The Alamut Ambush

'A tank driver – I warned you,' said Razzak. 'And not even a very good tank driver. But there's nothing wrong with his nerve. Slow down, man – I must give a word of praise to the man who had the right of it.'

dummy2

They were alongside the open doorway in which the big man in the Fair Isle pullover was still standing, evidently determined to see them out of Bunnock Street.

Razzak wound down the window and leaned out.

'Bloody Gyppo,' the man said loudly and clearly.

Razzak observed him in silence for five seconds. Finally he extended two fingers of his mangled right hand in the universal signal of contempt.

'Up yours, Jack!' he said without heat. 'Drive on, Jahein.'

Jahein jammed his foot down on the accelerator and his hand down on the horn and shot down the street in a deafening turmoil of noise which ended with a squeal of tyres as he skidded out of Bunnock Street on to the main road without either slowing or looking for other traffic.

'Diplomatic immunity is a wonderful thing,' Razzak said happily.

'It's a great comfort to Jahein, anyway – he thinks it covers accidental death too.'

Jahein shook his head in disagreement and gabbled again hoarsely in Arabic.

'Speak in English, man! I've told you before it is disrespectful to speak so in front of my guests!'

Jahein tossed his head and grunted.

Razzak shrugged his shoulders and. turned to Roskill. 'It isn't that the old dog can't learn new tricks,' he apologised. 'He speaks English perfectly well – though with a slight Australian accent.

dummy2

The Australians taught him all he's ever learnt – to swear, fight dirty, drive a tank and hate Pommie bastards. Perhaps that's why I can't get him to talk in English, the obstinate swine: you can thank the 9th Australian Division for that. But a loyal old swine – all he was saying was that if the Israelis wouldn't kill me, then I was born to hung and not die in a car crash.'

Roskill watched the traffic lights ahead turn from amber to red and prayed that Jahein's instinct was sound as the Mercedes whipped across the intersection.

'And he may be right at that,' mused Razzak. 'If Captain Majid has his way I shall probably hang sooner or later. But in the meantime, where can we take you, Squadron Leader?'

Meeting Razzak, the unknown quantity, had not been on the schedule for tonight. But perhaps the Egyptian wasn't quite such a question mark since he'd turned up at the Ryle reception: once more it brought him face to face with Hassan. Except that seemed to make nonsense of what had just happened – and not happened –

in Bunnock Street.

Unless...

Roskill relaxed. 'Your driver seems to know where he's going already.'

'Jahein?' Razzak chuckled. 'Jahein simply likes driving – give him a car and a tankful of petrol and he'll drive nowhere for hours on end. He isn't going anywhere at the moment. Just away from Captain Majid. And he's still learning to find his way round London too.'

dummy2

Roskill watched Jahein slide the big car through a gap in the traffic just ahead of a taxi which had the right of way. Whatever the old dog didn't know, he had nothing to learn about driving; that first impression had been false.

The light from a blue neon sign momentarily illuminated Razzak's face sharply. There was nothing left of the chuckle on it: the eerie blueness stripped away the fat, leaving it hard and serious. That was another first impression gone – there was always supposed to be a thin man screaming to get out of every fat one, and that flash had betrayed a lean bedouin inside the carpet salesman.

'Well, if you could drop me near St. Paul's, that would do very well,' said Roskill. 'It's not far from here.'

'I think Jahein can manage that,' Razzak murmured, settling back comfortably, his hands interlocking over the bulge of his stomach.

The gesture transmitted itself to the man behind the wheel as if by telepathy; as Razzak sat back the car's speed dropped to a sedate crawl. Getting to any destination too quickly wasn't part of the action.

'I suppose you're curious about my having you followed tonight,'

the Egyptian began conversationally.

'Under the circumstances I think I should be grateful.'

'My dear fellow! Think nothing of it! I'm sure you would have done as much for me. Besides, I owe you an apology – I couldn't think what there was to interest you in the Ryle Foundation. But there obviously is something, that's quite clear.'

Razzak was evidently prepared to be disingenuous. But it was a dummy2

game two could play.

'You owe me an apology for the Van Pelt report, certainly.'

'The Van Pelt – ?' Razzak began to laugh. 'Yes, that was rather naughty I must admit. The Van Pelt report – quite unforgiveable!'

The hands across the stomach shook as he laughed. 'Naughty', with its nursery and pansy connotations, struck Roskill as both inadequate and out of place in Razzak's excellent vocabulary.

Unless – a second thought arrived almost simultaneously – unless it was literally accurate: that saying of Chairman Mao's hadn't struck quite true either.

So the inconvenient report had simply been a figment of Razzak's imagination – a mere joke at Roskill's expense, damn the man!

'And you really don't think there's anything to interest us in the Ryle?'

'Not nothing of interest, Squadron Leader, but nothing to interest you. I thought weapons and guidance systems were your specialities, not – ' Razzak paused momentarily ' – counter-subversion. I thought that was the Special Branch's job.'

He sounded perfectly matter-of-fact and only mildly curious. Far too mild and matter-of-fact to be true: they both knew that this was the opening bid.

'You know about the Foundation then?'

'My dear fellow – I know it's being used by someone, if that's what you mean. You don't think I'd be interested in good works for their own sake, surely?'

'And who would "someone" be?'

dummy2

'That would be telling, wouldn't it! Can you tell me what's happened to make it so interesting?'

'Is that the basis for an exchange, Colonel Razzak?'

'It could be.'

Roskill thought furiously. Of all men, Razzak probably had most to offer and would give least. But even what he didn't give aught be of interest. And after Bunnock Street it was possible that the Egyptian's role might not be quite what they had imagined...

'Didn't you know the heat was on?'

'The heat?'

'Someone – possibly your "someone" – tried to kill one of our civil servants a couple of days ago. Didn't you know?'

'Civil servants?' Razzak sounded surprised.

'A rather top man. And you haven't heard?'

'I only got back from Paris this afternoon. Who was it?'

'A man called Llewelyn. I think you know him.'

'Llewelyn!'

'Does that surprise you?'

Razzak didn't reply immediately. It looked very much as though the news had genuinely surprised him. And that, Roskill thought grimly, was significant in itself, because it hadn't surprised Llewelyn. Yet what seemed to have thrown the Egyptian was not the deed itself, but the target.

'Llewelyn!' Razzak muttered to himself. 'The fools! The stupid, dummy2

criminal fools!'

'Which fools do you mean?'

Razzak turned towards him. 'You say they failed though? They didn't get Llewelyn?'

Roskill blessed the semi-darkness of the car which concealed the anger he felt burning his cheeks: No, you bastard, they didn't get Llewelyn – they got Alan Jenkins. Is that what you want to hear?

The flare of irrational rage died down, dowsed by the knowledge that it was dangerous – that hot emotional involvement was always to be avoided because it betrayed both men and judgment. Only cold, professional anger was permitted, and not too much of that.

Razzak had had one chance of incriminating himself. Now he could be given another.

'Oh, they missed him all right.' Not too casually, now; that would spoil it. 'They killed some poor devil of a technician who was checking out his car, though.'

Again Razzak fell silent, giving away nothing this time.

'It was a bomb in the car?'

That was another good feel line. It would be worth finding out just what sort of job the Egyptian could make of throwing them off the scent of Hassan and on to that of the Israelis.

'They used T.P.D.X.'

Razzak whistled softly. 'Ah – now I see why you were so quick off the mark back there at your car. It's tricky stuff, that T.P.D.X. – I don't blame you being nervous! A very little goes a long way.'

dummy2

'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.

dummy2

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 straight 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.'

dummy2

'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.'

dummy2

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 beer 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?'

dummy2

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.

'Obviously he doesn't know, so because I was having dinner with him he thinks I might have set up the whole thing – is that it? Does he think that? Do you think that?'

'I think – ' said Roskill slowly, searching for the right answer, and finding it in Audley's own words ' – I think it's not quite your style.'

'My style?' Shapiro smiled a rather sad, twisted smile. 'There's no style in killing. You either do it, or you don't do it. But I'm glad you don't think I did it. You see, I haven't any reason for killing Llewelyn. I don't like him and he doesn't like me. But he's working for peace in the Middle East, and frankly I'd rather have any sort of peace, on almost any terms, than what we've got now.'

It sounded an honest answer, thought Roskill. It was just a pity that it wasn't an answer to the real question. But the time to put that one had not yet arrived.

dummy2

'So if it wasn't me, who was it? Is that what I'm supposed to tell you?' Shapiro grinned again, some of his good humour re-turning.

'I'm sure you didn't come slumming down here just to put my little mind at ease.'

'I did rather think you might be able to tell me about Muhammed Razzak, for a start,' said Roskill.

'Razzak?' Shapiro frowned. 'You don't mean to tell me that old Razzak's a suspect? I doubt whether he knows Llewelyn from the Earl of Snowdon. He's a soldier, not a terrorist, any– '

'Plenty of soldiers have changed their jobs, Colonel Shapiro. Like you, for instance.'

'Huh! Like you too, Squadron Leader,' Shapiro murmured ironically. 'And I don't doubt we shall both live to regret it. But Razzak's been in Paris – is that supposed to be a suspicious alibi?'

What was downright odd, if not suspicious, was that these two old enemies each discounted the other's guilt. At the very least, and whatever they might think privately, they ought to be doing each other as much mischief as they could.

'Being in Paris doesn't clear him any more than being on the spot makes an assassin of you, Colonel. You've both got dogs to do your barking for you.'

'And you think Razzak may have loosed his dogs?'

'I think I don't share your low opinion of Colonel Razzak. And I don't really know what his style is.'

Shapiro waved his hand impatiently. 'Style – I tell you, that's a lot of balls. I know the man, and I tell you he's not – ' He broke off dummy2

abruptly as the waiter materialised in front of them, beer jug at the ready. Roskill reached forward to cover his empty tankard with his hand, but this time the man spoke instead of pouring.

'Phone in the back room for you, Jake,' he said familiarly, indicating the back room's direction with his thumb. 'Urgent.'

'It's always bloody urgent,' Shapiro complained. 'Thanks, Shabby.

Look after mv friend.'

Before Roskill could protest, a slender stream of beer frothed into his tankard. Shapiro eased himself out from behind the table, but turned back towards him before he had taken two steps. He looked down at Roskill.

'You're always off target about Razzaik – and me. I don't have a low opinion of him at all. For a Gyppo he's quite a guy – he's quite a guy by any standard. You wait till I get back.'

Roskill watched him bulldoze across the room. Everyone seemed to know him and on his triumphal progress towards the back room he contrived to kiss the two prettiest girls along the way. They appeared to enjoy it, too.

The waiter smiled at Roskill and shook his head. 'That Jake – he's a bad man,' he confided happily. 'I am glad my girls are out of his reach, safe at home.'

He filled Shapiro's tankard – Roskill hadn't seen it being emptied, but empty again it undoubtedly was. 'Say – do you want something to eat? The egg and aubergine's special tonight– or the stuffed tomatoes, maybe? On the house, anything you want, yes?'

Roskill was torn between hunger and a faint queasiness deep down dummy2

which told him that he'd already drunk well but not too wisely on an empty stomach.

'Cottage cheese fritters – or if you're not really hungry, maybe a slice of honeycake?'

The mention of fritters and honeycake reinforced the shrinking feeling. In any case, if he started to eat now the night would develop into a carouse, and the morning after would be a purgatory when the clearest of heads was required.

He shook his head with feigned regret. 'It's tempting, but I've already eaten.'

'Well, if you change your mind, just sing out.'

Roskill stared down into his beer and tried to concentrate. For whatever reason, Razzak and Shapiro were each concerned to make no trouble for the other. And Razzak had even offered to get him information about Hassan. So perhaps Shapiro could be prevailed on to make an even belter offer.

And yet Hassan, who was everyone's bogeyman, was still a completely nebulous figure. There was absolutely nothing concrete so far to link him with East Firle, and consequently with Alan Jenkins. It was Razzak and Shapiro who were surely involved there

— the bastards were involved somehow, no matter how clean the bills of health they advertised for each other.

He nodded his head angrily. As usual, everyone was giving everyone else the runaround, and he couldn't even think straight any more with the liquor and the noise and the heat.

He picked up his tankard, glanced around to make sure no one was dummy2

watching him, and then quickly tipped most of it among the bright plastic blossoms arranged in a long display box on his right. If it was as good as Shapiro said it might bring them to life; at least it couldn't do them any harm.

He was only just in time, for a moment later the Israeli loomed up in front of him just as he was ostentatiously draining the last swallow of beer.

'Sorry about that, Roskill – my date got hung up at the hospital.

She loves her work far more than me, that's the trouble. But she'll be here any minute now.'

'Then perhaps I'd better be pushing along.'

'Before you've got what you wanted? Man – don't be silly. Besides, Rosie Halprin could tell you a thing or two about Muhammed Razzak. After we took him apart she put him together again, back in '67.'

'Put him together again?'

Shapiro drank, lowered his tankard and carefully wiped the froth from his moustache.

'How much do you know about Razzak's little war?'

'He was a hero of some sort, wasn't he?'

Shapiro shook his head. 'Not the half of it, friend – not the half of it. He was a special sort of old-fashioned, cold-blooded hero.'

He stared out into the smokey room, and then back at Roskill.

'You know what happened in Sinai? The first two days were the fighting days – the third day was Grand National Day. There was dummy2

nothing wrong with their defences, they had perfectly good Russian linear system positions. It's just that the Russians would have smacked us with counter-attacks once we were through the forward lines, and the Egyptians didn't do a damn thing – there weren't more than a couple of attempts at counter-attacking.

'On the second night I was picking up strays – tanks we reckoned we could put right quickly enough for the other fronts if we needed them. It was all over bar the shouting, and the odd mishap.

'And then I got a call that someone was hitting the junction of the roads from Abu Agheila and Bir Lahfan, just south-west of Jebl Libni – there'd been some sniping there earlier, but this was kind of determined. And inconvement, because next day we were going flat out for the Canal, as I say.

'But I had a few patched-up Centurions with me, and we picked up a few more en route, and we sorted it out. And that's where we took Razzak.'

'You mean Razzak organised a counter-attack?'

'It wasn't much of a counter-attack – more a forlorn hope. He'd scratched together a handful of T 54s and one or two S.U. 100 tank-destroyers, and there were some infantry and engineers on the run from Abu Agheila he'd cobbled together. But that wasn't the point

– the point was how he'd got there.'

