by Ross Thomas
“It’ll never get to Africa,” he said. “He’ll sell it in London or Rotterdam. He’s fooled you, St. Ives. He hasn’t fooled me. He’ll sell it.”
“Would you sell it in Rotterdam or London?” I asked Mbwato.
“How much, Mr. Spencer?” Mbwato said softly. “How much do you think it would bring—in Rotterdam, say?”
“How much do you want?” Spencer said in a whisper, his thin tongue working at his lips again. Mbwato stared back at him, holding the shield chest high, his face for once impassive. “How much?” Spencer said again, hurling the words into the silence. “How much do you want?” This time it was a scream, one that keened out on the last word.
Mbwato looked at him without expression. Then he smiled, that gleaming, brighten-the-corner-where-you-are smile of his, and turned toward the door. I followed him through it and down the hall.
Halfway to the green copper doors that were held open by the man with the broken nose, Spencer called after us. It was more of a scream than a call. “How much, Mbwato? How much do you want?”
We didn’t hesitate or stop. We went through the door and down the three steps and across the crushed rock to the car. Mbwato put the shield in the rear, leaning it against the back seat. I had the car started by the time he got in next to me. “By the way,” he said, “what time is it?”
I didn’t look at my watch. I put the car into drive and pressed down on the accelerator. The rear wheels churned up some of the crushed rock. “It’s getaway time,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I KEPT THE FORD at twenty miles per hour on the way to the gate. We went past the blue jeep and its guard only glanced at us.
“Do you think he’ll give up so easily?” Mbwato said.
“Spencer? I don’t know.”
“At the gate perhaps,” he said.
“What about the gate?”
“They could try to stop us there.”
“He could have stopped us in the house. He’s got enough help around.”
“No,” Mbwato said. “Not in his home. It would be too complicated. I think the gate and if so, one must be prepared.” He took a key from his pocket and fitted it to the lock of his large attaché case. He opened it and I glanced at its contents.
“What in the hell is that?”
“Part of the Virginia contingency plan,” he said. “A sub-machine gun. A Carl Gustaf M45 to be exact, manufactured in Sweden.” He busily snapped things together. “Fires a 9-millimeter parabellum round, six hundred a minute. Thirty-six in the magazine,” he said, clicking one into the breech or whatever it was. I’m sure Mbwato knew.
With its U-shaped metal stock folded over its right side, the Carl Gustaf M45 had a wicked look about it. “Only weighs a little over nine pounds,” Mbwato said, handling the weapon as though it were an extension of his right arm.
“You get caught with a sub-machine gun in this country and you get thirty years,” I said.
“Really? I have one for you.”
“I don’t know anything about them,” I said.
“Oh, it’s not a sub-machine gun. It’s an automatic. Here.”
I had to take my right hand off the wheel to accept his present. It was a surprisingly light automatic. I glanced at it and saw the name Colt engraved on its slide.
“Quite a good piece,” Mbwato said. “It’s the Colt .45 Commander model with the alloy frame. Weighs just 26 ounces. Wonderful stopping power.”
“I don’t quite know how to thank you,” I said, and put the automatic on the seat beside me.
“Just a precaution.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Of course.”
The two guards at the exit to the plantation must have seen us coming because the gate opened as we approached and the one who earlier had examined our identification was outside the stone hut waving us through. Mbwato smiled at him as we went past; the guard didn’t smile back. I pressed the accelerator down and the Ford jumped up to sixty miles an hour which was really too fast for that road.
“Okay,” I said, “where to?”
“When you get to Highway 29 and 211 turn left. What time is it now?”
I looked at my watch. “Eight-twenty.”
“It’s growing dark.”
“Does that fit in with your getaway plan?”
“Perfectly,” he said.
“That’s good, because we’re going to need it.”
“Why?”
“We’ve got two cars behind us.”
“They’re following?”
“That’s right.”
“My word. Can you lose them?”
