The Alamut Ambush dda-2

by Anthony Price

  '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 dummy2

  him?' Audley smiled disconcertingly. 'I can see the drift of it now.

  It's not a bad theory in its way, I suppose.'

  'It's more than that, David. Razzak was maybe a bit too keen to give me a lead on Hassan last night – he even tried to clear Shapiro in favour of Hassan. And that makes me wonder now whether Hassan's not just a very convenient scapegoat – and what was done to my car was to keep up the illusion, that Hassan has a fixation about cars.'

  'Very neat, Hugh; And I think I go along with you as far as Razzak's fixing your car. But for the rest' – Audley paused – 'you're rather off the mark, I'm afraid.'

  Roskill checked himself from replying. By Audley's standards that was a mild, almost apologetic warning that he was talking nonsense. And he seemed very sure of himself.

  'Shapiro didn't buy your theory, did he?' said Audley gently.

  'With the cease-fire coming, neither of them wants trouble for the other.'

  'Of course they don't want it. The trouble is they've already got it.'

  'But– '

  'No buts.' Audley looked over his glasses at Roskill. 'They told you a great deal last night, Hugh – about that business in Sinai – but there was one thing they didn't tell you. A rather significant thing, really. It was Jake who saved Razzak out there. Transfusions, battlefield surgery, then air-lifted out – the lot. If it hadn't been for Jake, Razzak would have died there in the desert. Did they tell you that, either of them?'

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  Audley stared away from them towards the hillside, which was suddenly bathed in a great shaft of sunlight.

  'Maybe Jake saw something of himself in Razzak, I don't know.

  But he's not a sentimentalist – he's a very subtle man. A man who looks ahead. It may be that Razzak's just a marked card he put back in the Egyptian pack, but I don't think so. I think he wanted to make a contact for the future.'

  He turned back towards them again, staring directly at Roskill.

  'You can take my word that Hassan's here, or his men are. But we had the picture wrong all the same – Razzak didn't meet them up there on the beacon – he met Jake Shapiro.'

  Razzak and Shapiro!

  'If you hadn't been so close to it, you'd have seen it for yourself, Hugh,' said Audley soothingly. 'It was staring us both in the face.

  In fact there's nothing exactly new in the Israelis and the Egyptians having secret meetings – they've done it here before, and in the States. But what is special this time is it was these two, of all people.'

  Razzak and Shapiro! Roskill was vexed at his own obtuseness: it was so simple and logical an explanation to the two men's identical reaction. So simple that he hadn't had the wit to see it!

  He frowned at Audley.

  'But that doesn't change anything, David. It still leaves us with Alan and Razzak – if Alan saw Razzak and Shapiro together – '

  'Hugh, Hugh!' Audley held up his hand, frowning, as though Alan was an extraneous element in the pattern, best forgotten. 'What if dummy2

  he did? It would have been awkward for them, but it wouldn't be a killing matter. He couldn't have heard anything. If he'd have reported the meeting – and if it had leaked out from us, as I suppose it could have with Elliott Wilkinson around – that wouldn't have been enough to have him killed.'

  'Then what would have?'

  Audley shrugged. 'I can only guess, Hugh. It seems to me that they met here because they wanted to make sure that somebody in particular didn't follow them or listen in. They could each get up to the Beacon from a different direction and you can see for miles from up there. But if somebody did follow them – and if Alan saw who it was and recognised him – '

  'One of Hassan's men, do you mean?' said Butler.

  'And he was murdered just for that?' Mary said softly. 'Just for that?'

  Audley blinked at her. It bore down on Roskill with absolute certainty that Audley really didn't care either way why Alan had died, or by whose hand. It didn't even matter any longer that Llewelyn should be humiliated. What absorbed the man now was what had passed between Razzak and Shapiro, and only that.

  'If he was a danger, Miss Hunter,' Audley began didactically, ' – if Hassan's man wished to keep his cover – it may be he thought Alan was our man on the spot. We just can't tell.' He paused. 'But I think he really died because killing is what Hassan's men do best. It's their business.'

  'Their business?'

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  'I sat up half the night trying to puzzle it out.' Audley smiled to himself. 'I had most of the bits already actually – it was only your bit I needed, Hugh. When Faith passed on your message about the Alamut List it wasn't very difficult.

  'You see, there's nothing in the files about Hassan, because he hasn't done anything. Even what Cox told us – that was negative material. Hassan's never claimed to have shot up an airline office, or hijacked an airliner. He's never even raided across the Jordan.

  You'd almost think he doesn't exist.'

  'But Razzak was scared of him – and so was Shapiro,' Roskill interrupted.

  'And so was Llewelyn. But he wasn't surprised – that's what was so odd. And what's much more surprising is the way Cox assumed that if anyone wanted to kill Llewelyn, it would be Hassan. Razzak did the same, apparently – Hassan was his first choice too.'