Shapiro paused. 'I pieced some of it together from a talkative lieutenant we picked up with Razzak, and some of it afterwards.

It's quite a story – quite a story...'

'I thought Razzak commanded a tank unit on the frontier?' That had dummy2

been what Audley had said.

'He did – in their 7th Division forward area. But he wasn't there when we attacked on June 5th – he was in Cairo having his balls chewed up for defeatism!'

The Israeli showed his teeth in a wolfish smile that had no honour in it.

'Razzak's no fool. He reckoned we were coming, and he sent back a report saying that they ought to pull all their armour back from the frontier and dig in deep round the places that really mattered –

like El Arish. Leave the Gaza strip to fend for itself, he said apparently.

'Hell – I'm not going to give you a lecture on his tactics! We would have licked 'em anyway, but it wouldn't have been a walkover and we'd have lost even more good men than we did.

'But as it was, they didn't like it and they had him back in Cairo on the Sunday to tell him so in no uncertain terms. And he got up early on the Monday morning to hitch a lift in a light plane back to one of the forward strips. Not quite early enough, though – the field he was taking off from was one of our priority strikes.

'So the poor old sod was grounded two hundred miles from where his command was getting pasted — the sort of situation every commander has nightmares about!'

'But he did get to his regiment?'

Shapiro shook his head. 'His unit was mincemeat before he even reached the desert, and I don't doubt he knew it would be. No –

when most of the regimental brass was heading for home, old dummy2

Razzak was just steering for the sound of the guns. He knew damn well what would be happening – he knew what our air strike meant because he'd seen it himself. He set out simply to try to hold us up somewhere so that some of the army could escape as it did in '56 –

he didn't reckon anyone else was going to do it.

'God alone knows how he managed to get as far as he did. A Fouga strafed his staff car sometime that first day and creased him a bit –

but he just went on walking until he met another car coming in the opposite direction, making a break for it. He took that one at gunpoint – left a brigadier standing by the roadside in the middle of nowhere. And when that ran out of fuel he just went on walking.'

A special sort of old-fashioned hero indeed – the paunchy, pock-marked sort, obstinately trying to salvage something from the ruin achieved by the fools and the loudmouths...

'He never had a chance, of course. If he'd reached the front that first night he might have knocked some sense into someone, but I doubt it. The second night was too late – it was just a gesture, that's all. But it was quite a gesture: you know what he said when we finally picked him up? – which was when he'd fired off everything he'd got, I can tell you.'

'What did he say?'

'He'd been hit several times, actually. He was a real mess by then.

But he just lifted up his hand and said – in English, too, he said it –

he said: "You've shot my bloody trigger finger off – look what you've done!" Cheeky old sod!'

Shapiro wagged his own trigger finger at Roskill. 'And that's the dummy2

man you're suggesting had a bomb plugged into Llewelyn's car!

Friend, I'm not a great admirer of Egyptians in general, but I'd stake my last shekel that Razzak wasn't in on it. That handsome side-kick of his – Majid, is it? – he might do it if he had the knowhow. But not Razzak. If that's what you mean by style, then it's not his style. With him it'd be face-to-face or not at all.'

He spoke with a sudden passion which was not really out of character; some of the biggest comedians became like this the moment they stopped playing to the gallery, and there had never been any question that Shapiro was a hard man under his clowning.

What was out of character was not only that he was going out of his way to give Razzak an unsolicited testimonial, but that he now seemed inclined towards Audley's contention that there could be any recognisable style in killing.

But Razzak's self-sacrificial tactics in Sinai certainly didn't prove that he was capable of removing opponents by any available means. It almost suggested the very opposite – that under the layers of fat lay an iron determination unshaken by odds, difficulty and danger.

'Do you get my point?' said Shapiro.

'I'm not at all sure that I do, no,' said Roskill slowly. Perhaps it was the opposite point the crafty sod intended – to damn the Egyptian with praise. 'But I think your admiration for Colonel Razzak is –

touching– to say the least.'

Shapiro grimaced. 'Ah! The authentic supercilious voice of England – the lesser breeds shall not show unfitting qualities of dummy2

sportsmanship towards each other! I do beg your pardon. Squadron Leader. But it isn't simply admiration, I assure you. I know Razzak, that's all I was attempting to show in my clumsy way. I don't underrate him, but I know how his mind works. That was what you wanted to know, wasn't it?'

'You think we should look elsewhere?'

'I'm quite sure you'd be wasting your time on Razzak.' Shapiro gazed at Roskill quizzically. 'Does it surprise you – my advice?'

Roskill nodded. 'It does rather.'

'I ought to be stirring things up, eh?' Shapiro grinned, 'If I thought he could be properly saddled with it I might be tempted. Then again, I might not – there's no real percentage in playing "Wolf, Wolf". It weaken's one's credibility.'

He leaned forward towards Roskill. 'You're wondering why I'm being so nice to old Razzak – and helpful to you. But to be honest I wouldn't cross the road for either of you, any more than you'd cross it for me. But look at it from my point of view, friend – I know I didn't do it and I don't reckon Razzak did. But I know some dim-witted Arab did, and it'd suit me fine to see you nail him – and if it suits me I'll see he gets plenty of publicity when the time comes.'

'Not with a D Notice, you won't.'

'D Notice?' Shapiro blew a derisive raspberry. 'No D Notices in the States – or in Europe. They lap up D Notices, in fact – makes 'em see the fire under the smoke. And with my contacts in the Commons I'll make your D Notice look pretty sick, too. If you get your man I just can't lose – that's the way I see it.'

dummy2

That was the way Roskill was seeing it too – and seeing it very clearly. The newspapers had got very fair mileage out of the bomb explosion at the Zim office in Regent Street and the Marks and Spencer's fires the year before – and even from the crazy plan to kidnap Clore and Sieff. And the air liner bombs had been a far greater disaster for the Arab cause. But an act of terrorism directed against a foreign, non-Jewish Government official would unite official opinion against the Arab cause more surely than any of these crimes.

Except that the killers hadn't been after Llewelyn at all; he kept almost forgetting what only he and Audley – and the killers –

knew: that this was no deliberate act of misconceived policy, but something much simpler – the hurried elimination of a witness.

But a witness to what?

He met Shapiro's eyes. The agonising thing was that even if the man didn't know who the killers were, he might very well know why they had acted. And that was the one question that couldn't yet be asked of him.

Shapiro evidently misunderstood his expression; he shook his head sadly.

'I'm sorry you had to lose a good man to give me this on a plate, Roskill. It's a bloody waste, that's what it is – like this whole rotten situation we're in. Nobody gains, not us and not the Egyptians, and not those poor devils in the camps across the Jordan.'

'Only the Russians.'

'Them?' Shapiro waved a hand. 'Not them either – you wait and dummy2

see. The Arabs hate their guts.'

That was what Audley was always saying. In the long run meddlers in the Middle East only found trouble as the reward for their pains.

'So Razzak says you're innocent, and you say Razzak's whiter than snow,' said Roskill softly. 'But if not either of you, then who?'

'Does old Razzak say that? That's white of him!' Shapiro brushed his moustache thoughtfully. 'Well, I would say the only good reason for knocking off Llewelyn would be if he was the kingpin of the cease-fire negotiations – which he most certainly isn't. But of course he may think he is, in which case someone may believe him ... so we want someone dotty enough to believe it and fanatic enough to kill...'

'With T.P.D.X.'

'Indeed?' Shapiro raised his eyebrows. 'Then we want someone who knows his way round explosives too.'

'It's as tricky as that, is it?'

'Not tricky – just powerful. If you only lost one man, then they only used a very little of it. A beginner would have used too much and blown up the whole block.' He began to count off his fingers.

'Not official Fatah – they're down on foreign jobs after the last mess-up. Not Saiqa – their London man's hot on good public relations at the moment.' He stopped, frowning. 'Of course they could have hired some freelance white talent – there's enough money floating around to tempt some of the bad hats. They wouldn't like doing it, any of the groups. It would make 'em feel dummy2

reactionary and inadequate. But for a once-only job they might stretch a point. . .' He stopped again, gazing into space. 'On the whole I don't think so, though. If it ever leaked out there'd be tremendous loss of face. Besides, with all the training Moscow's been giving, there must be plenty of them around who know how to handle the stuff ... So where does that get us?'

He looked at Roskill. 'There's the Chinese-orientated wing of the P.

F.L.P. that's never been brought into the fold. But they wouldn't know about Llewelyn, and if they did they probably wouldn't be interested in him. So not them either, I reckon.' He grinned. 'Don't rush me, though. We'll get ourselves a short list in the end, never fear.'

If he was going to work his way painstakingly through the possibilities it might be hours before he reached the vital one, and he might never reach it at all. There was no real point in prolonging this process of elimination, anyway.

How about Hassan?'

Shapiro looked at him quickly, like a teacher faced, with a suspiciously sharp question.

Then he nodded to himself slowly — the teacher smugly satisfied that he had seen right through the question and the questioner to the instigators.

'So that's what it's all about, then!' he murmured, still more to himself than to Roskill. 'Hassan's really got off the ground at last!'

He whistled softly. 'That's a thought to conjure with, and no mistake. We shall all have to fasten our safety belts now, shan't dummy2

we?'

'You know about Hassan?'

'Know about him? My friend, until you just mentioned him I hoped he was only a nasty rumour. But if you British are worried about him, then I'm worried about him too!'

'What do you know about him?'

'Very little. I tell you, I thought he was only a crazy rumour,'

Shapiro spread his hands.

'We don't think he is.'

'Indeed?' The Israeli looked directly into Roskill's eyes. 'Well, in that case I should move very carefully, Squadron Leader. Very carefully and slowly. What did Razzak have to say about him?'

'He said very much the same thing, Colonel Shapiro.'

'Then for once I agree with him. He's giving you good advice.'

One thing was certain now: neither Razzak nor Shapiro wanted trouble. And as the threat of trouble had moved the Egyptian to offer a deal, it might serve equally well to get something out of the Israeli...

'That's one thing we can't do, I'm afraid. This time we're not going to take things lying down.' Roskill fumbled for the right formula.

'Llewelyn may not be as important as he thinks he is, but he still pulls a lot of weight. So if you can't give me a line on Hassan, we're going to have to take this city apart hunting for him.'

He carefully kept his voice casual. Even as it was it sounded bloody thin – all Shapiro had to do was to tell him to go ahead and dummy2

do his worst. The Israelis had nothing to lose – and the proof of that sat across the table: while Razzak had been seeking him out, Shapiro had been boozing contentedly!

The Israeli sat silent for a moment, doodling with a fingernail on the tablecloth. Finally he looked up again at Roskill, a conspiratorial glint in his eye.

'Very well... then if you want to play it the hard way I'll tell you what I'd do if I were you' – the finger wagged at Roskill – 'I'd have a word with David Audley, that's what I'd do.'

' David!' Roskill had no need to feign surprise. 'But David isn't even in the Middle East section now.'

'You don't need to tell me that!' Shapiro gave a short, bitter laugh.

'But in or out, he's still the best man you've got – and you're a friend of his. He's not in quarantine, is he?'

Roskill frowned. The best man – maybe; but this hadn't been in the best man's calculations!

'Look, Roskill' – the finger pointed at him like a pistol – 'you don't want to go at this half-arsed. You need someone who can calculate the angles. You go to David, and tell him I sent you. Tell him about Hassan – and Llewelyn. And tell him that what's scaring the pants off everyone is the Alamut List.'

'The Alamut List?'

Shapiro nodded. 'Alamut. He'll know exactly what it means when he hears it – in fact, he'll probably know better than any of us!'

dummy2

X

EAST FIRLE WAS its eternal, unquestioning self, tucked comfortably in the shadow of Beacon Hill.

As Roskill steered the hired MG carefully round its blind corner he felt unreality pressing in on him. It was impossible to relate feuding Arabs and Jews to privet hedges and japonica; outside the pub only four years since – a lifetime's four years – he had sat with Harry and an old man who had spent his working life making waggon wheels. They had talked for an hour about the war, and it had been fifteen minutes before he had realised that the war the wheelwright was remembering was the Kaiser's, not Hitler's.

It might just as well have been Napoleon's, when the old chap's grandfather had probably done his duty with the other beacon watchers on the hill, serving his turn beside the great pile of furze and pitch and damp hay, waiting for the French as other lads had once waited for the Spaniards and the Normans and God knows how many other invaders down the ages. The past still ran deep and strong in East Firle; it was the present that was blurred.

Unchanged, it was all unchanged. Even the immense wooden gates were still immovably open for him at the bottom of the Old Vicarage drive, decrepit, but too expensive to replace four years ago and now far beyond a widow's pension. The tattered white paint had flaked a bit more perhaps, and the straggling lilac thicket behind had grown wilder. But it was the same old place exactly, run down yet welcoming.

dummy2

The neat electric button on the front door buzzed confidently, though. That would be some of Alan's work; in the old days the house had always been full of his electrical enthusiasm, from shaving points in unlikely places to a complete internal telephone system, all beautifully installed – to the chagrin of visiting electricity board experts.

'Who is it?'

The disembodied voice caught him by surprise, coming from just above his head.

'Speak into the mike above you,' said the voice – a young female voice, apparently rather weary of explaining to idiot callers how they could communicate with her.

Roskill stared up at the apparatus. More of Alan's work. It was skilfully done, too. Made to last – and it would probably outlive the family's tenure of the house, to become a curiosity for future occupants: Alan's memorial.

'Speak into the mike over your head,' the young voice commanded him sharply. 'Who is it, please?'

'It's Hugh Roskill,' he projected upwards.

'Hugh Roskill,' repeated the voice, perplexed. 'Hugh Rosk – Uncle Hugh! Good Lord – come on in, Hugh! The door's open and I'm coming down.'

'Uncle Hugh' could only mean that it was the baby of the family, the unprogrammed late addition that had always mooned around in the background, clad in the hideous uniform of the English schoolgirl and hero-worshipping the godlike Harry from afar. Poor dummy2

kid, the last four years had taken Harry and her father from her, and now Alan too.

He pushed open the door and walked hesitantly into the hall. It was bigger and barer than he had remembered, with no clutter of shoes and gumboots on the red polished tiles, carelessly hung coats and school scarves on the row of wooden pegs.

