by John Glasby
Nothing for several moments, then he caught the brief yellow-orange flare of a match, being struck on the wall and the red glow of a cigarette tip as the silent watcher dragged the smoke down into his lungs. He was being watched, Carradine thought grimly. But by whom? Who else but Volescu and his men knew of his presence in Sofia? Possibly it was one of Volescu’s men, making sure he was not disturbed; all laid on by courtesy of the Bulgarian section of the Secret Service. But a little voice at the back of his mind warned him that this was unlikely to be the case. The chauffeur has said he would be there at precisely ten o’clock. It was unlikely he would come before then.
He waited for ten minutes while the man standing in the shadows smoked his cigarette. Then the other stepped out into the open, gave the front of the hotel a quick look that missed nothing. For several seconds his gaze seemed to dwell on Carradine’s window and he had the strange feeling that the other had X-ray eyes which could probe right through the thick curtains in front of him, could see him standing there looking down. Then, turning his gaze away, the man walked off along the narrow street, feet making no sound on the cobbles, his shoulders hunched forward a little, his soft hat pulled well down over his face, hiding his features completely.
Carradine dawdled in his room for over an hour, then he took out the Luger from its small case, slid the firing mechanism back and forth experimentally for a time, admiring the battered smoothness with which it worked, before clicking the magazine into place beside the butt. Going downstairs, he went into the small dining room, picked himself a table against the wall where he could watch the door, and smoked a cigarette while waiting for the waiter to put in an appearance. If he knew anything about these small Balkan hotels, the service was extremely bad and slow.
He had been there for four minutes, with the cigarette smoked down almost to the end, when one of the doors inside the room opened and a waiter stepped through, gave the tables a perfunctory glance, noticed Carradine sitting there and came forward, a faint look of surprise on his face.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said in full English, evidently recognising Carradine from the previous night. “I did not know that anyone would be down solely for breakfast.” His tone implied that only Englishman were sufficiently mad to want anything to eat this unearthly hour of the morning.
Carradine gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Am I too early? I thought that – ”
“Oh, not at all, sir.” The other dragged out his syllables with a faint leer that made Carradine feel nauseous. “I’ll get you something right away.”
Carradine had time in which to wonder what sort of something he would get before the other returned, but when the meals spread out before him, he was pleasantly surprised. It was then that he realised that the continental European had justice on his side when he claimed that British food was not worth the effort of eating. The cheese was firm yet had a buttery consistency, tasted delicious in the bowl of mixed things and dates held just the right tang to set the muscles at the side of his jaw stinging. He finished with a freshly roasted coffee, then sat back and enjoyed a second cigarette. Carradine had been glad to find that the coffee was black and strong. A quick glance at his watch told him it was almost eight o’clock. The sun had risen but was still hidden behind a bank of hazy cloud low in the east and the light over the city was still grey.
Going back to his room, he checked through everything that Forbes had pressed on him before he had left. How many of these fiendish devices would he have to use before this mission was over? he wondered tensely. Whatever happened, it was essential that he continued to think ahead, to trust no one. This man Anton Volescu. What did he know about him? Virtually nothing but what the Chief told him. Perhaps, of all the men he would meet here, he was the only one he could really trust.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, where he could just look down on to the street whenever he straightened himself up and lifted his head. Now there was nothing for him to do but sit and wait until ten o’clock. Then there would be the long drive east to Kazanluk. He tried to recall his geography of this region. If his memory did not fail him, Kazanluk lay just south of the Balkan Mountains. The towns en route would be Novoselci, Zlatica, Karlovo, Shipka and then Kazanluk.
Punctually at ten o’clock, he was waiting just inside the small foyer of the hotel. The street was empty with no sound of the car. Glancing down at his wristwatch, he eyed the red second sweep hand. Two minutes past ten. Something was wrong. He knew enough of these men to realise that in their business, minutes were of vital importance. He placed his right hand in his pocket and fingered the butt of the Luger. It felt cold and reassuring.
Ten-five. He dropped the butt of his cigarette on to the ground, glanced up at the sound of a car entering the street. Five seconds later, the car turned the corner, came to a stop directly opposite him. The thin-faced chauffeur opened the door from the inside, took his case and dropped it into the back seat, waited until he was seated beside him, then let in the clutch and drove quickly along the street, around the corner and into the main thoroughfare. They swung around a sharp S-bend, headed towards the eastern outskirts of Sofia.
Minutes later, they were out of most of the traffic and ten seconds after cutting over a low bridge, they swung out of the city and the driver put his foot down on the accelerator. The car creaked and groaned, but on the dashboard the needle of the speedometer rose slowly until it touched the ninety mark. His forehead furrowed in thought, Carradine glanced out of the corner of his eye at the man seated beside him. The other seemed relaxed, hands gripping the steering wheel, but there was a tightness about the corners of his mouth, about the set of the jaw and the narrowed eyes.
