‘You still think Razzak met Hassan, whoever Hassan may be?’
‘Not Hassan himself – that was never likely. But maybe one of his top men. Razzak didn’t go walking on the Sussex Downs for fun – that’s for sure. The trouble is that we don’t know enough about the man; he’s new in London and I daren’t go checking on him in records in case someone gets wind of what I’m doing.’
‘I thought you knew all the brass,’ Roskill needled him.
‘Blast it, Hugh – I do – but – ‘ Audley stuttered for a moment. ‘That’s the whole trouble: he’s not really a coming man. Maybe he was ten years ago, but from Suez to the June War he was just a field officer – a tank man. He had a regiment on the frontier in ‘67.’
‘Then you do know something about him.’
‘I do,’ said Audley rather reluctantly. ‘But I only know what Jake Shapiro himself told me when we had lunch last week – the day Razzak’s appointment came through, apparently.’
‘Shapiro spoke about him?’
Audley bridled. ‘It was just – conversation. Jake and I don’t talk shop much any more. We haven’t got anything useful to say to each other.’
‘But what did he say?’ Roskill persisted.
‘He said Razzak was… brave.’
From Audley it sounded strange, almost a criticism.
‘Brave?’
Audley seemed to shrug down the telephone. ‘When the Israelis were beating the stuffing out of the Egyptians in ‘67 Razzak was one of those who dug their heels in – apparently he put up a real fight.’
One of the hard-faced, bitter ones, he’d be. Roskill remembered the blank, irreconcilable stares he had noticed at the Ryle reception. For men like that any talk of cease-fire would be a betrayal, and that brought Razzak shoulder to shoulder with Hassan.
‘But I’ll be able to tell you more about him soon,’ Audley went on. ‘I’m having breakfast with a man who knows all about him tomorrow morning.’
Roskill grunted. That, of course, was half the secret of Audley’s success: if he didn’t know something, he could usually be relied on to know someone who would.
‘I should have thought Shapiro would be your man. He knows Razzak – and he was down there at Firle. If you can get your hooks into him – ‘
‘Nobody gets their hooks into Jake. The best we can hope for is that he’ll be willing to trade with you, Hugh.’
‘You’, not ‘me’! Roskill groaned. This was the same convenient formula Audley had invoked earlier at the Queensway Hotel, but after his objection to it Roskill had hoped it would be allowed to die a natural death.
‘Hell, David – he’s your buddy. I hardly know the fellow. You go trade with him.’
‘I want to keep out of it as long as I can, Hugh. As soon as Jake knows I’m involved he’ll be likely to raise the price.’
‘But you’re a friend of his.’
‘Friendship doesn’t stretch this far. But don’t worry – he’s not likely to ask you anything about aircraft. Missiles, maybe, but most likely tanks, and I can get you that Anglo-Belgian report on the Scorpion and the Scimitar. Offer him the inside information on that welded aluminium armour of theirs. He’ll be sure to like that’
Audley sounded suspiciously like the Foreign Office man who thought no one would know anything about desalination.
‘But supposing he doesn’t?’
‘Give him the Ryle Foundation, then – I’m damn certain he’ll go for that.’
It was lamentably clear that Audley was perfectly prepared to see Roskill compromise himself with anybody and everybody in the higher cause of his own tortuous designs, so there was no point in prolonging the conversation. Any moment now Isobel would be arriving beside the car, and he hated the idea of her standing waiting for him in the shadows of Bunnock Street.
‘Where do I find Shapiro, then? And don’t forget I’ve got to go down to Firle tomorrow morning, either.’
‘That’s just it, Hugh. You can reach him tonight: he’ll be in a fly-blown club called Shabtai’s in Silchester Lane – just behind St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. He’ll be there about ten thirty – he’s currently wooing a doctor in Bart’s.’
‘A doctor?’
