The Alamut Ambush

'Why, so I agree with him,' said Audley. 'I think the odds are against him – and you. But the least we can do is to shorten them as much as we can. Which means we treat Hassan as a mad dog.

And mad dogs have to be put down quickly.'

The Egyptian's lips twisted. 'Even by dog-lovers?'

'Especially by dog-lovers.' Audley took the jibe on the chin.

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'Quickly – and painlessly if possible. And without hate.'

For one long-lasting moment the Englishman and the Egyptian stared at each other, oblivious of everyone else.

'Especially by dog-lovers,' Razzak echoed him suddenly, but this time without any irony in his voice.

This, Roskill realised, was as far as Audley would ever go towards admitting what his wife said he felt for the poor bloody Middle East, snarled up now in a quarrel as impossible to resolve as an Escher engraving – with its little men trudging forever up a staircase joined to itself . . . Conscience or idealism – or exasperation – whatever it was, Audley was offering it to Razzak now in exchange for the man's trust.

'And Squadron Leader Roskill – and Major Butler?' said Razzak softly. 'Dog-lovers too?'

'Hugh is with me. He wants what we both want – '

' – And I want nothing,' said Butler. 'Except my head examining . . . I'm on my own time here. So if this country isn't involved you can trust me. If it is, you can't.'

Razzak considered them.

'Very well, then,' he shook his head, as if to emphasise the folly of his decision. 'It seems we have to trust each other...

'But you weren't quite right just now, Audley – nobody trusted me specially to do this dirty job. I won it by right of my own stupidity!' He tapped his chest. 'I'm the man Hassan once told all his plans to. And I let him walk away – I let him simply walk away.'

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Razzak took a deep breath before continuing. 'I Suppose it wasn't altogether my fault. It was the first night of the June War, and I had other things on my mind.' He closed his eyes for an instant, as though to refresh his memory with darkness.

'We were taking a rest about fifteen kilometres from Jebl Libni.

There was a truck bogged down off the road – crew gone, but it gave us some shelter from the wind. It gets cold in the Sinai at night... In the daytime you've got the heat and the dust, and half the flies in the world – but at night you can't keep warm sometimes.

That's the Sinai for you...' Razzak shivered, then caught hold of the thread again. 'I heard the scrape of his boots on the road – if hadn't I might have shot him, but he was wearing his boots so I didn't.'

His boots?

Razzak answered the question before it was asked. 'You know, they throw away their boots, our soldiers do, when they're running away ... First their rifles, then their boots. But he'd still got his boots – he'd got four waterbottles, a machine pistol and his boots, so I reckoned he was maybe an officer or a technician, and I thought he might know how things were up front. But he knew even less than I did. All he knew was that we were finished already.'

Razzak couldn't keep the ache of bitterness out of his voice.

Roskill was suddenly put in mind of old Havergal the night before: to know one's own honour was still whole, but to be ashamed of one's own country — what sort of trauma, what sort of deviation, dummy2

that might produce was outside his experience. But it might well put a man outside the normal rules.

'He didn't need to have it spelt out for him. He'd seen their planes, and he hadn't seen ours. He knew, Hassan did.' For a moment he was lost again.

'You're sure he was Hassan? He called himself that?'

'He called himself nothing, Dr. Audley. He never said who he was or what he was – he was just one ice-cold angry man. I've met some angry men these last three years, but never one as cold as that

– he was like burning ice that strips your skin off. I think if I'd been on my own he'd have shot me – not to get my water bottle, but just because he thought I was running away!'

'But you weren't – and he was, damn it!' Butler cut in.

Razzak shook his head. 'Who was running away and who wasn't?

I've never been quite sure which I was doing – maybe I was running. And Hassan certainly didn't think he was running away from his enemy. I believe he felt he was running towards him for the first time in his life!

'You see, when I saw how angry he was – he was spoiling for a fight – I asked him to join us. But he said I was a great fool ... and he asked me to join him...'

' ... to kill a few Jews and then be killed yourself – where is the purpose in that? Any street urchin can do as much with a grenade in the market place, to no purpose. But if you're set on dying, I can show you how to die usefully. These Jews – they are the last enemy, not the first. We Arabs must root out the enemy within first dummy2

– the selfish ones and the cowards, the little men in the big uniforms. The men who put their countries' politics before the Arab destiny...'

'I asked him how he proposed to do what even Gamal Abdul Nasser hadn't been able to do. He said: 'The same way the old Hashashin did – you kill those men who stand against you or in your way, so that your chosen friends can step into their places.'

'And then, when I'd turned him down, he talked to me – or at me, if you like. I suppose he thought he was