2.

The smell of her talc was faint in the room. He fell gently onto the bed and into a sleep as swift as that of a marathon hiker who’d slipped his pack. When he came awake there was a vague recollection of a dream in which Vassily Devenko had been charging at him on horseback at the head of a thousand thundering Tatar Cossacks, their karakul hats bobbing in the dust, Krenk rifles spitting, Vassily’s saber flashing in the air.

It was still dark and Irina breathed evenly in sleep. He armed the sweat from his face and lay eyes up in the dark with no idea whether it was one or six in the morning. He saw Vassily at the head of the mess table laughing at something he’d just said to a Polish cavalry major. Vassily was talking about the Polish army and the German army—how Poland would mop up the battlegrounds with German bodies if Hitler were fool enough to attack. It was one of those moments Alex never forgot—a spark that glowed brighter whenever it was touched by the wind of association: the grey rain now beating against the invisible window, a certain taste in the back of his throat that might have been left there by the wine he’d had with supper. Beside him at the officers’ mess table a Polish captain had kept shifting the knife and fork at his place, lining them up along various parallels. Alex remembered the captain’s eyes: drab and uneasy while Vassily drummed on about squashing the Wehrmacht.

He was a bloody fool, he thought. Vassily Devenko the hero of Sebastopol. Well he’d acquitted himself superbly when it called for tenacity and horseback dash: a brave indifference to losses, the cruel Russian battering-ram conception of martial excellence. Vassily the electric, Vassily the magnetic. They’d all have followed him blindly through Hell: the high handsome face, the white mane, the great thundering voice that called them on to fight and win. But these things were only half of leadership. Vassily’s flair and his grand ambitions hadn’t been matched by tactical realism and that had been his flaw. In the end he was a bloody fool.

Then why the intense feeling that he had to have Vassily’s approval?

He still needed that: he needed to have Vassily speak to him in his dreams, he needed to hear Vassily say It’s brilliant—you have my admiration. But instead Vassily came pounding at him on horseback lofting his saber with merciless rage.

He turned on his side; he touched her hip and withdrew his hand, still jealous of Vassily, uncertain in the darkness, afraid.

The day had its little crises—a C-47 came in from the chute drop and blew a tire and ground-looped on the runway but it didn’t crack up; Calhoun groused about the dwindling supply of spare tires. Then one of the Russian-made 9mm tommy-guns malfunctioned and burst on the target line and the corporal had to be taken to the dispensary to have metal splinters dug out of his hand. One of Solov’s men twisted his ankle on the afternoon jump. At four Alex walked down toward the hard-stands to have a look at the high-octane supply; Calhoun groused about that too.

When Alex walked back toward the hangar he saw a dark green car move past on the road beyond the fence. It drew his attention because it moved too slowly. It stopped about eighty yards beyond the gate: the driver got out and lifted the right-hand flap of the engine bonnet to look inside. It was just a bit coincidental having a breakdown right across the road from the fence and the runway. Too far away to get an impression of the driver’s face. The car was a Daimler with a long snout and coupé coachwork. The driver’s back was hunched; he was reaching into the engine compartment and fiddling but it was quite possible he was looking at the base under his arm. Alex turned his line of march toward the gate.

The two sentries came to atttention and Alex said, “One of you hike up there and see if you can help him on his way.” But then the driver buckled the flap down and climbed back into the car and smoke spurted from the pipes when the engine caught. The Daimler moved away—quite slowly.

“If anyone else stops move them along.”

“Yes sir.”

The publican brought their steaks and Irina dimmed the little kerosene lamp on the table. Through the doorway there was a lusty racket from the saloon bar. The velvet blackout curtains made the room stuffy; smoke hung against the low ceiling. It seemed to affect her eyes but she went on puffing at the Du Maurier. No one else was dining in the room. The walls were cluttered with the obligatory gimcracks—copper mugs, shotguns, a pair of flintlock pistols, emblems of highland regiments, photographs of hunting dogs and golfers in plus fours. Logs burned cozily on the hearth opposite their table.

Silence separated them. It was only in public formalities that she was capable of pretending an emotion she didn’t feel. They cut up the Angus beef and ate it. Finally the awkwardness got too much for her. “What’s the matter, darling?” A new Du Maurier; he struck the match for her.

“Getting close to the time, I suppose. Tense—you can’t help it.”

“That’s not all of it. You used to look like this when—”

“When what?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not a happy look. You know, darling, it’s not hard to hide something but it can be very hard to hide that you’ve got something to hide.”

“What do you suppose I’m hiding?”

“Whatever it is it’s got to do with me—with us.”

When he didn’t reply to that she said, “I suppose it’s still Vassily.”

“Perhaps it is. I had a dream about him—he was riding me down with a Cossack horde.”

“You feel you’ve betrayed him, don’t you?”

“It’s damned foolish of me. But he might have made this work. His plan. The odds were against it—more than they are with mine—but he might have done it. It was possible.”

“And he might have made me happy, isn’t that it? Part of it?”

He brooded at her hand—smoke curling from the cigarette in her fingers on the table. Irina said, “Odd that we always seem concerned for other people’s happiness. We want to make one another happy but we don’t seek happiness for ourselves—it’s too illusory. It isn’t what you want, is it? To be happy?”

“I don’t suppose it is. I haven’t thought about it.”

Then it was as if she changed the subject: “Vassily wasn’t cold. But he couldn’t love. His heart was too acquisitive—he had too much ambition. It’s a thing of the self, it doesn’t make room to let other people in. He was the same with both of us, you and me—he wanted our loyalty, our good opinion; he wanted to be admired.”

“I think we all do.”

“To the point of obsession?”

