The Alamut Ambush (13 page)

He reached forward towards the ignition, but even as his fingers closed on the key a fearful thought exploded in his brain, paralysing his hand.

Underneath the lamp beside the car.

‘Start the car, Hugh!’

Beside the car!

‘That’s interesting,’ Alan had said. And he had stared at something for a split second and there had been a white, blinding flare of light … torn metal and flesh slapped against the floor and walls of the pit, the crack of the explosion magnified in the confined space of the underground garage, echoing still while pieces of the one-time Vanden Plas Princess bounced from the ceiling and clattered to the floor…

Roskill’s fingers slowly left the key. He didn’t have to look down to see that his hand was shaking — he could feel it shaking.

‘What’s the matter, Hugh?’

The blind moment passed, and Roskill felt cold and calm – it had been like that when the Provost had suddenly changed from a beautiful little flying machine into an uncontrollable and disintegrating piece of flying junk: the moment of panic and then the businesslike preoccupation with saving himself which was half the battle. Only believe and ye shall be saved …

‘Somebody’s moved the car, Bel,’ he said gently. ‘There’s just a chance they might have – tampered with it.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I parked right nest to the lamp-post, Bel – the passenger’s door couldn’t be opened when I left it.’

‘But I got in?’

Roskill nodded. He had been slow, almost fatally slow, side-tracked by his own thoughts and then by Isobel’s fear – slow to remember the Vanden Plas Princess.

‘Tampered with?’ Isobel was calm now, too – beautifully and wholly Isobel, and not to be fobbed-off with half-baked explanations.

‘It could be nothing. But if those chaps back there in the churchyard had anything to do with Alan, then they know how to booby-trap cars.’

It could be nothing – but to bug the car they had no need to move it. And if they had done nothing but that to it there would be very little point in hanging around to see the fireworks.

But there was no need to spell that out to Isobel.

‘
I
see. And just what do you propose to do about it, Hugh?’

She was sitting more stiffly, but the tone of her voice was still perfectly controlled – altogether much more the experienced charity president questioning her treasurer over an adverse financial report that the female half of the illicit liaison caught sitting on something hot.

‘Well, we’re safe enough so long as we don’t do anything,’ said Roskill. ‘I doubt you came into their calculations, but just to make things look convincing I’m going to put my arm along the back of your seat and you can cuddle up to me – just to allay any fears they may have.’

Isobel moved towards him somewhat gingerly, as though he was personally wired to whatever might be under the bonnet.

‘We always said we’d never do this sort of thing in public,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘And certainly not in this disgusting place.’

She was bloody well cooler than he was, thought Roskill until he felt for her hand and found that it was trembling.

‘What sort of shoes are you wearing? Snazzy or sensible?’

‘Sensible. You said we weren’t going to eat at anywhere smart.’

All the better to run in, if it came to that.

‘In a moment I want you to get out of the car, Bel, and walk down the street – walk, mind you – don’t run unless I shout. But if I shout then start running.’

‘And what will you be doing?’

‘Christ – I shall be running too, and I can probably run a lot faster than you can.’

‘Why can’t we get out together?’

It was odds on that if the car was booby-trapped it would be the ignition that set it off. They couldn’t have had time for anything much more elaborate. But it was just possible that the driver’s door was rigged for a second-time opening explosion, a trick that conveniently removed the victim from the actual place where the booby-trappers might have been seen.

‘It’ll confuse them, Bel. But they probably won’t do anything anyway. They’ll think we’ve had a quarrel more likely. Just walk smartly away and don’t turn round – and don’t worry.’

Isobel looked hard at him. ‘You’re not going to do anything noble, are you, Hugh?’

‘I’m not going to do anything stupid, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You promise?’

‘Promise?’ Somehow he had to belittle the danger now, to get her moving. ‘My darling Bel – you remember the verse Valentine put up over the bar in the Mess at Snettisham – the advice on when to eject –

Some lucky Thracian has my noble shield,

I had to run: I dropped it in a wood,

But I got clear away, thank God!

So f------the shield! I’ll get another just as good.’

He tried to grin at her. ‘We’ve both got to bale out – just do what I’ve told you. I’ve no ambition to die for my – ‘

He stopped as the answer to the question which had been dogging him earlier rose unbidden in his mind: Audley would certainly know what ‘propositum’ and ‘taberna’ meant – he must remember to ask him at the next opportunity.

‘Hugh?’

‘It’s nothing, Bel. I’ve just remembered something unimportant I’ve got to do. Now, off you go!’

