The Alamut Ambush Read Online Free PDF

his way back to town; it was a speech he ought to have heard. And if true a valuable insight equally into Audley’s mind: beneath that air of calculation the man might even be committed to some sort of humanitarian ideal. He might have a dream like Llewelyn’s in fact. Perhaps that was what really fed his dislike of the man.
    So much the better now, Roskill thought.
    ‘I must try nevertheless, Faith,’ he said gently. ‘Because there’s something I believe we’ve all overlooked up to now.’
    Audley was sitting back, waiting for him, his final refusal cut and dried and ready for use.
    ‘It’s “no” to you, too, Hugh. I’m sorry, but I’m like that American statesman who said that if he was nominated for the presidency he wouldn’t stand, and if he was chosen he wouldn’t sit. So have another drink and don’t bother to ask me.’
    Roskill smiled. It seemed so clear now: it was like saying that the earth was round. But they had all been so busy thinking of themselves that no one had noticed it – except Faith, who had spoken the truth because she hadn’t understood at all.
    ‘Hugh, what’s the matter?’ Audley was looking at him, perplexed. ‘Have I said something amusing?’
    The matter was that it was amusing: Llewelyn scared enough to pocket his pride and try to manoeuvre a man he disliked – and who hated him – into rescuing him. And all for nothing.
    That was what Audley would surrender to: not the tragedy of it, but the savage joke.
    ‘The bomb in the Princess, David – it wasn’t for Llewelyn at all. It was for Jenkins. Just for Jenkins.’

II
    ROSKILL LAY ON a groundsheet in the soaking bracken, watching Mrs. Maitland shepherd her children into her Volkswagen half a mile below him.
    The eight o’clock sun was low enough behind him for the forward slope of the ridge to be a textbook observation position, which made him feel slightly foolish. If she had walked right by him she still wouldn’t have known him from Adam: she was a perfectly innocent housewife running her kids to school. But Audley had been insistent on every precaution being taken; nothing must be allowed to alert anyone about what they were actually doing.
    He watched the little car bump down the rutted track to the metalled road, and then along the curve of the road for a mile until it disappeared from view. Then he backtracked to the exact point where the Maitland’s telephone wires left the main cable, their more slender poles striding across the open field to the cottage and the farm beyond.
    He adjusted the binoculars fractionally, scanned the area for the umpteenth time and saw nothing fresh. In all probability there was nothing, or if there had been it had by now been hopelessly obliterated by the repair men whose tramplings were evident even at this distance. At best it was a long shot, but everything had to start somewhere, and this was that inescapable starting place.
    He replaced the binoculars in their leather case and folded the groundsheet. Mrs. Maitland would not return for at least forty minutes; Maitland himself had been gone half an hour and would be on his train by now. It was time to move.
    He searched the landscape once more, wondering as he did so if he was duplicating the actions of an earlier observer. Then he turned and retraced his way to where the Triumph was parked among the pines. He unlocked the boot and replaced the binoculars and the sheet. Shutting it he glimpsed his reflection in the shining cellulose, distorted and wholly unrecognisable. In leather jerkin, flat cap and gumboots – and with the ludicrous beard – he wasn’t quite sure what he resembled. An itinerant Basque revolutionary, perhaps, but hardly a pirate and certainly not a stray G.P.O. linesman. Equally, however, not his elegant self.
    He stumped off heavily down the hillside. The break in the weather hadn’t lasted, thank God; the ground was still wet, but was drying fast, which was just as well if there was going to be much