Was the other stepping on the accelerator to make up for those few lost minutes, determined to be on time at the other end of the journey if not at the beginning? Or had there been trouble back there? Turning his head, he looked behind him through the rear window. Nothing following them. The road behind them was clear for two miles in the bright sunlight that now flooded over the countryside.
He shrugged, turned back, settled himself deeper into his seat. The back of the seat was hard and uncomfortable against his shoulder blades and it occurred to him that he would have a sore posterior before the time they reached their destination. As for the car itself. It had turned out to be something of a surprise to him. Outwardly, it looked like a pre-war model, possibly capable of a good turn of speed in its prime, but now long past that. Only the smooth purring of the engine gave the lie to that; the red needle of the speedometer, now hovering close to the hundred mark. There was probably a very special kind of engine tucked away under the bonnet, he mused, and that red switch on the edge of the dashboard was, in all probability, a supercharger. Trust a man like Volescu to have a car like this.
They had driven for perhaps five kilometres before the driver eased his foot from the accelerator pedal, letting the engine idle, the speedometer needle dropping back to seventy. The car had excellent road-handling properties, in spite of the uneven nature of the road in places, especially on the bends.
“How long before we reach Kazanluk?” Carradine asked without turning his head.
The driver pursed his lips. “Another two hours. The road becomes dangerous a little further east and there are places when we skirt the mountains where we must be careful of landslides.”
“I see.” The other’s tone had been such as not to invite any further questions, but Carradine persisted. “And back there in Sofia. What happened to make you late? I understood that Volescu always believed in absolute punctuality.”
“There was a little difficulty,” said the other harshly. “It was nothing for you to worry about, something readily taken care of. We are used to handling this sort of thing.”
“Trouble?” asked Carradine brutally. He could see by the look on the other’s face that he did not want to talk about it, that he considered it to be none of Carradine’s business. But damnit all, it was his business, he told himself fiercely. After
all, it was his life these men were playing with, as well as their own.
“A little,” admitted the chauffeur finally. He bit the words out in sharp, staccato syllables.
“The Reds?”
“Perhaps. It is difficult to be sure. There are many different factions inside Bulgaria. Some are in this business only for the money, others do not care whether or not they are paid for what they do. These are the dangerous ones who kill for the sheer sadistic joy of it. I kill too, but only because I believe that the cause for which I am fighting is the right one.”
Carradine nodded, deciding that the man was what was known as a patriot. He felt a tight sense of a grim amusement. He had heard all this before, not once but many times. It was the usual call that went out whenever any country wanted war. Hitler had used it, Mussolini and, if one were really honest about this, so had Churchill and Roosevelt. The rallying call. Our cause is just. God is with us. It made one a little sick after a while.
There were several moments of silence. The other eased forward generally on the accelerator. The car moved forward, eating up the kilometres. For most of the way the road was deserted. Somehow, Carradine had expected more traffic on it. After all, it was one of the main roads east from the capital. Perhaps there was very little petrol to be had for private motoring.
He looked at his watch. A little after ten-thirty. They topped a low rise, then drove down into Novoselci, passed through it and increased the speed once more. The forests closed in on them now, stretching down onto both sides of the road. In places, the trees joined overhead, their branches forming in effect, an impenetrable carpet of leaves that shut out the sunlight, but kept in the heat.
The driver touched a switch, there was a faint grating sound above Carradine’s head and part of the car roof slid back, bringing a welcome touch of cooler air. He drew it down deeply into his lungs, nodded obliquely at the other. The driver kept the car at about seventy and now that the roof was open there was a wind roar that made talking difficult, if not impossible.
They came out of the shade of the forest into more open country with the tall mountains, snow-covered on their crests, crowding down on them. This was the real Bulgaria. Sofia was all right, but he much preferred to be out here. There were new chalets high on these mountains where one could ski and get away from everything.
Turning his head, he glanced back through the rear window, back to where the first Teutonic forest was receding into the distance. The road that wound away back there was still deserted – no, there was one car on it, far back in the distance, but coming up fast. A red car, he noticed, a bright, garish spot of colour against the otherwise green and sombre background.
“It looks as though you’re about to be challenged,” he remarked to the other.
The driver slid his gaze towards the mirror for an instant. The expression on his face did not seem to change, yet there was a change, something subtle that Carradine noticed. Fear or apprehension? It could have been either. Carradine was not sure.
Reaching forward, the driver flicked up the switch that Carradine has spotted a little earlier. The shrill, shrieking whine of the blowers from the supercharger screeched in his ears. The car leapt forward, shuddering a little. They ground on either side of the road lost its detail, dissolved into a blur of green and brown anonymity. The red needle climbed swiftly. Ninety-five, a hundred, a hundred and ten. It was still climbing, but glancing behind him, Carradine saw that the red car was still gaining on them, slowly but quite perceptibly.
“You think it may be trouble?” he asked quietly.
“It’s possible. No one in their right mind would drive a car like that along this road unless they had a very good reason for it, or they were not caring whether they lived or died.”
