I slammed the transmission from fourth into third and stepped the accelerator to the floor. The roadster jumped ahead with a scream from the gears and a snarl from the exhaust-it was a very sporty-sounding little beast. Beside me, Vadya, aroused by the jolt, sat up sleepily and looked at me. I was glad to see I wasn't the only agent in the world subject to human weakness and weariness.
I said, "You'd better powder your nose quick, honey. You may not get another chance."
The Mercedes, momentarily left behind, was coming up fast. I hurled the Spitfire through a couple of sharp turns without raising my foot-as I say, small British cars may be built fragile, but they do handle well. That gave me a little lead. No ton-and-a-half sedan, no matter how good, is going to take the corners like a sports car half its weight and height. Then the road ran straight for a bit and I had him sniffing at my trunk again, looking big as a charging rhino about to overrun us.
"I think it's Madame Ling in back," Vadya said calmly.
I said, "Hell, every Chinese female is Madame Ling to you. You've got Madame Lings on the brain." I grinned. "You mean the woman actually exists? Congratulations."
"She must have come up from London ahead of us in a big hurry."
I said, "The way I've been nursing this toy along, she could have walked and beat us. Well, I can't hold them off much longer. This damn road isn't crooked enough, and Baby just hasn't got it in the straights, not against a Mercedes. Any guns showing yet?"
"Not yet. But the man in back has shifted over to our side. He is winding down his window."
I reached down, driving one-handed, and freed my revolver and dropped it into her lap. "Use this. That pipsqueak automatic of yours will hardly shoot through safety glass, and they may have special windows in that fancy limousine. Just one thing, sweetheart."
"Yes?" She had flipped open my gun to check the loads.
"Curb those homicidal impulses," I said. "If you shoot the driver dead, he could yank the wheel the wrong way and come right down on top of us. Just give him a faceful of broken glass to discourage him, huh? You can see blood and brains some other time."
Vadya laughed shortly. "What you really mean is, you do not want that car badly wrecked because your wife may be in it. You think they may have brought her with them from London."
I guess I was really getting pretty tired. The possibility hadn't actually occurred to me, and there wasn't time to consider it now. The road was opening up ahead, and the Mercedes was weaving back and forth behind us, looking for a chance to lunge alongside.
I said, "Okay, I'm opening the gate. Here they come."
Something made a funny slapping sound against the Spitfire's soft top. I heard the simultaneous crack of a gun outside. The bullet came to rest somewhere in the package shelf under the dashboard, right in front of me. That took care of any doubts I might have had about the other party's hostile intentions. I swerved the car violently, to indicate that I was hit or badly scared, leaving the road wide open to our right.
The big sedan shot alongside. Vadya fired twice. Even with the howl of the wind and the roar of the motor, the sawed-off.38 Special made a respectable amount of noise. The side window of the Mercedes went to hell, and a rose of cracks blossomed in the windshield right in front of the driver as the bullets passed diagonally through the forward corner of the car. Momentarily blinded, the chauffeur veered off sharply and hit the bank. In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of the big sedan plowing to a halt, before a curve put it Out of sight.
Vadya said, "My hand will never be the same. I think all the bones are broken. What a cannon to carry! Here, I give it back to you… What are you doing?"
I'd swung the roadster onto a dirt track leading off into the gorse or broom or heather, or whatever the local vegetation was called.
"You brought up a certain possibility back there," I said. "I'm going to check it out. Besides, I'd kind of like to know what they intend doing next."
Vadya said, "If you really know the place we want, which you are keeping so secret, why waste time on those people? Better to get there before they reach a telephone and send a warning." Then she glanced at me and laughed. "Ah, you always were sentimental about women, Matthew. Very well, we will go look for your little wife. In the middle of an important case, upon which may depend the fate of the world, we will go hunting for a small, stupid blonde."
I said, "If you never met her, how do you know she's stupid?"
"Any woman who would marry you, darling, cannot be very bright."
