by Dan Latus
Magda broke in. ‘I think they’re coming, Jake!’
He looked round. She pointed along the road towards Penina. He saw she was right. A group of men moving fast were heading this way. No doubt they had seen or heard something.
It’s a pity, he thought with a grimace. No time for more questions.
‘Well,’ he said, pulling out the Glock. ‘I hope your mates are more sympathetic than me.’
‘There’s no need for that!’ the man protested.
‘Oh yes, there is!’
The man closed his eyes. Jake moved the gun aside and fired at the nearside front tyre. Then he quickly went around the vehicle, shooting out the other three tyres. The truck lurched as it settled on its rims.
He threw himself back in the Honda and got them moving. ‘Nothing to say?’ he asked, glancing sideways at Magda.
She shrugged. ‘Now they can’t follow us, I suppose.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But I would have shot the man, as well.’
Jake chuckled. ‘His mates might do that themselves! He’s not going to be much use to them with two broken legs.’
‘That is true.’ She paused and then said, ‘So where do we go now, Jake?’
‘How about your country? It should be a damn sight safer than here.’
Chapter 24
Five miles down the road he pulled the car off onto a forestry track, drove a few yards until they were out of sight round a bend and then stopped. Magda looked at him.
‘I want to check the car. See if someone has fixed a tracker on us.’
‘Because they knew where we were, where to come for us?’
He nodded. ‘Not knowing how they managed that is doing my bloody head in!’
He got out and took stock. He looked under the hood, and in the back of the vehicle. Then he ran his fingers along the undersides of the car, and still found nothing that shouldn’t be there. He lay on his back, squirmed his way right under the car. Same thing. Nothing. Nothing he could see, anyway.
Shaking his head, he got back into the driver’s seat. Then he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and sat frowning, thinking about it.
‘Doesn’t mean there’s nothing there, though,’ he said at last, reaching for the ignition key.
They got going again. They drove back into São Brás, where Jake visited a little shop he knew that sold everything there was to do with computers, as well as gizmos for defeating speed traps. Stuff like that. Said what he wanted, and came away with a gadget that was said to be so powerful there wasn’t a hope in hell of it not detecting something – if something was there.
The gadget found nothing.
‘Right,’ he said, a bit happier. ‘It’s not the car. They must have had some other way of keeping tabs on us.’
‘Perhaps someone told them?’
He grimaced. He didn’t even want to think about that possibility. There were only two people in the world he could think of who were in a position to be able to do anything like that: himself and Magda. Unless he had been talking in his sleep, and the fairies had recorded him doing it, it was unthinkable.
There was another possibility, though, a very obvious one once the car had been cleared of blame.
‘It has to be our phones,’ he said grimly. ‘We’ll dump them.’
He took out his phone and stripped out the sim card. Then he paused a moment, studying the body of the phone. ‘This had better go, as well.’
He walked over to a big commercial rubbish container, lifted the lid and dropped the phone inside.
‘Where’s yours?’ he asked Magda when he returned.
‘I don’t have it. It’s in my apartment.’
‘OK. Now let’s go! Sadly, we must leave this little town, where until a day or two ago we were so very happy.’
‘Yes indeed,’ Magda said, wearing a solemn expression, as they got back in the Honda. ‘Burn some rubber, Jake!’ she added in a surprisingly good best gangster moll accent.
Jake looked at her with surprise. Then he laughed and got them moving again.
They sped up the EN2, up into the barrocal, and on into the caldeira, the mountains, beyond. They were headed for the Alentejo, and the wide open spaces of interior, rural Portugal, where life supposedly stood still. Jake hoped the guide books were right about that.
He drove all day and through the night after they left São Brás, and early the next morning they reached France. Nothing more had happened in the meantime. They had put a lot of miles behind them without any hint of a pursuit. He had gradually relaxed. Maybe they were in the clear now.
‘You need to rest,’ Magda suggested. ‘Let me drive. You try to get some sleep in the back seat.’
He thought about it, and knew she was right. Magda didn’t say an awful lot, but when she did speak he was starting to think it was worth listening.
‘The next service area,’ he said. ‘I’ll pull in, and we can swap over.’
She nodded. ‘Sleep,’ she said, ‘and then we will talk some more about what has been happening.’
That, too, was a good suggestion. If she was to be with him, she needed to know more about where they stood and what they faced.
If she was to be with him? He still wasn’t entirely sure about that. Maybe it would be better to get her home, to her own country, and leave her there. Safer for her, and less complicated for him.
It would make sense. After all, how could she be with him, given what he was contemplating? She really had no idea what she would be letting herself in for. Nor did he, come to that. Not really. All he knew was that he was going to be doing a lot of travelling, and probably experiencing a lot more of what they had been through in the past couple of days.
So. Give her up? Let her go?
He would think about it some more, he decided. No need to say anything right now.
They stopped and changed seats. Once he was satisfied that Magda knew how to handle the Honda, Jake settled on the back seat as best he could to try to snatch some sleep. Exhausted though he was, though, sleep didn’t come easily, or quickly. As soon as he laid down and pulled a rug over his head to shut out the light, his mind went into overdrive. He retraced events since his return to the villa after meeting Bob in Faro. Then he did it all over again. He couldn’t help it.
