The tiny glow of a cupped cigarette could be seen in the bushes diagonally across the dark road. Bad form. The agent of record was an indulgent man denying himself neither chronometers nor cigarettes during the early stages of a kill. He should be replaced; he would be replaced.
Havelock judged the angle of the cigarette, its distance to the ground; the man was crouched or sitting, not standing. Because of the density of the foliage it was impossible for the man to see the road clearly, which meant that he did not expect the car with Jenna Karas for some time yet; he was being too casual for an imminent sighting. The sergeant had said in the driveway that the soldiers had an hour to fill their kidneys; twenty minutes had passed, leaving forty. Yet not really forty. The final ten minutes of the shift would be avoided because the changing of the guard would require an exchange of information, no matter how inconsequential or pro forma. Michael had very little time to do what had to be done, to mount his own counterstrategy. First, he had to learn all he could of Rome’s.
He sidestepped his way back along the edge of the foliage until the distant spill of light from the bridge was virtually blocked by the trees. He ran across the road and into the underbrush, turning left, testing every step to ensure the silence that was essential. For a brief, terrible moment he was back in the forests outside Prague, the echoes of the guns of Lidice in his ears, the sight of screaming, writhing bodies before his eyes. Then he snapped back to the immediate present, remembering who and where he was. He was the mountain cat; the most meaningful lair of his life had been soiled, corrupted by liars who were no better than those who commanded the guns at Lidice—or others who ordered “suicides” and gulags when the guns were stilled. He was in his element, in the forest, which had befriended him when he had no one to depend on, and no one understood it better.
The agent of record was sitting on a rock and, true to his indulgence, was playing with his watch, apparently pushing buttons, controlling time, master of the half-second. Havelock reached into his pocket and took out one of the items he had purchased in Monesi, a four-inch fish-scaling knife encased in a leather scabbard. He parted the branches in front of him, crouched low, then lunged.
“You! Jesus Christ! … Don’t! What are you doing? Oh, my God!”
“You talk above a whisper, you won’t have a face!” Michael’s knee was rammed into the agent’s throat, the razor-sharp, jagged blade pressed against the man’s cheek below his left eye. “This knife cleans fish, you son of a bitch. I’ll peel your skin off unless you tell me what I want to know. Right now.”
“You’re a maniac!”
“And you’re the loser, if you believe that. How long have you been here?”
“Twenty-six hours.”
“Who gave the order?”
“How do I know.”
“Because even an asshole like you would cover yourself! It’s the first thing we learn in dispatch, isn’t it? The order! Who gave it?”
“Ambiguity! The code was Ambiguity,” cried the agent of record, as the scaling edge of the blade dug into his face. “I swear to Christ, that’s all I know! Whoever used it was cleared by Cons Op—D.C. It can be traced back there! Jesus, I only know our orders came from the code! It was our clearance!”
“I’ll accept it. Now, give me the step schedule. All of it. You picked her up in Arma di Taggia, and she’s been followed ever since. How?”
“Change of vehicles up from the coast.”
“Where is she now? What’s the car? When’s it expected?”
“A Lancia. The ETA, as of a half hour ago, barring—”
“Cut it out! When?”
“Seven-forty arrival. A bug was planted in the car; they’ll be here at twenty of eight.”
“I know you don’t have a radio, a radio’d be evidence in your case. How were you contacted?”
“The phone at the inn. Jesus! Get that thing away from me!”
“Not yet, sane man. The schedule, the steps? Who’s on the car now?”
“Two men in a beat-up truck, a quarter of a mile behind. In case you intercept, they’ll hear it and be on you.”
“If I don’t, then what?”
“We’ve made arrangements. Starting at seven-thirty, everyone crossing the border gets out of his car or truck or whatever. Vehicles are searched—we spread lire—so one way or the other she’ll have to show herself.”
“That’s when you figured I’d come out?”
“If we … they … don’t find you first. They think they’ll spot you before she gets here.”
“And if they don’t?”
“I don’t know! It’s their plan.”
“It’s your plan!” Havelock broke the skin on the agent’s face; blood streaked down his cheek.
“Christ! Don’t, please!”
“Tell me!”
“It’s made to look like you attacked. They know You’ve got a weapon whether you show it or not. They nail you and pull it out if it’s not in your hand. It doesn’t matter; it’s only for confusion. They’ll run; the truck’s got a good engine.”
“And the car? What about the car?”
“It’s shoved through. We just want it out of there. She’s not Karas, she’s a Soviet lure. We’re to let Moscow have her back. The French won’t argue, a guard was paid.”
