Authors: Eric Ambler
‘I wish you luck, Mr Halliday.’
I didn’t respond to his smile. ‘You can do better than that, patron,’ I said. ‘What do you think he’s going to ask for Abra Bay? What kind of a price and in what currency? Fighter planes? Tanks? A flight of custom-fitted Boeings? A private aircraft carrier? The moon?’
He thought about it. ‘I think that the asking price will be impossible, yes, but how impossible and how far negotiable towards the possible, I really don’t know. As you know, I am no longer wholly in his confidence. Besides, what I, in my
old-fashioned way, might consider impossible might be seen in a different way by younger minds. They might believe that, providing precautions are taken, almost any price may seem to be paid.’
‘
Seem
to be paid?’ I was sure now that he knew what the asking price was to be.
The eyes saw that I had understood and smiled. ‘Hydraulic engineering is not the only subject on which His Highness can display ignorance. If the conjuror is clever enough His Highness will believe for a while in magic. But let me warn you. Don’t think he’s simple. If you start asking questions about Abra Bay, if you so much as mention it in the presence of this television unit, you will get no answers and no interview. Talk about the mine, talk about his frustrated plan for a clinic, talk about sinusitis if you like. Then you may get answers.’
Outside, the guard dogs had suddenly started barking. Zander looked at his watch again. ‘I think your friends may be a few minutes early,’ he said and went outside to see if he was right.
I followed slowly, shutting the museum door behind me.
Rainer had said that he thought I might be one of those interviewers who do better when they don’t rehearse. Well, it was an interesting theory, and it seemed to me, just standing there wondering if I should lock the door or leave that for one of the security guards, as if I now had the perfect opportunity to test it. At that point, I didn’t even have a good first question to ask The Ruler when the camera started rolling. Once I had identified him for the viewers, we might both sit there staring at one another clearing our throats. Perhaps he would end up by getting bored enough to start interviewing me. How would nice clever Mr Rainer like a reel or two of that?
Simone and Zander were standing beside the Ortofilm station-wagon with security guards on either side of them. An elderly steel-grey Porsche with Schelm driving was
coming up the track from the lower road. The car had Belgian plates. It stopped beside the station-wagon. Schelm and the General climbed out slowly looking around as they did so. Simone turned and gave me an exasperated look. I was neglecting my duties. I went over and made the introductions.
‘Miss Chihani and Mr Zander, allow me to present General Newell and Herr Mesner.’
The General smiled politely at Simone and gave Zander a friendly nod. Zander responded with a stiff little bow. I wondered what the General was making of the simper. Schelm was puzzled by it and so, when he spoke, sounded irritable.
‘I assume,’ he said after a short silence, ‘that Mr Zander accepts Mr Halliday’s statement we are not going to have arguments about everyone’s identity I hope.’
‘No, that should not be necessary.’ Zander let him see the eyes harden for a moment. ‘The fact that your name is not Mesner but Schelm doesn’t matter at all. General Newell is certainly genuine. You agree, Simone?’
‘Quite genuine.’
‘Then I suggest we go up closer to the house so that we are seen to be present and waiting. His Highness has his architect with him at present, but that audience won’t last much longer and we have questions of protocol to discuss. We go this way, General, if you please.’
He and the General fell into step beside one another as the rest of us trailed behind them up the slope to the house. ‘And how is His Highness these days?’ I heard the General ask. ‘Does he still have that Landru beard of his?’
‘A Landru beard, General? What is that?’
‘You must have seen pictures of Landru. Before our time, of course, but he was very famous. A French mass-murderer who killed a lot of women for their money. Guillotined eventually, and quite right too, but it was an interesting face. Big sad eyes and this long black beard that seemed to hang
down as if it were fastened to his ears with wire loops. Know what I mean? Like His Highness’s beard used to look.’
‘A real beard that looks false? Ah yes, I understand. So many beards look like that I think. His Highness was advised recently to shave the upper lip. He seems to like the result. But I was not aware that you had met him before.’
