Shah-Mak

by Alan Williams

  ‘What about sandstorms?’ said Packer.

  ‘Even better. They really bugger up any radar. And while you wouldn’t get most modern planes through one, a Storch just bounces about like a ping-pong ball and doesn’t get hurt.’ Ryderbeit leaned out and gave Pol a huge slap on the shoulder. ‘Well done, Fat Man! Now tell me where she is.’

  ‘At Beirut International Airport. In the section reserved for private aircraft. You and Capitaine Packer are cleared for take-off this evening at 18.30 hours for Nicosia.’

  Ryderbeit was suddenly suspicious. ‘Has she been tested?’

  ‘The vendor has assured us that the plane is in perfect flying order,’ Pol replied.

  ‘Yeah, these wogs never lie!’ Ryderbeit poured some more arak into the dregs of his coffee. ‘But don’t mind if I make a detour up to Tripoli, and if I don’t like the way she handles, I reserve my right to come back.’ His eye peered at Packer. ‘I take a hell of a lot of risks, soldier, but where flying’s concerned I take careful risks.’

  ‘One thing you don’t seem to have thought about,’ Packer said, ‘is that our 500-mile range may get us to Mamounia, but it’s going to be a one-way trip.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s another thing I didn’t tell you about these Storch babies. They’re put together like one of those toy aircraft — and they come apart the same way. Wings, engine, tailpiece — all detachable, and the rest folds up and can be put in a truck. We can refuel her in Steiner’s backyard.’

  ‘And a truck’s been laid on?’

  Pol answered, ‘Do not concern yourself — all arrangements have been made.’

  ‘Which presumably means,’ Packer said coldly, ‘that the Ruler makes his personal dates well in advance? Or perhaps Steiner makes them for him?’

  ‘You must surely understand,’ said Pol, ‘that a man in the Ruler’s position does not have time to attend to such details.’

  Such as a royal bunk-up with Sarah, thought Packer, but he made no comment.

  CHAPTER 33

  For the driver and his passenger the journey was a familiar one, though the route of the first stage, out of the city, varied slightly each time.

  Today, Marmut bem Letif had left the Ministry at his usual time, just after noon, and had ridden in his official car, flanked by two outriders with sirens to clear the traffic, to a restaurant in the commercial centre. The car had waited outside until the last diners had left; but when it finally drove away the two men sitting in the unnumbered Ford Falcon a few doors back down the street saw that it did so without picking up its passenger.

  Letif had slipped out of the back after the first course, crossed a garden and let himself into a small ground-floor flat from which he emerged a few minutes later wearing sandals and a burnous with its hood up. He went out through a gate in the garden wall, and down an alley into a small street where a taxi was waiting.

  Outside the Armenian quarter, on the edge of the city, they had been stopped at a roadblock where the troops had been sleepy with the heat, hardly glancing at his card in its celluloid frame. Two hours later, they had climbed the foothills and were driving over a bleak plateau with the wall of white spiked mountains on one side, the empty glare of the desert on the other.

  As soon as he saw they were coming close to the gorge — even after all these visits — Letif felt a faint ache in his bowels; but today he was more confident, sustained by his anger and outraged pride, following his last audience with the Ruler. He was even looking forward to this meeting.

  The sight of the gorge was so sudden that it still amazed, even alarmed him. After driving across nearly 100 kilometres of monotonous stony wasteland, the ground stopped, like the edge of the world. Beyond was a great void, ending in a distant wall of dark sunless rock, veined and blotched like raw marble.

  The doctor’s guards appeared, as always, from some mysterious covert: ragged men dressed in bits of uniforms from many armies, strapped about with an arsenal of light weapons, all of which looked modern and in working order. They examined Letif’s pass with the usual meticulous curiosity, passing it from one to the other before handing it back to him and signalling that he could get out.

  It was only when he reached the edge of the precipice that he could see the bottom — a ribbon of black water several thousand feet below. The air was already cool up here, but the emptiness below seemed to give off a chill of its own. To his right rose a pillar of sandstone supporting a bridge across the chasm: a narrow catwalk sustained by steel cables that drooped away into the distance, and reinforced by two more cables attached to the top of the sandstone. These also steadied a pair of rope handrails.

