The Alamut Ambush

by Anthony Price

  He looked back towards the house again, and as he did so he saw the white bath towel flap over the window sill – that was the signal that Deerstalker was still in position.

  Wait or go?

  Roskill realised suddenly that he was very close to being frightened, and the longer he waited, the more frightened he’d get.

  Go then!

  He held the reins carefully in his left hand and using the advantage of the hill swung himself into the saddle. Sammy backed nervously, sensing her rider’s fear, and for one brief, blind second of panic Roskill felt he was losing control of her.

  He urged her forward and felt her gears engage. Up the last few yards on to ground that was only gently sloping, and turn —now walk, Sammy…

  The burial mound stood out against the grey sky – now trot, Sammy…

  Jingling harness, horse snorting and spluttering, landscape jumping – mustn’t lose stirrups…

  He approached the mound directly, uncertain until the last moment whether to veer to the left or the right of it. The right would be safer, as the man wouldn’t get a direct look at him, but equally he wouldn’t get a direct view either and the whole point of this crazy ride would be lost.

  Left, then –

  Sammy thumped stiff-legged past the burial mound, at the last moment turning slightly crab-wise against the hillside’s slope and so giving him a perfect view of his quarry, deerstalker, field-glasses, open mouth and all.

  And then, in a second of total confusion, he was past: and tugging savagely at the reins, fighting to stop Sammy from breaking into a canter which would take them all the way to Alfriston.

  Jack Butler!

  He was fifty yards on before he managed to turn the mare and quieten her to a walk. And by then Butler was no longer lying prone, but was sitting staring at him in the midst of a small pile of belongings, the wind riffling the pages of a foolscap notebook beside him.

  Butler!

  But if Jack was down here – up here – eyes glued to the Old Vicarage, what price Audley’s – and his own – so clever scheme to make a fool of Llewelyn? Damn it, it looked as though Llewelyn was making a fool of them…

  He let Sammy amble back towards the mound at her own snail’s pace, covering his doubts with a grin. Whatever the truth, this wasn’t the time to admit anything incriminating.

  ‘Hullo there, Jack,’ he called out. His eye caught the cover of a book beside Butler’s hand in the grass – a Golden Eagle, it looked like, perched on Tennyson’s crag – at the very moment Butler plonked the notebook on it. ‘Spotted any interesting birds?’

  Butler knew about as much about birds as he knew about desalination, most likely.

  ‘I shan’t spot anything queerer than you today.’ Butler rose stiffly to his feet. ‘Where the devil did you spring from, Hugh. And looking like – ‘ words failed him ‘ – like that?’

  Belatedly Roskill remembered he was wearing the plain glass spectacles, the relics of some East Firle amateur dramatic society’s production, not to mention the dilapidated pork-pie hat. But he resisted the temptation to whip them off, which would only be to admit that he realised how comical he looked.

  Except that Butler certainly wasn’t laughing; if at the best of times that pale, freckled face rarely smiled, it was composed now in an expression of deadly seriousness.

  ‘You don’t expect me to go riding in my best suit, do you?’ Roskill chided him.

  ‘I don’t expect you to go riding at all at a time like this. What are you doing up here?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same question. Doesn’t Fred trust me? Or is it Llewelyn who gives the orders?’

  Butler swept the deerstalker off his head and ran his hand through his short carroty hair. Then he looked up at Roskill, his eyes angry.

  ‘Neither of them knows I’m here. And I shouldn’t be here if I wasn’t daft.’ He shook his head bitterly. ‘But I guessed you and Audley were up to something, and I’m afraid you’re bigger fools than I am even.’

  Roskill smiled. ‘My dear Jack – some joker fixed my track rods last night. You don’t need to tell me how to add two and two. Do you think I’ve forgotten what happened to Alan?’

  ‘I think you’re a fool to keep whatever it is you’re doing to yourselves – you and Audley,’ Butler said harshly.

  ‘Maybe so. But then you’ve kept it to yourself too, apparently.’

  ‘I said I was a fool. But then I’m not supposed to be in on this business any more – I was only brought in to make sure you two reached the briefing yesterday.’

