The Alamut Ambush

'Then what would have?'

Audley shrugged. 'I can only guess, Hugh. It seems to me that they met here because they wanted to make sure that somebody in particular didn't follow them or listen in. They could each get up to the Beacon from a different direction and you can see for miles from up there. But if somebody did follow them – and if Alan saw who it was and recognised him – '

'One of Hassan's men, do you mean?' said Butler.

'And he was murdered just for that?' Mary said softly. 'Just for that?'

Audley blinked at her. It bore down on Roskill with absolute certainty that Audley really didn't care either way why Alan had died, or by whose hand. It didn't even matter any longer that Llewelyn should be humiliated. What absorbed the man now was what had passed between Razzak and Shapiro, and only that.

'If he was a danger, Miss Hunter,' Audley began didactically, ' – if Hassan's man wished to keep his cover – it may be he thought Alan was our man on the spot. We just can't tell.' He paused. 'But I think he really died because killing is what Hassan's men do best. It's their business.'

'Their business?'

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'I sat up half the night trying to puzzle it out.' Audley smiled to himself. 'I had most of the bits already actually – it was only your bit I needed, Hugh. When Faith passed on your message about the Alamut List it wasn't very difficult.

'You see, there's nothing in the files about Hassan, because he hasn't done anything. Even what Cox told us – that was negative material. Hassan's never claimed to have shot up an airline office, or hijacked an airliner. He's never even raided across the Jordan.

You'd almost think he doesn't exist.'

'But Razzak was scared of him – and so was Shapiro,' Roskill interrupted.

'And so was Llewelyn. But he wasn't surprised – that's what was so odd. And what's much more surprising is the way Cox assumed that if anyone wanted to kill Llewelyn, it would be Hassan. Razzak did the same, apparently – Hassan was his first choice too.'

'That's right.' Roskill nodded. ' 'A murderous bloody minded idea'

he said. And – Christ! – ' the Egyptian's words came back with a jolt' – he told me to play it cool, otherwise Hassan'd move his name up to the top of the list. My God! The list!'

'The Alamut List,' Audley repeated. 'The Alamut List is the difference between Hassan and all the other guerrilla leaders, Habash and Gharbiya and Haydar. They believe in terrorism, sure enough – and liberation and revolution and all the resit. But Hassan's special subject is going to be assassination, no more and no less. The very name gives the game away —'

'The name?'

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'Alamut. It was the name of the Hashashin castle in the Elburz Mountains in Northern Persia – it was where the original sect of the Assassins started, back in the eleventh century. It's all in Joinville's 'Life of Saint Louis' – Make way for him who bears the lives of kings in his hands.'

Butler rolled his eyes at Roskill, for Audley's knowledge of medieval Arab history was at once the pride and the despair of the department. It had been his cover in all his Mediterranean and Middle Eastern journeys in the old days, with learned articles to his credit to back it. Indeed, there were those who had suggested that the cover had always been his real preoccupation, for which his job was the real cover. So Shapiro had meant exactly what he'd said, though perhaps with his tongue in his cheek.

'But I won't bore you with a history lesson.' The tightness of Audley's voice indicated that he'd picked up Butler's look. 'What it suggests is a programme of selective political assassination. The removal of the inconvenient doves for the benefit of the impatient hawks.'

'That's the devil of a lot to build on a name.' There was a sparring note in Butler's words, almost a touch of disdain at Audley's intellectualism. 'One name and a botched killing.'

Audley measured Butler coolly. They were chalk and cheese, thought Roskill, and neither of them would ever meet the other's mind. Unconsciously they would always goad each other by overplaying their chosen roles of the omniscient, donnish theorist and the practical, plain-speaking soldier, even when they were in basic agreement.

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'I grant you they're frightened,' went on Butler. 'I can smell the fear on them. But if you're right, then Llewelyn and Stocker have got a damn funny way of going about things – letting you and Hugh loose with only half an idea of what you're up to.'

Dear old Jack! Roskill felt a rueful affection for the square, pugnacious face, the very pattern of the British military countenance – except that old time scarlet would have clashed hideously with the freckles and the hair. And except that this very morning had proved that appearance to be deceptive: when he disapproved of his masters' behaviour, Jack was ready as Audley to intervene on his own initiative.

'I don't think so at all, Major Butler,' said Audley mildly. 'To my way of thinking, the name substantiated the fear, and the fear produces the action. I said to Hugh yesterday that Llewelyn knew more than he was saying — I think he knows about the Alamut List. And I think he's got enough self-regard to believe he'd be on it at the top – that's why he never gave a thought to Jenkins. He was half expecting it to happen some time.'

'Well, why the devil didn't he tell you from the start?'

'Ah, now I can only guess at that,' said Audley, peering over his glasses. 'Just how good an assassin Hassan is I don't know –

though I wouldn't describe what he's done so far as a botched job.

But I rather think he's a good propagandist.'

'A propagandist?'

'Yes. After all, he hasn't really done anything yet, but he's spread the word where it matters. When you think about it, the Alamut dummy2