Judas Country

He suddenly remembered something. 'Did you tell him we'd opened one box?'

'Of course not. If heis after guns, that'd tell him we knew.'

'Yes, of course. I'm sorry.' He stared into his whisky. 'But… which is he mostly likely to be after? '

'Champagne or sub-machine guns? In Beirut it's a fifty-fifty chance, isn't it?'

'I suppose so,' he said miserably.

'But if you know anybody in Beirut you could ring up and try to get the word on him. It's a small town in that sense."

He cheered up a bit. 'Yes, I can do that tomorrow.'

'And sooner or later you're going to have to tell London we can't sell this cargo. Only don't put the real reason in a cable or telex.'

'I'm not stupid.'

'No, but you're drinking whisky after dinner again.'

'Oh God, so I am.' He shook his head sadly and then drank some more anyway. 'But why should anybody send you on a flight like this?'

'There's an obvious profit in it – probably paid for in advance and certainly not going through the company's books. If Kingsley saw the crunch coming he might want to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the firm while he still had it.'

'A man like Mr Kingsley?'

'A man exactly like Mr Kingsley.' A charming, handsome, well-dressed polite man with the morality of dry rot. Who'd come as near parking me up the creek as I'd been for ten years. So why wasn't I more resentful? Probably because I was too busy being annoyed at myself to be surprised at him. I'd been concentrating on getting a paid ride down here instead of looking for snags. And the bastard hadn't even made the mistake of overpaying me for an apparently simple job. In fact, he hadn't made the mistake of paying me at all.

Oh well. With Ken back, things might be different.

I asked: 'I don't suppose there's any news of Kingsley himself, yet?'

'Nothing.'

'I see why, now. For all he knows, there's a gun-running warrant out for him.'

6

Appropriately enough, the Atlantis was below normal ground level, although probably it hadn't been down there for three or four thousand years; it just smelt that way. We were the first into the place except for a bunch of Canadian soldiers at the bar. We squeezed past them and parked around a small round table in a corner.

A waiter came over, lit the small night-light candle on the table and took our order for two large Scotches and two Keos.

Ken peered around. 'Difficult to be colour prejudiced in a place like this.' The room had a lighting level a bit better than a coal hole in a power strike.

'Cheapestdécor you can get: don't pay your electricity bill. But it must be an improvement on Beit Oren.'

'Yes, you couldsee some of that.'

'Was it bad?'

'Oh…' Just then the waiter put our beers, two small glasses and a bottle of soda on the table; '… not really tough or anything, just bloody depressing. Grey stone and brown paint and bugger-all to do. No art classes and all the books in Hebrew… You name it, they haven't got it.' He picked up his glass. 'Do I make the old joke about Hey this glass is dirty! No, sir, that's your double Scotch.'

I'd been expecting something like that. 'Put in some soda.' While he did, I sneaked out the tonic bottle that I'd filled with Scotch from the hotel bar. If the manager here didn't like it, he could turn up the lights and catch me at it.

Ken watched as I poured. 'Nice to see your brain hasn't gone to fat. Cheers. What are these girls like?'

I shrugged and drank two-handed. 'All the usual mod cons, I expect. I haven't met them; I just passed the word through Sergeant Papa.'

Ken chuckled. "That man… Did he show you his army snapshot album?'

'Sure. How d'you think he got to know all those generals? -those are all real.'

'He procured for them. Hell, couldn't you guess?'

'I should have done, I should have done… So let's hope he gives us five-star service.'

'It isn't the servicehe gives that interests me…' Ken smiled hungrily in the candlelight. 'How much money have we got?'

'Here and now? – something over twenty-five quid, that's all.'

'They didn't pay you for the flight down here, yet?'

'Not yet – if ever. Just a nice line about receivers not being responsible for earlier debts.'

'Bastards,' he said unemotionally. 'What was the whole idea of sending you down here, anyway?'

I took out my sole Dunhill pipe and began to fill it carefully. 'They were opening a new hotel in the Lebanon – but that's off, now. I was coming down to fly the VIP guests around a bit, and bringing a spot of cargo.'

'Like what?'

'Like boxes marked champagne.'

He caught my tone. 'Boxesmarked…?'

I looked casually around, but as far as my non-radar eyes could tell, there wasn't anybody within hearing. 'They sort of turned out to be M3's. New MSAl's to be precise.'

He frowned and stared. 'You mean you didn't know what you were carrying?'

I nodded and put my pipe in my mouth.

'Je-sus. Delete what I said about your brain not going soft' He thought for a moment. 'Where are they now?'

'Still airside. Except for one box we brought through – we were going to serve it to the Professor. That's how we know what it is.'

'We?'

'Kapotas, the manager-accountant chap. He's the only one.' I hoped.

'Where did it all come from?'

So I told him about Kingsley and he vaguely remembered the man from our RAF days. Then he asked: 'Who was supposed to take it off you in Beirut?'

'I was just told to contact the hotel and they'd send round a cargo handling agent with the paperwork. There's nothing suspicious in that.'

He nodded agreement and finished his drinks. I banged on the table for the waiter – there was no question of 'catching his eye' in that blackout, short of throwing a chair at him.

He brought over two more beers, more 'doubles', another soda and two menu cards: the place was supposed to be a grill as well as a bar. But I waved them away. 'We'll eat when the girls get here.'

Ken got the hungry look again. 'Where the hell have they got to?'

'Spill some soda in your lap and cool down. It's early yet.'

'I suppose so…"

I did my party trick with the extra Scotch and we drank. Ken wasn't rushing the drink, but it's surprising how you can lose your capacity for alcohol if you're off it for a time. And we'd had a couple at the airport, then he'd had a glass or two with the Professor, and maybe he'd treated himself at the hotel bar as well… Anyway, I'd keep an eye on it. He'd certainly hate himself in the morning if he slept through the evening.

I asked: 'What did the Prof want?'

'Oh…' he frowned into his glass. 'It was mostly just a celebration. He did mention something he dug up in Israel, before he got picked up. He thinks it would be easier for somebody else to export it.'

'Oh brother!' I made it a long outward breath. 'We really need a job smuggling something out of Israel, don't we? Not while there's still vacancies for night shite shovellers in Calcutta.'

Ken nodded without meaning much. 'It may not still be in Israel – he didn't so much say it was-'

'He wasn't very chatty, was he?'

'In his business would you be? Anyway, we can't do much about it, not without an aeroplane.'

And with Ken being barred from Israel, if that's where the thing was. But I wasn't going to mention his deportation until he did himself; bad form and all that.

But then he remembered the guns again. The M3A1, you said? In the normal.45 calibre?'

'Right. There were five in the box we opened, plus about two loads for each. That weighs exactly the same as a dozen bottles of Kroeger Royale, if you want to know.'

He shook his head slowly. That's ridiculous… who wants a.45 calibre gun out here? It's almost all 9-mil. or the Russian stuff. And only two loads? – you'd fire that just learning the gun, and then there's no more ammo this side of the American Army in Germany. They just become scrap metal. Ridiculous.'

I relit my pipe and added to the quaint, truly Cypriot atmosphere of the place. That's what I thought. But, mind, we don'tknow what's in the other eleven boxes. They might be all ammunition. They could be anything – even champagne.'