“Liar! Goddamned liar!” Michael slid the blade of the fishing knife across the agent’s face to the other cheek. “Liars should be marked! You’re going to be marked, liar!” He broke the skin with the point. “Those two nitro clowns, the ones who worked Africa—Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola—they’re not here for the mountain air, liar!”
“Oh, Jesus! You’re killing me!”
“Not yet, but it’s entirely possible. What’s their act?”
“They’re just backups! Ricci brought them!”
“The Corsican?”
“I don’t know … Corsican.”
“The blond.”
“Yes! Don’t cut me! Please, don’t cut me!”
“Backups? Like your friend at the table?”
“The table? Christ, what are you?”
“An observer, and you’re stupid. For you, they’re only guns?”
“Jesus, yes! That’s what they are!”
So the liars in Washington lied even to their own in Rome. Jenna Karas did not exist. The woman in the car was to be dispatched beyond Rome’s cognizance. Liars! killers!
Why?
“Where are they?”
“I’m bleeding! I’ve got blood in my mouth!”
“You’ll drown in it if you don’t tell me. Where?”
“One on both sides! Twenty, thirty feet before the gate. Christ, I’m dying!”
“No, you’re not dying, agent of record. You’re just marked; you’re finished. You’re not worth surgery.” Havelock switched the knife to his left hand and raised his right, his fingers straight out, taut, the muscles of the palm’s underside rigid. He crashed his hand into the man’s throat; he would be immobilized for no less than an hour. It would be long enough; it had to be.
He crawled through the underbrush, sure of his footing, at home in the friendly forest.
He found him. The man was on his knees hunched over a canvas bag—a knapsack or a small duffel; the light from the bridge was just bright enough to outline the figure and too dim to make it clearly visible if one did not know what to look for. Suddenly there was the growing sound of an engine accompanied by the clatter of a loose tailpipe or a bumper making contact with the rock-filled road. Michael spun around, holding his breath, his hand reaching toward his belt. A broken-down van came into view. A sickening feeling spreading through him, he wondered, Had the agent lied? He looked back at the explosives specialist; the man crouched lower, making no other move at all, and Havelock slowly let out his breath.
The van rattled by and stopped at the bridge. The blond killer was standing by a guard; he had obviously been instructed to observe procedure, but instead, his eyes were roaming the woods and the road below. Loud voices filled the gate area: a couple in the van was objecting to the unexpected demand to get out; apparently, they made the trip daily across the border.
Michael knew the noise was his cover; he crept forward. He was within seven feet of the man when the rear door of the van was opened and the shouted obscenities rose to a crescendo. The door was slammed shut. Havelock lunged out of the underbrush, arms extended with fingers curved for the attack.
“Che mai …?”
The specialist had no chance to experience further shock. His head was slammed into soft earth and rock, his neck vised by Michael’s right hand; he coughed spastically and went limp. Havelock turned the unconscious body over, and whipping the man’s belt out of the trousers, he slipped it under the arms beneath the shoulder blades, and yanked it taut, then looped it over and knotted it. He removed the Llama automatic from his chest holster and brought the short barrel down on the man’s head above the right temple, extending the time during which the expert would remain unconscious.
Michael tore into the canvas bag. It was a specialist’s mobile laboratory, filled with compact blocks of dynamite and soft rolls of plastic explosive. The devices with wires extending from miniaturized clocks with radium dials were detonators, with positive and negative poles plugged into one another across the lethal powder, set to emit charges at a given minute by a twist of the fingers. There was also another type of detonating device: small, flat, circular modules, no larger than the face of a man’s watch; these were without wires, having only a bar with a luminous numerical readout, and a tiny button on the right with which to set the desired time. These were designed specifically for the plastic charges, buried inside, and were accurate within five seconds over a time span of twenty-four hours. Havelock felt the casing of a single plastique. On the top surface was a self-sealing lip through which a module was inserted, and the bottom was marked by a flap that was to be peeled away several minutes before placement. The peeling process released an epoxy stronger than a weld; it would adhere to a second surface through earthquake and hurricane. He removed three charges and modules, and put them in his pockets. Then he crawled away, pulling the canvas bag behind him; ten feet farther into the forest he shoved it under a fallen pine branch. He looked at his watch. Twelve minutes to go.
