Next moment a single-decker bus came into view and jolted to a standstill behind the lorry. Out of it poured a score of State police. Following the boy, they ran towards the gate of the stable yard. Springing to his feet, Nicholas pushed the door to from which he was looking. Out of the blue an evil fate had struck at him, Fedora and their friends. The barn was about to be raided: and from it there was no escape.
CHAPTER XVIII
DECREE OF FATE
For a moment Nicholas stood stockstill. To have rushed out from behind the bales of hay and shouted a warning to the congregation would have been futile. By the time he made himself heard above the singing, the leading men in the running squad of police would be at the main doors of the barn. It was already too late for anyone to get out that way without being caught. There remained the small door to the loft, near which he was standing. For the congregation to escape that way was equally impossible. The police would follow, call on them to halt, and open fire if any of them attempted to jump down into the road. For him alone it offered a means of escape, providing he did not involve himself with the congregation, and providing that no police had been left on watch with the vehicles below.
Realising that, as far as he was concerned, everything hung on this last point, he opened the door a crack and peered through it. The roof of the big removal van blocked a large sector of his view. Beyond it the road was empty, but he could hear voices. He felt certain that someone was standing on the far side of it, talking to its driver.
Suddenly the singing ceased. The harmonium played on for a moment, then died in a wail. For a matter of seconds there was a tense silence. It was broken by the bark of a harsh order. Hard upon it came a babble of mingled shouts of anger and cries of fear.
Nicholas pulled the Luger, which he had used in the warehouse, from his pocket. He knew nothing about weapons and wondered if its immersion in the canal had rendered it temporarily useless. The pistol had been well greased and, to his relief, he found that its recoil chamber still slid back easily. Pressing the magazine button, he quickly removed the clip, and saw that it had only three bullets remaining in it. Ramming it into his pocket, he reloaded with one of the full clips that Fedora had given him. Then, holding the weapon at the ready, he clambered back across the bales of hay until he could see down into the middle and far end of the barn.
Crouching there, still under cover, he took swift stock of the situation. The police already had the little group of men covered with sten-guns. They were crowded into a corner with their hands above their heads. Their faces were sullen but resigned. It was clear they realised the uselessness of putting up a fight. The women were proving more difficult. They were screaming abuse and, in several cases, attempting to break through the police in the hope of getting away. Fedora was among them. She was struggling wildly with a tall, dark man. Stooping her head, she bit him on the wrist. With a curse, he let her go, but hit her. She fell to the floor. He dragged her up and hit her again.
Nicholas was desperately tempted to intervene; but he was not a practised shot with an automatic. He knew that at that distance he was just as likely to hit Fedora as the thug who was maltreating her. Another thought also restrained him. There was more at stake than Fedora, or himself, or any individual life. Unless one of them could stop Bilto he would leave England that night. To-morrow it would be too late to prevent him making a present of the secrets he held to the men who ruled behind the Iron Curtain, and were endeavouring to force their hideous tyranny on the whole world. That Fedora should have been captured was tragic, but that made it all the more imperative that he should do his utmost to retain his freedom, so that he might yet get back across the frontier and telephone a warning to London in time.
In any case, no one man could have rescued Fedora now, in the face of a score of armed police. Had Nicholas attempted it he would have been shot down long before he could reach her, and thrown away his life to no purpose. That thought allayed a little his feeling that it was cowardly to play the role of an onlooker; but he could have cursed aloud with fury at his impotence to help, as his gaze continued fixed upon her.
At the second blow she had fallen again. Now she was lying on her back at the side of the barn, sprawling half across a pile of cattle-cake. Her right arm was flung out at an awkward angle above her head, and she lay quite still.
As Nicholas stared at her, he recalled the gloomy thoughts that had obsessed her when they had first settled down in the loft some six hours earlier—her feeling that she was finished, that she was burnt out and had nothing left to live for, her wish to pretend that it was their last night on earth. Had that been some strange foreboding that her death was imminent? He was no believer in fortune-telling and the ‘mumbo-jumbo of the occult’, preferring to explain away the inexplicable by attributing it to the as yet little understood affects of cosmic rays, or by other meaningless pseudo-scientific jargon. Yet he knew that there were cases of incontestable authenticity in which people had received previous warning of their own deaths. Had Fedora had such a warning? Had the policeman’s last blow broken her neck? Had her gallant heart at last failed, after she had been through so much, at learning fate’s decree that she was not to escape after all? As she lay slumped and twisted there, was she already dead?
The police now had the whole congregation under control.
The officer in charge of the raid took a paper from his breast pocket and in a careless gabble read it out. It was a decree by the People’s Government of Czechoslovakia prohibiting all religious assemblies held without an official permit, and making anyone caught attending such an assembly liable to a minimum penalty of one year’s labour in the uranium mines.
Stuffing the paper back into his pocket, the officer gave an order, and his men began to hustle the cowed peasants towards the doors of the barn. He was standing near the pastor and, turning, gave him a vicious kick on the behind with his jackboot, as a send-off in the right direction.
