The Alamut Ambush dda-2

by Anthony Price

  'I did indeed!' Faith smiled reminiscently. 'Lots too much hair, but very good-looking. He's nice.'

  'He's damn good, too,' Roskill said. Jenkins was the star up-and-coming performer of the electronic backroom boys, which excused his hair and the irreverance that went with it. 'If there was anything in the Princess, Alan Jenkins would have found it And I take it there was something?'

  'There was, Hugh.'

  'Well, for Christ's sake, man, don't be so mysterious. What sort of bug was it?'

  'We don't know.' Butler looked obstinately at Roskill, as though he wanted to look away, but couldn't. 'Jenkins is dead. It blew him apart, whatever it was. He's dead.'

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  'He's what?'

  It wasn't a question: Roskill knew he'd heard perfectly well – he could hear the distant thump of the boiler and the whisper of the hot water in the pipes. It blew him apart, whatever it was ... Not Jenkins, of all people.

  'He was told to remove any bugs he found,' said Butler flatly.

  'Llewelyn wanted his car back on the double. Jenkins was working alone, taping his report as he went along. He'd checked out the interior of the car, and the engine and the boot. He was working in the pit underneath when he spotted this bug, just about under the driver's seat. He started to remove it, and then said, "That's interesting". Just that – and then there was an explosion.'

  Faith put her hands to her cheeks.

  'They haven't reconstructed things accurately yet – it happened just after midnight, this morning. But from what he said just before it sounds as though someone took a lot of trouble. All we know is that it was one of the latest plastic explosives almost certainly, with maybe one of those new proximity activators. But it must have been attached to the bug as well – it can't have been just bad luck, otherwise he wouldn't have spotted something interesting.'

  Not Jenkins. Roskill groaned to himself inwardly. Lots of hair but very good-looking. But not good-looking any more.

  He'd never thought of Jenkins as good-looking. Just intelligent and eager – that had been how he had looked that first time, at the Battle of Britain Open Day at Snettisham. Harry's younger brother who was a genius with electronic gadgets and bored with his dummy2

  trainee managership. It had seemed such good sense to find a useful square hole for so square a peg...

  'It was quick, Hugh,' said Butler. 'He never knew what hit him. He wasn't expecting it – damn it, no one was expecting it.'

  No one had expected it – and bloody Llewelyn had wanted his precious car on the double. But that was half-baked, unfair thinking; of course no one expected it. Chicago in the twenties, maybe Berlin in the worst days of the Cold War. And Northern Ireland today. But this wouldn't be an I.R.A. job: if the police had driven it all the way from Oxfordshire it was a real professional piece of work.

  'But why, Major Butler – why?' said Faith. 'Why should anyone want to blow Jenkins up?'

  'Not Jenkins, Mrs. Audley. Jenkins was an accident, an innocent bystander. Killing Jenkins was like poisoning a food taster – no sense to it. It was Llewelyn they wanted, and it looks as though whoever rigged the device was plain bloody-minded. But then the whole thing was a botched up affair, half clever and half stupid: if they wanted to kill Llewelyn they could have done it with much less fuss. And if they wanted to put the fear of God into him they needn't have taken so much trouble.'

  Butler was right. It was like a futile accident – as futile as a sudden skid on a patch of oil. Better to think of Jenkins skidding into a lorry: nothing anyone could do about it, and at least it was quick.

  Except that this patch of oil had been deliberately spread by someone, and it would be a sweet thing to see that same someone's dummy2

  face rubbed in it.

  Roskill savoured the prospect for a moment: Butler had been right about that, too – for him Alan Jenkins overshadowed Snettisham.

  So for the first time a desire for a tangible revenge — a new sensation that – would coincide with a job.

  Then he stopped short in mid-thought, suddenly at a loss. That wasn't how things worked at all. Further, they worked the opposite way round: any sort of personal involvement, however innocent, was anathema. In this instance he ought to be the last person conscripted, not the first.

  And doubly the last. Whatever Llewelyn did it had nothing to do with aviation or avionics, or he would have encountered him already. A bungled assassination was first and last a Special Branch matter, not a fit assignment for an avionics man. One might just as well despatch a chopper to intercept a bomber.

