by Jon Cleary
‘I wish I could help her,’ Raclot said. ‘I owe her a great debt.’
Tim contained his own curiosity. He came to Beirut twice a year to sell opals, but he kept his identity as secure as was possible. This was oil men’s territory and he did not want to stumble across anyone who might recognize him and take the word back to Kansas City. He never stayed in any of the better-known hotels, always preferring a small pension and never the same one twice. He had thought several times about not looking up Raclot again after their accidental meeting; but he had some good memories of Africa and Raclot was the only man he could share them with. So he would call up the Frenchman and they would meet for a drink and lunch or dinner; they would talk about old times but never about the present and neither of them would ask questions that might embarrass. He still let Raclot call him by the name he had been known by in Africa; he had not told him that he had yet another identity that he used in business here in Beirut and back in Australia. Indeed, he had not told Raclot anything about his business or mentioned Australia at all. He had long ago given up the name Tim Davoren. He would have succeeded in blocking it completely from his mind if it had not been for his son, who would always be there to remind him of the past.
‘You could never help her in this, Henri. You’re on the wrong side. These chaps are Marxists.’
‘You know who they are?’
‘I have a fair idea. They approached me last year, when I was here, about buying some guns for them.’
‘Did you sell them any?’ Raclot asked the question warily.
‘I gave that up years ago. I thought of passing them on to Rudi Schnatz – I wonder if he’s still in the game? – then thought better of it. There are so many buyers nowadays, it got so that my conscience started to worry me. In the old days you could be pretty certain whom the guns were going to be used against. Not any more. You could sell guns now and find them being used against your own chaps. Like today, for instance.’
‘Lucas Beaufort is one of your chaps?’
Tim smiled, pushed back a lock of grey hair that had fallen over his brow. The black moustache had been shaved off the day he left Kansas City; the once-dark hair was now steel grey. Twenty-five years had wrought changes in his looks; he was no longer instantly recognizable as Tim Davoren. He often wondered what Nina looked like now, but it seemed she led a sheltered social life and he had never seen any pictures of her in newspapers or magazines. He had been tempted to write and order a year’s subscription to the Independent, feeling sure she must be occasionally featured in its pages, but he had recognized the danger there in time. He did occasionally see pictures of Lucas in Time magazine or in copies of the Wall Street Journal that he would pick up on his trips out of Australia. Lucas did not appear to have changed at all.
‘I doubt if he’d think of it that way. But yes, we’re on the same side. In a way.’ He sipped his Arab beer, too light for his taste after the Australian beer he had become used to. ‘Henri, would you really like to help Mrs Whatever-her-name-is? Prue.’
6
Prue had got over her initial panic. Thirty-six hours had passed since she had received the ransom note and she had slowly but steadily regained some measure of control. She was a natural optimist and hope held her afloat like an unsinkable buoy. But she wondered how she would have stood up to the fear and worry if Nina and Magnus had not arrived.
She was alone in the suite with Nina when the call came from the desk downstairs to say that Colonel Raclot would like to see her. Magnus was at the embassy, holding an awkward three-way conversation by phone with Washington and Kansas City. Bruce, speaking for Margaret and Sally, was all for agreeing to any terms the kidnappers were asking. But Washington was still stalling, still insisting, without actually saying so, that an American presence in Abu Sadar was worth more than any two men’s lives.
‘Who is he?’ Nina asked.
‘I knew him in France. I think we’d better get Magnus back here.’
A plainclothes security man from the embassy had been kept in the suite. He let Raclot in when the latter knocked on the door, then looked at Prue for instructions. She asked him to wait out in the corridor for a few minutes and, with a careful look at Raclot he went out, closing the door behind him.
Raclot kissed the hands of both women, expressed concern at what had happened. ‘A long time ago, madame, I expressed the hope that I could repay you for what you did for me.’
‘I helped the Colonel escape from the police.’ Prue saw the intrigued look on Nina’s face. ‘But that is all I’m ever going to tell you. It’s something between me and the Colonel.’