  ‘Then what exactly brings you to Firle?’

  ‘David Audley did yesterday at the Queensway – he couldn’t resist telling them to their faces, could he?’ Butler’s lips curled. ‘And I remember how quiet you went when I told you about Maitland.’

  ‘So you checked.’

  Butler nodded. He wasn’t the fastest man alive, but he was very, very sure. And if he’d checked, he’d not have missed anything.

  ‘Which still doesn’t explain why you’re here, Jack.’

  Butler looked down at his highly polished boots, then slowly raised his eyes to meet Roskill’s. ‘To teach you that two and two can be made to equal minus one, lad, that’s why. Do you know who you’re up against? If you’d just get off that creature I might tell you something interesting.’

  There were times when Butler’s almost fatherly concern for him irritated Roskill unbearably. But also there were times when the man’s caution paid off, and this could be one of them. Roskill disengaged his feet from the stirrups and slid awkwardly off Sammy. Over her back, away to the north-east, he saw the great dark rain column, which now blotted out half the scene below them.

  ‘You’d better make it quick, Jack, or we’re both going to get wet.’

  Butler looked carefully round the naked hilltop, ignoring the rainclouds, before answering.

  ‘I don’t know why they asked me to the Queensway yesterday. Just to put you at ease, I suppose – as I said, my brief was just to hook you both, no more, no less,’ Butler still wasn’t apologising, merely stating facts. ‘Only I got there a shade ahead of time.’

  He watched Roskill. ‘You can claim what you like for your electronic toys, Hugh – but there’s nowt to beat the human ear. Listen before you knock, that’s what my old Dad always used to say!’

  Butler’s father had been a printer – a head printer, as Butler liked to remind people – in darkest Lancashire, Bolton or Blackburn. Roskill had always suspected from the way Butler spoke of him, half proud, half rueful, that the old man had considered his son’s preference for the army instead of an apprenticeship the equivalent of a daughter’s choice of prostitution rather than the mill.

  ‘They were arguing,’ said Butler, ‘Llewelyn and Stocker were arguing over just how expendable you were. The Welshman said that Audley mustn’t be risked, but you could be. And Stocker said you were one of Fred’s kindergarten and there’d be the devil to pay if you were damaged.’

  Butler had an exact memory as well as a good ear; if he said ‘expendable’, then that was the word Llewelyn had used. The bastards had discussed him as though he was a piece of fairly expensive equipment!

  ‘And Llewelyn asked the Special Branch man how he rated the risk – ‘

  ‘How did he rate it?’

  ‘He said if they were right about Audley he’d pretty soon find the right hole and then he’d put you down it like a ferret. Only you weren’t a trained ferret and Hassan was no rabbit.’

  ‘So I’m an untrained ferret now!’

  Butler shook his head sadly. ‘You’re a bright lad, Hugh — with your weapons systems. But you’re being used for something different this time.’

  ‘They warned me, Jack – you were there when they did it. You’re forgetting I’m supposed to go running back to them every time David blows his nose.’

  ‘But you aren’t, are you?’

  Roskill shrugged. ‘It doesn’t happen to suit me.’

&nbs
p; ‘Aye – it doesn’t suit you!’ said Butler, scowling. ‘Man, they’ve got Audley summed up properly, and you too, I’m sorry to say. He’s a bloody genius at research, but when he has a job of his own to do he goes his own sweet way, and they know it. When they warned you they were just covering themselves with Sir Frederick, that’s all.’

  He paused for breath, running his hand through his hair again. ‘Have they bothered you at all? Have they tried to get in touch with you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘They bloody haven’t, have they? I tell you, Hugh, they’re just waiting for you two to get things really stirred up. And you’ll do exactly just that, if I know you!’

  ‘We haven’t done anything exactly spectacular yet, you know, Jack,’ Roskill protested mildly. It was odd – he’d never seen Jack to vehement, at least not since the cancellation of the South African cricket tour.

  ‘Enough to get your track rods fixed.’

  Roskill gazed at Butler, overwhelmed suddenly with curiosity.

