The Alamut Ambush

'Lady Ryle – I do beg your pardon,' he said quickly. 'I was almost sure I'd seen you in the headlights...'

'Colonel Razzak,' said Isobel in her coolest Lady Ryle voice, 'I dummy2

thought I recognised you too, but in this light I wasn't sure at first either.'

Razzak!

No wonder the man had behaved as though Roskill knew him –

and no wonder he knew enough about Roskill to be suspicious in the first place.

But – damn it – it wasn't so much Razzak's arrival as his physical appearance that beat everything. From Audley's brief introduction he had imagined a lean, fanatical Bedouin – a throwback to those great days of Arab empire over which the Foreign Office man had enthused. He had never dreamed that the hero of Sinai would be hidden in the body of a roly-poly Levantine carpet salesman.

'It is a compliment that you should recognise me in any light, Lady Ryle.'

In another moment the fat slob would be kissing her hand. Except that the thought was hardly charitable to a man who had just broken the speed limit to stop them both being shredded into little pieces: no matter what his true motives were, and fat and ugly notwithstanding, Razzak's account was in credit.

And that, in itself, was an unforeseen complication. It didn't exactly exculpate Razzak from Alan's death. No sensible man resorted to violence in a foreign and neutral country if it could be avoided, and just because he had avoided it tonight it did not follow that he had done so in Alan's case. It could simply be that Alan had known too much, whereas Roskill knew practically damn all – after the Ryle reception debacle that must have been obvious dummy2

enough.

But that only made tonight's emergency more frightening: it meant that there was someone else beyond Razzak's control – and that could include both Hassan and the Israelis — who was prepared to turn a London back-street into a shambles for no very good reason.

The door behind him opened suddenly with a crash that made him jump. Framed in it was a Goliath of a man in shirtsleeves and a vast Fair Isle pullover.

The Goliath took in the scene with one slow dance from right to left – Roskill, Razzak, Isobel and the Mercedes with its doors open and its headlights glaring – and then swung his own glare to Roskill.

'I don't know wot your game is, mate,' he said in tones in which anger and scorn were carefully balanced, 'but you just go and play it somewhere else!'

Razzak stared coldly at the man for a moment, and then turned again towards Isobel.

'Allow me to offer you the hospitality of my car,' he said. He turned to Roskill. 'And you, too, Squadron Leader.'

The Goliath snorted.

Roskill leant into the Triumph and gently slid the keys out of the ignition.

'You can't leave it outside my property,' barked the Goliath, gratefully seizing the chance of being awkward. 'I'll have the bloody police take it away!'

Roskill was almost relieved that the man had sworn at last; the dummy2

absence of obscenities in his opening broadside had made his anger more threatening.

'The bloody police will be coming for it very soon anyway,' he replied with assumed indifference. 'It's a stolen vehicle. You lay a finger on it and you'll be in trouble.'

That might at least protect the car from outrage – and the Goliath from sudden death – until he could get the department's specialists to look it over, and in the meantime it took some of the wind out of the man's bellying sails.

He locked the car doors carefully and followed Isobel into the Mercedes. Razzak leant forward and flashed the headlights off and on before settling back beside them.

'You know, I have always admired, the independent spirit of the British working class,' he said gravely. 'But whenever I encounter it myself I have a great desire to kick it in the teeth. And yet I am a peasant myself, and I find my reaction most contradictory.'

'I think he had the right of it, Colonel Razzak,' replied Isobel equally seriously. 'We were probably disturbing his television and we may have woken the baby. Those are two capital crimes in England, you must understand.'

'The right of it?' Razzak nodded thoughtfully. 'He takes us for criminals, and there are several of us and only one of him — but he has the right of it! How admirable!'

The gun-dogs came out of the churchyard and headed towards them, watched closely by Goliath. As he slipped into the driver's seat the younger of the two shook his head at Razzak.

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'No one there now, Colonel,' he said obsequiously.

Razzak nodded again, and turned back to Isobel and Roskill. 'Can I take you now to wherever you were going, perhaps?'

Isobel glanced at Roskill. 'I think I'd prefer to go home, if you don't mind, Hugh. I've rather lost my appetite.'

'If that's what you wish, Lady Ryle.' Roskill was not quite able to keep the relief out of his voice. But her common sense would tell her what he was thinking, anyway: if he was someone's target –

and bizarre though that thought was, it appeared to be the case –

she would only be a liability to him now.

Isobel reached for the door handle. 'I'll take the short cut home, then – don't worry about me. I'm sure you and Colonel Razzak have important things to discuss.'

Razzak cut in before Roskill could reply. 'Allow me to send Captain Majid with you just in case, Lady Ryle – he would be honoured to accompany you.'

'Colonel, I couldn't possibly – '

Razzak held up his hand. 'Please! Let us say no more about the matter. Captain Majid will accompany you and make his own way home when you are safely in your house. Jahein here can drive me perfectly well, so long as he remembers it is a car he controls, not a tank.'

The driver got out of the car – rather sulkily, Roskill thought – and the older Arab moved behind the wheel.

'It's very kind of you, Colonel,' murmured Isobel. 'One thing, Hugh

– when is the funeral?'

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Roskill frowned, perplexed. 'The funeral?'

'Your friend,' she said with a hint of irritation. 'I would like to send a wreath, old-fashioned as that may seem to you.'

Isobel had known the Jenkins family in Harry's day, Roskill remembered – in the halcyon time when they'd all been equal and innocent recipients of the Ryle hospitality. And Isobel, who never forgot a birthday or an anniversary, would undoubtedly be an inveterate wreath-sender. It was the side they had not got in common: strange, but he hadn't once thought of Alan's funeral –

only of his death.

'I'll phone you when I know,' he said.

He watched her walk away beside the Egyptian captain, very tall and straight and entirely Lady Ryle now. It was at times like this that he wondered what the hell he was doing with his life, while knowing that if he could have the same time again he would make exactly the same decisions. A part share in Isobel was worth ten times a whole share of any other girl he had ever known.

VIII

'A REMARKABLE WOMAN,' murmured Razzak.

'Yes, she is. And it was civil of you to send your man with her, Razzak.'

The man behind the wheel gave a suppressed snort, and Razzak himself chuckled.

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'Not civil at all, Squadron Leader – a mere trick to rid me of the noble captain. If I had thought there was any danger I would have despatched Jahein – is that not so, Jahein?'

The grizzled head bobbed.

'You see, we are old soldiers, Jahein and I, and the captain is a new soldier set beside us to see that we don't get into trouble. He is like a – what is that shellfish that fastens itself to the rocks?'

'A limpet?'

'A limpet! Yes. Or a pilot fish that swims beside the shark – that might be more like it. But every now and then we give him the slip, don't we, Jahein?'

Jahein spat out a few words of Arabic in a hoarse, almost strangled voice. Their meaning was lost on Roskill, but they sounded so marvellously obscene that no translation was necessary.