The yelling had stopped at the bridge. The angry couple was back in the van, the guards apologizing for the crazy temporary regulations. Burocrati! The engine was started, a series of metallic groans preceding the full roar of an accelerator pressed to the floor. The headlights were turned back on and the orange barrier raised as the gears ground abrasively and the decrepit vehicle crept onto the bridge. The clatter was louder now, actually deafening as the van rumbled across the surface of the bridge ridged with narrow, open metal struts. The noise echoed below and above, filling the air with an unrelenting staccato that made one of the guards wince and put both hands to his ears. The clatter, the headlights: the first was diversion; the second, distraction. If he could get into a decent line of sight, he might—just possibly—eliminate his backup executioner; he would not make the attempt unless the odds were his.
The burly man in the heavy jacket would hug the rail, leaning over, perhaps, to be as inconspicuous as possible in the glare of the headlights, a weary pedestrian with too much wine in him. No single shot could be counted on; no man was that accurate at eighty-plus feet. But the magnum was a powerful weapon, the permanently attached silencer designed for zero sighting as much as any handgun could be. Therefore a marksman firing five or six rounds at a given target would have the probabilities on his side, but only if the bullets were fired in what amounted to a single burst; each instant of separation was a margin for error. It would require a steady arm supported by a solid object, a view undistorted by light and shadow. It would not hurt to get closer, either.
With his concentration split equally between the overgrowth in front of him and the blond assassin, whom he could see through the trees on his left, he made his way as swiftly, as silently, as he could to the edge of the river gorge.
A flashlight beam shot out behind him. He scrambled behind a huge boulder, sliding partially down the smooth surface and catching his foot on a protruding ridge. His sanctuary was the top of a jagged wall of rock and bush that led to the roiling waters several hundred feet below. His vision at the far side was clear; he stared at the end of the beam of light. Some part of the foliage he had raced through had snapped, and the blond killer was standing motionless with the flashlight in his hand. Gradually his attention waned: an animal or a night bird, he judged; there was no human being to be seen.
Above, the clattering truck neared the midpoint of the bridge. There he was! Less than seventy feet away, he leaned over the rail, his head huddled deep in the collar of his heavy jacket. The clanging was thunderous now, the echoes full, as the backup executioner was caught in the glare of the headlights. Havelock spun around on the boulder, steadying his feet on the flanking rocks. There would be no more than a second to make the decision, no more than two or three to fire the magnum during the short space of time when the rear of the van would block the view from the booths at the entrance. Full of uncertainty, Michael pulled the heavy weapon from his belt and braced his arm against the boulder, his feet anchored by pressure, his left hand gripping his right wrist to steady the barrel that was aimed diagonally above. He had to be sure; he could not risk the night and everything the night stood for. But if the odds were his …
They were. As the hood of the van passed the man he stood up, now silhouetted in the back light, a large immobile target. Havelock fired four rounds in rapid succession in concert with the deafening clatter on the bridge. The support killer arched backward, then sank down into the shadows of the solid steel barricade of the pedestrian walk.
The clanging receded as the van reached the far side of the bridge. There was no orange barrier across the entrance on the French side: francs had been paid; the two guards leaning against a gatehouse wall smoked their cigarettes. However, another sound intruded; it came from behind, quite far behind, down the road from Monesi. Michael curved his spine into the surface of the rock and slid back into the edge of the woods, crouching instantly, shoving the warm magnum under his belt. He glanced through the trees at the checkpoint; the two authentic soldiers in the nearest gatehouse on the right could be seen beyond the large glass windows, nodding at each other as if counting something in their hands—lire had reached the second level. The blond impostor was outside, an outsider as far as the current transaction was concerned; he was staring down the road, squinting in the dim light.
He raised his hand to the midpoint of his chest and shook his wrist twice—an innocuous gesture, a man restoring circulation to a forearm strained by carrying too much weight too recently. It was a signal.
The killer brought his hand down to his right hip, and it took no imagination to realize he was releasing the snap on his holster while keeping his concentration on the road below. Havelock crept rapidly through the woods until he reached the unconscious figure of the explosives specialist. The sound of a motor grew louder, joined now by a faint, bass-toned hum in the farther distance—a second vehicle steadily increasing its speed. Michael parted the thick branches of an overhanging pine and looked to his left. Several hundred yards down the road the glistening grille of a large automobile could be seen, reflecting the light from the bridge. It swung into the curve; the car was a Lancia. It was Jenna! Havelock imposed a control over his mind and body he had not thought was possible. The next few minutes would bring into play everything he had learned—that no one should ever have to learn—since he was a child in Prague, every skill he had absorbed from the shadow world in which he had lived so long.
