Midnight Plus One - Lyall Gavin (книги полностью бесплатно .TXT) 📗

THIRTY-TWO

Five minutes later we were in Liechtenstein and turning on to the main road which we'd left on the other side of the frontier, three kilometres back. The Rolls had taken a thumping, but Rolls's are built for that, and fifty yards in the dark is a long range for a Sten – particularly if it was like most Stens I'd known and the single-shot button didn't work. One headlight was shot out, there were bullet-holes through the windscreen and both left-hand doors, and one through the big radiator grill. I didn't know if it hadpunctured the radiator itself – but we'd certainly find out on the mountain road to Steg.

I sat at the back alongside Maganhard, wincing at every jolt and slopping cognac down my shirt. Harvey was up front with the girl.

Maganhard hadn't said a word, but he didn't look much more dead than usual, so perhaps he was thinking.

After a few miles, Harvey turned round and said through the partition: 'D'you want us to leave you down near Vaduz? – find a doctor?'

Maganhard woke up and looked at me. 'You are wounded?'

'I'm not dying. And I don't suppose you know a doctor who's ready to call a bullet-hole a mosquito bite. And, anyway, there's still Calieron to come.'

'Think we'll have any trouble?' Harvey asked.

'Not much. He can't have every gunman in Europe under contract. And if he had, he'd have put them down in the battle zone.'

After a time, Maganhard said: 'When I told you I wanted to get past the frontier, Mr Cane, I did not understand that it would be necessary for a man to be burned as that man was,'

I said wearily: 'Nobody knew it would be necessary, Mr Maganhard. It just happened. In this sort of job, people don't always die with a brave smile and a kind word for mother.'

'I thought you knew him! '

'I did. And I'm sorry he got burned, if that helps. But nobody forced him to be down there with a Sten.'

He thought for a moment, then said: 'I suppose they came to kill or be killed. Perhaps it was fair.'

'You're still sentimentalising them. They came to kill – full stop. If they'd thought there was a chance of getting killed they wouldn't have come.' I shook my head. 'Alain didn't become St Francis just by dying rather nastily.'

Miss Jarman said: 'All the other times, you didn't have a choice about shooting. They started it. But this time – you planned it. You started it.'

'I could have stuck my head out of the trench,' I growled, 'and given them the first shot – if that would have made me more moral. It would damn sure have made me headless.'

'I didn't mean that.' Her voice was cold and a little shivery, and not just from the wind coming through the bullet-holes. She'd seen Alain burn, too. 'I mean perhaps we could have done something else that…' Her voice trailed off.

'Perhaps we could,' I said heavily. But I was trying not to think what.

We turned right at Triesen and on to the twisting road up to Triesenberg and, beyond it, Steg. We were going to find out about that radiator now.

Miss Jarman said: 'The engine's getting warm.'

'Keep going. Don't slow up.'

She didn't. We slammed into a series of hairpins as fast as Morgan would have taken them – and on just one headlight. But she had an open road for it: Liechtensteiners don't believe in doing much but sleep outside the money-making hours. We'd-only seen a cyclist and a tourist coach since the frontier.

As we came up to the lights of Triesenberg, it started to drizzlegently. Harvey leant across almost into Miss Jar-man's lap to read the radiator temperature. 'The needle's practically off the clock,' he reported. 'We won't get much farther.'

'Keep going.'

'Christ, we'll blow a cylinder.'

'That engine's full of cylinders. Keep going.'

The girl said flatly: 'We won't get as far as Steg unless we stop to cool down.'

,'If we don't get there quick, there won't be any point in going.'

Maganhard turned to me. 'We have nearly an hour and a half.'

'D'you think so? Didn't you tell me that Calieron wouldn't kill Fiez as long as he was trying to kill you? Well, perhaps now he knows he can't kill you – so his only hope is to knock off Fiez and then outvote you.'

He went quiet. Then he asked suspiciously: 'How could he know I am not dead?'

'By now Morgan's probably rung the General and the General's rung Calieron. And there must have been some arrangement for Alain and Co. to ring Calieron to say the job was done. Either way, nobody's told him youare dead – so he must be getting pretty jumpy by now.'

We ran clear of Triesenberg and the road became a gritty track winding up through the steep mountainside, pastures. A faint smell of hotness began to drift back from the engine – and a small, harsh clattering sound.

Miss Jarman said: 'I think the engine's going to seize.'

'Not yet. Just the valves getting hot. Get above the snow-line and we can stuff some of that into it.'

Maganhard said: 'If Herr Fiez is dead, then it would be a mistake for me to go on.'

'More of a mistake not to be sure.'

We wound on up. The rain got stronger and colder, and as the headlight swept the mountainside on bends, I could see fragments of cloud crawling in among the pines above us.

And by now the engine was sounding like a convention of Spanish dancers. Harvey turned to say something.

Headlights blazed in our faces. The girl tromped on the brakes.

The other driver must have reckoned our single headlight for a motor-bike, because he kept on coming. Then his brakes screamed like a new soul in Hell and his lights zigzagged as he skidded. There was a long tearingcrunch. The Rolls shuddered delicately and stopped.

Harvey was out on the running-board, gun in hand. I grabbed the empty Mauser, tried to jump to my feet, got a flare of pain in my rib, and sat down again.

Jammed at an angle across our left front bumper was a big black German saloon, ripped open like a sardine tin from front wheel to rear door. The Rolls' bumper probably had a couple of scratches on it.

In the sudden silence Harvey said clearly: 'Come out slowly and with the hands empty.'

The driver got out fast, waving his hands furiously and swearing like a pirate's parrot. It was Henri Merlin.

I climbed carefully across Maganhard's feet and said: 'Calm down, Henri, the Marines are here.'

He shoved his head forward and peered through the drizzle. 'Caneton? Pas possible! But it is! You are superb! ' He reached to clout me on both shoulders. I dodged gingerly.

Maganhard stepped down behind me. We were standing between the cars, just outside the headlight beams, lit by a soft underglow reflected back off the rain. I saw Merlin's huge damp grin – and then his face collapse into despair.

He spread his hands. 'But now – it does not matter. He – they-' He stopped to sort and translate his thoughts.

Maganhard said: 'Good evening, Monsieur Merlin.'

Merlin turned to him. 'I came – to Monsieur Fiez – a quarter of an hour since. And I find no Galleron – and Fiez is dead.'

It went very quiet again. Something that wasn't quite rain brushed my face. Several somethings danced like moths in the headlights. We hadn't quite reached the snow-line, but as the freezing level slid down the mountain, the snow-line had reached us.

Maganhard looked at me and said quietly and bitterly: 'It seems this Calieron took your advice.'

'He could afford better advice than mine.'

'He is not a fool,' Maganhard said. 'An hour ago he was counting on me being dead. Now, he is counting on me being alive. So – we must not go.'

'We could just sneak up and view the body,' I suggested.

'Calieron must be waiting near by for me to come.'

'But it isn't midnight yet. We could still go and view the body.'