They drove up the track towards the hills, the Mercedes a hundred yards behind. McQuade was feverishly elated. They had done it! They ‘d got Heinrich Muller out of his castle … Tucker looked waxen, wide-eyed. ‘How long before that guy breaks out?’
‘He’s gagged and tied up! And the telephone line’s cut! For God’s sake think positively!’
Tucker’s eyes were darting to the rearview mirror as if he expected the Mercedes to open fire. ‘You should have insisted on Muller coming With us – this bodyguard really screws things up—’
‘We half-expected him to bring his bodyguard! So we knock him out with an eight-hour jab! In eight hours we’ll be at sea!’
They were climbing up into the hills now. They crested the first hill; the others rose up. They ground on into them. There seemed more than before. Christ, it was a long way. Past the cut telephone wire. They came over the last hill and the mauve valley beyond came into view. Please God … They ground down into the flat land. McQuade’s nerves were stretched tight. The guardhouse came into view. The guard emerged, carrying a clipboard. Tucker rolled the Landrover up to the gate. Muller’s car stopped behind them.
The guard ran to McQuade’s side. He handed the clipboard through the window. McQuade scribbled in the time, and a signature.
The guard took the board, saluted, and ran to the gate. Tucker let out a sigh. The guard unpadlocked the chain, and swung the gate open. Tucker revved the engine and the Landrover roared through. He swung onto the main road to Outjo.
‘Oh thank God …’
The black Mercedes was invisible in the cloud of dust behind them.
The road was straight, rising to a crest. They came over it and there, three hundred yards ahead was the station-wagon, facing them, on the opposite side of the road, with its bonnet up. Both Sarah and the Kid leaning under it. Sarah straightened and waved frantically.
‘Stop in the middle of the road,’ McQuade rasped.
Tucker put on the brakes, his leg muscles trembly. He pulled to a stop alongside Sarah, blocking the whole road. Sarah came to the driver’s window.
McQuade got out of the Landrover shakily. He walked with Sarah to the station-wagon. He whispered, ‘There’s the bodyguard as well. Two syringes. Two chloroform pads.’ Tucker got out and followed. He peered into the engine with McQuade. The Mercedes was slowing. McQuade turned. It came to a stop. McQuade turned and walked towards the driver’s side, looking apologetic. Heinz was winding down his window. McQuade called:
‘Can I come in your car to the police station, sir? Sergeant Myburgh’s just going to help this lady. Or do you mind waiting a few minutes?’
Muller rasped in German, ‘It’s a trick!’
Heinz rammed the car into reverse and McQuade bounded at the driver’s door as Muller tried to wrench out a gun. He squirted tear gas at Heinz’s furious face, and flung himself aside as Muller fired. The shot crashed through the windscreen as Heinz clutched his face and the car stalled. Muller was also clutching his face, gasping, and McQuade plunged the canister inside and squirted again. The Kid came rushing up. McQuade flung open the driver’s door and the edge of his hand chopped down on Heinz’s ear and his head crashed onto the steering wheel. The Kid wrenched open the back door, grabbed at Muller and slapped a wad of chloroform in his face. McQuade wrenched Heinz’s head back, and Tucker slapped the other wad on his face. In the back seat Muller was unconscious, groaning. The limousine reeked of chloroform. McQuade rasped to Tucker, ‘Get him into the back seat!’ He ran around the car to the other rear door. He flung it open, frantically got his hands under Muller’s armpits, and heaved. Tucker was desperately unshackling Heinz from his seat belt. McQuade heaved with all his frantic might, and Muller came out of the car. McQuade looked desperately up and down the road for traffic. Tucker and the Kid had hauled Heinz out. They staggered with him to the rear door. Sarah came running and seized Muller’s ankles. They staggered him across the road. The Kid scrambled into the back seat of the Mercedes and heaved the deadweight of Heinz inside. McQuade and Sarah lugged Muller to the rear of the station-wagon. McQuade looked frantically for traffic and yelled, ‘Hurry up!’ The Kid and Tucker came running, grabbed the coffin, pulled it out of the station-wagon and laid it on the road. The lid was off. McQuade and Sarah dumped Muller into it. They all grabbed handles, and heaved it up and shoved it into the station-wagon.
Sarah ran to her bag in the front seat. She already had her syringes full. She looked frantically up the road, held the syringe up to the light and squirted it, then came running around to the back of the vehicle. McQuade was wrenching Muller’s jacket sleeve up, Tucker feverishly undoing the cuff buttons. He pulled back the sleeve to expose the skin. Sarah frantically rubbed an antiseptic wad on it. ‘Go for it!’ McQuade snapped. She sank the needle into a vein in the white flesh.