Well, I'd left myself open for that. I stopped the Spitfire behind an unidentified Scottish bush and got out stiffly and reloaded my gun while Vadya was climbing out and tying her scarf more firmly over her hair. She'd picked up a boy's black leather jacket and a pair of black sneakers on our small-town shopping spree. They changed her appearance drastically. Although her basic costume remained the same, she no longer looked like a lady of fashion from France, expensively dressed for an evening on the town. She looked more like the kind of black stockinged beatnik female who'd rush recklessly around the countryside by motorcycle or small sports car.
In the same spirit, I'd got myself a black turtleneck sweater and a sharp-looking cap. A night of hard driving, and some exposure to rain at various stops, had done the rest, giving us both an authentically shabby, wrinkled, tough, and careless look to go with the jazzy, mud-splashed little car.
As we made our way back along the hillside toward a point from which we should be able to get a view of the road and the wrecked Mercedes, I couldn't help feeling that we'd got a long way from London and civilization in relatively few hours. Driving, I hadn't quite realized how wild the country had become, particularly since we'd turned westward off what seemed to be the main tourist trail, shortly after passing through the town of Inverness, at the end of Loch Ness.
With a little sleep under my belt and nothing on my mind I could really have appreciated the scenery around us. Even under the unfavorable circumstances, I managed to notice that it was pretty spectacular. The vegetation was tough and low and windswept, gray-green in color, with few real trees. All around us, steep mountains rose up into the low-hanging clouds. I had to keep reminding myself that we weren't more than a couple of thousand feet above sea level. The place had that high-country feel that you get in the Rockies above ten thousand feet.
We reached our vantage point in time to witness Madame Ling, her associate, and her chauffeur being invited to climb into the cab of a big truck-excuse me, lorry- that had just stopped, or been stopped, at the scene of the accident. The chauffeur held a stained handkerchief to the side of his face; the others seemed unhurt. At the distance, I couldn't make out their features clearly, but I could see that Madame Ling was smaller than I'd expected-I guess I'd visualized a tall, slinky, Oriental menace. Instead I saw a slight little black-haired woman dressed in smart Occidental clothes, including a mink coat that would have bought a lot of oil for the lamps of China. The cab door slammed and the big truck started up and took them away toward the east.
I said, "They'll probably have him drop them off back in Inverness. I don't think it's any use trying to tail them. They'll be watching for that. How old is Madame Ling?"
Vadya shrugged. "Those smooth-faced yellow bitches have no age, darling. She's over twelve and under eighty. Why, does she attract you?"
"Yeah, like a snake," I said. "I don't like small, subtle women. Big obvious ones are much nicer." Vadya made a face at me, and I grinned and said, "I guess it's safe to go down there now. They aren't likely to double back in that rig. Even if they held a gun on the driver, he couldn't get it turned around on this road."
A bunch of shaggy, black-faced sheep scattered warily as we scrambled down the slope. Reaching the Mercedes, I was surprised at the amount of damage my.38 had done to the window and windshield until I realized that somebody in the Ling party had carefully obliterated all recognizable bulletholes with a rock, to avoid a lot of awkward explanations. On the right side, which had hit the
bank, there was a shattered headlight, a bent wheel and front suspension, and some scraped and dented body work. In a way, it was too bad. It was a handsome car.
There was nothing significant inside, just the usual meticulous Mercedes trimmings and upholstery. The keys had been left in the ignition. This caused me a little worry, lest Madame Ling had anticipated our return and set a boobytrap or two, but nothing blew when I took the keys, when I inserted the proper one in the trunk lock, or when I raised the lid. Except for the spare tire and tools, there was nothing in the trunk.
I drew a long breath. I guess I had actually hoped to find something, or somebody. Well, at least it wasn't totally bad news, like a dead body. I straightened up slowly and looked at Vadya.
"So much for your bright idea," I said. "No blood, no bobby pins, no blonde hairs. Two will get you twenty nobody's been carried anywhere in that trunk, dead or alive."
