As airports go, Nicosia is just a country way-station where you can usually get permission to back-track down the runway after landing., But Beirut's something else. Not just the gateway to the East – or the West – but the main junction of the whole area. Where the north-bound routes from the Gulf and East Africa join the east-west traffic for Europe and the States and you may as well stop off for a few beers and a couple of barmaids between flights. Like what Cairo used to be and Damascus pretends it is.
So you slot yourself into a queue of big jets whose approach speeds are higher than your flat-out maximum and go hammering down the glidepath feeling their big snouts snuffling up your tail and praying the flaps won't tear off. In over the permanent bonfire behind the docks where they burn the old crankcase oil from the taxis (at least that's the story and I'll believe anything about Beirut taxis); slicing across the width of the city towards the sea again, parallel to the sudden suburban hills like Beit Mery that the locals insist are mountains – and finally you float half the length of runway 21 waiting for the speed to unwind before you drop her on. I did the landing; Ken would have done it better.
The radio told us to park on a ramp way down by the eastern hangars, which left us a long way to walk but out of sight of the terminal building, which might just help.
We trudged across the warm concrete sniffing the sharp smell of burnt jet fuel that I still find vaguely. exciting because to me it ^till means fast fighters and not airliners. That dates me. Eleanor asked innocently: 'Is the champagne going to be all right in there?'
'Should be,' I said. 'The aeroplane's locked; anybody stealing stuff still has to get it through Customs… If we just forget about the problem, maybe it won't go away.'
Ken switched hands on two pieces of Mitzi's luggage – she bad as much as the rest of us together – and let the girls get a few paces ahead, then said quietly: 'Whensomebody finds out that aeroplane's in town they'll bust the course record for corrupting a Beirut Customs officer.'
'Impossible. Anyway, they must have corrupted one in advance, just for this cargo. Then the handling agent brings it through when he knows that one's on duty. I'm rather counting on that. The agent daren't do anything until he's got these papers, and even if the Customs bloke recognises the aircraft he won't blow the whistle if he's still hoping for a payoff. Given the usual foul-up in communications, I'd think we've got most of twenty-four hours.'
'I hope you're right. Incidentally, the copper in Nicosia's going to be spitting blood, ours for choice, if we don't turn up for the inquest.'
I shrugged as well as I could with two handfuls of luggage. 'He didn't subpoena us. Anyway, he's only interested in Mitzi and maybe you.'
"Turn off the extinguisher, Jack, I've stopped burning, huh?' he said dryly. 'Well, maybe we'll be back in time anyhow.'
Ken took the girls through immigration and Customs while I made my number with control, paid my landing fees and generally sniffed the official air. It smelt calm. By half past five we were in a Ford Galaxie taxi going sonic down Khalde Boulevard. Beirut driving is terrible, but that's all. It doesn't get really aggressive, such as you find in Israel.
'Where,' Mitzi asked, 'are we going to stay?'
I knew what Ken would say – and he did: The St George. Is there anywhere else?'
'For God's sake come down to our price bracket. We'll stay at some small place in the same area and do our drinking in the St George.'
But the girls decided they, at least, would go for the St George itself. I think they were both just a little apprehensive about Beirut and felt that in a big western hotel there'd be less chance of anybody throwing them across the crupper of his Cadillac and galloping them off across the burning sands.
Well, things do happen in Beirut, if not quite that.
Anyhow, we made sure the girls got rooms at the St George, then took the taxi on and found ourselves a small place on the Rue Ibn Sina, about five minutes' walk away but no sea view. We had a rendezvous in the St George for half past six, and Ken and I made it with just twenty minutes to spare.
The St George bar has the air of a London club-room that got a bit bleached in the sun. Not that much light gets in past the long drapes; if you want to do anything as touristy as get tanned, you sit outside overlooking the swimming pool. Real Beirutis prefer the leather armchairs, the unhurried waiters, the elegant pale woodwork, the incense of diplomacy and big business.
A waiter took our order, gave an unspoken opinion that our clothes belonged out by the pool if not in it, drifted away.
I asked: 'How did it feel – the aeroplane?'
'Nice to be back. But a bit small for our business. What d'you think we should get once we're back in the money?'
I shrugged. 'I was thinking something like a Britten-Norman Islander. 'Second-hand, you can pick them up for around £30,000 complete.'