The Lancia sedan drew nearer, and sharp bolts of pain shot through Michael’s chest as he stared at the windshield. Jenna was not there. Instead, two men could be seen in the wash of the dashboard, the driver smoking, his companion apparently talking garrulously, waving his hands for emphasis. Then the driver turned his head sideways, addressing a remark to someone in the back seat. The Lancia began to slow down; it was within two hundred feet of the checkpoint.
The blond impostor at the orange barrier turned and walked quickly to the gatehouse booth; he knocked on the window, then pointed to the approaching vehicle and then to himself. He was the eager recruit telling his veteran superiors that he could handle the immediate assignment. The two soldiers looked up, annoyed at the intrusion, perhaps wondering if the intruder had seen money changing hands; they nodded, waving him away.
Instead of leaving immediately, the assassin employed by Rome reached into his pocket and took out an object while moving unobtrusively toward the closed door of the booth. He reached down and inserted the object into the frame below the window, the movements of his shoulders indicating that he used considerable force. Havelock tried to imagine what it was, what the killer was doing. And then it was clear; the door of the booth was a sliding door, but it would not slide now. The man called Ricci had wedged a thin steel plate with small angled spikes into the space between frame and panel; the door was jammed. The more force that was used to open it, the deeper the tiny spikes would embed themselves, until all movement would be impossible. The two soldiers were trapped inside, and as with checkpoints everywhere—no matter how minor—the booth was sturdily constructed with thick glass in the windows. Yet there was a fallacy: a simple call to the barracks somewhere on the other side would bring assistance. Michael peered through the dim light above the gatehouse, and saw there was no fallacy. Dangling from the limb of a tree was a heavy-gauge telephone wire; it had been severed. The killers from Rome controlled the checkpoint.
The blond man strode to the metal plank that separated the road from the entrance to the bridge, assumed a military stance-the feet apart, the left hand at his waist, the right held up in the “Halt” position—and faced the oncoming sedan.
The Lancia came to a stop. The front windows were rolled down and passports were offered by the two men in the front seat. The killer walked to the driver’s window and spoke quietly—too quietly for Havelock to hear the words—while looking past the driver into the rear seat.
The driver was explaining something and turned to his companion for confirmation. The second man leaned across the seat, nodding his head, then shaking it, as if in sorrow. The false guard stood back and spoke louder, with a soldier’s authority.
“Regrets, signori and signora,” he said in Italian. “Tonight’s regulations require that all passengers step out of their automobiles while they are examined.”
“But we were assured that we could proceed across into Col des Moulinets as rapidly as possible, Caporale,” protested the driver, raising his voice. “The dear woman buried her husband less than two hours ago. She is distraught.… Here are her papers, her passport. Ours also. Everything is in order, I can assure you. We are expected for an eight o’clock mass. She is from a fine family, a Franco-Italian marriage tragically ended by a dreadful accident The mayors of both Monesi and Moulinets were at the funeral—”
“Regrets, signore,” repeated the killer. “Please, step out. There is a truck behind you and it is not right for you to hold up the line.”
Havelock turned his head, looking at the run-down truck with the powerful engine. There was no one inside. Instead, the two men were on opposite shoulders of the road, dressed in mountain clothes, their eyes scanning the country road and the woods, their hands in their pockets. Backups for backups, support for support. The border belonged to the unit from Rome, secure in its knowledge that no one could pass through without being seen, and if the target was seen, the target would die.
And if he was not seen? Would the secondary order hold? Would the secondary target—the bait—be eliminated in Col des Moulinets because she was no longer feasible bait? The answer was as painful for Michael to admit to himself as it was self—evident. She had to be. She did not exist, her existence was too dangerous for the liars who gave orders to strategists and embassies alike. The unit would return to Rome without its primary kill, the only loser an agent of record who had not been apprised of the secondary target.
The tall, slender figure in black climbed out of the car—a woman in mourning, an opaque veil of black lace falling from her wide—brimmed hat and covering her face. Havelock stared; the pain in his chest was almost unbearable. She was no more than twenty feet away, yet the gulf was filled with death, her death to follow shortly whether his came or not.
“My regrets again, signora,” said the killer in uniform. “It will be necessary for you to remove your hat.”
“Good Lord, why?” asked Jenna Karas, her voice low, controlled, but with a trace of a throb, which could be a sign of grief as well as of fear.
“Merely to match your face with the photograph on the passport, signora. Surely you know It’s customary.”
Jenna slowly lifted the veil from her face, and then the hat from her head. The skin that was so often bronzed by the sun was chalk-white in the dim, eerie light of the bridge; her delicate features were taut, the high cheekbones masklike, and her long blond hair was pulled back and knotted severely. Michael watched, breathing slowly, silently, a part of him wanting to cry out while another desperately, foolishly, placed them back in another time … lying together on the grass overlooking the Moldau, walking down the Ringstrasse, holding hands as children might, laughing at the irony of two deep-cover agents behaving like human beings.… In bed, holding each other, telling themselves they would somehow break out of their movable prison.
