The Alamut Ambush (7 page)

‘It was used on the car all right, but it doesn’t pin it on Fatah,’ Cox shook his head sadly. ‘That would have been too easy! Unfortunately they moved it — or a good deal of it – to one of their front line posts in the Ghor as Safi area, south of the Dead Sea.’

Roskill groaned. ‘Don’t tell me! The Israelis raided the place!’

‘Right again. Softened it up with an air raid on January 20. The next day what they euphemistically call a “purging operation” was effected. In this instance they purged Fatah of a large amount of T.P.D.X., among other things of lesser importance.’

‘So it fits the Bicester evidence exactly – Wog or Cypriot. It could have been either of them.’

‘Was the Ghor as Safi raid laid on to take the T.P.D.X.?’ Audley asked.

Cox looked questioningly at Yeatman.

‘We rather think it was,’ said Yeatman. ‘I’d lay you three to one on.’

Audley tapped the table. ‘Then what you’re saying is that they’re so damn good they can scoop up the stuff within a fortnight of its arrival, and then so damn clumsy they can’t wrap it up properly. Frankly, I don’t think they would use it – ever. They just wanted it out of circulation. But if they did use it, it would go off under the right man.’

Roskill caught his breath: Audley was temping fortune now.

‘Perhaps it did,’ said Butler, thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps –‘

‘Blow up what’s his name — Jenkins? In the way most likely to ensure the Special Branch and heaven knows who else would be called in?’ Audley ridiculed the idea with a wave of the hand. ‘Let’s stick to what’s within the bounds of probability at least. And I think that rules out the Israelis.’

‘They have been known to miscalculate, you know,’ Llewelyn protested. ‘Karameh, for example. The Nahal Diqla business and the Abu Zaabal raid.’

‘By our standards that’s not a very high striking rate,’ Audley replied. ‘But don’t worry. I’ll check out the Cypriots its well as the Wogs.’

‘When you do, Dr. Audley,’ Yeatman said, ‘you might make a special effort in the case of your friend Colonel Shapiro.’

Now at last, thought Roskill, they were coming down on the target area. Shapiro was Audley’s special Israeli buddy: he had been at Audley’s wedding, and at Cambridge with Audley years before. And though the man seemed rather comical, his was top grade military intelligence and hard as nails, blooded in ‘56 and ‘67.

‘And what has Shapiro been doing?’

‘He left town, as the Americans would say, in a sudden cloud of dust the morning of the day Llewelyn’s car was stolen. Instead of having lunch with you, Dr. Audley – your regular Wednesday lunch, I believe – ‘

Audley blinked unhappily.

‘ – he plunged into rural Sussex and lunched with another friend at Lewes.’

‘And then, apparently, he drove cross-country,’ Llewelyn took up the story, dead-pan, ‘to dine at All Souls, four places away from me.’

Roskill strove agonisingly to listen and to think at the same time. Lewes was – what – maybe ten minutes’ drive from East Firle?

‘One of those little coincidences which make life interesting,’ continued Llewelyn. ‘In the terms of personal alibis. Colonel Shapiro has what might be called a watertight one. I can testify that he didn’t lay a finger on my car. But in any accessory role, or as a mastermind, I’m afraid he’s guilty until you can prove him innocent. It does rather look as though he put the finger on me, if that’s the correct term. Don’t you agree?’

They had ambushed Audley neatly and cruelly. But with Shapiro as their No. 1 prospect, it was no wonder they’d wanted him above everyone else.

‘As a matter of fact, I don’t agree at all. Jake Shapiro would never set up anything so crude. And since Americanisms are
de rigeur
this morning, I’d say it’s much more likely that he’s been framed.’

Audley spoke calmly, his composure quickly restored. ‘Besides, he’d be even less likely to miss you than Eleazor’s sons – if he wanted you dead you’d be dead. The only surprising thing is that he’s in this position.’

He turned from Llewelyn back to Yeatman. ‘And since you’re so well posted on comings and goings, where were all the other possible suspects? The Fatah man, for instance – I don’t even know who the current top man here is now – did he leave town? And the P.F.L.P. man? And that new Egyptian who’s got Howeidi’s job – what’s his name? – Razzak? He’s new in town.’

It was Yeatman’s turn to look put out, but it was Stocker who answered.

‘You can count Razzak out – unless leaving town on Wednesday according to plan is suspicious circumstance in itself, that is. I happen to know that he went to Paris to see their ambassador. He asked me on Monday which was the best early boat train.’

