‘But I thought you said Britain and Israel are secretly cooperating over the Canal?’
‘We are, darling, but we’re like two wild cats tied up in a sack. Both of us would prefer to have the means to go it alone.’
I mulled this over for a couple of minutes then said, ‘Poor old Yanks. Whichever way it turns out someone is going to have them over a barrel.’
‘One thing is certain in the Middle East, Charlie. Either Israel is going to put her neighbours back in their place, and start building secure borders . . . or Britain will strengthen its hold on the Canal. But only one of those two things can happen, because it depends on who has control of your dud money. If Israel gets it the Americans will do as we tell them; if Britain gets its hands on it, America will support your illegally annexing the Canal.’
‘What if the Yanks get it back themselves?’
‘Then we’re both stuffed, aren’t we?’
‘. . . and your people will kill me to get it?’
‘They will kill you to get it, or to stop you getting it. Either or both.’
‘You’re beginning to move with a very unpleasant class of person, Grace. Do you know that?’ At least she giggled when I said that.
‘You’re priceless, Charlie.’
‘But I haven’t got your money. All I brought down from the hills were boxes of coins: sovereigns and half-sovereigns . . . and funnily enough – which is why I believe you this time – my bosses said exactly the same as you: that we could keep the coin for all they’d care. All they wanted to see was banknotes.’
Grace was quiet for a long time, and then she said, ‘Bugger.’
‘There were two expeditions before ours – the local tribesmen told us that. One French and one Israeli. Maybe they got it.’
‘No; I’d know that.’
‘Maybe it was never there in the first place.’
‘No. I’d know that too. Our best interrogators questioned the aircraft crew when they crossed over into Israel. The stuff was in the plane.’
‘Where in the plane?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Didn’t they tell you?’
‘No. They held that detail back until we guaranteed them citizenship. Then some fool took it into his head that they were lying, were spies, and had them shot.’
Poor Frohlich, I knew him, Horatio. I didn’t see that I needed to tell Grace that, but Grace was nothing if not sharp.
She asked, ‘How come you’re mixed up in all this anyway, Charlie?’
‘They wanted someone to identify the aircraft: somebody they could control – I’d seen it at Tempsford a month before it got here, although I was in hospital by the time they ran.’
‘That’s where you burned your face and your shoulders?’
‘That’s right: what goes around comes around.’
It was an odd, peaceful moment. We had said all that needed to be said. Grace would tell her people what she’d learned from me. If I made it back, I’d tell Hudd.
If her pals didn’t believe me, and genuinely thought I had the dollars, they would try to kill me for them. If they believed me, they still wouldn’t be able to take a chance on my not being able to work out where the money was anyway . . . and if they wanted another shot at finding it they’d still have to kill me, to be on the safe side. Tails I lost; heads they won. I suppose we both knew that when Grace left the place she would be carrying my death warrant with her. I sat up and swung my feet over the edge of the old mattress. Yawned, and stretched.
Grace asked me, ‘Do you still carry that silly little pistol of yours?’
‘Yes.’
I pulled over my leather jacket, and took it out of the pocket. I handed it to her. What I was left with was a camel’s tooth in my hand.
She asked, ‘What’s that?’
‘A camel’s tooth. Someone gave it to me for luck.’
She handed back the pistol, and I put it and the tooth in separate pockets. The pistol was shoved into the left one.
Grace said, ‘Why don’t you kill me: now? You’d get a head start. You and your pal could be away before they realized anything had gone wrong.’
‘I couldn’t do that, Grace. You know that.’
‘Yes, Charlie, I do.’ She said that very sadly. ‘Bugger off. I’ll give you an hour.’
I dressed silently; neither of us said goodbye. The place was in darkness still, and every direction I turned seemed to echo with the snores of contented sleepers. As I got to the street dawn was just beginning to show, so I slipped into the shadows, and tried to find my way back.
Alas, with Grace, things were rarely that easy. After I had been moving for twenty minutes, I became aware that I was being followed. I don’t know how that happens: I didn’t see or hear anything, I just knew. The streets seemed even darker than at night, because no windows shed light onto the roads. When I judged I was about three blocks from home I checked at a corner, and looked back to the one I’d rounded a minute before.
Grace should have been more careful. She stopped, but had already taken a step too many, and was out in the open. There was nowhere to hide.
She pulled an automatic pistol from her waistband, and fired it at me. Just like that. I hope that it was an instinctive reaction – something she didn’t think about. In the split second before the first bullet hit me my brain was saying Grace can’t be doing this. The bullet struck the wall a couple of feet off the ground, and ricocheted into my inside right knee. The leg was immediately numbed: it kept me upright, but I couldn’t feel anything, not even
