track rod. And if he just dummy2
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 dummy2
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?'
dummy2
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.'
'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 dummy2
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.'
