The Alamut Ambush

talking to a dead man, so it didn't matter. But I think he needed to talk to someone very badly at that moment — to tell just one person about his great new idea for uniting all the Arabs, and just how it would work. And by the will of God it was to me he talked!'

'But you weren't tempted?' said Butler.

'Tempted?' Razzak stared at Butler. 'Would you have been tempted, Major? Politics by assassination?'

'Bloody nonsense,' grunted Butler. 'I beg your pardon, Miss Hunter, but that's what it is. I agree with Audley – you'd likely get a worse lot, and then you'd have to make a habit of it.'

'I agree! That's just what I thought it was. The pity of it was that I didn't take him seriously – I thought the sun had touched his brains... but then he thought I was crazy too, and when he'd talked himself out he went off on his madness and I went off on mine. It never occurred to me to put a bullet in his back – he didn't seem that important.'

That had been quite a meeting under the bogged-down lorry in the dummy2

desert, thought Roskill: two angles of the Firle triangle. And the third angle not so very far away either – somewhere to the north-east Jake Shapiro's tank recovery team would already have been in action.

But the drama of the occasion seemed to have escaped Audley.

'And just when did you start to take him seriously? When the Alamut List turned up?'

Razzak gave him a crooked smile. 'It wasn't I who took him seriously – I forgot about him. But he didn't forget me, Audley: he was fool enough to take me seriously. You know, the funny thing is that I let him go and he came back to me of his own free will –

it's enough to make you weep!'

'How – ?'

'Let me tell it my own way. It'll amuse you, I promise you.' Razzak lifted his maimed hand. 'When I came back with this – and my stiff knee – they said I was no good for a soldier any more. So they gave me back my old security job – except it was a sinecure now because I had one of Safari's bright young men to do the work.

Huh!

'And I also had another bright young man – a Palestinian – to keep an eye on me, just so I wouldn't tangle with any more Russians.

Huh! But a good boy in his way all the same . ..

' . . . A good boy with a hot-headed little sister in the Gaza strip. A hot-headed little grenade-throwing sister, whom the Israelis promptly picked up with their usual efficiency.

'But when my boy went to all his clever friends to try and spring dummy2

his little sister, he found they couldn't help him – or they wouldn't help him. Or they thought another martyr for the cause would be a good thing. So in the end he came to old Razzak as a last resort.

And I fixed it for him. No, Audley, not through Jake Shapiro.

There are other ways such small things can be done ... judiciously.

'And that put my young watchdog in an awkward position, because he now had an obligation to me.'

' 'He that doeth good shall be rewarded with what is better','

murmured Audley.

'Ah! The devil quoting the scriptures!' Razzak grinned. ' 'And shall be secure from the terrors of that day. But those that have done evil shall be hurled down into the Fire.' Very good, Audley – and my young man paid his obligation by telling me a story. But it happened to be a story I'd already heard once — in the Sinai.

'Only then it was just a mad idea, and now it had turned into reality

– and my story-teller was part of it.'

'Part of it?'

'I thought he was Safari's man. In fact he was one of Hassan's

'Watchers' – Al-Rukba'n he calls them. They're the ones who have been drawing up the blueprints for the kills and keeping an eye on people like me.'

'I would have thought there was a simpler way with people like you,' said Butler. 'And you particularly.'

'Ah – that's because you think Hassan's like all the rest of them, just one more indiscriminate killer. But he's not, and that's what makes him strong! He's a discriminate killer – what makes his men dummy2

believe in him is that he says too many Arabs have died already.

He sees himself as a surgeon, not a butcher – believe me, Major, I know.'

'You know – that's just it. You're a danger to him.'

Razzak shook his head.

'Major, I don't propose to bore you with Hassan's organisation – it's only his version of the 'cell' system. No single cell knows enough to be dangerous and Hassan liimself is the only link between them

– it's a very small set-up.'

'But the Ryle Foundation – ' Roskill began.