by Gavin Lyall
He rolled the dead man off my legs. I asked: ‘Did you get him?’
‘Yes. You seemed to be busy standing up in the spotlight taking a bow.’
‘You were fifty yards off,’ I said, still angry. ‘You couldn’t hit him with that little gun.’
‘If you stopped being surprised at what other people can do, you wouldn’t get your head shot off so often.’
I said: ‘Stomach, damn it, stomach.’ But he walked straight past me and turned over the other dead man. It occurred to me that I’d better find out just where Ihad been hit.
There was a messy hole just about the bottom of my ribs on the left-hand side: that would be the exit wound. For my cleverness, I’d got myself shot in the back. I groped round and found a smaller hole, higher up, round under my shoulder-blade.
I decided it probably hadn’t got my stomach, and since my breathing didn’t seem to have any leaks, it hadn’t got a lung. I found Harvey squatting down beside me.
‘I’ve got a busted rib or two,’ I said. ‘I think it ran around outside them.’
‘Probably. He was using a 7.65 Sauer.’ He tossed a small automatic into the mud by my face. ‘Peanut gun; you were lucky. Can you walk back to the car?’
‘We’ve got so far. It’s not much farther.’
‘You’vegot so far,’ he corrected, ‘and you ain’t no advertisement. In case you want to know, neither of these guys is Alain. He’s holed up in a pillbox across the track with a Sten.’
I hadn’t really expected we’d killed Alain, but I’d hoped.
‘Alain won’t stay,’ I said. ‘Not if he knows we’re still trying. The odds are against him now – he’s a professional.’
‘Still playing Caneton, hey?’ He stood up and back. ‘All right, let’s see how you look on your feet.’
I took a deep breath – which was a mistake – and started. It took time and blood, and it was climbing a skyscraper with little green men swinging axes into my side. But after a while, I was up on my two feet and leaning hard against the wall.
Harvey said: ‘Me, I’d say the wall was doing the work.’
‘I’ll chase him out,’ I snarled. I was breathing in fast, shallow gasps, to keep the strain off my ribs. ‘Get me the petrol tin out of the car.’
‘Recommended procedure for knocking out pillboxes.’ He went on looking at me. Then there was a distant shouting. We both looked back up the trench, to where the dark slope rose up above it to the frontier road and the mountain wall beyond. Light flickered, like men running with torches.
‘I’d forgotten about the cops,’ Harvey said thoughtfully. ‘If we go back, we’re still in Switzerland.’ He swung back to me. ‘You’ve kind of committed us, haven’t you?’
‘Get me the petrol.’
‘Where’ll you be?’
I nodded towards the culvert. ‘Far side of the path.’
He nodded and hurried back towards the communication trench.
Crawling through the culvert started the little axes chipping away at my ribs again, but I made it. Then I had an eight-foot stretch of trench wall before it turned a corner leading forwards to the parallel where the pillbox was.
I knelt down carefully and took a quick look round the corner. The narrow dark eye of the pillbox stared back at me.
I jerked back. Thèpillbox wasn’t only to cover the tank path – but also the trench itself. To stop an enemy spreading along it if he broke in. Just what it was going to stop me doing – if Alain was still there.
‘Alain,‘I called softly.‘Voici Caneton. C’est tout fini, Alain.’
The pillbox stayed quiet.
I climbed up on the firestep, found a place where I could peep through the bushes and the wet sand-heaps, laid the Mauser down, and waited. Moonlight washed over the pillbox, turning it to a dirty bone-white – and as cold and quiet as the far side of the moon.
Are you still there, Alain? Don’t you remember that a fixed position can turn into a trap? Damn it, you’re a professional – you must have crept out and away. Given it up as a bad job, decided you wouldn’t earn this twelve thousand or whatever you’re getting paid…
Then the loophole spluttered flame and noise. Short, fast burst, as when a man knows what he’s firing at. Harvey must have reached the car.
I fired two single shots and ducked, swearing angrily. Behind me, the shots had started more shouting among the cops weaving their way through the trenches from the frontier road.
But damn you, Alain – you shouldn’t still be there. You’ve forgotten everything. You should never cling to a fixed position when the odds turn against you; it can kill you. It must kill you – because now we must go on.
There was a clatter in the culvert behind me, and a few moments later Harvey whispered: ‘I’ve got it – where do I throw it?’
‘I’mthrowing it. Cover me as I go round the corner; he can see down that stretch.’
He hung on to the tin and said coldly: ‘What’s the matter – one medal isn’t enough for you?’
‘I’llget him. Give me the petrol.’
‘Listen, hero,’ he said softly. ‘We don’t have time for you to stagger bravely on and get your head blown off. Cover me.’
I’dcommitted us all right. And he had to dig us out.
I nodded. ‘Don’t go until he shoots at me.’
‘Okay. Where do I throw it – over the top so it drips down and blocks the loophole?’
‘That wouldn’t stop Alain. Chuck it inside.’
He looked at me, then turned away. Then he turned back and said: ‘Can you really light gasoline off a gunflash?’
‘Yes.’
He walked carefully up the firestep to the corner. I waited until he was there, then raised my head and started firing careful single shots at the loophole. The first one raised dust just below it; the second didn’t – it must have gone straight in. With a Mauser on a butt at eight yards, you can place shots the way a brain surgeon places a scalpel. The third shot didn’t raise dust, either.
The Sten blared at me, throwing gobs of wet sand and bullets clattering against the back wall. Harvey went round the corner with a rush and splash.
Alain had forgotten another lesson. He’d let himself be distracted. I flicked the Mauser on to automatic and let go a burst that scattered dust around the loophole and then climbed uncontrollably off the roof. But the Sten had stopped.
Harvey didn’t pause. He must have had the top off the can already. He jumped up the steps; I saw his head and shoulders rise above the parapet, holding the big can upside down to lay a petrol trail.
He ran smack into Alain coming out.
For a moment they hung together, so close that Alain couldn’t use the Sten – and Harvey’s gun was in his belt. Then they bounced apart. Harvey dropped the can and grabbed for his waist; Alain slashed with the Sten, knocking him back off the steps.
I stood straight up, shoved the Mauser out to arm’s length, and squeezed the trigger. It fired once and was empty. Alain ducked, then calmly straightened the Sten in his hands and aimed down into the trench.
Harvey fired.
I saw the reflected flash – and Alain became flames.
You can have seen petrol fires before – have lit them before – and you never remember how fast they light because you just don’t believe what you see. Alain must have been soaked in the stuff from bumping into the can, and the steps were flooded. Together, they turned into fire.
He didn’t shoot at Harvey. He turned, a man of flames standing in a hedge of flames, tried to wipe the fire out of his eyes with a burning arm, then started to shoot careful bursts across my head at the Rolls. He had forgotten a lot -but not what he was here for.
Harvey fired again. The figure toppled off the steps with the Sten still going, and hit the bottom of the trench with a hiss.
I laid my head down on the wet sand of the parapet and started to feel very sick.
Harvey met me at the tank path; he was moving slowly and wearily, and he looked
singed, dirty, and damp. Behind him, the flames still flickered in the trench, and behind me the waving torches of the police were only a few hundred yards off. But somehow they didn’t seem important; nothing to hurry us.
HarvíV said: ‘We seem to have won the war.’ His voice was flat, numbed, without any expression.
I said: ‘Yes,’ and braced myself for anything he had to say about my bright ideas.
But all he said was: ‘I could use a drink.’
‘Me, too.’
We walked slowly towards the Rolls, which had come across the culvert and stopped just past the front-line trenches. When we got there, I said: Take the wire-cutters out of my case. There’s probably some front-line wire ahead.’
He took them and started out in front of the car, then stopped and said: ‘Bernard. And now Alain.’ But his voice was still dead. He wasn’t feeling anything about it – yet.