‘I haven’t met him. I just saw him once a few years ago at Cairo airport. He had a Lear jet and a Belgian pilot. There was some sort of row going on I was told. How long did that Belgian last?’
‘About three weeks. He was inclined to question orders. The current plane is a Caravelle Super B and the pilot is a Pakistani.’
‘Who doesn’t question orders?’
‘Who is more tactful in his approach. When the orders are not to his professional liking he always seems able to ground the plane with mechanical faults. This is far enough for the moment I think. The personal bodyguards all speak English. It will be better if they do not share our thoughts.’
The two Arab bodyguards we had been approaching were now about fifteen yards away from us flanking the bolt-studded main entrance door to the house. They looked like soldiers wearing cheap civilian suits that were too right under the arms because the alterations fitter hadn’t been told about the machine pistols they would be cradling in front of them all the time they were on duty. Now, as they levelled the guns at us and prepared to go through the routine of telling us to halt and state our business, Zander spoilt it for them by turning his back on the levelled guns and indicating with a gesture that the rest of us should do the same.
‘Ex-Arab Legion with UAE passports,’ he explained quietly. ‘Well-trained up to a point and fairly steady when they have been given simple orders that they understand, but can get trigger-happy. That very dark-skinned one with the bright blue tie claims that he is a bilingual lip-reader. He’s almost certainly kidding himself, but I’ve never had a chance
of testing him, so when he’s around I’m always careful.’ His eyes beamed at the General and his raised hands seemed almost to be blessing him. ‘Well now, it is good to meet with you at last. I gather that your discussions last night with Mr Halliday were, as the communiqués say, full and frank.’
‘We also talked this morning,’ Schelm said. ‘I have arranged for the Dutch crew to be here as early as possible, around noon. If they have to be kept waiting it can’t be helped. Our Italian friends will be as near to the frontier as they can, but I’m told that you understand their difficulties, and ours, in this peculiar situation.’
Zander bestowed on him a lesser smile, the kind that I had merited once or twice. ‘Yes, Herr Mesner, I understand. A little later, though, I would like to discuss the difficulties in greater detail with you. Meanwhile, to business. This is the agreed protocol for your audience. His Highness is expecting only one set of visitors today. It consists of Mr Halliday and his television crew. Understood? Mr Halliday will be received first in the presence of the Chief Secretary and the Financial Counsellor. Refreshments will be served. During that period I shall request permission to introduce you, General, and you, Herr Mesner, as honoured strangers of my acquaintance who seek an audience with His Highness. They have private and confidential proposals to make to him of some urgency and are hoping that his presence here in Europe will excuse to some extent the unorthodox nature and crude European informality of their approach. His Highness will express amused surprise. I shall persuade him that there could be nothing lost by humouring such eccentricity and that these strangers and their proposals might serve to pass the time while preparations for the important business of the day – the television interview – are made by Mr Halliday in consultation with the Chief Secretary and the Financial Counsellor.’
‘Supposing they decide that one of them can deal with me and that the other sticks around to hear what the eccentric strangers have to propose?’ I asked.
‘Neither of them decides anything. His Highness gives the orders. They obey. Their orders for today are to take Mr Halliday down and show him the upper gallery of the mine. That’s the place where patients of the new clinic will be treated as soon as the Austrians come to their senses and stop all this nonsense about building permits. They, and you, will be told when it’s all clear for the three of you to return. That will be when His Highness has finished telling the General what he wants and the General has asked all the questions he knows he’s going to be asked when he reports back to his Committee – those questions he can think of while he’s still in shock anyway. The refreshment, by the way, will be mint tea.’
‘Who starts the ball rolling, about Abra Bay I mean?’ asked the General.
‘I do,’ said Zander. ‘The moment Mr Halliday and the two officials are out of the way, you’ll be brought in. I’ll introduce you. His Highness will have no difficulty in stating his terms. And there’ll be no beating about the bush. You’ll forget I’m there. So will His Highness. My last act will be to perform the introductions. After that I’ll be superfluous. I might be told to suggest the best channel, from
his
point of view, for further direct talks between you and him. I shall suggest a senior member of Syncom-Sentinel’s Gulf management. If I were you I’d reject that suggestion and propose one of the Benelux ambassadors in Abu Dhabi.’
