My mind reeled. How could that be? I had almost forgotten the episode in Holland, pushing it out of my mind as something I needed to forget. I had been more than happy to move on to pastures entirely new but now it was obvious that the auction of the Griffin Interrogator was in some way linked to the events in Zandvoort. Below me was one of the men who’d jumped me in the mist, the man whose companion I had killed.
We had all assumed that the men I encountered in Holland were Russians, some sort of Samovar backup. But that couldn’t be. The man I was now looking at was without doubt the owner of the English accent we had heard the previous evening, the person Nebulo had referred to as Gadd.
Gadd parked in front of Budermann on the road north. Behind him came an old Chevrolet van which stopped diagonally across the road just north of the junction so that only Martines and Budermann could leave that way. From the van emerged a small, dark man with his arm in a sling, presumably the other servant, Pinteiro. He was joined by Budermann and Gadd. They stood staring south, leaving Martines alone in the back of the Mercedes.
I picked up the Springfield rifle and pushed five rounds, staggered, into the magazine and pulled out the empty cartridge clip. As an added extra I pushed the top cartridge down below the line of the bolt with my left thumb and, after pushing the bolt slightly over it, inserted a sixth cartridge directly into the firing chamber. Then I shoved the bolt right in, turned and locked it.
We didn’t have long to wait. The Russians drove across the bridge and pulled up almost level with Julia, who was nearer the bridge than I was.
‘There are three of them,’ she said.
Through the Weaver scope I could see the car clearly. She was right. Bitri was at the wheel and stayed there. Abdel Rassem climbed out of the back seat clutching a case while a third man got out and stood balancing a submachine gun on the car roof. A police car had followed the Russians and now stood cutting the main road before the junction. Gomes and two others stood beside it. The scene was set. It just needed Nebulo to put everything into motion.
He arrived in an enormous limousine and pulled up beside Gomes before walking quickly to the junction where Budermann was standing. Budermann had a small box in one hand: Griffin at last. The two men exchanged a few words, then Budermann turned and walked slowly towards the bridge. At the same time Abdel Rassem left his two companions and strode purposefully towards him.
Nobody else moved. There was total silence.
The two men were ten yards apart when there came the sound of a car roaring up the road from the south. The trees blocked my view but suddenly a black Dodge smashed into the side of Gomes’ police car.
‘It’s Conniston,’ Julia shouted. ‘They must have followed Nebulo.’
There was an absolute pandemonium as four CIA men tumbled out of the car, one of them blasting away with a .45 Thompson semi-automatic carbine, the others shooting handguns.
Gomes lay spreadeagled across his car, half his head smashed away. His men were firing back from behind the rocks that littered the side of the road. A burst of bullets came from the trees where Moros had hidden himself and Conniston clutched at his shoulder.
Nebulo was cowering behind one of the bridge parapets.
The Griffin exchange had stopped abruptly. Budermann, clutching the little box, was running towards his car. The Russian too had decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
He was right. ‘Time to go,’ I shouted into the radio.
‘Too true,’ Julia replied. ‘The Army’s arrived.’
I looked back towards the Petrópolis road and there stood an Army truck disgorging heavily armed soldiers. Obviously Conniston had been able to enlist the aid of one of the generals.
My last image of the scene was of Gadd, who’d been rooted beside the Chevrolet van, a pistol unused in his hand, suddenly turn and dart back to the Mercedes.
I ran through the trees, cursing that we hadn’t parked nearer. In one hand I clutched the walkie-talkie, in the other the 43½ inch-long Springfield rifle. Behind me, the Russians’ car started up and then shot along the road below.
Suddenly my walkie-talkie barked out a strange male voice, ‘I’ll get them’, followed by an ear-splitting crash. The Russian car shrieked across the road, smashed into a large rock and rebounded into a red Ford Corcel that appeared from the opposite direction.
The two cars were a hundred yards away. I broke out of the trees and ran towards them, dropping the radio so I could handle the rifle properly.
