‘Yes, an inn, half a mile ahead. You won’t see it, but I’ll tell you.’ They were both thinking on the same lines, and it was pleasing to find that they both knew it, without any waste of words. ‘Drop me off there, and try to hang on to him.’
‘Sure? You know these roads better than I do.’
‘You don’t speak German,’ said Werner unanswerably.
George would have managed to make himself understood somehow, but Werner wouldn’t even have to try, and delay was what they could least afford.
‘You’ll call the German police, too? They might pick up the Dodge before they get it into hiding.’ Nobody was going to be able to identify it afterwards, that was plain. ‘And the frontier, in case. Though I doubt if they’ll risk the frontier… not on the road.’
‘At night it could be a very nominal check… they might. If they try some other way over, it has to be a rough one. You’ll have a better chance of staying with him.’
‘And the other side? What choice of roads?’
‘After Scheidenau, it has to be Bregenz or Langen. I’ll call both. Pity we weren’t near enough to get a number, but a Mercedes in a hurry… black or dark blue?… I’d say black.’
‘And the Dodge you know.’ A cigarette-end in the dark, the sole trace of the Mercedes, vanished round one more bend ahead. George switched on dipped headlights, and made up a little of the lost ground while there was a ridge of rock between them.
‘The Dodge I know. Slow round this bend, my inn’s on the right. You’ll see a track going off uphill.’
George saw the pole first, the telephone wire sliding away from the road. He braked to a halt where the climbing path began, and Werner was out like a greyhound. ‘Good luck!’ He waved and darted away into the dark; and George ranged through the Volkswagen’s willing gears and set off doggedly after the vanished Mercedes.
And now he was on his own, and any communing he was going to do would be done strictly with himself. But give Werner ten minutes with that telephone, and there would be large numbers of invisible allies turning out to his aid. He could use as many as he could get. The outfit that could plant four men and that kind of car to pick off Francis Killian had plenty of resources at its disposal. The thing began to look promisingly big. Big, thorough, and highly sensitive to any display of curiosity. Now which of those calls Killian had made to-day in Regenheim could have caused Them—whoever They were!—to set up this efficient ambush?
No doubt about now Werner would be reeling off the whole list to the German police, and leaving them to do the rest. If he was fast enough they might be able to stop the Dodge in Felsenbach, before some discreet garage doors closed on it somewhere—those double doors in Regenheim, perhaps?—and three or four waiting experts fell on it and transformed everything on it or in it that was transformable, and sent it out again to be palmed off on some innocent sucker the other side of the country. George had known the whole job done inside four hours, even in England, and in comparison with these big boys with the whole of Europe open to them the English were mere amateurs.
And if the car was meant to vanish without trace, ten thousand to one so was Francis Killian. Like anybody else who got too nosy about this complicated corner of Central Europe, about anonymous graves and mysterious disappearances. Like Robin Aylwin himself? Like Peter Bromwich? Hang on tightly enough to this one, thought George, picking up the distant spark and breathing again, and you may find out what happened to the others.
He wished he knew whether the men in that car knew he was there on their tail. His impression was that they did not, for though they were moving briskly, and had left him well behind, the fact remained that with their power they could have been much farther ahead of him had they wished. It looked as if speed, though important and desirable, was not the first consideration. They wouldn’t wish to storm the frontier post as if they were in flight from the law; and if, on the other hand, they intended to evade Customs altogether, perhaps they had to look for a way not familiar to them. The crossing between Scheidenau and Felsenbach was a quiet one at any time, surely practically dead at night; but that might be a mixed blessing. Bored Customs men might take more interest in a car passing through than would those who had a constant stream of traffic. No, George’s best bet was that they wouldn’t go near the post. There are more ways over any hill frontier than are covered by the authorities.
About a mile to go now to the crest. If they were going to leave the road it must be soon, for the descent on the other side was through much more open country. It seemed that suddenly he was gaining on them a little; he could see the spark of red, obviously round another bend from his stretch of road, proceeding in a diagonal incline to the right, and now decidedly at a more sedate speed. He eased up slowly to hold his distance. Arrival at the point where he had seen the quarry change course gave him a shock, for he had been relying on the Mercedes as a guide, and travelling by mere unreliable moonlight or sidelights, or into the sharp cut-off of dipped headlights, which made progress hazardous and the angles of the road deceptive. So far from swinging to the right here, it turned somewhat to the left. He braked with his nose on the grass verge, and risked switching his lights on full beam for an instant. He had slightly overshot the opening of a narrow, stony track that branched off sharply to the right.
Where they could go, he could go, with room to spare. He backed a few yards, and turned into the track after them. His guess had been accurate, they had no intention of entering Austria by the road.
Now he had to use his lights, he would not have survived long without them. Luckily the driver of the Mercedes must also be having to concentrate hard, and the noise they were making up there would effectively drown out the noise he was making down here. Once launched on this track there was only one way to go, for trees and rocks encroached on it irregularly on either side. The surface was beaten earth, like any ramblers’ path in the mountains, liberally toothed with outcrop rock and loose stones. In places it was more like a dried watercourse than a track, and in other places more like a bog than either, and reinforced with half-peeled logs laid as a causeway. It climbed steeply, twice negotiating narrow wooden bridges which George took at a crawl, forewarned by the earthquake rumblings his quarry had set up in crossing. Most of the time he lost sight of the Mercedes altogether, but from time to time he caught a glimpse of the rear lights, and knew he was holding his own. Caution, not haste, was what mattered to them here. He could even have closed up on them, at some risk, but he was unarmed, and there were three of them, almost certainly provided with guns. Much better hang back and remain undetected, as rather surprisingly he still seemed to be, until he could make contact with the reinforcements called out by Werner.
He had not the least idea at what point they re-entered Austria; there was never anything to mark the change. Nor had he any notion of how far they had come on this travesty of a road; three miles of strained attention can seem more like thirty. But it occurred to him suddenly that they had ceased to climb, and on either side of the belt of trees that shrouded them he could see the faintly lambent sky, still frayed with broken cloud. Then the descent, which was mercifully more gradual than the ascent had been, but still testing enough. The track, doubling like a coursed hare, tipped them abruptly into a lane enclosed between stone walls, no wider than the way they had come, but at once smoother, an ordinary dirt road that might have led to some isolated farm, and probably did. This in turn brought them at length to a metalled road, fields opening out on either side. George rolled the Volkswagen cautiously up to the turn, and cut his lights.