The Alamut Ambush (22 page)

‘But what I don’t see – ‘ Butler frowned fiercely ‘ – there’s nothing new about assassination in the Middle East. Or anywhere else, for that matter. These last few years – damn it, the precautions are routine now.’

‘True. But if the name Alamut means what I think it does, there’s never been ainyone like Hassan before either — not in recent times, anyway. All the other Palestinian groups have had much broader aims … ‘ Audley sighed, and shook his head. ‘It’s plain madness, but there won’t be any shortage of volunteers.’

He looked at them bleakly. ‘In the old times they used to promise paradise to assassins, but they don’t need to do that
now
. I was in the camps across the Jordan in ‘68. They were full of flies and dirty children and automatic weapons even then – and no hope. God knows what they’re like now. But even then I could have gone into any of them and sworn in a hundred fedayeen – it’s practically the same word as the Assassins had for their killers. Not with a promise of paradise – just to get them out of the hell they’re in already, poor devils.’

He stopped abruptly as his eyes reached Butler, as though embarrassed at this descent into emotion.

‘Which means we’ve got to crack down on Hassan hard – and quickly,’ said Butler. ‘Poor devils or not. Mooning over this Alamut List won’t do a ha’porth of good – if we wait for them to start we’ve already lost half the battle!’

‘Christ, Jack – !’ The insane image of Butler in chain-mail, kite-shaped shield on his shoulder, swinging a great Crusading sword in the midst of a crowd of howling Arabs, rose in Roskill’s mind. ‘Who do we crack down on, for God’s sake? We don’t even know who they are!’

‘The girl downstairs has seen one of ‘em,’ snapped Butler. ‘Start with him, and to blazes with diplomatic immunity and kid gloves! Then move in on the Ryle Foundation – one good shake there, and something should come to the surface. And get in touch with the Arab governments – if Audley’s right this is one time when they won’t play awkward. It’s their
necks
on the block even more than ours this time – they’ll have their security wallahs moving like blue-bottomed flies.

‘You’ve got to get things moving.
I
don’t know what you and Audley have been up to, but you’re both sitting tight on a keg of gunpowder, and any minute now it’s going to blow you both to kingdom come!’

‘I see.’ But Audley’s face had a blank, obstinate cast to it which Roskill recognised: if there was any force in Butler’s argument there was evidently a more powerful force which moved him in the opposite direction. ‘And what do you think, Miss Hunter?’

Butler’s jaw tightened as he followed Audley’s invitation to Mary, who had sat mouse-like through the exchange, her hands clasped on her lap. For one second Roskill thought Butler was going to explode – it was hard to imagine an appeal better calculated to make Jack see red; an appeal made on a violent issue of state security addressed to a grey-haired, crippled maiden lady. Women were Jack’s blank spot at the best of times, and in this instance he could hardly be expected to penetrate that gentle expression to the uncrippled intelligence beneath.

But his control asserted itself in time – this might not be Jack’s best day, when he’d lost a day’s cricket in order to save fools from the consequences of their folly and ended by crossing swords with Audley, but bullying sweet old ladies would clash with his image of himself, however much he was provoked by circumstances.

His subsidence was not lost on Mary, however.

‘I don’t really think I’m qualified to pass an opinion,’ she said diffidently, placating Butler, but watching Audley.

Roskill saw that this time at least, Audley had not set out deliberately to niggle Butler. It was far more in character that he would wish to use Mary’s unclouded judgment; if there was one thing Audley did superlatively well, it was to identify brains and then to pick them clean.

‘I’d still very much like to hear what you think,’ said Audley. ‘Spectators have a way of seeing some things the players miss.’

Mary bowed her head, studying her hands briefly. Then she looked up directly at Audley.

‘Very well, David. I must say I don’t really understand why you don’t want to tell anyone what happened here – I do see Major Butler’s point … But’ – her voice gained in determination – ‘if the men above you already knew about this Hassan and his list, they certainly don’t need to tell them what they already know. They must want you to do something – or find out something – particular. Something only you can do, possibly.’

Roskill glanced at Butler out of the corner of his eye. Good for Mary.

