Authors: Donald Hamilton
Eight hours later we were in Scotland.
A driver who knows the country, in a fast, well-broken-in car, can probably make that run in six hours or less, since Britain, like most of Europe, imposes few speed limits on the open road. Missing an occasional turn in the dark, in a brand-new car that had to be babied, it took us a couple of hours longer, and morning twilight was well advanced as we roared through the rolling border country past the neighborhood of Hadrian’s old wall, built to keep the savage northern tribes out of peaceful Roman Britain, and entered Scotland at Gretna Green, where people used to go to get married in a hurry, and maybe still do.
Nevertheless, by American standards, it seemed like getting from one country to another in a big hurry. I’d studied maps enough to know, theoretically, that Scotland isn’t quite as far from London as Alaska, say, is from New York, but I hadn’t quite realized, practically, that you could run clear out of England in a single night’s drive. On the other hand, neither had I realized that while it’s only about three hundred miles from London to the Scottish border, it’s another tough three hundred to the part of the northwestern Highlands in which we were interested.
By the time we reached it, the city of Glasgow was a mess of loused-up, left-handed, early-morning traffic, soaked with rain. Beyond, the country got ruggeder as we proceeded north, the roads got narrower, the weather got wetter, and I got groggier in spite of the fact that I kept Vadya busy pouring me black coffee out of a thermos we’d picked up, along with a bunch of other necessities, like an overnight bag and a few clothes, in a small town where we’d stopped for gas—excuse me, petrol. It’s a secret I’ve managed to keep from Washington so far, but I still occasionally require sleep. I haven’t quite managed to kick the habit, although it’s not for want of trying.
It didn’t help any that pieces had started falling off the car, a characteristic of small British vehicles. They make the most beautifully steering and handling little heaps in the world, but they stick them together with paper clips and old chewing gum. Then they leave a few Rolls-Royces and Rovers standing around, conspicuously to prove that they can put a car together right when they feel like it. By the time we’d fought the daytime tourist traffic up past famed Loch Lomond and Loch Ness, we no longer had windshield washer, temperature gauge, speedometer, or hand brake, and I was starting to wonder when something really essential would let go.
I guess I was paying more attention to these distractions, and to my growing weariness, than to what was going on around me. Anyway, the big Mercedes almost sneaked up on us without my recognizing it as a threat. I mean, we’d established early in the evening that, whatever Colonel Stark and his electronic wizards might be doing—we’d located his beeper, magnetically attached to the gas tank behind the seats, and left it strictly alone—nobody was tailing us in the normal eyeball fashion. We’d discussed the fact that if somebody beat us up from London, or just made a long-distance phone call, we might be picked up when we got into the desolate Highlands where there were only one or two likely roads for the opposition to cover, but the possibility had kind of slipped my mind.
Suddenly there was a big sedan riding our tail and flashing its lights for clearance to pass—in Europe it’s taken for granted that some people will drive faster than others, and that the slow drivers will just naturally get out of the way of the fast ones, even if they have to take to the bushes to do it. I glanced at the mirror mechanically, and looked ahead for a suitable spot to let the big car pass on the narrow road. Then I looked more sharply at the mirror.
It was a chauffeur-driven car, with two passengers in the rear. I couldn’t tell much about them, back there, except that one was a woman, but under the natty cap that reminded me of our missing friend Crowe-Barham doing his home-James bit, the chauffeur’s face had a certain Fu Manchu aspect. And while every Oriental in the United Kingdom might not be trying to kill me, I had a hunch I’d live longer if I acted on the assumption that he was.
I slammed the transmission from fourth into third and stepped the accelerator to the floor. The roadster jumped ahead with a scream from the gears and a snarl from the exhaust—it was a very sporty-sounding little beast. Beside me, Vadya, aroused by the jolt, sat up sleepily and looked at me. I was glad to see I wasn’t the only agent in the world subject to human weakness and weariness.
I said, “You’d better powder your nose quick, honey. You may not get another chance.”
The Mercedes, momentarily left behind, was coming up fast. I hurled the Spitfire through a couple of sharp turns without raising my foot—as I say, small British cars may be built fragile, but they do handle well. That gave me a little lead. No ton-and-a-half sedan, no matter how good, is going to take the corners like a sports car half its weight and height. Then the road ran straight for a bit and I had him sniffing at my trunk again, looking big as a charging rhino about to overrun us.
“I think it’s Madame Ling in back,” Vadya said calmly.
I said, “Hell, every Chinese female is Madame Ling to you. You’ve got Madame Lings on the brain.” I grinned. “You mean the woman actually exists? Congratulations.”
“She must have come up from London ahead of us in a big hurry.”
I said, “The way I’ve been nursing this toy along, she could have walked and beat us. Well, I can’t hold them off much longer. This damn road isn’t crooked enough, and Baby just hasn’t got it in the straights, not against a Mercedes. Any guns showing yet?”
“Not yet. But the man in back has shifted over to our side. He is winding down his window.”
I reached down, driving one-handed, and freed my revolver and dropped it into her lap. “Use this. That pipsqueak automatic of yours will hardly shoot through safety glass, and they may have special windows in that fancy limousine. Just one thing, sweetheart.”
“Yes?” She had flipped open my gun to check the loads.
“Curb those homicidal impulses,” I said. “If you shoot the driver dead, he could yank the wheel the wrong way and come right down on top of us. Just give him a faceful of broken glass to discourage him, huh? You can see blood and brains some other time.”
Vadya laughed shortly. “What you really mean is, you do not want that car badly wrecked because your wife may be in it. You think they may have brought her with them from London.”
I guess I was really getting pretty tired. The possibility hadn’t actually occurred to me, and there wasn’t time to consider it now. The road was opening up ahead, and the Mercedes was weaving back and forth behind us, looking for a chance to lunge alongside.
I said, “Okay, I’m opening the gate. Here they come.”
Something made a funny slapping sound against the Spitfire’s soft top. I heard the simultaneous crack of a gun outside. The bullet came to rest somewhere in the package shelf under the dashboard, right in front of me. That took care of any doubts I might have had about the other party’s hostile intentions. I swerved the car violently, to indicate that I was hit or badly scared, leaving the road wide open to our right.
The big sedan shot alongside. Vadya fired twice. Even with the howl of the wind and the roar of the motor, the sawed-off .38 Special made a respectable amount of noise. The side window of the Mercedes went to hell, and a rose of cracks blossomed in the windshield right in front of the driver as the bullets passed diagonally through the forward corner of the car. Momentarily blinded, the chauffeur veered off sharply and hit the bank. In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of the big sedan plowing to a halt, before a curve put it out of sight.
Vadya said, “My hand will never be the same. I think all the bones are broken. What a cannon to carry! Here, I give it back to you… What are you doing?”
I’d swung the roadster onto a dirt track leading off into the gorse or broom or heather, or whatever the local vegetation was called.
“You brought up a certain possibility back there,” I said. “I’m going to check it out. Besides, I’d kind of like to know what they intend doing next.”
Vadya said, “If you really know the place we want, which you are keeping so secret, why waste time on those people? Better to get there before they reach a telephone and send a warning.” Then she glanced at me and laughed. “Ah, you always were sentimental about women, Matthew. Very well, we will go look for your little wife. In the middle of an important case, upon which may depend the fate of the world, we will go hunting for a small, stupid blonde.”
I said, “If you never met her, how do you know she’s stupid?”
“Any woman who would marry you, darling, cannot be very bright.”
Well, I’d left myself open for that. I stopped the Spitfire behind an unidentified Scottish bush and got out stiffly and reloaded my gun while Vadya was climbing out and tying her scarf more firmly over her hair. She’d picked up a boy’s black leather jacket and a pair of black sneakers on our small-town shopping spree. They changed her appearance drastically. Although her basic costume remained the same, she no longer looked like a lady of fashion from France, expensively dressed for an evening on the town. She looked more like the kind of black-stockinged beatnik female who’d rush recklessly around the countryside by motorcycle or small sports car.
In the same spirit, I’d got myself a black turtleneck sweater and a sharp-looking cap. A night of hard driving, and some exposure to rain at various stops, had done the rest, giving us both an authentically shabby, wrinkled, tough, and careless look to go with the jazzy, mud-splashed little car.
