Then he saw Moeller and Banat.
They were standing beside a big American sedan drawn up beyond the taxis. There were two other men on the far side of the car: one was tall and thin and wore a mackintosh and a workman’s cap, the other was a very dark heavy-jowled man with a grey belted ulster and a soft hat which he wore without a dent in it. A fifth and younger man sat at the wheel of the car.
His heart thumping, Graham beckoned to the porter, who was making for the taxis, and walked towards them.
Moeller nodded as he came up. “Good! Your luggage? Ah, yes.” He nodded to the tall man, who came round, took the case from the porter, and put it in the luggage boot at the back.
Graham tipped the porter and got in the car. Moeller followed him and sat beside him. The tall man got in beside the driver. Banat and the man in the ulster sat on the pull-down seats facing Graham and Moeller. Banat’s face was expressionless. The man in the ulster avoided Graham’s eyes and looked out of the window.
The car started. Almost immediately, Banat took out his pistol and snapped the safety catch.
Graham turned to Moeller. “Is that necessary?” he demanded. “I’m not going to escape.”
Moeller shrugged. “As you please.” He said something to Banat who grinned, snapped the safety catch again and put the gun back in his pocket.
The car swung into the cobbled road leading to the dock gates.
“Which hotel are we going to?” Graham inquired.
Moeller turned his head slightly. “I have not yet made up my mind. We can leave that question until later. We shall drive out to Santa Margherita first.”
“But …”
“There are not ‘buts.’ I am making the arrangements.” He did not bother to turn his head this time.
“What about Kuvetli?”
“He left by the pilot boat early this morning.”
“Then what’s happened to him?”
“He is probably writing a report to Colonel Haki. I advise you to forget about him.”
Graham was silent. He had asked about Mr. Kuvetli with the sole object of concealing the fact that he was badly frightened. He had been in the car less than two minutes, and already the odds against him had lengthened considerably.
The car bumped over the cobbles to the dock gates, and Graham braced himself for the sharp right turn that would take them towards the town and the Santa Margherita road. The next moment he lurched sideways in his seat as the car swerved to the left. Banat whipped out his gun.
Graham slowly regained his position. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought we turned right for Santa Margherita.”
There was no reply. He sat back in his corner trying to keep his face expressionless. He had assumed quite unwarrantably that it would be through Genoa itself, and
on to the Santa Margherita road that he would be taken for his “ride.” All his hopes had been based on the assumption. He had taken too much for granted.
He glanced at Moeller. The German agent was sitting back with his eyes closed: an old man whose work for the day was done. The rest of the day was Banat’s. Graham knew that the small deep-set eyes were feeling for his, and that the long-suffering mouth was grinning. Banat was going to enjoy his work. The other man was still looking out of the window. He had not uttered a sound.
They reached a fork and turned to the right along a secondary road with a direction sign for Novi-Torimo. They were going north. The road was straight and lined with dusty plane trees. Beyond the trees there were rows of grim-looking houses and a factory or two. Soon, however, the road began to rise and twist, and the houses and factories were left behind. They were getting into the country.