The world must be full of secrets, Nina thought; but she had so few secrets of her own. She was not even privy to the one that still concerned her most: the whereabouts of her husband and son.
‘It would be better,’ said Prue, ‘if you could wait till our friend Mr McKea arrives. He knows what we can and cannot do.’
‘As you wish, madame.’ Prue had never known Raclot to speak English before; but maybe mercenaries needed to be multilingual. ‘Do you ever hear from Guy?’
‘Only on my daughter’s birthday. Just a card.’
‘Still his mother’s boy, eh? A pity.’
Magnus arrived in ten minutes, flinging open the door and striding in, his bald head glistening with sweat, as if he had run all the way from the embassy. He still looked and moved like a man much younger than he was, but Prue remarked that he had got older in the face in the past few hours. Things, she guessed, were not going well with Washington.
She introduced Raclot, who explained that he thought he could help. ‘I can’t make the contact myself. I’m known to be on the wrong side in all the little internal wars that go on in this part of the world. They call me a right-wing Christian Fascist. Which is perhaps what I am,’ he said without apology. ‘But I have a friend who can make the contact. Or try to.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.’
‘Colonel, how do I know we can trust you? There is a great deal of money involved in this – ’
‘Magnus, please – ’ Prue remembered when Raclot had once asked if she could be trusted. History did repeat itself, in cracked mirrors.
The stiffening in Raclot was barely discernible: it disappeared as soon as Prue spoke up in his defence. ‘I owe Madame Devon a very great debt, m’sieu. One that has no dollar value on it.’
‘I apologize, Colonel,’ said Magnus. ‘I wasn’t really thinking of the money. But I don’t want our hopes raised and then find out we’ve been tricked.’
‘I understand, m’sieu. I can assure you that the man I’m recommending is a man of honour.’
‘I’ll have to confer with our ambassador. Certain things have been taken out of our hands. Will you come with me to the embassy?’
‘Of course. I’m persona non grata there, but I’m sure you’ll vouch for me.’
‘Get on to the bank,’ Magnus said to Prue. ‘Tell them to bring the money to the embassy at once. It will save time, if we get the okay from the embassy.’
‘Do you think the kidnappers will settle for just the money?’
‘I don’t know. But if anyone can afford such a bet, it’s the Beauforts.’
He and Raclot went out and Nina said, ‘What a callous, nasty thing to say!’
‘I’ll bet he’s already sorry he said it.’ Prue was already on to the bank. ‘But I think we’re forgetting something. This is just as worrying for him as it is for us. In his own way he loves Daddy as much as we do.’
‘You have Roger to worry about, too – ’
‘Yes.’
Prue finished her call to the bank, went to the window and looked out. She put on her glasses, not knowing what she wanted to see; she was still sharp-eyed when she was close to things, but anything distant had now become a blur. The glasses did not help her now: she looked out on a city that hid its secrets so well that all outsiders like herself might just as well have been blind
. Then tears produced their own blindness.
7
Ambassador Bredgar was waiting in his office with two of his senior men whom Magnus had already met. A third man, quiet, anonymous-looking, stood in the background. ‘This is Ben Criska. He heads our security.’
Magnus nodded and Raclot smiled and said, ‘M. Criska is the CIA station chief, Mr McKea. I’m on his list of those to be watched.’
Bredgar said sharply, ‘Is that so, Ben?’
Criska nodded. ‘I think in this case Colonel Raclot can be trusted. He’s never been a fortune-hunter and he’s certainly not on the side of these guys, whoever they are. They’re not a right-wing bunch.’
Raclot’s dry smile hadn’t altered. ‘I must ask you some day, M. Criska, for a personal reference.’
Bredgar, still uneasy, had had enough of the fencing. ‘Are you the contact, Colonel? No? Then who is?’
‘I’m afraid we have to go on trust there,’ said Magnus. ‘Mrs Devon knew the Colonel some years ago and she says he is to be trusted. Unless your men have come up with an alternative, I’m afraid we have no choice.’
