The radio told us to park on a ramp way down by the eastern hangars, which left us a long way to walk but out of sight of the terminal building, which might just help.
We trudged across the warm concrete sniffing the sharp smell of burnt jet fuel that I still find vaguely. exciting because to me it ^till means fast fighters and not airliners. That dates me. Eleanor asked innocently: 'Is the champagne going to be all right in there?'
'Should be,' I said. 'The aeroplane's locked; anybody stealing stuff still has to get it through Customs… If we just forget about the problem, maybe it won't go away.'
Ken switched hands on two pieces of Mitzi's luggage – she bad as much as the rest of us together – and let the girls get a few paces ahead, then said quietly: 'Whensomebody finds out that aeroplane's in town they'll bust the course record for corrupting a Beirut Customs officer.'
'Impossible. Anyway, they must have corrupted one in advance, just for this cargo. Then the handling agent brings it through when he knows that one's on duty. I'm rather counting on that. The agent daren't do anything until he's got these papers, and even if the Customs bloke recognises the aircraft he won't blow the whistle if he's still hoping for a payoff. Given the usual foul-up in communications, I'd think we've got most of twenty-four hours.'
'I hope you're right. Incidentally, the copper in Nicosia's going to be spitting blood, ours for choice, if we don't turn up for the inquest.'
I shrugged as well as I could with two handfuls of luggage. 'He didn't subpoena us. Anyway, he's only interested in Mitzi and maybe you.'
"Turn off the extinguisher, Jack, I've stopped burning, huh?' he said dryly. 'Well, maybe we'll be back in time anyhow.'
Ken took the girls through immigration and Customs while I made my number with control, paid my landing fees and generally sniffed the official air. It smelt calm. By half past five we were in a Ford Galaxie taxi going sonic down Khalde Boulevard. Beirut driving is terrible, but that's all. It doesn't get really aggressive, such as you find in Israel.
'Where,' Mitzi asked, 'are we going to stay?'
I knew what Ken would say – and he did: The St George. Is there anywhere else?'
'For God's sake come down to our price bracket. We'll stay at some small place in the same area and do our drinking in the St George.'
But the girls decided they, at least, would go for the St George itself. I think they were both just a little apprehensive about Beirut and felt that in a big western hotel there'd be less chance of anybody throwing them across the crupper of his Cadillac and galloping them off across the burning sands.
Well, things do happen in Beirut, if not quite that.
Anyhow, we made sure the girls got rooms at the St George, then took the taxi on and found ourselves a small place on the Rue Ibn Sina, about five minutes' walk away but no sea view. We had a rendezvous in the St George for half past six, and Ken and I made it with just twenty minutes to spare.
The St George bar has the air of a London club-room that got a bit bleached in the sun. Not that much light gets in past the long drapes; if you want to do anything as touristy as get tanned, you sit outside overlooking the swimming pool. Real Beirutis prefer the leather armchairs, the unhurried waiters, the elegant pale woodwork, the incense of diplomacy and big business.
A waiter took our order, gave an unspoken opinion that our clothes belonged out by the pool if not in it, drifted away.
I asked: 'How did it feel – the aeroplane?'
'Nice to be back. But a bit small for our business. What d'you think we should get once we're back in the money?'
I shrugged. 'I was thinking something like a Britten-Norman Islander. 'Second-hand, you can pick them up for around £30,000 complete.'
Ken made a sour-smell expression. 'A third-level job? Little feeder-liner like that? Hell, it wouldn't carry more than a ton.' Our Scotches arrived and he stirred his ice with the plastic stick. 'I'll bet you can still get a DC-3 for ten thousand, four-ton payload and all.'
'And all those hungry horses to feed.' An Islander's engines churn out just 600 horsepower total, a DC-3 Dakota gives 2,400 – and the fuel costs are about in proportion, let alone your servicing bills. I could get you a four-engined jetliner, 80 seats and no more than fifteen years old, for just over £100,000, but if you wanted to stay rich you'd use it as a garden ornament instead of the concrete gnomes. It's when you start operating an aeroplane that you go broke.
'Well,' I said, 'maybe we could stretch to a Skyvan with a ton-and-a-half.'
'Still third-level,' Ken grumbled.
'Look, chum, third-level's the only place for small operators these days. Short field, rough field, stuff. Everything bigger's got jets flying into it. Nobody wants to ride in a DC-3 any more. That's one reason you can get them for ten thousand.'
'I wasn't thinking about people.'
'Nor strawberries nor monkeys?'
He finished his Scotch and clattered the ice in his glass. 'No, hell, but… what else do we know?'
'Jail?'
He took a deep breath and then nodded briefly and waved at the waiter leaning on the bar.
'By the way,' I said, 'what are we doing here?"
'Helping Mitzi track down her father's sword… Sounds like something out of a folk song, doesn't it? '
'What are we getting out of it?'
'I liked Bruno – and he pretty well promised me a piece of the action once we got out.'
'D'you think Mitzi accepts that as a debt against the estate? She might just say Thank You very prettily. Even if we find the bloody thing.'
'Look, Roy, she needs me – us – a private aircraft, just as much as her father did. Nobody can walk aboard a scheduled flight carrying a three-foot sword; the Lebanese would nick it and swear it had been found in Tyre or Sidon. It could just as well have been.'
'Have you been swotting up the Crusades?'
'What the hell d'you think Bruno and I talked about in jail? Women? Cold beer?'
'Sorry.' Then the girls arrived. Changed, of course, since women can't unpack a suitcase without putting on something fresh, but in Eleanor's case a good idea too: Beirut's a bit stuffy about women in denim pants. Now she had on a plain white shirtwaister with a wide pleated skirt showing a nice pair of sum' brown legs. I wondered if she was sun-tanned all over and then wondered why I wondered it.
The waiter took an order for a couple of vodka tonics and the girls said their rooms were fine and how were ours and we said fine, although in fact we'd only hired one and it was lousy, and finally Mitzi said: 'We rang Mr Aziz-'
'Did you?' Ken was a bit surprised.
'There are many pages of Aziz in the telephone book. I would not have found his number without the address.'
'Big family,' I said. 'I thought I knew the name.'
Eleanor said: "They can't all be one family. You should have seen how many.'
'Better word would be a "clan", like the Campbells or Stewarts. The clans run the country. Not so much Beirut, there's too many foreigners and foreign money here, but certainly the rest.'
'What did the mansay T asked Ken.
Eleanor was still looking at me. 'It sounds positively feudal.'
I said: 'No, it's all done through Parliament. In the Smiths' district you get a Smith standing as Conservative candidate, a Smith for the Liberals, a Social-Democratic Smith and so on… the peasants get a free vote, and if that isn't democracy, what is?'
Ken snapped: 'What did he jay?'