Midnight Runner - Jack Higgins [30]
Afterwards, they drove down to the Excelsior Hotel, where he told Selim and the other five Scouts to take a couple of days off and gave them twenty dollars, each in fives. They were American dollars, an old custom that delighted them, for U.S. dollars were greatly appreciated in Hazar. He told them he knew where to find them if necessary and dismissed them.
The Excelsior dated from colonial days and still had a whiff of British Empire about it. The bar had the look of an old movie, with cane furniture, fans turning on the ceiling, and a marble-topped bar, bottles arranged behind. The barman, Abdul, wore a white monkey jacket from his days as a waiter on cruise ships.
"Lager," Villiers told him, "and as cold as it gets."
He went out through the French doors and sat in a large cane chair, the awning above his head flapping in the wind. Abdul brought the lager. Villiers ran a finger down the glass, beaded with moisture, then drank slowly, but without stopping, washing away the sand and the heat and the dirt of the border country.
Abdul had waited, an old ritual. "Another one, Sahb?"
"Yes, thank you, Abdul."
Villiers lit a cigarette and looked out to the horizon, a dark mood on him. Maybe it was the death of Omar, and the puzzle why he himself had been spared. On the other hand, maybe he'd stayed in Hazar too long. He'd been married once, more years ago than he cared to remember: Gabrielle of the blond hair and the green eyes, the love of his life. But he'd been away from home too much, they'd drifted apart, and finally divorced just before the Falklands War. What made it worse was that she'd married the enemy, an Argentine Air Force fighter ace who later became a general.
No one could ever replace her. There had been women, of course, but never one to move him enough to marry again. For Villiers, it had been a life of soldiering in strange places, his only anchor the old family house in West Sussex, and the home farm, worked by his nephew, who was married with two children and also doubled as the estate manager. They were always begging him to give up soldiering while he was still in one piece and come home.
Abdul interrupted his reverie with the second lager. Someone called, "I'll have one of those," and Villiers turned to see Ben Carver walk in wearing flying overalls and a Panama hat. He flopped down in the chair opposite Villiers and fanned his face with the hat.
"Christ, it's hot out there."
"How's the air taxi business?"
"Lucrative, with all those oil leases out there on the border country. I've replaced the Three-Ten your friend Dillon crashed last year."
"He didn't crash it, he was shot down by Bedu, as you well know."
"All right, so he was shot down. I've still got the Golden Eagle, and I've got a couple of South African kids flying over in my new Beechcraft. Well, it's not exactly new, but it'll do nicely."
"Are they going to stay?"
"They're giving it six months. I need someone. There's a lot of Rashid work around."
"I hear she's coming in today."
"The Countess? Yeah, she's flying in with someone named Dauncey. Not staying long, though. Got a slot back to London day after tomorrow."
"Dauncey is her cousin. Tell me, Ben, when you fly to oil sites out there in the Empty Quarter, do you see much action?"
"Action? What do you mean?"
"Well, since the Sultan won't let the Scouts cross the border anymore, I just don't know things the way I used to. Who do you see?"
Carver wasn't smiling now. "A few caravans, will that do?" He swallowed his lager and stood. "I see nothing, Tony."
"Which is what you're paid to do?"
"I'm paid to fly to exploratory oil wells, land in the desert, then fly back." He walked to the door and turned. "And I'm paid to mind my own business. You should try it."
"So that means you don't fly that new toy of hers, the Scorpion? I've seen that