“The signora has lovely hair,” said the blond killer, with a smile that denied his rank. “My mother would approve. We, too, are from the north.”
“Thank you. May I replace my veil, Caporale? I am in mourning.”
“In one moment, please,” replied Ricci, holding up the passport but not looking at it. Instead, he was glancing everywhere at once without moving his head, his anger obviously mounting. Jenna’s escorts stood motionless by the car, avoiding the soldier’s eyes.
Behind the Lancia, on either side of the run-down truck, the support assassins were tense, peering into the shadows, then repeatedly looking in the vicinity of the country inn, anticipation on their faces. It was as though they all expected him to materialize out of the darkness, to appear suddenly, walking either casually or resolutely up the path from the inn, or from behind the thick trunk of a pine tree on the edge of the road, calling out to the woman by the automobile. It was what they expected; these were the moments they had calculated as the crisis span—the target would be found now if he had not been found before. And from their viewpoint, it had to happen. Everything was clean, nothing wrinkled. The target had not crossed over the bridge within the past twenty-six hours—and if he had crossed over prior to minus-twenty-six, it would have been stupid. There was no way he could know which vehicle carried Jenna Karas or which road it would take through Col des Moulinets. Beyond these deductions, there was no reason for the man marked for dispatch to know there was a unit from Rome at the checkpoint. It would happen now, or it would not happen.
The tension at the scene was stretched to the breaking point. It was compounded by the two soldiers inside the gatehouse booth who were trying to open the door and shouting through the windows, their voices muted by the thick glass. Nothing was lost on Jenna Karas or her paid escorts; the driver had edged toward the door, his companion toward the border of the road and the woods. A trap was in the making, but for reasons they could not understand, it was clearly not a trap for them; if it were, they would have been summarily taken.
Havelock knew that everything now was timing: the eternal wait until the moment came, and then that instant when instinct told him to move. He could not rearrange the odds to favor him, but he could reduce them against him. Against Jenna.
“Finird in niente,” said the uniformed killer, just loud enough to be heard; he brought his hand to his waist and shook his wrist twice as he had done before, giving a signal as he had given it before.
Michael reached into his pocket and took out a packet of plastic explosive and a module. The luminous readout was at oooo; he pressed the timer button delicately until he had the figures he wanted, then inserted the module into the self-sealing lip. He had checked and rechecked his position in the darkness; he knew the least obstructed path and used it now. He snaked his way eight feet into the forest, observed the outlines of the branches against the night sky, and threw the packet into the air. The moment it was out of his hand, he scrambled back toward the road, arcing to his left, now parallel to the run-down truck, ten feet from the backup killer dressed in mountain clothes. He had two shells left in the magnum; it was possible he would have to use both before he cared to, but the muted sounds were preferable to explosions from the Llama automatic. Seconds now.
“Regrets again for the delay, signora and signori,” said the assassin sent by Rome, walking away from the Lancia toward the winch that operated the orange barrier. “Procedures must be followed. You may return to your automobile now, all is in order.” The blond man passed the windows of the booth, ignoring the angry shouts of the soldiers inside; he had no time to waste on minor players. A plan had failed, a finely tuned strategy had been an exercise in futility; anger and frustration were second only to his professional instincts to get out of the area. There was only one chore left to finish, which an agent of record was to know nothing about. He raised the orange barrier and immediately stepped back out into the center of the entrance, blocking passage. He removed a notebook and a pencil from his pocket—the border guard attending to his last procedure, taking down the numbers of a vehicle’s license. It, too, was a signal,
Only seconds.
Jenna and her two escorts climbed back in the car, the faces of the two men betraying bewilderment and cautious relief. The doors slammed shut, and at the sound a short, stocky man came slowly out of the foliage across the road near the trunk of the Lancia. He walked directly to the rear of the automobile, but his attention was not on the car but on the woods beyond the road. He raised his right hand to his waist, and shook his wrist twice, perplexed at the lack of response to his signal. He stood for a moment, his frown conveying minor alarm but not panic. Men in his business understood the problems of equipment malfunction; they were sudden and deadly, which was why the two specialists traveled as a team. He turned his head quickly toward the checkpoint; the blond assassin was impatient. The man knelt down, took an object out of his left hand and transferred it to his right. He reached under the car, the area directly beneath the fuel tank.
