The hotel was an L-shaped affair with the low-numbered rooms – like mine – on the street front, and the better ones in the quiet wing that stuck back from it. The view from 323 was the blank wall of the apartment building next door, but blank walls don't throw bottles, rev up jeep engines and sing Swedish drinking songs at one a.m. Apart from that, it was a bigger room than mine, and with a bathroom, but the furniture was the usual heavy Victorian mahogany and chintz, just more of it.
When I went in, the Professor was the only one there. I put the tray down on the round table by the window, took the first bottle from the ice bucket and started a careful job of opening it.
'I'm sorry the hotel's in a bit of a muddle at the moment, but I expect you heard about our troubles.' That was just to try and get him talking; he didn't look like the type who normally chatted with servants.
In fact he looked like the last of the hairy English kings: neat sharp imperial beard, black flecked with grey, on a square face with cold grey eyes above a solid square body. But all a bit shrunken, which could have been a year of Beit Oren food. With a deep tan – the jail pallor had gone – and an elegant Chinese silk dressing gown over a bare chest, and Moroccan slippers, he looked as fit a sixty-year-old as I'd seen in my life.
He screwed a small cigar into an ivory holder and said: 'You are not the floor waiter, then?' A slight German accent and a touch of dry humour.
'No, I'm sort of the company pilot.'
'Ah so?' He was interested. 'Perhaps you are Mr Cavitt's friend, Mr…' I suppose Ken must have mentioned my name at some time, but he'd forgotten.
'Case, Roy Case.' I'd got the wire off the cork, and now- 'Please do not work it with the thumbs. Twist it out gently with a napkin. We waste less that way.'
Of course, I hadn't brought a napkin. He sighed, took a folded maroon silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and passed it across. I got the cork out without any bang, poured a glass and took it over to him.
'Please to give yourself one.'
"Thank you, Professor.' And so I did. 'Can I give you some caviar now?'
We'd done what we could, like finding a poncey-looking dish and filling it with cracked ice and the caviar pot in the middle and a plate of bread and butter… But he wasn't offering to share allthat.
'I will wait for Mr Caviti. He seemed well?'
'I think so. He tells me you're a medievalist?'
He moved a chunky, strong hand in a deprecating motion. 'Only a humble artisan. I dig things up; it needs a real scholar to decide what I have found.' And he sipped his Dom Perignon like any humble artisan.
'D'you find much from that period out this end of the world?' I was thinking of mediaeval times as being knights in armour and most of the ruins out here being Greek or Roman or Hebrew or Islamic…
He looked mildly surprised. "The Crusades, Mr Case, the Crusades. Four centuries of holy warfare leaves its mark.'
'Silly of me. And where you find a mark, you dig?'
'When there is permission.' He smiled gently.
'Found any new Lost Cities recently?'
'God grant nobody finds any; the Middle East is full of old cities that nobody has the money to excavate yet already. But no – my business is artefacts, not so much buildings. Coins, pottery, a fragment of a helmet, a lance tip.'
'Where were you working when… er…?' I didn't know quite how to put it to a professor. But he just smiled again.
'At Acre, then Caesarea. Both, as you know, were important Crusader ports and fortresses.'
Actually, I did remember something like that. 'Wasn't Richard the Lion Heart involved around there?'
'Certainly. He recaptured Acre in 1191 – his first battle with the great Salah ed-din.'
'Huh?'
'Saladin, you would say.'
'Oh, him.' I sipped my champagne – although I don't like fizzy drinks much. Then asked: 'Are you going back to Israel to carry on the good work?'
'Probably. Permits may be a little more difficult to come by, but…' He flapped the problem aside.
Sohe hadn't been deported. Or was good at hiding the fact. And just then there was a knock on the door.
The Professor bounced on to his feet – he'd locked the doorbehind me – and moved pretty nippily across, opened it, and let in a girl. I'd expected Ken.
His daughter – it had to be, since they let go a quick rattle of German as she stepped inside – was a short, properly shaped girl in her late twenties. Almost everything about her was mousey: the colour of her hair, the neat quick movements, the sharpness of her face, the polite hesitant smile as her dark eyes followed the direction of his nod and she saw me.
'Mr Case – my daughter, Mitzi Braunhof.' He shut the door behind her.
I held out a hand.'Frau Braunhof…'
'No.' She took a few quick steps and shook my hand quickly. 'My marriage is finished. Just Fraulein again.' She was wearing a simple black skirt, thin black high-necked sweater and a light suede jacket. I bowed in what I thought was a formal German way, turned back and poured her a glass.
The Prof said: 'Mr Case is a friend of Mr Cavitt, Liebchen. Also a pilot.'
'Ah?' she looked politely interested and took the drink. 'Thank you. You must have arranged for him to stay here.'
'Mr Case,' the Prof said gravely, 'flies for the Castle Hotel company.'
Mitzi cocked her head and said, a little curiously: 'You are not going back to work with Mr Caviti?"
'Oh yes. Soon as we can arrange it.'
There is a problem?'
I shrugged. 'It takes time to get back to where we left off.'
'Ah yes…' and she gave a quick mousey nod, just as if my remark had meant something.
There was another knock on the door and this time it really was Ken. Looking a little pinker and cleaner from the bath and in a pair of fawn twill trousers with a lot of horizontal creases from lying on a shelf for – maybe two years. But the same new white shirt.
I put down my glass. 'I'll leave you to it. I want to get to some shops before they close, anyway. Anything you want besides a pair of sunglasses, Ken?'
Ken shrugged, 'last about everything. But it can wait'
The Prof said:' Ledra Street is not quite Bond Street Kenneth.'
I went past them to the door. 'See you downstairs, Ken?'
'Sure. About seven.' He gave me a quick, and perhaps slightly nervous smile. I went out.
Sergeant Papa was sipping coffee at the lobby desk. No sign of Kapotas. I asked, 'Any messages?'
He turned his head ponderously and took a slip from my pigeon-hole: a Mr Uthman Jehangir had called from the Ledra Palace. He was news to me. 'Did you take the call?'
'Yes. I would guess he is Lebanese. He said he would call again. And somebody asked for Professor Spohr. I said we do not know him.'
'Good. You checked the passports?'
'Yees.' He frowned. 'The woman's name is Braunhof.'
'She's still his daughter. Busted marriage, I gather.'
He frowned on. They changed the Austrian passport in 1970. Now it does not show the maiden name or even if women are married."
I didn't know women's lib had taken over in Vienna. 'Well, don't charge them the immoral rate – though I suppose we are already, for secrecy. Anyway, I'm out until about seven. Then Ken Caviti and I are going on the town.'
'He has just come out of… ummm…?'
'Biet Oren.'
'Yes.' He nodded slowly. "They all have the paleness under the sunburn.'
'We'll be looking for some bright lights and dark corners. You must advise us where we won't get screwed.'