For an eternity her thumb slowly went down on the plunger. Then she whipped the needle out, and McQuade scrambled inside and slammed the lid on top of the coffin and began to screw it down. Sarah ran back to the front seat, snatched up another syringe and ran for the Mercedes. The Kid already had Heinz’s sleeve pulled up. She rubbed the antiseptic over the vein, then sank the needle in.
McQuade turned down the last screw on the coffin lid and scrambled out. He slammed the door closed, then ran for the driver’s seat. Sarah pulled the needle out of Heinz, ran for the station-wagon and scrambled in. The Kid got into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and Tucker ran for the Landrover.
Maybe the whole thing had taken just less than four minutes.
They roared down the road towards the Skeleton Coast, the station-wagon in the lead, followed by the Mercedes and the Landrover. They roared past the gate to Schloss Namib and disappeared in three clouds of dust. Seven minutes later Sarah pointed urgently, ‘There’s the turn-off!’
McQuade was going a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. He jerked his foot off the accelerator, jammed his foot on the brake, the tyres bit the gravel and the vehicle went into a swaying skid and his heart lurched. He corrected the vehicle and the gate flashed past at a hundred kilometres an hour. He looked wildly in his mirror for the Mercedes but he could see nothing through his dust. He jammed on his brakes again and he felt the vehicle go into another skid. He jerked his foot off and corrected, then trod on the accelerator again. ‘What are you doing?!’ Sarah cried.
‘Too late, we’ll have to find another place.’
‘But we’ve got to get rid of the bodyguard! And change out of uniform—’
‘To turn around will take too long now! Look for another gate!’
‘Oh God!’ Sarah slumped back and closed her eyes. ‘You’re changing the plan – that’s the way disasters happen!’
‘It’s too late now!’
‘In that coffin you have the most-wanted war-criminal in the world!’
‘Look for another gate!’
The gate to the guest farm flashed past. McQuade snapped, ‘About a mile ahead there’s another gate. On the left.’
He saw it in sufficient time, braked without skidding and swung into the open gateway in a cloud of dust. He slammed to a stop and looked feverishly back the way he had come.
His dust hung in a pall. He expected the Mercedes to be half a mile behind him. He waited feverishly. Sarah was just as tense, staring back down the road. The dust began to drift away. McQuade’s leg muscles were trembly. ‘Come on, Kid …’ he whispered. ‘Use the time!’ He scrambled out of the car and ripped off his police shirt. He pulled his civilian clothes from under the seat, flung on a shirt, then tore the trousers off and pulled on his suit trousers. He chucked on his suit jacket, and stuffed the handcuffs in his pocket. Well over a minute had passed. ‘Oh Jesus, come on.’ He could bear it no longer and strode back onto the road as he put on a tie. Sarah scrambled out, anxiety all over her face, and hurried to join him. Then suddenly they saw the new cloud of dust coming.
‘Thank God! Get back to the car. Behind the wheel.’
McQuade peered down the road at the approaching dust. Then his heart lurched. ‘It’s the Landrover, not the Mercedes!’ He stepped out into the road and waved frantically. Dust shot up from the wheels as Tucker slammed on the brakes. McQuade pointed frantically at the gate. The Landrover started screeching to a halt and McQuade saw that its right front bumper was buckled. Tucker swung to a grinding halt in the gateway. ‘They’ve got the Kid!’
McQuade’s mind fumbled. ‘Who?’
Tucker was wild-eyed. ‘You overshot the gate but the Kid didn’t see because of the dust, so he turned in and I followed. We went bashing through the bush looking for you, then suddenly I see another car and four guys with guns out. I just swung aside but they shot the Kid’s tyres out. The other car started to cut me off so I bashed into it and smashed its radiator and got away.’
McQuade stared. ‘Get back on the road!’
He turned and ran to the station-wagon. He flung open the driver’s door. ‘Out! I’m driving.’
Sarah scrambled out and McQuade grabbed her.
In one movement he had her right arm twisted behind her back fiercely and the handcuffs snapped on her wrist. She swung her free elbow at him, then cried out as he wrenched her bent arm higher. He grabbed her other wrist and snapped the cuffs on. ‘You bitch!’
He grabbed her by the collar and shoved her to the passenger side. He flung open the door and shoved her inside. He ran to the driver’s side and scrambled in, rammed the gears and roared backwards up onto the road. He skidded to a halt, then roared off, with Tucker following. He turned to her furiously:
‘You bitch! So you still work for Mossad! How else did those guys know where to wait for us?’