That was only to be expected, though: there were fewer wearers now, and those who were left were older and tidier. Only to be expected, but saddening. It was as though the house was dying round its occupants, and he, the killer, was returning to the scene of his crime.

'Hugh? It is Hugh, isn't it! I hardly recognised you in that beard – I didn't know the R.A.F. allowed that sort of thing.'

Gone the school uniform and the pony tail; instead a shockingly disreputable shirt and trousers and the long straight hair. Harry's little sister had become indistinguishable from the millions of nubile teenagers who had sprung up like buttercups and daisies in the last decade.

'I don't fly these days, so they don't really mind. Sorry to disappoint you, Penelope.'

'But it doesn't – it doesn't at all! I think it looks madly cinquecento and sexy.'

The beard, thought Roskill grimly, would have to come off, and the sooner, the better. It had never occurred to him that little girls would find it sexy.

Penelope looked at him. 'I suppose you've come down about Alan,'

dummy2

she said. There was neither grief nor curiosity in her tone. It was a simple statement of fact.

'Something of the sort,' he replied gently.

'Well, Mother's gone to Lewes to shop, but his room's open and you can poke around it if you like. I don't mind.'

'Why should I want to poke around his room?'

She tossed the hair out of her eyes. 'Well, it was all hush-hush, what he was doing – bugging people with his electronic things, I suppose. So we've been expecting someone to come down and sort out his what's-its.' She regarded him with a trace of truculence.

'Now that you don't fly, do you bug people too?'

It was the rebel generation, of course, and hardly to be wondered at. But in this house it was surprising somehow, nevertheless; and there would have been a pretty tug-of-war in her loyalties if Harry had been still alive.

'I don't bug anybody. Navigation's my line – radar and that type of thing,' he said neutrally. It wasn't the conversation for which he'd mentally prepared himself, and it made the sympathy on his tongue taste more than ever like hypocrisy. 'I'm sorry about Alan, Penelope. It was rotten luck.'

'Yes, it was.' She paused. 'Or I suppose it was, because; they didn't tell us much about it, except that there was this explosion in the laboratory where he was working. Do you know what happened? Is that why you're here – to tell Mother all the ghoulish details?'

'I just happened to be passing by, actually. I don't know anything about the explosion.'

dummy2

'Oh.' The flicker of interest faded. 'Well, Mother won't be back for a couple of hours. She may not even be back for lunch if she meets up with anyone. Aunt Mary's in, naturally – you can go up and see her if you like.'

Aunt Mary was in, naturally. Always in, or at least no further than her wheelchair could go. But it was nevertheless Aunt Mary he had come to see, for she of all people saw almost everything and heard in the end what she had not seen. If there had been anything to see or hear around Firle that day, Aunt Mary was as good a bet as any for the information.

'I'll do that. I'd like to see her again.'

'Okay then – just go straight up. She's in the end room, the usual one.' She turned on her heel towards the kitchen. 'I'm on lunch duty today, so I won't come with you. But you can have a bite with us if you like.'

'I'll have to get on my way soon.'

'Suit yourself.'

She left him standing.

The room at the end – that had been Mary's ever since she had finally surrendered to the wheelchair, It was the best room in the house and the whole family had united to force her to accept it.

They had united, too, to overcome its one disadvantage, labouring through one long, hot summer to build a miniature lift from the first floor to the ground floor. Not that there had been any shortage of volunteers; relays of guests and neighbours had willingly lent muscle-power and technical assistance – fifteen courses of the dummy2

brickwork were Roskill's own: for everyone who knew Mary it had been a sad labour of love.

So the room had become her base rather than her prison, catching the sun the whole day to warm her and giving her a great sweep of landscape as well as the curve of the downland on which to focus the German naval telescope her father had brought back from the Zeebrugge raid.

If she had seen anything on that...

'It's Hugh!' She was awaiting him, already facing the door; she would have heard the distant murmur of voices and no visitor to the Old Vicarage ever left without visiting the end room.

He had forgotten how beautiful she was. There had been some old general – he had read a book about him way back – of whom it was said 'he made old age beautiful', and the same was true of Mary.

Except that sixty years was not old and it was the crippling arthritis and the pain which had aged her, though without tarnishing that beauty. Isobel would age like that, exactly.

She held out her hands to him. 'It's been such a long time, Hugh –

far too long. We've missed you.'

It wasn't a complaint; somehow it implied that the fault was hers, not his, and that she wanted to make it up.

'Mary...' He took the cold, twisted binds.

'It is good to see you, Hugh!'

Her unashamed pleasure cut deep into him. This was the darkest treachery: dearest Mary, I haven't come here to see your eyes light dummy2

up. I've come to ask you what they saw up there on the hill. Did you see anything, Mary? Did you? And did Alan tell you anything?

'It's good to see you too, Mary darling.'

The truth, but what an empty, guilty truth it was!

'I hadn't the heart to come after Harry was killed,' he heard his voice say in the distance. 'I think – I somehow felt I was to blame.

It ought to have been me that time.'

'What a very silly thing to think!' She underlined the word 'silly'; for Mary silliness was the venial sin and only wickedness carried a heavy penance. 'And Harry would be the first to tell you so. You were each promoted, and you weren't to blame for that.'

'It wasn't quite as simple as that, Mary.' He could hear himself still, as though he was listening to a tape. 'I didn't take that promotion because I really wanted it – I took it because I was losing my nerve. I could feel it running out of my boots every time I flew.'

It sounded strange, blurted out just like that, unmasked, the thing he'd kept hidden from everyone but Isobel. And he'd never intended to share it with anyone else, either. Yet telling it to Mary now seemed perfectly natural – it was the curious effect Mary's charisma had on everyone, from the milkman to the vicar. She had never sought confidences, they simply tumbled out in her presence.

Perhaps that was really why he had never returned to East Firle: it was too easy to talk to Mary.

'Hugh! Now that's the silliest thing of all! If you felt like that, then you were right to do what you did, not wicked. If you hadn't you might have killed someone else as well as yourself. But you dummy2

certainly didn't harm Harry.'

The plain facts in black and white, sensible and honest. But that wasn't how the scales of guilt were balanced: guilt was always the might-have-been that could never be outweighed by good sense and honesty.

'Perhaps you're right, Mary.'

'Of course I'm right. And it's all past and done with now – there's no sense in remembering bad things in the past unless they help to make the present better. And I'm sure your present doesn't need any helping.' She patted his hand. 'Are you happy, Hugh? And are you doing a useful job?'

Roskill smiled at her. Happiness and usefulness had always been Mary's criteria for the good life.

'I sometimes wonder whether what I do is useful, Mary. But it's certainly interesting enough.'

She nodded, smiling at him. 'And are you married yet?'

It was on the edge of his tongue to tell her: no, Mary, not married.

But I love a married woman seven years older than I am, with two sons at boarding school and a rich busy husband who doesn't give a damn provided she doesn't rock the boat. And. what the hell am I to do about that, Mary? Just tell me what...

But one slipped confidence was enough for one day.

'No, Mary – not yet, anyway.' He smiled back at her. 'And you –

have you still got your finger on East Firle's pulse?'

'Shame on you, Hugh! You make me sound like a nosey old woman, and I hope I'm not that.'

dummy2

'Not at all. It's a sympathetic ear you have, not a nosey nose,' He looked at her affectionately. No elaborate lies now, for she would see through them. And no excuses either, for she deserved better than that; if he couldn't trust Mary's good sense, there was no sense left in the world. 'And I need your ear now, Mary.'

For a moment she regarded him in silence, searching his face. And there was sadness in her own face now as she identified his purpose: he was no longer her special visitor, redeeming a long absence, but a duty caller like the meter reader and the postman, just doing his job.

'It's Alan, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

She held his gaze steadily. 'What is it you want to know about him?'

'He spent his last leave here.' Roskill felt a muscle twitch in his cheek. If he'd ever wondered why one was never normally assigned to a job involving one's own friends and relatives, he had the answer in full now. 'I want – we want to know what he did and where he went. And who he met, and anything he said or saw out of the ordinary.'

He could see from the stricken look on her face that he'd bungled it ridiculously: he'd made Alan sound like Philby and Burgess and Maclean rolled into one, and the report of his accidental death transparently the officifd lie that it was. How could he have been so clumsy?

'Alan hadn't done anything wrong, Mary. But we think he may have had some information for us – something important. And we dummy2

don't know what it was. What I'm doing now, asking you these questions, is really just routine.'

'But it was important?'

'It might be very important.'

'Well, I'm surprised he didn't tell you.'

It was an oddly stupid thing for someone as sharp as Mary to say.

Unless the years really were beginning to tell.

'We never saw him, Mary. The accident was on Tuesday night. He wasn't due back on duty until the next day.'

'I mean in his letter to you.'

Letter?

'His letter?'

'Haven't you had it? He wrote it on Tuesday morning – he borrowed a five-penny stamp off me for it. It had to be a five-penny because he wanted it to go first class.'

'To me?'

'He said it was to you. Because in return for the stamp he said he'd send my love. I thought that was why you were here – because of his letter. The Ice Maiden posted it from Lewes, to make sure of the London post.'

'The Ice Maiden?'

'Sorry – it's the family name for Penny. And you haven't had it?

That's really too bad of them, even though it is usually reliable.'

A letter from Alan. So he had seen something, and knew he had seen it. Or at least wanted a second opinion on what he had seen –

dummy2

that made sense. For Alan had never sent him a letter before, but he was the most obvious contact for advice inside the department.

And a letter somewhere in the G.P.O. pipeline, since it had so far reached neither the department nor the flat...

Mary swivelled her chair round and lifted the old-fashioned phone beside her.

'I'll just make sure Penny really did send it,' she said. 'I know she did go to Lewes that morning. But – Penny? That letter of Alan's on Tuesday, the one he wanted to get the next London post – did you take it in?'

She watched Roskill over the receiver, listening. 'You didn't . . .

you did what?' She frowned in puzzlement. 'I think you'd better tell Hugh about that.'

Roskill took the receiver from her.

'Penelope – what did you do with that letter?'

'Haven't you got it? Well, you can blame Alan's friend if you haven't. He was the one who posted it.'

'Which friend was this?'

'Good Lord, I don't know. He turned up on the doorstep about twenty minutes after Alan disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke –

he wanted Alan urgently, but I told him Alan had cleared off.'

'You didn't tell him where Alan had gone?'

' I couldn't very well do that, because I didn't know – he'd just shifted his flat, but he went off in such a rush he forgot to tell us where his new one was. At least he didn't write it in the book, dummy2

anyway, the clot.'

'What did you tell him then?'

'I told him Alan would be back at work next day, so he'd have to make do with that.'

Yes, they'd made do with that all right...

'And the letter? You gave him the letter?'

'The letter? That was just lying on the hall table – I was going to take it in to Lewes for him. I said to him – to Alan's friend – that the new address might be in there, but he said it'd be a bit much to open it because it was marked "private".'

Roskill closed his eyes. The room seemed still and airless and close, but there was a chill down his back. She had killed him. She had killed him in innocence, but as surely as if she'd planted the T.

P.D.X. with her own hands.

'Hullo, Hugh – are you still there?'

He blinked. 'Yes, Penelope. So you gave it to him.'

'Well, he said we shouldn't open it. But he was going straight back to London and he'd post it there. So I gave it to him, of course. I suppose the clot's forgotten all about it. I'm sorry if it was important, but he seemed a sensible type.'

A sensible type of killer, certainly. And lucky too.

'What was he like?'

The friend – he was dishy. Dark hair and a super tan – very Mediterranean. But dressed like a bank clerk, all grey suit and striped shirt and cuff links, you know.'

dummy2

If it came to the pinch he could take her up to the gallery in Records, but the fellow might not even be in them, not if he was one of Hassan's men, and in any case was probably long gone by now.

More immediately, Penelope had turned their suspicions into fact.

And not only fact, for she had given the killers the solid motivation they had needed to take such risks and to plan so elaborately: they had known what Alan had seen and what he planned to do about it.

So they had moved to eliminate not a risk, but a certainty.

'It was an accident, was it?'

Mary was staring at him.

'An accident?'

'I'm not blind, Hugh. The look on your face a moment ago – you looked as though someone had read your death sentence. But it was Alan's, wasn't it – that letter the man took away – it was Alan's.'

The risk had been there from the start, that she would suspect there was more to Alan's death than mere accident the moment he started asking questions. But now she too had more than suspicion on which to work.

'Hugh. I know very well that Alan worked for some branch of security. I knew it because he never talked about his work, when he always told me about everything else. But I didn't know it was dangerous.' She looked at Roskill questioningly, almost pleadingly.

'I accept you can't tell me why – if that's your job, I do understand dummy2

it, Hugh. But at least you can tell me how he really died.'

He said softly, 'Does it matter, Mary?'

'It matters to me. Of all of them, Hugh, Alan was my special one.

Betty was ill when he was little, and I practically brought him up.'

She paused. 'I'm not bargaining – I'll tell you everything I know.

But I'd – I'd feel better if I knew that he died to some purpose, and not because of a silly mistake he made in his work.'

The rules said 'no'. The rules said he must always wear a double face and tell outsiders nothing more than was needed to make them co-operate. But the rules were not ends in themselves, just as the interest and security of the realm was not an end in itself.

So to Mary the rules must say 'yes', or go straight out of the window: her peace of mind was what it was all about.

'It wasn't an accident.' He put his hand over hers. 'It looked like an accident, but it wasn't. And I don't believe it had anything to do with his job, Mary. It wasn't a particularly dangerous job. But he saw something, or maybe heard something, while he was down here on leave, and he was killed before he could report it. And he didn't feel a thing – I promise you.' Mary remained silent for a moment.

'Thank you, Hugh,' she said at length. 'I'll never tell anyone what you've told me, not even Betty.' She drew a deep breath. 'And now you must ask me your questions – you want to know what Alan did on his leave.'

'I think it's just that Tuesday morning that matters – the day he left.

He left in a hurry, didn't he.'

dummy2

'In a frightful rush,' Mary nodded. 'He was going to go after lunch, but when he came back from the Beacon he'd changed his mind.'

'He'd walked up to the Beacon?'

'He rode up on Sammy – Penny's horse. She's half his horse, actually. She was, I mean ... He paid half Sammy's bills on condition he had first choice during his leaves. He always used to take Sammy out on the hills first thing in the morning. Then he used to spend the rest of the day pottering. He was fixing up the two-way speaker in the porch this leave, so that I could answer the door from here when the family was out. I don't believe he went out anywhere else during the whole time he was here.'