There were no seconds left. The forget could not wait.
Havelock had the man in the sights of his magnum. He fired; the specialist screamed as his body crashed up into the metal of the fender, the packet flying out of his hand as his arm whipped back; the bullet had lodged in his spine and his body arched in searing pain. Though in agony, the killer turned toward the source of the explosive spit, pulled an automatic from his pocket and leveled it instantly. Frantically Michael rolled out of the area until the dense underbrush stopped his movement. The gunshots echoed everywhere, bullets spaying the ground, as Havelock raised the magnum and fired its last round. The muffled report was followed by a loud gasp from the man by the truck as his neck was blown away.
“Doo’è? Doo’è?” shouted the blond assassin at the checkpoint, racing around the Lancia.
The explosion filled the air, the blinding light of the detonated plastique bathing the darkness of the woods, echoing throughout the mountains. The assassin lunged to the ground and, aiming at nothing, began shooting at everything. The Lancia’s engine roared, its wheels spun, and the sedan surged onto the bridge. Jenna was free.
Seconds more. He had to do it.
Michael got to his feet and raced out of the forest, the empty magnum in his belt, the Llama in his band. The assassin saw him in the light of the spreading flames in the woods; the blond man got up on his knees and, supporting his right arm with his left, aimed at Havelock. He fired rapidly, repeatedly; the bullets shrieked in ricochets and snapped the air above and to the right of Michael as he lurched for the cover of the truck. But it was no cover; he heard the scraping, then the footsteps behind him, and whirled around, his back against the door. At the rear of the truck the killer-driver came, crouching—the movements of a professional cornering a quarry at close range—as he raised his weapon and fired. Havelock dropped to the ground at first sighting and returned two shots; feeling the ice-like pain in his shoulder, he knew he had been hit, but not how seriously. The driver rolled spastically off the edge of the road; if he was not gone, he would be soon.
Suddenly, the dirt exploded in front of Michael; the blond assassin was free to resume firing now that his associate was finished. Havelock dived to his right, then plunged under the truck, crawling in panic to the other side. Seconds. Only seconds left. He sprang to his feet and sidestepped to the door. The crowd of frightened people down at the inn were shouting at one another, running in all directions. There was so little time; men would race out of barracks, perhaps were racing even now. He reached for the handle and yanked the door open; he saw what he wanted to see: the keys were in the ignition as he had dared to think they would be. The unit from Rome had been in control, and control meant being able to get away from the execution ground instantly.
He leaped up into the seat, his head low, his fingers working furiously. He turned the key; the engine caught, and at the first sound, gunfire came from the road ahead and bullets embedded themselves in metal. There was a pause, and Michael understood; the assassin was reloading his gun. These were the crucial seconds. He switched on the headlights; like the motor, they were powerful—blinding. Up ahead, the blond man was crouched off the shoulder of the road, slamming a clip into the base of his automatic. Havelock Jammed the clutch, pulled the gearshift, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
The heavy truck jolted forward, its tires screeching over rock and dirt. Michael spun the wheel to his right as the engine roared with the gathering speed. Rapid gunshots; the windshield was punctured and a web of cracks spread throughout the glass as bullets screamed into the cab. Havelock raised his head Just high enough to see what he had to see; the killer was centered in the glare of the headlights. Michael kept his course until he felt and heard the impact, accompanied by a scream of fury, which was abruptly cut short as the assassin lurched and twisted, but was held in place, his legs crushed under the heavy cleated tires of the truck. Havelock spun the wheel again, now to his left, back into the road proper; he sped past the two gatehouses onto the bridge, noting as he raced by that the two guards were prone on the floor of the booth.
There was chaos on the French side, but no barrier to block his way. soldiers were running to and from the checkpoint, shouting orders at no one and everyone; inside a lighted booth four guards were huddled together, one screaming into a telephone. The road into Col des Moulinets bore to the left off the bridge, then curved right, heading straight into a silhouetted patchwork of small wood-framed houses, set close together, with sloping roofs, typical of a thousand villages in this part of the Alps. He entered a narrow cobblestone street; several pedestrians jumped onto the narrow pavement, startled as much by the sound as by the sight of the heavy Italian truck.
He saw the red lights … the wide, rear lights of the Lancia. It was far in the distance; it turned into a street—God only knew what street, there were so many. Col des Moulinets was one of those villages where every long-ago path and pasture bypass had been paved with stone; some had been converted into streets, others merely into quaint alleyways, barely wide enough for produce carts. But he would know it when he came to it; he had to.