‘A female doctor, man – there’s nothing odd about Jake. He’s ambitiously normal, you might say. His sense of humour’s neanderthal, but he’s a decent chap if you don’t try to double-cross him too obviously. Just don’t let him bully you, and whatever you do don’t try and keep up with him when he’s drinking – he’s got a leather liver.’
Razzak and Shapiro sounded equally formidable in their different ways, Roskill reflected unhappily. They were both tank men and therefore had to be mad to start with – anyone who chose to enclose himself in a slow, vulnerable steel coffin couldn’t be wholly normal, whatever Audley might say.
He could only hope that Audley had guessed correctly, and that he was about to enlist the aid of the right madman.
By the time he had returned to the car he had managed to convince himself that it could hardly be so very far from the mark. If it was based on what looked like a string of coincidences, that was in its favour. Strings of coincidences were like unicorns and mermaids – they simply didn’t exist in nature, and sensible men treated them with suspicion.
Alan had been killed deliberately and Alan had been at Firle when Shapiro and Razzak had passed so close to each other. And certainly, if anyone was mixed up with Hassan it would be Razzak – and if anyone had reason enough to spy on them it was Shapiro.
Yet for all that he would have preferred to have met the Israeli after his expedition to Firle, not before it. He had great hopes of Firle: if there had been any sort of meeting there, it had probably been set up in the belief that those wide open downs were a private place. But that was a very typical mistake a foreigner and a townsman might make; in reality there were very often watching eyes in the countryside, ready to note strange faces which would have passed unnoticed in the anonymity of a crowded city street.
Perhaps no one else had seen as much as Alan had, but the chances were at least fair that someone else had seen something.
There was a click from the passenger’s door and a rapid tapping on the window – Isobel’s characteristic tap.
He reached over and unlocked the door, and Isobel slid hurriedly on to the seat.
‘Start the car, Hugh,’ she said urgently. ‘Drive off!’
Roskill frowned at her: Isobel was not totally unflappable, but this urgency had the sound of fear in it.
‘There are two men in the churchyard watching you,’ she whispered. They’re just out of the lamplight – I took the shortcut and I almost bumped into them. I’m certain they were watching you – let’s get away from here, Hugh, please.’
He fought the urge to turn around. If they were watching him from just inside the churchyard, beyond the radius of the last lamp, then he wouldn’t be able to see than anyway. Whereas underneath the lamp beside the car his every movement would be clear to them.
He looked, ahead down Bunnock Street, which stretched empty and malevolent before him. Isobel could hardly be imagining things: there was nothing else here for anyone to watch. And her instinct for flight was simple common sense – Bunnock Street was not a place to linger in when seventy-five yards and five seconds away, beyond the curve of the terraced houses, was the safety of the main road.
He reached forward towards the ignition, but even as his fingers closed on the key a fearful thought exploded in his brain, paralysing his hand.
Underneath the lamp beside the car.
‘Start the car, Hugh!’
Beside the car!
‘That’s interesting,’ Alan had said. And he had stared at something for a split second and there had been a white, blinding flare of light … torn metal and flesh slapped against the floor and walls of the pit, the crack of the explosion magnified in the confined space of the underground garage, echoing still while pieces of the one-time Vanden Plas Princess bounced
from the ceiling and clattered to the floor…
Roskill’s fingers slowly left the key. He didn’t have to look down to see that his hand was shaking — he could feel it shaking.
‘What’s the matter, Hugh?’
The blind moment passed, and Roskill felt cold and calm – it had been like that when the Provost had suddenly changed from a beautiful little flying machine into an uncontrollable and disintegrating piece of flying junk: the moment of panic and then the businesslike preoccupation with saving himself which was half the battle. Only believe and ye shall be saved …
‘Somebody’s moved the car, Bel,’ he said gently. ‘There’s just a chance they might have – tampered with it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I parked right nest to the lamp-post, Bel – the passenger’s door couldn’t be opened when I left it.’
‘But I got in?’