  Letif knew that distance and height were deceptive, and that the true span of the bridge was less than 400 metres; but whenever he stepped on to those short wind-worn planks he felt the bile rising in his throat, and turned his eyes upwards, narrowing them until he could only just make out the blurred rim of the cliff ahead. A few steps from the edge, the bridge began to sway, then to rock with a slow lurching rhythm that made him feel as though his small body were being magnified to monstrous proportions.

  He was greeted on the other side with ritual courtesy. Here the men wore no uniforms, carried no guns — at least, not visibly. Letif was never introduced to them by name, but their hands were soft and they had the refined, thoughtful faces of students from good families who had rejected fashionable Western clothes and had reverted, instead, with almost religious zeal, to the plain tribal costume of their ancestors.

  Beyond the summit of the cliff was a short drop into a silver-green oasis of olive trees; in the middle stood a small house with a flat white roof. A couple of goats were tethered under the trees. It was a scene of Arcadian simplicity which always struck Letif as being irritatingly mannered, as did the costumes of the young men who had greeted him. They, in turn, reminded him of those students he had met in Paris and America who wore Lenin-type caps and workmen’s boots, and had charge accounts at all the best shops and restaurants.

  But he consoled himself with the image of that long room in the Palace, its walls and ceilings gilded with gold leaf, its red carpet climbing the steps to a throne of solid gold studded with 780 emeralds. The thought revived his anger and hatred, and he entered the house in a spirit of resolve.

  It was a simple peasant house, with one main room, its whitewashed walls covered with ornamental hangings, except for one which was lined with books, many of them in European languages. The floor was stone, the furniture in traditional Arab style — low couches draped in woollen rugs, leather stools, small round tables of beaten brass.

  Letif’s escort withdrew through the bead curtain. The windows were small and the light poor, and it took Letif several seconds to appreciate the scene.

  There were only two men in the room. One was Dr Zak, sitting quietly in the corner sipping a glass of mint tea. The other was Colonel Sham Tamat.

  Letif was surprised; for although Dr Zak had long enjoyed the status of being head of a licensed opposition, the old man had never before held court to both the Minister of the Interior and the Chief of the Committee of Counter-Terrorism and Public Safety. Letif’s instinct, as well as his trade, led him to suspect a trap. In any case, he decided that matters had clearly reached a climax.

  He bowed, gave the ceremonial greeting, and sat down, against the wall opposite the two men. The colonel’s appearance was certainly not that of a conspirator: he was wearing cavalry twill jodhpurs and calfskin boots, and an English chequered hacking jacket with a yellow handkerchief flowering from his breast pocket; and was drinking from a bottle of good Scotch whisky on the table beside him. Letif guessed that he had brought it with him. For Dr Zak — like the Ruler — discouraged alcohol.

  Tamat gave his big fleshy grin. ‘So, Minister Letif, we meet in the wolf’s den!’ His smile shifted to Dr Zak, who sat without expression. Tamat raised his glass to Letif: ‘Well — what is new at the all-powerful Ministry of the Interior?’

  Letif licked his lips. ‘I
have spoken again to His Imperial Highness. He is angry that I cannot tell him more than we have already discussed. He does not believe the report that our honourable host —’ he nodded at Zak — ‘was in Damascus. In fact, I had the impression that he no longer believes even what I tell him. I believe that he knows more than we suspect.’ He sat with his fingers locked together, his face grown taut and pale. ‘He also insulted me. It was not even a subtle insult. It was a vicious wound to the memory of my father.’

  Tamat drank some whisky. His expression was relaxed, benign. ‘Poor Letif. But we who work so close to the Devil must expect the occasional jab from his horns. Did he tell you anything new?’

  ‘He told me I had little time — that I must hurry. He expects foreign assassins to enter the country at any moment. It is my impression that he is no longer impatient, but is becoming nervous.’