“Vassily was clever—he was shrewd, cunning. But he didn’t have good sense.” He wasn’t sure why he said that.

She said abruptly, “It might be a good idea if you tried to stop thinking of him as if he’d been your father. You’ve put yourself in an impossible position. You thought of him paternally but he thought of you as a dangerous rival. If he were alive he’d never grant you his approval, you know that. He was jealous of you—more afraid of you than you were of him.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew you had adaptability and compassion. I think he always knew you’d overtake him. He tried to keep you down with his thumb. When you broke with him and went to America he wasn’t heartbroken; he was afraid.”

She thrust her chair back. “It’s something for you to think about, Alex. If he’d lived he’d have had to end up subordinating himself to you.”

He held her coat for her. “Button up—it’s a cold night.”

“I’m a Russian woman.” She left the fur collar open against her shoulders.

He seated her in the Austin and went around to take the wheel. Pale ribbons of light from the slitted blackout headlamps threw a meager illumination across the dark wet paving. The engine ran a little rough—perhaps the plugs were burnt; perhaps it was only the chill. He adjusted the choke and made the turns up through Inverness.

There was a car in the mirror: it kept a steady distance. There weren’t many legitimate places for a vehicle to be going at this time of night under blacked-out curfew conditions. His muscles tightened, knuckles going pale on the wheel.

Irina turned around to look back. After a while they were on the open high road and she said, “I think it’s a Daimler coupé.”

It began to close the gap as they left the town behind—easing closer at a steady rate. The road ran up through swinging bends to a plateau inland from the sea; then it would be a reasonably flat run through eight miles of coastal plain to the gate of the base. The trouble was he wasn’t sure enough of the road to have a full-out run at it in the dark; in any case the Daimler was a far more powerful car and if they meant to run him off the road he couldn’t prevent their overtaking him.

He said, “Let me have the revolver,” He’d left it under the passenger seat when they’d gone in to dine; it was nervy enough being a Russian officer here, it wouldn’t do to walk into a public house festooned with weaponry.

He held his left hand out palm up and she fitted the hand gun into it; they were nearly at the top of the bends. “Slide down in the seat.”

“Perhaps I should have the gun while you’re driving.”

“Can you use it?”

“Not very well. I could make noise with it.”

“Let’s make sure who they are first.”

“We can’t race them in this little car.”

“I know,” he said. “We’ll do the opposite. Duck down now, Irina.”

He remembered the Daimler coupé that had stopped outside the fence this afternoon. Too much coincidence. He laid his thumb across the revolver’s hammer and slid forward on the seat until he could only just see over the wheel. The Austin chugged over the top onto the flats in third; he kept it in third and kept the speed down to twenty-five. The slitted lights of the Daimler bobbed over the crest and slid forward in the mirror, sinister and disembodied in the night. Alex crowded over against the left-hand edge of the road; the Austin whined along with a slight list because of the road’s crown. Irina had a graceless posture, far down and sitting on the back of her neck. He was sure she was smiling at the ludicrousness of it. He dropped the stick into second and let the Austin coast with the clutch all the way to the floor; the speedometer needle dropped toward fifteen and the Daimler came along quickly, pulling out to the right to go by. “Keep your head down now.”

It gave the Daimler several options but it was no good anticipating which the Daimler would choose; he was as prepared for any of them as he could be. When the nose of the car drew even with his eye he ducked all the way below the sill and touched the brake gently because this would be the time they’d fire and his braking might throw off their aim.

The bullet caromed off something in front of him and slid away with a sobbing sound; the Daimler roared away ahead.

He straightened to see through the windscreen. There was a silver slash across the painted metal two feet beyond the glass. The Daimler was fishtailing with acceleration but it might be trying to gain a little distance before slewing across the road and blocking him: so Alex simply stopped the car.

Irina began to sit up but he said, “Stay down.” He shifted the revolver to his right hand and put it out the window.

But the Daimler sped right on away, its single red taillight reappearing on a farther incline and then being absorbed into the night.

She sat up and adjusted her coat. “Wasn’t that rather pointless?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they meant us real harm they certainly behaved halfheartedly. To say the least.”

“They may be waiting for us. Up the road.”

But it was the road he had to take. After ten minutes he put the Austin in gear.

Now he went fast because if they’d set up an ambush he didn’t want to give them time for a clear shot. He got the Austin up to fifty and held it there in fourth; he couldn’t go much faster because the narrow road had sudden turns between the stone walls of the Scottish farms. Irina held the revolver and he used both hands on the wheel. He went into the turns fast and came out of them slow because they might have chosen a blind spot to wedge the Daimler across the road.

“Did you see their faces at all?”

“No. But it was only one man—the driver.”

“Strange,” she said. “I wasn’t frightened then. Now look at me, I can’t stop shaking.”

The Daimler was gone. He had to stop at the gate and be recognized by sentries and then he drove straight to the hangar and trotted to the phone inside: he got an outside line and rang through to Coastal Patrol. He had a piece of luck: MacAndrews was still in his office.

“It’s a Daimler coupé, dark green, with a closed rumble seat. I couldn’t make out the plate number but it’s heading southeast—it can’t be more than ten miles from here.”

“I’ll ring up the constabularies down that way. Afraid I can’t promise too much you know—it might have turned off anywhere.”

“I’d like to ask that driver a few questions. But tell them to treat him with care—he’s got a gun. Probably a pistol since he used it one-handed from the car.”

“We’ll stop him if we can. Sorry about this, General—rotten hospitality, isn’t it.”

He cradled it and swiveled in the chair to find Irina in the door with one shoulder tipped against the jamb. She looked oddly young: her face was flushed, her slack pose a bit ungainly, like that of a young girl ready to sprawl. “Take me to bed, darling.”