THIRTY-TWO
Five minutes later we were in Liechtenstein and turning on to the main road which we’d left on the other side of the frontier, three kilometres back. The Rolls had taken a thumping, but Rolls’s are built for that, and fifty yards in the dark is a long range for a Sten – particularly if it was like most Stens I’d known and the single-shot button didn’t work. One headlight was shot out, there were bullet-holes through the windscreen and both left-hand doors, and one through the big radiator grill. I didn’t know if it hadpunctured the radiator itself – but we’d certainly find out on the mountain road to Steg.
I sat at the back alongside Maganhard, wincing at every jolt and slopping cognac down my shirt. Harvey was up front with the girl.
Maganhard hadn’t said a word, but he didn’t look much more dead than usual, so perhaps he was thinking.
After a few miles, Harvey turned round and said through the partition: ‘D’you want us to leave you down near Vaduz? – find a doctor?’
Maganhard woke up and looked at me. ‘You are wounded?’
‘I’m not dying. And I don’t suppose you know a doctor who’s ready to call a bullet-hole a mosquito bite. And, anyway, there’s still Calieron to come.’
‘Think we’ll have any trouble?’ Harvey asked.
‘Not much. He can’t have every gunman in Europe under contract. And if he had, he’d have put them down in the battle zone.’
After a time, Maganhard said: ‘When I told you I wanted to get past the frontier, Mr Cane, I did not understand that it would be necessary for a man to be burned as that man was,’
I said wearily: ‘Nobody knew it would be necessary, Mr Maganhard. It just happened. In this sort of job, people don’t always die with a brave smile and a kind word for mother.’
‘I thought you knew him! ‘
‘I did. And I’m sorry he got burned, if that helps. But nobody forced him to be down there with a Sten.’
He thought for a moment, then said: ‘I suppose they came to kill or be killed. Perhaps it was fair.’
‘You’re still sentimentalising them. They came to kill – full stop. If they’d thought there was a chance of getting killed they wouldn’t have come.’ I shook my head. ‘Alain didn’t become St Francis just by dying rather nastily.’
Miss Jarman said: ‘All the other times, you didn’t have a choice about shooting. They started it. But this time – you planned it. You started it.’
‘I could have stuck my head out of the trench,’ I growled, ‘and given them the first shot – if that would have made me more moral. It would damn sure have made me headless.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ Her voice was cold and a little shivery, and not just from the wind coming through the bullet-holes. She’d seen Alain burn, too. ‘I mean perhaps we could have done something else that…’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Perhaps we could,’ I said heavily. But I was trying not to think what.
We turned right at Triesen and on to the twisting road up to Triesenberg and, beyond it, Steg. We were going to find out about that radiator now.
Miss Jarman said: ‘The engine’s getting warm.’
‘Keep going. Don’t slow up.’
She didn’t. We slammed into a series of hairpins as fast as Morgan would have taken them – and on just one headlight. But she had an open road for it: Liechtensteiners don’t believe in doing much but sleep outside the money-making hours. We’d-only seen a cyclist and a tourist coach since the frontier.
As we came up to the lights of Triesenberg, it started to drizzlegently. Harvey leant across almost into Miss Jar-man’s lap to read the radiator temperature. ‘The needle’s practically off the clock,’ he reported. ‘We won’t get much farther.’
‘Keep going.’
‘Christ, we’ll blow a cylinder.’
‘That engine’s full of cylinders. Keep going.’
The girl said flatly: ‘We won’t get as far as Steg unless we stop to cool down.’
,‘If we don’t get there quick, there won’t be any point in going.’
Maganhard turned to me. ‘We have nearly an hour and a half.’
‘D’you think so? Didn’t you tell me that Calieron wouldn’t kill Fiez as long as he was trying to kill you? Well, perhaps now he knows he can’t kill you – so his only hope is to knock off Fiez and then outvote you.’
He went quiet. Then he asked suspiciously: ‘How could he know I am not dead?’
‘By now Morgan’s probably rung the General and the General’s rung Calieron. And there must have been some arrangement for Alain and Co. to ring Calieron to say the job was done. Either way, nobody’s told him youare dead – so he must be getting pretty jumpy by now.’