  Tamat shrugged. ‘Impressions are not sufficient, Letif. I, like His Imperial Highness, require facts.’

  Letif stared at the floor. He wondered why he was not accorded the accustomed formality of mint tea. He also wondered if he should tell Tamat that the Ruler knew about the fat man; whether Zak had confided to the colonel the existence of this Frenchman who was known under the names of Cassis and Pol, and perhaps other names too.

  He wished that Zak had spoken to him first, had forewarned him of this meeting; for Letif loathed and feared his encounters with Tamat — doubly so now that the circumstances were so sudden and unexplained. He looked at Dr Zak, but the old man seemed to be dozing. ‘Tell me what is happening,’ he said, in a clear defiant voice.

  Dr Zak opened his eyes and gave a slow sad smile. ‘Come, Minister, I have something to show you.’ He unfolded his thin legs and stood up, beckoning to Letif with his clawlike hand. Together the two men moved up to the wall of books. Zak paused, then ran his finger along a row of yellow paperbound volumes in French. He smiled again at Letif. ‘One day, Minister, when I have more time, I must try and arrange my humble little library. I can find nothing when I want it.’

  Letif smiled back. ‘What are you looking for?’ He heard the rattle of the bead curtain and wondered if this was his mint tea arriving. He was about to turn when the doctor’s bony fingers closed round his wrist.

  ‘I think I have found it.’ Zak’s free hand was reaching up for a book on one of the higher shelves. Letif heard the pad of footsteps on the stone floor behind him. Zak had pulled out the book and Letif was trying to see the title, when something was thrown round his shoulders. He thought at first it was a rug, though it was too light, and had a shiny surface like a waterproof cape or oilskin. He felt hands round his neck and across his face, and began to scream.

  It was a loud, choking animal scream, accompanied by a frenzied struggling … the noises of the farmyard and the abattoir. The man used the ceremonial dagger, with its long scythe-like blade worn thin on a whetstone, like a well-used carving knife.

  He cut Letif’s throat with one swift movement, opening it from ear to ear, slicing the oesophagus, windpipe and tendons as far back as the spinal cord, until the narrow head was lolling back from the shoulders, while the face, stretched in its frozen scream, hung upside down until the man carefully lifted it, let the body down, and wrapped the head and shoulders in the plastic sheet whose folds were already brimming over with blood.

  A second man had appeared and together they carried the body outside. ‘Bury him at once,’ Zak said, and put the book back on the shelf. ‘Then signal to the guards.’ He turned to Tamat. ‘I have given instructions that they are to dispose of the driver and the car in the gorge.’

  Colonel Tamat nodded and finished his whisky. ‘This has been most satisfactory, Doctor.’ He glanced towards the bookshelves. ‘I congratulate you — hardly a spot of blood! Is that an omen, I wonder?’ He chuckled and refreshed his glass.

  CHAPTER 34

  Sarah woke late and breakfasted alone in the air-conditioned salon, where there was coffee and mint tea, yoghourt and honey, and bread loaves the shape of stones. Beyond the French windows she could see a few of the other guests, all of them men, basking on long chairs under the arcades round the pool. The women rarely appeared before dusk.

  She had a headache and was still tired, although she had slept heavily. She was also hungry. She had slipped in unnoticed last night after the Embassy party, and had gone straight to her room. Mrs Braintree’s warnings had been muted, if not neutralized, by her agreement with Charles Pol, who had promised her that if she did what she was told, she would be as rich as she required.

  The thought filled her with febrile excitement; and the best she could say for Mrs Braintree was that her medicine seemed to have worked. Not only had her stomach recovered, but her rash seemed to be clearing up too.

  Steiner found her in a mood of tentative elation. ‘Good morning, my dear Sarah.’ He looked fresh and at ease. ‘I apologize most sincerely for the disgraceful lack of water. But I am afraid we are not in the West any more. However, I trust you have not been too greatly inconvenienced?’

  Sarah said something noncommittal and waited. For a long moment Steiner gazed out at the pool, which was still covered with a film of grey sand, like the skin of a toad.

