The Alamut Ambush dda-2

by Anthony Price

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  'And you know who might use it?'

  The Egyptian shrugged. 'The Russians flew in a load of it to Amman a few months ago, the idiots. By now every fedayeen group between there and Mount Hermon has some. You aren't going to learn anything from that.'

  There was a note of exasperated contempt in Razzak's voice which embraced both the Russians and the fedayeen. And he was being damnably slow off the mark.

  'And the Israelis?'

  The Israelis?' Razzak seemed mystified. 'So what about them?'

  'They've got some too.'

  'Got some?' Another shrug. 'Probably they have – the thieving swine have got plenty of other people's property these days. You're not going to tell me – ' he stared at Roskill in the flickering light of the passing shopfronts' – my dear Squadron Leader Roskill –

  you're not going to tell me the Israelis fixed that car?'

  'It happens that Colonel Shapiro was damn well-placed to get it done.'

  'Shapiro?' Razzak exclaimed incredulously. 'You must be joking!'

  He continued to stare at Roskill in evident disbelief. 'But you're not, are you!'

  'He had the opportunity,' Roskill said defensively. This wasn't how the fat man was meant to react.

  Razzak shook his head. 'I think you're being less than frank with me. If Shapiro had the opportunity – if that's what you really believe – you can discount him. Whatever he is, he's not a fool.

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  And if he wanted to do it he wouldn't make such a goddman mess

  – it would be done properly while he was lying on the beach at Tel Aviv.'

  That familiar tune! It was reassuring to have Audley's assessment confirmed – but disconcerting to have the confirmation from this source.

  Unless Razzak was on the level. Unless, unless, unless – there were too many snakes in this game, and not nearly enough ladders ...

  'Then if not Shapiro, who do you favour?'

  There was a bump and the painful hiss of tyres rubbed callously against the kerb. Roskill glimpsed the bulk of St. Paul's ahead.

  'You weren't looking for Colonel Shapiro at the reception this evening, Roskill. Who were you looking out for?' Razzak turned the question back to Roskill.

  'I thought we made a deal just now, Colonel. Who were you looking for?'

  'I wasn't looking for anyone in particular. I was — how shall I put it – showing my face. Showing it where it isn't often seen. Showing it where I wished it to be seen.'

  Razzak paused, then touched Roskill's arm and pointed across the street. 'Who do you see over there, just on the corner?'

  'The policeman?'

  'The policeman. He isn't doing anything. He's not hunting anyone.

  But if there are any criminals walking in the street they can see dummy2

  him, and he is saying to them "I am here. I've got my eye on you.

  So don't try anything!" He doesn't have to say a word, but they can hear him just as well as if he shouted.

  'And he is just an ordinary bobby. I am a lot more than an ordinary bobby, my friend. For those I wish to be seen by – I am a Scotland Yard chief of detectives.'

  'And who would that be?'

  'The fools, Roskill – the fools! The ones who throw the grenades and shoot up school buses. The ones who try to play soldiers in the dark while it is safe and then run away before the sun rises. The ones who kill the wrong people at the wrong time.'

  'You don't approve of the liberation movement?'

  'Liberation my arse!' Razzak snorted contemptuously. 'They couldn't liberate the skin off a rice pudding. They can't even agree what they want to liberate for more than ten minutes, never mind how it's to be done.'

  He shook his head vehemently. 'I know what you're thinking too –

  that we Egyptians aren't liberators either, because; the Zionists have kicked our backsides three times since '47.' Razzak pounded his knee. 'But it doesn't matter how many times we get beaten by them – we are still their real enemy and they'll still have to come to terms with us. Not the Syrians or the Iraqis or the Jordanians – and not the Liberation Front.'

  'You don't rate guerrilla warfare at all?'

  'When it works inside a country – yes! In Vietnam – or the way the Zionists fixed you British in Palestine. But not hit and run from dummy2

  across a border. And not by stupid terrorism in foreign countries –

  that just makes things worse for us. That's what ruined us in '67.