A premonition rose in Roskill’s mind like a telltale wisp of smoke from a haystack, catching him unaware.

‘Boat train?’ he echoed.

Stocker looked at him sardonically. ‘Unlike you, Squadron Leader, there are people who are not enamoured with flying.’ (How little they knew!) ‘Colonel Razzak only flies when he has to, it would seem, and in this instance he was in no hurry.’

‘We’ll check it out all the same.’ Audley hadn’t missed it either, evidently. ‘Dover-Calais, I take it?’

‘Newhaven-Dieppe as a matter of fact. A longer sea trip but a less depressing journey, I’m told.’

Roskill stared stupidly at his knee, not trusting himself to look anyone in the eye. If Lewes was in easy driving distance of East Firle, Newhaven was almost within easy walking distance. Razzak and Shapiro were like two bearings on a map: their point of intersection in time and space could have turned that peaceful stretch of downland into a place of danger. The coincidence once again was too glaring to ignore.

‘You’re quite right to suspect everyone, Audley,’ said Llewelyn. ‘The possibility of Shapiro’s innocence has occurred to us. You actually favour the P.F.L.P., don’t you, Cox?’

‘The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as such – no,’ said Cox judiciously. ‘They’ve been getting more responsible – or maybe more respectable – recently, rather like the student revolutionaries. But there are one or two offshoots which do frighten the life out of me.’

‘Such as?’

Cox considered Audley in silence for several seconds. ‘The one that worries me at this moment in time hasn’t even got a name yet. Not a name I can put to it,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Or at best only part of a name.’

It wasn’t reluctance, but diffidence. Cox had never met Audley before, but he would know the big man’s reputation well enough. Roskill remembered his own first traumatic encounter with him again: he had been desperately afraid of having his own cherished theories disdainfully shot down in flames.

He looked at Cox carefully for the first time. He didn’t look like a policeman – not the bulldog, bloodhound or alsatian varieties anyway. Mongrel with a discernible fox terrier bloodline, unremarkable in any gathering. But that, of course, was the modern Special Branch trend; a hairy hitchhiking student had only recently complained to him that the special fuzz was becoming hard to pinpoint.

What was certain, though, was that Cox’s ability would belie his appearance: there’d be no dead wood around Llewelyn and Stocker.

The same thoughts, or something like, must have been running through Audley’s head. ‘Even part of a name is a beginning,’ he said encouragingly. ‘A name and a feeling about it. I’ve started with no more man that often enough.’

Cox nodded. ‘That’s about it – a name and a feeling.’

‘And the name?’

‘
Hassan
.’ Cox paused. ‘It’s a man, or the code name for a man, not a group. The man who gives the orders to a group, maybe an inner P.F.L.P. wing, or an off-shoot, or maybe some-tiling entirely new – we don’t know.’

‘And what has Hassan done so far?’

‘Apparently nothing. The only references we’ve had to Hassan are in the nature of forecasts. Rather messianic forecasts, too.’

‘Such as?’

‘We’ve had four, possibly five. And when I say “we” I mean the joint committee we set up with the Interpol people in ‘69. The West Germans got the first when they were rounding up everyone after the Zurich air crash. They all add up to the same thing, anyway –
when Hassan gets going he won’t make any mistakes
.’

‘Then that would seem to rule out Hassan in this instance, Tom,’ said Llewelyn.

‘That depends, sir, on whether he intended to get you or merely to frighten you.’

‘He’s frightened me – no doubt about that. But he could have done that with far less trouble – and without any accidental bloodshed.’

Cox shook his head. ‘I don’t think he’s fussy about that.’

‘Which means, I take it,’ said Audley, ‘that something unpleasant happened to your five sources?’

Cox looked at him sharply. ‘Yes – and no. Two of them were released – three if you count the one in France, but we don’t really know for sure about him. The French aren’t very cooperative these days. All three of them have disappeared, anyway.’

‘And the other two?’

‘They were held on weapons charges. Each of them had a sub-machine gun hidden in his digs – in each case, oddly enough, it was an Israeli Uzi they’d got, too.’

‘Not so odd, really,’ said Stocker. ‘The Uzi happens to be the best thing on the market. It’s standard issue in four or five gentile armies – what you might call an Israeli export triumph.’

‘Well, the Germans didn’t take kindly to it in the hands of a couple of Arab students – one was a Syrian, actually, and the other an Iraqi. They were going to throw the book at them.’