Like Harry, Alan had always used home for relaxation and family life: his London existence had been frenetic, and Firle was where he recharged his batteries.

'He rode up to the Beacon, then.'

'He walked Sammy up the steeper parts – he liked to get to the top as quickly as possible. I used to watch him through the telescope –

he'd wave when he reached the top.'

'And you watched him on Tuesday.'

She looked at him in despair. 'Hugh, I didn't – not on Tuesday. I had a bad day on Tuesday — I try not to take the pills the doctor gives me. They make me whoozy and I want to keep them for when I shall really need them. But I just had to take one that morning, and I didn't feel up to anything after that. I'm sorry.'

Roskill couldn't hide his disappointment. It had been a black Tuesday indeed – not only because Alan had chosen to ride to the dummy2

Beacon at that fatal moment in time, but because twice thereafter the chance of learning what he had seen had been lost.

'But you saw him when he came down.'

'Only very briefly. I was resting and he only came to borrow a stamp, and then to say goodbye. He was always very considerate when I had a bad day, and I'm not very good company then.'

'Did he say anything?'

'He said he was writing to you. He was excited, Hugh – he certainly wasn't frightened. I do remember asking him why he wasn't staying for lunch, because Penny was cutting the asparagus for him. But he just said "The sooner I'm off, the better" – I think he said.'

Like Harry, Alan had a broad streak of ambition in him. And if he'd had some idea of what he'd seen, he might also have had an inkling that it might be dangerous as well as important. And that would account for the letter, and for his leaving it to Penelope to post, as well as for the quick getaway. It might even account for his not leaving his new address.

But it all added up to nothing new, except that what he'd seen had been on the Beacon itself – and that the only lead lay in Penelope's identifying the dishy young man.

He stared forlornly past the shining brass case of the telescope to the hillside beyond. But looking wouldn't turn the clock back four days to betray what had taken place up there, six hundred feet above him.

Yet the hill drew him. It was hard to imagine that Alan had dummy2

unwittingly seen his death up there, if that had been how it had been. There was nothing up there but the birds wheeling and diving over the grassland. On warm, windy days the gliders joined the birds, and in summer there were wild strawberries – he'd picked them with Harry and had brought them down here to this very room.

He got up and began to move towards the window.

'Don't go near the window, Hugh,' Mary said suddenly. 'There's something else.'

Roskill froze in mid-step.

'Go directly behind the telescope,' Mary ordered him. 'Now look through it at the Beacon.'

Obediently he focused the telescope on the top of the hill. It was a splendid instrument, heavy yet moving smoothly and freely on its mounting. The hilltop came up sharply, every feature of it clear even though no direct sunlight came through the grey clouds above it. But there was nothing to see on it except the grass shivering in the wind.

'Come right along the skyline, away from the long barrow towards the tumuli – the tussock of grass on the right at the base of it. Do you see anything?'

As a fire order it left something to be desired: there were a whole series of mounds up there, most of which were not visible at this angle, or at least not visible to Roskill's eye except as slight irregularities in the grassland. Mary knew this landscape like the back of her hand and she could –

dummy2

But there was something up there, snug down beside the trailing edge of one hump. And not something, but someone.

'Have you got him? Deerstalker hat and binoculars. I spotted him more than an hour ago, just after breakfast – it was the flash of the binoculars that gave him away. A bird-watcher I took him for.'

A bird-watcher? Well, there were birds up there right enough.

'And I thought what a very silly bird-watcher he was.'

'Silly?' Roskill turned his eye away from the hilltop towards her.

'He can't see much ground from there. The hill falls away too quickly in front of him. And even if he could see enough ground, the Beacon is the last place I'd go to bird-watch. Far too many people go tramping over it – quite enough to spoil it for him, anyway.'

Roskill squinted through the eye-piece again. Deerstalker and binoculars, and the suggestion of a dark jacket.

He turned back to Mary again. 'You think he's watching us?'

'I thought he was watching this house an hour ago, but I thought I was imagining it because I couldn't think why anyone would want to do that. But now – ' she trailed off. 'Now I don't know what to think.'

No one had tailed him to Firle – the MG had seen to that. So whoever was watching up there had to be directly connected with Alan's death – and that meant Hassan.

He stared back up the hillside longingly now. So near, and yet so impossibly far! Ensconced up there, on the highest point for miles around and with tracks leading away in at least three directions, the dummy2

bastard was laughing. He could see from afar who was coming, and could stay or go as he chose.

He shook his head in a mixture of resignation and frustration. It wasn't as if he could call up assistance, even if there was time to do so: the Firle trip was strictly off the record.

'You'd like to know who it is, wouldn't you, Hugh? To see whether it really is a bird-watcher?'

'I'd have to be a little bird to do it.'

'Not necessarily.'

Mary met his gaze, so she wasn't kidding him, evidently. Again he looked up towards the skyline. She could hardly envisage a breakneck cavalry charge by car; it wasn't that the MG couldn't do it – the West Firle approach was easy even for sedate family saloons, and the mile of trackway along the ridge was perfectly usable if the farm gates were unlocked. But he'd never get up close unnoticed: the watcher would have spotted the MG already.

'How, Mary?'

'Go straight up, of course – the way Alan used to.'

The way Alan used to?

She swivelled the chair and propelled it into the shadow to the left of the curtains.

'Come here, Hugh, by my shoulder ... That man up there, he thinks he can see everything, but he can't – he can't see what's right in front of his nose. Look – '

Roskill followed her pointing finger. Five, six years she'd been a dummy2

prisoner of the chair, and for the years before that increasingly handicapped. But she was born and bred to this countryside, had walked and ridden it before he was born and knew every inch of it.

' – You go out of this house at the back past the stables and into the spinney. Then the hedge beyond is in full leaf now, and it hasn't been laid for years. After that there's the patch of woodland, and you come out just there.' The finger stabbed decisively.

'And from where he is he can't possibly see you beyond those last trees, because the slope of the hillside in front of him blocks the view. There's the little path up the side of the hill there, that Alan used – it's steep, but Alan used to lead Sammy along it, under that bit of furze. So you'll come up away on his left.'

She was right. If he followed that little worn path he'd end up on the very shoulder of the ridge, little more than a hundred yards, maybe only fifty, from the deerstalker hat.

Except that he didn't fancy even those last few yards if the watcher really wasn't watching birds. He'd be as obvious and out-of-place –

and as vulnerable – as a fox in the stubble. The very suddenness of his appearance would make his position doubly dangerous: it might panic the man into doing something frightful.

But Mary was looking at him fiercely, and he could hardly admit just how cold his feet were.

'You don't think it would work?'

'It'd work all right – up to that last hundred yards, And then he'd spot me.' He shook his head. 'I don't want to run him to earth or to scare him off – I just want to get a good look at him.'

dummy2

'And he'd recognise you?'

'I'm afraid he would.'

The truth was he was altogether too distinctive in his neat grey city suit to go tramping over the hill, apart from the damned beard.

They'd tagged him at the Ryle reception, and by now the word would be out on him for sure. Even if by any remote stroke of luck it hadn't reached the bird-watcher, those field-glasses would have caught him walking from the car to the house. He'd been in full view of the hill there – he'd even paused to look up at it: just to make the job easier.

Mary sighed, and then gave him a small understanding smile.

'You're quite right, Hugh – I'm afraid I'm just a silly old woman who watches too much television. From this chair everything always seems to look either too easy or too difficult. He's probably just a bad bird-watcher anyway.'

Her understanding only made it worse. He rubbed the beard, scowling at himself in the gilt mirror oa the wall behind her. He'd secretly been rather proud of it, at least until Penelope had found it sexy. Now, the sooner it came off, the better.

The sooner it came off!

He stared at the reflection in the mirror intently, no longer scowling. The beard and the suit were mere trappings, not integral parts.

'Mary – is there a razor in the house?'

She looked up at him in surprise. 'There's an old cut-throat of Charlie's – ?'

dummy2

'And some old clothes of Alan's? And a rucksack or something like that?'

But now she was already ahead of him. 'And Charlie's old hat and an old pair of spectacles too, with clear glass in them.' She paused for breath. 'But don't take a rucksack, Hugh – take Sammy!'

Roskill frowned at her, perplexed for a moment.

'The horse, Hugh – nobody would look twice at a horseman on the hill. There've been riders up there already this morning. They went straight by him.'

He looked at her doubtfully. He'd not been in a saddle since heaven only knew when. But if he could stay on top it would double his mobility, never mind his credibility...

'I'm not much of a horseman, Mary.'

'Sammy's not much of a horse.'

He couldn't disappoint her now, and – damn it – he dlidn't want to.

Besides, it might actually work. 'Hell, Mary – I'll give it a try,' he said.

XI

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER he wasn't quite so sure the horse had been such a good idea.

She was a docile enough creature, undeniably, easy to ride on the flat and tolerably sure-footed on the hillside. But however many dummy2

times she had been up the sheep-track – he supposed it was a sheep-track, though there was no sign of any sheep – she hadn't learned to traverse it willingly: he was already sweating with the effort of dragging her up and he suspected that only the near impossibility of turning round kept the beast going. In fact there was now no turning back for cither of them – they were saddled with each other.

He scanned the escarpment above him for movement. At least Mary's memory of the lie of the land had been exact, and only the skyline of bare tuft was above him.

And one thing was established anyway – he felt it in his bones: this had been how Alan had unwittingly created the necessity for his own death. He had ridden out innocently for his early morning exercise using his favourite route, and had set up his own appointment in Samarra.

It was a thought that turned the sweat on his back clammy.

Moreover, the deerstalker might even be the man Alan had seen, in which case he might recognise the horse, even if he failed to recognise her new rider.

He looked critically at the mare. No, that was hardly possible: Sammy – it was an unlovely diminutive for Samantha – was a most anonymous horse, a very common, brown, ordinary horse without a single distinguishing mark.

He toiled on up, past the wire fence with its strands conveniently looped for easy passage — Sammy knew the drill of old and waited patiently while he refixed them — and then on under the furze patch. Beyond it the going was easier and the skyline was still empty.

dummy2

He looked back down towards the village, to the house and to the window from which Mary was watching his every step. Far beyond it he could see an electric train racing silently towards Eastbourne, flashing sparks from its wheels. And beyond that a great blue-black column of rain and raincloud spreading slowly like the wrath of God across the miniaturised landscape.

The rain was five, maybe seven miles away – and how fast did rain travel?

He reached the end of the furze, the jumping off point and a suitable resting place for the horse. He could wait here for the rain to reach him, and then go on in with it, or go straight in the moment Mary gave him her signal.

He looked back towards the house again, and as he did so he saw the white bath towel flap over the window sill – that was the signal that Deerstalker was still in position.

Wait or go?

Roskill realised suddenly that he was very close to being frightened, and the longer he waited, the more frightened he'd get.

Go then!

He held the reins carefully in his left hand and using the advantage of the hill swung himself into the saddle. Sammy backed nervously, sensing her rider's fear, and for one brief, blind second of panic Roskill felt he was losing control of her.

He urged her forward and felt her gears engage. Up the last few yards on to ground that was only gently sloping, and turn — now walk, Sammy...

dummy2

The burial mound stood out against the grey sky – now trot, Sammy...

Jingling harness, horse snorting and spluttering, landscape jumping

– mustn't lose stirrups...

He approached the mound directly, uncertain until the last moment whether to veer to the left or the right of it. The right would be safer, as the man wouldn't get a direct look at him, but equally he wouldn't get a direct view either and the whole point of this crazy ride would be lost.

Left, then –

Sammy thumped stiff-legged past the burial mound, at the last moment turning slightly crab-wise against the hillside's slope and so giving him a perfect view of his quarry, deerstalker, field-glasses, open mouth and all.

And then, in a second of total confusion, he was past: and tugging savagely at the reins, fighting to stop Sammy from breaking into a canter which would take them all the way to Alfriston.

Jack Butler!

He was fifty yards on before he managed to turn the mare and quieten her to a walk. And by then Butler was no longer lying prone, but was sitting staring at him in the midst of a small pile of belongings, the wind riffling the pages of a foolscap notebook beside him.

Butler!

But if Jack was down here – up here – eyes glued to the Old dummy2

Vicarage, what price Audley's – and his own – so clever scheme to make a fool of Llewelyn? Damn it, it looked as though Llewelyn was making a fool of them...

He let Sammy amble back towards the mound at her own snail's pace, covering his doubts with a grin. Whatever the truth, this wasn't the time to admit anything incriminating.

'Hullo there, Jack,' he called out. His eye caught the cover of a book beside Butler's hand in the grass – a Golden Eagle, it looked like, perched on Tennyson's crag – at the very moment Butler plonked the notebook on it. 'Spotted any interesting birds?'

Butler knew about as much about birds as he knew about desalination, most likely.

'I shan't spot anything queerer than you today.' Butler rose stiffly to his feet. 'Where the devil did you spring from, Hugh. And looking like – ' words failed him ' – like that?'

Belatedly Roskill remembered he was wearing the plain glass spectacles, the relics of some East Firle amateur dramatic society's production, not to mention the dilapidated pork-pie hat. But he resisted the temptation to whip them off, which would only be to admit that he realised how comical he looked.

Except that Butler certainly wasn't laughing; if at the best of times that pale, freckled face rarely smiled, it was composed now in an expression of deadly seriousness.

'You don't expect me to go riding in my best suit, do you?' Roskill chided him.

'I don't expect you to go riding at all at a time like this. What are dummy2

you doing up here?'

'I was going to ask you the same question. Doesn't Fred trust me?

Or is it Llewelyn who gives the orders?'

Butler swept the deerstalker off his head and ran his hand through his short carroty hair. Then he looked up at Roskill, his eyes angry.

'Neither of them knows I'm here. And I shouldn't be here if I wasn't daft.' He shook his head bitterly. 'But I guessed you and Audley were up to something, and I'm afraid you're bigger fools than I am even.'

Roskill smiled. 'My dear Jack – some joker fixed my track rods last night. You don't need to tell me how to add two and two. Do you think I've forgotten what happened to Alan?'

'I think you're a fool to keep whatever it is you're doing to yourselves – you and Audley,' Butler said harshly.

'Maybe so. But then you've kept it to yourself too, apparently.'

