. You couldn’t have unloaded at Ben Gurion. This airfield’s not so well guarded. I suppose his boys were going in at midnight and—’
He stood up. ‘Time. They are going in around midnight.’
They weren’t, but he didn’t know why. I followed him to the door, and the proprietor rushed to open it, wish us a good night and come back soon.
‘Ken—’ but Mitzi was already strolling – as much as her rather nervous walk could become a stroll – past. Ken closed up and took her arm.
I gave them seven seconds start, then strolled after, though the whole thing was pointless by now. When Gadulla the Bold found there weren’t any nine boxes of untraceable small arms in the deal, then his interest in twenty per cent of a vague promise was going to reach nil. I still did the covering well enough, stopping to listen behind me, skittering ahead cat-footed to keep Ken and Mitzi in sight.
Going back, the City was even quieter and emptier than it had been. Once we’d turned off David Street, the alleys were just dark echoing links between sparks of light from little lamps on occasional walls.
After ten minutes, when we’d passed the front of Gadulla’s shop twice and were just reaching the back steps, I caught them up. ‘Nobody’s behind. Ken, before we see Gadulla—’
But he went on up the steps and pressed the bell. Mitzi followed, then halfway up she stumbled and dropped her handbag. It hit the stone below with a sharp glassy pop.
‘Scheisse!’
I picked it up. ‘What the hell have you got in there?’
‘It was just a little pot I had bought. I thought to ask Herr Gadulla if it was real.’
‘I hope it wasn’t.’ I took it up the steps. The door creaked open and dim light filtered out. A pot goes pop? I opened the handbag and shook out the ruins of a light bulb.
Or signal gun.
A soldier ran into the alley behind us, pointing an Uzi.
‘Please do not move,’ said the voice of Mihail Ben Iver.
Chapter 30
Of course, he was a soldier; any Israeli his age would still be on the reserve. And if you happen to want to take your submachine gun to a party, you’d attract comment in civilian dress and no second glance in uniform.
He arranged us competently: Ken, Gadulla and me in chairs jammed into a corner, with nothing we could reach or kick within range. But not until Mitzi had searched us. Gadulla didn’t like that. Not one bit he didn’t.
Mitzi stood back, mousey eyes glinting and smiling watchfully.
Ken asked: ‘I suppose young fuzzy-chops found out where you were staying and came a-calling?’
Ben Iver said: ‘Miss Spohr decided to change her agent. She thought I might get her a better deal.’
Well, maybe. He could cut out Ken and me and Gadulla – if Gadulla agreed to turn up the sword at all – but he’d also be cutting himself a big slice of the action.
‘Is that the gun that killed Papadimitriou?’ Ken asked.
Ben Iver grinned. ‘Hardly.’
It had been a ridiculous question. But the answer had solved Papa’s death, all right.
‘Any more questions?’ Ben Iver asked cheerfully, his glasses twinkling in the lamplight. ‘Or shall we move on to item three, like where is the sword?’
Nobody said anything, Gadulla in particular. Mitzi looked hopefully at Ben Iver. He held the gun one-handed – you can do that easily with a small, compact gun like the Uzi – and took out a smallish colour photograph.
‘You know this, of course?’ He waggled it at Gadulla. ‘It was the original redemption ticket you gave Professor Spohr in return for the sword.’
‘He stole it from me,’ Gadulla said bleakly.
Mitzi looked a bit sharp, but Ben Iver nodded. ‘That sounds more likely.’
I asked: ‘Are we too young to see this picture?’
‘No, but I would prefer to describe it. It shows Mr Gadulla in happy conversation with a certain Palestinian terrorist leader who lives in Beirut – or is it Damascus? Anyway, the likenesses are very good. I really don’t know why people allow such pictures to be taken.’
Nor do I, yet you see books about the French Resistance with wartime group photos, everybody clutching a Sten gun and grinning like a toothpaste ad, and what the Gestapo would have done if they’d found one of those pictures …
‘It isn’t evidence,’ Ken said.
‘Evidence, schmevidence. We know it would at least put Mr Gadulla across the border into Jordan, stateless, homeless, all his prop
erty here confiscated. Ha Mosad – which you kindly thought I belonged to – doesn’t need legal evidence.’
He held up the photo. ‘So I have here one pawn ticket for one sword.’
‘It was in the letter Spohr wrote to Gadulla?’ I asked, just to get things straight. ‘Did Papa know what it was?’
Ben Iver shook his head without looking at me. ‘Not exactly. But he had the sort of mind that understands blackmail. Now, please – the sword.’
