Judas Country

15

The ride down the hill, in a big metallic-grey Mercedes, was a lot smoother than the journey up. And no problems, either. I'd wondered if Aziz might call the police and have us picked up for carrying illegal firearms, stealing a car, kidnapping a chauffeur and everything short of barratry and mopery. Then I'd decided he didn't want us in jail any more than we wanted to be there, and for once I was right.

Nobody said much until we were standing on the steps „of the St George watching the car flow away in the cold lamplight. It wasn't even very late; not yet midnight.

Ken stretched and said: 'Well, one final jar before the dew falls? ' He looked around us and Eleanor and I nodded.

Mitzi said: 'I think I will go to bed, please.'

'Your choice,' Ken said, and we walked up into the hotel -which was still as wide awake as high noon. 'But just as a matter of professional interest: where¡s that paper?'

Mitzi turned to Eleanor. 'You still have it?'

'The document about the sword? Sure.' And she dug in her big handbag and passed it over. ('Je-sus,' Ken said softly. 'If the bastard had only known…'

'Was that what it was all about?' Eleanor asked.

'An animal searched me,' Mitzi said bitterly, stowing away the paper and then heading for the desk to pick up her key.

Ken looked at Eleanor. 'Didn't anybody try to take offyour clothes?'

'Didn't they hell.' She looked a little warm. 'Enough of themimplied the idea, though I don't think they were looking for bits of paper. You know there was another room, smaller and darker, where they had a little brazier thing burning?'

I felt a smile crawling on to my face and tried to frown it down.

'Did they?' said Ken innocently.

'They suggested I should stand over it, kind of; it was supposed to be… well, aromatic.'

Ken grinned wickedly. 'And which one of us'll you have first?'

She blushed, really blushed.

'And modern science,' I said, 'proves there's no such thing as an aphrodisiac.'

She staredfirmly at the lift doors while her blush faded. Mitzi came back with her key to say goodnight.

Ken said: 'For God's sake be careful with that piece of paper. Why not the hotel safe now?'

I said: 'No,' without quite knowing why except that it was an obvious place and I didn't think Aziz needed any help in thinking of obvious places.

'I will keep it okay,' Mitzi promised. Then she smiled, rather demurely. 'Thank you for being so brave, like knights.' She turned away into the lift.

Ken looked at me and raised his eyebrows. 'Gadzooks and forsooth.'

'Just show me the nearest dragon and stand aside.'

'Oh come on,' said Eleanor impatiently. 'She was just trying to say you smell like horses. Who's buying me a drink after dragging me away from all those lovely sexy men?'

As we headed towards the bar at the end of the lobby, Ken murmured: 'I can tell you of one quote maiden unquote who'd better not get immured in any foul dungeons if she wants to get rescued by Christmas.' We sat down and he thumped the table. 'Ho, varlet: two foaming goblets and a gin-and-moat for the damsel.'

'For goodness' sake,' said Eleanor, a bit embarrassed. 'What really happened up at the house, there? I didn't know you two had guns.'

'We didn't,' Ken said. 'We borrowed them off Aziz's bodyguards.'

'He got a bit simplistic about wanting the authentication of the sword,' I explained.

'And he searched Mitzi?' She frowned. 'Well, I suppose there was nothing else you could do.'

It hadn't seemed quite that easy at the time, but Ken just said gravely: 'Not without turning in our keys to Camelot's executive washroom.'

The waiter appeared and we ordered; I switched to vodka, Urne juice and soda, which doesn't taste of much but hasn't wiped its boots on your tongue the next morning.

'Aziz said one thing,' Ken said. 'That he'd financed Bruno's digging in Israel. D'you think that's true?'

'It's likely,' Eleanor agreed. 'I'd wondered if that was the connection. It isn't just the money, it's that governments don't give permission to one-man-bands. An archaeologist needs some sort of endorsement. What did Aziz do – set up some phoney foundation?' Ken nodded. 'In the States.'

'That figures. So now he wants his cut, does he?' "That or the whole cake.'

I said: 'Mitzi's still convinced Aziz has the sword. Question: is she right?'

They thought about this while I looked around the bar. About half the seats were occupied, mostly with Beirut residents in standard dark suits (but not Lebanese, who don't use even the best bars much; these were Europeans and Americans) plus a few tourists in brighter gear. None actually looked like Aziz's boys, though he could well have planted one. He might want to know where Ken and I were staying.

The waiter brought our drinks and, when he'd gone, Eleanor said: 'Now we know Aziz is really involved, that he wasn't just looking after the sword while Spohr was in jail – then I'd say No, he doesn't have it. It's a guess, but I just think we'd have heard something before this.' She glanced from Ken to me and back, her blue eyes very serious.

Ken nodded slowly. 'If hehas got it, then Bruno didn't know he had. There'd be no point in involving me and an aeroplane. Aziz is big enough to get the sword out of this country a hundred ways without my help. I say he hasn't got it… Buggerii,' he added.

That made it fairly unanimous. I said: 'So the poor bastard was being honest, in his own way.'

Ken looked up sharply. 'It's thatway of his that I didn't take to.'

'Quite so, quite so. And I think he's going to spend the night thinking up his next move rather than fasting and praying to change for the better. And if he hasn't got the sword, is there any reason to think it's in the Lebanon at all?'

'If it is,' Ken said gloomily, 'we stand damn-all chance of finding it compared with him. I see what you mean; fingers out and wheels up.'

'Huh?' said Eleanor.

I said: 'You seem fairly fireproof so you can make up your own mind, but Caviti and Case announce their departure for Cyprus as soon as possible tomorrow. And I think Mitzi'd be a fool to stay, so if you can persuade her the sword isn't here…'

'If I can't,' she said dryly, 'I'm sure I can convince her that herparfit gentil knights have suddenly gotten dragon-shy.'