Ken made a sour-smell expression. 'A third-level job? Little feeder-liner like that? Hell, it wouldn't carry more than a ton.' Our Scotches arrived and he stirred his ice with the plastic stick. 'I'll bet you can still get a DC-3 for ten thousand, four-ton payload and all.'
'And all those hungry horses to feed.' An Islander's engines churn out just 600 horsepower total, a DC-3 Dakota gives 2,400 – and the fuel costs are about in proportion, let alone your servicing bills. I could get you a four-engined jetliner, 80 seats and no more than fifteen years old, for just over £100,000, but if you wanted to stay rich you'd use it as a garden ornament instead of the concrete gnomes. It's when you start operating an aeroplane that you go broke.
'Well,' I said, 'maybe we could stretch to a Skyvan with a ton-and-a-half.'
'Still third-level,' Ken grumbled.
'Look, chum, third-level's the only place for small operators these days. Short field, rough field, stuff. Everything bigger's got jets flying into it. Nobody wants to ride in a DC-3 any more. That's one reason you can get them for ten thousand.'
'I wasn't thinking about people.'
'Nor strawberries nor monkeys?'
He finished his Scotch and clattered the ice in his glass. 'No, hell, but… what else do we know?'
'Jail?'
He took a deep breath and then nodded briefly and waved at the waiter leaning on the bar.
'By the way,' I said, 'what are we doing here?"
'Helping Mitzi track down her father's sword… Sounds like something out of a folk song, doesn't it? '
'What are we getting out of it?'
'I liked Bruno – and he pretty well promised me a piece of the action once we got out.'
'D'you think Mitzi accepts that as a debt against the estate? She might just say Thank You very prettily. Even if we find the bloody thing.'
'Look, Roy, she needs me – us – a private aircraft, just as much as her father did. Nobody can walk aboard a scheduled flight carrying a three-foot sword; the Lebanese would nick it and swear it had been found in Tyre or Sidon. It could just as well have been.'
'Have you been swotting up the Crusades?'
'What the hell d'you think Bruno and I talked about in jail? Women? Cold beer?'
'Sorry.' Then the girls arrived. Changed, of course, since women can't unpack a suitcase without putting on something fresh, but in Eleanor's case a good idea too: Beirut's a bit stuffy about women in denim pants. Now she had on a plain white shirtwaister with a wide pleated skirt showing a nice pair of sum' brown legs. I wondered if she was sun-tanned all over and then wondered why I wondered it.
The waiter took an order for a couple of vodka tonics and the girls said their rooms were fine and how were ours and we said fine, although in fact we'd only hired one and it was lousy, and finally Mitzi said: 'We rang Mr Aziz-'
'Did you?' Ken was a bit surprised.
'There are many pages of Aziz in the telephone book. I would not have found his number without the address.'
'Big family,' I said. 'I thought I knew the name.'
Eleanor said: "They can't all be one family. You should have seen how many.'
'Better word would be a "clan", like the Campbells or Stewarts. The clans run the country. Not so much Beirut, there's too many foreigners and foreign money here, but certainly the rest.'
'What did the mansay T asked Ken.
Eleanor was still looking at me. 'It sounds positively feudal.'
I said: 'No, it's all done through Parliament. In the Smiths' district you get a Smith standing as Conservative candidate, a Smith for the Liberals, a Social-Democratic Smith and so on… the peasants get a free vote, and if that isn't democracy, what is?'
Ken snapped: 'What did he jay?'
Mitzi said: 'Come to a party.'
'That's Beirut,' Ken groaned. 'Where and when?'
'At his house in… in Beit Mery. After dinner.'
'I'm hungry,' said Ken.
It was dark when we started up the hill, which was probably good for the girls' nerves. But I knew what sort of drop there was beyond the low walls on the outside of the hairpin bends, and the taxi driver was – as usual – practising for his fighter-pilot badge. From the way Ken talked between clenched teeth, he remembered those roads, too.
'When we get there,' he asked Mitzi, 'what are you going to say?'
'I will tell him my father is dead and ask where is the sword he found.'
It was all right – the taxi driver didn't speak English. That's why I'd picked him out of the bunch that rush you whenever you step out of a hotel in that town. Ken said: "That sounds a bit sort of… straightforward.'
