The Alamut Ambush (21 page)

‘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?’

‘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 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 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?’

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!

He frowned at Audley.

‘But that doesn’t change anything, David. It still leaves us with Alan and Razzak – if Alan saw Razzak and Shapiro together – ‘

‘Hugh, Hugh!’ Audley held up his hand, frowning, as though Alan was an extraneous element in the pattern, best forgotten. ‘What if he did? It would have been awkward for them, but it wouldn’t be a killing matter. He couldn’t have heard anything. If he’d have reported the meeting – and if it had leaked out from us, as I suppose it could have with Elliott Wilkinson around – that wouldn’t have been enough to have him killed.’

‘Then what would have?’

Audley shrugged. ‘I can only guess, Hugh. It seems to me that they met here because they wanted to make sure that somebody in particular didn’t follow them or listen in. They could each get up to the Beacon from a different direction and you can see for miles from up there. But if somebody
did
follow them – and if Alan saw who it was and recognised him – ‘

‘One of Hassan’s men, do you mean?’ said Butler.

‘And he was murdered just for that?’ Mary said softly. ‘Just for that?’

Audley blinked at her. It bore down on Roskill with absolute certainty that Audley really didn’t care either way why Alan had died, or by whose hand. It didn’t even matter any longer that Llewelyn should be humiliated. What absorbed the man now was what had passed between Razzak and Shapiro, and only that.

‘If he was a danger, Miss Hunter,’ Audley began didactically, ‘ – if Hassan’s man wished to keep his cover – it may be he thought Alan was our man on the spot. We just can’t tell.’ He paused. ‘But I think he really died because killing is what Hassan’s men do best. It’s their business.’

‘Their business?’

‘
I
sat up half the night trying to puzzle it out.’ Audley smiled to himself. ‘I had most of the bits already actually – it was only your bit I needed, Hugh. When Faith passed on your message about the Alamut List it wasn’t very difficult.

‘You see, there’s nothing in the files about Hassan, because he hasn’t done anything. Even what Cox told us – that was negative material. Hassan’s never claimed to have shot up an airline office, or hijacked an airliner. He’s never even raided across the Jordan. You’d almost think he doesn’t exist.’

‘But Razzak was scared of him – and so was Shapiro,’ Roskill interrupted.

‘And so was Llewelyn. But he wasn’t
surprised –
that’s what was so odd. And what’s much more surprising is the way Cox assumed that if anyone wanted to kill Llewelyn, it would be Hassan. Razzak did the same, apparently – Hassan was his first choice too.’

‘That’s right.’ Roskill nodded. ‘ “A murderous bloody minded idea” he said. And – Christ! – ‘ the Egyptian’s words came back with a jolt’ – he told me to play it cool, otherwise Hassan’d move his name up to the top of the list.
My
God! The list!’

‘The Alamut List,’ Audley repeated. ‘The Alamut List is the difference between Hassan and all the other guerrilla leaders, Habash and Gharbiya and Haydar. They believe in terrorism, sure enough – and liberation and revolution and all the resit. But Hassan’s special subject is going to be assassination, no more and no less. The very name gives the game away —‘

‘The name?’

‘Alamut. It was the name of the
Hashashin
castle in the Elburz Mountains in Northern Persia – it was where the original sect of the Assassins started, back in the eleventh century. It’s all in Joinville’s “Life of Saint Louis” –
Make way for him who bears the lives of kings in his hands
.’

Butler rolled his eyes at Roskill, for Audley’s knowledge of medieval Arab history was at once the pride and the despair of the department. It had been his cover in all his Mediterranean and Middle Eastern journeys in the old days, with learned articles to his credit to back it. Indeed, there were those who had suggested that the cover had always been his real preoccupation, for which his job was the real cover. So Shapiro had meant exactly what he’d said, though perhaps with his tongue in his cheek.

‘But I won’t bore you with a history lesson.’ The tightness of Audley’s voice indicated that he’d picked up Butler’s look. ‘What it suggests is a programme of selective political assassination. The removal of the inconvenient doves for the benefit of the impatient hawks.’

‘That’s the devil of a lot to build on a name.’ There was a sparring note in Butler’s words, almost a touch of disdain at Audley’s intellectualism. ‘One name and a botched killing.’

Audley measured Butler coolly. They were chalk and cheese, thought Roskill, and neither of them would ever meet the other’s mind. Unconsciously they would always goad each other by overplaying their chosen roles of the omniscient, donnish theorist and the practical, plain-speaking soldier, even when they were in basic agreement.

‘I grant you they’re frightened,’ went on Butler. ‘I can smell the fear on them. But if you’re right, then Llewelyn and Stocker have got a damn funny way of going about things – letting you and Hugh loose with only half an idea of what you’re up to.’

Dear old Jack! Roskill felt a rueful affection for the square, pugnacious face, the very pattern of the British military countenance – except that old time scarlet would have clashed hideously with the freckles and the hair. And except that this very morning had proved that appearance to be deceptive: when he disapproved of his masters’ behaviour, Jack was ready as Audley to intervene on his own initiative.

‘I don’t think so at all, Major Butler,’ said Audley mildly. ‘To my way of thinking, the name substantiated the fear, and the fear produces the action. I said to Hugh yesterday that Llewelyn knew more than he was saying — I think he knows about the Alamut List. And I think he’s got enough self-regard to believe he’d be on it at the top – that’s why he never gave a thought to Jenkins. He was half expecting it to happen some time.’

‘Well, why the devil didn’t he tell you from the start?’

‘Ah, now I can only guess at that,’ said Audley, peering over his glasses. ‘Just how good an assassin Hassan is I don’t know – though I wouldn’t describe what he’s done so far as a botched job. But I rather think he’s a good propagandist.’

‘A propagandist?’

‘Yes. After all, he hasn’t really done anything yet, but he’s spread the word where it matters. When you think about it, the Alamut List is just a piece of theatre – like Robespierre’s black book that put the fear of God up all his colleagues. He’s using fear as his fifth column – before long, whoever dies, he’ll get the credit. Without lifting a finger.’

It was true, thought Roskill. Hassan was as nebulous as morning mist, but already his name was doing his work for him. Fear and uncertainty emanated from it – it was a mist in which men saw dead men’s faces, and looking closer saw the faces were their own.

He shrugged off the nightmare; in another moment he’d see his own reflection in his mind if he let his imagination work.

‘So they all think this is the beginning of a massacre,’ he said harshly. ‘But we know it isn’t, because it was Alan they were after, not Llewelyn.’

‘But Razzak and Shapiro met, Hugh. And as everyone’s already said, with the cease-fire coming up now’s the time Hassan has got to make his play. God knows whether the Americans and the Russians can make the cease-fire stick, but if Hassan really is the hardliner they say he is, he’s not going to wait and see.’

It was all circumstantial evidence, just one or two degrees from bluff. But Razzak and Shapiro weren’t fools to be stampeded by mere suspicion, and neither was Llewelyn. And although Audley’s knowledge of what was really going on in the Middle East was rusty and out-of-date, he had always had an uncanny instinct for distinguishing reality from illusion.