The railways out of the reckoning, it had to be the main road. “It’s dangerous,” Shaw admitted, “but short of giving up the whole job or seeking Embassy help, there’s literally no choice. It’d take far too long to cover four hundred miles by living off the country, as it were, and hoping for the odd lift to ease our feet. What we want is something going all the way, right through to Moscow.”
“Sure, but how in hell do we get it?” Virginia asked wearily. She was, he knew, dragging herself along by willpower alone now. “Pinch it?”
He shook his head. “No, not if you mean knock off a car. That way we’d be sure to be stopped somewhere along the line. Stolen cars and lorries are taken more seriously here than they are in England… or even the States.”
“So?”
He shrugged; rain dripped down inside his collar. “We bum a lift from a long-distance driver — it’s as simple as that, in theory.”
“And if the driver doesn’t like the look of us?”
“We use that gun of Fawcett’s. As a matter of fact, it’s a hundred to one no driver’s going to be all that keen on us… not in Russia! But, you see, that way no one back here is going to report anything missing, and there shouldn’t be any chase, as such. That’s not to say we may not be stopped by a road check, but we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“And the driver — assuming we have to use the gun? What about him when we make Moscow… or do we cross him when we come to him, too?”
Shaw grinned. “You’re learning, Virginia!” They tramped ahead, their feet aching, bodies stiff with the sustained effort of keeping going. They were now on the one main route east out of Minsk — the highway for Smolensk and Moscow. There had to be somebody who would carry them along it.
They picked up their lift, and it was a totally unexpected one, more than two aching, weary miles farther along, after a handful of misfires when Shaw had stopped vehicles terminating their journeys in Smolensk; it had been tempting to board any one of those vehicles and hasten one more long step from the scene of the crash, but Shaw had resisted it. It would be more prudent to take only the one straight through lift, rather than change in Smolensk and thus have two drivers to deal with. It was just after the last driver had engaged his gears and moved slowly ahead, with a regretful wave at Virginia, that Shaw heard the big car coming up behind. Carrying CD plates, it had been traveling fast but was now slowing, waiting for the heavy transporter to straighten and let it pass. Shaw could see now that it was a limousine. Its headlights beamed on to Shaw and the girl and as it swept past him Shaw gave a gasp of sheer astonishment.
He yelled, “What the…!”
The car, some twenty yards past him now, braked suddenly as if the driver had just caught on. Shaw took Virginia’s arm and ran her forward. As they reached the car, a door was pushed open and a man looked out, smiling with pleasure, but clearly as surprised to see them as they were to see him.
“Well met, indeed!” Hartley Henderson beamed. “Can I by any chance offer you two a lift somewhere?”
Thirteen
As they climbed into the wide front seat of the limousine Henderson said, “You look a trifle bedraggled, my dear Cane… but then I mustn’t seem to joke about that tragic business.” He looked at Shaw curiously. “How the devil did you two get this far, anyway?”
“With difficulty!”
“I’ve no doubt of that. You’ve certainly put the authorities in a panic, all four of you. Why in heaven’s name did you disappear like that?”
“Just a minute… what d’you mean by ‘all four’?”
“Wicks and Fawcett vanished too.” Henderson glanced sideways. “You didn’t know that?” He engaged his clutch as he spoke and the big car rolled smoothly forward.
“No, as a matter of fact I didn’t.” Shaw gave him the story he’d faked up and Henderson seemed to accept it. The fewer the people who knew the real reason for his disappearance the less would be the chance of the story leaking. Apart from what the man himself had told him, Shaw knew nothing of Hartley Henderson — beyond the undoubted fact that he wasn’t exactly uncommunicative; he might relish the purveying of a good story in Moscow and, as ever, the Kremlin sprouted ears, and had a good deal of Moscow bugged as well. Shaw added, “We got a lift for part of the way after all that, but we had a long walk and we’re both damned tired. Especially Miss MacKinlay. