Beirut Hippodrome is a fairly standard sort of course for that end of the world: an oval sand track with a fancy colonnaded wooden stand on the south side by the finish, an open-aircafé next to it and the ring and stables and stuff somewhere behind that. Two things make it different: you come in through the north gate so you have to walk clear across the track to reach the stand, and most of the middle is a forest so that spectators can't see the north side and most of the last turn to home.
Some say this is so you won't notice what's happening on the back straight, others that it's a bluff to make you think something's happening there instead of it all being arranged beforehand byle Combine with its go-go and stop-stop pills. Oddly, the locals don't seem to get angry about this: le Combine is just another factor to consider along with the jockey, recent form, hard or soft going, distance, whether Orion is in Venus and whatever else racegoers worry about.
Me, I have no opinions bar one: that the first time I bet on a Beirut horse it'll be because I saw a tout in a vision and he had nail-holes in his wrists and ankles.
We just missed the first race, so by the time they let us across the track people were drifting back from the rails tearing up tickets and calling for another jar. The stand looked about half full, thecafé area more so, with Jehangir at a front table, his tin leg stuck stiffly out and his smile gleaming in the sunlight. He waved us in and I introduced Ken and we sat down.
'Three more beers,' Jehangir called, and a crumpled old waiter took off at a hand-gallop. For once, our style of dress -if that's what it was – didn't seem too far out of place. Royal Ascot this wasn't, though there were still a number of city suits around. But Jehangir himself was hi candy-pink trousers and striped shirt, and a lot of the crowd had had similar ideas.
'You see that man in the glasses?' Jehangir pointed inconspicuously. 'Seventeen years ago, he assassinated the President of Syria.' He seemed pleased by the thought, like a man recommending a horse. The man looked fiftyish, but still lean and hard; a policeman wearing a carbine that had gone green, I meangreen, around the breech wandered up, saluted the assassin smartly. Jehangir nodded approvingly.
Our drinks arrived. Jehangir said: 'Now we can drink beer and talk champagne. But first, you must let me mark your cards for you.'
We hadn't even bought race-cards, since they come only in Arabic – which tells you about how many tourists come here -but Jehangir bent studiously over his own. 'I know nothing about the second, but in the third and fifth, ah…'
I said: 'On her death-bed, my mother made me promise never to take sweets from strangers or advice from friends.'
Jehangir grinned. 'You will die rich.'
'I'm sure half of that's true.'
Ken asked: 'Are you feeling lucky or knowledgeable?'
Jehangir shrugged deprecatingly. 'A little of both. But surely you don't believe all these stories aboutle Combine that one hears from losers?'
'I knew a man here who bought an ex-racehorse, just for some exercise, and he swore it wouldn't get up in the morning without him shouting "The joint's raided! " '
Jehangir grinned automatically. 'Who wants to hear stories about honest dealing and hard work?'
'Not me,' Ken assured him, and both of them smiled.
I said: 'Were you doing any work for Castle Hotels when they were still in business?'
He bent his head gracefully. 'They asked me to be host on the opening night – and bring a few friends from Rome. Some say I run the best non-political party in Beirut.'
I nodded. So the 'champagne' would originally have been delivered, maybe not direct to him, but certainly close to him.1 glanced at Ken and knew he was following the same thought-prints.
Jehangir looked at his fingernails. 'Am I to take it, from your arrival in Beirut, that Mr… er, Kapotas is no longer an interested party?'
Ken said: 'He's a busy man, a lot of things on his mind. We don't want to see him overworked. You know how it is?'
'Oh, I know,' Jehangir said softly. Then, to me: 'So, if all the documentation is still complete, one might just go ahead as if nothing as heart-breaking as Castle's failure had happened?'
'Onemight,' I said.
'Apart,' he added, 'from the matter of the delivery charge?'
So then a tall young black man in blue jeans came up to the table and gave Jehangir a wad of money the size of a club sandwich. Ken stared. 'Jesus. Was that the first race?'
Jehangir flapped the wad casually. 'It looks more than it is. But you haven't met Janni, have you?'
The Negro shook hands and gave me a quick, slightly uneasy smile showing a lot of very white but uneven teeth. He was very dark, with a bluish sheen on his skin but a sharper nose than you'd expect; East Africa, somewhere, which went with a Muslim name. That apart, he had shoulders like a bulldozer blade and a chest like a concrete mixer, but carried his weight lightly.
'Gentlemen,' Jehangir said gravely, 'you have just shaken hands with the next heavyweight champion of the world.'
Now I could see the thin pale scars above and below the eyes. Janni smiled again, but not until we looked at him.
Ken sounded impressed. 'Are you a fights manager as well?' It fitted, of course: horses, Via Veneto parties, boxers – they went together. And boxes of guns, too?
