Ahead of us and off to the left, the sky was just beginning to lighten as the sun rose out over the Czech republic and stretched long shadowed fingers towards the eastern border of Germany. I watched Sean putting every ounce of effort into piloting the car safely south and tried not to think about the last time any of us had seen our beds.
As it was, someone had weighted my eyelids when I wasn’t looking. I blinked and realised several kilometres had passed in the meantime. God, I was so tired everything had begun to ache again. Sean had the car’s air con system turned down cool enough to keep him sharp, but it was just making me more sleepy.
Well, maybe I could allow myself just five minutes . . .
***
I jerked awake almost instantly, it seemed, to find that we were barely moving and an hour had passed.
“Where are we?” I demanded, my pulse suddenly stepping up with guilt at my lapse in concentration.
“Just outside Nürnberg,” Sean tossed across and the exasperation showed clearly in his voice. “Bloody traffic.”
I sat up from the slithered position I’d drooped into and looked around me. Ahead all I could see was the tailgate of a massive truck on Swiss plates. Alongside was a pair of middle-aged suits in a BMW. They were either too world-weary, or too polite, to look perturbed at having a car filled with armed desperadoes and a hostage right next to them.
For the next forty-five minutes we barely made a couple of kilometres. The loudest noise inside the car was the slap of the wipers on intermittent across the screen, like an irregular heartbeat. The traffic grew steadily thicker as the morning filled out into rush hour. It was agonisingly slow.
“We’re going to have to stop and fill up again,” Sean said at last, glancing down at the instrument panel. “It may as well be now.” He caught Hofmann’s eye in the rear-view mirror and nodded towards Ivan. “Do you want to hood him up again?”
Hofmann put the SIG in his pocket and slid the knife out of his boot again.
“No,” he said ominously. “If he makes trouble I will deal with him quietly enough.”
Sean left the engine running again, despite the obvious disapproval of the filling station attendant, while he poured in litre upon litre of Super bleifrei. The Skyline seemed to have an appetite for fuel that was of alcoholic proportions. It had consumed an exorbitant amount since our last stop, but economy was not supposed to be one of its assets under these conditions.
I ran in to pay to lessen the time we were off the road and also so that Sean could move the car further away from prying eyes. Even without his hood, Ivan was still handcuffed to the grab rail and looked suspiciously like he was being taken somewhere against his will rather than being rescued. It wasn’t a scenario we wanted to have to explain in detail to anyone, least of all to the police.
It all took up precious time, minute after minute of it. When we rejoined the A6, now heading west towards Heilbronn, I was aware that Gregor was probably already on route to Einsbaden. The wheels were in motion and couldn’t be called back nor cancelled out.
I tried to ring Major Gilby again to let him know our progress, but this time the Manor’s phone line rang out without reply. There’s rarely something good will come about from an unanswered phone. My mind started constructing its own spurious reasons, each more fantastical than the last, but I couldn’t ignore the likelihood that Gregor Venko was already there, and that the Manor had already fallen to his forces.
I caught Sean’s anxious gaze as I ended the dead call. His eyes were red-rimmed from staring into the artificial airflow, fatigue pinching his cheeks into hollows.
I wondered if he could force himself to this kind of stamina naturally or if he’d taken anything in order to sustain it. I couldn’t think of a way to ask that wouldn’t insult him.
“It’ll be OK,” I said, more to reassure myself than him. “We’ll get there.”
“That’s not the worry,” he said, raising a half smile even though his voice was flat. “It’s what we’ll find there when we do.”
***
At Heilbronn we turned south again, back onto the B10 for Stuttgart and the penultimate leg. The traffic stayed obstinately thick and cumbersome. Since Nürnberg we’d been able to average barely eighty miles an hour. I was almost glad when Madeleine II began to give us the countdown warnings to our final junction. That feeling didn’t last for long.
By the time we were onto the tortuous back roads heading for our destination, Sean’s temper was racked to breaking point by sheer overwhelming exhaustion.
He drove with a kind of controlled violence now, taking blatant risks to get past other vehicles. Yet still he seemed to maintain a light deft touch on the Skyline’s controls as it screamed and scrabbled and snorted along the narrow roads. Like a master rider on a horse that was totally insane.
***
Ten o’clock.
The deadline came and went, and still we were half a lifetime from Einsbaden. The village had always seemed so close to the Manor, but now some giant joke of fate kept moving it further away.
But, when we finally skittered between the griffin-topped gateposts and I checked my watch, I discovered that despite the increased congestion we had shaved a further two minutes off the outward trip from the Manor to the autobahn. Nevertheless, it was now ten-ten.
Ten minutes too late, perhaps?
The barrier on the driveway was down. Sean cursed, shifting his foot off the accelerator and beginning to brake. We’d barely shaken off speed when two figures stepped out from behind the guard hut and pointed submachine guns meaningfully in our direction.
For a second I thought that Major Gilby had posted a couple of his men to watch for our return, but as soon as the thought had formed I dismissed it. He didn’t have two to spare.
I registered the fact that they were strangers at the same instant that the Uzis they were carrying began to sing. The flashes from each muzzle became a continuous blaze as they opened fire. I ducked down behind the level of the dash top as my side of the windscreen crazed.
Sean got back on the power without any thought to a progressive throttle. The Skyline leapt forwards, snarling, and ran towards the men with the guns. I heard the whiz and twang of the rounds hitting the bodywork, but the big car shook them off and kept coming.
Too late perhaps, our attackers realised Sean wasn’t trying to evade them. The front edge of the bonnet hit the barrier, snapping it off and hurling it aside like a broken lance. One of the men jumped for cover, rolling into the trees.
We clipped the other man’s thigh with the front wing as he moved just too slowly to avoid us. He flew backwards with a grunt, dropping the Uzi and disappearing from view. Sean never even looked in the mirror.
“Well, that gives you your answer about Gregor,” he said tightly. “He’s here.”
I sat up again and shook the fragments of broken glass off my clothing. I’d picked up a couple of scratches from the splinters on the backs of my hands. Other than that I’d been lucky.
The holes in the windscreen would have been at head height if I’d been taller. Sean’s height, for instance. I realised they’d been aiming for the driver, but they’d been thrown by the fact that – to them – he was sitting on the wrong side of the car.
I readied the PM-98, keeping my finger outside the trigger guard for the moment. Hofmann released Ivan’s hands from the grab rail, re-cuffing them in front of him so we could get him out quickly. Gregor’s sighting of his son could be vital if we were going to avoid being shot to pieces.
The front of the Manor forecourt was deserted, but Sean must have spotted something because he snatched the wheel over at the last moment and headed for the parking area at the rear of the house.