at the Ryle reception.
For men like that any talk of cease-fire would be a betrayal, and that brought Razzak shoulder to shoulder with Hassan.
'But I'll be able to tell you more about him soon,' Audley went on.
'I'm having breakfast with a man who knows all about him tomorrow morning.'
Roskill grunted. That, of course, was half the secret of Audley's success: if he didn't know something, he could usually be relied on to know someone who would.
'I should have thought Shapiro would be your man. He knows Razzak – and he was down there at Firle. If you can get your hooks into him – '
'Nobody gets their hooks into Jake. The best we can hope for is that he'll be willing to trade with you, Hugh.'
'You', not 'me'! Roskill groaned. This was the same convenient formula Audley had invoked earlier at the Queensway Hotel, but after his objection to it Roskill had hoped it would be allowed to die a natural death.
'Hell, David – he's your buddy. I hardly know the fellow. You go trade with him.'
'I want to keep out of it as long as I can, Hugh. As soon as Jake dummy2
knows I'm involved he'll be likely to raise the price.'
'But you're a friend of his.'
'Friendship doesn't stretch this far. But don't worry – he's not likely to ask you anything about aircraft. Missiles, maybe, but most likely tanks, and I can get you that Anglo-Belgian report on the Scorpion and the Scimitar. Offer him the inside information on that welded aluminium armour of theirs. He'll be sure to like that'
Audley sounded suspiciously like the Foreign Office man who thought no one would know anything about desalination.
'But supposing he doesn't?'
'Give him the Ryle Foundation, then – I'm damn certain he'll go for
It was lamentably clear that Audley was perfectly prepared to see Roskill compromise himself with anybody and everybody in the higher cause of his own tortuous designs, so there was no point in prolonging the conversation. Any moment now Isobel would be arriving beside the car, and he hated the idea of her standing waiting for him in the shadows of Bunnock Street.
'Where do I find Shapiro, then? And don't forget I've got to go down to Firle tomorrow morning, either.'
'That's just it, Hugh. You can reach him tonight: he'll be in a fly-blown club called Shabtai's in Silchester Lane – just behind St.
Bartholomew's Hospital. He'll be there about ten thirty – he's currently wooing a doctor in Bart's.'
'A doctor?'
'A female doctor, man – there's nothing odd about Jake. He's dummy2
ambitiously normal, you might say. His sense of humour's neanderthal, but he's a decent chap if you don't try to double-cross him too obviously. Just don't let him bully you, and whatever you do don't try and keep up with him when he's drinking – he's got a leather liver.'
Razzak and Shapiro sounded equally formidable in their different ways, Roskill reflected unhappily. They were both tank men and therefore had to be mad to start with – anyone who chose to enclose himself in a slow, vulnerable steel coffin couldn't be wholly normal, whatever Audley might say.
He could only hope that Audley had guessed correctly, and that he was about to enlist the aid of the right madman.
By the time he had returned to the car he had managed to convince himself that it could hardly be so very far from the mark. If it was based on what looked like a string of coincidences, that was in its favour. Strings of coincidences were like unicorns and mermaids –
they simply didn't exist in nature, and sensible men treated them with suspicion.
Alan had been killed deliberately and Alan had been at Firle when Shapiro and Razzak had passed so close to each other. And certainly, if anyone was mixed up with Hassan it would be Razzak
– and if anyone had reason enough to spy on them it was Shapiro.
Yet for all that he would have preferred to have met the Israeli after his expedition to Firle, not before it. He had great hopes of Firle: if there had been any sort of meeting there, it had probably dummy2
been set up in the belief that those wide open downs were a private place. But that was a very typical mistake a foreigner and a townsman might make; in reality there were very often watching eyes in the countryside, ready to note strange faces which would have passed unnoticed in the anonymity of a crowded city street.
Perhaps no one else had seen as much as Alan had, but the chances were at least fair that someone else had seen something.
There was a click from the passenger's door and a rapid tapping on the window – Isobel's characteristic tap.
He reached over and unlocked the door, and Isobel slid hurriedly on to the seat.
'Start the car, Hugh,' she said urgently. 'Drive off!'
Roskill frowned at her: Isobel was not totally unflappable, but this urgency had the sound of fear in it.
'There are two men in the churchyard watching you,' she whispered. They're just out of the lamplight – I took the shortcut and I almost bumped into them. I'm certain they were watching you – let's get away from here, Hugh, please.'
He fought the urge to turn around. If they were watching him from just inside the churchyard, beyond the radius of the last lamp, then he wouldn't be able to see than anyway. Whereas underneath the lamp beside the car