Switching his gaze to the road ahead of them, Carradine saw the reason for the other’s remark. They were almost at the end of a long, ten-kilometre stretch of straight road. Now they were entering a system of sharply-angled bends and switch back curves where they would be forced to slow down or run the very grave risk of going over the edge. In places, there was a sheer drop of almost two hundred metres on the left-hand side of the road and at the speed they were going it needed only a slight mistake on the part of the driver, a swerve which could not be instantly controlled and they would plunge, cartwheeling, down the sheer slope and finish up in a mass of tangled, twisted metal at the bottom. He did not relish their chances of survival if that happened.
The driver touched the brakes, lightly at first, then with more pressure. The car slowed. He snapped off the supercharger switch and the howl of the blowers died at once, leaving only the wind blast in their ears.
A quick glance over his shoulder and Carradine saw that the red car had almost caught up with them. Its speed must have been quite fantastic to have covered so much ground in so short a time. He tried to make out the shapes of the men inside but the sunlight was glinting fiercely on the curved windscreen and in the glare of eye-searing brilliance, he could make out nothing. The car was about three hundred metres behind them, closing only slowly now.
Narrowing his eyes, Carradine tried to make out the features of the two men seated in the other car. There was that tight, tensed-up feeling back in the pit of his stomach and acting on impulse, he drew the Luger from his pocket and thumbed off the safety catch.
“Just in case they do mean trouble,” he said quietly, throwing a quick, sideways glance at the other.
He saw the man give a brief nod, saw the tightening of his lips. “They probably know the road as well as I do,” he grunted. “But we may be able to shake them off three kilometres further on. There is a tunnel there and they will not be able to speed through it for fear of running into the back of us.”
Unless they decided to make their play before then, Carradine reflected. But no, there was no sign the car was closing up. They were maintaining their distance. Perhaps he was doing them an injustice. Maybe they were just a couple of men out for a quiet drive through this beautiful countryside, with no thought of violence in their heads. Maybe!
The Bulgarian threw the heavy car around the corners, keeping his foot resting lightly on the accelerator, ready to thrust down on it hard when they reached the mouth of the tunnel. Inwardly, Carradine hoped that the other knew what he was doing. If those two men in the car were Red agents, they would not be biding their time without a reason. They would know the tunnel lay directly ahead, and they were prepared for anything the driver might do. The one thing that they might not be prepared for was the gun in Carradine’s right fist, his finger tight on the trigger.
“There we are,” said the driver softly. He nodded his head towards the windscreen. Carradine shifted his glance away from the car behind them for a second. The steep slope of the mountains crowded down on to the road directly in front of them and less than half a kilometre away he saw the gaping black mouth of the tunnel, looming up on them in the bright, glaring sunlight. There was a shallow S-bend in the road and they were on the straight. The second he came out of the bend, the driver thrust down on the accelerator. The car lurched forward as though propelled from a gun. Ten seconds and the sunlight was gone, blotted out by the tunnel walls.
Far-off in the distance, it was just possible to see the round circle of daylight that marked the other end of the tunnel. For the men following behind, there would be only blackness, that tiny circle of light blotted out by the massive bulk of their own car. But the driver simply pointed the bonnet of the car directly at it, and gave it all it had.
The beating roar of the powerful engine was flung at them from the curved tunnel walls, magnified a hundred times, howling in their ears. Then, as the end of the tunnel rushed up on them, the whine turned into an ear-shattering roar that lasted for the barest fraction of a second. Bright sunlight struck them forcibly. Carradine blinked his eyes several times to adjust them to the glare. For a few seconds, there was a red haze dancing in front of his vision. Then he was able to see properly. The round disc of the s
un was in front of them now, in the cloudless blue-white of the heavens. How the driver managed to make out details of the road ahead of him was nothing short of a miracle. Yet their car kept to the road, hugging the smooth surface as it plunged down the winding mountain road, which twisted down from the tunnel towards the valley between the shoulders of the tall ridges. Through the haze, there was also the added glare of sunlight reflected from the sparkling white collars of snow that covered the upper peaks. Down below them, perhaps three hundred metres away, the road rapidly gave up. There was a sign by the side of the road, but they had come upon, then flashed by it so quickly that he did not have the time to see what it was meant to indicate. A quick spin of the wheel and they made a corner on two wheels, cut along a straight stretch like a bat out of hell, then were forced to slow as they drove through the cobbled streets of a small village which suddenly materialised out of nowhere at the bottom of the slope. Carradine had a quick, vague impression of a tall-spired church, several houses with steep-sloping roofs clustered around, and then they were out, the driver swiftly changing gear as they laboured up a steep slope.
Behind them, there was no sign of the red car. Had they lost it somewhere along that twisting road? Had there been no connection between it and themselves? Had it simply turned off along one of the few side roads, which branched away into the mountains on either side?
He leaned forward, lit a cigarette. Despite the open roof, the atmosphere in the car was hot and oppressive. Did it always get as hot as this in this area at this time of the year? He thrust the thought away as a roar intruded on his senses from behind. The red car was there, almost on their tail!