Jehangir lit a cigarette and waved it. 'Only for the best. Janni boxed on the Ethiopian team at the Olympics, but went down with flu in the second week. I was the only one who'd spotted him by then. If he'd gone through and won, of course, the Americans would've got him. And givenhim ten fights in six months and ruined him.'
I asked: 'What's the score so far?'
'Fourteen fights in two years, and we've won the last nine in a row, mostly inside the distance.' I love that 'we' you get from managers, just as if they'd been in there, too, throwing left hooks with their cigars. 'Next month to Rome, and once we've won that, the Sporting Club in London.'
'Tomorrow, the world,' Ken murmured, looking at Janni.
Jehangir nodded. 'But Janni hardly speaks any English yet. And why rush it? So far he can't understand what stupid questions sports writers ask nor what rubbish they write.' Nor read account books where somehow the boxer ends up with minus ten per cent of the take.
The crowd stirred and several people stood up from tables around us: a line of stubby, sawn-off horses was walking out between us and the stands, jockeys in the driving seats, one in green silks who could have switched weights with his horse and the records book would never have noticed a thing.
Jehangir hauled himself upright, said: 'Excuse me, gentlemen, just one moment,' and walked stiffly off to get a closer look. Janni went with him, carefully blocking people from bumping the master's left leg.
Ken said: 'Give me five pounds to put on that fat jock. There's no way he can be honest.'
'My mother's dying words were: "If you lend money for gambling it's a hundred to six you'll never get it back".'
'Gabby old bat on her death-bed, wasn't she?' Then, with no change of voice, he went on: 'I'd said nobody hit anybody on the chin except on TV. I forgot about trained boxers.'
I rubbed my chin and nodded. 'And Jehangir knew I'd got all the documents. Well, if the kid ever makes world champion I'll remember to feel honoured.'
'Not in a million years. Not if his eyes get cut like that at this level of competition. Two real fights and he'll be learning English by Braille. What are we asking as a delivery price?'
'Let's see what he suggests about shaking the aeroplane loose.' I lit a pipe and leaned back comfortably. The sun was pleasantly warm but no more, and the air smelled only faintly of horses. A young waiter hurried around putting fresh charcoals on the pans of the hubble-bubble pipes that stood beside half the tables; you just plugged in your own mouthpiece and took a drag. Simple; I keep on meaning to try it sometime.
By and by the horses cantered off to the start, Janni hurried away to the Tote and Jehangir came and sat down again.
Ken said: 'I thought you didn't know anything about this race?'
Jehangir grinned and shrugged. 'I can't resist any race. Now -we were talking about a delivery price, I think.'
I said: 'There's a snag: the aeroplane's been sort of confiscated.'
Jehangir went stiff and expressionless.
'Only a tiny bit sort of,' Ken reassured him, and passed over the copy of the court order.
The crowd grunted the Lebanese version of 'They're off,' but Jehangir went on reading. Even when the rest of us got up and stood on our chairs to watch the finish, which was nicely choreographed into a tight bunch with our fat friend in front by a nose. Mind, his horse could have dropped dead twenty yards before and they'd still have won on combined inertia.
The sand cloud settled and Ken shook his head at me. 'The next time you get your mother on the ouija board, pass her a message from me, will you?'
Jehangir looked up. 'How did you get on the wrong side of the Aziz family?'
'Do they frighten you?' Ken asked.
'Only like a big truck: no problem if you can see it coming.'
Ken grinned. 'It's a frame, of course. Mitzi – the lady mentioned there – her fathermay have taken twelve thousand from Aziz to finance an archaeological dig, but that's nothing to do with us anyway: we just gave her a lift to Beirut.'
Jehangir nodded gently. 'Of course. I heard about her father's suicide in Cyprus.'
I'd forgotten he'd been in Nicosia perhaps as late as we were, and I rather think Ken had, too.
Ken said: 'She's on her way back to Cyprus now, so we can't count on any help from her… Any steps you think we should take?'
The line of horses walked back past us, led by the fat boy, who at least had the decency to look a bit uneasy. Jehangir just sat frowning at the paper.
At last he said: "This is a nuisance. I hoped to be able to unload this evening. I suppose I could try talking to Aziz himself… point out that the lady has gone, that by keeping the plane here he's only causing you unnecessary trouble…'
'I don't think,' I said, 'he much minds about that.'
Jehangir raised an elegant white eyebrow. 'Ah – it's gone that far, has it? Well, I'll try ringing him anyway. I might persuade him to release the cargo, at least.'
Ken said:'I've just thought of a much simpler way: you give us twelve thousand dollars as a delivery fee, we give it to Aziz – and bingo, everybody's happy.'