Bredgar looked at Criska again and the latter shook his head. ‘We’ve made no progress. I think the Colonel can be trusted. The question is, can his contact be trusted?’
‘Yes,’ said Raclot.
There was silence for a moment, then Magnus said, ‘That’s it, then. Any instructions for the Colonel to pass on? He’s already told me that his contact won’t see any of us. None of this satisfies me at all, but as I said, we have no alternative.’
‘Colonel Raclot,’ said Bredgar, ‘you have to tell your contact that my government will not agree to any demand for a withdrawal of Beaufort Oil from Abu Sadar. He will have to convince those terrorists that all they will get is the money he will be carrying. If they ask for more money – ’ He glanced at Magnus.
Magnus felt like a man who had no bargaining position at all: the only credit he had was hope and that was not negotiable. ‘We’ll pay more if they ask. The money doesn’t matter. Tell him to tell them that we’d withdraw Beaufort Oil if it was our decision, but it isn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bredgar, ‘but there are broader issues here than the lives of two men.’
‘There always are with governments.’ Magnus knew he was being unreasonable: he was not incapable of the broad view. Without governments there would only be anarchy and no man’s life would be safe. That was what he had always believed, he knew it was what Lucas believed. But, when the crunch came, one expected a government to have compassion.
Ten minutes later Raclot left the embassy with the money. He had his own car, a small Renault, and he drove out of the city and up the Damascus road to the small house that looked out on one of the finest views in the Mediterranean. He lived there alone, with a Christian Arab woman coming in each day to housekeep and cook for him. He would sit on his tiny terrace and watch the sun go down over the sea, see the ghosts of Phoenicians, Hittites, Arabs, Crusaders in the golden mirages on the water and regret that he had not lived in those days. His own times were as dead as those distant eras, and he would know that, as surely as a man with terminal cancer, he was dying of loneliness and lack of interest. But it was something he would never confess to anyone, least of all to the man waiting for him in the house. But he suspected that Burgess, too, could be dying of the same illness.
Chapter Thirteen
Tim and Lucas
1
Tim drove south along the Rashaya road in the rented Simca. The two suitcases containing the ransom money were locked in the trunk. He had not bothered to open the suitcases and check that they contained the Swiss francs and not bundles of worthless paper; Raclot had told him who had given him the money and he knew that Magnus McKea was not one to try and cheat on other men’s lives. But as he drove he could not help thinking of the fortune sitting there a few feet behind him. He wondered how kidnappers arrived at the ransoms they demanded. These men he was going to meet had asked for ten times the amount that the kidnappers in Germany had asked for Nina back in 1946. The ransom – or bribe – that Lucas had paid him had been chickenfeed to what was there in the trunk of the car. Perhaps lives had no real value at all: the money demanded and paid was the only real commodity with value. Lucas and Prue’s husband, Roger Devon, in the total scheme of the world, perhaps meant no more than the innocent natives he had seen killed in the Congo.
He turned up the road towards Merjayun. He had fought through here during World War II, before his regiment had been sent back to England for the invasion of Normandy. That had been a clean war: no kidnapping of civilians, no ransom demands, just plain wholesome killing of soldiers. Far away on his left he could see the snow-sprinkled peak of Mount Hermon; he had once led a patrol up there looking for a suspected Vichy French outpost. It was occupied now by other troops, Syrians with their guns pointed towards Israel. Once it had been a holy mountain: the Canaanites had regarded it as the seat of the Lord of the Sun and Clouds. But nothing was holy to modern armies: soldiers were the sacrifices given to the gods these days. He felt suddenly tired, sick of the world.
He stopped in Merjayun at the house of a Greek Orthodox, a merchant who made a living in a dozen commodities, including information. Tim had made several phone calls while he had been waiting in Raclot’s house and by the time Raclot had returned he knew where he had to go. The merchant, a small wizened man with no politics but a highly developed sense of survival, did not invite him into the house but came out to the car.