  The bloody Syrians called the tune, and we did all the dancing!

  Next time we're going to call the tune!'

  And maybe they would at that, thought Roskill – with the Russians committed and the Americans weary of pulling chestnuts out of the fire. Llewelyn seemed to think there was a chance, anyway – even if Audley was as cynical as ever.

  But that wouldn't extract payment for Alan – and by God someone was going to dance for that! The high bloody politicians could pursue their high bloody policies to their hearts' content. Only this once he had his own private score to settle.

  'If you wanted to nip trouble in the bud, you've started too late, Colonel,' he said harshly.

  'But they didn't get Llewelyn.'

  'Not this time they didn't.'

  'There won't be a next time, Squadron Leader. I'll see to that'

  'No good. This isn't the Gaza Strip, and they don't get one free shot here. We want these chaps, Colonel – and if you won't give 'em to us we're going to get them ourselves, no matter who they are.

  Whatever you may hear, that's how it's going to be.'

  'I see.' Razzak considered Roskill''s angry words in silence for a moment. 'Well, I can tell you this, Squadron Leader: there is a – a new group that may be mixed up with the Ryle Foundation. I didn't know they had reached London, but if they have this might be their work. If you can hold off for forty-eight hours I could probably dummy2

  pinpoint them. But you must hold off.'

  'Hold off?'

  'That's right. Do nothing – and whatever you do, don't phone me at the embassy, or I shall have someone like Majid breathing down my neck and getting in the way. You can phone Jahein at his flat –

  he can stay home and watch television – he'll either have a message, or he'll know how to get to me.' He fished a crumpled envelope from his pocket and laboriously wrote a number on it.

  'Phone him there. But whatever you do, don't start stirring things up in the wrong places.'

  Roskill took the envelope. Either Razzak had been scared into making a genuine offer, or he was simply trying to buy time.

  'And just what are the wrong places?'

  Razzak looked at him steadily. 'The Ryle Foundation for a start.

  And I don't want the Israelis breathing down my neck either – don't start chasing them. It's bad enough having to put up with Majid.'

  'That's asking one hell of a lot, Colonel – you're asking me to sit twiddling rny thumbs. I'm not sure I can do that without knowing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.'

  The Egyptian took a deep breath. 'Does the name Hassan mean anything to you?'

  Roskill cocked his head – it had to be the right note of interest now, with no hint of the surprise which tightened his guts.

  'Hassan who?'

  'Hassan will do for now — it doesn't matter whether it's a real man or just a murderous bloody-minded idea. But that's what I'm after, dummy2

  Roskill – that's what I'm after.'

  'And if you find him you'll give him to us.'

  'Give him to you?' Razzak growled. 'If I find him, you can rely on that. And just you make sure of him, by God. Because if it was Hassan who bombed Llewelyn's car and he finds me sniffing around, he'll put my name to the top of his list!'

  IX

  HOWE HAD GONE off duty when Roskill finally got through to the department again; a much younger voice answered him, making no trouble – as Howe undoubtedly would have done –

  when he asked to be put stra
ight through to the technical section stand-by man.

  He had toyed with the idea of asking for further details about Razzak, until he remembered what Audley had said earlier: it was vital that Llewelyn should be kept in the dark about what they were doing, and any official request they made would go straight back to him.

  So the bugger of it was that they were thus effectively cut off from their own information services and thrown back on their own resources. Which was fine for Audley, but rendered Roskill himself almost powerless – and, damn it, that might well be just what Audley was counting on! Even calling the technical section was a risk, but it was one risk that had to be taken. The Triumph dummy2

  was probably safe enough in Bunnock Street – it always had been in the past. But if any hopeful car thief tried his hand on it the results might be catastrophic. And that was the risk that could not be taken.

  Roskill sighed. At least the car was a loose end that could be tied up, a tangible object that could be tested and made to produce facts. It belonged to the world he understood, not to Audley's world of possibilities and theories and hypotheses.

