“Just got out and walked away?”
“Yes. On yet another hand, Harry, he’d have manifested by now, loud and clear, wouldn’t he?”
“Would he not?” Kenwood grinned. “If the first theory’s right, though, it doesn’t look too good, sir.”
“Right, it doesn’t — not for Hedge, not for us. Uthman … our Hedge isn’t the stoic sort, and he’ll cave in the first time anyone lays a finger on him. I’m —” He broke off as an inspector approached. “Something fresh?”
“Yes, sir. Fingerprint analysis.” The Inspector handed over a set of documents: several prints in the dormobile were those of Hedge, checked already with his security screening records in Whitehall; several were those of Angus Dewar, who had a police record; several were unidentified and there were no leads to Uthman. Nevertheless, some of Shard’s assumptions seemed to have been confirmed, though he would have wished for something more positive, a direct involvement of Uthman to confirm that he was working in the right direction in his assumption of a second kidnap. He felt a sudden weariness, almost a sense of defeat: he was still working so much in the dark and time was short — must be short now after the Dundee business. And just a moment later the shortness of time was startlingly confirmed: Whitehall came on the security line in the Chief Superintendent’s office, asking for Shard. It was the Head of Department in person.
“Shard, you get around. I called Dundee. Anything to report?”
“Little enough, sir.” Shard passed the details of the dormobile and Hedge’s confirmed sojourn in it. “It doesn’t help much —”
“And the report about Mackintosh’s wife? What d’you suppose they’re doing with her? If you haven’t a theory on that, I have: Uthman wants her handy in connexion with the last act, don’t ask me why, just pin your ears back: Uthman’s put out a broadcast, too brief for him to be located. We have twenty-four hours as of half an hour ago. At that time the Murzuq lot go into action — he hasn’t specified whether it’s to be missiles or bombers. This they do unless Mackintosh is handed over, and Uthman has Mackintosh. He’ll make Mackintosh available to us on certain terms …” The voice went on, battering at Shard’s ears with urgency and a message of doom. Uthman had demanded the payment of ten million pounds, half in German Deutschmarks, half in US dollars, to be paid into an account in a Swiss bank; on receipt of confirmation from the bankers that the sum had been paid, he would release Mackintosh. The British Government was positively not playing that game; to do so would be to open the floodgates of blackmail and ransom for the future. RAF Strike Command was on immediate notice, and would fly off three hours before zero hour to destroy the Murzuq set-up lock, stock and barrel if the threat was not dismantled by that time. On the diplomatic front everything possible was being done, but the official Libyans were not co-operating. The Arab world was closing ranks. There was virtual pleading in the Head of Department’s voice. “Get Uthman, Shard. Get Mackintosh. No-one wants war. Even our friends won’t thank us. But we can’t lose the oil. Have you made any progress at all?”
Shard said, “I’ve been praying, sir.” He wasn’t too surprised when the line exploded in his earhole. Defeat tasted again, sour and bitter in his mouth. Then another call came in, this time from the nick at Middleton-in-Teesdale: a shepherd tending sheep out in the Pennine fastnesses had witnessed a road accident. A car — a Volvo, not a Mercedes — had taken a bend in a fell-climbing B road too fast and had come off. The shepherd, who had not been seen himself, had started to go to its assistance when he noted guns in the hands of three Arabs who got out of the car; and when these men opened up the boot and brought out a woman who could have been alive but who could equally well have been dead, the shepherd had beat it fast, behind the cover of a stone wall, and had eventually contacted a telephone …
“I doubt if she’s dead,” Shard said. “Just doped. And I reckon Uthman’s all set to use her as he’s using Mackintosh, and means to bring ’em together again. In which case we’re moving in the right direction, and this is the clincher. All set, Harry?”
“Sure, sir. Where to?”
“The B6276 from Bowbank near Middleton-in-Teesdale to Brough. I reckon we’ll pick ’em up walking. They won’t risk hitching!”
*
Hedge, roadborne again, had come round. He was still flat on his back, this time with feet resting upon him. It seemed to be a big car, but his space was constricted even so, appallingly constricted. He judged himself, accurately, to be on the floor in the back of the car, which was proceeding at a tremendous speed: his body registered that unmistakably. He had changed hands, he had probably changed his destination, but the desire of his companions not to let him see where he was going had not changed. They could not, therefore, be the police: the police would certainly not put him on the floor. Especially — he remembered it — since he had said …
Yes, he had said. He felt the flush spreading in his face, felt the fear in the pit of his queasy stomach: he had given himself away. He was quite clearly in the hands of evildoers and there would be pressure, torture. He gave a high sound like a whinny, and a pair of feet moved. A face peered down: night had lightened into the dawn now, and there was just enough visibility to see the face when it loomed close. It was dark, swarthy, moustached, hook-nosed, Arab. That Arab aspect spelled many things: Mackintosh, a shattered oil industry, disruption of the embryonic water grid, ICBMs, Murzuq, the Cabinet, death. Hedge fainted again. When consciousness returned, the face had lifted and there was more daylight: Hedge’s bleary eye caught a sight of tree-tops, racing past. It made him feel sicker, and he groaned, which brought the face again.
“You speak?” the face asked, and smiled, showing very wonderful teeth.
“No.” Hedge gulped as bile rose. “Would you please move your feet?”
“There is nowhere to move them to, and they are comfortable.” More pressure was exerted in the region of Hedge’s private parts, painfully. He yelped, but made no further complaint — it didn’t seem wise. The man went on, “We are lucky, Mr Hedge. Someone from your Foreign Office we did not expect to have, and you are, I think, sent by Allah.”
“Allah?”
“Allah, to whom all praise be given. You will be useful. You are a man of importance?”
Hedge was in a quandary: importance might well secure him better treatment and more careful handling, on the other hand it might worsen matters. Important persons knew more than unimportant ones and also were more negotiable as hostages, and nasty things could happen to hostages. Hedge searched his mind for a non-committal reply that could be revised later, but as it turned out his cerebration was unnecessary: the man had retrieved Hedge’s brief-case from the wreckage and had formed his own view.
“The brief-case is of good quality, though now damaged and stained with blood. The suit is very good indeed, very expensive. The railway ticket in the pocket is for first class sleeping-compartment travel. There is a bowler hat, squashed flat. In the brief-case is a flask, made of silver and containing brandy … flask now flat like bowler hat and brandy gone. You are important, Mr Hedge.”
The die thus cast in his face, Hedge made the best of it. “Important, yes. I shall be looked for, make no mistake! You’ve been dangerously stupid. The Foreign Office stands very high in our country — it is government. I advise you to let me go. I’m purely fortuitous — you said so yourself. I don’t know who you are, so I can’t do you any harm, you see.” He looked up, pleadingly. “Won’t you think again?”
The teeth shone at him, lustrous in the climbing sun. “I shall put temptation behind me, I shall shut the gate to keep in the going horse, I shall seal the fate. I shall tell you who I am.”
“No, no —”
“I am Uthman.”
Hedge’s body gave a violent jerk.
“You know of me, of Uthman.”
“No, no indeed not —”
“Liar. The upheaval beneath the foot speaks truth. Uthman you know. I am Uthman. Yes, I think you may be very useful
.”