“No,” I said. “I’d only lose myself.”
Mbwato turned around in the seat. “There seem to be two in each car and they’re wearing hats very much like the guards at Spencer’s. He must have changed his mind.”
“He must have.”
“Is this a fast car?”
“Fairly so.”
“Then I think we should go as fast as possible.”
“That’s what I’m doing. It might help if you told me where we’re going.”
“Bull Run,” Mbwato said, adding dreamily, “‘Look! There stands Jackson like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians.’ General Barnard Elliott Bee said that, you know; gave Jackson his nickname.”
“At Bull Run,” I said.
“Manassas really. The first battle of Manassas to be exact. Jackson was an extremely dour man, most reserved.”
“And that’s where we’re going? To Manassas?”
“Not to the town, to the battlefield.”
“It was a big battle,” I said. “What particular spot do you have in mind?”
“Henry Hill.”
“What’s on Henry Hill?”
“It’s where Jackson held. In point of fact, there’s a statue of him there now. Might have been the turn of the battle really. McDowell’s union troops were hopeless, raw recruits mostly. Had McDowell kept the plateau, he might have won. There’s been some debate about that. But it was a great victory for the South. Their first. In fact, it was the first battle of the war.”
“It’s not that I don’t like your lecture, Colonel, but just what are we going to do when we get to Henry Hill? You know, where Jackson was first called Stonewall.”
Mbwato turned in his seat to look out the rear window. “They seem to be gaining, don’t they?”
“I was watching during your lecture.”
“At Henry Hill we rendezvous with Captain Ulado.”
“I take it you chose the spot.”
“Yes. It’s only about twelve air miles from Dulles International.”
“How far by road?”
“We don’t have to worry about that, Mr. St. Ives. Captain Ulado is meeting us with a helicopter.”
I nodded, keeping my surprise to myself, and glanced in the rear-view mirror. The two cars behind us were maintaining their distance. The closer one was approximately a hundred feet behind the Ford. At the junction of Highway 29 and 211 I barely paused and then skidded the car into a left turn. I pressed the gas pedal down hard and when I next looked at the speedometer the needle was bounding off ninety-five.
“This is as fast as it’ll go,” I shouted at Mbwato above the engine and wind noise. He nodded, half turned in the front seat, the muzzle of the sub-machine gun resting on the seat’s back.
Traffic was light and it got even lighter when most of the cars and trucks veered off to the right to take Interstate 66 rather than the slower 29 and 211. The two pursuing cars remained leeched to our rear, neither closer nor farther away. A mile past the cutoff to 66 they made their move. The lead car, a black monster that I thought to be an Oldsmobile, drew up effortlessly alongside us. The second car, another Oldsmobile, took up a position ten feet to the rear of the Ford’s bumper. I was boxed. The car on the left swerved toward me and I had to hit the shoulder to avoid a sideswipe. I got the Ford back on the road. I didn’t have the speed to move ahead. I couldn’t slam
on the brakes, so I decided to go after the car on the left, but he dropped back too quickly for me to make my move.
“Don’t try it again,” Mbwato yelled. “Just wait for him to draw alongside.”
He clambered over the seat into the rear, taking the sub-machine gun with him. The lead Oldsmobile pulled up alongside me again and the machine gun went off in my ear.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
“Shooting at him. I believe I got the bugger.”
I looked in my rear-view mirror. Both cars had dropped back, but not much. The man next to the driver in the lead car was talking over a telephone, probably to the car back of him about how they could head us off at the pass.
“You didn’t hit anything,” I yelled at Mbwato.
“What time is it?” he screamed in my ear. He had to scream because the sub-machine gun had made both my ears ring. I looked at my watch. “Eight-forty.”
“Can’t you go any faster?”
“No. How far?” I yelled.
“Five minutes.”