Graham knew that unless some wholly unexpected way of escape presented itself, his chances of surviving the next hour were now practically non-existent. Presently the car would stop. Then he would be taken out and shot as methodically and efficiently as if he had been condemned by a court martial. The blood was thundering in his head, and his breathing was quick and shallow. He tried to breathe slowly and deeply, but the muscles in his chest seemed incapable of making the effort. He went on trying. He knew that if he surrendered himself to fear now, if he let himself go, he would be lost, whatever happened. He must not be frightened. Death, he
told himself, would not be so bad. A moment of astonishment, and it would be over. He had to die sooner or later, and a bullet through the base of the skull now would be better than months of illness when he was old. Forty years was not a bad lifetime to have lived. There were many young men in Europe at that moment who would regard the attainment of such an age as an enviable achievement. To suppose that the lopping off of thirty years or so from a normal span of life was a disaster was to pretend to an importance which no man possessed. Living wasn’t even so very pleasant. Mostly it was a matter of getting from the cradle to the grave with the least possible discomfort; of satisfying the body’s needs, and of slowing down the process of its decay. Why make such a fuss about abandoning so dreary a business? Why, indeed! And yet you did make a fuss …
He became conscious of the revolver pressing against his chest. Supposing they decided to search him! But no, they wouldn’t do that. They’d taken one revolver from him, and another from Mr. Kuvetli. They would scarcely suspect that there was a third. There were five other men in the car, and four of them at least were armed. He had six rounds in the revolver. He might be able to fire two of them before he himself were hit. If he waited until Banat’s attention had wandered he might get off three or even four of them. If he were going to be killed, he’d see that the killing was as expensive as possible. He got a cigarette out of his pocket and then, putting his hand inside his jacket as if he were looking for a match, snicked off the safety catch. For a moment he considered drawing the revolver there and then, and trusting to luck and
the driver’s swerving to survive Banat’s first shot; but the gun in Banat’s hand was steady. Besides, there was always a chance that something unexpected might happen to create a better opportunity. For instance, the driver might take a corner too fast and wreck the car.
But the car purred steadily on. The windows were tightly shut, and Banat’s attar of roses began to scent the air inside. The man in the ulster was becoming drowsy. Once or twice he yawned. Then, obviously to give himself something to do, he brought out a heavy German pistol and examined the magazine. As he replaced it, his dull pouched eyes rested for a moment on Graham. He looked away again indifferently, like a passenger in a train with the stranger opposite to him.
They had been driving for about twenty-five minutes. They passed through a small straggling village with a single fly-blown-looking café with a petrol pump outside it, and two or three shops, and began to climb. Graham was vaguely aware that the fields and farmlands which had flanked the road till then were giving way to clumps of trees and uncultivatable slopes, and guessed that they were getting into the hills to the north of Genoa and west of the railway pass above Pontedecimo. Suddenly the car swung left down a small side road between trees, and began to crawl in low gear up a long twisting hill cut in the side of a wooded slope.
There was a movement by his side. He turned quickly, the blood rushing up into his head, and met Moeller’s eyes.
Moeller nodded. “Yes, Mr. Graham, this is just about as far as you are going.”
“But the hotel …?” Graham began to stammer.
The pale eyes did not flicker. “I am afraid, Mr. Graham, that you must be very simple. Or can it be that you think that I am simple?” He shrugged. “No doubt it is unimportant. But I have a request to make. As you have already caused me so much trouble, discomfort and expense, would it be asking too much of you to suggest that you do not cause me any more? When we stop and you are asked to get out, please do so without argument or physical protest. If you cannot consider your own dignity at such a time, please think of the cushions of the car.”
He turned abruptly and nodded to the man in the ulster who tapped on the window behind him. The car jerked to a standstill, and the man in the ulster half rose and put his hand down on the latch which opened the door beside him. At the same moment Moeller said something to Banat. Banat grinned.
In that second Graham acted. His last wretched little bluff had been called. They were going to kill him, and did not care whether he knew it or not. They were anxious only that his blood should not soil the cushions he was sitting on. A sudden blind fury seized him. His self-control, racked out until every nerve in his body was quivering, suddenly went. Before he knew what he was doing, he had pulled out Mathis’s revolver and fired it full in Banat’s face.
Even as the din of the shot thudded through his head, he saw something horrible happen to the face. Then he flung himself forward.
The man in the ulster had the door open about an inch
when Graham’s weight hit him. He lost his balance, and hurtled backwards through the door. A fraction of a second later he hit the road with Graham on top of him.
Half stunned by the impact, Graham rolled clear and scrambled for cover behind the car. It could, he knew, last only a second or two now. The man in the ulster was knocked out; but the other two, shouting at the tops of their voices, had their doors open, and Moeller would not be long in picking up Banat’s gun. He might be able to get in one more shot. Moeller, perhaps …
At that moment chance took a hand. Graham realised that he was crouching only a foot or so away from the car’s tank, and with some wild notion of hindering the pursuit should he succeed in getting clear, he raised the revolver and fired again.
