The Alamut Ambush Read Online Free PDF Page A

then he’d never really known Alan as he had kiiown Harry: the age gap had been small enough, yet impassable.
    Yet it was civil of Butler to regret him, a decent gesture after their recent passage of words. It called for a civil answer.
    ‘If it hadn’t been him it would have been some other poor devil.’
    ‘But it was doubly bad luck for him, though. It should have been Maitland. He was the one on call.’
    ‘Why wasn’t it Maitland, then?’
    Butler switched on the engine. ‘Act of God, the insurance companies would call it. That gale last night brought half a tree across Maitland’s telephone wires – he lives out of London, down East Grinstead way. They couldn’t get through to him. The other two chaps were out of town and Jenkins had just come back. He was the second stand-by. Pure bad luck.’
    He looked up at Roskill as he reached for the transmission selector. ‘But if you want to get your own back on bad luck, Hugh – get Audley. It’s as simple as that.’
    Roskill watched the Rover’s tail-lights down the drive until the beech hedge cut them off. So Jenkins’s death had been doubly accidental – a useless, cruelly coincidental death. He turned despondently towards the porch. It would take more than coincidence to make Audley change his mind.
    He stopped with his hand on the iron latch, staring at. the weathered oak. Were those the original adze marks on it? Pure bad luck . , . yet perhaps Audley would be more interested in bad luck, at that – he had once said that he was not a great believer in luck, either good or bad: he maintained it was very often something a man received according to his deserts…
    There was a germ of an idea there: a trick and a deception, certainly, but also an idea. Yet it would have to be good to catch a suspicious-minded Audley; it must do better than fit the facts, but must carry its own inner conviction. It must intrigue him. It must –
    Roskill caught his breath, still gripping the latch. It did fit the facts . It fitted them so perfectly that it ceased to be a deception even as he tested it in his own mind.
    God! It was like carrying a supposedly forged masterpiece to an art dealer, only to realise at the last moment that the forgery bore the irrefutable marks of authenticity on it!
    He started as the latch moved under his hand and the door opened suddenly in his face. A gust of warm air hit him.
    ‘Hugh! What are you doing standing out in the cold? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.’
    Roskill stared at her. ‘I think I have, Faith – I think I have.’
    Faith put her hand on his arm. ‘It’s Alan Jenkins, isn’t it? I’m so sorry – I can’t quite believe it even now.’
    ‘I’m going to ask David to help me. Do you mind?’
    ‘Mind? Of course I don’t! I think it’s his duty to help you.’
    ‘Even after Jack Butler tried to use the way you felt as a lever?’
    Faith shook her head ruefully. ‘I’m used to that sort of thing now. It’s the way they think – always the indirect way. It’s the way David himself thinks half the time. He can’t help it. You’re the only normal one among them I believe, Hugh. And don’t you dare change.’
    Roskill looked at the floor in confusion, thinking guiltily of what he was planning, and worse still why it would appeal to her dear David. Really, she deserved better than tliis…
    ‘But it’s no use, Hugh. He won’t help you. It isn’t that he doesn’t care about people, because I know he does. But they hurt his pride terribly when they took him off the Middle East – he won’t admit it, and he laughs it off like he did this evening. But it mattered to him much more than he pretends because he really cared about the Jews and the Arabs. He had real friends among them, on both sides – that was why he was so good at his job. And I think he really hates that man Llewelyn. So it won’t be any use – I haven’t even tried to convince him, so I know you won’t be able to.’
    A pity Butler was on