Gavin Lyall - Judas Country

I stood up carefully; Pietro put his hand on the gun – not nervously, just as a gesture. I waved my empty glass and looked thirsty and he nodded at the cupboard, and I went over and found myself a Scotch and a vacuum flask of chilled water.

That put me about ten feet from the desk, and the size of the desk itself made it another five feet to Pietro so I wasn't going to try throwing a drink in his face.

I just said conversationally to Ken: 'Nice big desk that. You could play table tennis across it.'

He looked up and there was a tiny light in his eyes. I went back and sat down and sipped. And studied the situation.

The desk was planted diagonally across a corner and well out from it. Ken was sitting a bit in front but almost in line with its length; nearly in line at the other end was the drinks cupboard and floor-to-ceiling shelves of expensive-looking books.

I left it for ten minutes and the room grew quiet and cool, almost cold, around us. Ken had his eyes shut and looked as if he was dozing.

Then I stood up, and Pietro put his hand back on the gun. I said: 'Can I get a book to read? Book -livre -libro-' I pointed at the shelves. 'What's the Arabic for "book"?'

'Koran?' Mitzi suggested uselessly.

'For God's sake.' I walked over and patted a row of books. 'May I?'

Pietrofrowned slightly, as if he was thinking, then nodded heavily. I smiled graciously and began reading titles. It seemed to be solid history of the Middle East, and I do mean solid. A lot was in English, the rest in French or German, but I was picking for size rather than language. I took one or two down, pretended to glance at them, then chose a nice leather-bound volume a bit smaller than the average encyclopaedia format. I think it was about Schliemann at Mycenae; anyway, it was in German. I opened it up and turned around.

As I moved, Pietro put his hand on the Smith, then took it away again. I didn't look at him. 'Hey, listen to this,' I said to Mitzi, and peered at the title page. 'I am not going to say Go or anything like that, but go when I shut the book. How d'you like that?'

'What?'She genuinely thought I'd got my brain caught in the wringer.

I grinned at her, slammed the book shut and skimmed it across the desk top. Ken was moving as it left my hand; he hit the floor on his knees and caught the revolver in mid-air. I heard the hammer come back with a firm snap.

Then Ken was back in the middle of the room to give himself space and Pietro was lifting slowly to his feet with a disbelieving expression. He took a step and looked at Ken and then another step.

Ken just spread his feet slightly and waited, the gun cocked but pointing loosely at the floor. Pietro took another step around the desk and his mouth worked a bit and he was walking through mud into the barbed wire and machine guns. Ken didn't make any move and he had no expression. A machine gun doesn't need one.

Pietrotook a pace and there was suddenly a glitter of sweat across his forehead. The room was as quiet as an icicle but Pietro could hear thunder. His mouth came open and he tried to move his foot and did – by millimetres, like a man learning to walk again after a stroke, while the sweat bulged out on his forehead and dribbled down his face. And then he locked solid. For a moment his face showed he was trying to move forward, then some part of him snapped and he just stood there.

Ken lifted his left arm slowly and pointed to a chair and Pietro turned and took two exhausted steps and collapsed into it. Then, like a contracting muscle, his big square body turned slowly on its side and drew up into the foetal position.

He was no friend of mine, but I think that's the part I'd rather have missed. Ken said:'Touché,' and let the Smith's hammer silently down.

The door was impossible. It was built of seasoned timber at least a couple of inches thick and stiffened with ornate ironwork like an old castle. It was probably just Aziz's passion for the past – he could hardly have planned his study as a dungeon – but it came to the same thing for us.

Ken was behind the desk finding the cords to the strip of high curtain and pulling it back. Sure enough, there was a shallow window there but no way of opening it.

'We could stack up a few things and bust out through that,' he said.

'What's the rush? Don't you want to wait and talk to the nice Mr Aziz again, like he promised?'

He grinned and started jerking at the desk drawers. 'Okay, I'll stay if you think he'd be offended.'

Mitzi was just standing there, a little dazed by what had happened. 'But how,' she demanded, 'did you know that Mr Case would-'

'All those years on the halls,' Ken said. 'You never heard of Caviti and Case, Astounding Telepathic Acrobats?… The un-trusting bastard's locked most of these drawers.'

'Don't bust 'em,' I warned. 'And don't leave prints. We don't want to give him any legal squawk at all.'

He bounced the heavy pistol in his hand. 'You think he'll worry about that?'

The most you can do is kill him. He'll still be a big man in a big family.'

He looked down at the gun and said sadly: 'Yes… they don't change things as much as you think.' He glanced at Pietro, then laid the pistol down and started sorting through the one drawer he'd got open.

Mitzi said: 'But must we wait? Why do you not shoot at the door to make it open?'

'And spoil the party? ' I asked. 'Anyway, that only works on T. V. Ken tried it once in Isfahan.'

He chuckled. 'Yes – bloody thing jammed the lock so solid they were still trying to open the door by its hinges when we left town."

'Which admittedly wasn't all that much later,' I added.

The phone rang.

'No, ' I said quickly, and Ken took his hand off it. 'He'll probably take it on an extension somewhere – and anyway, we wouldn't understand a word. But good news or bad, he'll come in here after.' The ringing stopped and we all stared at the phone.

Then I said to Mitzi: 'My guess is somebody's been searching your rooms at the St George. Will they have found it?'

She hesitated a moment, then shook her head slowly. 'No.'

'Is it in the hotel safe?'

Again a hesitation, again: 'No.'

'Well, I doubt if they could have got that opened, but probably they'll know you didn't use it. And I don't think they've had time to find where Ken and I are staying… Now he'sgo¿. to come back and ask again.'

The phone tinged once. Ken stood up and said softly: 'Places for the Second Act, please.'

We should have thought of Aziz bringing a second man -another bodyguard – if the next step was to 'ask' us again. For those sort of games you need two.

But it didn't make much difference. As they froze in the doorway, Ken was up on his feet, the Smith held in both hands and sighting down it at Aziz's belly. 'Step inside and tell your friend to close the door.'

The new bodyguard was taller, leaner, older, but his sports jacket and trousers had the same greasy shabbiness of Pietro's suit. Some sort of caste system, I suppose. He glanced at Aziz, who told him something – the right something, since he pushed the door shut and just stood there.

Ken said: 'Tell him to give his gun to Roy. And if he wants to try and be clever, that's fine with me.'

Aziz passed it on, part of it, anyway. I walked across behind Ken and took the second gun. This cove was a little more humble about his personal artillery: all he had was a standard Colt Police.38 with a six-inch barrel, which was very much more my idea of a gun to hold if the voting got noisy. Not too easy to conceal, but they don't bother too much about that in Beirut anyway.

Aziz was staring puzzled at Pietro, who was still curled up and if he wasn't quite sucking his thumb, he might as well have been. 'What happened to-'