Gadulla went on looking like a bent hawk for a moment longer, then nodded. ‘If I may stand up?’
‘Carefully.’
Gadulla went to a thin, colourful rug hanging on the wall, unhooked it and lifted the sword down from the pegs behind.
‘Has it been there all the time?’ Ken asked, staring.
‘Only a few hours,’ He laid it carefully on the table under the lamp and sat down. Mitzi moved quickly across to look.
I’d never really expected to meet it and so hadn’t any high hopes about it, but even so I wasn’t much impressed. It was just a big, very sword-like sword. A long straight, slightly tapered blade two inches wide at the top, and with occasional little nicks of rust. But painted with some brownish-red stuff – probably a rust inhibitor the Prof had slapped on.
The hilt looked oddly thin: just a bar of rough metal leading up from a straight crosspiece and loosely wrapped with a tangle of grimy gold wire. There’d probably been a grip of wood, long rotted, with the wire binding it in place. And at the top, fat as a small plum, the pommel, with the crest on one side, a wine-coloured jewel on the other.
Mitzi had her sharp eyes right down on it, almost as if she was trying to pick up a scent. ‘Ufert … the name is right … and three leopards, passant guardant …’ she rubbed the crest carefully with her thumb; ‘… that is right … and the jewel. Yes!’
‘Is that a ruby?’ Ken asked.
‘Ruby?’ Ben Iver leant forward.
Mitzi shrugged. ‘Miss Travis told you: they did not put yet real gems in German swords.’ She had a ring on her finger with a tiny diamond; she scratched at the ‘ruby’. ‘No, it is what you call “balas”.’
‘Spinel,’ Ben Iver said sadly. I think he’d have been more at home with a genuine gem and a doubtful sword, but you can’t have everything.
Mitzi lifted the sword reverently. It must have weighed like a bad conscience and I’d hate to have been on the consumer’s end, but it still looked just a rather crude old sword.
Not to her. ‘It was mine and now I have it!’
Ken said gently: ‘Bruno didn’t plan on you getting it’
She swung round on him. ‘He had no right. I am his daughter. When he is dead his money is mine, not to some criminals in here and Beirut!’
I said: ‘But he wasn’t going to die …’ then remembered he was, anyway. Then I knew why he’d died. ‘You told him he’d got cancer. The doctors had told you secretly, the way they do, and you got into a row that night – it would be about money, wouldn’t it? – and you said “Screw you, dear daddy, you’ll be dead in two months and it’ll all be mine anyway.” The jolt of that, and knowing he’d got just two months of pain to come, he rings Gadulla then posts the two letters … It figures.’
Mitzi was looking at me with a little mousey Mona Lisa smile.
Ken swallowed. ‘If he’s determined to do her down, why not leave a note saying what happened?’
‘Let’s put in one more scene. For neatness. She doesn’t go out. She hears a shot. She goes in next door: one dead father, one suicide note. She confiscates that, maybe she goes through his papers. But nobody’s come running. So she can walk out, to prove her uninvolvement – and get rid of the note. She daren’t dispose of that around the hotel.’
Ben Iver said: ‘Please do not go on. These family dramas make us Jews feel very sentimental.’
Mitzi turned and glared at him. ‘I did not know he would kill himself!’
I nodded. ‘It caused you a lot of trouble when he did. You just wanted him to appreciate his last two months to the full.’
Beside me, Ken gave a little shiver.
Gadulla said calmly: ‘If I may have the photograph?’
Ben Iver seemed surprised to find it in his hand, then crunched it and tossed it across. Gadulla picked it off the floor – Arabs aren’t ball players – uncrumpled it, looked at it unemotionally. Then stood up again slowly. ‘May I?’
He went to the table and lit the spirit stove. ‘Of course, you, may have copied this.’
Ben Iver shrugged. ‘So may the Professor. But you have what you always expected. And we are both in business … there may be a time when we can work together.’
Gadulla nodded briefly, held the photo to the stove. There’s something about flame that makes you watch it. Ben Iver said: ‘I think that is the best—’
Mitzi hit him with the sword.
It was a simple back-hand swing, and if she couldn’t put much weight behind it, the sword had plenty of its own. Ben Iver got his arms up and the sword chopped into them, swept them back past his head and sliced into the bridge of his nose, exploding his glasses. And stuck there. He slammed back against the wall – and then I got my eyes shut.
I heard the Uzi clatter free, then the thud and clang as Ben Iver’s face hit the floor. Reluctantly, I looked again.