  ‘What’s all this got to do with your sudden urge to come bird watching here?’

  ‘I knew I could pick you up here as soon as I found out about Jenkins. It was the one place I was sure you’d turn up.’

  ‘But why, Jack? It’s not your affair any more – you ought to be home with your girls, or watching the cricket.’

  Butler glowered at him. ‘Aye, but somebody’s got to watch your back for you. And in my book you don’t send anyone out without telling him the score…’

  He clipped off the sentences abruptly, as though their implicit criticism of his superiors were against the grain of his character. Roskill eyed him with astonishment: he’d always regarded Jack as a fundamentally simple man, who did his job and minded his business, sustained only by a rather old-fashioned patriotism, the three small female Butlers and the latest cricket scores. But now it looked as though his loyalties were rather more complex.

  ‘Besides, if I want to go bird-watching in my own time – ‘ the hint of Lancashire broadened as Butler gestured to the darkening landscape ‘– I can watch where I bloody well please, and– ‘

  He stopped suddenly, his freckled, hairy hand frozen in mid-sweep and his attention snatched away from Roskill by something which had caught his eye below them.

  ‘Blue and white Cambridge saloon in the drive beside your car. Isn’t that – ?’

  ‘One wing mirror?’ Roskill cut in. ‘And there’ll be a patch of rust on the white strip, forward of the door?’

  Butler lifted his field-glasses.

  ‘Aye – it’s Audley’s car, isn’t it!’ Butler turned back to him. ‘Did you expect him to come down here?’

  They both knew well enough that Audley never strayed abroad on business from the department or his home if it could be avoided. And in this instance Audley had even spelt it out: If I were spotted there it might give the game away.

  ‘He’d only come here in an emergency. Jack.’

  ‘Likely there’s an emergency, then. Or maybe he’s not as thick as you are.’

  ‘It’s simpler than that,’ said Roskill. ‘Before I came down here I phoned him up – he wasn’t in and I left a message with Faith.’

  ‘A message?’

  A big raindrop spattered on Roskill’s cheek, rolling down to the corner of his mouth. He brushed it away.

  ‘I told her to ask him what Alamut was.’

  XII

  ‘JAKE’S QUITE RIGHT,’ said Audley. ‘I probably do know more about Alamut than he does. But the Alamut List is something different.’

  Roskill looked at Mary doubtfully. It was typical of David to shoot his mouth off in front of civilians; it wasn’t so much lax security this time as that calculated and deliberate amateurishness of his – the flouting of the rules to prove that he was a gentleman rather than a player. Except that this time David might not be wholly to blame – if Mary had crooked her little finger at him.

  Audley caught his look and waved his hand airily.

  ‘Miss Hunter and I have already had a talk, damn it – she already knows enough to ruin us, thanks to you.’

  Mary’s eyes rested on the big man approvingly, as though he had already been compacted into her inner circle. So the charm had not been one-way, Roskill thought with a twinge of jealousy: when Audley put himself out, which wasn’t often, he too had a way with him.

  But having blabbed already himself, Roskill knew he was in no position to protest, even though he could sense Butler’s disapproval. It would be interesting to see how long it took Mary to crack Butler’s shell wide open too.

  ‘Who is he, then?’ Butler asked. ‘Hassan?’

  Audley shook his head. ‘Let’s get things in order first, Butler. I want to hear exactly how Hugh got on to him.’

  Settled in the huge leather armchair, Audley was a good deal more relaxed now than he had been when Roskill had arrived. But then he had seen Butler through the telescope and had feared – as Roskill had done – that he’d been taken for a ride. The good news that they were still in business had rather taken the edge off the bad news that the business was nasty: he seemed to have expected that.

  They listened in silence while Roskill gave them his edited account of the previous evening. The trick, as he knew from long experience, was to practise the ancient and dishonourable art of British understatement. He had learnt from a wise American years before that most people instinctively assumed that understatement concealed courage and competence. Used properly it rendered both cowardice and incompetence alike invisible, and long years of exposure had not rendered the British themselves immune to it – if anything they were more easily deceived than foreigners, who sometimes mistook it for inarticulateness.