'I said I was a fool. But then I'm not supposed to be in on this business any more – I was only brought in to make sure you two reached the briefing yesterday.'

'Then what exactly brings you to Firle?'

'David Audley did yesterday at the Queensway – he couldn't resist telling them to their faces, could he?' Butler's lips curled. 'And I remember how quiet you went when I told you about Maitland.'

'So you checked.'

Butler nodded. He wasn't the fastest man alive, but he was very, very sure. And if he'd checked, he'd not have missed anything.

dummy2

'Which still doesn't explain why you're here, Jack.'

Butler looked down at his highly polished boots, then slowly raised his eyes to meet Roskill's. 'To teach you that two and two can be made to equal minus one, lad, that's why. Do you know who you're up against? If you'd just get off that creature I might tell you something interesting.'

There were times when Butler's almost fatherly concern for him irritated Roskill unbearably. But also there were times when the man's caution paid off, and this could be one of them. Roskill disengaged his feet from the stirrups and slid awkwardly off Sammy. Over her back, away to the north-east, he saw the great dark rain column, which now blotted out half the scene below them.

'You'd better make it quick, Jack, or we're both going to get wet.'

Butler looked carefully round the naked hilltop, ignoring the rainclouds, before answering.

'I don't know why they asked me to the Queensway yesterday. Just to put you at ease, I suppose – as I said, my brief was just to hook you both, no more, no less,' Butler still wasn't apologising, merely stating facts. 'Only I got there a shade ahead of time.'

He watched Roskill. 'You can claim what you like for your electronic toys, Hugh – but there's nowt to beat the human ear.

Listen before you knock, that's what my old Dad always used to say!'

Butler's father had been a printer – a head printer, as Butler liked to remind people – in darkest Lancashire, Bolton or Blackburn.

Roskill had always suspected from the way Butler spoke of him, dummy2

half proud, half rueful, that the old man had considered his son's preference for the army instead of an apprenticeship the equivalent of a daughter's choice of prostitution rather than the mill.

'They were arguing,' said Butler, 'Llewelyn and Stocker were arguing over just how expendable you were. The Welshman said that Audley mustn't be risked, but you could be. And Stocker said you were one of Fred's kindergarten and there'd be the devil to pay if you were damaged.'

Butler had an exact memory as well as a good ear; if he said

'expendable', then that was the word Llewelyn had used. The bastards had discussed him as though he was a piece of fairly expensive equipment!

'And Llewelyn asked the Special Branch man how he rated the risk

– '

'How did he rate it?'

'He said if they were right about Audley he'd pretty soon find the right hole and then he'd put you down it like a ferret. Only you weren't a trained ferret and Hassan was no rabbit.'

'So I'm an untrained ferret now!'

Butler shook his head sadly. 'You're a bright lad, Hugh — with your weapons systems. But you're being used for something different this time.'

'They warned me, Jack – you were there when they did it. You're forgetting I'm supposed to go running back to them every time David blows his nose.'

'But you aren't, are you?'

dummy2

Roskill shrugged. 'It doesn't happen to suit me.'

'Aye – it doesn't suit you!' said Butler, scowling. 'Man, they've got Audley summed up properly, and you too, I'm sorry to say. He's a bloody genius at research, but when he has a job of his own to do he goes his own sweet way, and they know it. When they warned you they were just covering themselves with Sir Frederick, that's all.'

He paused for breath, running his hand through his hair again.

'Have they bothered you at all? Have they tried to get in touch with you?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'They bloody haven't, have they? I tell you, Hugh, they're just waiting for you two to get things really stirred up. And you'll do exactly just that, if I know you!'

'We haven't done anything exactly spectacular yet, you know, Jack,' Roskill protested mildly. It was odd – he'd never seen Jack to vehement, at least not since the cancellation of the South African cricket tour.

'Enough to get your track rods fixed.'

Roskill gazed at Butler, overwhelmed suddenly with curiosity.

'What's all this got to do with your sudden urge to come bird watching here?'

'I knew I could pick you up here as soon as I found out about Jenkins. It was the one place I was sure you'd turn up.'

'But why, Jack? It's not your affair any more – you ought to be home with your girls, or watching the cricket.'

Butler glowered at him. 'Aye, but somebody's got to watch your back for you. And in my book you don't send anyone out without dummy2

telling him the score...'

He clipped off the sentences abruptly, as though their implicit criticism of his superiors were against the grain of his character.

Roskill eyed him with astonishment: he'd always regarded Jack as a fundamentally simple man, who did his job and minded his business, sustained only by a rather old-fashioned patriotism, the three small female Butlers and the latest cricket scores. But now it looked as though his loyalties were rather more complex.

'Besides, if I want to go bird-watching in my own time – ' the hint of Lancashire broadened as Butler gestured to the darkening landscape '– I can watch where I bloody well please, and– '

He stopped suddenly, his freckled, hairy hand frozen in mid-sweep and his attention snatched away from Roskill by something which had caught his eye below them.

'Blue and white Cambridge saloon in the drive beside your car.

Isn't that – ?'

'One wing mirror?' Roskill cut in. 'And there'll be a patch of rust on the white strip, forward of the door?'

Butler lifted his field-glasses.

'Aye – it's Audley's car, isn't it!' Butler turned back to him. 'Did you expect him to come down here?'

They both knew well enough that Audley never strayed abroad on business from the department or his home if it could be avoided.

And in this instance Audley had even spelt it out: If I were spotted there it might give the game away.

'He'd only come here in an emergency. Jack.'

dummy2

'Likely there's an emergency, then. Or maybe he's not as thick as you are.'

'It's simpler than that,' said Roskill. 'Before I came down here I phoned him up – he wasn't in and I left a message with Faith.'

'A message?'

A big raindrop spattered on Roskill's cheek, rolling down to the corner of his mouth. He brushed it away.

'I told her to ask him what Alamut was.'

XII

'JAKE'S QUITE RIGHT,' said Audley. 'I probably do know more about Alamut than he does. But the Alamut List is something different.'

Roskill looked at Mary doubtfully. It was typical of David to shoot his mouth off in front of civilians; it wasn't so much lax security this time as that calculated and deliberate amateurishness of his –

the flouting of the rules to prove that he was a gentleman rather than a player. Except that this time David might not be wholly to blame – if Mary had crooked her little finger at him.

Audley caught his look and waved his hand airily.

'Miss Hunter and I have already had a talk, damn it – she already knows enough to ruin us, thanks to you.'

Mary's eyes rested on the big man approvingly, as though he had dummy2

already been compacted into her inner circle. So the charm had not been one-way, Roskill thought with a twinge of jealousy: when Audley put himself out, which wasn't often, he too had a way with him.

But having blabbed already himself, Roskill knew he was in no position to protest, even though he could sense Butler's disapproval. It would be interesting to see how long it took Mary to crack Butler's shell wide open too.

'Who is he, then?' Butler asked. 'Hassan?'

Audley shook his head. 'Let's get things in order first, Butler. I want to hear exactly how Hugh got on to him.'

Settled in the huge leather armchair, Audley was a good deal more relaxed now than he had been when Roskill had arrived. But then he had seen Butler through the telescope and had feared – as Roskill had done – that he'd been taken for a ride. The good news that they were still in business had rather taken the edge off the bad news that the business was nasty: he seemed to have expected that.

They listened in silence while Roskill gave them his edited account of the previous evening. The trick, as he knew from long experience, was to practise the ancient and dishonourable art of British understatement. He had learnt from a wise American years before that most people instinctively assumed that understatement concealed courage and competence. Used properly it rendered both cowardice and incompetence alike invisible, and long years of exposure had not rendered the British themselves immune to it – if anything they were more easily deceived than foreigners, who sometimes mistook it for inarticulateness.

dummy2

At the end Audley nodded sagely. Mary was gazing at him in rapt attention, which would have been very gratifying if he had not felt such a charlatan.

'So the Ryle Foundation is Hassan's cover?' said Butler.

'I think it's very likely. Not exactly a cover, though — or not just a cover. A ready-made framework as well.'

'The ivy on the oak tree,' murmured Mary.

'That's it. Only not so obvious – more like a tape worm.'

'And we still don't know what he's up to here,' growled Butler.

'Except he's quite ready to kill just to keep us in the dark, that's the only thing we know. And he's damned efficient at doing it.'

'Efficient,' Audley repeated thoughtfully. 'But not so efficient with your car, was he, Hugh?'

'I'm not so sure about that now, David. To be honest, I'm not at all sure that it was Hassan at all. There was something not quite right about that whole business – and that's what the technical chap seemed to think when they phoned me this morning, too – '

That reassuring Highland voice:

'McClure speaking, Squadron Leader – I'm sorry, Squadron Leader, but we can't let you have your car back yet.'

'For God's sake, why not? What's wrong with it?'

'Nothing – and that's what's wrong. Or almost nothing. The nut on the track rod had been removed, that's all.'

The nut – ? Christ, man – do you call that nothing?'

dummy2

'Och, I can see well it might have been awkward on a motorway – '

'Damn right it would have been!'

'But it needn't have come to that, Squadron Leader. With the track rod, you know, it takes time to free itself and jump out. It could have killed you or it could have no more than dented your bumper.'

'So what?'

'So it's a verra chancey way of putting a man down. It's something and nothing, if you take my point It'd be an amateur or a man who didn't know his own mind who'd do such a stupid thing... Or it could be a wee cozenage.'

'A what?'

'A deception, Squadron Leader – a red herring. A cover for something else much smarter. You told me to mind young Jenkins last night, and I do. And you'd do well to do as much yourself ...

But if that's the way of it, we haven't been able to find it yet, though we're still looking. And the while, I cannot let you have the vehicle...'

' – Then he offered me a department car. But as I was coming down here I thought it wiser to hire one for myself.'

No need to labour that point; cozenages could be attempted by friends who wished to keep track of him just as easily as by foes.

'And then I got to thinking about it,' said Roskill, watching Audley

– this was Audley's technique, after all. 'If Hassan wanted to stop me, he didn't need anything as crude as the track rod. And if he just dummy2

wanted to follow me, there'd be no point in fixing it at all. He doesn't fit, that's what it amounts to.'

Audley raised an eyebrow. 'Razzak?'

Roskill nodded. 'I've got the feeling that Razzak wanted to meet me. And he wanted me to believe he was on the side of the angels.'

'Well, he chose one hell of a risky way of making friends,' said Butler. 'He could have broken your neck for you – then you'd have been on the angels' side yourself.'

'I don't think he'd ever have let me get out of that street, Jack. I think he was parked just round the curve out of sight, waiting for me. In fact I'm damned sure he was waiting for me, now I come to think of it – his lights went on and his engine revved up the moment I got out of the car.'

'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?'

dummy2

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?'

dummy2

'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?'

dummy2

'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 would 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.

dummy2

'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!'

dummy2

'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.

'Now have I said something silly?'

'On the contrary, Miss Hunter,' Audley laughed, 'you have said what I hoped to hear. What drew Hassan's men wasn't so much the meeting as its subject. And that's why Razzak and Jake were both so keen to keep us from breathing down their necks just now: whatever they're negotiating has to be dynamite. And the moment you said you weren't going to give up, Hugh – even after Razzak dummy2

had promised to find out about Hassan – that was when Jake thought of me.'

'But why you?' Jack Butler sounded humbler now. 'You're supposed to be out of the Middle East.'

'Out of the Middle East – but not out of favour with Sir Frederick,'

said Audley quickly. 'If it came to the push I could still pull some strings, and Jake knows it. And he trusts me, that's the point. He may even suspect I'm already involved – he knows Hugh's a friend of mine, anyway. And remember, all he wants is to get the heat off for a day or two, if what Razzak said is anything to go by – '

'But is it?' Roskill interrupted. 'I still don't quite know what makes Razzak tick. You were going to find out about him, David – I haven't even seen the official file on him, damn it!'

'But I have,' Butler said shortly. 'There's not a lot in it either. He's peasant stock, with a dash of Turkish or maybe Albanian. Cairo military academy. Two tank conversion courses over here — that's why his English is so good. He did one on Shermans back in '46, and one of Centurions a few years ago, with attachment to the R.T.

R. – they thought he was pretty sound. And he's been blooded three times: he was in the Irak al-Manshia siege in '48, where Nasser won his spurs. Then in '56 he broke out of Um Katef – it took him fifteen days to walk home. And then the '67 business.'

'What about his politics?'

Butler nodded. 'I'm coming to them. He was in the Free Officers movement by the end of '49 – he was one of the group that captured Farouk's palace. Then Nasser put him in Intelligence, and dummy2

he was in the special squad that smashed the Muslim Brotherhood after they tried to kill Nasser in '54. Went to Russia next year and put up some sort of black there – he was sent home in disgrace, anyway – '

'He broke a Russian officer's jaw in an argument,' said Audley.

'Officially it was a professional argument. Actually it was over a girl – a bit of uncomradely racial prejudice. He doesn't like the Russians much.'

'Well, it certainly stopped his promotion dead,' said Butler. 'He was shipped back into the army and it took him ten years to get his battalion. And the rest you know.'

'Not quite,' said Audley. 'Those are just the bones of it. What it adds up to is that Razzak's a patriot – and not an Arab patriot either. An Egyptian.'

'So that's why he doesn't like the guerrillas much?'

'If they were Egyptian guerrillas he'd like them, Hugh. Egyptians –

yes. Palestinians, Syrians, British and Russians – all damn foreigners to him. And when you think that Nasser's the first real Egyptian to rule Egypt for a couple of thousand years you can see his point. In fact Razzak's more an Egyptian than an Arab in just the same way Shapiro's more an Israeli than a Jew – maybe that's what they've really got in common! Anyway – '

The phone beside Mary overwhelmed the rest of his words with a shattering burst of sound, startling them all.

Mary picked up the receiver. 'It's all right – it's only the house phone. We haven't got a proper one any more. It'll be Penny about dummy2

lunch – yes, Penelope?'

But as she listened her eyebrows lifted in surprise, and her eyes fastened on Audley. She put her hand over the mouthpiece.

'We've got another visitor – and for you, David!'

Audley pursed his lips. 'So soon? I'd rather expected Jake to wait for me to come to him. But it seems I was wrong.'

'It isn't Colonel Shapiro,' said Mary. 'It's the Egyptian – Colonel Razzak.'

'Razzak!' Audley frowned and blinked. ' Razzak?'