*
There had been more trees, and occasionally there had been tall buildings, imposing buildings like those of banks or insurance companies. At one moment Hedge was almost sure he had caught the immense words YORKSHIRE GENERAL, but of course that didn’t necessarily prove anything. He had seen a blue bus; mainly he had seen either trees or nothing but sky. He had no real clues as to where he was, where he would be eventually, but he had listened to conversations conducted in Arabic, of which he had a smattering: according to Uthman, the man Angus and his Scots were now out of the running, wherever the running might be going to. They had been a tiresome interpolation, now written off; and everything, but everything it seemed, was set fair for Uthman. The drive lasted for a little over five hours: Hedge could from time to time see the watch on the wrist of the man sitting alongside Uthman. It was all a torture: physically it was dreadful, mentally it was dreadful too. Hedge felt desperate, claustrophobic beneath the four feet, sick, with an infernal headache and violent indigestion … that damn British Rail dinner, though he wished with a fervency that brought tears to his eyes that he was back in the Inter-City eating it. What was to happen to him, what would they do to him in the meantime, how would his wife be taking his disappearance? The news would be out by now: would they look hard, would they order troops and police out, would no stone be left unturned? The wretched Hesseltine, Assistant Commissioner Crime in the metropolitan police district, probably wouldn’t overstretch himself, he detested Hedge as much as Hedge detested him, no love lost at all — why, he could even be pleased! At last the car came to a stop and Hedge was told to get out. The final part of the journey had been made over extremely rough ground, a mere farm track it had felt like — he had no real idea of the length of this last stretch but fancied it was at least three or four miles, probably much more. Peace had come when the speed had slowed still more and the car had nosed into gloom that became pitch darkness lit by the headlights. Hedge emerged with difficulty: he was as stiff as a plank and needed help. When he was set on his feet he stared around at most curious enclosing walls: rock, a little damp here and there despite the long summer drought, damp with water that had taken its time filtering down through the years from hundreds of feet overhead: he was in a natural cave, on a bottom partially smooth and partially rocky, below a roof lost in total darkness, with stalagmites and stalactites like immense penises all around him and the cave extending ahead into an infinity, as it seemed, of under-the-mountain distance. Hedge considered his geology and geography: Yorkshire, Derbyshire, even the West Country? Obviously it would not have taken a fast car five hours to penetrate Yorkshire from Newcastle, so … on the other hand the man Angus could have been right into Scotland before Uthman had intercepted — and Uthman might have done some doubling back and forth, or something, to throw off any pursuit afterwards. So he might be almost anywhere. The cave was cool, but Hedge broke out into a profuse sweat, and mopped at his face with his handkerchief, and it came away all bloody so that he gave a shocked bleat.
“God,” he said in a high voice. “What are you going to do with me?”
Uthman, who had turned out to be a smallish man, surprisingly, said, “Important men have important knowledge, is this not so?”
“Not always,” Hedge said. “Certainly not always.”
“No?” The eyes were wide, innocent.
“Oh, by no means always. In any case, it depends on one’s sphere of importance … whether it’s useful or not.”
“What is your sphere, Mr Hedge?”
“Ah … well. Er — finance. That is important — you know how it is — these stringent times. I … check expenditure.”
“A counter of toilet rolls?”
“What?” Hedge glared: pomposity could never be wholly overcome. “More important than that.”
Uthman looked at him, right into his eves; there was a difference in the Arab now, a new hardness, a sadism almost. Uthman said, “Mackenzie Edinburgh Castle Mackintosh.”
Hedge fidgeted: the man’s eyes were like lasers. “Really.”
“Detective Shard.”
“Ah-ha. I don’t know —”
“The face tells it all. I summarise: your rail ticket said Edinburgh. Edinburgh is near Dundee, in Dundee is now Detective Shard. You are from your Foreign Office, and you have knowledge of Mackintosh. In your brief-case is nothing about finance but about security.”
Hedge’s mouth trembled.
“I summarise more: you are again a liar, Mr Hedge. Salam.”
The last word, a name that Uthman had used to his back-seat companion in the car, brought swift response. Salam, a heavy man with the face of a thug, lunged forward suddenly with a big fist that went crashing into Hedge’s face. Bone crunched on bone and Hedge went down, whimpering, smashing into the upthrust protrusion of a stalagmite and breaking it off, an erection brought to a sudden end after centuries of glory. He lay there snivelling, looking up imploringly at Uthman, his breath coming in gasps. He expected more, but thankfully it didn’t come. Uthman looked down at him with a sneer on his lips, then turned away and said something to Salam. Salam clapped his hands; from the darkness ahead men came in response, carrying electric torches. Four of them lifted Hedge like a sack and carried him away, ahead into the torch-lit gloom, into the immensity of the deep cave past the shiny gleam of rock penetrated and eaten away by the movement of water that had cut its course through the strata millions of years before the dawn of man’s history.
