The Alamut Ambush

particular. Something only you can do, possibly.'

Roskill glanced at Butler out of the corner of his eye. Good for Mary.

'Quite right, Miss Hunter,' said Audley encouragingly. 'I think they dummy2

wanted me to make contact with Jake Shapiro again. If anyone can give the lowdown on Hassan it'll be Jake, but he wouldn't stop to give our friend Dai Llewelyn the time of day. That's the whole trouble – they kicked me out once for being too close to Jake. And with things as they are, they don't want to get involved with Israeli Intelligence. But if I happened to go back to my bad old ways off my own bat, unofficially – that would be different...'

'Yet it can't be this Alamut List that they want,' Mary said, frowning.

Audley perked up. 'Why not, Miss Hunter?'

'Well ... if I've understood what you've been saying, it would be a list of all the moderate men – people like nice young King Hussein

– the people who really want peace.'

'That's right. And Eban and Allon and Abu Khadra and all the others.'

'That's what I mean – you already know who'd be on the list, so it can't be that...' Mary trailed off. 'Of course, I only know what I read in the papers, but I always think the Israelis are great doers. I mean, they've been putting up with things, and having things done to them for so long, and now they've found out that they can do things just as well. Not just the wars they've fought, but the way they captured that Nazi – Eichmann – and the way they fought back against the guerrillas who tried to take their airliners – while other people talk, they do things...' Again she stopped uncertainly.

'Go on, Miss Hunter.'

'So – ' Mary rallied ' – so I'd want to know what they're planning to dummy2

do about Hassan, because they're the ones who wouldn't sit down and wait for him to start shooting and murdering. And they wouldn't expect anyone to help them. Unless – unless – ' she stared hard at Audley – 'unless that was why Colonel Shapiro met Colonel Razzak. Is that too stupid?'

Too stupid?

Not an exchange of information and a friendly word of warning between honest enemies, but something more: an alliance!

An Egyptian-Israeli entente!

It could be temporary, and must be unofficial and highly secret, with nothing on paper. But was it feasible?

Roskill glanced at Audley, and saw that he was smiling. So this, or something like it, was what Audley had been after all along. And given that Shapiro and Razzak were the only ones of their kind in that sea of hatred and distrust, who better than them to make the contact? They could be enemies still, but facing a more dangerous common enemy – with the Nazis at the gates, even the Russians and the West had made common cause once, without relaxing their deeper enmity.

'Now have I said something silly?'

'On the contrary, Miss Hunter,' Audley laughed, 'you have said what I hoped to hear. What drew Hassan's men wasn't so much the meeting as its subject. And that's why Razzak and Jake were both so keen to keep us from breathing down their necks just now: whatever they're negotiating has to be dynamite. And the moment you said you weren't going to give up, Hugh – even after Razzak dummy2

had promised to find out about Hassan – that was when Jake thought of me.'

'But why you?' Jack Butler sounded humbler now. 'You're supposed to be out of the Middle East.'

'Out of the Middle East – but not out of favour with Sir Frederick,'

said Audley quickly. 'If it came to the push I could still pull some strings, and Jake knows it. And he trusts me, that's the point. He may even suspect I'm already involved – he knows Hugh's a friend of mine, anyway. And remember, all he wants is to get the heat off for a day or two, if what Razzak said is anything to go by – '

'But is it?' Roskill interrupted. 'I still don't quite know what makes Razzak tick. You were going to find out about him, David – I haven't even seen the official file on him, damn it!'

'But I have,' Butler said shortly. 'There's not a lot in it either. He's peasant stock, with a dash of Turkish or maybe Albanian. Cairo military academy. Two tank conversion courses over here — that's why his English is so good. He did one on Shermans back in '46, and one of Centurions a few years ago, with attachment to the R.T.

R. – they thought he was pretty sound. And he's been blooded three times: he was in the Irak al-Manshia siege in '48, where Nasser won his spurs. Then in '56 he broke out of Um Katef – it took him fifteen days to walk home. And then the '67 business.'

'What about his politics?'

Butler nodded. 'I'm coming to them. He was in the Free Officers movement by the end of '49 – he was one of the group that captured Farouk's palace. Then Nasser put him in Intelligence, and dummy2

he was in the special squad that smashed the Muslim Brotherhood after they tried to kill Nasser in '54. Went to Russia next year and put up some sort of black there – he was sent home in disgrace, anyway – '

'He broke a Russian officer's jaw in an argument,' said Audley.

'Officially it was a professional argument. Actually it was over a girl – a bit of uncomradely racial prejudice. He doesn't like the Russians much.'

'Well, it certainly stopped his promotion dead,' said Butler. 'He was shipped back into the army and it took him ten years to get his battalion. And the rest you know.'

'Not quite,' said Audley. 'Those are just the bones of it. What it adds up to is that Razzak's a patriot – and not