The intersecting streets grew wider, the houses and shops set farther back; narrow pavements became sidewalks, and more and more villagers were seen strolling past the lighted storefronts. The Lancia was nowhere; it had disappeared.
“Pardon! Ou est l’aéroport?” he yelled out the window to an elderly couple about to step off the curb into the cobblestone street.
“Airport?” said the old man in French, the word itself pronounced in an accent that was more Italian than Gallic. “There is no airport in Col des Moulinets, monsieur. You can take the southern roadway down to Cap Martin.”
“There is an airport near the village, I’m sure of it,” cried Havelock, trying to control his anxiety. “A friend, a very good friend, told me he was flying into Col des Moulinets. I’m to meet him. I’m late.”
“Your friend meant Cap Martin, monsieur.”
“Perhaps not,” called out a younger man who was leaning against the doorframe of a shop closed for the evening. “There is no real airport, monsieur, but there is an airfield fifteen, twenty kilometers north on the road to Tenda. It’s used by the rich who have estates in Roquebillière and Breil.”
“That’s it! What’s the fastest way?”
“Take your next right, then right again back three streets to Rue Maritimes. Turn left; it will lead you into the mountain auto route. Fifteen, eighteen kilometers north.”
“Thank you.”
Time was a racing montage of light and shadow, filled with peopled streets and leaping figures, small interfering cars and glaring headlights, gradually replaced by fewer buildings, fewer people, fewer streetlamps; he had reached the outskirts of the village. If the police had been alerted by the panicked border guards, he had eluded them by the odds of a small force versus a large area. Minutes later—how many he would never know—he was tearing through the darkness of the Maritimes countryside, the rolling hills everywhere that were introductions to the mountains beyond, barricades to be negotiated with all the speed the powerful truck could manage. And as the grinding gears strained and the tires under him screamed to a crescendo, he saw the silhouettes of paddle wheels; like the hills, they were everywhere, alongside houses by mountain streams and rivulets, slowly turning, a certain majesty in their never-ending movements—proof again that time and nature were constant. In a strange way, Michael needed the reaffirmation; he was losing his mind!
There were no lights on the auto route, no red specks fat the darkness. The Lancia was nowhere to be seen. Was he even going in the right direction? Or had anxiety warped his senses? So close and yet so terribly far away, one gulf traversed, one more to leap. Traversed? We said it better in Prague. Přjezd said it better.
Miluti vás, má drahá. We understand these words, Jenna. We do not need the language of liars. We never should have learned it. Don’t listen to the liars! They neutralized us; now they want to kill us. They have to because I know they’re there. I know, and so will you.
A searchlight! Its beam was sweeping the night sky. Beyond the nearest hills, diagonally up ahead on the left Somewhere the road would turn; somewhere minutes away was an airfield and a plane—and Jenna.
The second hill was steep, the other side of it steeper, with curves; he held the wheel with all his strength, careening into each turn. Lights. Wide white beams in front, two red dots behind. It was the Lancia! A mile, two miles ahead and below; it was impossible to tell, but the field was there. Parallel lines of yellow ground lights crossed each other at forty-plus degree points; the valley winds had been studied for maximum lift. The airfield was in a valley, sufficiently wide and long for small jets as well as prop aircraft—used by the rich who have estates in Roquebillière and Breil.
Havelock kept the accelerator on the floor, his left foot grazing the brake for those instants when balance was in jeopardy. The road leveled out and became a flat track that circled the fenced-off airfield. Within the enormous compound were the vivid reflections of glistening wings and fuselages; perhaps a dozen stationary planes were moored to the ground in varying positions off the runways—the yachts of yesterday had been replaced by silver tubes that sailed through the sikes. The ten-foot-high hurricane fence was strung with barbed wire across the top and angled an additional four feet inside. The rich of Roquebillière and Breil cared for their airborne possessions. Such a fence—a double mile in length—carried a price of several hundred thousand dollars; and that being the case, would there be a security gate and guards somewhat more attentive than the French and Italian military?
There were. He screeched into the entrance roadway. The heavy ten-foot gate was closing three hundred feet in front of him. Inside, the Lancia was racing across the field. Suddenly its lights were extinguished; somewhere within the expanse of grass and asphalt its driver had spotted a plane. Lights would reveal markings, and markings were traces; if he could see the Lancia’s headlights several miles away in the darkness of the valley, his, too, could be seen. There were only seconds and half-seconds now, each minuscule movement of a clock narrowing the final gulf or widening it.
While gripping the wheel, he jammed the palms of both hands on the rim of the truck’s horn, hammering out the only alarm code that came to him: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! He repeated it over and over again as he sped down the entrance drive toward the closing gate.