He knew he needed to get far away from all that, if only for a short time. He needed to recover, do some thinking and work out what he was going to do from now on. Where they were heading now was somewhere completely different, and hopefully might make that possible.
And Magda? Was that what she needed, too? Well, he thought wearily, Magda was pretty much an enigma. Who could say what she really thought and felt about anything – apart from him, seemingly. She had made that pretty clear. He was beginning to realize how little he knew about her otherwise, but that didn’t stop him feeling glad she was with him – for now, at least.
He certainly wasn’t going to complain about Magda being along for the ride. She had done well by him. There wasn’t a single complaint he could make. It was just that he wasn’t sure he wanted to encumber himself with responsibility for another human being. Nor did he want any harm to come to her, either.
He did finally drift off to sleep. When he woke up, Magda said they had done more than 500 kilometres while he slept. Now they were approaching Lyon. He sat up with a jolt.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I am fine, thank you. But you need to drive again, I think. And we need more diesel.’
He nodded. ‘Pull in at the next service station. We’ll get something to eat and drink while we’re there.’
They bought baguettes and coffee, strong coffee, and sat in the little dining area with them, next to the shelves of chocolate bars and magazines.
The forecourt of the filling station was busy. Cars arriving and leaving every few seconds from the twenty or so pumps. The highway beyond was a constant stream of traffic. High-powered cars sweeping past in the fast lane, conv
oys of trucks in the slow lane, and the middle lane thronged with vans, saloons and coaches. Europe on the move, non-stop.
‘What still puzzles me,’ Jake said with a sigh, ‘is how the hell they got on to us so fast. Was it through our phones? I certainly hope so, but if it was by some other means we’ll still be at risk. However they did it,’ he added, ‘they certainly knew. They knew exactly.’
‘Yes.’ Magda nodded. ‘The old lady told us that. She heard them talking in a café in the town.’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘We’ll just have to hope it was the phones that gave us away, but let’s take nothing for granted. We’ll have to stay vigilant, just in case.’
He knew they had been lucky, very lucky. They probably wouldn’t have managed to escape without the help of the old couple.
‘One day we must go back there, and thank them both properly,’ he suggested.
‘Perhaps.’
That didn’t sound like much of a commitment, Jake thought with a little smile. So perhaps she wasn’t so sentimental, after all. In a way, it was reassuring. They needed to focus on themselves, and the now, if they were to get away with this. Let the distant future look after itself.
‘At least we are free of Fogarty for now,’ he added.
‘Perhaps,’ Magda said again.
A realist, as well! He was glad of that, too.
‘How long is it since you left home?’ he asked with a yawn. ‘When, and why, did you leave, for that matter?’
She chuckled. ‘It would take all day to tell you, and we don’t have the time. Perhaps we should go now?’
Practical, too, Jake thought, as he got up. I’m learning more about her every minute.
Magda’s estimate of the travel time needed was spot on. It took three days to reach her country. They scarcely stopped on the way, Jake eager to put miles behind him, and intent on leaving no electronic trail as they went. They slept in the car, when they took time out to sleep, and he paid for the diesel and everything else they needed with cash.
The second day, they crossed France and Belgium, and drove a long way across Germany. Then they stopped for the night in a rest area on the autobahn near Chemnitz. The next morning, early, they by-passed Dresden and headed down to the valley of the Elbe.
‘To us Czechs,’ Magda said, ‘it is the Labe, the River Labe. Elbe is the German name.’
‘Is it? I didn’t know that.’
‘There is probably much that you don’t know about my country,’ Magda pointed out with a smile. ‘Unless you did your spying there?’
He shook his head. ‘No. All that was done in the Middle East – a long time ago.’
‘Perhaps.’
That word again! He glanced at her and she laughed. He shook his head ruefully. She was just winding him up.
They followed the road along the riverside, passing between rows of picturesque timber cottages and going through several villages and small towns. Half an hour later, they crossed the border and entered the Czech Republic without any fuss at all. Schengen, Jake thought with relief. What a blessing the agreement was still in use, in this part of the continent at least.
With Magda directing him, he turned off the main road into a spectacularly picturesque Czech village nestling in a deep and incredibly narrow canyon. The road and a small river flowing through the canyon left little space for anything else, but somehow restaurants, hotels and shops had been carved out of and built into the sandstone walls.
‘Hřensko. German tourists like it here,’ Magda said with a disdainful sniff, as they passed market stalls selling shiploads of beer and shedloads of garden gnomes for those visitors with an itch to make their day out seem worthwhile.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Jake said, looking around with interest. Then he smiled. ‘But you don’t?’
She just shrugged.
They drove the length of the village and then climbed up into dense forest, the big trees coming to the very edge of the road on both sides of the narrow strip of tarmac.
‘You would have to like trees – really like them a lot – to live here,’ Jake pointed out after a few minutes.
‘Oh, yes!’ Magda said with chuckle. ‘It is a fairytale forest, I think.’