  There was a soft Highland voice on the other end of the phone. So Alan's senior partner, Maitland, was no longer on duty; it was a cold, sad thought that by routine it should have been Alan himself who answered him now.

  'You've a little trouble with your car?' The man softly rolled each V; it was a comforting, competent sound – the sound of the ever-reliable Scot, resigned to getting the English out of trouble.

  Roskill explained the Bunnock Street nightmare as simply as he could.

  'That was verra smart of you, sir.'

  'It was lucky, certainly.'

  'Aye, lucky too,' the Scot conceded, 'And that would be a two-year-old car of yours?'

  'Three-year-old, actually. How do you know?'

  'The new Triumph has a steering lock – it would be a verra difficult car to move, and you say they didn't have much time.'

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  'I don't quite see why they had to move it at all.'

  'Well, it depends on what they've done to it. But likely they preferred to work in a more private place. It's surprising how much people notice. But no matter – it's enough to know that they moved it and we shan't be wasting our time.'

  Roskill cleared his throat. The Scot would be wondering why he'd insisted on getting through to him directly when a message would have served well enough.

  'I think I ought to warn you – ' he began awkwardly. 'I feel I must warn you personally that there could be a connection between my car and – the car that killed Alan Jenkins. There may not be, but there could be.'

  There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  'Thank you, sir. I had that in mind, verra much in mind. I'll not forget it – and you'll have your car back in one piece as well, never fear.'

  The smell that greeted him as he entered Shabtai's took him directly back to the mess tent under the netting beyond the baking runway where the Israeli Skyhawks had been poised: a Jewish cooking smell that was strange rather than exotic, and exciting as everything on that airstrip had been exciting.

  He pushed through a curtain of beads – there was no other way to go – and came to the head of an ancient wrought iron spiral staircase which looked as though it had been extracted from some Victorian garden. Below him was a brick-arched cellar, with dim dummy2

  lights and crowded tables and a hubbub of conversation. There was a smoke haze and a whole range of further smells, each of which seemed to predominate at a different level as he descended the staircase, like the strata in an exposed cliff face.

  As he reached the bottom step a girl started to sing in the furthest corner. She sang loudly and uninhibitedly, unaccompanied except by rhythmic clapping from people at the tables nearest her.

  Presumably she was singing in Yiddish, but Roskill couldn't make out the words anyway – it; was the sort of singing that always embarrassed him because it seemed to insist on audience participation.

  He stopped a perspiring waiter and inquired for Jake Shapiro. The man grinned and nodded, pointing to the far corner opposite the singer.

  He threaded his way between the jammed tables. In a purely British establishment – at least one with a widely mixed collection of age groups like this – his passage would have been marked by blank looks and murmured apologies on both sides; but here he was received with smiles and left with the impression that he would have been welcome at most of the tables he disrupted.

  Audley was wrong, he thought. Caricature or not, Shabtai's atmosphere was genuine. Or perhaps it was simply that Audley was a born loner who couldn't take crowds of people in any form except between the covers of a book, so that his judgment betrayed him in their presence. It would be the idea of Israel, not the Israelis in the flesh, which would attract him.

  'Colonel Shapiro.'

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  His vision had adjusted to the dimness, but there was no mistaking the man anyway: the bushy, ragged Stalin moustache and the broad, heavy shoulders – where Razzak was deceptively fat there was nothing deceptive about this hard-muscled bulkiness. It reminded Roskill of one of his father's prize bulls, amiable but unsafe.

  Shapiro looked up at him – a confident, unhurried look. The mouth was hidden in the moustache's shadow, but the complex of lines on each side of it suggested that he was smiling.

  'Ah! I wondered who it would be.' Shapiro set down the heavy pewter tankard he'd been nursing and brushed back the lick of black hair from his forehead. 'Roskill, isn't it? One of Sir Frederick's band of brothers? We met at poor old David's nuptials

  – you were one of the zoot-suited ushers, weren't you?' He gestured with a large, hairy hand. 'Take a seat, Squadron Leader, take a seat!'