‘And if he agrees, what then?’
‘He won’t agree to anything immediately, General. You’ll be asked to withdraw for a while so that
he
can consider
your
proposal. Later, you will be recalled so that arrangements for a further meeting may be discussed. I shall not be present and you will probably be told to break off all contacts with me. You will be asked what my price was or is.’
‘Halliday gave us your message about that,’ Schelm said. ‘All we tell him is that it involves a great sum of money. Right?’
‘Thank you. I shall have another, but minor, request to make, but we can leave that until later, until after your first audience. We shall have to wait, of course, while Mr Halliday does the television interview. I shall leave with him.’
‘Not with the Dutch? Wouldn’t it be safer to do a quick switch?’ The General had clearly taken to the good soldier Zander.
‘No, General, I shall leave with Mr Halliday and my family. The Dutch have been explained by telling the truth. Our unit was incompetent, the Dutch are acceptable to the Austrians. This has been agreed with the Chief Secretary. There should be no thought of other possible changes of plan.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We shall be summoned at any minute now. Keeping the architect there talking is only a way for His Highness to avoid seeming eager.’
‘What do we do while you and Halliday are received?’ Schelm asked. ‘Just wait here?’
‘You might stroll up and down admiring the view beyond the parking lot. He won’t let Mr Halliday keep him long. You are the ones who can deliver his heart’s desires. Believe me. Ah yes! See? Here we go, and right on time.’
The big front door had opened and the architect emerged. He was square and plumpish and carried a tube of plans. The man who followed him out to the steps leading down was grossly fat and wore an Arab head-dress with his grey suit.
‘The one wearing the keffiyeh is the Chief Secretary,’ said Zander.
As a statement it was not completely irrelevant. The fat man could have been the Financial Counsellor or some other court functionary of consequence, but Zander had said it breathlessly as if it really mattered.
Hurrying past us on his way to the car-park the architect muttered a polite greeting in German. By pretending to respond to it I was able to turn a little so that I could see what was happening in Zander’s eyes. I at once wished that I hadn’t. The simper had become a hole in the face and the
narrowed eyes were those of a predator, ready to kill and perhaps eager to do so. It was easier to look up at the bulk of the Chief Secretary.
He was still considering our group and identifying those in it. Then, after a moment or two, he pointed a forefinger at Zander and made a beckoning motion with the thumb cocked above it.
‘You may bring the American, Robert Halliday,’ he said.
A house built against a wooded hillside with the adit of an old mine as its central feature and all its windows on the front is bound to have some drawbacks as a place to live in. Dr Petrucher, or the wretched architect working for him, had solved the basic problems by placing the rooms in two straight rows, one up one down. He had connected them all laterally by doors – two to all rooms except those at the ends – and vertically by an iron spiral staircase in the kitchen. There was, remarkably, a bathroom, but to get to it from the living room you had to go through three downstairs rooms to the kitchen, then up the staircase and back through two bedrooms. That, however, was a later discovery. My first impression of the interior was that I had entered the back lot movie-studio façade of a Styrian hunting lodge which had been stacked, rather carelessly, against a section of the mock-up used for shooting fights to the death on mountain ledges. In the entrance hall a huge slab of bare limestone that was part of the hillside jutted out of the rear wall masonry at head height so that you had to walk around it to get to the living room.
Outside the door we paused. The Chief Secretary was a heavy breather and sweated a lot. He mopped his face with a king-size handkerchief and then peered at me over it. ‘I am assured,’ he said, ‘that you are carrying no weapon of any kind, Mr Halliday. Is that correct?’
‘Quite correct.’
‘When His Highness first acknowledges your presence at an audience, you should bow your head.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘Then follow me.’ He scratched on the door with one of the
rings he wore and waited. I caught Zander’s eyes on me. They were telling me in no uncertain terms not to play the fool. If His Highness’s Chief Secretary said that I should bow, then I should do so. It was my piddling bloody dignity that I should forget.