They drove for another twenty minutes or so before they emerged into more open country. Still plenty of trees, but here there were open fields, too.
A few miles further on, as they approached a small huddle of buildings at the foot of a hill, Magda announced, ‘We are here!’
‘Oh?’ Jake stared ahead with interest. ‘Where’s here?’
‘Vysoká Lípa,’ she said confidently.
Chapter 25
Vysoká Lípa was a hamlet with a name that literally meant “High Lime Tree”, perhaps in recognition of the wonderful old tree in front of the ancient hotel, or perhaps not. It was a settlement, a wide scatter of houses, without a true centre, but the hotel itself was an adequate substitute. It stood on a bend at the highest point the road passing through Vysoká Lípa reached, overlooking everything else. Nearby was the bus stop and the tourist information panels, as well as boards with information for local residents.
A couple of dozen traditional timber houses straggled down the steep road from the hotel, and an equal number were set well back behind them. At the bottom of the hill were two restaurants, largely targeting German visitors from over the nearby border. Some of the houses in the village were guesthouses, or at least had rooms to let. Many others seemed to be weekend retreats, or holiday homes, for their owners.
‘Do they get a lot of tourists here?’ Jake asked.
Magda nodded. ‘This area is called Czech Switzerland. So, yes, they do. Most of them come from Dresden and other towns in Lower Saxony.’
The cottage to which Magda took him was set well back from the road, and up against a huge, overhanging sandstone outcrop perhaps 200 feet high. Like most of the other houses in the area, it was a black, timber building, a Czech variant on a log cabin, with white grouting filling the gaps between the timbers and around the window frames. It was one of a dozen or so set along a cinder track.
The back of the cottage was actually built against the rock face, with no space at all between building and rock. From the front and the sides, though, there were sweeping views down across meadows grazed by horses and sheep, all the way to the edge of the forest a mile or two distant. Jake parked in a small bay beside the cottage and they got out to stretch and admire the view.
‘Stunning,’ Jake said, impressed. ‘You can see forever from up here.’
‘It was my grandmother’s cottage. As a child, I always looked forward to visiting Babička,’ Magda said wistfully. ‘It is so beautiful here, especially compared to a tenth-floor flat in the city.’
‘Which city was that?’
‘Prague,’ she said with a sigh.
He nodded. So that was where she was from. He had wondered often enough.
‘Babička?’
‘Grandmother.’
‘Ah!’
They stood in silence for a few moments.
‘Different to the Algarve, isn’t it?’ Jake said with a smile.
She just nodded, not bothering to confirm the obvious.
The verdant green was overwhelming. In the Algarve now there was bare earth, rock and sand, and dead looking plants and trees. Here, there were miles of luxuriant, flowing grassland, and the trees were tall and a bright green colour that simply didn’t exist in regions with long, hot, rain-free summers.
‘It is good growing country, I think,’ Magda said. ‘For the farmers and the foresters.’
That was self-evidently true.
‘Let’s hope it’s also safe,’ Jake said, turning to look at the house.
They spent what was in many ways an idyllic first week there in Vysoká Lípa. It was like being on holiday. They had outrun Fogarty, Bob and anyone else who might be on their trail – the whole damned lot of them! They had escaped unharmed, and were able now to relax and try to recover
from their ordeal and flight. There wasn’t anyone in the whole world with a clue as to where they were. They were free. Jake liked the feeling that gave him. He liked it a lot.
So they walked in the forest and climbed some low hills covered in pine and beech, and at the end of their walks, there was always a little place where they could buy a cold beer. This was gentle, peaceful country with only a scatter of people living in it permanently, although the weekends always saw an influx of visitors, Germans in the main, but some Czechs, too. No Portuguese, though, Jake pointed out with a smile. And no Brits, thank God!
But seeing a group of German visitors enjoying themselves in a restaurant one evening got Jake thinking about the future. For how much longer would it be possible to cross national borders so easily? Perhaps the journey he and Magda had just made from the Algarve wouldn’t be so straightforward before much longer.
Trouble had been brewing on European borders for a year or two. Several million refugees and migrants had arrived, or were on their way, from the Middle East and North Africa, and there was no sign of an end to it. Mostly the influx headed for Germany, following Chancellor Merkel’s kindly but perhaps misguided offer to accommodate all who wanted to come. But Greece was in turmoil with them. And Turkey had several million “guests” living in tents.
The Balkan states – Macedonia, Slovenia and so on – as well as Austria and Hungary, had closed their borders at least for a while. Fences were going up. At times, even the French-Belgian border had been closed. What did it all mean? The Schengen agreement, which had opened up the European continent to free travel, was in trouble. That was one thing it meant. It was entirely possible that the twenty year EU experiment of living without internal borders was coming to an end.
Then there was the UK, which wasn’t part of Schengen anyway, and now had opted to leave the EU. Jake wondered what it all meant for Magda and himself. They were OK here, certainly at the moment, but how easy was it going to be for them to move and try to do what they had spoken of doing? Perhaps they would find themselves trapped here?
He broached the subject over an evening meal Magda had prepared. A straightforward question seemed a good place to start.