Sarah looked at him. Her hair was awry and she was sitting awkwardly, her hands manacled behind her back, but her voice was calm. ‘James McQuade, you have caught the most-wanted war-criminal in the world and Israel wants him brought to justice! And so do I.’
‘You lied to me, you bitch! All the time you were pretending to help me you were reporting back to Mossad!’
‘Yes. I lied in the course of duty.’
‘And fucked me in the course of duty! And told me you loved me in the course of duty!’
‘Yes. However I do love you.’
‘I don’t believe you! I can’t believe anything you say!’
‘Then why don’t you stop and throw me out?’
‘Because you’re the goddam hostage from now on!’
‘Believe me, Mossad knows you haven’t got it in you to hurt me so I’m not much value as a hostage.’
‘Don’t bet on it!’
‘I love you, Jim.’
He wanted to shout Bullshit! but he took a fierce breath and tried to force calm on himself.
‘So rescuing me at Sun City, and your so-called confession were just more of your dirty Mossad tricks!’
‘No. I really did try to quit the case and I really did rescue you. But when you didn’t throw me out after I’d confessed I decided I had to stay on the case. Duty. After we’d settled down in the safe-house I telephoned Matt and told him I was staying on, but on my own terms, namely that no harm came to you. He was very relieved because he thought we’d both done a runner. He accepted my conditions and gave me four weeks in which to get Muller’s false name out of you. Or find the computer print-out, or your short-list. You’d told me you’d put it all in a bank safety-deposit box. I searched high and low while you were out in case you’d lied to me, but I didn’t have a chance to get at the tool-box because you always had the Landrover.’
He seethed. ‘Why didn’t Matt just come out to the safe-house, roll me and get the name out of me?’
‘Because I refused to tell them where we were in case they did just that. That was the deal, and I held all the cards so he had to swallow it.’ She looked at him. ‘That proves I love you.’ McQuade snorted furiously, and she went on: ‘Then the Hess service happened and things started jumping.’
‘So you told them about the Hess service!’ He seethed. ‘And they followed us to Namibia! Right to the guest farm and Schloss Namib! And once they had the name of Strauss, what were your new orders? Apart from continuing to fuck me.’
‘To stick with you, cooperate with you and report your intentions. By telephone.’
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know. A number in Otjiwarongo.’
McQuade was furiously grappling with all this. ‘But once I’d led them to Schloss Namib why didn’t they snatch Muller themselves?’
‘I wasn’t told their plans. I presume they were still casing the place, double-checking on Muller’s identity, et cetera. It would be terrible if Mossad snatched the wrong man. They were hoping I’d persuade you to hold off long enough for them to carry out their own plan.’
‘But today I forced their hand by going ahead?! So they fell back on a contingency plan, namely to snatch Muller from me!’
‘Obviously.’
‘At the place in the bush where you and I had decided to respray the vehicles! Which you told them about!’
‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘My guess is that that was just a contingency plan for a contingency plan: they intended to forcibly prevent you from snatching Muller yourself – although they considered your plan a very good one – by jumping on you on Thursday night at the guest farm. But you foxed us all by moving to Etosha unexpectedly.’
‘Why didn’t you report to them on Friday where we were?’
‘I tried. But there’s one public telephone there, only available during office hours and there was a queue. I didn’t have another chance because I was with you guys all the time.’ She added, ‘And, you mightn’t believe this, but I didn’t want another chance. I could have got to that telephone again somehow, but I didn’t want to … betray you further. I’d done my duty, and now it was up to the gods.’
‘The gods?’ He snorted. ‘Why didn’t Mossad forcibly stop us on the road before we got to Muller’s gate this morning?’
‘My guess is they didn’t dare tackle you on the open road, risk a big fight in a public place right near Muller’s hideaway. As you’d given them the slip, it was better to let you get on with it and then snatch Muller from you in the bush.’
‘I’d have given him to you after I’d finished with him!’
‘I know that, but Mossad considers he’s too important to take chances over.’
McQuade seethed. ‘And what would you have done with me if you’d snatched Muller from me back there?’
‘Apologized. And tried to make you understand that I really do love you.’
McQuade snorted. ‘And what about that loot I’ve risked life and bankruptcy for?’
‘I was going to try to get that information from Muller for you. I want you to have that loot. It’s morally yours.’
He snorted furiously again. ‘And what other surprises have you got for me? Why weren’t you told Mossad’s plan? Don’t they trust you either?’
‘Not much. They know I’m in love with you. That’s why I wanted to be taken off the case. Conflict of duty. They refused. And here I am.’ She added, ‘In handcuffs.’
Just then they came over a rise and they saw the police ahead. McQuade’s stomach lurched.
‘Oh God …’ Sarah gasped.