Twelve
BEFORE LEAVING IN the car provided by the Leeds nick, Shard had called the Head of Security again: it was a time for decision, for the closing of funk-holes, for the taking of chances. He said, “Everything’s pointing to North Yorks and contiguous areas now, sir, and I believe I’m not all that far off Uthman. Making the assumption, I’m asking for a concentration of all available troops and helicopters in the area of the Pennine’s — let’s say, the dales north of Ripon as far up as Teesdale, and right across from the A1 to Kendal.”
“To do what?”
“Provide an availability for immediate back-up, sir.”
“To back up prayer, I suppose.” The voice was still cold. “All right, Shard, will do.”
Shard and Kenwood went down to the car. Shard sat in silence beside the driver, drumming his fingers on the sill as they headed fast for the north. Success of a kind was in the air at last: plenty of patrol cars would be converging on the three Arabs and their prisoner … but if that success didn’t come bloody soon, Shard thought, and if it didn’t prove the sort of success he wanted, there would be little hope of averting a catastrophic showdown. As the Head of Security had said, no-one wanted war. Equally, no-one wanted to be without oil — but whichever way it went, it looked as though one or other oil source was going to be turned off sharpish. As for Uthman, his recent broadcast had indicated clearly what his personal part in the business was: money, just money, nothing else, no high patriotic principles. Uthman was prepared to sell out his own side quite happily, just as happily as he would see the British oil industry destroyed. There was no altruism in Uthman; he’d seen a gold mine and had known how to dig it. It could he useful to bear in mind his financial outlook: it made some difference, to know one was not dealing with dedication …
The day was darkening towards evening as the police car left the A58 for the A1. They went north fast, speed limits disregarded. At Scotch Corner they turned off onto the A66 to a lash of rain on the car’s windscreen: the drought breaking at last — really breaking? The rain increased as they turned up for Barnard Castle and the B6277 for Middleton-in-Teesdale: Shard’s idea was to sweep right down the B6276 for Brough. Orders had gone out before he had left Leeds for helicopters to come in and search the area for the fugitives. Here the dales were an immensity of utter loneliness, the fells wide open to strong winds and lashing rain, to deep snow and hot sunshine in their seasons, a remoteness at the top of the world, with long, magnificent views on a bright day: an easy area to hide away
in, a difficult area for the pursuit if it was held down to ground level. The rain increased as they came up towards Mickleton; the driver switched on his headlights. After the left turn for Brough they saw huddled sheep behind stone walls in rock-strewn fields; sometimes on the twisting, climbing turns, as the light faded, the headlamps beamed out over nothing but blankness as the road verges dropped sheer into the dales. On this road there was no humanity at all — not in the surroundings where no friendly light showed, not in Shard: this thing was narrowing down to its end and there would be no mercy shown when the opposing sides met — if they did: once again Shard thought of the immensity of the area. And no good news came from the police patrols as they met them and received reports: nil reports all of them. The fugitives had vanished again, just as they had vanished in Leeds after the first sighting. There was a good deal of traffic on the radio, more reports, and all blank. Shard from time to time heard helicopters overhead, saw their searchlights beaming down, long probing fingers that were having no luck at all.
“Hopeless, Harry.”
“Never say die, sir!”
Shard grunted. Soon after this they came up to the bent Volvo: it looked like a write-off, the engine smashed in, the front off-side wheel and wing crushed, the steering gone, the doors burst under the impact — they’d been lucky to get out without injury. Seat belts … but what about the girl, shut in the boot? Shard, after his brief inspection, got back into the police car, wet through from what had become a downpour, and the search continued. They came down on Brough, and Shard decided to head down the A685 towards Kirkby Stephen for want of any other inspiration: any road could be the right one, and any could equally well be the wrong one, you paid your money and took your choice … and kept a listening ear open for all the reports. And there was a query in the air: the Arab gentry and their prisoner had presumably been heading north all the way from Leeds, but the Volvo had in fact been headed south, this being evident from the skid marks on the road. Maybe they’d been deflected, headed off by some sighting of police; Shard was considering the point when, at last, things began to improve: a call came in from control at Richmond.
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