The muzzle of the revolver had been practically touching the tank when he pulled the trigger, and the sheet of flame which roared up sent him staggering back out of cover. Shots crashed out, and a bullet whipped by his head. Panic seized him. He turned and dashed for the trees, and the slope shelving away from the edge of the road. He heard two more shots, then something struck him violently in the back, and a sheet of light flashed between his eyes and his brain.
He could not have been unconscious for more than a minute. When he came to he was lying face downwards on the surface of dead pine needles on the slope below the level of the road.
Dagger-like pains were shooting through his head. For a moment or two he did not try to move. Then he opened
his eyes again and his gaze, wandering inch by inch away from him, encountered Mathis’ revolver. Instinctively he stretched out his hand to take it. His body throbbed agonisingly, but his fingers gripped the revolver. He waited for a second or two. Then, very slowly, he drew his knees up under him, raised himself on his hands and began to crawl back to the road.
The blast of the exploding tank had scattered fragments of ripped panelling and smouldering leather all over the road. Lying on his side amid this wreckage was the man in the workman’s cap. The mackintosh down his left side hung in charred shreds. What was left of the car itself was a mass of shimmering incandescence, and the steel skeleton buckling like paper in the terrific heat was only just visible. Farther up the road the driver was standing with his hands to his face, swaying as if he were drunk. The sickening stench of burning flesh hung in the air. There was no sign of Moeller.
Graham crawled back down the slope for a few yards, got painfully to his feet and stumbled away, down through the trees towards the lower road.
I
T WAS AFTER MIDDAY
before he reached the café in the village and a telephone. By the time a car from the Turkish Consulate arrived, he had had a wash and fortified himself with brandy.
The Consul was a lean, business-like man, who spoke English as if he had been to England. He listened intently to what Graham had to say before he said much himself. When Graham had finished, however, the Consul squirted some more soda water into his vermouth, leaned back in his chair and whistled through his teeth.
“Is that all?” he inquired.
“Isn’t it enough?”
“More than enough.” The Consul grinned apologetically. “I will tell you, Mr. Graham, that when I received your message this morning, I telegraphed immediately to Colonel Haki, reporting that you were very likely dead. Allow me to congratulate you.”
“Thank you. I was lucky.” He spoke automatically.
There seemed to be something strangely fatuous about congratulations on being alive. He said: “Kuvetli told me the other night that he had fought for the Gazi and that he was ready to give his life for Turkey. You don’t, somehow, expect people who say that sort of thing to be taken up on it so quickly.”
“That is true. It is very sad,” said the Consul. He was obviously itching to get to business. “Meanwhile,” he continued adroitly, “we must see that no time is lost. Every minute increases the danger of his body being found before you are out of the country. The authorities are not very well disposed towards us at the moment, and if he were found before you had left, I doubt if we could prevent your being detained for at least some days.”
“What about the car?”
“We can leave the driver to explain that. If, as you say, your suit-case was destroyed in the fire, there is nothing to connect you with the accident. Are you feeling well enough to travel?”
“Yes. I’m bruised a bit and I still feel damnably shaky, but I’ll get over that.”
“Good. Then, all things considered, it will be as well if you travel immediately.”
“Kuvetli said something about a ’plane.”
“A ’plane? Ah! May I see your passport, please?”
Graham handed it over. The Consul flicked over the pages, shut the passport with a snap and returned it. “Your transit visa,” he said, “specifies that you are entering Italy at Genoa and leaving it at Bardonecchia. If you are particularly anxious to go by air we can get the visa
amended, but that will take an hour or so. Also you will have to return to Genoa. Also, in case Kuvetli is found within the next few hours, it is better not to bring yourself to the notice of the police with a change of arrangements.” He glanced at his watch. “There is a train to Paris which leaves Genoa at two o’clock. It stops at Asti soon after three. I recommend that you get on it there. I can drive you to Asti in my car.”