'But why? He knows it is true, that he owes me the sword.' It all sounded a bit straightforward and true to me, too, but of course I've never had the chance to play the bereaved daughter. The Lebanese can be sentimental about family ties. Their own, anyway.
Eleanor said: 'I wonder if…" and then seemed to change her mind and went on: 'Do you have any idea why Mr Aziz got involved in this at all?'
'My father needed some person to sell for him. He was an archaeologist, not a salesman.'
'But why somebody in Beirut?'
I said: 'I can guess at that. Anywhere else – Cyprus or Rome or anywhere – the Israeli government might get an injunction to stop the sale as an illegal export. They'd try, anyway. The Lebanon just doesn't recognise Israeli law.'
Eleanor grunted and sat back – the three of them were on the back seat, me leaning over from beside the driver.
Then Mitzi got an idea: 'He cannot have sold it already?'
There was a silence except for the roar of the engine and the squeal of the tyres. The headlights swept across a battered wall covered in rows of political posters, all showing almost identical confident chubby faces with a few lines of coloured script below. Only the colours were different.
Eleanor said: 'No, I don't think so. We'd have heard something. And like I said: it wouldn't go for half the price without the documentation that you've got. I guess that's why your father kept the two separate while he was… while he was away.'
That didn't exactly explain why the Prof had posted the authentication off to Aziz just before he died, though. But I didn't mention it.
Ken said: 'So, in a way, that bit of paper's worth as much as the sword itself.'
'In a way,' Eleanor agreed, 'Hell' – her voice got a little thoughtful – 'I'm in a kind of equivocal position about all this. Employees of the Met aren't supposed to go chasing about after illegal exports.'
'You mean they're not supposed to get caught,' Ken said dryly.
Aziz lived not quite at the top of the hill and not quite where the driver first thought he did, either. But we found it; a rambling modern split-level affair dug back into the raw rock hillside, and a drive-way jammed with big cars glistening in the warm orange light flooding from a dozen thinly-curtained big windows. But outside, there was a sudden sharp chill to the air. We'd climbed less than 2,000 feet, but that included the difference between the hot, cramped streets and an open hillside facing the sea. You should be here in summer to get the real contrast.
Eleanor and Mitzi were shivering slightly, but still looking out over the spread-out lights of Beirut below. It's funny how, down there, you never seem overlooked by the hills, but up here you seem to be staring straight down the city's cleavage.
Ken came back from bargaining with the driver and said briskly: 'Any city looks beautiful from up high at night. Let's get in where the booze is free.'
Eleanor murmured: 'I bet he writes fairy stories in his spare time, too,' but she followed.
It was a big room, with a higher ceiling than you'd expect in that shape of house, bright and white-walled and not looking full with over thirty people standing around sipping and chattering. As we came in at the top of a small flight of steps, most turned to look at us.
I'd known Ken and I wouldn't be contending for the best-dressed award, but I'd put off thinking about it. Now we stood out like two witches at the Princess's christening. Almost everybody else – they were mostly men anyway – was in a neat city suit and crisp white shirt. The exceptions were a character in the gold-embroidered white robes of the Yemen and a cove who'd had his length of blue pinstripe cut into a normal jacket and a calf-length skirt; arab head-dress and sandals, of course. I'd seen the mixture before but it still gets me.
The door-opener in the white jacket was still wondering if we'd come to collect the garbage when our host bustled through the crowd with hand outstretched.
'You must be Mademoiselle Braunhof- Spohr, of course. And Mademoiselle Travis. Eleanor Travis of the Met? You don't know me but I've heard of you. And also…? ' He looked at Ken and me and held the smile with an effort.
He was shortish, with a comfortable round body in a dark blue-green silk suit and a surprisingly bony square face. It was as if forty-five years – I guessed – of good living had all sunk into his belly and left his chin and cheeks untouched. His hair was thin and dark, shading to pure white over his ears.
Ken said: 'Case and Cavitt. We fly aeroplanes. We brought the ladies to Beirut and they brought us up here. I hope we're not intruding.'
'Of course not, messieurs, naturally not. All friends of Ma'm-zelle Spohr… You must have a drink…' Another white jacket materialised at his elbow with a tray. 'Champagne or gin and tonic for the ladies. And for the gentlemen…?'
'Scotch,' Ken said. 'I never know where I am with champagne.'
Aziz didn't get it, thank God, but smiled briefly and turned to Mitzi. 'And how is your dear father? Did he send you to see me?'