Vadya moved her shoulders easily under the leather jacket, beaded with fine rain. "It seemed like a logical possibility, darling."
"Uhuh, logical," I said. I took the keys from the trunk and tossed them to her. "Put those back in the ignition, will you, doll?"
As she turned away, I took a small metallic object from my pocket and stuck it onto the metal under the lip of the trunk, before I slammed the lid. Colonel Stark might be a little surprised to find his magnetic beeper attached to the wrong car, but I hoped he'd take the hint, when his homing devices led him here, and check up on the damaged sedan and its owner. With his resources, he'd have a greater possibility of getting something that way than we would, but I wasn't optimistic about his chances. Madame Ling would undoubtedly cover her tracks well.
Still, it left somebody with a clue of sorts to follow, if the two of us should fail. I walked forward and found Vadya leaning far into the car to examine the glove compartment.
"Now, that's a hell of an inviting position for a lady to assume," I said. "Find anything?"
She shook her head, backing out and turning to face me. She looked at me rather sharply, and glanced back towards the closed trunk as if suspecting that she might have missed something, but I saw no reason to tell her what I'd done. Her yearning for international cooperation probably wasn't strong enough to include the British. In fact, I rather doubted it was strong enough to include me, in any permanent way.
That doubt had grown stronger since I'd discovered that the Mercedes trunk had been empty. I mean, it had contained no small blonde girls, living or dead, but it had contained no luggage, either, and none had been transferred to the truck that had taken the Ling party away. And a smart-looking woman like Madame Ling would hardly have visited London without at least one well-filled suitcase.
The implication was that she had not just come up from the south ahead of us as Vadya had been so careful to suggest; instead she'd come driving to intercept us from somewhere right here in Scotland, close enough that she'd seen no need to bring even an overnight bag. Madame Ling might not have been in London, kidnapping people, for months. After all, the only one who positively claimed to have identified her there was Vadya…
chapter FOURTEEN
It was Vadya who suggested that we stop for the night, pointing out that we'd hardly be in shape to cope with any serious problems if we didn't get some rest soon. I didn't believe her reasons, but I didn't argue with her suggestion. The place we picked, although it called itself a hotel, was actually a kind of slant-roofed, two-story mountain lodge, located well off the road in a hollow next to a wide, shallow, rocky, fast-running stream. It seemed to be a dual-purpose hostelry, catering to fishermen in summer and skiers in winter. Several trees grew in the hollow, giving the place a sheltered look by contrast with the bleak surrounding moors and mountains.
There were about a dozen cars in the parking area. Numbers of the black-faced Scottish sheep grazed around the hotel. They were just about the wooliest beasts I'd ever seen, like ambulating haystacks. The nearest ones paused to watch us thoughtfully as we parked and went inside, where a man in tweeds rented us a second-floor room for the night and told us that the bathroom was at the end of the hall, that dinner was already being served, and that we'd get breakfast at seven-thirty in the morning. Here, as elsewhere in Britain, breakfast was included in the price of the room.
I spotted a phone booth at the foot of the stairs and ducked back down to it while Vadya was making use of the facilities down the hall. I had no trouble getting through to our London relay, but when I identified myself in code he gave me the flat wrong-number routine that means get the hell off the line before you can be traced and don't call again.
I hung up and went slowly back upstairs, frowning. In a way it wasn't an unexpected development. Colonel Stark had sounded like just the kind of stuffed shirt who'd lodge a protest through channels against my activities- real and imagined-even while he was having a tracking device planted in my car. I could guess that Mac didn't want to talk with me because, in the name of Anglo-American friendship, he'd been instructed by higher authority to do something he really didn't want to do, namely order me to look up our British compadres hat in hand and offer them my humble services even if it meant letting them have our Dr. McRow for a pet.
