Judas Country

He looked mildly surprised. "The Crusades, Mr Case, the Crusades. Four centuries of holy warfare leaves its mark.'

'Silly of me. And where you find a mark, you dig?'

'When there is permission.' He smiled gently.

'Found any new Lost Cities recently?'

'God grant nobody finds any; the Middle East is full of old cities that nobody has the money to excavate yet already. But no – my business is artefacts, not so much buildings. Coins, pottery, a fragment of a helmet, a lance tip.'

'Where were you working when… er…?' I didn't know quite how to put it to a professor. But he just smiled again.

'At Acre, then Caesarea. Both, as you know, were important Crusader ports and fortresses.'

Actually, I did remember something like that. 'Wasn't Richard the Lion Heart involved around there?'

'Certainly. He recaptured Acre in 1191 – his first battle with the great Salah ed-din.'

'Huh?'

'Saladin, you would say.'

'Oh, him.' I sipped my champagne – although I don't like fizzy drinks much. Then asked: 'Are you going back to Israel to carry on the good work?'

'Probably. Permits may be a little more difficult to come by, but…' He flapped the problem aside.

Sohe hadn't been deported. Or was good at hiding the fact. And just then there was a knock on the door.

The Professor bounced on to his feet – he'd locked the doorbehind me – and moved pretty nippily across, opened it, and let in a girl. I'd expected Ken.

His daughter – it had to be, since they let go a quick rattle of German as she stepped inside – was a short, properly shaped girl in her late twenties. Almost everything about her was mousey: the colour of her hair, the neat quick movements, the sharpness of her face, the polite hesitant smile as her dark eyes followed the direction of his nod and she saw me.

'Mr Case – my daughter, Mitzi Braunhof.' He shut the door behind her.

I held out a hand.'Frau Braunhof…'

'No.' She took a few quick steps and shook my hand quickly. 'My marriage is finished. Just Fraulein again.' She was wearing a simple black skirt, thin black high-necked sweater and a light suede jacket. I bowed in what I thought was a formal German way, turned back and poured her a glass.

The Prof said: 'Mr Case is a friend of Mr Cavitt, Liebchen. Also a pilot.'

'Ah?' she looked politely interested and took the drink. 'Thank you. You must have arranged for him to stay here.'

'Mr Case,' the Prof said gravely, 'flies for the Castle Hotel company.'

Mitzi cocked her head and said, a little curiously: 'You are not going back to work with Mr Caviti?"

'Oh yes. Soon as we can arrange it.'

There is a problem?'

I shrugged. 'It takes time to get back to where we left off.'

'Ah yes…' and she gave a quick mousey nod, just as if my remark had meant something.

There was another knock on the door and this time it really was Ken. Looking a little pinker and cleaner from the bath and in a pair of fawn twill trousers with a lot of horizontal creases from lying on a shelf for – maybe two years. But the same new white shirt.

I put down my glass. 'I'll leave you to it. I want to get to some shops before they close, anyway. Anything you want besides a pair of sunglasses, Ken?'

Ken shrugged, 'last about everything. But it can wait'

The Prof said:' Ledra Street is not quite Bond Street Kenneth.'

I went past them to the door. 'See you downstairs, Ken?'

'Sure. About seven.' He gave me a quick, and perhaps slightly nervous smile. I went out.

*

Sergeant Papa was sipping coffee at the lobby desk. No sign of Kapotas. I asked, 'Any messages?'

He turned his head ponderously and took a slip from my pigeon-hole: a Mr Uthman Jehangir had called from the Ledra Palace. He was news to me. 'Did you take the call?'

'Yes. I would guess he is Lebanese. He said he would call again. And somebody asked for Professor Spohr. I said we do not know him.'

'Good. You checked the passports?'

'Yees.' He frowned. 'The woman's name is Braunhof.'

'She's still his daughter. Busted marriage, I gather.'

He frowned on. They changed the Austrian passport in 1970. Now it does not show the maiden name or even if women are married."

I didn't know women's lib had taken over in Vienna. 'Well, don't charge them the immoral rate – though I suppose we are already, for secrecy. Anyway, I'm out until about seven. Then Ken Caviti and I are going on the town.'

'He has just come out of… ummm…?'

'Biet Oren.'

'Yes.' He nodded slowly. "They all have the paleness under the sunburn.'

'We'll be looking for some bright lights and dark corners. You must advise us where we won't get screwed.'

'Where youwon't get screwed?' he frowned.

'Not expensively.'

5

In the afternoons they close Ledra Street to all traffic except taxis and delivery vans, so I could just drift down the middle of the road with the easygoing crowd, mostly local and mostly in bright cheap clothes. Just a few uniforms and blue berets, a few old ladies wrapped in the traditional black. The sunlight was warm and soft, not the trip through the toaster that it would be in a month or so, but there were thunderheads stacking up on the mountains to the south-west, and an occasional distant grumble of thunder.

I drifted, stopped for a cup of gritty sweet Turkish coffee, bought a pair of sunglasses, bought myself a pair of nylon socks – and then, because that seemed mean, bought Ken a pair as well. It's funny how you never get time to buy ordinary things at home; I'm always getting my handkerchiefs in Frankfurt and my paperclips in Brussels.

So by then I was almost up to the permanent roadblock to the Turkish quarter. I could have gone through – they don't mind foreigners – but there didn't seem much point right then. So I turned left and drifted towards the Paphos Gate, and once I was there it wasn't more than five minutes to the Ledra Palace and goodbye to my resolution about spending Castle money only in Castle Hotels.

The little old barman was just setting up for the evening, filling bowls of nuts and crisps. He did a quick double-take and said gravely: 'It's been a long time, Captain.'

'Nearly two years.'

'Whisky and… soda, is it, sir?'

'And not too much ice.'

He put a bowl of overcooked peanuts in front of me and trotted off to organise the drink. It's a tall, dim room and the stone-tiled floor gives a slight echo that makes it seem even cooler than it is. Almost empty, now, but full enough at other times for them to have started punching out the arched french windows to make an extension into the garden. And then the old hands from all over the world will sit in there and complain that it just isn't the same any more, and they'll be right but they'll still be there.

He came back with the Scotch. 'And Captain Caviti – is he with you, sir?' He'd remembered Ken's name; not mine.

'He'll be around. Mind if I ring somebody in the hotel?'

He put the phone in front of me and went back to the nuts and crisps and ice. I asked for Mr Jehangir's room and got a polite voice that said it was jolly good of me to call and he'd be down as soon as he could get some togs on. Sergeant Papa must have quite an ear to spot the faint trace of accent; I wouldn't have got it if I hadn't been listening for it.

I sipped my Scotch and ate a peanut and waited and… and now what? Back to Britain in a few days – but what after that? Well, for the summer we might find some charter outfit that wanted a couple of extra bods; that would build up a bit of fat against the cold. But it wouldn't be heading us towards our own aeroplane again. For that, we needed capital – or a personal introduction to Father Christmas. And he'd have to be in a pretty good mood even for Father Christmas: Ken and I weren't bright young things with decades of earning power ahead. At forty, we'd only got about fifteen years before a medical downcheck put all the future behind us. By then, we had to be in a position to hire others to do the flying, or…