  At the end Audley nodded sagely. Mary was gazing at him in rapt attention, which would have been very gratifying if he had not felt such a charlatan.

  ‘So the Ryle Foundation is Hassan’s cover?’ said Butler.

  ‘I think it’s very likely. Not exactly a cover, though — or not just a cover. A ready-made framework as well.’

  ‘The ivy on the oak tree,’ murmured Mary.

  ‘That’s it. Only not so obvious – more like a tape worm.’

  ‘And we still don’t know what he’s up to here,’ growled Butler. ‘Except he’s quite ready to kill just to keep us in the dark, that’s the only thing we know. And he’s damned efficient at doing it.’

  ‘Efficient,’ Audley repeated thoughtfully. ‘But not so efficient with your car, was he, Hugh?’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that now, David. To be honest, I’m not at all sure that it was Hassan at all. There was something not quite right about that whole business – and that’s what the technical chap seemed to think when they phoned me this morning, too – ‘

  That reassuring Highland voice:

  ‘McClure speaking, Squadron Leader – I’m sorry, Squadron Leader, but we can’t let you have your car back yet.’

  ‘For God’s sake, why not? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing – and that’s what’s wrong. Or almost nothing. The nut on the track rod had been removed, that’s all.’

  The nut – ? Christ, man – do you call that nothing?’

  ‘Och, I can see well it might have been awkward on a motorway – ‘

  ‘Damn right it would have been!’

  ‘But it needn’t have come to that, Squadron Leader. With the track rod, you know, it takes time to free itself and jump out. It could have killed you or it could have no more than dented your bumper.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So it’s a verra chancey way of putting a man down. It’s something and nothing, if you take my point It’d be an amateur or a man who didn’t know his own mind who’d do such a stupid thing… Or it could be a wee cozenage.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A deception, Squadron Leader – a red herring. A cover for something else much smarter. You told me to mind young Jenkins last night, and I do. And you’d do well to do as much yourself … But if that’s the
way of it, we haven’t been able to find it yet, though we’re still looking. And the while, I cannot let you have the vehicle…’

  ‘ – Then he offered me a department car. But as I was coming down here I thought it wiser to hire one for myself.’

  No need to labour that point; cozenages could be attempted by friends who wished to keep track of him just as easily as by foes.

  ‘And then I got to thinking about it,’ said Roskill, watching Audley – this was Audley’s technique, after all. ‘If Hassan wanted to stop me, he didn’t need anything as crude as the track rod. And if he just wanted to follow me, there’d be no point in fixing it at all. He doesn’t fit, that’s what it amounts to.’

  Audley raised an eyebrow. ‘Razzak?’

  Roskill nodded. ‘I’ve got the feeling that Razzak wanted to meet me. And he wanted me to believe he was on the side of the angels.’

  ‘Well, he chose one hell of a risky way of making friends,’ said Butler. ‘He could have broken your neck for you – then you’d have been on the angels’ side yourself.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d ever have let me get out of that street, Jack. I think he was parked just round the curve out of sight, waiting for me. In fact I’m damned sure he was waiting for me, now I come to think of it – his lights went on and his engine revved up the moment I got out of the car.’

  ‘It’s tenuous, Hugh,’ said Audley critically. ‘I agree with Butler. Why bother with the car at all?’

  ‘Because – ‘ Roskill frowned, searching in his mind for the thread of reasoning he was certain was there, somewhere. He shook his head helplessly. ‘Look, David — I think Razzak’s quite a chap, but he’s a dark horse. We know he was here, at Firle, almost for sure. Hassan’s being here is just guesswork, but in any case it could just as easily have been Razzak who had that car fixed for Alan – and that gives him one damn good reason for wanting to have a quiet talk with me.’

  ‘Which is– ?’

  ‘Alan’s letter. It was addressed to me, remember.’

  ‘And your turning up at the Ryle reception would have shaken him?’ Audley smiled disconcertingly. ‘I can see the drift of it now. It’s not a bad theory in its way, I suppose.’