It's pretty standard treatment for a tricky official situation. After all, undercover communications are notoriously unreliable, and you can't recall a man you can't reach. I wasn't really surprised at the medicine, it was the way it had been administered that disturbed me. In my previous message I had asked certain questions. Even if our London man considered his lines unsafe, he could easily have given me a coded hint of where and when I could pick up the information I'd requested. The unqualified cutoff, with no alternative contact suggested, meant that there were no answers available and none expected. I was on my own.
When I re-entered our room, Vadya was standing in front of the dresser working at her hair and making dissatisfied faces at her reflection in the mirror. She glanced at me over her shoulder.
"Where did you go?"
I asked, "Do you want a lie or the truth?"
"Oh, a lie, of course. Lies are always more amusing than the truth. Tell me you went down to lock the car and never even considered using the telephone."
I grinned. She made a final effort toward perfection, grimaced, threw the comb aside, came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders. I was glad to see that she was back in her high-heeled pumps. As far as I'm concerned, women in sneakers can stay on the tennis court where they belong. She looked pretty good for having spent almost twenty-four hours in her clothes. Somehow she'd got most of the travel creases Out of the black linen dress, and while the black lace stockings had hit a couple of snags during the day's adventures, the figured stuff apparently didn't run like ordinary nylon, which made it ideal for a lady in our line of work: dark, durable, and sexy-looking. Hose-wise, what undercover woman could ask for more?
With her hands on my shoulders, she looked soulfully into my eyes and said, "I am disappointed in you, darling. I am hurt. Here we are, alone again after two long empty years, but you do not relax for a moment. You plot and plan and sneak off to telephone. Can we not, just for tonight, forget that we are agents and think only of each other and our love?"
I made an admiring sound. "Vadya, you're great. You do that beautifully."
She laughed. "I should. I've had lots of practice. But I'll do it even better after I have had something to eat and drink. Come on, I am absolutely starving."
There's a rumor, started by the French I believe, to the effect that the British can't cook. Being a meat-and-potatoes man from way back, I don't go along with this libel. The liquor laws on the island are incomprehensible, and even when you can legally get a martini it's atrocious, but the food has always seemed more than adequate to my simple taste. I may be slightly prejudiced by the fact that I'm a sucker for the white tablecloths and good service that practically always go with it, even in the remote Scottish Highlands.
On course, I was being skillfully seduced all through
dinner, and that always improves a meal. This was apparently the real reason why Vadya'd had us stop for the night, and she was working at it hard and expertly. She continued to play variations of the basic theme she'd stated up in the room: we were two old pros, doomed by fate to fight on opposite sides, who'd once managed to snatch a moment of rapture nevertheless, and might find another if only we could keep the world and its conspiracies at bay, just for tonight. She was really very good. She almost had me believing that of all the men she'd met in the business, I was the one she always remembered, ever since that night in Tucson.
We practically closed up the dining room, which didn't make it very late, only about nine. There was still pale daylight at the windows when we went up the stairs. As far north as we were, in summer, we could expect only a few hours of real darkness. Back in our room again, I switched on the light, and then went across to pull the heavy curtains at the windows. They seemed to shut out not only the Scottish twilight, but all the world outside.
Vadya was still standing by the door. When I turned back to face her, she made a small adjustment to the fragile-looking scarf she was again wearing about her shoulders-the scarf with which she had killed a man- but she did not move otherwise. I walked across the room and took her in my arms and kissed her. It took a while to do a thorough job. At last she freed herself with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"Ah, that is better," she murmured. "That is much better. I thought you were going to make me do all the work, darling." She looked down, and loosened the scarf, and laid it aside. "Now you can take my dress off. Be careful. It is the only dress I have."
"Sure." I unzipped her and stripped her of one layer of clothing, leaving her clad in a black nylon slip. I performed the operation with great delicacy, as if I were skinning a mink and wanted to be sure to preserve the valuable pelt. I hung the dress carefully in the wardrobe and went back to her. "Yes, ma'am," I said. "One dress removed, intact."
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