  ‘We are taking a trip into the city,’ he said at last. ‘There are some things I want to show you. And things I want to discuss. Are you ready?’

  ‘I’ll just get my bag.’

  She felt a guilty excitement as she climbed into the upholstered gloom of the Fleetwood, sitting well back in the seat away from him. She remembered Mrs Braintree’s warnings against the man, and although Sarah had never found Shiva Steiner anything but courteous and charming, she could not help feeling that it would take quite a lot to shock an old bag like the Ambassador’s wife.

  Steiner said little during the drive. When they left the house the road was empty, but a few miles on, when Sarah looked back through the smoked rear window, the unnumbered grey car was there again with two men inside. She pointed it out to Steiner, but he seemed uninterested; then she told him about the car last night.

  ‘You are very observant,’ he murmured. He. sounded preoccupied or bored; and she was reminded of his behaviour during their dinner with the Ruler in Klosters, when he had dropped his easy social manner, suddenly, like an actor abandoning his role once he has stepped off stage.

  ‘But who are they?’ she asked.

  He turned slowly and looked at her. ‘Why are you so interested, my dear?’

  ‘I talked to the British Ambassador’s wife last night. She said some very odd things — not only about being followed, but about you.’

  ‘I do not suppose they were very complimentary. In my experience, the wives of Western diplomats live on rumours and gossip, as some people live on vitamins.’

  There was a long pause. They were coming into the city now, leaving the private villas with their gardens and swimming-pools, and were driving between squalid modern buildings divided by dark alleys and crowded bazaars. The traffic had not yet built up, but there seemed to Sarah to be a great many troops and armoured vehicles about. Near the city centre, they were to be seen in every doorway, at every street corner: most of them carried short-muzzled machine pistols, and several of them had radios.

  She asked Steiner about them, and he gave a small, patronizing smile. ‘You must know, my dear Sarah, that this country has one of the largest armies in the world.’

  ‘But why so many today?’

  ‘They are probably on manoeuvres. An army has to be given something to do. You cannot keep it locked up in barracks all the time.’

  His reply struck her as a trifle too glib, but she did not feel qualified to argue. She looked back through the rear window; and after a moment she saw it again, a few cars back. She turned again to Steiner and said fiercely, ‘You still haven’t told me who they are.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The men in the car behind — the ones who followed me last night. Who are they?’ Steiner’s lack of interest was not only ir
ritating her, it was making her nervous.

  ‘Security police,’ he replied.

  ‘But why do they follow us? Why did they follow me last night?’

  Steiner sighed. ‘My dear, they follow anyone they think is important. Particularly foreigners. It is partly a form of protection for, regrettably, there are still many beggars in the city — wild men who have come in from the desert and the mountains where they used to be brigands. And this is a very security-minded country.’

  Again Sarah found that the explanation seemed a little too elaborate, and not quite convincing.

  They had reached the end of a street which opened on to a large deserted square: at the far end was an ornate white building which reminded her of a French casino. On one side of it stood a mosque, with a glittering dome and a pencil-shaped minaret; on the other, a long building faced with colonnades.

  The street was blocked by a couple of jeeps and a row of troops in leopard-spotted uniforms. The driver turned the car so that it was facing across the street, then stopped. Steiner nodded in the direction of the square.

  ‘That is the Royal Palace you see directly ahead — the Ruler’s official residence. On the right is the Great Mosque, and on the left the Senate Building.’ He spoke with the indifferent precision of a tour guide.

  She looked at him, puzzled. ‘Shiva, I saw all this the other day when we all came into town together. But then we were able to go right round the square. Now it’s all blocked off.’

  ‘Quite.’ There was an uncharacteristic note of irritation in Steiner’s voice. He gestured with his squat flat fingers. ‘It is precisely this roadblock that I wished you to see. You will be passing through it tonight.’

  She caught her breath and stared at him.

  ‘They will not be the same troops on duty,’ he continued, ‘but they will have received instructions to let you through. The car will drop you here.’

  ‘Tonight?’ she said, in a dry whisper.