'For you? But how the devil did he know where to come?' Butler snapped. 'I made sure no one tailed me, and the driver's not born who can keep up with Hugh – '

He stopped dead as his question answered itself: any toddler in his pedal car could keep up with Audley's driving, and with Audley none the wiser – if he even bothered to look in his mirror.

'Well, don't look at me,' Audley said defensively. 'I'm not a field man used to peering backwards all the time, blast it. And no one but Faith and Hugh – '

Audley stopped too, for once one second behind everyone else in making the connections, and laughably put out by it. Roskill couldn't help grinning at him: that celebrated incompetence in practical matters was at last playing a practical dividend.

'And Jake' he said. 'So at least we don't have to test your theory about Shapiro and Razzak. You've proved it yourself, David. The real question's why Razzak's coming out into the open now.'

dummy2

Audley sucked his lower lip, glaring at a point in space two feet in front of his nose. 'The real question is why it's Razzak and not Jake. Damn it – I was depending on Jake.'

'Will Razzak know enough to connect young Jenkins' death with Firle?' Butler asked.

'What are you getting at, Jack?'

'Well, if he does he'll be scared stiff we're going to pin it on him.

The very fact we're here means we know one hell of a lot. It's logical.'

'So why's he making contact with us now?'

'To stop us doing anything,' said Audley quickly. 'From what he said to you, Hugh, I'll bet it's time he's trying to win. Anything to get us off his back until whatever he and Jake are doing is completed. And that gives us a club to hit him with – let's get him up here, Miss Hunter.'

'A club to hit him with?'

'A lever, I should have said, Miss Hunter. If it was Jake it would be different. But Razzak doesn't know me, and he's not going to tell us more than he has to.'

'But he wants your help.'

'He wants us to delay doing anything. And that's a risk I'm not going to take unless I know exactly why, down to the last detail.

Which means we're going to have to throw a scare into him.'

'What I've seen of him, that isn't going to be easy,' said Roskill. 'He doesn't strike me as the scaring type. And we haven't got much to scare him with, when it comes to the crunch.'

dummy2

'I'm afraid I shall just be in the way,' Mary said diffidently. 'He's certainly not going to be scared of me.'

Audley focused on her. 'Now you could just be wrong there, Miss Hunter – you could just be wrong. If I've got it right Jake wanted me involved because he knows I feel the same way about the Middle East as he does. I'm a dove from conviction, not necessity.'

He looked from Mary to Roskill. 'But you two are different.

You've each got a score to settle with someone. Razzak won't have allowed for that, but it's something he'll understand when he meets it. The Koran says that Allah rewards those who forgive — but then it lays down that those who avenge themselves when wronged incur no guilt!'

'But, Dr. Audley – David – I don't want vengeance. It won't bring Alan back.'

'Hugh doesn't feel that way, do you, Hugh?' Audley nodded at Roskill. 'You've wanted an eye for an eye from the start. Now's your chance to force Razzak to show you how to get it. I'll give you a cue, don't worry.'

Roskill studied Audley suspiciously. The tricky sod was up to something for sure; his very eagerness betrayed it. But so far their objectives still seemed to coincide...

Mary watched them both for a moment, reluctance written plainly on her face.

'We can't keep him waiting any longer, Miss Hunter,' Audley said.

'Ask him up, please – and trust me!'

dummy2

XIII

CHARACTERISTICALLY, PENELOPE DID not show Colonel Muhammed Razzak where to go; from the tentative way he put his head round the door it was clear that she had given him the same vague directions that she gave to everyone else.

The liquid brown eyes – Omar Sharif's eyes set incongruously in that battered face – passed over each of them uneasily before finally settling on Mary. Already this was something less than the jolly, confident Razzak of the previous night.

'Madame,' the Egyptian bent courteously over Mary's hand, though he was too well-versed in English protocol to kiss it. 'Your niece informs me that you are holding a levee and that I may join it. I hope I am not intruding.'

'Indeed you are not, Colonel Razzak. You come most carefully upon your hour. We were talking about you only a few minutes ago.'

Marvellous – she was bloody marvellous, thought Roskill proudly.

Not even Audley could have scripted her better!

'You have the advantage of me, Madame,' Razzak was holding himself very straight now. 'You make me nervous!'

'Oh, surely not, Colonel. I've been hearing how gallant you are.'

'Madame – ?' Razzak spread his hands speechlessly. He had been so very much the master of the situation the previous evening that dummy2

it was immensely morale-raising to see Mary floor him now, unintentionally or not. Roskill felt his own confidence and resolution hardening.

'This is Dr. Audley, whom you wish to meet, my niece said. And this is Major Butler – and Hugh you already know. And I am Mary Hunter ... Do please sit down, Colonel.'

Razzak nodded to each of them in turn before easing himself down into the leather armchair which Audley had vacated.

'And just what exactly are you and Jake Shapiro up to together, Colonel?' Audley said conversationally.

Razzak's eyes were opaque, but he was unable to stop them shifting between Audley and Mary. It struck Roskill that he was now watching one of the Audley techniques from the inside – the very technique that had been used on Butler and himself, God damn it! Mary's intelligence probably was only a bonus; for Audley she was at once a catalyst and an inhibiting factor, to be used in either role as necessary.

'Don't worry about Miss Hunter,' Audley went on smoothly. 'Miss Hunter has an interest in what we're going to talk about. And she knows far too much to be left out of things now.'

'Far too much?' Razzak's tone was controlled. 'And exactly how much is far too much?'

'She knows Hassan was responsible for her nephew's death.'

Audley underscored the name heavily. 'The man we lost was her nephew, you see, Colonel.'

It was Roskill's cue, unmistakably.

dummy2

'And he was a friend of mine – a good friend,' said Roskill menacingly. 'So this isn't just routine for me. This is personal.'

'What Hugh means is that he's not so concerned with diplomatic niceties, whoever else may be. And you know how rough the Anglo-Saxons get when they take the law into their own hands.'

Audley smiled suddenly. 'In fact you could say he's taking a very old Anglo-Saxon law into his hands. A thousand years ago in these parts the family of a murdered man had a choice of justice. They could ask for wergild, which was paid in cash, or they could take vengeance, which was paid in blood. Hugh's very old-fashioned –

he doesn't want wergild. And as his friend I have to go along with him.'

The Egyptian stared at them in astonishment. Whatever line of approach he'd prepared for, it wasn't this!

'And as for me, Colonel Razzak,' Audley continued, 'it comes down to this: I know Llewelyn wasn't Hassan's target. And now I know that you met Shapiro up on the hill there somewhere. But Llewelyn doesn't know either of these things yet, because we haven't told him. All you have to do is to convince us that it's worth our while to sit down on what we know for a time. It's up to you.'

'Up to me?' Razzak said softly. 'My dear Dr. Audley, I came down here to help you, not to be threatened by you with – ' he searched for words ' – with Anglo-Saxon laws!'

'To help us? Colonel, I'm not so naive and nor are you! You came down here to find out how much we knew and then to buy some more time with some more promises. But promises aren't good dummy2

enough. I want the whole story now.'

Razzak squirmed forward and began to manoeuvre himself out of the chair. 'I was told you were a man of sympathy, Dr. Audley. I was told wrong. As far as I'm concerned you can tell Mr. Llewelyn what you like – '

'Llewelyn?' Audley snorted. 'I can see you haven't got the message at all. Llewelyn would settle for wergild.'

Razzak stopped on the very edge of the chair. 'And just how would you get blood from me?'

Audley pointed towards the telephone. 'By picking up that phone and dialling a man I know in Fleet Street, Colonel Razzak. And I'd say "Larry, old man, I've got a little story for you"– '

'You wouldn't dare – '

'– "about the British security man who got himself killed because he happened to come upon an Egyptian and an Israeli who were having a private chat down in Sussex last Tuesday."'

' They wouldn't dare.'

'Tomorrow's Sunday – and I'm a very reliable source. I tell you, the Sunday papers would eat it up – and you with it!'

Razzak considered Audley in silence for a moment, then shook his head. 'No, Dr. Audley. Perhaps they might after all, but you wouldn't.'

' But I would,' said Roskill.

'Hugh – ' Mary began doubtfully.

'No, Mary darling!' He felt the anger welling up in him now, and dummy2

there was no need to simulate it. 'They think they can fight their private wars here, and we won't dare lift a finger because it would be undiplomatic. But I don't give a damn! Some bastard fixed that car so it'd kill Alan, and by Christ if they think they can sweep it under the carpet they're wrong!'

He turned to Audley. 'You don't have to stick your neck out, David

– I'll stick mine out. And it'll be a pleasure!'

Audley's bluff had been too coolly mounted ever to sway a man like Razzak. Perhaps it had been calculated to give Roskill himself another cue – it didn't matter; what mattered was that hot blood was something different. Even before he met the Egyptian's eyes he seemed to feel the man's resolution weakening — it was like sensing victory across a chess-board in the moment before the decisive move was made.

'That's how it is, Colonel,' Audley murmured. 'I told you Hugh was after blood. Now perhaps you believe me.'

'I see!' Razzak nodded to himself as though some inner truth he'd doubted had of a sudden become plain. 'Well, I was warned you were hungry. But it seems you're greedy too . . .'

'Greedy?' Audley leaned forward as the Egyptian sank back into the armchair. 'Believe me, Colonel, I'm the best friend you and Jake Shapiro have got – I'm the only thing that stands between you and trouble. And trouble is something you don't need just now, isn't it!'

Razzak looked at Audley sardonically. 'And this you are doing for old time's sake – because Jake's an old friend? Can I I believe that dummy2

now?'

Jake – it was no longer Shapiro, but Jake. And it was a more eloquent flag of truce than any formula of words. Except they now had to meet the bill for the threats they'd made: somehow the Egyptian's confidence had to be won.

'No, Razzak,' Audley's voice deepened. 'But you have to believe that I'm taking a risk of my own in holding out on my own people.

If it gets out, I'm not going to be very popular, am I?'

'True,' Razzak conceded. 'Very true.'

'But it isn't just a matter of friendship. I may be out of touch.

Colonel, but I can still work out why Hassan's in a different class from the P.F.L.P.'

The Egyptian said nothing.

'Hassan's plan is to pick off the moderates – right? And the cease-fire plan means he can't delay any longer?'

An impassive nod. The olive branch was recognised, but not yet accepted.

'But you're not really worried about that, are you, Colonel? Not in the wider sense, anyway. It's Egypt that matters to you. Not Jordan or Syria – or Israel.' Audley took a breath. 'And we both know that in the wider sense Hassan will fail.' Not utterly impassive now – a flicker of interest. 'He'll fail because he's trying just another shortcut, and there aren't any short-cuts in the Middle East any more –

just the long haul. Peace or war, the long haul's still the only way.'

Razzak's eyes glinted again now.

'All Hassan can do is add confusion,' went on Audley, 'and this is dummy2

the one time when Egypt can't afford it, isn't it? Not after Nasser's heart-attack last year.'

The shutters came down again. 'Heart attack?' Razzak said carefully.

'Influenza, they called it. But we don't have to pretend now, Colonel Razzak,' Audley shook his head. 'How long do they give him if he doesn't pack things in? A year? Eighteen months? Not more, I think...'

The Egyptian watched him warily.

'It's quite simple, Colonel. You're one of his old soldiers – one of the men who took the tanks to Farouk's palace in '52. You weren't an assassin then, and you aren't now. You were one of the men who broke the Moslem Brotherhood. He trusts you.'

Audley paused. 'All Hassan will do is maybe kill a few men, and if Nasser wasn't a sick man himself it wouldn't matter – the balance doesn't matter while he's there, because he can handle it, and Hassan wouldn't dare move against him. But time's running out, and he can't afford to lose any of the old guard now – when he goes they have to balance each other. Egypt needs them all.'

'So – ?' Razzak interrupted him at last. 'So – ?'

'Why, so I agree with him,' said Audley. 'I think the odds are against him – and you. But the least we can do is to shorten them as much as we can. Which means we treat Hassan as a mad dog.

And mad dogs have to be put down quickly.'

The Egyptian's lips twisted. 'Even by dog-lovers?'

'Especially by dog-lovers.' Audley took the jibe on the chin.

dummy2

'Quickly – and painlessly if possible. And without hate.'

For one long-lasting moment the Englishman and the Egyptian stared at each other, oblivious of everyone else.

'Especially by dog-lovers,' Razzak echoed him suddenly, but this time without any irony in his voice.

This, Roskill realised, was as far as Audley would ever go towards admitting what his wife said he felt for the poor bloody Middle East, snarled up now in a quarrel as impossible to resolve as an Escher engraving – with its little men trudging forever up a staircase joined to itself . . . Conscience or idealism – or exasperation – whatever it was, Audley was offering it to Razzak now in exchange for the man's trust.

'And Squadron Leader Roskill – and Major Butler?' said Razzak softly. 'Dog-lovers too?'

'Hugh is with me. He wants what we both want – '

' – And I want nothing,' said Butler. 'Except my head examining . . . I'm on my own time here. So if this country isn't involved you can trust me. If it is, you can't.'

Razzak considered them.

'Very well, then,' he shook his head, as if to emphasise the folly of his decision. 'It seems we have to trust each other...

'But you weren't quite right just now, Audley – nobody trusted me specially to do this dirty job. I won it by right of my own stupidity!' He tapped his chest. 'I'm the man Hassan once told all his plans to. And I let him walk away – I let him simply walk away.'

dummy2

Razzak took a deep breath before continuing. 'I Suppose it wasn't altogether my fault. It was the first night of the June War, and I had other things on my mind.' He closed his eyes for an instant, as though to refresh his memory with darkness.

'We were taking a rest about fifteen kilometres from Jebl Libni.

There was a truck bogged down off the road – crew gone, but it gave us some shelter from the wind. It gets cold in the Sinai at night... In the daytime you've got the heat and the dust, and half the flies in the world – but at night you can't keep warm sometimes.

That's the Sinai for you...' Razzak shivered, then caught hold of the thread again. 'I heard the scrape of his boots on the road – if hadn't I might have shot him, but he was wearing his boots so I didn't.'

His boots?

Razzak answered the question before it was asked. 'You know, they throw away their boots, our soldiers do, when they're running away ... First their rifles, then their boots. But he'd still got his boots – he'd got four waterbottles, a machine pistol and his boots, so I reckoned he was maybe an officer or a technician, and I thought he might know how things were up front. But he knew even less than I did. All he knew was that we were finished already.'