Roskill nodded. He had been slow, almost fatally slow, side-tracked by his own thoughts and then by Isobel’s fear – slow to remember the Vanden Plas Princess.
‘Tampered with?’ Isobel was calm now, too – beautifully and wholly Isobel, and not to be fobbed-off with half-baked explanations.
‘It could be nothing. But if those chaps back there in the churchyard had anything to do with Alan, then they know how to booby-trap cars.’
It could be nothing – but to bug the car they had no need to move it. And if they had done nothing but that to it there would be very little point in hanging around to see the fireworks.
But there was no need to spell that out to Isobel.
‘I see. And just what do you propose to do about it, Hugh?’
She was sitting more stiffly, but the tone of her voice was still perfectly controlled – altogether much more the experienced charity president questioning her treasurer over an adverse financial report that the female half of the illicit liaison caught sitting on something hot.
‘Well, we’re safe enough so long as we don’t do anything,’ said Roskill. ‘I doubt you came into their calculations, but just to make things look convincing I’m going to put my arm along the back of your seat and you can cuddle up to me – just to allay any fears they may have.’
Isobel moved towards him somewhat gingerly, as though he was personally wired to whatever might be under the bonnet.
‘We always said we’d never do this sort of thing in public,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘And certainly not in this disgusting place.’
She was bloody well cooler than he was, thought Roskill until he felt for her hand and found that it was trembling.
‘What sort of shoes are you wearing? Snazzy or sensible?’
‘Sensible. You said we weren’t going to eat at anywhere smart.’
All the better to run in, if it came to that.
‘In a moment I want you to get out of the car, Bel, and walk down the street – walk, mind you – don’t run unless I shout. But if I shout then start running.’
‘And what will you be doing?’
‘Christ – I shall be running too, and I can probably run a lot faster than you can.’
‘Why can’t we get out together?’
It was odds on that if the car was booby-trapped it would be the ignition that set it off. They couldn’t have had time for anything much more elaborate. But it was just possible that the driver’s door was rigged for a second-time opening explosion, a trick that conveniently removed the victim from the actual place where the booby-trappers might have been seen.
‘It’ll confuse them, Bel. But they probably won’t do anything anyway. They’ll think we’ve had a quarrel more likely. Just walk smartly away and don’t turn round – and don’t worry.’
Isobel looked hard at him. ‘You’re not going to do anything noble, are you, Hugh?’
‘I’m not going to do anything stupid, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You promise?’
‘Promise?’ Somehow he had to belittle the danger now, to get her moving. ‘My darling Bel – you remember the verse Valentine put up over the bar in the Mess at Snettisham – the advice on when to eject –
Some lucky Thracian has my noble shield,
I had to run: I dropped it in a wood,
But I got clear away, thank God!
So f------the shield! I’ll get another just as good.’
He tried to grin at her. ‘We’ve both got to bale out – just do what I’ve told you. I’ve no ambition to die for my – ‘
He stopped as the answer to the question which had been dogging him earlier rose unbidden in his mind: Audley would certainly know what ‘propositum’ and ‘taberna’ meant – he must remember to ask him at the next opportunity.
‘Hugh?’
‘It’s nothing, Bel. I’ve just remembered something unimportant I’ve got to do. Now, off you go!’
The very irrelevance of what he was saying seemed to reassure her. It even served to calm Roskill himself: it was somehow unthinkable that anything could happen to him until he had the answer to that ancient piece of Latin wit – probably lavatorial wit, too …
Isobel gave him one final look, drew a deep breath and grasped her bag decisively. Then, with a firm, unhurried movement she opened the door, stepped gracefully on to the pavement – her entrances and exits were always elegant – and set off down Bunnock Street like a swan navigating the town drain.
Roskill watched her progress with one eye on the driving mirror, in which the entrance to St. Biddulph’s churchyard was framed.