I concentrated on my driving. Mbwato crawled back into the front seat and produced his map which he studied by the light of the open glove compartment. It was growing dark, not quite dusk yet. I decided that the attempt to wreck us made sense. At least to Spencer. When a car goes out of control at ninety-five, few of its passengers walk away. We could be accidentally killed, his guards could retrieve the shield, even if it were somewhat damaged, and Spencer could go drilling for oil in Komporeen. A car wreck would be simple and safer than a bullet in his well-appointed house. No messy bodies to dispose of. No one to wonder what happened to that itinerant go-between and the spade colonel with the funny name. They just died in a car wreck.
“That stone house ahead,” Mbwato yelled. “Take a right.”
I took a right, barely missing a stone pillar as the car slewed on its mushy springs. An asphalt road led up a hill. “Now where?”
Mbwato studied his map. “Next left; take the next left,” he said.
I took the next left onto an even smaller road, the tires shuddering and squealing in protest. I glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was now only one car following.
The road ended abruptly near a white frame house. “Wrong road,” Mbwato muttered. “Wrong goddamned road. Not your fault though. Mine. Never could read a map.”
The black Oldsmobile had stopped fifty feet behind us, its two occupants wary of Mbwato’s sub-machine gun. “What do we do now?” I said. “Make St. Ives’ last stand?”
“Run for it,” Mbwato said, jerking his door open.
“Where?”
“Up there,” he said, pointing to a hill where I could see the outline of a statue of a man on a horse. “Henry Hill.”
It was three hundred yards away, all uphill. Mbwato opened the rear door and snatched out the shield. He slipped it over his left forearm and waved the sub-machine gun at me. “Make a run for it.”
There was a shot and the sound indicated that it came from near the parked Oldsmobile. The Ford’s rear window cob-webbed around a hole. I snatched up the automatic from the seat and ran around the car. Mbwato stood at the edge of the road and fired two bursts at the Oldsmobile. There was an answering shot. And then another.
“Let’s go,” he said, and started running up gently sloping Henry Hill which boasted not a rock, not a tree, not a bush. I ran after him. I had no place else to go. We were a third of the way up the hill when I heard the helicopter. It came in low, barely skirted a forest of trees to the left and settled gently to the ground near the statue of what I assumed to be a horse and General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who once had stood like a stone wall and later was carried across a river and into some trees to die at thirty-nine.
There were two more shots. They came from behind us. Mbwato stopped and turned. He held the sixty-eight-pound shield out at his left side and fired the machine gun from his right hip. A long burst. Then a short one. I turned to see a man in a gray uniform fall to his knees and then sprawl forward on the grass. The second man in a gray uniform flopped to his belly. He carried a rifle and he seemed to be taking careful aim from the prone position. He fired once; then twice. Mbwato’s machine gun let off a burst and I turned. He stood there for a moment, a big, black man in a blue silk jacket, an African brass shield on one arm, a Swedish sub-machine gun cradled in the other. He stood there and lifted his face up to the sky and roared a long terrible cry. Then he fell backward onto the grass that sloped gently up to the top of Henry Hill where the helicopter and Stonewall Jackson waited for the black colonel who had a sneaking sympathy for the Confederacy.
I turned to face the man with the rifle. He was up on one knee and I lifted the automatic and squeezed the trigger twice, then three times, then four. It was luck. You shouldn’t hit anything at that distance with an automatic, but the third or the fourth bullet caught him and he dropped the rifle and clutched his stomach and then bent slowly forward to the ground.
I ran to Mbwato who lay face up on the grass. There were two small red stains, about the size of dimes, on his white shirt, just to the right of its buttons. He breathed harshly and his breath bubbled in his throat.
“Take it,” he said.
“Take what?” I said.
“The shield, you fool.”
“How bad?” I said. “How bad is it?”
“The shield, damn it,” he said, and lifted it up, all sixty-eight pounds of it, with his left arm. I tugged it off and put it on the grass.
“Take it to Ulado,” he said. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Okay,” I said.