Razzak couldn't keep the ache of bitterness out of his voice.

Roskill was suddenly put in mind of old Havergal the night before: to know one's own honour was still whole, but to be ashamed of one's own country — what sort of trauma, what sort of deviation, dummy2

that might produce was outside his experience. But it might well put a man outside the normal rules.

'He didn't need to have it spelt out for him. He'd seen their planes, and he hadn't seen ours. He knew, Hassan did.' For a moment he was lost again.

'You're sure he was Hassan? He called himself that?'

'He called himself nothing, Dr. Audley. He never said who he was or what he was – he was just one ice-cold angry man. I've met some angry men these last three years, but never one as cold as that

– he was like burning ice that strips your skin off. I think if I'd been on my own he'd have shot me – not to get my water bottle, but just because he thought I was running away!'

'But you weren't – and he was, damn it!' Butler cut in.

Razzak shook his head. 'Who was running away and who wasn't?

I've never been quite sure which I was doing – maybe I was running. And Hassan certainly didn't think he was running away from his enemy. I believe he felt he was running towards him for the first time in his life!

'You see, when I saw how angry he was – he was spoiling for a fight – I asked him to join us. But he said I was a great fool ... and he asked me to join him...'

' ... to kill a few Jews and then be killed yourself – where is the purpose in that? Any street urchin can do as much with a grenade in the market place, to no purpose. But if you're set on dying, I can show you how to die usefully. These Jews – they are the last enemy, not the first. We Arabs must root out the enemy within first dummy2

– the selfish ones and the cowards, the little men in the big uniforms. The men who put their countries' politics before the Arab destiny...'

'I asked him how he proposed to do what even Gamal Abdul Nasser hadn't been able to do. He said: "The same way the old Hashashin did – you kill those men who stand against you or in your way, so that your chosen friends can step into their places."

'And then, when I'd turned him down, he talked to me – or at me, if you like. I suppose he thought he was talking to a dead man, so it didn't matter. But I think he needed to talk to someone very badly at that moment — to tell just one person about his great new idea for uniting all the Arabs, and just how it would work. And by the will of God it was to me he talked!'

'But you weren't tempted?' said Butler.

'Tempted?' Razzak stared at Butler. 'Would you have been tempted, Major? Politics by assassination?'

'Bloody nonsense,' grunted Butler. 'I beg your pardon, Miss Hunter, but that's what it is. I agree with Audley – you'd likely get a worse lot, and then you'd have to make a habit of it.'

"I agree! That's just what I thought it was. The pity of it was that I didn't take him seriously – I thought the sun had touched his brains... but then he thought I was crazy too, and when he'd talked himself out he went off on his madness and I went off on mine. It never occurred to me to put a bullet in his back – he didn't seem that important.'

That had been quite a meeting under the bogged-down lorry in the dummy2

desert, thought Roskill: two angles of the Firle triangle. And the third angle not so very far away either – somewhere to the north-east Jake Shapiro's tank recovery team would already have been in action.

But the drama of the occasion seemed to have escaped Audley.

'And just when did you start to take him seriously? When the Alamut List turned up?'

Razzak gave him a crooked smile. 'It wasn't I who took him seriously – I forgot about him. But he didn't forget me, Audley: he was fool enough to take me seriously. You know, the funny thing is that I let him go and he came back to me of his own free will –

it's enough to make you weep!'

'How – ?'

'Let me tell it my own way. It'll amuse you, I promise you.' Razzak lifted his maimed hand. 'When I came back with this – and my stiff knee – they said I was no good for a soldier any more. So they gave me back my old security job – except it was a sinecure now because I had one of Safari's bright young men to do the work.

Huh!

'And I also had another bright young man – a Palestinian – to keep an eye on me, just so I wouldn't tangle with any more Russians.

Huh! But a good boy in his way all the same . ..

' . . . A good boy with a hot-headed little sister in the Gaza strip. A hot-headed little grenade-throwing sister, whom the Israelis promptly picked up with their usual efficiency.

'But when my boy went to all his clever friends to try and spring dummy2

his little sister, he found they couldn't help him – or they wouldn't help him. Or they thought another martyr for the cause would be a good thing. So in the end he came to old Razzak as a last resort.

And I fixed it for him. No, Audley, not through Jake Shapiro.

There are other ways such small things can be done ... judiciously.

'And that put my young watchdog in an awkward position, because he now had an obligation to me.'

' "He that doeth good shall be rewarded with what is better",'

murmured Audley.

'Ah! The devil quoting the scriptures!' Razzak grinned. ' "And shall be secure from the terrors of that day. But those that have done evil shall be hurled down into the Fire." Very good, Audley – and my young man paid his obligation by telling me a story. But it happened to be a story I'd already heard once — in the Sinai.

'Only then it was just a mad idea, and now it had turned into reality

– and my story-teller was part of it.'

'Part of it?'

'I thought he was Safari's man. In fact he was one of Hassan's

"Watchers" – Al-Rukba'n he calls them. They're the ones who have been drawing up the blueprints for the kills and keeping an eye on people like me.'

'I would have thought there was a simpler way with people like you,' said Butler. 'And you particularly.'

'Ah – that's because you think Hassan's like all the rest of them, just one more indiscriminate killer. But he's not, and that's what makes him strong! He's a discriminate killer – what makes his men dummy2

believe in him is that he says too many Arabs have died already.

He sees himself as a surgeon, not a butcher – believe me, Major, I know.'

'You know – that's just it. You're a danger to him.'

Razzak shook his head.

'Major, I don't propose to bore you with Hassan's organisation – it's only his version of the "cell" system. No single cell knows enough to be dangerous and Hassan liimself is the only link between them

– it's a very small set-up.'

'But the Ryle Foundation – ' Roskill began.

'He uses it certainly. But it's also part of the illusion he meant to build. Rumours – but when you grasp at them they vanish; incidents that don't lead you anywhere. Squadron Leader, Hassan's like a conjuror who makes a great play of concealing something that wasn't ever there in the first place!'

'Then what is there? Is there anything at all?'

'What is there?' Razzak's expression hardened. 'There's a precision killing machine that was all ready and waiting before the conjuring tricks started.'

Roskill stared at him. It was just as Audley had said: the psychological warfare was a preparation – the fear of the assassin that had turned his knees to jelly in Bunnock Street. The fear that Cox and Shapiro and Audley had each echoed. The bomb wired to the ignition and the rifleman crouching in wait on the roof-top ...

'So what have you done about it?' Butler said.

'Until this week, Major – nothing.'

dummy2

'Nothing!'

'Major, the one new thing my Watcher told me was that our security system was penetrated. And not just by him either.' The Egyptian sighed. 'Now – you tell me how you'd move against someone who'd already got you staked out – you tell me.'

He looked around contemptuously. 'The only reason I'm alive and here now is that I've done nothing – I've sat on my arse for four mouths biting my nails and pretending to be even more stupid than I am.'

'Until now,' said Audley quietly.

'Until now. And I'll tell you for why – '

'Because sooner or later Hassan had to make contact with his Watchers. Or they have to make contact with him. And that's the moment when he's vulnerable. If his security is as good as you say, it's the only moment.'

Razzak looked at Audley approvingly. 'Very good, Audley– '

'Not very good at all, merely logical. Without the Watchers, Hassan is nothing – he's the will, but they are the brains. The killers are nothing too – ten a penny in the bazaar. And your problem isn't new, Razzak.'

'My problem?'

'You can't trust your own service. We had a section in one of the Gulf states that went sour on us in – it doesn't matter when. But there was a job to do there, and we couldn't trust them to do it. So we gave it to someone else altogether – someone who wasn't dummy2

exactly friendly, but who had the same interest in this case.'

Mina al Khasab – the oil refinery affair! It had been department scuttlebutt that Audley had used the Russians to evict the Chinese...

'There's nothing new under the sun, Colonel Razzak. Somehow you know where Hassan's going to meet his Watchers. The new Alamut. But you can't get at it yourself and Jake Shapiro can.'

Roskill frowned – if that was it, then the risk Razzak was taking was enormous. But, by God, once he'd taken it – once he'd argued the Israelis into taking his chestnuts out of the fire – the picture changed altogether.

It wasn't just that he was bypassing Hassan's Watchers – and with men whose efficiency far surpassed the Arab intelligence services

– but that if anything went wrong it would be the Israelis who carried the can: to Hassan and to the world at large it would be just another instance of the Jews slapping at one of the terrorist gadflies with their usual heavy hand.

Either way, with any luck, both Razzak and Egypt would be in the clear –

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety ...

He looked at the Egyptian with new respect. A dove – maybe; a patriotic Egyptian – beyond doubt. But above all a cunning bastard after Audley's own heart!

'But wait a moment!' Butler exclaimed. 'If you know where Hassan's meeting his people, why do you need the Israelis? You don't have to use your security men now. A squad of paratroops could do your work for you.'

dummy2

'It isn't as easy as that, Major,' Razzak shook his head. 'Alamut —

if we can call it that – isn't a place any more, not a secret hideout I can point to on a map and say "There – that's Alamut!"' The second finger that did service for the lost trigger finger tapped the arm of the chair, and then was lost in the fist that struck down on the place it had been tapping. 'I can't say "Bang – that was Alamut!" '

He waved Butler down. 'I don't even know what Hassan looks like

– medium build, medium height, moustache maybe, dark glasses perhaps – I only know where he will be at a point in time. Alamut is not somewhere – it is a time, not a place.. .'

'It can be on Cloud Nine for all I care,' Butler snapped. 'They meet there and you want to hit them for six. But you can't get at them. Is it in Israel?'

'Israel?' The disbelief in Razzak's voice was answer enough.

'Not Israel then. And obviously not in Egypt. So one of the others, where your writ does not run — but neither does Israel's either. So why Israel? Why not your Russian allies – they don't want trouble either – ' Butler's eyes settled for a second on Audley ' — and they've been known to do other people's dirty work?'

'Major Butler – ' Audley began. Butler cut him short. 'No, Audley.

Maybe it feels right to you, and maybe history repeats itself — but I have to have facts to swallow. I want a plain answer.'

'And I will give you one,' Razzak held up his hand. 'I accept Major Butler's disbelief. Six months ago I would have agreed with him –

and even now it's not something I'm doing willingly.'

Razzak lifted his chins and stared down his squashed nose at dummy2

Butler. If it had been a lean face and a hawkish nose it would have been a proud look, even an arrogant one. So that, thought Roskill, was probably what it was.

'Major, this man Hassan is very confident of himself but he is also very careful. If anything happened now – anything — to make him think that maybe he's not been so clever, then there will be no Alamut tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow!'

'Less than thirty-six hours from now. And I'll never get another chance like this – not a chance to take Hassan and Watchers in one bite.'

Razzak sat forward. 'But you are right, Major – I could ask the Russians. Or the Syrians – and even the Iraqis too, though as things stand between us that would hardly be wise. But all of them are belter placed to take Alamut if I offered it to them. But having taken it, would they destroy it? Or I wonder – would they use Hassan for themselves?'

He grimaced. 'I think they would be tempted. But even if they weren't I think they're no more secure than we are. I think they'd scare him off, Major.'

The Egyptian's tone was carefully controlled: only the words themselves conveyed the distrust and contempt he evidently felt for his allies and fellow-Arabs.

'So you prefer your enemies?'

'When my enemies have identical interests – I'd make a treaty with the devil himself, Major.'

dummy2

A slow smile cracked Butler's face. Whether by accident or intuition, Razzak was speaking Butler's language now – the language of pragmatic patriotism, which measured friendship neither by blood nor past history, but by the calculation of mutual benefits.

'The same interests,' said Audley, 'but not the same opportunity for temptation perhaps?'

'Hah!' Razzak chuckled. 'There you have the answer in a nutshell –

but less than that even. The Israelis have no opportunity at all!

They can do what I want or they can do nothing at all. What you call a Hobson's Choice.'

'It seems that you've managed things rather well, then, Colonel.'

'No, Dr. Audley. It's simply that Alamut has left us only a Hobson's Choice to make.'

Razzak nodded at Butler. 'You guessed very close actually, Major.

"Cloud Nine" you said. You see, Hassan is meeting his friends on tomorrow evening's Trans-Levant flight from Aleppo to Mosul.'

XIV

'TOMORROW EVENING'S ORDINARY, scheduled flight.'

Razzak showed his teeth, beautiful white even teeth, as incongruous in his ugly face as those liquid brown eyes. 'But if you had ever tried to book a seat on this particular flight you would have failed. And I'd guess the regular crew won't be flying dummy2

tomorrow either, for one reason or another. It might even be hard to find out which of Trans-Levant's fleet it'll be, too, until the very last moment. But otherwise – an ordinary flight, yes!'

'Good God Almighty!' Butler exploded. 'Man – are you sure?

Because if you're wrong – '

'Because if I'm wrong, what I propose to do would be a crime?'

Razzak raised his eyebrows eloquently. 'The thought had crossed my mind, Major Butler. But I am not wrong. That flight will be Alamut, believe me. The final briefing before the kill. But it must be our kill, not Hassan's.'

An ordinary flight . . . And yet there was method in it: if Hassan had one or two men strategically placed in Trans-Levant's operation – if he had it penetrated like the Ryle Foundation – then it wasn't as crazy as it sounded. The problem of organising any secret convention was that the delegates had to converge on a place. They had to meet somewhere, and in meeting they maximised the danger of discovery.

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 dummy2

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 dummy2

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.

dummy2

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 dummy2

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 dummy2

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.

dummy2

'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.

dummy2

'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 dummy2

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 dummy2

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.

dummy2

'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.'

dummy2

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 stared 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?'

dummy2

'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.

dummy2

Sport – yes, self-defence – no!'

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

'Razzak and the Colonel?' The boyish grin faded, and Yaffe nodded understandingly. 'They insisted on that, too – it has to be face to face for the final agreement, just the two of them. I think when it comes to the final crunch they still don't trust us– the only man they trust is Colonel Shapiro.'

In the end everything depended on Shapiro and Razzak. It was not really the logic of Israeli-Egyptian co-operation that was going to confound Hassan, because in real life the logical thing could usually be safely discounted; it was this million-to-one relationship between enemies.