  'That's right.' Roskill nodded. ' "A murderous bloody minded idea"

  he said. And – Christ! – ' the Egyptian's words came back with a jolt' – he told me to play it cool, otherwise Hassan'd move his name up to the top of the list. My God! The list!'

  'The Alamut List,' Audley repeated. 'The Alamut List is the difference between Hassan and all the other guerrilla leaders, Habash and Gharbiya and Haydar. They believe in terrorism, sure enough – and liberation and revolution and all the resit. But Hassan's special subject is going to be assassination, no more and no less. The very name gives the game away —'

  'The name?'

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  'Alamut. It was the name of the Hashashin castle in the Elburz Mountains in Northern Persia – it was where the original sect of the Assassins started, back in the eleventh century. It's all in Joinville's "Life of Saint Louis" – Make way for him who bears the lives of kings in his hands.'

  Butler rolled his eyes at Roskill, for Audley's knowledge of medieval Arab history was at once the pride and the despair of the department. It had been his cover in all his Mediterranean and Middle Eastern journeys in the old days, with learned articles to his credit to back it. Indeed, there were those who had suggested that the cover had always been his real preoccupation, for which his job was the real cover. So Shapiro had meant exactly what he'd said, though perhaps with his tongue in his cheek.

  'But I won't bore you with a history lesson.' The tightness of Audley's voice indicated that he'd picked up Butler's look. 'What it suggests is a programme of selective political assassination. The removal of the inconvenient doves for the benefit of the impatient hawks.'

  'That's the devil of a lot to build on a name.' There was a sparring note in Butler's words, almost a touch of disdain at Audley's intellectualism. 'One name and a botched killing.'

  Audley measured Butler coolly. They were chalk and cheese, thought Roskill, and neither of them wo
uld ever meet the other's mind. Unconsciously they would always goad each other by overplaying their chosen roles of the omniscient, donnish theorist and the practical, plain-speaking soldier, even when they were in basic agreement.

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  'I grant you they're frightened,' went on Butler. 'I can smell the fear on them. But if you're right, then Llewelyn and Stocker have got a damn funny way of going about things – letting you and Hugh loose with only half an idea of what you're up to.'

  Dear old Jack! Roskill felt a rueful affection for the square, pugnacious face, the very pattern of the British military countenance – except that old time scarlet would have clashed hideously with the freckles and the hair. And except that this very morning had proved that appearance to be deceptive: when he disapproved of his masters' behaviour, Jack was ready as Audley to intervene on his own initiative.

  'I don't think so at all, Major Butler,' said Audley mildly. 'To my way of thinking, the name substantiated the fear, and the fear produces the action. I said to Hugh yesterday that Llewelyn knew more than he was saying — I think he knows about the Alamut List. And I think he's got enough self-regard to believe he'd be on it at the top – that's why he never gave a thought to Jenkins. He was half expecting it to happen some time.'

  'Well, why the devil didn't he tell you from the start?'

  'Ah, now I can only guess at that,' said Audley, peering over his glasses. 'Just how good an assassin Hassan is I don't know –

  though I wouldn't describe what he's done so far as a botched job.

  But I rather think he's a good propagandist.'

  'A propagandist?'

  'Yes. After all, he hasn't really done anything yet, but he's spread the word where it matters. When you think about it, the Alamut dummy2

  List is just a piece of theatre – like Robespierre's black book that put the fear of God up all his colleagues. He's using fear as his fifth column – before long, whoever dies, he'll get the credit. Without lifting a finger.'

  It was true, thought Roskill. Hassan was as nebulous as morning mist, but already his name was doing his work for him. Fear and uncertainty emanated from it – it was a mist in which men saw dead men's faces, and looking closer saw the faces were their own.

  He shrugged off the nightmare; in another moment he'd see his own reflection in his mind if he let his imagination work.

  'So they all think this is the beginning of a massacre,' he said harshly. 'But we know it isn't, because it was Alan they were after, not Llewelyn.'

  'But Razzak and Shapiro met, Hugh. And as everyone's already said, with the cease-fire coming up now's the time Hassan has got to make his play. God knows whether the Americans and the Russians can make the cease-fire stick, but if Hassan really is the hardliner they say he is, he's not going to wait and see.'

  It was all circumstantial evidence, just one or two degrees from bluff. But Razzak and Shapiro weren't fools to be stampeded by mere suspicion, and neither was Llewelyn. And although Audley's knowledge of what was really going on in the Middle East was rusty and out-of-date, he had always had an uncanny instinct for distinguishing reality from illusion.

  'But what I don't see – ' Butler frowned fiercely ' – there's nothing new about assassination in the Middle East. Or anywhere else, for dummy2

  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!'

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  '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 dummy2

  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 dummy2

  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 dummy2

  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.