‘But they didn’t?’

‘They never got the chance. The Syrian committed suicide – he was in a secure jail in Bonn. But the Iraqi was picked up in a little town near the Swiss border.’ Cox paused for effect. ‘He was sprung by four masked men armed with Uzis. It was only a little police station, of course – and they weren’t expecting anything. But it was a neat job all the same, and the Germans haven’t had a smell of him since. And believe me, they’ve looked hard.’

‘All of which is vastly exciting,’ said Llewelyn, ‘but doesn’t prove a thing. I’ve seen your Hassan file, Tom. It’s interesting, even disturbing. But if Hassan exists he doesn’t appear to have reached England. And if he is here we don’t even know what his aims are. You just can’t give me one single, useful, tangible fact to back this “feeling” of yours.’

Llewelyn spoke lazily, only a few degrees from contempt, his Welsh origins again rich beneath his words — Roskill was reminded of a mineworkers’ union organiser rejecting an absurd wage offer made by a not very bright Coal Board spokesman. For a man under possible sentence of death the union organiser was admirably cool, but nonetheless exasperating. The temptation to come to Cox’s support was irresistible.

‘I don’t agree at all.’ He tried to match the Welshman’s lilt with the sort of public school drawl that would be most offensive. ‘I don’t know much about your Arab-Israeli feuds, but I do know that whoever fixed your car was well organised and ruthless and bloody-minded. And that goes for suicide and jail-breaking too. It means that this character Hassan looks after his own – one way or another. Which makes him a good prospect.’

He looked to Audley for support and was disconcerted to receive a blank stare.

‘We’ll check him out,’ said Audley noncommittsilly.

Like Llewelyn – irritatingly like Llewelyn – he was also playing it cool now. Roskill shrugged and relapsed into silence, masking his annoyance; this was presumably how the poor bloody pawns always felt.

Llewelyn smiled ait him. ‘All are prospects and all must be checked out. Quite right again. But checking takes time and I can’t go on living a – how shall I put it? – restricted life for ever. It’s boring and it wastes a lot of valuable time. So – ‘ he turned to Audley – ‘just what do you suppose to do about it?’

A muscle twitched momentarily in Audley’s cheek, as though a boring and restricted life of indefinite duration might be no bad thing for Llewelyn.

‘Forty-eight hours,’ he said. ‘Give me that long to look up a few old acquaintances and do a little horse-trading. Then I may be able to tell you where you stand.’

‘Horse-trading?’ Stocker looked at him curiously. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you had much to trade with?’

‘I haven’t. But I’ve no doubt Roskill has. If you’ve no objection to his letting slip something here and there I think we might make out well enough.’

‘Yes, I suppose you might at that.’ Stocker eyed Roskill. ‘You must have quite a few marketable titbits about the Middle Eastern air forces tucked away by now — and I’ve no objection to your disbursing a few in a good cause.’

‘You haven’t?’ Roskill looked from, one to the other incredulously, dismayed at their calm assumption that he would so easily squander his hard-won capital. It went against all his instincts – and worse, if it ever leaked out it would ruin his reputation. ‘Well, I bloody well have! I’m not going to play both ends against the middle for anyone, no matter what!’

‘Don’t worry, Hugh,’ Audley reassured him. ‘We won’t sour your contacts. In fact I may be able to provide you with a few very useful ones. There’s no cause for alarm.’

Roskill subsided sullenly. The bugger of it was that playing both ends against the middle just about described what he
was
doing already – and the middle against each end, too. And. God only knew what Audley and Llewelyn and Stocker were really up to.

‘Talking of contacts, Squadron Leader Roskill, I think you’ve one exceedingly useful one of which you may not be aware,’ said Cox. ‘The Ryle Foundation.’

The Ryle – ‘ A moment earlier Roskill had been halfway to telling himself that at least there could hardly be any more unpleasant surprises ahead, but evidently there was no limit to them.

‘The Ryle Foundation?’ He heard his own voice echo Cox uncertainly.

‘I believe you know Lady Ryle quite well,’ said Cox. ‘And Sir John Ryle.’

‘I know the Ryles, yes.’ The voice sounded more like his own this time, no matter how he felt inside. ‘But I’ve never had anything to do with the Foundation – and I don’t think the Ryles have either.’ But obviously they did; or one of them did. He couldn’t even remember whether it was relief or education or both, for the life of him. ‘But Lady Ryle does a lot of charity committee work,’ he concluded cautiously.