Ken said: 'Gadulla's expecting us. Caviti – and my friend.'

The kid gave a smile of recognition and scuttled back into the shop.

We eased in a couple of steps off the street and waited. Opposite was a barber's with a glassed-in front. The Old City supports more barbers than an Army training camp, but everybody still seems covered in hair. Just another economic factor I'll never grasp.

A quiet gritty voice said: 'Ahlan, ahlan…' and we turned round.

Why had I expected an old man? – because the Prof had been? – because of the antiques angle? This one was tall, lean and several years younger than us. Dressed in a slim, coarse gallabiya, jacket and red-and-white check head-dress tied with black silk. A thin triangular face you might have called hawklike if the hawk hadn't flown into high ground some time and bent its beak, the bend exaggerated by the symmetrical little moustache beneath. But the eyes were dark and calm.

He touched Ken on both shoulders in a ceremonial embrace, bowed to me. 'It is a pleasure, Mr Case. Please come through.' He held back an old smoke-stained curtain and we went down the cave and around a rack of modern shelving holding rows of 'antiques' and into a back chamber the size of a cell. I looked quickly at Ken, but perhaps even his dreams had forgotten by now.

'Coffee, perhaps?' Gadulla offered. 'Please sit down.'

Ken took off his jacket and shook it, then shivered. I knew how he felt.

Gadulla said: 'Of course…' and yanked a one-bar electric fire from under the low round table that held a telephone and small spirit stove.

A few minutes later we were sitting half-naked on chairs shaped like camel saddles and our clothes were turning the little room into a steam bath. There were no windows – just a couple of doors – and a single lamp in a beaded shade, and when you'd been there a while, the time of day stopped mattering. The room had been built without sun or stars; a place for quiet secrets.

'Is there a back door?' Ken asked.

'Perhaps fifty.' Gadulla gestured at the two doors. 'If you have the keys – and the friends. The whole street is so much connected, above and below.'

'Fine. Is the sword here?'

'It will be. Did you bring the plane with no trouble?'

I nodded. 'No trouble.'

'How good.' He walked to the front of the shop and called something to the boy. I got up and turned my half-toasted trousers around.

From the rough-plastered walls, and Gadulla himself, you couldn't guess whether the man was waiting for the soup kitchen to call or the armed guards to haul out the day's takings. His robe was plain wool cloth, his jacket a grey pin-stripe – old but well-cut – the head-dress clean.

He came back. 'The lad is bringing coffee. But I forgot-' he reached below the table and put up a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. 'Perhaps you would like some of this?'

Ken glanced at me. 'Maybe a spot – just to balance the wet on the outside.'

Gadulla poured two careful shots into decorated glasses. 'I hope it is good. I was rather strictly raised; I am one of your Coca-Cola Muslims.'

We sipped, and Ken had been right: it just matched that electric fire sizzling my shins.

After the second sip, Ken said: 'It wasn't till I got talking to some Arabs in Beit Oren that I knew strict Muslims don't really disapprove of alcohol – they just won't touch it in this life. In Paradise they're going to sit around all day smashed out of their knickers. Have I got that right?'

Gadulla said inscrutably: 'It is not quite that simple.' He looked at me. 'I believe you first saw Professor Spohr dead?"

'More or less.'

'Did he leave any note? – any letters?'

'Not that I saw. But he rang you, didn't he? – what did he say then?'

He thought about it. While he did, the boy came in with a tray of coffee from the localcafé. Gadulla handed round the tiny cups. 'Later I will make my own, but now, this is quicker,' The boy grinned and went away.

'Bruno – the Professor – said he would send instructions, but I could expect to sell the sword half and half with somebody from elsewhere.' He looked calmly at Ken.

'Beirut?' I suggested.

'He said no names on the telephone.'

Ken asked: 'Did he sound as if he was going to kill himself?'

'A terrible question. Now… now I think yes. That he was saying goodbye.'

There was a long silence. Then Ken got up and eased himself back into his trousers. 'Oooh, lovely. Like wading in hot cheese. I'll tell you one thing Brunodidn't do: make it easy for his loving daughter to inherit that sword.'

The afternoon crawled by. The boy came with more coffee; Gadulla talked to a few customers beyond the curtain. But mostly we just sat and looked at the wall and listened to my stomach. Somewhere down the line, I'd forgotten to have lunch.

The kid could buy you a snack,' Ken suggested.

'Like a couple of sheep's-eyes? I prefer my own judgment."

'Once it gets dark we'll go out and finda café.'

We waited on.

About five, Gadulla pulled down a metal blind over the front of the shop and padlocked it to steel hoops set in the floor. 'Now would you care to see from the roof?'

It made a change. He unlocked one of the doors, led the way up steep, winding stone steps. At one landing there was a short dark corridor with two other doors and no sign of life but a yellow plastic bucket. We went on up. At the top, Gadulla unlocked another door and we walked out on to a small, flat, walled roof garden.

Over behind the YMCA the sun was sliding down among a few scattered clouds trailing after the front. And away east, you could just see the distant ramparts of the storm, calm and white and incredibly detailed. Somewhere well over into Jordan.

Gadulla clucked sympathetically at his rain-beaten potted plants, then waved a hand over the edge of the wall. 'You see? This is just one more way out.'

A maze of other flat roofs, all at different levels, rambled away on both sides. A little bit of athleticism and you could be a dozen houses away in a couple of minutes.

'D'you live here?' Ken asked.

'Not usually. I have a house-' he waved northwards '-with my workshops.'

'Made any good antiques lately?' I asked politely.

He grinned his lopsided grin. 'Is it fair that only one person should own something that is unique? I just help the spread of knowledge. But before I knew about the plane, I had an idea for taking the sword from the country. I would make a mould from it, then cast perhaps another forty – in metal with the same weight – and put a glass for the jewel and something for the crest and sell them to tourists. Very cheap, so I sold them quickly and they all left Israel in one or two weeks and the airport searchers got used to them. But the forty-first…" He grinned again. He'd obviously have liked to do it just for the hell of it.

Ken smiled back, but not so widely. As we walked back down the stairs, he muttered: 'I think we'd better have Eleanor and Mitzi over for an expert opinion. I'm not sure I'd recognise a moulding.'

I'd been thinking the same thing.

By six it was dark enough. Gadulla led us out through one of his back doors: up one flight of steps, unlock a door, down a stone corridor, around a couple of corners, another door and we were at the head of some outside steps leading down into a narrow cul-de-sac of an alley.

He showed us a bell-push beside the door. 'An hour, perhaps? I will be here then.'

By night, most of the Old City seems empty but not dead, only lurking. A fewcafés are open, near the gates, and you get an occasional glint of light from a shuttered window, a whisper of music from TV or radio, the echo of somebody else's footsteps around a corner. You find yourself walking quietly and listening hard.