He looked at me with those curiously gentle dark eyes, the man they called “The Rope,” and then he smiled that come-to-glory smile. “You have been, Mr. St. Ives, most gracious,” he said, and then he died.
I knelt there in the grass beside him just staring, and then there was a shout from the helicopter. I stuffed the automatic into my coat pocket, picked up the shield with both hands, and started toward the helicopter. I couldn’t see anything. The shield was in front of my eyes. I heard a shot. And then there was another and something twanged off the shield, knocking me backward. I dropped the shield. Two men in gray were coming down the hill from the right. Both held rifles and both of them were aimed at me. I pulled the automatic out of my pocket and fired blindly, but the two men continued to advance slowly, one careful pace at a time. They were still fifty feet away when I threw the automatic at them and bent down for the shield. As I straightened, one of them put his rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim. There was a sudden burst of fire from the helicopter and both of the gray-clad men dropped to the grass. I couldn’t tell whether they were hit. I didn’t care. I ran toward the helicopter. It wasn’t much of a run, not carrying sixty-eight pounds of brass uphill. A child could have caught me, a toddler. It was almost dark now and I guided myself by the sound of the helicopter and the light in its plastic-domed nose.
Hands reached out and took the shield from me. “Inside, Mr. St. Ives,” a voice said, and I recognized it as belonging to Mr. Ulado, who lifted the shield into the rear of the four-place machine. When it was stowed away he picked up a sub-machine gun that was the twin of the one that Mbwato had had and in a casual, practiced way loosed another burst at the two men with rifles.
“They must have circled around,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Get in,” Ulado said. “Where’s Mr. Mbwato?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Halfway up Henry Hill.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Get in.”
I climbed into the back. Ulado got in the seat next to the pilot, a slim young Negro who wore a green velour shirt and a coconut straw hat with a plain black band. “Dulles,” Ulado barked at him, and the young Negro nodded and shot the helicopter up.
Ulado turned around in his seat to face me. “The pilot,” he yelled. “Trained in Vietnam.” I nodded and sank back in the hard
canvas seat. It was a short hop, not more than ten minutes, if that. The pilot talked over his radio to the tower and set the copter down not far from the main terminal. Ulado got out and I crawled after him. He reached into the cockpit of the machine and wrestled the shield out.
“Mbwato said you’d know what to do with it,” I said.
Captain Ulado nodded gravely. “I do, Mr. St. Ives. May I thank you for all your help. We say good-by here. I have a plane standing by on the runway.” He put the shield down so that it rested against his left leg and held out his right hand. I shook it.
“You’ll never know how much we appreciate your efforts,” he said, picked up the shield, turned, and walked off into the dark. I started to call after him, to tell him that he’d forgotten his sub-machine gun, but perhaps he didn’t need it any more.
I walked toward the terminal, found my way up to the main lobby, and then located someone who could tell me what I wanted to know. “You have a chartered plane leaving here in a few minutes with a friend of mine on board,” I said. “I think it’s a prop job.”
The man in blue uniform flipped through some cards on the counter. “Yes,” he said. “A Constellation. Chartered by a Mr. Mbwato—I think that’s how you pronounce it.” He turned and looked at the clock on the wall behind him. “It should be departing any moment now.”
“Could you tell me its destination?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Rotterdam.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK THE next morning I was lying in a bed in the room at the Madison, staring up at the ceiling, and waiting for someone to come and take me away when the telephone rang. It was a Miss Schulte who said that she worked for Hertz.
“The car that you reported stolen has been found in Silver Spring, Mr. St. Ives. That’s in Maryland. It was undamaged except for the rear window, which apparently has a bullet hole in it.”
“I wonder how that got there?” I said.
She said that she didn’t know but that the insurance would take care of it. Then she asked whether I would like to come down to pay for the rental or would I like her to bill me. I told her to bill me and she said that would be fine.
