The Alamut Ambush

by Anthony Price

  But if the crew and the passengers could be hand-picked, an airline flight solved this problem dramatically: quite simply, the meeting would be over before anyone knew it had taken place. What seemed a random collection of travellers would come together naturally and disperse naturally. If by any mischance any individual delegate was being followed, the pursuits would be baulked at the departure point and then led straight home when they picked up their quarry again.

  Razzak was watching each of them speculatively — watching each of them test the plausibility of what he had told them and, as each found it not so implausible, waiting for them to react to it.

  ‘So you want the Israelis to sabotage it?’ Butler was frowning and there was doubt in his voice.

  Razzak shook his head. ‘No, Major Butler. If I thought they could sabotage it, then I’d have done it myself without their help. But sabotaging planes isn’t as easy as it used to be – and sabotaging this one just isn’t possible, believe me.’

  ‘I was going to say’ – Butler said brusquely – ‘Hassan’s a fool to put all his eggs in one basket so they can all be broken at once. And him too. But why isn’t it possible?’

  ‘Many reasons, Major. The men he has in Trans-Levant will be his most trusted ones, that’s certain. And even if we knew which plane they were going to use, which we don’t, no one’s going to get close to it at Aleppo – not now, anyway.’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Because Aleppo airport is at this moment sealed up as tight as a camel’s – as tight as Fort Knox. By Hassan, I believe – and at no cost to himself.’

  ‘How the devil has he managed that?’

  ‘Very simply, Major. At this moment Aleppo airport already has a bomb scare of its own. Someone phoned up yesterday to warn them that the Kurdish extremists – the ones who haven’t accepted the settlement with Iraq – are going to blow up one of the Iraqi flights. It was in the newspapers this morning. Not a plane moves until they’ve checked it out thoroughly.’

  The Egyptian shrugged. ‘It could be just Hassan’s good fortune. But I don’t think it is. The Kurds have denied it and for once I believe them. You see, Major – it has the feel of Hassan about it. He’s a man who likes to use others to do his own work. He likes to ride on other people’s backs.’

  The Old Man of the Sea, thought Roskill. Of all the creepy fairy tales, that one had chilled him most in his childhood. And again there was method in it – Hassan’s method. For he would only be using Aleppo’s security system now as he had used Trans-Levant and the Ryle. And as he planned to use the Arab nations to destroy Israel for him.

  ‘I think his plane will be the best-guarded of all, Major Butler,’ said Razzak simply.

  ‘Then that only leaves you hijacking,’ said Butler. ‘And – by God! – if you’ve got one of his men in your pocket — ‘ He stopped short as he saw the objection to what he had said. ‘But where does that bring the Israelis in? Are you going to hijack it to Israel?’

  ‘If it were possible, it would be the most civilised way of solving the problem, that is true,’ the Egyptian said regretfully. ‘But I am assured that it is one thing the Israelis will not even contemplate. They are wise enough to leave such foolishness to the P.F.L.P, And in any case, these are not innocent travellers to be threatened by one man – even if I could be sure of getting him aboard armed. No, Major – they would fight, as the Israelis fight.’

  He sighed. ‘If we could afford to fail I might have risked it. But we can’t… We have to be sure.’

  Razzak paused, and his gaze settled on Roskill now.

  So I know the answer, thought Roskill.

  Take, burn and obliterate – nothing else would do. And for certainty he needed the Israelis…

  The Israelis: orphans in a brutal world with time so much against them that Alexander’s way with the Gordian Knot would always seem to them the simplest and the safest one. And however faulty their political wisdom might be, in the one field that Roskill himself understood, their performance was unsurpassed.

  And Razzak was still staring at him.

  ‘Long-range interception?’ As his eyes locked with Razzak’s he felt the question mark fall away like a drop-tank. ‘They could shoot it down for you, couldn’t they!’

  If the Syrians and the Iraqis themselves were not to be trusted, nor the Russians either, the Israelis were the only airmen in the Middle East with the men and the planes to do the job. Roskill conjured up the dedicated professionalism of the pilots he had met and their mastery of the Vietnam-tested equipment the Americans had fed them. And of all people, the Egyptians would know just how good they were: they had been on the receiving end!