‘The men you wish to meet, sir, will be waiting for you at the Kefer Tibnit turn-off on the Nabative el Tahta road. Why do you smile, sir?’
‘The men I have to meet have a sense of humour.’
‘Perhaps, sir,’ said the merchant, as if he doubted it. ‘I was asked to check that you had not been followed. I am to telephone them.’
‘As far as I know, no I haven’t been followed. There was a fair amount of traffic on the road, it was difficult to tell. I hope you haven’t been put at risk by being involved in this.’
The merchant smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. ‘One is always at risk in this part of the country, sir. The Lebanese, the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Israelis – one has to sniff the wind and hope that one can tell which way it is blowing. I am just a neutral messenger. I have given you the message. Good luck, sir.’
Tim drove on, wondering if Lucas knew where he was being held and would appreciate the irony. He saw Beaufort Castle away in the distance on his left some time before he reached the Kefer Tibnit turn-off. He drove past the jumble of small houses and stores at the turn-off, swung on to the side road and pulled up beside a stone wall in the shade of a walnut tree. An olive grove stretched away on his left; on the opposite side of the road the ground fell away into a shallow wadi where a peasant was working among some scraggly tomato plants. The sun was dropping down towards the western hills and shadows were already creeping out of the wadis and lengthening themselves out from the trees. He hoped the men he was to see would come before dark.
He sat waiting, unafraid but apprehensive. He was not concerned for his own safety; strangely enough, now that he thought about it, he was philosophical about the safety of Lucas and Prue’s husband. He knew their chances of being spared were less than fifty-fifty. He knew from experience that one could never tell how an argument would go with Arabs; he could only hope that their emotion of the moment was favourable towards him and what he would put to them. But he was apprehensive about meeting Lucas and he was not sure how he would handle that situation.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the peasant straighten up among his tomato plants. Then he came up the wadi, followed by two men with sub-machineguns who had appeared from behind rocky outcrops. They came on the run and were beside the car before Tim could get out to meet them. The two men with guns jumped into the back seat and the peasant, a younger man than he had looked while down among the tomato plants, slid into the front seat beside Tim.
Tim started up the car. ‘My guess was right, Hassan. I thought you were in on this.’
Hassan Kirmani, who had called himself Burami when he had picked up the two Americans in the lobby of the Hotel St Georges, took off the ragged cloth he wore round his head. ‘I’m glad they sent you, Mr Burgess. At least we can talk with you. We were afraid they would send some obdurate American from the embassy. One can’t talk to American officials.’
You may find I’m pretty obdurate, too. ‘Have you been talking to Mr Beaufort and Mr Devon?’
‘No. The old man has refused to talk to us at all. He’s an – ’ Hassan smiled. ‘An obdurate old son-of-a-bitch, isn’t he? Or don’t you know him?’
‘I knew him a long time ago. He sounds as if he hasn’t changed. You’re not holding him in the castle, are you?’
Hassan continued smiling. ‘It would have been a nice touch if we could have. We Arabs like irony. But we’re holding him in its shadow, as it were, so perhaps that’s good enough. Turn here, please.’
Tim turned the Simca on to a narrow track that ran up between outcrops of rock, past huge round boulders that looked like the toppled domes of mosques. Over to his left, beyond a deep ravine, he could see the castle. Time and weather had taken their toll of parts of the wall, but it still looked as impregnable as it must have looked to Saladin when he had besieged it. The Christians had always lost out in the end in its defence: he hoped that was not an omen for Lucas and Roger Devon.
Dusk was thick among the rocks when the Simca suddenly came out into a tiny village perched high on a cliff above the ravine. At first glance the village seemed deserted; then Tim saw the armed men on the flat rooftops of the houses. He pulled up the car and he, Hassan and the other two men, who had not spoken a word during the drive, got out. Tim went to the trunk and took out the two suitcases, lifting them out with some difficulty.