The very irrelevance of what he was saying seemed to reassure her. It even served to calm Roskill himself: it was somehow unthinkable that anything could happen to him until he had the answer to that ancient piece of Latin wit – probably lavatorial wit, too …

Isobel gave him one final look, drew a deep breath and grasped her bag decisively. Then, with a firm, unhurried movement she opened the door, stepped gracefully on to the pavement – her entrances and exits were always elegant – and set off down Bunnock Street like a swan navigating the town drain.

Roskill watched her progress with one eye on the driving mirror, in which the entrance to St. Biddulph’s churchyard was framed.

Ten paces and she was out of the street light’s circle and into a patch of half-light… and then ten more and she was almost on the edge of the next circle, from the lamp on the other side of the street. Beyond that she was virtually out of reach of a danger and it was time for him to move.

With his hand on the door handle he risked turning to get one good, clear look at the churchyard entrance. There was the loom of something darker beyond the pool of light – something that was moving now. In that second it dawned on him that Isobel’s door was the obvious one to use. He levered himself awkwardly across towards it, bumping himself painfully on the gear-lever as he did so, and swung himself on to the pavement.

In doing so he had another glimpse of the churchyard: there was a figure, two figures now, there. But in the very instant that he saw them there was the roar of an engine from the other end of Bunnock Street and the glare of powerful headlights which swept over the nearside curve of the street and then over Roskill – and then on to the men themselves.

They threw up their hands across their faces and broke left and right away from the beam of light as though it was a death-ray, leaving Roskill rooted in the shadow of his own car.

The car behind the headlights hurtled the last few yards of the street – a big maroon Mercedes – lurching to a stop within inches of the Triumph, obliquely across its bows.

The rear window slid down smoothly and a swarthy, scarred face peered out of it.

‘Squadron-Leader Roskill?’

A plump, good-humoured face he had seen before earlier in the evening – the fat Arab.

The door swung open and a pair of beautifully polished shoes glinted momentarily as the Arab levered himself out. Beyond him Roskill glimpsed Isobel standing irresolutely halfway down the street.

‘Forgive me for arriving so – so rudely, Squadron-Leader,’ said the Arab, limping towards him slowly. ‘But I don’t think your car is fit to drive any more.’

‘I wasn’t intending to drive it.’

‘You weren’t?’ The fat man cocked his head in curiosity, and then nodded it. ‘How very wise of you! Then I can only presume that you are already aware that it’s been – is nobbled the word? One nobbles racehorses, so I think one might nobble cars, don’t you?’

He patted the Triumph’s bonnet appreciatively.

‘And those two gentlemen who didn’t like the headlights,’ continued the Egyptian, ‘I suppose we’d better see them on their way.’

He snapped his fingers at his driver and the driver’s mate and pointed towards the churchyard. Wordlessly the men obeyed him, like the well-trained gun-dogs they were.

The Arab patted the car again. ‘One of your little electronic gadgets was upset, I suppose,’ he said conversationally. ‘Or would that be telling?’

He smiled, and the only thing Roskill could think of doing to hide his doubts about the whole situation was to smile back.

‘Nothing so elaborate, I’m afraid,’ he replied self-deprecatingly. ‘Let’s say I’m just suspicious of cars these days.’

‘So my journey was really unnecessary after all?’

‘Not at all. It’s very reassuring to know I’ve got unexpected friends watching over me.’

The fat man chuckled. ‘You are a most popular person, Squadron-Leader. No sooner had my man settled down to follow you, than he noticed that someone else was doing the same thing. And as that made it very difficult for him to follow you, he followed
them
instead – very sensible fellow.’

‘And what did he see?’

‘He saw them take your car away. And they got away from him then, because he wasn’t expecting that. So he phoned me– ‘

‘ – And you knew what to expect?’

‘When my man told me they’d brought the car back I had my suspicions, certainly.’

‘But you don’t know what’s been done exactly?’

It was curious that the fellow was so eager to explain exactly how he’d come storming into Bunnock Street like the U.S. cavalry. It made Roskill want to push him further, to find out what he didn’t wish to explain. Like, for example, who the devil he was—which was one question Roskill couldn’t humiliate himself with.

A shrug. ‘They didn’t take it away to give it a wash and a polish, obviously.’

‘A shot of T.P.D.X. in the right place, maybe?’

For the first time the smile slipped a fraction. The Arab cocked his head again slightly and the light from the lamp above them picked out a long whitish scar that ran down from his cheekbone downwards, to be lost in one of his jowls.

But before he could begin to reply Isobel appeared beside his right shoulder. The Arab swung half round and faced her, incorporating a little bow into the movement.

‘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 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 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 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.