Ten paces and she was out of the street light’s circle and into a patch of half-light… and then ten more and she was almost on the edge of the next circle, from the lamp on the other side of the street. Beyond that she was virtually out of reach of a danger and it was time for him to move.
With his hand on the door handle he risked turning to get one good, clear look at the churchyard entrance. There was the loom of something darker beyond the pool of light – something that was moving now. In that second it dawned on him that Isobel’s door was the obvious one to use. He levered himself awkwardly across towards it, bumping himself painfully on the gear-lever as he did so, and swung himself on to the pavement.
In doing so he had another glimpse of the churchyard: there was a figure, two figures now, there. But in the very instant that he saw them there was the roar of an engine from the other end of Bunnock Street and the glare of powerful headlights which swept over the nearside curve of the street and then over Roskill – and then on to the men themselves.
They threw up their hands across their faces and broke left and right away from the beam of light as though it was a death-ray, leaving Roskill rooted in the shadow of his own car.
The car behind the headlights hurtled the last few yards of the street – a big maroon Mercedes – lurching to a stop within inches of the Triumph, obliquely across its bows.
The rear window slid down smoothly and a swarthy, scarred face peered out of it.
‘Squadron-Leader Roskill?’
A plump, good-humoured face he had seen before earlier in the evening – the fat Arab.
The door swung open and a pair of beautifully polished shoes glinted momentarily as the Arab levered himself out. Beyond him Roskill glimpsed Isobel standing irresolutely halfway down the street.
‘Forgive me for arriving so – so rudely, Squadron-Leader,’ said the Arab, limping towards him slowly. ‘But I don’t think your car is fit to drive any more.’
‘I wasn’t intending to drive it.’
‘You weren’t?’ The fat man cocked his head in curiosity, and then nodded it. ‘How very wise of you! Then I can only presume that you are already aware that it’s been – is nobbled the word? One nobbles racehorses, so I think one might nobble cars, don’t you?’
He patted the Triumph’s bonnet appreciatively.
‘And those two gentlemen who didn’t like the headlights,’ continued the Egyptian, ‘I suppose we’d better see them on their way.’
He snapped his fingers at
his driver and the driver’s mate and pointed towards the churchyard. Wordlessly the men obeyed him, like the well-trained gun-dogs they were.
The Arab patted the car again. ‘One of your little electronic gadgets was upset, I suppose,’ he said conversationally. ‘Or would that be telling?’
He smiled, and the only thing Roskill could think of doing to hide his doubts about the whole situation was to smile back.
‘Nothing so elaborate, I’m afraid,’ he replied self-deprecatingly. ‘Let’s say I’m just suspicious of cars these days.’
‘So my journey was really unnecessary after all?’
‘Not at all. It’s very reassuring to know I’ve got unexpected friends watching over me.’
The fat man chuckled. ‘You are a most popular person, Squadron-Leader. No sooner had my man settled down to follow you, than he noticed that someone else was doing the same thing. And as that made it very difficult for him to follow you, he followed them instead – very sensible fellow.’
‘And what did he see?’
‘He saw them take your car away. And they got away from him then, because he wasn’t expecting that. So he phoned me– ‘
‘ – And you knew what to expect?’
‘When my man told me they’d brought the car back I had my suspicions, certainly.’
‘But you don’t know what’s been done exactly?’
It was curious that the fellow was so eager to explain exactly how he’d come storming into Bunnock Street like the U.S. cavalry. It made Roskill want to push him further, to find out what he didn’t wish to explain. Like, for example, who the devil he was—which was one question Roskill couldn’t humiliate himself with.
A shrug. ‘They didn’t take it away to give it a wash and a polish, obviously.’
‘A shot of T.P.D.X. in the right place, maybe?’
For the first time the smile slipped a fraction. The Arab cocked his head again slightly and the light from the lamp above them picked out a long whitish scar that ran down from his cheekbone downwards, to be lost in one of his jowls.
The Alamut Ambush Page 10