Not long since, Nicholas had inveighed against priests of all denominations as parasites, and propagators of outworn superstitions the continued observance of which was not consonant with the ‘Dignity of Man’. Yet his gorge rose, not on account of the physical brutality of the act but from an instinctive feeling that the indignity had been inflicted upon something in essence higher than any individual man, of which this humble Lutheran pastor was only the representative.
As he continued to stare down at the heart-rending spectacle of the Sovas and their fellow-worshippers being hurried from the barn, he saw Fedora move her arm, and the policeman who had hit her pulled her stumbling to her feet. His heart leapt with relief at the knowledge that she was not dead, but had only fainted.
Next moment he was given swift cause to think of himself. The boy of eleven who had led the raid was standing near the officer. He had caught him by the arm and was pointing to the loft. Owing to the hubbub which was going on below, Nicholas could not catch his words; but it was clear that he was suggesting that before they had entered the barn some of the congregation might have hidden themselves up among the hay, so the loft ought to be searched.
Without waiting for further indications of his peril Nicholas scrambled back. Next moment he was again standing in the semi-darkness beside the door of the loft. It was, as he had left it, open a few inches. He peered through. There was no one in sight, but he could still hear voices on the far side of the removal van, and at any second now the police would be bringing their prisoners out from the yard into the road. If he jumped down, capture was as good as certain.
The reason why the police had brought the removal van was now obvious. It was the perfect type of vehicle in which to lock up and cart away a score or more of men and women. Apparently it was in normal use during the week and commandeered only for such raids on Sundays; as on its top, which was heightened by the usual two-foot board along its sides and ends to keep light goods stacked there from slipping off, there lay a pile of hessian wrappers and a tarpaulin.
In a
flash of inspiration Nicholas saw the chance it offered. He had only to step out on to the roof of the van and pull the furniture wrappers over him to escape detection. As he opened the door he heard footsteps running up the ladder on the far side of the hay. Without the loss of a second, he pocketed his gun and stepped across the yard-wide gap which was all that separated him from the roof of the van. Throwing out his hands, so as to fall upon it with as little noise as possible, he dived below the level of the side-board, which then screened him from anyone approaching along the road. Grabbing the coverings with both hands, he pulled the whole bundle on top of himself and lay still, so that if the searchers who had come up the loft chanced to look out of its door they would see nothing to arouse their suspicions.
He had been lying there no more than a minute when he heard sounds beneath him. Someone was pulling open the doors at the back of the van. There came a trampling of many feet approaching along the road, with which mingled cries and curses. The noise increased to a din as the twenty to thirty people who had made up the congregation were herded into the van. Gradually the commotion subsided. The engine started up, the van moved slowly at first until it had backed round to face the direction from which it had come, then drove off.
For several minutes Nicholas did not dare to put his head out from under the coverings, as it was possible that some of the police might still be at the door of the loft, or, if they had gone into the farm, be looking out of one of its windows; but as soon as he felt confident that the van was out of sight of the hamlet he raised himself on one elbow and took a quick look round.
Behind the van the road was clear. In front the single-decker bus that had brought the raiding party was churning up the dust two hundred yards ahead. As he watched, it perceptibly increased its lead. In the distance, to the right, he could see the river; but they were veering away from it; so it was clear that outside the hamlet the van must have taken the left-hand fork and was on the road that led both to the airport and to Prague.
Now, for the first time since the raid, Nicholas had the chance to assess the new situation. That he and Fedora should have been caught up in the Communists’ campaign to suppress religion was the most appalling luck. By what practically amounted to a miracle they had escaped from their pursuers, leaving no trace, and were by now almost certainly assumed to be dead; yet the arrangements for their flight from the country were in hand, and within another hour or so they should have been making their final preparations with Mr. Lutonský for a clean get-away. It was indeed a bitter pill to swallow that, through having chanced to spend a few hours in the Sova’s barn, rather than in any one of the scores of others in the district, they should now again be prisoners.
That Nicholas had managed to escape actual arrest was true, but he was as much a prisoner as Fedora, because he could not get off the top of the fast-moving van without the risk of breaking his neck; and when it did pull up all the odds were that it would do so in the yard of some police headquarters, so to climb down then would mean immediate arrest.
Prague was only some twelve kilometres away, the van was going in that direction, and there was no town of any size nearer; so it seemed certain that it was going to the capital and would not stop before it got there. The fact that it would actually pass the airport added to Nicholas’ bitter fury; but it seemed that his only possible chance of escaping capture lay in remaining hidden under the coverings until night, then endeavouring to get away unseen from the garage or yard in which the van was parked after it had unloaded its human cargo. But, even if he succeeded in that, he would then have missed the plane, and all chance of stopping Bilto would be gone.
It was not until the van had covered a couple of kilometres that it suddenly occurred to him that he might manage to stop it while it was still out in the country. The bus containing the raiding party had gone on ahead and was now out of sight. It seemed certain that they would have left guards with the van, but he still had his pistol; so if there were not too many of them, and he could take them by surprise, there was at least a chance that he might get away.