The driver of the Russian car seemed to be injured but Abdel Rassem and another man jumped out, Makarov nine millimetre automatics in hand. At the same time the door of the other car burst open and Captain Mackenzie rolled out. Now I knew why Julia hadn’t wanted the .357 Magnum: she hadn’t had it. I didn’t have time to wonder when she’d given it to him.
Mackenzie raised himself on to one knee and as he did so the nameless Russian took aim at him.
Instinctively I fired and the Russian dropped. Abdel Rassem spun round, saw me and stiffened. I waved the Springfield at him and he slowly raised his hands, his own weapon falling to the ground.
I also had Mackenzie covered. He rose, blood streaming from his nose and a gash on his forehead from his smashed windscreen.
‘Hold it!’ he shouted. ‘I’m on your side. For the sake of the Queen, you understand?’
I understood. ‘For the sake of the Queen.’ I could hear the DG saying it, silhouetted against the Thames back in the Guest Room at the House of Lords. The stupid bastards. Why hadn’t they trusted me? Why hadn’t Julia told me?
‘Griffin. Get Griffin,’ Mackenzie shouted.
‘They haven’t got it. The exchange wasn’t completed.’
Mackenzie ran to the car. Pausing to glance at Bitri’s unconscious figure behind the steering wheel, then he grabbed one of the cases in the back. At least we had some of the money.
Behind us the shooting had stopped. ‘Come on,’ I urged as Julia emerged from the trees.
The two cars were hopelessly entangled, which would block any pursuit. We scooped up the Russians’ guns and started running down the road, leaving Abdel Rassem beside the wreck of his car.
If the Brazilian Army had used a helicopter nobody would have escaped. But they didn’t and we did.
‘What happened to Martines?’ Mackenzie asked when we reached the cars.
‘I don’t know. He may have got away, with Griffin.’
‘Then he’ll go to his boat. He must realise that the Army will be at the villa by now. You’d better follow me.’
He climbed into Julia’s car and they roared off. I could do nothing but follow.
We drove to Santa Bárbara and then south again towards Rio and Baia Botafogo. It was a long journey which gave me plenty of time to think. It was a pity I’d left the walkie-talkie behind or I could have asked Julia and Mackenzie a few questions. Not that I needed many answers. I’d realised a long time ago that I was being used as just one more pawn. Somebody in London was playing games and part of that game was Mackenzie. He was probably MI6, sent out to keep an eye on me, see what I managed to stir up. I could now understand how he became involved in Pedro’s disappearance. Pedro had gone to the warehouse being used by Allenberg’s group and they had grabbed him. Mackenzie had tried to find him in the same way we had and got there just before us. Perhaps he had seen Pedro being driven away. In any event he had found one of Allenberg’s men inside and somehow managed to get the Leblon address. He trussed the man up, left a message for me which he signed Pedro and set off for Leblon. But there, like Pedro before him, he had walked into a trap. Luckily for him we arrived and he was able to get away. That brought me to Julia.
Julia had known all about Mackenzie’s role, just as she’d known everything in Chicago. In Leblon she had deliberately let him escape. And Pedro had known too: he’d covered up for Mackenzie and provided him with a car and the walkie-talkie I had just heard him using. He’d used it to monitor our conversation the previous evening. Mackenzie had probably followed us to Petrópolis, then gone on to Santa Bárbara and found the road from there back to the bridge.
I could see why they wouldn’t trust me initially. I’d been the one who’d ‘given’ Budermann Griffin in Chicago. But later, after Gomes had interrogated me, surely Julia could have been allowed to tell me everything then.
But Julia didn’t know everything as we discovered when we arrived at the docks. There were still parts of the story neither of us understood, characters still without identities.
Mackenzie jumped out of the car and rushed to the dockside. I don’t know why. There was nothing there. He stood staring down at the gently lapping water and floating jetsam.
‘They’ve gone,’ he said, stating the obvious as Julia and I joined him.
Martines might have gone but not everyone had followed him. Almost silently the black Mercedes pulled up behind us. We turned to look into the barrel of an Uzi submachine gun.