'It's quite a nice face,' said Ken, 'but she ought to get the mind broken and re-set.'

Eleanor just grinned. Then: 'But if the sword isn't here, where is it?'

That brought down the glooms like a cloudburst. Ken's face shut tight, then he finished his Scotch with a quick jerk of his head and stood up. That was today. Coming, Roy?'

He walked out.

Eleanor stared after him. 'What did Isay?'

'Israel – or almost.' I swallowed my own drink. "That's the one place he can't go back to. When they let him out of jail they deported him.' I stood up. 'We'll be round here about eight. Be packed if you're coming.'

It was a five-minute walk to our hotel, but we did it in ten to make sure nobody was following. The night clerk stopped picking his teeth long enough to hand over our key and, as an afterthought, a message:Ring Uthman Jehangir not after 2 am. It gave the number.

'Who in hell's he?' Ken asked.

'Met him in Nicosia. He wanted to buy some champagne off me.'

'Ah. D'you think…?'

I shrugged, looked at my watch: only half past midnight. 'I suppose I'd better ring him, since he knows we're in town.' Probably he'd asked for me in Nicosia and then followed on the evening flight. He could have found out our hotel from the control tower: you always let them know where you're staying.

But now I certainly hadn't got the twenty-four hours' grace I was hoping for.

Ken said: 'I'll go on up and kill a few spiders,' and went. There weren't any room phones so I made the call from the desk, with the clerk no more than a yard away and his breath a lot closer.

Jehangir himself answered.

I said: 'It's Roy Case: you left a message…'

'Of course! Delighted to hear from you. Very glad you could get to Beirut.'

'It was a last-minute decision. I got a sort of charter…'

'Fine. But now we can get down to business. Why don't we meet at the races tomorrow afternoon? You know the track?'

'Yes, sure…' I didn't want to meet Jehangir, not in his own town, but we'd made enough enemies for one night. 'Okay, then. About two-thirty?'

'Just fine. Until then.'

I rang off and the clerk carefully wrote the item down on our bill.

I was careful to say 'It's me,' before I went into the room; sure enough Ken had the gun half pointed. He was stripped to his shorts – once gaudy red-and-yellow stripes, now faded and torn – and his body looked bony and pale.

'What was all that about? ' he asked.

'Business. I said we'd meet him at the races tomorrow afternoon.' I locked the door behind me.

'What?'

'Just keeping him happy. I can forget.' I began to undress.

It was a small room, maybe ten by eight, but even then the two beds weren't big enough to crowd it. The Castle rooms had been old-fashioned and worn; this place had started cheap and nasty and worked its way down. Ken climbed in between the patched grey sheets that felt like damp sandpaper and sighted the Smith at the ceiling light.

I said: 'There's less noisy ways. Are you going to sleep with that bloody thing?'

'Probably.'

'Couldn't you borrow the clerk's teddy-bear? – at least it wouldn't blow my head off when you have a bad dream.' I climbed into my own bed. 'Are you going to hang on to it?'

'I don't take off my coat in the rain. Aren't you keeping the Colt?'

I shook my head. 'I've got enough problems in this town without getting caught with a gun, too. Anyway, nobody wants us dead.'

He propped himself up on one elbow. 'Your funeral. But I tell you what, give me those three-eight rounds.'

So I fished the Colt out of my jacket and shook out the cartridges. A.38 will fit a magnum.357 – it's identical calibre, really – but not vice versa: they make the magnum rounds too long to fit into, and probably blow up, an ordinary.38.1 passed them over and he stuffed them into the big Smith.

Actually, it wasn't a bad idea. Now, with a heavy gun and a – relatively – light cartridge he'd be a lot more accurate for not much loss of power and far less kick.

I lay back again. 'Happy now? Glass of water? Bedtime story?'

'Stuff it.'

I turned off the light. 'If you dream anything good, ask if she's got a sister."

He dreamed, all right, but not that. I woke as his feet thumped on the floor, and snapped on the lamp. He was sitting on the bed, head down almost on his knees and his whole body covered in sweat as if it had rained on him. His right hand was locked, white-knuckled, around the gun.

He was swearing to himself, just a long rhythmic mumbling curse.

I said gently: 'You were back inside?'

He lifted his head slightly, wiped the hair back off his forehead. 'I was back. Shit. I'm not going back. I'm just not going to go.'

'Was it bad in there?'

'Ahhh… not like some you hear about. They didn't treat us like animals, just like things. We just had to be there, to be counted at the stock-taking. You knew you could neverdecide anything; you'd wake up in the night and think "Tomorrow I'll-" and then remember you couldn't. It was the nights -and the walls. I'm not going back to that.'

He waved the pistol in a gentle, meaningless gesture. But it was something he could control, could use to control events. Maybe sleeping with it made a sort of sense, after all.

Then he asked: 'We don't have a bottle, do we?'

'Sorry.' I wished I'd thought of it, even at Beirut prices for Scotch.

Til be all right.' He stood up shakily, found a rag of hotel towel and wiped the sweat off. Then lay down, looking at the ceiling.

When he spoke, his voice was normal again. 'It's funny -when you come out you want to shack up in some place like the Ledra or a Hilton. But you know something? – even this bed's too soft for me. Bloody silly.'

After a pause, he added: 'Mind, in every other way I've had enough of crummy joints like this.'

'We've stayed in worse as often as better.'

'We were younger. There was still time for the good times to come.'

'Stop feeling your age; you'll make it fall off. That's just three-in-the-morning talk.'

'Maybe.' He rolled over and shoved the gun back under the pillow. 'Sorry, Roy. I'm okay.'

Perhaps. Anyway, he didn't wake me again.