Crawling to the back of the roof, he peeped cautiously over the ridge board. Six feet below, on the tail board, two guards were sitting. He could easily have shot both of them from above; but that was not necessarily going to stop the van. If the shots were not heard by the driver, the two guards would simply roll off the tail-board and the van go on. If, on the other hand, the driver did hear the shots and pull up, that would be far from the end of the matter. The driver was probably armed, and the odds were that he had one or two more guards sitting on the box with him. If so, they would jump out into the road with their guns ready in their hands, and before Nicholas could possibly get away he would be shot himself.
The only alternative was to do the job the other way about and, if possible, shoot the driver first. That would result in the van careering on till it ran off the road and crashed into a tree or overturned. The risk entailed was considerable, as Nicholas knew that he would be flung from its top, and perhaps be seriously injured. On the other hand the men on the box would almost certainly be trapped in the smash, and the two guards on the tail-board flung off. There was also a fair chance that if the doors of the van had not been fully secured the prisoners might break out. That offered a prospect of rescuing Fedora, and if they escaped injury, they might be able to get away in the confusion.
Having weighed the chances, Nicholas decided that the risk was worth it. He alone would know when the crash was coming, so would have a much better prospect than the guards on the tail, of landing safely. The question now was, could he get into a position from which it would be possible to shoot the driver?
On hands and knees he crawled forward to the front of the van. Beyond the ridge-board projected the lower roof of the cab. It appeared to be made only of match-boarding, and he considered shooting blind down through it, but decided that the possibility of missing the man altogether was too great. Turning to the side of the van, he peered over. He could now see the cab a few feet below him, but not the man in it. To lean over meant that he would have to fire into it from a very awkward angle, but that seemed to offer a much better chance of wounding the driver than firing through the roof.
The road in front was clear. A glance over his shoulder showed that nothing was coming up behind. They were passing through a wood, so there was no chance of his being seen from a distance, and it would provide good cover for flight if he survived the initial stages of his coup. Taking out his gun, he clicked a bullet up into its chamber. The van was approaching a bend in the road. With difficulty now he fought down the urge to get the desperate business over, and waited until they were within fifty yards of it. Then, leaning over as far as he dared, and with his elbow crooked, he fired three shots down into the driver’s cab.
He heard a faint shout, but nothing else happened. He thought he must have missed. If he had it was to be expected that the van would pull up, and that frightened, angry men would soon be shooting back at him; yet it ran on steadily. It had almost reached the corner, and there was still no indication whether his shots had taken effect. He seemed to have been crouching on the angle of the roof for an age, waiting for the van to swerve and run off the road. Round the bend he glimpsed open country. If he could not halt the van before it came out of the wood his chances of getting away would be enormously reduced. Seized by panic, he leaned over to fire again.
It was not necessary. Even as he gripped the front-board with his free hand, to prevent himself being sent over the side by an unexpected jolt, he saw that the van could not now get round the bend. It was still running straight. As he pulled himself back, its front wheels went over the grass verge. The grass was fairly level but sloped down sharply. Without changing speed, or even a perceptible bump, the van left the road. Another moment, and it was charging down the bank towards the trees.
The instant Nicholas realised that his plan was, after all, succeeding, he turned and endeavoured to scramble to the rear of the roof. He
hoped that if he could get there before the van crashed he would be able to shoot one, if not both, of the guards on the tail-board. He might have done it, had he known even half a minute earlier that he had accounted for the driver; but now it was too late. The sharp tilt the van took as it charged down the bank sent him slithering back. Scared now that he might be caught unawares if the van turned over, he got his feet against the front-board, wriggled round and sat up.
The wood was not dense; its trees were, on average, forty feet apart with low scrub between them. The van, now bumping wildly, was about to career through a gap between a big oak and a beech, but their boughs almost met, and the lowest were a little less than the height of the van. With dilated eyes Nicholas saw that he was about to be swept from its top: yet he managed to keep his wits. As the nearest bough of the oak scraped the roof of the cab, lifted and rushed upon him, he thrust the gun into his trouser top and grasped at the bough with both hands.
For a moment he fumbled wildly, as the twigs and leaves were dashed into his face, then his clutching fingers found a firm hold. The van careered on beneath him; he was dragged to the rear end of its roof, bumped painfully on the back edge-board, and over it. Now that there was nothing to support his weight the bough bent under him. Still hanging on to it, his toes were no more than five feet from the ground. Letting go, he dropped, made an effort to keep upright but fell, and rolled into some bushes.
As Nicholas staggered to his feet the van hit another oak, fifty feet away, head on. He was just in time to see the two guards flung off the tail-board. He could have run for it then and there, and got away, but he was checked by the thought of Fedora. Given a little luck now he might save her, and the unfortunate peasant congregation, as well as himself. If he could catch the guards before they had a chance to recover from their shaking, he could hold them up and force them to undo the doors of the van. Automatically now, his hand went to the pocket in which he carried the pistol.
Curtain of Fear Page 29