  'It's nice to be expected,' Roskill drawled. 'I was afraid I might be disturbing a private party.'

  'Not at all! Any friend of David's is welcome – even on business.

  You must have some of my beer, now you're here.' Shapiro raised his tankard in one hand and snapped his fingers at a waiter. 'I've got my own little barrel – special strong ale, a firkin of it. Not a bit like this pressurised nat's water they flog everywhere now – a real beer, this is.'

  He drank deeply.

  'To be honest, I didn't expect you, though, Roskill. One of the S.B.

  S like Cooper or Cox, I thought it'd be – or if Sir Frederick was in dummy2

  on it, maybe Jack Butler. I thought you were strictly airborne these days – in fact, you've just been over to pick old Hod's brains, haven't you?'

  'A flying visit – yes,' Roskill said carefully. 'Your chaps were very hospitable.'

  'You asked a lot of sharp questions, so I hear. The feeling is that you got more than you gave.' Shapiro wagged a finger. 'I shall have to look out now, shan't I!'

  Roskill grinned at the incongruous idea of anyone outsmarting an alerted Shapiro. That, as 'old' David was so fond of saying, would be the day!

  'But you have been expecting someone?'

  'Someone was asking for me this afternoon, I'm told. And I've been wating for something to happen ever since I heard about Llewelyn's car.' Shapiro gazed frankly at Roskill. 'I suppose you already know I was dining with him that evening?'

  So much for security...

  'You've got good hearing. Colonel Razzak doesn't seem to have heard so quickly.'

  Shapiro shrugged. 'It's my job – and you can't blame me if Razzak isn't up to his. But that's hardly fair to the poor bugger – he's been enjoying a dirty mid-week in Paris, hasn't he. Is he back yet?'

  Roskill watched their waiter manoeuvre his way towards them bearing a tall glass jug of beer and another tankard. He set the tankard before Roskill, filling it exactly with one graceful, practised movement, and then did the same for Shapiro's without dummy2

  bothering to find out whether it was empty. Presumably it was more often empty than not.

  'There now!' said Shapiro with a growl of satisfaction. 'You'll not find a better b
eer than that in London – it's as near as you'll get to the old London strong ale. Man I get it from swears it's all in the fining and filtering and dry-hopping, but I think it's just got more malt and less water. All the rest of it's bullshit.'

  Good beer it might be, Roskill reflected unhappily, but on an empty stomach lined with whisky it was likely to be disastrous.

  Yet the laws of hospitality and the honour of Britain demanded that it should be drunk, and drunk properly. 'Open your throat and pour it down' had been the first boozing rule he'd learnt: there was nothing he could do but obey the rule.

  He took the tankard, opened his throat and poured it down in.

  Surprisingly, it descended very easily – smooth, heavy and only moderately cool.

  'Bravo!' Shapiro regarded him with enthusiasm. 'The same again?'

  'With what I've had already tonight I think that'll do very well. I shan't be fit to drive – ' Roskill stopped in mid-sentence, sobered by the thought that as of the moment he had no car; for the time being it was the dangerous property of the soft-voiced Scotsman.

  'Ah! The breathalyser!' Shapiro nodded regretfully. 'I never use a car in London, and I forget that some people still do. You should use public transport, my friend – it's like they say on the posters: car free, carefree. There are too many cars in London anyway.'

  'So one blown up here and there doesn't matter?'

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  Shapiro stared in silence at the check tablecloth in front of him.

  When he raised his eyes to meet Roskill's, there was no longer any amusement in them.

  'Now that was a bad business — a sad business,' he said heavily.

  'Not the car – the car is nothing. But you lost a man, didn't you?'

  'A good man.'

  'All men are good when you lose them. We know that in Israel better than most, because we can't afford to lose anyone. There are too few of us as it is.'

  'Then you'll understand that we want to know why we lost him.'

  Shapiro raised his eyebrows expressively. 'Doesn't Llewelyn know?' He paused, and then went on, nodding to himself.