Mitzi was grabbing for the gun, Gadulla pushing the stove off the table and it bursting in a whuff of flame around the gun. Ken took two long strides, kicked the Uzi clear.
I got on my feet to watch Gadulla. He went quietly back to the corner and sat down again.
Ken snick-snacked the Uzi’s bolt and a cartridge clunked on the floor. Loaded, all right. ‘First, you’ll be wondering why I called you here … somebody put that fire out.’
I pulled the rug off the wall.
Mitzi screamed: ‘Give me the gun! I want it! That is why I did it!’
‘Going for a hundred per cent, huh?’ Ken said. I threw the rug on the flames and tramped it down, then bent over Ben Iver.
I think he moved as I touched him, but never again. The blood was oozing where it should have been pouring.
Mitzi was still screaming. Ken pointed the gun at her. ‘Stand aside and shut up. You don’t get a third chance.’
She took a pace back and stood there, looking a little mad.
I said: ‘Ken, forget about Ben Iver.’
‘Fine. I didn’t fancy explaining him at a hospital.’
Gadulla said, calm as ever: ‘I do not want him found in that uniform in this place.’
Ken said: ‘Amen and join the club.’
The phone rang.
Ken and I looked at each other. He said: ‘Ben Iver must have friends.’
I turned to Gadulla. ‘His or yours?’ He made a tiny shrug.
‘Answer it – in English.’
All he had to say was ‘Hello’, then listen a moment. Then hold it out to me. ‘He wants Mr Case or Mr Cavitt.’
It seemed a long time before I got to saying: ‘Roy Case.’
‘Inspector Tamir.’
I mouthed police at Ken. His face hardened.
Tamir said: ‘I am sorry to trouble you but I want you to know the shop is surrounded and all gates to the City watched. So it would be simplest if you came out quietly, and with the sword.’
I absorbed some of this, then asked: ‘What’s your number?’
He gave it. Probably the police barracks just inside the Jaffa Gate.
I rang off. ‘He says we’re surrounded and come out quietly.’
Gadulla shook his head. ‘You cannot surround a street like this, with all the back doors … And they will not use much force in the City. They are afraid of riots.’
Ken looked at him steadily. ‘But somebody sold us out. Again.’
He spread his hands. ‘For what? What would the police offer me?’
I picked up the phone, dialled the number. It was a police station, all right. ‘Do you speak English? – good. I want to speak to Miss Eleanor
Travis. The American lady. I think she came with Inspector Tamir.’
‘Yes. I will find her.’
I put the phone down, feeling suddenly tired. ‘Little Eleanor, all right. She met the cop in Tel Aviv. She discovers the sword for the government, they give her the inside track for the first bid.’
Mitzi said: ‘But I promised her first refusal.’
‘But this way,’ I said, ‘it’s legal and above-board and the Met’s reputation isn’t hurt. Fame and promotion for our Eleanor.’
Ken leant against the wall. ‘We’re in real Judas country, aren’t we?’
Mitzi suddenly panicked. ‘But when the police come in, what will they think about him?’ She flustered a hand at Ben Iver.
‘They won’t believe he committed suicide,’ I said. ‘What you mean is you murdered somebody and you’d rather it didn’t become public knowledge. You should think of these things in advance. Can we manage to lose him?’ I asked Gadulla.
‘We will have to,’ he said calmly.
Ken nodded. ‘Right. And then out the back door.’
I said: ‘Ken – they’re watching the gates, and at night they don’t need many men for that. There’s only seven ways out of the City.’
‘There’s always another way.’
Gadulla shook his head dubiously. ‘The City was always a fort. It still is.’
‘All right, we’ll hide out somewhere here until we’ve grown beards like rabbis! They’ll get tired after a month or two.’
‘I can just see Mitzi with a beard.’
And that was it. Unless we kept her nailed down, she’d be off like the good news from Ghent to Aix doing a new deal that swapped us for whatever the police had on offer that week. Ken sighed and nodded.
I said: ‘We can walk out now – without the sword. No-sword, no body – no crime. Eleanor can’t prove the thing existed. So they’ll screw us around for a day and let us go.’
Gadulla liked it. Ken didn’t. ‘No-o. I’ve come a long way to find the damn thing and I’m not letting go.’
Of course, if the sword stayed with Gadulla so did the profit. I picked it off the floor and wiped it clean on the charred rug. The gold wire was crumpled around the hilt now, but otherwise it wasn’t harmed from tasting blood for the first time in nearly eight hundred years.