It wasn't long and it wasn't quiet, but it felt like a long silence to me. Eleanor stiffened, Ken froze, Mitzi's eyes sparkled darkly. She said calmly: 'My father died last night.'
It took a moment to sink into Aziz, and then, oddly, his first reaction was anger. He snapped his head from side to side. 'Why was I not told this? It must have been reported?' Then he recovered and turned back to Mitzi, taking her elbow protectively. 'But my dear, this is most terrible. You must sit down, tell me what happened…' And he led her out through an arched doorway filled with a bead curtain.
Ken sipped and frowned. 'That boy's got class. Of a sort.' He grinned at Eleanor. 'And Miss Travis of the Met, I presume?'
She smiled automatically and rather artificially. 'Yes. If he knows the Met's staff that well… he's no little grave-robber. You can see that anyway.' She nodded at the wall beside us.
It was long and plain white – most Beirut houses go in for more decor – and packed with alcoves, each holding some antiquity: a Greek vase, a curved sword, an amphora on a metalt stand, a green-crusted bronze helmet.
'They mostly aren't mediaeval so I can't tell, but they look pretty valuable pieces. I don't know…' she frowned and her voice trailed off.
The conversation around us had got buzzing again, together with some appraising glances at Eleanor. She might not know it, but her blonde Nordic good looks put her up with the Swissfranc as hard currency in Beirut. I planned on sticking by her; alone, I'd be ignored. Ken seemed to have the same idea.
A couple of minutes later we had a discussion group of a man from a pipeline company, a manager of an Italian bank branch, somebody to do with hotel management and a vulture in blue spectacles who said he was the Minister of this or that.
'I'm afraid I didn't quite gather what our host does,' I said to the hotel management, who was staring past me at Eleanor's chest.
'Some of everything,' he said without shifting his eyes. 'But the main family business is arranging and leasing concessions, you understand?"
'No.'
He glanced at me, a little impatiently since he'd rather be talking to Eleanor's cleavage. 'If you want to make Coca-Cola in the Yemen or build a Hilton in Aden, he will do the arrangements. Hilton know he will pick only good men to finance it, and the financiers know he will get good terms from Hilton. Then he puts in a little Aziz money for good faith and takes out a lot as his fee. Very simple.'
I nodded. 'All you need is to be a big man in a big family with a reputation going back five generations.'
He smiled briefly and maybe sourly. "That is all.'
'I heard they were opening a Castle hotel out here…'
This time his grin was quite genuine and satisfied. 'That is gone; busted. Pierre was not involved in that; he is not a fool. The English end let them down, and my poor friends who put money in do not know what to do. They were buying the name Castle and now it means failure.'
If his poor friends had fallen into the pool of the sacred crocodile he might have been happier, but only might.
I tried to make the next question sound vague and disinterested. 'Was a man called Uthman Jehangir involved in that?'
He looked at me sharply. 'Jehangir? Do you know him?'
'Met him in Cyprus once. He mentioned the Castle.'
He shook his head. 'He is not big enough. He is a sportsman – no, you would say playboy. A gambler. Perhaps they asked him to run the opening night party, to bring a film star. He knows such people. But he would not put money in a long-term affair, even if they let him.'
I nodded and said: 'Uh-huh,' as if that finished Jehangir for me, too. And, nice man that I am, I gave my friend his reward: 'Eleanor, have you met Mr umm errr from the hotel business?'
On the edge of the crowd I found a waiter with a tray and prised another Scotch out of him and then stood there admiring the vast antique chandelier that didn't really fit with the modern teak or white furniture. But in Beirut you have to have one; it's as much a status symbol as a Rolls-Royce is to a pop singer. It was nice to know that even after five generations of success you don't get immune to it.
Ken drifted up beside me…'Met anybody who knows God personally?'
'Not unless He's in the hotel business.'
He jerked his head at the archway. They're taking their time in-' But just then Mitzi and Aziz appeared. She looked pale, big-eyed and serious; Aziz just serious. He saw us, came over, and said in a low voice: 'Messieurs – if you could kindly help us…'
'Eleanor too?' Ken asked.
Aziz looked over to where she was under siege and smiled faintly. 'No, I think she seems busy enough. And – as yet – this does not concern the Met.'
He led the way back through the arch.