  ‘Shoot down an airliner in broad daylight – they won’t hijack it, but they’ll shoot it down?’ Butler barked incredulously.

  ‘It will be at night and far out of the desert,’ said Razzak. ‘No one will see anything.’

  ‘And the Kurds will get the blame,’ observed Audley dryly.

  ‘But – Aleppo to Baghdad,’ Butler persisted. ‘It must be six or seven hundred miles to the north, the air route. Can they do it at that range?’

  ‘Five hundred miles, Major Butler. And they have American Phantoms. As to the technical problem of interception, no doubt Squadron Leader Roskill could answer for that.’

  Butler swung round. ‘Hugh – ‘

  ‘Given the flight plan there’d be nothing to it, Jack. A piece of cake, as they used to say.’

  And that might very well be the crux of the thing: Hassan’s mind, like Jack Butler’s, would be earth-bound. If he had ever dreamed in his wildest nightmares of any sort of Israeli intervention he could not have imagined any threat from the airstrips so far to the south.

  But with a competent crew and a late mark Phantom of the sort the Israelis now had, the 500-mile interception of a moving dot on a radar screen was no dream. It was a sentence of death.

  ‘An aerial ambush?’ Butler whispered.

  ‘It’s been done before.’ Roskill’s memory suddenly came to his rescue. ‘It’s like David said – there’s nothing new under the sun, Jack. The Americans picked off Admiral Yamamoto that way in the South Pacific in ‘43 – a beautiful precision job. And didn’t the Germans try for Churchill when they thought he was on a Lisbon flight in ‘42 or ‘43?’

  ‘I remember that. They killed Leslie Howard on that aeroplane,’ said Mary softly. ‘I remember that as though it was yesterday. He was such a marvellous actor, too.’

  They all turned towards her. She had sat there so quietly in the background, with the conversation flowing past her, that they had taken her for granted. Except that Roskill had marked the watchfulness in her eyes as they had settled on each speaker in turn. And now she seemed very sad.

  ‘Of course, we didn’t know at the time how his aeroplane had been lost,’ she continued irrelevantly. She looked thoughtfully at Audley, and then at Razzak. ‘If my niece and her friends were here, Colonel Razzak, they would say you were being very wicked – they would say that the policeman must never fire first, even to prevent a crime. Young people today aren’t like the papers say. They are really very puritan – very sure they can distinguish good from bad.’

  Roskill felt a stirring of embarrassment. He couldn’t see what she was driving at, and he wasn’t sure that she could either. Yet vagueness had never been one of Mary’s failings.

  ‘But you don’t hate them, do you – these people on the aeroplane?’ said Mary.

  ‘Madame – ?’ Razzak seemed disconcerted too.

  ‘And I know how David feels,’ Mary went on. ‘Is your Colonel – Shapiro was it? – is he like you, David?’

  There was a moment’s silence, which lengthened into awkwardness before Audley broke it.

  ‘Shapiro’s a decent man, Miss Hunter. He doesn’t always like what he has to do.’

  ‘I thought he might be,’ Mary said. ‘And if this . .. Alamut is allowed to take place, there might be war again in the Middle East?’

 
‘Full-scale war – no, Miss Hunter,’ Razzak shook his head at her. ‘Hassan’s great objective is nonsense. He will not achieve it even if we fail to destroy Alamut – I agree with Dr. Audley absolutely there. He might wreck the cease-fire that is coming, perhaps, but that isn’t what we are worried about.’

  The Egyptian sounded as though he set no great store by the cease-fire.

  ‘What worries us, Miss Hunter, is how he plans to achieve this thing. We don’t want to lose … anyone we can’t afford to lose before he fails.’

  Mary considered him thoughtfully. ‘And if you and the Israelis worked together in secret this time, one day you may work together openly?’

  Roskill looked at her sharply. That was more like the old Mary. It had never occurred to him that Razzak and Shapiro might also be playing another, much deeper game, and for even higher stakes.

  Razzak said nothing. But then there was nothing he could say; the very idea was enough to make the Pyramids tremble.

