Shaw plunged on, into the filthy night. The police car’s headlights sliced into the murk behind him as the vehicle swung round to illuminate the marshlands. The firing was still going on spasmodically; it sounded as though they were shooting blind into the darkness. After a while it stopped, and there was an uneasy lull. And shortly after this, Shaw became aware that there was someone else moving through the mud and rain, and that this person was behind him — not, as he would have expected had it been Wicks or Fawcett, in front; and the unknown person was moving with expertise.
Keeping low in the scrubby growth fringing the marsh, Shaw made for the meagre cover of a nightmarish tree, a tree whose outline had all the sinister appearance of one of the weird sisters on the blasted heath. Here, crouching on one knee, he waited, with the hammer of Fawcett’s Webley drawn back. The rain hissed down; already he was soaked to the skin and shivering, his teeth chattering together miserably. Soon, against the background loom of light from the distant road, he could make out a slow-moving figure coming closer.
He raised the Webley.
It could be Wicks or his friend, perhaps coming up in rear after lying low until he had gone past; but more likely it was a Russian combing the area. Shaw wasn’t going to go down without a fight, and if the man approaching should, after all, turn out to be Ivan Conroy, then this might be as good a time as any to carry out Treece’s ultimate order.
He kept dead still, merged with the misshapen tree, to all intents and purposes merely a growth on its trunk…
The unknown figure came very slowly nearer.
Shaw could hear the breathing now. There was something familiar about that outline… his mouth tightened ominously. He was almost certain…
He kept as quiet as the grave until the moving figure was within range of the Webley. Then he moved. He straightened and stepped away from the tree. “Right,” he said evenly. “That’s just as near as you come, Miss Virginia MacKinlay. I’m in no mood to be chivalrous tonight. Meanwhile you can start talking and the first thing I’d like to know is who you’re working for — and don’t give me any more bull about meat executives on Manhatten!”
There was a sharp intake of breath, and then the girl’s voice came to him shakily. She said, “Well, maybe it’s time I explained a few things, Commander Shaw…”
He had been badly rocked by that totally unexpected use of his name on the very verge of the Pripet marshes. He’d kept the Webley lined up on the girl’s navel and told her to approach him but not to make any sudden moves, and to keep her hands away from her sides. She obeyed; he frisked her very thoroughly but she had no weapon of any kind. After tha,t he lowered his own gun in some perplexity. The girl, who was wearing a light summer coat over her frock, was as wet and cold as he was himself, and he was sorry for any young girl who’d come through the experience of that coach smash. Her voice was still not fully under control, and he had felt the tremor in her body as his hands had searched her.
He said, “Now, let’s have it. I’m sorry I can’t return the compliment and address you by your real name.”
“Just for the record, it is my real name,” she said in a small, weary voice, “but it’s not all that important anyway. I’m only quite an insignificant cog—”
“In what?” he demanded cuttingly. “The KGB?”
“No,” she said. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
That rocked him. “The what?”
“You heard…” she seemed to be trying to go on but there was a catch in her throat and she swayed towards him. He reached out and caught her. She had gone completely limp, almost boneless. Her body lay in his arms, light as a feather, yielding as a lover. She was desperately cold, and trembling violently as though she were feverish. He felt a stickiness matting her hair in front; there was a patch of blood where she had evidently taken a nasty blow on the head in the crash.
Shaw held her tightly to him, giving her the warmth, such as it was, of his own body. Her breath was hot on his chest, through his thin shirt. She had sounded one hundred per cent genuine, but he couldn’t accept her on that basis. An agent of the FBI… it was a pretty thin story to be telling, here behind the Curtain! She could be anyone, could easily be in the service of the Russians. And yet… he was puzzled. Why come out here to him, why risk an attack in the darkness before her pals on the roadway could reach her? In any case, it would have to remain a mystery for the time being. Shaw looked away to the south, towards the road. The police car’s headlights were no longer directed off the highway; they were now brilliantly outlining the wrecked coach. Figures were scrambling over the bodywork and passing between the car and the coach, and torches were moving back along the road as if a search were in progress. By now someone in the police vehicle would have radioed urgent messages ahead to Minsk… Shaw lifted the girl clear of the ground, hoisting her over his shoulder, and turned away from the road. He began stumbling deeper into open country.
A little later, the girl had recovered consciousness but was in no fit state to be questioned. He laid her gently down in the lee of the scrub and they waited in relative security for the next move. So far as Shaw had any clear intentions at the moment, he meant to circle back to the road, clear of the crash scene, as soon as it seemed safe to do so, and then maybe make east, in the general direction of Minsk; he certainly couldn’t continue far to the north or south of the road, for there was nothing but marsh in either direction.
Soon, he saw signs of increased activity along the highway.
So far only scanty traffic had been passing the scene and this had been waved ahead by the police, who evidently were not encouraging any rubbernecking. Now a whole convoy of lights came up from the east, coming out fast from Minsk. Shaw watched. As they screamed up to the crashed coach, he saw that they were ambulances, a fleet of them with a police car in the lead, and in the rear of the line a heavy Red Army lorry. As this lorry drew up, troops piled from it and at once fanned out along both sides of the highway.
Shaw cursed.
The police in the first car must already have checked the number of dead and injured aboard with the number which Superluxury Tour 37 would be known to be carrying — and they could even have found that briefcase by now. They would know well enough that some of the passengers had skipped. Shaw wondered about Wicks and Fawcett… those two would be well clear by now — unless they’d lingered too near the road after all and had been the targets for the earlier bursts of firing and had been mown down. Unlikely that they would have lingered… but whatever had happened to them, he himself had to get on the move again — and fast.
He lifted the girl once more, cradling her in his arms this time, and moved off, making away from the road into unknown territory over muddy and squelchy earth. He stumbled on, finding after a while that he was gasping for breath; the effort of carrying Virginia, light as she was, with the appalling drag of the mud that clung to his feet, was tiring him fast. Virginia became heavier in his arms. He stopped, and shifted her again to his shoulder. He could hear, faintly, the sounds of the search going on behind him. There were shouted commands, a distant, metallic rattle of equipment now and again — and then a broad swath from a searchlight mounted on the Red Army vehicle swept across, wavered, then steadied. A moment after that, it began a sweep closing in on Shaw from the east.