  So what the devil was Butler up to? Roskill felt a cold tingle of caution crawl up his back. Butler was a good fellow, solid and sensible, but an establishment man to the core, prepared to put his hand to any awkward job loyally. And notoriously he was given such awkward jobs...

  But it would be useless to ask outright for the truth. Butler would be ready to fend off such a question. Better simply to play it straight, with caution.

  'And why would anyone want to blow up Llewelyn?'

  'Perhaps Dr. Audley could tell us that.'

  Audley slowly put down the empty glass he'd been nursing and dummy2

  stared at Butler.

  'The last time I set eyes on the man was maybe ten years ago. It was in a pub in Richmond – he apologised for treading on my hand in the game we'd played that afternoon. He'd trodden on it deliberately, of course; it was just part of his game. And that was the last time I met him. Ten, maybe eleven years ago.'

  'But you know of him, then,' Butler prodded.

  Audley looked at Butler reflectively.

  'Too late, I did. He was a bastard,' Audley turned towards Roskill.

  'But he knows what he wants – just as Butler here knows what he wants. Unfortunately for him, he's not going to get it.'

  'David, what on earth are you talking about?' Faith's face, turned towards her husband for the first time, seemed thinner and whiter in the candlelight.

  'That's your cue, love,' said Audley. 'In a moment you're going to start disapproving of me. So will Hugh. Or on second thoughts maybe Hugh won't. Hugh's a downier bird than they think – not just an overgrown ex-fighter pilot with a crafty streak. I think Hugh's smelt a rat too.'

  A rat, certainly. But what sort of rat?

  'Hugh's not talking, very sensibly, love. And Major Butler's not talking either now! Perhaps I'm being rather unfair to Butler, though. He's only doing his job.'

  'Unfair?' The irritation was plain in Faith's voice. 'Aggravating and pompous. And under the circumstances callous too, I think.'

  'There – you've started to disapprove.' Audley's sudden enjoyment dummy2

  of the situation was aggravating: this was the old Audley, one maddening step ahead of the play and relishing the fact. Again, it was all very well for Audley to enjoy himself; Butler hadn't come for him.

  Or had he?

  It flashed across Roskill's mind that Audley was now behaving exactly as he himself had done when Butler calmly cancelled Snettisham: wriggling in the snare. But Audley was an altogether more formidable creature. When it came to traps he would be a wolverine, almost untrappable...

  'You never did finish your story about the hounds of Hell, David, did you?' Roskill murmured. 'I take it that the rake was lucky: the hounds passed him by and he turned into a prodigal? The question is, which of us are the hounds going to take?'

  Audley smiled appreciatively. 'You were just a touch slow there, Hugh, but you got there in the end. I think they were after me all the time, don't you?'

  Faith looked from one to the other of them. 'What hounds?'

  Roskill watched Butler. 'What David means, Faith, is that Jack there could just as easily have waited for me at home if he wanted to preserve my beard. More easily, in fact. But instead he had to come here and tell you all about it, and make a great performance of it, when strictly speaking he shouldn't have done so at all.

  ' And normally he wouldn't have done. But he did – didn't y
ou, honest Jack? Because it wasn't me you wanted at all. It was David!'

  Butler lifted his chin. 'Audley can help. It's as simple as that.'

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  'Well, why the bloody hell – pardon, Faith – can't you ask him straight out?'

  'Simple again. He might have refused.'

  'No one gives orders to him any more? Are you an over-mighty subject now, David?'

  'No "might" about it. I have refused. In this matter I am an over-mighty subject, as it happens. Llewelyn can stew in his own juice...'

  'David!' Faith was outraged. 'You can't say that, not when someone wants to murder him – not when they've already murdered Alan Jenkins. Don't you want to catch the people who did that?'

  Audley shook his head at her. 'Faith, love – can't you see that's what you're supposed to say to me? Can't you understand that nobody's ever going to catch whoever booby-trapped Llewelyn's car? He'll be away and long gone. And even if he wasn't, and we caught him, then we'd only have some stupid devil who thought he was doing his patriotic duty.