‘Quite right, Miss Hunter,’ said Audley encouragingly. ‘I think they wanted me to make contact with Jake Shapiro again. If anyone can give the lowdown on Hassan it’ll be Jake, but he wouldn’t stop to give our friend Dai Llewelyn the time of day. That’s the whole trouble – they kicked me out once for being too close to Jake. And with things as they are, they don’t
want
to get involved with Israeli Intelligence. But if I happened to go back to my bad old ways off my own bat, unofficially – that would be different…’

‘Yet it can’t be this Alamut List that they want,’
Mary
said, frowning.

Audley perked up. ‘Why not, Miss Hunter?’

‘Well … if I’ve understood what you’ve been saying, it would be a list of all the moderate men – people like nice young King Hussein – the people who really want peace.’

‘That’s right. And Eban and Allon and Abu Khadra and all the others.’

‘That’s what I mean – you already know who’d be on the list, so it can’t be that…’ Mary trailed off. ‘Of course, I only know what I read in the papers, but I always think the Israelis are great
doers
. I mean, they’ve been putting up with things, and having things done to them for so long, and now they’ve found out that they can do things just as well. Not just the wars they’ve fought, but the way they captured that Nazi – Eichmann – and the way they fought back against the guerrillas who tried to take their airliners – while other people talk, they
do
things…’ Again she stopped uncertainly.

‘Go on, Miss Hunter.’

‘So – ‘ Mary rallied ‘ – so I’d want to know what they’re planning to do about Hassan, because they’re the ones who wouldn’t sit down and wait for him to start shooting and murdering. And they wouldn’t expect anyone to help them. Unless – unless – ‘ she stared hard at Audley – ‘unless that was why Colonel Shapiro met Colonel Razzak. Is that too stupid?’

Too stupid?

Not an exchange of information and a friendly word of warning between honest enemies, but something more: an alliance!

An Egyptian-Israeli entente!

It
could be temporary, and must be unofficial and highly secret, with nothing on paper. But was it feasible?

Roskill glanced at Audley, and saw that he was smiling. So this, or something like it, was what Audley had been after all along. And given that Shapiro and Razzak were the only ones of their kind in that sea of hatred and distrust, who better than them to make the contact? They could be enemies still, but facing a more dangerous common enemy – with the Nazis at the gates, even the Russians and the West had made common cause once, without relaxing their deeper enmity.

‘Now have I said something silly?’

‘On the contrary, Miss Hunter,’ Audley laughed, ‘you have said what I hoped to hear. What drew Hassan’s men wasn’t so much the meeting as its subject. And that’s why Razzak and Jake were both so keen to keep us from breathing down their necks just now: whatever they’re negotiating has to be dynamite. And the moment you said you weren’t going to give up, Hugh – even after Razzak had promised to find out about Hassan – that was when Jake thought of me.’

‘But why you?’ Jack Butler sounded humbler now. ‘You’re supposed to be out of the Middle East.’

‘Out of the Middle East – but not out of favour with Sir Frederick,’ said Audley quickly. ‘If it came to the push I could still pull some strings, and Jake knows it. And he trusts me, that’s the point. He may even suspect I’m already involved – he knows Hugh’s a friend of mine, anyway. And remember, all he wants is to get the heat off for a day or two, if what Razzak said is anything to go by – ‘

‘But is it?’ Roskill interrupted. ‘I still don’t quite know what makes Razzak tick. You were going to find out about him, David – I haven’t even seen the official file on him, damn it!’

‘But I have,’ Butler said shortly. ‘There’s not a lot in it either. He’s peasant stock, with a dash of Turkish or maybe Albanian. Cairo military academy. Two tank conversion courses over here — that’s why his English is so good. He did one on Shermans back in ‘46, and one of Centurions a few years ago, with attachment to the R.T.R. – they thought he was pretty sound. And he’s been blooded three times: he was in the Irak al-Manshia siege in ‘48, where Nasser won his spurs. Then in ‘56 he broke out of Um Katef – it took him fifteen days to walk home. And then the ‘67 business.’

‘What about his politics?’

Butler nodded. ‘I’m coming to them. He was in the Free Officers movement by the end of ‘49 – he was one of the group that captured Farouk’s palace. Then Nasser put him in Intelligence, and he was in the special squad that smashed the Muslim Brotherhood after they tried to kill Nasser in ‘54. Went to Russia next year and put up some sort of black there – he was sent home in disgrace, anyway – ‘

‘He broke a Russian officer’s jaw in an argument,’ said Audley. ‘Officially it was a professional argument. Actually it was over a girl – a bit of uncomradely racial prejudice. He doesn’t like the Russians much.’