  Mary seemed to sense that quickly enough. She turned towards Audley.

  ‘There are a lot of things that I still don’t understand, Dr. Audley – David. But you asked me for my opinion before.’

  ‘I did,’ Audley didn’t sound quite so confident now. It was almost as though she was speaking out of turn. ‘Go on, Miss Hunter.’

  ‘You said I had a stake in what was happening.’

  Audley blinked – that sure sign he was no longer quite in control of the situation.

  ‘So you have, Mary,’ said Roskill tightly. To hell with Audley. ‘You and I have both got a stake of our own.’

  ‘That’s just it, Hugh dear. We have to forget about Alan now, both of us. This is more important.’

  ‘But, Mary – ‘

  ‘Shooting down that aeroplane is a terrible thing, even if they are all wicked men, which I’m sure they’re not. I suppose I ought to agree with my niece – with what I know she’d say. She’d talk about means and ends.’

  She gazed at Audley. ‘But I would say that Colonel Razzak is right, and you must do what you can to help him. I don’t know whether ends can ever justify means – but sometimes I think they absolve them. I suppose it’s because Father made us all read de Vigny when we were young…’

  ‘Servitude et Grandeur Militaires?’ said Audley in surprise.

  Mary smiled at him. ‘I know it doesn’t sound like a girl’s book. We had a Victorian translation of it called “The Problem of Military Obligation” which made it sound even less like one. But when I read it I thought it was very sad and beautiful, I remember – we were what used to be called a “service family”, Colonel Razzak, you see. We did know something about obligations.’

  ‘ “We are the firemen, free from passion, who must put out the fire. Later there will come the explanations, but that is not our concern.”’

  Trust Audley to dish up a bloody quotation.

  And yet – damn it – there was something here that Roskill knew he had missed; something Mary was sharing with Audley and Razzak, and could not share with him.

  ‘Madame,’ said Razzak gravely, ‘I give you my word that we shall put out this fire.’

  XV

  ‘COLONEL SHAPIRO is a very remarkable man,’ said Yaffe seriously. ‘A very remarkable man indeed.’

  Roskill glanced quickly at the Israeli agent, to make sure he wasn’t taking the mickey. But of course he wasn’t: he was a slender, schoolmasterish young man, old beyond his years and serious almost to the point of eccentricity, judging by his conversation so far.

  ‘Then Razzak’s equally remarkable,’ said Roskill tendentiously. Yaffe made him feel both irresponsible and argumentative.

  Yaffe considered the proposition solemnly.

  ‘Y–ess,’ he conceded at length. ‘Yes, I think you might bracket him with Colonel Shapiro. Just below, perhaps – but in the same general bracket. The men of the future!’

  On the other hand, thought Roskill, in the present company of screwballs and mavericks the young man wasn’t really remarkable: compared with Shapiro and Razzak – compared with David Audley, come to that – he was raving normal.

  ‘Always supposing your people are willing to risk a Phantom far from home,’ he murmured. ‘I rather gathered yesterday that it still wasn’t cut and dried. If it goes sour now they’re going to be men of no future at all, I shouldn’t wonder — or have you got some inside information?’

  Yaffe grinned at him knowingly, taking years off himself as he did so. ‘I’m only an onlooker now – like you, Squadron Leader. But I don’t think we’d be here if the plan had aborted.’

  It was true enough. According to Razzak, the very possibility of the British knowing what was afoot had nearly put the project off altogether – it was evident that neither the Israelis nor the Egyptians trusted them to hold on to a secret successfully. It was a tribute equally to Audley’s reputation for good faith and to his ability to spin a likely tale to his own side that this second meeting was taking place at all. But now at last it looked as though Shapiro was ready to accept the flight plan details that Razzak had promised him at Firle.

  And there, thought Roskill, was the rub: they now were as far as he could judge, on the very edge of the New Forest, a rendezvous even less desirable than Firle. And though both the Israeli and the Egyptian had official engagements in this general area at midday, one on Salisbury Plain and the other at Portland, these woodlands struck him as being even less suitable than the open downlands.