  'And that wouldn't stop them blowing up Llewelyn if they're set on it, any more than it would bring young Jenkins back to life. And they don't want me to avenge Jenkins, anyway – no one's ever going to do that.'

  No one would do that, no matter what, thought Roskill bitterly. No one could avenge an accidental death.

  'But if they find out why it was done they can still save Llewelyn,'

  said Butler. 'You can help there.'

  'You can't refuse, David,' said Faith.

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  'I'm not supposed to have any choice, and that's a fact. Your tender social conscience and Hugh's special relationship with Jenkins are designed to weight the scales – just what was so special about Jenkins, Hugh?'

  Coming from almost any other man it would have been offensive in its implication. But Audley was curiously naive about such things, and prudish too. He meant exactly what he had said, and if he had suspected anything else he wouldn't have spoken at all; Roskill simply wouldn't have been sitting at dinner with him.

  But it was none of his business nevertheless, and it was on the tip of Roskill's tongue to say so when he glimpsed Faith's face, stricken with ludicrous embarrassment; she was all of fifteen years younger than her husband, but a million years older in this – the embarrassment was for his naivete, not for any homosexual tendencies Roskill might possess.

  Ludicrous, though – and how Alan would have laughed at it, with his obsessive pursuit of dolly girls who needed no pursuing!

  He had to take pity on her.

  'Nothing like that, Faith. Jenkins was a friend of mine. I got him into the service.'

  That would have to do. It was as much as the service knew, anyway. The private guilt and grief was all his own – his own and Isobel's . . .

  'Hugh – I'm sorry. But it wasn't your fault.'

  Not his fault. An accident. Nothing they could do about it and he never knew what hit him. Epitath for both the Jenkins brothers.

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  One way or another he'd done for them both now.

  But this was mere self-pity. The important thing now was somehow to succeed where Butler had failed: to do what the bastards wanted him to do – to involve Audley. And that could never be done by moral blackmail, or not so crudely anyway. Nor could it be done while both of them were still in the dark.

  'I know it isn't my fault. It isn't David's either, so you might as well let him off the hook. Just tell us this, Jack: am I still in on things, or was I just the sprat to catch the mackerel?'

  'They want both of you.'

  It might be true. Or it might be that Butler was still trying to catch the mackerel.

  'They'll just have to make do with me then.' He couldn't risk winking at Butler, with Audley sitting directly ahead of him. More likely neither of them would see it in the candlelight, anyway. 'Just tell me what Llewelyn is up to that might make a target of him.'

  Butler shook his head slowly. 'That's the rub, Hugh. Apparently Llewelyn isn't up to anything.'

  'Nonsense!' Audley exploded. 'Llewelyn isn't the sort of man who is ever up to nothing. He isn't capable of doing nothing.'

  Faith said: 'But you said you didn't know anything about him.'

  'I said I hadn't met him for years. Until last year I'd forgotten about him, and when I came up with him again it was too late to take precautions. He'd got me kicked out of the Middle Eastern group.'

  Roskill looked at him incredulously. Audley had been the brains of that group and virtually a law unto himself. And under Sir dummy2

  Frederick's special protection.

  'Nobody told you that, did they, Hugh? Come to think of it, why does everyone think I transferred to the European section? What do people say about it?'

  Roskill strove to rearrange his thoughts. The rumour was that Audley had been miffed at having his warnings ignored, and that after the Aden withdrawal he had schemed diligently to manoeuvre himself out of an area in which there was no longer either credit or honour to be gained.

  'They say you were – prudent,' he replied cautiously.

  'I abandoned a sinking ship, did I?' Audley smiled bitterly.

  'It was thoughtful of Fred to put that around – better for my image!

  But actually I was sacked – kicked upstairs and promoted out of Llewelyn's way. I asked too many awkward questions and gave too many inconvenient answers.'

  So Llewelyn was definitely Middle East; it had been on the cards from the moment Audley had been involved.