We ran clear of Triesenberg and the road became a gritty track winding up through the steep mountainside, pastures. A faint smell of hotness began to drift back from the engine – and a small, harsh clattering sound.
Miss Jarman said: ‘I think the engine’s going to seize.’
‘Not yet. Just the valves getting hot. Get above the snow-line and we can stuff some of that into it.’
Maganhard said: ‘If Herr Fiez is dead, then it would be a mistake for me to go on.’
‘More of a mistake not to be sure.’
We wound on up. The rain got stronger and colder, and as the headlight swept the mountainside on bends, I could see fragments of cloud crawling in among the pines above us.
And by now the engine was sounding like a convention of Spanish dancers. Harvey turned to say something.
Headlights blazed in our faces. The girl tromped on the brakes.
The other driver must have reckoned our single headlight for a motor-bike, because he kept on coming. Then his brakes screamed like a new soul in Hell and his lights zigzagged as he skidded. There was a long tearingcrunch. The Rolls shuddered delicately and stopped.
Harvey was out on the running-board, gun in hand. I grabbed the empty Mauser, tried to jump to my feet, got a flare of pain in my rib, and sat down again.
Jammed at an angle across our left front bumper was a big black German saloon, ripped open like a sardine tin from front wheel to rear door. The Rolls’ bumper probably had a couple of scratches on it.
In the sudden silence Harvey said clearly: ‘Come out slowly and with the hands empty.’
The driver got out fast, waving his hands furiously and swearing like a pirate’s parrot. It was Henri Merlin.
I climbed carefully across Maganhard’s feet and said: ‘Calm down, Henri, the Marines are here.’
He shoved his head forward and peered through the drizzle. ‘Caneton? Pas possible! But it is! You are superb! ‘ He reached to clout me on both shoulders. I dodged gingerly.
Maganhard stepped down behind me. We were standing between the cars, just outside the headlight beams, lit by a soft underglow reflected back off the rain. I saw Merlin’s huge damp grin – and then his face collapse into despair.
He spread his hands. ‘But now – it does not matter. He – they-‘ He stopped to sort and translate his thoughts.
Maganhard said: ‘Good evening, Mons
ieur Merlin.’
Merlin turned to him. ‘I came – to Monsieur Fiez – a quarter of an hour since. And I find no Galleron – and Fiez is dead.’
It went very quiet again. Something that wasn’t quite rain brushed my face. Several somethings danced like moths in the headlights. We hadn’t quite reached the snow-line, but as the freezing level slid down the mountain, the snow-line had reached us.
Maganhard looked at me and said quietly and bitterly: ‘It seems this Calieron took your advice.’
‘He could afford better advice than mine.’
‘He is not a fool,’ Maganhard said. ‘An hour ago he was counting on me being dead. Now, he is counting on me being alive. So – we must not go.’
‘We could just sneak up and view the body,’ I suggested.
‘Calieron must be waiting near by for me to come.’
‘But it isn’t midnight yet. We could still go and view the body.’
There was a clatter as the girl opened the bonnet of the Rolls, and a long hiss as the snow hit the hot engine.
Maganhard said with stiff patience: ‘Under Caspar’s rules, the time set for a meeting is thelast possible time. If all shareholders are present before that, a meeting is automatically convened. With Herr Fiez dead, all the shareholders will be present if I am there and this Calieron walks in. Therefore-‘
‘But he won’t convene any meetings,’ I said cheerfully, ‘on account of me having a gun stuffed down his throat. So let’s go up and view-‘
‘Christ,’ Harvey said, ‘anybody’d think you were running for election, that way you say the same thing every ten seconds. So you want to go see the body? – okay, let’s go see it, if it’ll keep you quiet.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘All right, if you insist.’ The girl came up beside me. ‘How’s the engine?’
‘I’ve got the radiator cap off, but we need something to put inside. The snow isn’t lying yet.’
‘Drain off Merlin’s car.’
Henri started to look horrified, remembered all the other things that had happened to that car, and just shrugged.
Harvey and the girl went away. The snow, in bigger and slower flakes, drifted slowly around us.
