'Like what?'

'Like boxes marked champagne.'

He caught my tone. 'Boxesmarked…?'

I looked casually around, but as far as my non-radar eyes could tell, there wasn't anybody within hearing. 'They sort of turned out to be M3's. New MSAl's to be precise.'

He frowned and stared. 'You mean you didn't know what you were carrying?'

I nodded and put my pipe in my mouth.

'Je-sus. Delete what I said about your brain not going soft' He thought for a moment. 'Where are they now?'

'Still airside. Except for one box we brought through – we were going to serve it to the Professor. That's how we know what it is.'

'We?'

'Kapotas, the manager-accountant chap. He's the only one.' I hoped.

'Where did it all come from?'

So I told him about Kingsley and he vaguely remembered the man from our RAF days. Then he asked: 'Who was supposed to take it off you in Beirut?'

'I was just told to contact the hotel and they'd send round a cargo handling agent with the paperwork. There's nothing suspicious in that.'

He nodded agreement and finished his drinks. I banged on the table for the waiter – there was no question of 'catching his eye' in that blackout, short of throwing a chair at him.

He brought over two more beers, more 'doubles', another soda and two menu cards: the place was supposed to be a grill as well as a bar. But I waved them away. 'We'll eat when the girls get here.'

Ken got the hungry look again. 'Where the hell have they got to?'

'Spill some soda in your lap and cool down. It's early yet.'

'I suppose so…"

I did my party trick with the extra Scotch and we drank. Ken wasn't rushing the drink, but it's surprising how you can lose your capacity for alcohol if you're off it for a time. And we'd had a couple at the airport, then he'd had a glass or two with the Professor, and maybe he'd treated himself at the hotel bar as well… Anyway, I'd keep an eye on it. He'd certainly hate himself in the morning if he slept through the evening.

I asked: 'What did the Prof want?'

'Oh…' he frowned into his glass. 'It was mostly just a celebration. He did mention something he dug up in Israel, before he got picked up. He thinks it would be easier for somebody else to export it.'

'Oh brother!' I made it a long outward breath. 'We really need a job smuggling something out of Israel, don't we? Not while there's still vacancies for night shite shovellers in Calcutta.'

Ken nodded without meaning much. 'It may not still be in Israel – he didn't so much say it was-'

'He wasn't very chatty, was he?'

'In his business would you be? Anyway, we can't do much about it, not without an aeroplane.'

And with Ken being barred from Israel, if that's where the thing was. But I wasn't going to mention his deportation until he did himself; bad form and all that.

But then he remembered the guns again. The M3A1, you said? In the normal.45 calibre?'

'Right. There were five in the box we opened, plus about two loads for each. That weighs exactly the same as a dozen bottles of Kroeger Royale, if you want to know.'

He shook his head slowly. That's ridiculous… who wants a.45 calibre gun out here? It's almost all 9-mil. or the Russian stuff. And only two loads? – you'd fire that just learning the gun, and then there's no more ammo this side of the American Army in Germany. They just become scrap metal. Ridiculous.'

I relit my pipe and added to the quaint, truly Cypriot atmosphere of the place. That's what I thought. But, mind, we don'tknow what's in the other eleven boxes. They might be all ammunition. They could be anything – even champagne.'

'Yes, there's that. What happened to Kingsley, by the way?'

'Nobody knows, but I get the general idea that he was last seen with a Montevideo brochure in one hand and the office safe in the other.'

That sounds likely. But he wasn't so stupid, was he? If you'd got picked up by the Lebanese or Cyprus cops-'

'You mean if I do yet.'

'Yes, but – with your reputation, who'd think of blaming Kingsley? He picked the right pilot for the job. You've got to admire the bugger.'

'Have I? Show me the law.'

A woman's voice asked over my shoulder: 'Mr Caviti and Mr Case?'

There were two of them, as ordered, and we scrambled awkwardly on to our feet and pulled and pushed chairs until we were all seated again, with the waiter almost perched on my shoulder like a parrot.

The smaller, darker, girl said: 'We seem to like champagne, these days.'

It's funny how long 'these days' have been going on. Ken gave her a quick sharp look and I knew she was mine. Well, it was his evening. So I just nodded over my shoulder and the waiter faded away.

The girl said: 'I'm Nina, this is my friend Suzie.'

The names fitted, but they'd probably been chosen for the fit. Nina was smallish but certainly not thin under her tight primrose sweater. Neat sharp features, big dark eyes, and hair that might have been jet black even in a good light, in a loose, silky pageboy bob. Her voice was just English English without any accent that I could spot.

I said: 'I'm Roy Case, the gentleman with the X-ray eyes is Ken Caviti.'

Suzie said: 'Charmed, I'm sure,' and smiled absently back at Ken's hot stare. She was another English girl – I suppose the Sergeant had chosen them deliberately – and while she might not have been a genuine blonde, she was certainly one at heart. She had a cheery open face, a pert nose, slightly chubby arms and hands and a powerful overdose of figure more or less inside a thin silk blouse. And she positively radiated sex of the simplest kind: just bouncing about in a bed with no hangover to come.

Ken was obviously getting the same perfume; his eyes were practically licking her.

I said: 'I must apologise for Ken: he just spent the last two years in a monastery.'

Suzie said: 'Ooooh, how interesting,' and went on smiling out of her big blue To Let eyes. Ken finally got his mind off her chest and back to his glass.

Then the waiter came back with the champagne and menus.

'What d'you recommend?' I asked Nina.

'Kebabs. Four shish kebabs.' Quite firmly. Ken looked disappointed – he'd obviously been dreaming of steak – but he had the sense to guess what it would taste like in a joint like this. A kebab is about the one thing no Cypriot could louse up.

I said: 'Right, four kebabs,' and it was the waiter's turn to look disappointed; he'd been thinking of steaks, too.

Nina lifted her glass. 'Well, here's to us.'

We all drank, and Suzie said: 'Ooooh, lovely,' in a practised way. Myself, I'm no connoisseur of champagne, but my guess is that if they'd aged this another twenty-four hours it would have made a big difference. I stirred my glass with a fork.

Nina asked: 'Don't you like champagne?'

'I prefer the taste to the bubbles. Somebody once gave me a glass of a 1911, I think it was, and that was exactly what the angels have for teabreaks. And it was practically flat.'

'I remember,' Ken said. 'It was that Portuguese mining man in Monte.7 thought the stuff tasted like mushroom soup.'

I shrugged and sipped; without the bubbles I'm not sure there was any taste at all.

Nina asked: 'Have you just arrived in Cyprus?'

I nodded.

'Have you been here before?'

Ken said: 'A few dozen times.'

She lifted her thin dark eyebrows. 'What business are you in?'

I said: 'We're pilots.'

Suzie said automatically: 'Oooh, how interesting.'

'In the RAF?' asked Nina.

I shook my head. 'Just civi L'

'Which airline?'

'Our own,' Ken said. 'From time to time.'

'Oooh,' said Suzie, almost waking up. 'Do you really have your own airline?'

'Sure. It's just that we can't remember where we put it.'

Nina was frowning slightly. Even if Sergeant Papa hadn't briefed her, she'd priced us pretty accurately. Ken had simply added a black uniform tie to his white shirt and twill trousers rig. I had on a white shirt, for once, and the trousers of my blue uniform. Not the jacket with its three stripes that mean nothing except impressing customers without quite annoying four-stripe airline captains. In fact the only expensive thing about us was our wristwatches: Ken's Rolex and my Breitling. You daren't skimp on the tools of your trade.