'And you see – ' said Yaffe, suddenly more cheerful again ' – we rather think the heat's gone off Razzak now. With Majid on his way – '
'Majid gone?'
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'Of course, you wouldn't know that. He flew out last night. A sudden urgent family crisis.'
So that was it! And there'd be others like Majid across the Mediterranean and through the Middle East who'd be called away from duty by sick relatives and unforeseen family crises and every other excuse in the book to their final briefing in Alamut. It was no more than the expected pattern, after all. But it was a relief nevertheless to come up with one sound reason for this relaxation of tension.
'Mind you,' said Yaffe, 'I do still agree with you about this place.'
He waved a hand at the woods around them. 'But you can blame the Egyptians for that. They're rather sensitive about meeting us, and they insisted it had to be well out of London.'
There was another distant rattle of machine-gun fire.
Yaffe grinned. 'In the peace and quiet of the English countryside.'
'What the devil is all that shooting?'
'That's the Territorial Army – or whatever you call it now – up on the Mereden Range,' Yaffe's seriousness seemed to melt. 'Every Sunday morning they have it for several hours. Then they give it to us.'
Roskill looked at Yaffe in astonishment, whereupon the Israeli burst out laughing.
'I don't mean the Israeli army, Squadron Leader – the local Rifle Club, I mean.' He patted the ancient golf bag over his shoulder. 'I practise with the family heirloom every Sunday. It's the only way an honest man can keep a gun licence in your law-abiding country.
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Sport – yes, self-defence – no!'
'I still don't see why they had to meet at all.'
'Razzak and the Colonel?' The boyish grin faded, and Yaffe nodded understandingly. 'They insisted on that, too – it has to be face to face for the final agreement, just the two of them. I think when it comes to the final crunch they still don't trust us– the only man they trust is Colonel Shapiro.'
In the end everything depended on Shapiro and Razzak. It was not really the logic of Israeli-Egyptian co- operation that was going to confound Hassan, because in real life the logical thing could usually be safely discounted; it was this million-to-one relationship between enemies.
'I don't know what he said to convince our people at home,' Yaffe murmured, almost to himself. He looked at Roskill pensively. 'It's very easy to be enlightened when you're not involved, Roskill. And when you don't have to make the decisions that involve your survival. We don't have that luxury – that's why so many of us have got a Masada complex.'
'A what?'
Yaffe shook his head pityingly. 'You British always think you're going to win the last battle, but we Jews expect to lose it – we've lost too many last battles. It takes a lot to trust an enemy when you feel like that.'
'The Egyptians are trusting you as well.'
'Not as much. We're the ones taking the big risk if they want to double-cross us.' Yaffe sighed. 'Oh, I know we've been after dummy2
Hassan too – and what Razzak's given us fits in with our own information. And we can't afford to have Hassan loose any more than they can. But our security's a lot better than theirs. There's a pretty good chance we could protect our people.'
Roskill felt in no mood to argue. But what Yaffe couldn't see – and what Shapiro had seen – was that if Israeli security succeeded in protecting its leaders from assassination when the Arabs failed to protect theirs, nothing would convince the Middle Eastern countries that Israel wasn't at the bottom of it all. And maybe Hassan had calculated that too.
The trees ahead of them were thinning. If Yaffe's topography was right, the low ridge beyond the meadow just ahead was the vantage point from which they would be protediig the final rendezvous between Shapiro and Razzak, at which Audley was a self-invited observer. And there Alan would get the vengeance Roskill hadn't dared to hope for – an overflowing measure of vengeance.
It was strange that revenge no longer seemed to matter so much now that it was in someone else's hands. It was as though Alan had once more become no more than the victim of a tragic accident –
or an innocent battle casualty among the thousands who had perished in a whole generation of Middle Eastern bloodshed. What made it futile was that it was not his quarrel: no one would carve the old 'duke et decorum' tag on his grave.
Roskill was suddenly reminded of the Latin words scratched in the Bunnock Street telephone kiosk, which he had not had the chance to put to Audley...
'But we don't really have any choice,' Yaffe said philosophically.
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'We've either got to trust them or go on killing them, and I'm fed up with killing. I don't ever want to – '
Yaffe's words strangled in his throat. He jerked forward convulsively, shouldering his way in front of Roskill and plucking frantically at his coat as he did so. The golf bag swung outwards, striking Roskill a tremendous blow in the chest —
There was a chip of wood spinning in the air –
There was noise –
The spinning chip and the noise and the golf bag hitting him had all happened in the same fragment of time, and in that millisecond
– that same millisecond – Roskill's leg was swept from under him and Yaffe himself crashed back into
