Gavin Lyall - Judas Country

'What will he have done by then?' Mitzi asked. She looked a little pale, and I wasn't blaming her. She was the one Aziz was after; Ken and I were just obstacles and, on the morning's showing, not much of that.

I shrugged. 'I dunno. He must already have tried to get you arrested-' she went positively white; '-but even a Beirut judge probably wouldn't wear that.'

Eleanor was back studying the order. 'At least it shows how much he lent your father.'

'How much?' Mitzi asked shakily.

'Twelve thousand dollars, US.'

It didn't sound much, not in one way. In another, it sounded like the cost of space flight. 'Even if we'd got it, it isn't really what he wants. It's that document. Except if we could pay twelve thousand into the court they'd free the aeroplane.'

Ken suggested: 'Why not put up Eleanor as a bond? In Beirut she must be worth-'

She straightened her back, chin and breasts pointing a broadside at him. 'And why not your own mother?'

I said: 'Oh, he traded her in years back, when she still had some mileage left on-'

'For God's sake be serious! ' she snapped.

I slapped my hands on the table, tilted back my chair and said: 'Right, one serious thought coming up. We catch the lunchtkne flight for Cyprus. Let him have the aeroplane – it isn't ours, anyway. In a way, that order's our safe-conduct. It implies he'd settle for the aeroplane, so if we give him that Ken shook his head. 'Hell, no, Roy. I just hate to let go of an aeroplane – and it won't look good on your reputation, bugging out so easy.'

He had a point there. 'So, let the girls take the flight. We stay here and see what we can do. It'll be more without you hanging on our sword arms.'

Eleanor looked momentarily wistful, then resigned herself. 'I guess that's the best idea."

Mitzi stilllooked worried.'Herr Aziz… he will not stop us leaving?'

He might try. One thing he'd almost certainly do was have a man sitting around the airport to see what we did next.

I slapped the table. 'Third great thought coming up. We give you back to the deputy manager; he'll get the tickets for you on the quiet. May I?' I leant across and undid another button on Eleanor's blouse. 'Now he wouldn't hand you over to God or the "Gestapo."

Ken and I lunched in one of the little Arabcafés up on the Comiche de Chourane by the new hotels built by and for the gulf oil sheikhs. It isn't the European end of town, but we wanted to stay clear of obvious places. We hadn't been followed from the airport, but they could have been so bad that they'd lost us by accident.

'After all,' I said, 'Aziz isn't a mobster. He doesn't have real professionals on his staff; he's just improvising with what he's got.'

'There's some hard boys around Beirut, and I don't mean those jazzy guerrilla groups.' We were eating a coldmezze sort of thing: spicy olives, pickled cucumbers, houmus, sliced Kafta sausage and other cold meats. It was pretty good, though maybe not as much as Ken thought it was. Anything that wasn't served with four stone walls around it still tasted like the day you lost your virginity.

'They're there,' I agreed, 'but Aziz himself wouldn't know them, and he might be careful not to know the people who do know them. He's doing all right in straight business and he'd screw himself if he went in for the narcotics and prostitution and stuff.'

He looked up from his plate, unconvinced. 'How d'you know he isn't in already?'

'Because he's too vulnerable. The boys in those trades don't believe in competition, and the easiest way to get rid of him would be to send out a whisper that hewas involved. He's got to talk to people like Hilton and Sheraton and Coca-Cola and any smell of dope-peddling and white-slavery would rub off on them. They'd be looking for a new contact man as from yesterday.'

Ken stuck an olive in his mouth and chewed it with grudging agreement. 'All right, so from nine to five he loves small animals and big children. What was he doing after hours last night?'

Thecafé doors swung open and a couple of well-built characters in bulging lightweight jackets stood looking coldly around. The waiters froze in a relaxed, familiar way, and everybody else gave one glance and then looked at their plates.

The bodyguards' eyes fixed on us, the obvious strangers. Ken's right hand crawled on the table.

I hissed: 'Keep still. You know the form in this town.'

He nodded and relaxed. A small, tubby man in a blue silk suit and Arab head-dress walked in between the tough guys, and the proprietor made a small gesture towards a reserved corner table. The bodyguards watched us warily as they followed him across.

The room quickly got back to its normal murmuring and clattering. 'Cheap millionaire,' Ken commented. 'What were you saying about Aziz?'

I shrugged. 'He turned rough when he thought he was getting cheated. You know what these types are like: they'll lose thousands on some crazy gamble, they give it away in handf uls inside the family – but you cheat them out of a penny and they feel you're trying to castrate them.'

Ken finished his plate-load except for the houmus. 'Who was cheating him, then?'

'We were – in way. If we'd let the post go through, and Sergeant Papa had, too, that authentication would've gone straight to Aziz.'

Ken grunted. I went on: 'And before that, the Professor himself was.'

'Oh, come off it, Roy.'

'Well, I'll give you odds Aziz thinks so. Look: 'the Prof found the sword over a year ago, right? Some time before he got arrested, anyway, because he had time to get it hidden and have that authentication drawn up. Yet he never told Aziz anything, not then, not after he got out of jail and that was six weeks ago.

What d'you expect Aziz to think? He's got twelve thousand dollars on this horse and the jockey cuts him dead in the street.'

Ken shook his head. 'You're trying to have it both ways. You can't say Bruno was cheating by not sending him the authentication when we know he was.'

'So he changed his mind. We know he changed it enough to shoot himself: suicide isn't long-term planning.'

'Or is, if you look at it another way,' Ken said gloomily. 'You still prefer a suicide verdict?'

I shrugged. 'I'm not the coroner. But posting that letter sort of fits. Irrevocable step and all that.'

'It's still bugger-all use if it doesn't tell you where the sword is. And you're only taking Aziz's word that Bruno didn't contact him.'

'I suppose I am.' And I began wondering why I was.

'Still,' he perked up and snapped his fingers for the waiter, 'that isn't our immediate problem. We've got to get the aeroplane out of hock.'

I looked at my watch. 'They should just have taken off – but 'we don't make any move until we've confirmed they got on that flight.'

'Agreed.' He did a quick check of the bill and dealt some scruffy notes on to the table. 'Then what?'

'Should we try for a lawyer?' I asked.

'Hell, no; the length of a lawsuit increases by the square of the lawyers involved. Aziz'll have enough already. Anyway, this town doesn't work on law, it works on pull. We need some pull.'

'And where do we find that on a Saturday afternoon?'

He looked slyly happy. 'At the races? We never cancelled that date there…'

Beirut Hippodrome is a fairly standard sort of course for that end of the world: an oval sand track with a fancy colonnaded wooden stand on the south side by the finish, an open-aircafé next to it and the ring and stables and stuff somewhere behind that. Two things make it different: you come in through the north gate so you have to walk clear across the track to reach the stand, and most of the middle is a forest so that spectators can't see the north side and most of the last turn to home.