Jehangir was staring at him, mouth drooping. Then he closed it with a snap and swallowed. 'Actually, that sounds to me rather a complicated way – as well as making for somewhat expensive champagne. Let me see… at a thousand a box that would be…er, just over $83 a bottle. I know champagne's been going up quite frightfully these last few years, but…' And he smiled appraisingly at Ken. He'd only been talking to give himself time to think.
'It's a rather special champagne,' Ken said quietly. 'And in fact it isn't twelve boxes any more. One got opened in Cyprus by mistake.'
'Ahh,' Jehangir nodded; but by now he'd been expecting something Jike that. 'What happened to that box, do you know?'
I said: 'The man who opened it, he doesn't really appreciate that class of wine. So he – laid it down, as it were. His grandchildren's grandchildren might find it, but not until then.'
Jehangir's mouth twitched, but he said gravely: 'Splendid. If one doesn't understand these rare vintages, one shouldn't touch them. I suppose weare talking about Mr Kapotas?'
I nodded.
Jehangir went on: 'But that makes things even more expensive: we're up to… to ninety dollars a bottle, now. I hope and believe that I'm a good trader – so does everyone in Beirut -but that's going a bit high for even my customers.'
The trouble is,' Ken said, 'that nothing less than twelve thousand is any practical use to us.'
'Just to get your plane out of the pawn-shop? If you wait a few days it'll fall back into your lap. The court can't keep up the pretence of this order for long. It may cost you a couple of hundred dollars in legal fees, but you might well recover that, too. Or were you wanting to get Mr Aziz out of Miss Braunhof -Spohr's affairs entirely?'
'Something like that,' Ken admitted.
'It's very noble of you.'
Ken smiled bleakly and said: 'I was thinking that you wouldn't be buying just the stock but also, as you might say, the goodwill.'
'Ahh.' Jehangir nodded slowly. 'That puts it very nicely. But you don't seem to have considered that I've already bought quite a lot of goodwill in connection with this cargo. Possibly more than you have. I don't think my name is on any of those documents Mr Case carries?'
He looked at me and the best I could do was shrug.
Jehangir beamed at me. 'I thought not.' Then Janni came back with a sombre expression and no wad of notes. Jehangir waved him to a seat. 'You can't win them all, can you?'
He was looking at Ken, but I said: 'That's what my mother told me. What d'you suggest now?'
"That I contact Mr Aziz and see what we can work out. Then I contact you. Will you be at the hotel?'
'We'd better be, hadn't we?'
'Good. Would you care to leave the manifest and so forth with me? – It might speed things along.'
'I'm not in that much of a hurry.'
Jehangir gave me one of his quick grins. 'Now, I must think about the third race.'
I stood up, but Janni was on his feet first. His English might be lousy, but he was a good enough fighter to smell the change of mood. He just stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Ken stood up slowly, his face clenched tight. Jehangir grinned at him, too, and said: 'You will still have a delivery fee, of course. It will cover a few days in Beirut and any legal fees. And you will get the plane back – unless Castle does, first.'
Ken said quietly: 'What happened to your leg?'
Jehangir tapped his thigh gently, getting a muffled tinny noise. They do a very good job, these days. Light alloy with a glass-fibre socket moulded exactly to your stump so it can be held on by pure suction; brilliant. I actually had this fitted in England, at Roehampton. Oh yes – I lost the original to a bit of stray firing in the 1958 troubles.'
Ken nodded. 'Not something that's still going around, then.'
'Oh no.' Jehangir looked at him carefully. 'No, I don't think so.'
As we walked away I said: 'Never try to blackmail a gambler: he's accustomed to risking the odds.'
'Who told you that? No, don't say it.' His face was still stiff. "The bastard. The swindling sod.'
'Hell, you said yourself the guns had probably been mostly paid for. Why should he spring another twelve thousand?'
'You took all the risks without being paid for them. I was just standing up for your rights.'
'Yes? Well, if my rights happen to feel tired, you just leave ' em lay. D'you think we should let him have those guns?'
'Why? – d'you want them for yourself?'
The gate to the path across the course was open so we walked out through the men raking the sand smooth again, along with a few punters who'd seen the light after just two races. But there were still twice as many hurrying in the opposite direction.
I said: 'I'd trust me with them more than I would him. Anyway, if he doesn't unpack the things fast, it wouldn't be much of a trick to trace them back to us.'
Ken shrugged: 'He's just another middleman. He's not charging up El Hamra shouting "Liberty! " with an M3 and a tin leg. They probably aren't even for this country.'
We reached the main gate just before they shut it for the third race, and stood on the pavement waving at taxis.
Ken said thoughtfully: 'What d'you think hewill do next?'
'Talk to Aziz. He's got to.'
'And we just wait?'
'No, we ring Aziz first.'
'Us? Ring Aziz?' He stared at me. 'And what do we tell him?'
'Promise not to laugh? Why not the truth?'