or two S.U. 100 tank-destroyers, and there were some infantry and engineers on the run from Abu Agheila he'd cobbled together. But that wasn't the point
– the point was how he'd got there.'
Shapiro paused. 'I pieced some of it together from a talkative lieutenant we picked up with Razzak, and some of it afterwards.
It's quite a story – quite a story...'
'I thought Razzak commanded a tank unit on the frontier?' That had dummy2
been what Audley had said.
'He did – in their 7th Division forward area. But he wasn't there when we attacked on June 5th – he was in Cairo having his balls chewed up for defeatism!'
The Israeli showed his teeth in a wolfish smile that had no honour in it.
'Razzak's no fool. He reckoned we were coming, and he sent back a report saying that they ought to pull all their armour back from the frontier and dig in deep round the places that really mattered –
like El Arish. Leave the Gaza strip to fend for itself, he said apparently.
'Hell – I'm not going to give you a lecture on his tactics! We would have licked 'em anyway, but it wouldn't have been a walkover and we'd have lost even more good men than we did.
'But as it was, they didn't like it and they had him back in Cairo on the Sunday to tell him so in no uncertain terms. And he got up early on the Monday morning to hitch a lift in a light plane back to one of the forward strips. Not quite early enough, though – the field he was taking off from was one of our priority strikes.
'So the poor old sod was grounded two hundred miles from where his command was getting pasted — the sort of situation every commander has nightmares about!'
'But he did get to his regiment?'
Shapiro shook his head. 'His unit was mincemeat before he even reached the desert, and I don't doubt he knew it would be. No –
when most of the regimental brass was heading for home, old dummy2
Razzak was just steering for the sound of the guns. He knew damn well what would be happening – he knew what our air strike meant because he'd seen it himself. He set out simply to try to hold us up somewhere so that some of the army could escape as it did in '56 –
he didn't reckon anyone else was going to do it.
'God alone knows how he managed to get as far as he did. A Fouga strafed his staff car sometime that first day and creased him a bit –
but he just went on walking until he met another car coming in the opposite direction, making a break for it. He took that one at gunpoint – left a brigadier standing by the roadside in the middle of nowhere. And when that ran out of fuel he just went on walking.'
A special sort of old-fashioned hero indeed – the paunchy, pock-marked sort, obstinately trying to salvage something from the ruin achieved by the fools and the loudmouths...
'He never had a chance, of course. If he'd reached the front that first night he might have knocked some sense into someone, but I doubt it. The second night was too late – it was just a gesture, that's all. But it was quite a gesture: you know what he said when we finally picked him up? – which was when he'd fired off everything he'd got, I can tell you.'
'What did he say?'
'He'd been hit several times, actually. He was a real mess by then.
But he just lifted up his hand and said – in English, too, he said it –
he said: 'You've shot my bloody trigger finger off – look what you've done!' Cheeky old sod!'
Shapiro wagged his own trigger finger at Roskill. 'And that's the dummy2
man you're suggesting had a bomb plugged into Llewelyn's car!
Friend, I'm not a great admirer of Egyptians in general, but I'd stake my last shekel that Razzak wasn't in on it. That handsome side-kick of his – Majid, is it? –
He spoke with a sudden passion which was not really out of character; some of the biggest comedians became like this the moment they stopped playing to the gallery, and there had never been any question that Shapiro was a hard man under his clowning.
What was out of character was not only that he was going out of his way to give Razzak an unsolicited testimonial, but that he now seemed inclined towards Audley's contention that there could be any recognisable style in killing.
But Razzak's self-sacrificial tactics in Sinai certainly didn't prove that he was capable of removing opponents by any available means. It almost suggested the very opposite – that under the layers of fat lay an iron determination unshaken by odds, difficulty and danger.
'Do you get my point?' said Shapiro.
'I'm not at all sure that I do, no,' said Roskill slowly. Perhaps it was the opposite point the crafty sod intended – to damn the Egyptian with praise. 'But I think your admiration for Colonel Razzak is –
touching– to say the least.'
Shapiro grimaced. 'Ah! The authentic supercilious voice of England – the lesser breeds shall not show unfitting