Two uniformed guards were inside the fence, one pushing the thick metal crossbar of the gate, the other standing by the latch, prepared to receive the sliding bar and insert the clamp. As the gate reached the three-quarter mark, both guards stared through the wire mesh at the powerful truck bearing down on them; the blaring series of notes was not lost on them. Their terrified faces showed they had no intention of staying in the path of the wild vehicle about to crash into their post. The guard at the crossbar released it and ran to his left; the gate swung back partially—only partially—when he withdrew his grip. The man by the latch scrambled to his right, diving into the grass and the protection of the extended fence.
The impact came, the truck ripping the gate away, twisting it up off its hinges and smashing it into the small booth, shattering glass and severing an electrical wire that erupted in sparks and static. Michael raced the truck onto the field, his wounded shoulder pitched in pain; the truck careened sharply, narrowly missing two adjacent planes parked in the shadows of a single wide hangar. He spun the wheel to his left sending the trade in the direction the Lancia had been heading less than a minute ago.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing! Where was it? Where was it?
A flicker of light Movement—at the far end of the field, beyond the glowing yellow lines of the north runway, slightly above the farthest ground row. The cabin of a plane had been opened, an interior light snapped briefly on, then instantly turned off. He whipped the wheel to the right-blood from his wrenched wounded shoulder spreading through his shirt—and raced diagonally across the enormous compound; heavy, weatherproof bulbs exploded under the tires as he sped toward the now darkened area where seconds ago there had been the dim flash of light.
There it was! Not a jet, but a twin-engine, single-wing, its propellers suddenly revving furiously, flames belching from its exhausts. It was not on the runway but beyond the glow of the parallel lines of yellow lights; the pilot was about to taxi into the takeoff position. But he was not moving now; he was holding!
The Lancia. It was behind and to the right of the plane. Again, a light! Not from the aircraft now, but from the Lancia itself. Doors opened; figures leaped out, dashing for the plane. The cabin door, another light! For an instant Michael considered ramming the fuselage or crashing into the nearest wing, but it could be a tragic error. If he struck a fuel tank, the aircraft would blow up in seconds. He swerved the heavy truck to the right, then to the left, and screeching to a stop yards in front of the plane, he leaped out.
“Jenna! Jenna! Poslouchám iá! Stůil! Listen to me!”
She was climbing on board, pushed up the steps by the driver of the Lancia, who followed her inside and closed the door. He ran, oblivious to everything but her; he had to stop her! The plane spun in place like a grotesque, dark cormorant. Its path was free of the Lancia!
The blow came out of the shadows, muffled and at the same time magnified by the furious winds of the propeller’s wash. His head snapped back as his legs buckled, blood matting the hair above his right temple. He was on his knees, supporting himself with his hands, staring up at the plane, at the window of the moving plane, and he could not move! The cabin lights remained on for several seconds and he saw her face in the glass, her eyes staring back at him. It was a sight he would remember for as long as he lived … if he lived. A second blow with a blunt instrument was delivered to the back of his neck.
He could not think about the terrible sight now, about her now! He could hear the sirens screaming across the field, see the glare of searchlights shooting over the runway, catching the glistening metal of the plane as it sped down between the yellow lights. The man who had struck him twice was running toward the Lancia; he had to move! He had to move now, or he would not be permitted to live, permitted ever to see her again. He struggled to his feet as he pulled the Llama automatic from under his jacket.
He fired twice above the roof of the sedan; the man leaping into the seat could have killed him moments ago; he would not kill that man now. His hands were too unsteady, the flashing, sweeping lights too bewildering to ensure inflicting only a wound. But he had to have the car. He fired again, the bullet ricocheting off the metal as he approached the window.
“Get out or you’re dead!” he shouted, gripping the door handle. “You heard what I said! Get out!” Havelock yanked the man by the cloth of his coat and pulled him, propelling him onto the grass. There was no time for a dozen questions he wanted to ask. He had to escape! He slid behind the wheel and slammed the door shut; the motor was running.
For the next forty-five seconds he crisscrossed the airfield at enormous speeds, evading the airfield’s security police by weaving in and out of searchlight beams. A dozen times he nearly crashed into stationary aircraft before reaching the demolished gate. He raced through, not seeing the road, functioning only on nerves and instinct.
He could not shut out the terrible sight of Jenna’s face in the window of the moving plane. In Rome her face had shown raw fear and confusion. Moments ago there had been something else; it was in her eyes.
Cold, immaculate hatred.