Ken said: 'Nicosia in time for a late dinner, then. What after that?'

'Back to the Castle. Then either Kapotas gets the okay from London for us to fly the aeroplane home, or we cable the bank and buy our own tickets.'

'Tomorrow's Sunday.'

'So we're stuck there till Monday anyhow.'

After a moment he said: 'What about Mitzi – and the sword?'

'What about it? We haven't a blind idea where it is except probably still Israel. We did our best for Mitzi, but now it's time to resign from the crusade and get back into something profit-making.'

He was quiet for a while. Then: 'Did you know I was deported from Israel?'

The Consulate said.'

'1 meant to tell you myself. So we couldn't go to Israel anyway… but I'd like to have found King Richard's sword.'

'Me too. And the Holy Grail and Henry Morgan's treasure and King Solomon's mines. Not necessarily all in the same week, though.'

'Screw you, too.' But when I glanced across, he was grinning. 'I suppose really it wasn't our type of weapon, anyway.'

'One sword, king-size, only one previous owner… Mind the store for me?'

'Where are you going?'

'Back to dump the cargo.'

He sat up. 'Oh Christ no. I tell you, that stuff'scapital?

'It's jail bait. We've been lucky so far, mostly because we've kept ducking and weaving, but lucky besides. Just think how many people know by now: Jehangir and Co., Aziz and Kapotas and anybody they've told, then Kingsley and God-knows-who in Europe.'

'Yes, but it's still-'

'And when we reach Nicosia we're due for a bollocking about that takeoff from Beirut – they're sure to have complained. If just one official gets snoopy, then kiss me good night, head warder.'

'Well, maybe, but…" he sounded wistful. 'I mean, those pistols are all new. Average £50 apiece just on a legal sale across the counter. That's a thousand quid before we open another box.'

'Ken, we can'tarrange a legal sale. We aren't arms dealers. We were never the bright boys who fix for stuff to go from A to B and somebody called C to carry it. We were C, pig in the middle. But at least we insisted on honest manifests and end-use certificates and all.'

'An honest end-use certificate? We knew bloody well that half the stuff we carried was going to wind up in some other country.'

'I'm not talking about morality, dammit, I'm talking about getting caught. Those certificates were protection.'

'Were they?' – sourly.

'Mostly. And you only did two years. If they'd thought you were a freelance smuggler…'

He nodded but said doggedly: 'It's stillcapital. Like something I've been investing the last two years… a chance to get started again. There must besomething we can do with it -more than the fish can, anyway.'

It's tricky to argue with that, particularly when you agree with most of it. The fact that the load probably belonged to lehangir, at least legally or morally – or come to think of it, not quite either – wasn't bothering me. I wriggled back out of my seat. 'Okay. The champagne papers'll see us through for the unopened boxes. But the opened stuff goes out. Are you keeping the Smith?'

'Just in case comrade lehangir hasn't switched to breeding lovebirds.' He had a point, there. I slid the cockpit door behind me before turning on the cabin lights.

The escape hatch is the last full-sized window on the starboard side, just behind the wing and opposite the door. It came loose easy enough, with a blare of engine noise and wind, and the aeroplane twitched with the increased drag. I threw the submachine-guns first.

By the time I was down to tearing up and feeding out the cardboard boxes themselves, I was frozen rigid: any air comes cold at 170 knots. Putting the hatch back in was no fun at all and once I almost lost the whole thing and how would I explainthat!

Then I went looking for any damage done by Ken's shot. And I couldn't find a sign, so probably it was still in Jehangir's tin leg and it didn't bother me if it rattled as well. But I did find the gun he'd dropped: a Mauser HSc with one up the spout, so he'd been seriously ready to shoot. But I wasn't going to open up the hatch and refreeze just for one gun. I put on the safety and jammed it up the backside of the rear seat, in among the springs. Then shivered my way back to the cockpit.

20

Nicosia did its usual speedy job of prising the landing fee out of me, then looked severe and said: There has been a complaint about your departure from Beirut.'

I looked surprised. 'What for? I had a clearance.'

They say-' he glanced down at a sheet of telex paper '-they say the clearance was cancelled and you took off without permission.'

'I was flying below the airways; don't see how they can cancel that sort of clearance.'

He looked at the paper again but it didn't seem to help. 'I do not quite understand…'

'If they want to fill in a form 939 and send it to our Civil Aviation boys, then I'll answer it. Until then they've got no blasted business libelling me all over the Mediterranean.'

He frowned. He was pretty sure I'd done something, but he didn't want to stick his neck out on behalf of what he probably regarded as a bunch of hysterical Arabs.

So he coughed and nodded. 'I will tell them if they ask. Are you staying at the Castle again?'

'Where else?'

He went away and I finished up the paperwork and went outside to find Ken.

It was a quiet taxi ride into Nicosia town. Halfway there, Ken roused himself enough to ask: 'How are we cashwise?'

'Not terribly fit.' The Beirut hotel hadn't cost us much, but the flight and the bar of the St George had caused severe financial bruising. In various currencies, I had just about thirty quid left.

Ken grunted and left it at that.

Sergeant Papa wasn't on duty, so we walked straight in and turned left for the bar/dining-room. At the far end, a handful of families were finishing dinner; closer up, Kapotas was sitting at a bar table working over some account books with a glass of something beside him.

I said: "The phrase you're looking for is "Welcome home". Is that whisky after dinner again?'

He looked up and his shoulders sagged a little. 'I haven't had any dinner yet. I thought you'd be in Beirut much longer. Welcome home.'

'Why, thank you. We haven't had dinner ourselves, yet. Is it edible?'

He dropped his pen and rubbed his eyes. 'I doubt it. And with you two back, my accounts will mean nothing – again.' He got up and took his glass to the bar.

Ken was already leaning on it, and Apostólos, smiling gently, was pouring our two shots. He touched up Kapotas's glass as well and we said 'Cheers' and drank.

Then Ken asked: 'Didn't the girls get back here?'

Kapotas shook his head, and Ken and I looked at each other. Then he said slowly: "The Ledra, then? I mean, if you've got money you wouldn't come… I'll just check, I think.'

He went out. Kapotas watched him blankly, then nodded me away to the table, where Apostólos couldn't overhear. Then he whispered: 'What happened over there? '

I thought about it. 'We went to a party, we went to the races, we met some interesting new people. I suppose that about sums it up.'

'You brought back the plane?'

I stared. 'Yes, of course.'

'But not the cargo?'

'We-ell…'

'Oh God!'

'It's down to just nine boxes, now,' I said helpfully.

He had his hands over his eyes. 'But I thought that was what you weregoing for! '

'Sorry, it wasn't.'

He looked at me with haunted eyes. 'Do you know that a senior partner of Harborne, Gough is coming from London tomorrow to look at everything personally?'

My first thought was: with only thirty quid, where the hell can we get off this islandtoi Turkey, maybe? I said: 'I didn't know. But he won't want to open champagne boxes and count the bubbles, anyway.'