As we made our way back along the hillside toward a point from which we should be able to get a view of the road and the wrecked Mercedes, I couldn’t help feeling that we’d got a long way from London and civilization in relatively few hours. Driving, I hadn’t quite realized how wild the country had become, particularly since we’d turned westward off what seemed to be the main tourist trail, shortly after passing through the town of Inverness, at the end of Loch Ness.
With a little sleep under my belt and nothing on my mind I could really have appreciated the scenery around us. Even under the unfavorable circumstances, I managed to notice that it was pretty spectacular. The vegetation was tough and low and windswept, gray-green in color, with few real trees. All around us, steep mountains rose up into the low-hanging clouds. I had to keep reminding myself that we weren’t more than a couple of thousand feet above sea level. The place had that high-country feel that you get in the Rockies above ten thousand feet.
We reached our vantage point in time to witness Madame Ling, her associate, and her chauffeur being invited to climb into the cab of a big truck—excuse me, lorry—that had just stopped, or been stopped, at the scene of the accident. The chauffeur held a stained handkerchief to the side of his face; the others seemed unhurt. At the distance, I couldn’t make out their features clearly, but I could see that Madame Ling was smaller than I’d expected—I guess I’d visualized a tall, slinky, Oriental menace. Instead I saw a slight little black-haired woman dressed in smart Occidental clothes, including a mink coat that would have bought a lot of oil for the lamps of China. The cab door slammed and the big truck started up and took them away toward the east.
I said, “They’ll probably have him drop them off back in Inverness. I don’t think it’s any use trying to tail them. They’ll be watching for that. How old is Madame Ling?”
Vadya shrugged. “Those smooth-faced yellow bitches have no age, darling. She’s over twelve and under eighty. Why, does she attract you?”
“Yeah, like a snake,” I said. “I don’t like small, subtle women. Big obvious ones are much nicer.” Vadya made a face at me, and I grinned and said, “I guess it’s safe to go down there now. They aren’t likely to double back in that rig. Even if they held a gun on the driver, he couldn’t get it turned around on this road.”
A bunch of shaggy, black-faced sheep scattered warily as we scrambled down the slope. Reaching the Mercedes, I was surprised at the amount of damage my .38 had done to the window and windshield until I realized that somebody in the Ling party had carefully obliterated all recognizable bulletholes with a rock, to avoid a lot of awkward explanations. On the right side, which had hit the bank, there was a shattered headlight, a bent wheel and front suspension, and some scraped and dented body work. In a way, it was too bad. It was a handsome car.
There was nothing significant inside, just the usual meticulous Mercedes trimmings and upholstery. The keys had been left in the ignition. This caused me a little worry, lest Madame Ling had anticipated our return and set a boobytrap or two, but nothing blew when I took the keys, when I inserted the proper one in the trunk lock, or when I raised the lid. Except for the spare tire and tools, there was nothing in the trunk.
I drew a long breath. I guess I had actually hoped to find something, or somebody. Well, at least it wasn’t totally bad news, like a dead body. I straightened up slowly and looked at Vadya.
“So much for your bright idea,” I said. “No blood, no bobby pins, no blonde hairs. Two will get you twenty nobody’s been carried anywhere in that trunk, dead or alive.”
Vadya moved her shoulders easily under the leather jacket, beaded with fine rain. “It seemed like a logical possibility, darling.”
“Uhuh, logical,” I said. I took the keys from the trunk and tossed them to her. “Put those back in the ignition, will you, doll?”
As she turned away, I took a small metallic object from my pocket and stuck it onto the metal under the lip of the trunk, before I slammed the lid. Colonel Stark might be a little surprised to find his magnetic beeper attached to the wrong car, but I hoped he’d take the hint, when his homing devices led him here, and check up on the damaged sedan and its owner. With his resources, he’d have a greater possibility of getting something that way than we would, but I wasn’t optimistic about his chances. Madame Ling would undoubtedly cover her tracks well.
Still, it left somebody with a clue of sorts to follow, if the two of us should fail. I walked forward and found Vadya leaning far into the car to examine the glove compartment.