'I don't know what he said to convince our people at home,' Yaffe murmured, almost to himself. He looked at Roskill pensively. 'It's very easy to be enlightened when you're not involved, Roskill. And when you don't have to make the decisions that involve your survival. We don't have that luxury – that's why so many of us have got a Masada complex.'

'A what?'

Yaffe shook his head pityingly. 'You British always think you're going to win the last battle, but we Jews expect to lose it – we've lost too many last battles. It takes a lot to trust an enemy when you feel like that.'

'The Egyptians are trusting you as well.'

'Not as much. We're the ones taking the big risk if they want to double-cross us.' Yaffe sighed. 'Oh, I know we've been after dummy2

Hassan too – and what Razzak's given us fits in with our own information. And we can't afford to have Hassan loose any more than they can. But our security's a lot better than theirs. There's a pretty good chance we could protect our people.'

Roskill felt in no mood to argue. But what Yaffe couldn't see – and what Shapiro had seen – was that if Israeli security succeeded in protecting its leaders from assassination when the Arabs failed to protect theirs, nothing would convince the Middle Eastern countries that Israel wasn't at the bottom of it all. And maybe Hassan had calculated that too.

The trees ahead of them were thinning. If Yaffe's topography was right, the low ridge beyond the meadow just ahead was the vantage point from which they would be protediig the final rendezvous between Shapiro and Razzak, at which Audley was a self-invited observer. And there Alan would get the vengeance Roskill hadn't dared to hope for – an overflowing measure of vengeance.

It was strange that revenge no longer seemed to matter so much now that it was in someone else's hands. It was as though Alan had once more become no more than the victim of a tragic accident –

or an innocent battle casualty among the thousands who had perished in a whole generation of Middle Eastern bloodshed. What made it futile was that it was not his quarrel: no one would carve the old 'duke et decorum' tag on his grave.

Roskill was suddenly reminded of the Latin words scratched in the Bunnock Street telephone kiosk, which he had not had the chance to put to Audley...

'But we don't really have any choice,' Yaffe said philosophically.

dummy2

'We've either got to trust them or go on killing them, and I'm fed up with killing. I don't ever want to – '

Yaffe's words strangled in his throat. He jerked forward convulsively, shouldering his way in front of Roskill and plucking frantically at his coat as he did so. The golf bag swung outwards, striking Roskill a tremendous blow in the chest —

There was a chip of wood spinning in the air –

There was noise –

The spinning chip and the noise and the golf bag hitting him had all happened in the same fragment of time, and in that millisecond

– that same millisecond – Roskill's leg was swept from under him and Yaffe himself crashed back into him.

And someone cried out in agony and shock.

The trees whirled round him and the leaf-mould came up towards his face.

There was blackness and a terrible weight on his chest. Blackness and wetness and the weight on his chest that pressed him down, expelling all the air from his luags.

Can't breath — dead — dying — the chip of wood spinning in the sunlight –

'Are they dead?'

A voice a long way away.

A grunt. 'At this range they are dead.'

Roskill wanted to cry out that he was not dead – maybe dying, but dummy2

not dead. And maybe not dying if only someone would take the weight from his chest.

But that hoarse grunt and that voice had been familiar – appallingly recognisable. He thought: 'If I cry out, if I move, then I am dead.'

'Are you sure?'

An English voice.

Grunt. The known grunt.

'Uzis make no mistakes. But we can make sure.'

A third voice, not English, not known. Roskill felt the hope draining out of him and the lethargy of the inevitable coup de grace taking its place.

'My God!' The English voice again, closer and trembling. 'You've cut them to pieces!'

'I told you – at this range – '

Hope flickered again. Roskill forced himself to take tiny, shallow breaths; it was difficult enough to breath at all with the whole world crushing him down into the ground.

'No choice. They would have seen us, and they knew me – both of them.' Contemptuous.

'They would probably have recognised all of us.' The third voice was matter-of-fact. 'And the Jew was reaching for his gun anyway.

It is unfortunate, but he is right.'

'So what do we do now?' The English voice still shook. 'God! What a mess they're in!'

'We get them off the path. Then we go on.'

dummy2

'Go on? We leave them?'

'We leave them until we find out what Razzak is doing and who he's meeting. These two won't go away.'

'Someone may find them, damn it!'

'Don't panic.'

'Panic?' Anger overlaid the fear in the Englishman's voice now.

'There was to be no killing in England – that was an order! You can't kill people here and walk away, can't you understand that?'

'We're not going to walk away. When we've got what we came for, we'll come back and deal with them. But Razzak comes first.' The voice hardened. 'How much time do we have, Jahein?'

'He left five minutes ago – we have no time to spare.'

'Oh, God!' There was a sob in the English voice: the man was crumbling.

'Look – ' The third voice softened now, as though its owner recognised the danger that lay in the Englishman's collapse. Roskill strove to listen with a part of his mind, while the other part attempted to control his body – to make it lifeless. They already thought him dead, and half the possum's trick was in the mind of the hunter...

The third voice was wheedling, justifying, explaining: Majid had been wrong to have been so sure Razzak was a harmless fool – the dead Jew was proof of that ... so he had missed something, maybe during the Paris trip when he'd been alone with Razzak... he had been over-confident and careless. It was even possible he was treacherous, and if so it had been a blessing that they'd sent Jahein dummy2

to watch too without telling him. But until they knew for certain they were all at risk now . . . and they needed him to operate the Shibasaki microphone –

' – We'll just carry them off the path – down there – in the groundsheet. Here, Jahein – help me with the Jew.'

Roskill summoned up every last reserve of self-control: he mustn't brace himself as the crushing weight was lifted off him, mustn't breathe, mustn't twitch... he must be dead!

'Get his pistol, Jahein -'

The weight was gone.

'And get the other's gun while we hide the Jew.'

There was a pause, and then a hand touched Roskkill's shoulder, started tentatively to move him – and then stopped. There was a spasm of retching...

'Well?'

'He – he didn't have one.'

'Huh! Well, it wouldn't have done him any good. Here – set the sheet beside him and we'll roll him on to it.'

Unfeeling butcher's hands rolling dead meat – Roskill flopped awkwardly, heavily and loosely as he guessed dead meat would flop. The sheet enclosed him like a shroud.

'Hurry, now!'

There was a numbness in his leg and along his side — not pain, but numbness. That was the side on which he had fallen when Yaffe cannoned into him ... As he was clumsily swung into the air, dummy2

jumbled in the groundsheet, Roskill was suddenly fully aware at last that he had been hit, how badly he couldn't tell. But it couldn't be too badly, otherwise he wouldn't be conscious – or did one retain consciousness as clear as this while shock kept the pain at bay?

The swinging stopped and he was thumped down and half rolled out of the sheet, face down again ... They were scattering something over him, leaves or dead bracken...

Someone – not Jahein – spoke urgently in Arabic.

Silence. Merciful, life-giving silence.

He must not spoil it now: he must wait and let the silence flower into safety.

Roskill started to count slowly, first to one hundred – with an extra ten because he had a feeling he'd jumped from seventy to ninety.

Then another slow hundred...

His eyes wouldn't open: his eyelids seemed gummed together.

Gently he eased his right hand towards his face and wiped them.

He tried again: there was a small beetle, shiny black, exploring a twig six inches in front of him, and beyond that a wall of green.

Somewhere close at hand a bird took flight, carrying its shattering alarm cry through the woods.

Roskill began to explore his body. The side was still numb, but he could twitch his toes inside his shoe. So far, so good.

With his right hand he began to feel gingerly down his back: it was soaked with blood – poor Yaffe's blood. As if the thought focused dummy2

his vision he saw just to his right the Israeli's feet sticking out from under the edge of the groundsheet. He didn't want to look any further ; Yaffe must have taken most of that burst of fire...

He felt the bitter anger swell up in his throat – after all the warnings he had had, to be chopped down –

The thought was cut off dead as his hand touched an enormous crater in the left cheek of his backside — Christ! He'd been shot in the arse!

He forced himself to touch the edge of the crater again. It couldn't be as big as his fingertips told him it was, but by the size of it, it had to be an exit wound. As he touched it he felt pain for the first time: his brain was telling him what his body wasn't yet ready to admit.

The question was – where was the entry wound?

Sudden fear drenched him again. It didn't matter where he was hit, but only that he get to hell out of here before they came back.

He wrenched the groundsheet back, scattering the bracken and sending arrows of pain up his left side from the mangled buttock.

He raised himself stiffly on his hands and looked around. He was still close to the edge of the wood – he could see the light through the trees – but down an incline away from the path. He lifted his head higher and took his weight on his right knee.

Still not a movement anywhere. Away to his left he could now see the sunshine bright in the meadow, beyond a steep, sandy bank –

there was a stream there at the meadow's edge.

He glanced down and caught his breath: he was covered in blood, dummy2

saturated in it, his shirt and trousers sodden. God! No wonder they hadn't looked twice at him — he was like a slaughter house!

The thing now was to get away fast. He stood up – and cried out in pain and surprise as he pitched forward.

His leg wasn't there at all!

No, blast it – he rolled desperately to protect his backside – of course it was there! But it felt as though it wasn't and whatever was wrong with it, he wasn't going anywhere on it.

Roskill pounded the soft earth in fear and anguish. He couldn't stay here, but he couldn't go far hopping or dragging himself. He felt thirsty and dizzy – two of the classic shock signs the squadron M.

O. had dinned into his heads. He was hurt worse than he'd thought.

Falling blood pressure, rapid irregular pulse; skin pale, cold, clammy and moist... he could remember Doc Farrell reciting the litany.

But there was something else Farrell was always preaching in his survival course – what was it?

'The sympathetic system overrides the central nervous system in emergency – the sympathetic reactions are directed towards the mobilisation of the resources of the body for the expenditure of energy in dealing with crises.'

Man — when you're in danger the adrenalin pumps and you work at a tremendous peak of efficiency. If you went on living like that you'd burn yourself out in no time. But if you don't panic while you're there on top, you're a superman!

dummy2

The superman wiped the blood-stained tears from his eyes and looked round him again.

The golf bag!

Trying not to look at Yaffe, Roskill slid the bag off the dead man's arm. The straps were stiff and slippery – like everything else the bag was blood-soaked.

The family heirloom: God, let it not be some ancient muzzle-loader!

He knew before he'd slid three inches of it out what it was: an old Lee-Enfield – the blunt terrier's muzzle, with the wooden stock and hand-guard, was unmistakable: the immortal S.M.L.E.

Bullets? He jerked back the bolt feverishly.

There was nothing there. But of course there was nothing there: Yaffe would never carry a loaded rifle in his golf bag. Not to panic; there had to be rounds in the bag somewhere ...

Unless he collected them at the Rifle Club!

Roskill fumbled with the strap on the ball pocket: small, stout cardboard boxes with metal edges. And nestling in the boxes lovely .303 cartridges, five in each of the little black chargers.

Thank you, God!

Remember how it was in the old A.T.C. days, when the Flight Sergeant forced them to learn the drill – and he had always found it easy to learn things by heart...

Draw back the rifle and hold it with the left hand at the point of balance . . .

dummy2

It was easy still – place the charger in the bridge charger guide.

Place the ball of the thumb on the top round just in front of the charger ...

The rounds went down smoothly in a clean sweep. Roskill took another charger, pressed the rounds home and closed the breech with one round up the spout – no practice this time, with that last round safe in the magazine. He stuffed two of the little boxes into his coat pocket for good measure.

Superman was armed now, anyway – Lee Enfield against Uzi!

But not here. This was Uzi country; the old rifle liked the open spaces best, not the woodlands.

The meadow.

They would be coming back across the meadow.

Roskill set off, propelling himself up the incline on his right hip with his right foot, the rifle resting painfully on his collar bone, his useless left foot dragging behind him. But before he'd gone three yards he knew he'd never make the distance back up to the path and then along to the meadow – not in the time that must be left to him now. Not even that pumping adrenalin could disguise the weakness and the spreading pain down his leg.

He veered off to the left, towards the stream.

Downhill, even on the uneven surface of the wood, the going was easier – it was no more than agonising. And the stream itself refreshed him: he lay in it, he dipped his face into it, and at the last he drank from it, watching the water redden as it washed some of the blood from him.

dummy2

The cattle, or whatever used the meadow, had used this point in the high bank to get to the water – there was a mud wallow, but beyond it a broad track worn to the top.

Leaving a slimy trail of blood and water behind him, Roskill inched his way up the track. He knew the effort was squandering his energy reserve as he crawled, anchoring each advance with the rifle butt. But the line of meadow grass at the top was the Promised Land; to fail to reach it now would be to lose everything.

At last he could peer over the top, between the tufts. For a moment he couldn't focus: the landscape swam before his eyes.

Then it became an empty field – a much bigger field than he had imagined, at least from this worm's-eye view, with a barbed wire fence marking its frontier with a low ridge of heathland and forest scrubland. And there in the far corner to his left was the stile which he and Yaffe should have crossed just a few minutes ago.

Yaffe....

The hay-makers had taken the first growth from the field, and it was trimmed to an even stubble. But they had left an awkward patch providentially close to where he lay, beside the stump of an old tree whose roots had been stretching down out of the bank towards the water.

Roskill crawled the final yards to the protection of the stump. For half a minute he rested his face against the rough bark, breathing deeply.

Another sign that he was slipping.

But not yet, damn it, not yet!

dummy2

Roskill carefully placed the rifle on its side in the grass and took the spare cartridge boxes out of his pocket. He opened them and placed the spare slips ready beside the stump. He was appalled to see that his hand was white and shaking like an old man's, the veins huge and blue.

He looked methodically around him again.

A good fire position should permit free use of the weapon, have a good field of fire, be inconspicuous and bulletproof.

Wasn't there something else, though?

Be easy to move from ...

Well, it was all those except perhaps the last. But that didn't matter, because he wouldn't be moving from it, one way or another!

He slid the rifle forward, checking the safety catch. It was undoubtedly a very old one, with the open U-shaped backsight which he'd heard of, but never seen. At least the aiming rule was simple enough though: the top of the foresight must be in the middle of the U, in line with the shoulders.

He could feel a roughness on the stock – there were Arabic letters carved into it, and five little bright silver studs carefully hammered in line below.

Trophies, by God! One stud for each life the Arab owner had taken, until Yaffe – no, Yaffe's father more likely – had missed becoming a stud and won it from its owner. The War of '47, maybe...