  As if to echo his disquiet there was a distant and incongruous stutter of gunfire, which he had been hearing at intervals ever since they had left the car: somewhere not too far off, just over the rise to their right, there was a firing range.

  ‘Well, I can think of a hell of a lot of better places than this to meet,’ he said grumpily. ‘After last time it’s bloody well asking for trouble. Just because you happen to live here – ‘

  ‘There’ll be no trouble this time, that I can guarantee you absolutely,’ Yaffe interrupted him.

  ‘Did you guarantee that last time?’

  ‘That was — ‘ Yaffe sounded irritated rather than defensive ‘– bad luck.’

  ‘It was somebody’s carelessness.’

  Undeniably it was somebody’s carelessness, whatever Yaffe said. But it obviously wasn’t Yaffe’s carelessness, because no one was allowed to make that sort of mistake twice – least of all, Roskill told himself thankfully, in the Israeli service. Which meant that if Yaffe said there was nothing to worry about, there was no percentage in getting flustered.

  ‘I agree it’s a poor place from the security angle.’ Yaffe was conciliatory now. ‘Not a place I would have chosen, even though I live here. But you’ll just have to take my word for its security today.’

  Perhaps Shapiro’s men were lurking behind every bush. If so they were skilled woodsmen; but then the Israelis did most things competently these days.

  ‘Who did choose it then?’

  ‘Razzak did, indirectly — it’s rather unfortunate, but I believe he’s been having quite a lot of trouble ducking shadows. They’ve been sticking to him like leeches.’

  Majid, presumably. There was a strong suspicion in Roskill’s mind now that the handsome captain might be one of Hassan’s Watchers.

  ‘I think the real trouble was that he couldn’t shake them off without making them more suspicious,’ Yaffe continued thoughtfully. ‘And the more he shook them, the more suspicious they’d get of course. That was why he set up that meeting near Newhaven when he was already en route to Paris – ‘

  ‘Which didn’t work too well!’

  Yaffe shrugged. ‘It might have been worse.’

  ‘So you think!’ Roskill thought bitterly of Alan taking his early morning gallop. ‘And that was only because Hassan’s man ran into one of our chaps. So what makes you so sure they can’t do better this time?’

  ‘This time?’ Yaffe frowned. ‘Squadron Leader, this is our territory and our meeting.’

  Roskill sta
red sullenly at the leaf-strewn path at his feet. It was as full of holes as gruyere cheese, full of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Yet the Israeli was utterly confident – and so had been the Egyptian the day before when Audley had insisted in coming in on the final meeting.

  And damn it – David Audley had been confident too. They were all so goddamn confident now.

  ‘And you see – ‘ said Yaffe, suddenly more cheerful again ‘ – we rather think the heat’s gone off Razzak now. With Majid on his way – ‘

  ‘Majid gone?’

  ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know that. He flew out last night. A sudden urgent family crisis.’

  So that was it! And there’d be others like Majid across the Mediterranean and through the Middle East who’d be called away from duty by sick relatives and unforeseen family crises and every other excuse in the book to their final briefing in Alamut. It was no more than the expected pattern, after all. But it was a relief nevertheless to come up with one sound reason for this relaxation of tension.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Yaffe, ‘I do still agree with you about this place.’ He waved a hand at the woods around them. ‘But you can blame the Egyptians for that. They’re rather sensitive about meeting us, and they insisted it had to be well out of London.’

  There was another distant rattle of machine-gun fire.

  Yaffe grinned. ‘In the peace and quiet of the English countryside.’

  ‘What the devil is all that shooting?’

  ‘That’s the Territorial Army – or whatever you call it now – up on the Mereden Range,’ Yaffe’s seriousness seemed to melt. ‘Every Sunday morning they have it for several hours. Then they give it to us.’

  Roskill looked at Yaffe in astonishment, whereupon the Israeli burst out laughing.

  ‘I don’t mean the Israeli army, Squadron Leader – the local Rifle Club, I mean.’ He patted the ancient golf bag over his shoulder. ‘I practise with the family heirloom every Sunday. It’s the only way an honest man can keep a gun licence in your law-abiding country. Sport – yes, self-defence – no!’

  ‘I still don’t see why they had to meet at all.’