‘Well, it certainly stopped his promotion dead,’ said Butler. ‘He was shipped back into the army and it took him ten years to get his battalion. And the rest you know.’

‘Not quite,’ said Audley. ‘Those are just the bones of it. What it adds up to is that Razzak’s a patriot – and not an Arab patriot either. An
Egyptian
.’

‘So that’s why he doesn’t like the guerrillas much?’

‘If they were Egyptian guerrillas he’d like them, Hugh. Egyptians – yes. Palestinians, Syrians, British and Russians – all damn foreigners to him. And when you think that Nasser’s the first real Egyptian to rule Egypt for a couple of thousand years you can see his point. In fact Razzak’s more an Egyptian than an Arab in just the same way Shapiro’s more an Israeli than a Jew – maybe that’s what they’ve really got in common! Anyway – ‘

The phone beside Mary overwhelmed the rest of his words with a shattering burst of sound, startling them all.

Mary picked up the receiver. ‘It’s all right – it’s only the house phone. We haven’t got a proper one any more. It’ll be Penny about lunch – yes, Penelope?’

But as she listened her eyebrows lifted in surprise, and her eyes fastened on Audley. She put her hand over the mouthpiece.

‘We’ve got another visitor – and for you, David!’

Audley pursed his lips. ‘So soon? I’d rather expected Jake to wait for me to come to him. But it seems I was wrong.’

‘It isn’t Colonel Shapiro,’ said Mary. ‘It’s the Egyptian – Colonel Razzak.’

‘Razzak!’ Audley frowned and blinked. ‘
Razzak
?’

‘For you? But how the devil did he know where to come?’ Butler snapped. ‘I made sure no one tailed me, and the driver’s not born who can keep up with Hugh – ‘

He stopped dead as his question answered itself: any toddler in his pedal car could keep up with Audley’s driving, and with Audley none the wiser – if he even bothered to look in his mirror.

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Audley said defensively. ‘I’m not a field man used to peering backwards all the time, blast it. And no one but Faith and Hugh – ‘

Audley stopped too, for once one second behind everyone else in making the connections, and laughably put out by it. Roskill couldn’t help grinning at him: that celebrated incompetence in practical matters was at last playing a practical dividend.

‘And
Jake’
he said. ‘So at least we don’t have to test your theory about Shapiro and Razzak. You’ve proved it yourself, David. The real question’s why Razzak’s coming out into the open now.’

Audley sucked his lower lip, glaring at a point in space two feet in front of his nose. ‘The real question is why it’s Razzak and not Jake. Damn it – I was depending on Jake.’

‘Will Razzak know enough to connect young Jenkins’ death with Firle?’ Butler asked.

‘What are you getting at, Jack?’

‘Well, if he does he’ll be scared stiff we’re going to pin it on him. The very fact we’re here means we know one hell of a lot. It’s logical.’

‘So why’s he making contact with us now?’

‘To stop us doing anything,’ said Audley quickly. ‘From what he said to you, Hugh, I’ll bet it’s time he’s trying to win. Anything to get us off his back until whatever he and Jake are doing is completed. And that gives us a club to hit him with – let’s get him up here, Miss Hunter.’

‘A club to hit him with?’

‘A lever, I should have said, Miss Hunter. If it was Jake it would be different. But Razzak doesn’t know me, and he’s not going to tell us more than he has to.’

‘But he wants your help.’

‘He wants us to delay doing anything. And that’s a risk I’m not going to take unless I know exactly why, down to the last detail. Which means we’re going to have to throw a scare into him.’

‘What I’ve seen of him, that isn’t going to be easy,’ said Roskill. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the scaring type. And we haven’t got much to scare him with, when it comes to the crunch.’

‘I’m afraid I shall just be in the way,’ Mary said diffidently. ‘He’s certainly not going to be scared of me.’

Audley focused on her. ‘Now you could just be wrong there, Miss Hunter – you could just be wrong. If I’ve got it right Jake wanted me involved because he knows I feel the same way about the Middle East as he does. I’m a dove from conviction, not necessity.’

He looked from Mary to Roskill. ‘But you two are different. You’ve each got a score to settle with someone. Razzak won’t have allowed for that, but it’s something he’ll understand when he meets it. The Koran says that Allah rewards those who forgive — but then it lays down that those who avenge themselves when wronged incur no guilt!’