  'I can't think how I didn't meet up with him much earlier. He must have kept very quiet until he was sure the power was in his hands.

  Then – wham! I think he damn near convinced the J.I.C. diat I was an Israeli agent.'

  Rumour had said that too: Audley had worked far too closely with the Israelis.

  'I did a little quiet research on him after it was all over.' Audley sighed. 'Just for my peace of mind, of course.

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  'Outwardly he's all empiricism and pragmatism, outsmarting the Russians and the Chinese. But inwardly he's a raving idealist. I think he dreams of becoming a political Lawrence of Arabia – or at least getting back to the U.N. partition lines of '47 if he can't undo 1920. An admirer of all things Arab, anyway – providing they fit in with his dream of the new Middle East.'

  'Would you say there's any substance in his dreams?' Butler asked.

  'There's something in it, certainly. He wants to underwrite the new nationalisms, and that would seem to be backing a winning streak.

  But he thinks that deep down the Arabs would rather deal with us than with anyone else because we're the only ones who have had any sort of love affair with Arabia.

  'The trouble is that the real Lawrence types always seem to turn up on the wrong side – like those bright characters in the Yemen. And he tried to stop them.'

  Audley gave Butler a sidelong glance, as though it had suddenly dawned on him that he was being drawn. 'Anyway, that was why I was – promoted: my advice didn't always fit his scheme of things.

  And admittedly I'm not exactly anti-Israeli.'

  There was a lot left unsaid there, thought Roskill. If Llewelyn was a schemer, so was Audley. In fact Audley could probably be as bloody-minded and obstinate as anyone when it came to the crunch, for all his air of donnish reasonableness.

  But for the rest, it made sense. The great powers might be chary of blowing up each other's civil servants, but some of the smaller powers were much less inhibited, particularly the Middle Eastern dummy2

  ones. There were harassed bureaucrats in Washington and Moscow who sweated without great success to curb such tendencies. The Israelis; went their own remorseless way, apparently regardless –

  and some of the Arab guerrilla groups were both uncontrollable and unpredictable ...

  'But if he doesn't approve of you, darling, why does he want your help now?' Faith asked. 'And why doesn't he ask you straight out?'

  'It would s
tick in his throat. But I suppose he thinks I've got some useful private contacts.' Audley shook his head. 'He's wrong of course.'

  'He doesn't think so,' said Butler. 'The truth is, Mrs. Audley, your husband was the sharpest man in the group, and they know it. And he had his own grapevine.'

  ' "Had" is right. I haven't got it now. I've been out nearly a year, and that's a lifetime – I'm out of touch completely. They should know that I can't pick up the threads just like that. It won't do – it simply won't do – and I'm surprised Llewelyn ever thought it would.'

  'He's seen the driver's seat in his car, Dr. Audley,' said Butler harshly. 'He's frightened.'

  'Frightened? You're damn right he's frightened. So am I – and so should you be. But he'll put himself on ice and expect me to go poking around. And I'm not going to! I'm not equipped to deal with maniacs.'

  'You don't have to. Just get a line on the who and the why – that's all.'

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  Audley gestured abruptly. 'No! It's not on. Besides, I've got Faith to think of now. So even if I could, I wouldn't. You can tell them I'm just not interested.'

  Not interested – that would be the heart of the matter for a man like Audley in anything that involved choice. Only because of that would he allow other, weightier reasons to become decisive.

  Butler pushed back his chair and stood up.

  'I'll tell them just that. But on your head be it then, Dr. Audley.'

  'Not on my head, Major Butler. That's a hat I don't choose to wear.

  It doesn't fit.'

  Butler's eyes shifted momentarily to Roskill, and then back towards Audley, calculation naked in them now.

  'If it's not yours then it's Hugh's, whether it fits or not – spare me a moment outside, Hugh – so I'll see myself out, Mrs. Audley. And I'm sorry to have troubled you.'

  Roskill followed Butler to the square of cobbles in the angle of the old house, in the pool of light from the porch lantern. It didn't help to be dragged out like this – Audley would know very well what he would be up to – but if there was anything to be salvaged now he had to know more.