Read Online The Alamut Ambush by Anthony Price - Free Book Online Page B

were going to throw the book at them.’
    ‘But they didn’t?’
    ‘They never got the chance. The Syrian committed suicide – he was in a secure jail in Bonn. But the Iraqi was picked up in a little town near the Swiss border.’ Cox paused for effect. ‘He was sprung by four masked men armed with Uzis. It was only a little police station, of course – and they weren’t expecting anything. But it was a neat job all the same, and the Germans haven’t had a smell of him since. And believe me, they’ve looked hard.’
    ‘All of which is vastly exciting,’ said Llewelyn, ‘but doesn’t prove a thing. I’ve seen your Hassan file, Tom. It’s interesting, even disturbing. But if Hassan exists he doesn’t appear to have reached England. And if he is here we don’t even know what his aims are. You just can’t give me one single, useful, tangible fact to back this “feeling” of yours.’
    Llewelyn spoke lazily, only a few degrees from contempt, his Welsh origins again rich beneath his words — Roskill was reminded of a mineworkers’ union organiser rejecting an absurd wage offer made by a not very bright Coal Board spokesman. For a man under possible sentence of death the union organiser was admirably cool, but nonetheless exasperating. The temptation to come to Cox’s support was irresistible.
    ‘I don’t agree at all.’ He tried to match the Welshman’s lilt with the sort of public school drawl that would be most offensive. ‘I don’t know much about your Arab-Israeli feuds, but I do know that whoever fixed your car was well organised and ruthless and bloody-minded. And that goes for suicide and jail-breaking too. It means that this character Hassan looks after his own – one way or another. Which makes him a good prospect.’
    He looked to Audley for support and was disconcerted to receive a blank stare.
    ‘We’ll check him out,’ said Audley noncommittsilly.
    Like Llewelyn – irritatingly like Llewelyn – he was also playing it cool now. Roskill shrugged and relapsed into silence, masking his annoyance; this was presumably how the poor bloody pawns always felt.
    Llewelyn smiled ait him. ‘All are prospects and all must be checked out. Quite right again. But checking takes time and I can’t go on living a – how shall I put it? – restricted life for ever. It’s boring and it wastes a lot of valuable time. So – ‘ he turned to Audley – ‘just what do you suppose to do about it?’
    A muscle twitched momentarily in Audley’s cheek, as though a boring and restricted life of indefinite duration might be no bad thing for Llewelyn.
    ‘Forty-eight hours,’ he said. ‘Give me that long to look up a few old acquaintances and do a little horse-trading. Then I may be able to tell you where you stand.’
    ‘Horse-trading?’ Stocker looked at him curiously. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you had much to trade with?’
    ‘I haven’t. But I’ve no doubt Roskill has. If you’ve no objection to his letting slip something here and there I think we might make out well enough.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose you might at that.’ Stocker eyed Roskill. ‘You must have quite a few marketable titbits about the Middle Eastern air forces tucked away by now — and I’ve no objection to your disbursing a few in a good cause.’
    ‘You haven’t?’ Roskill looked from, one to the other incredulously, dismayed at their calm assumption that he would so easily squander his hard-won capital. It went against all his instincts – and worse, if it ever leaked out it would ruin his reputation. ‘Well, I bloody well have! I’m not going to play both ends against the middle for anyone, no matter what!’
    ‘Don’t worry, Hugh,’ Audley reassured him. ‘We won’t sour your contacts. In fact I may be able to provide you with a few very useful ones. There’s no cause for alarm.’
    Roskill subsided sullenly. The bugger of it was that playing both ends against the middle just about described what he was doing