The Alamut Ambush

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.

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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?'

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'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?'

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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!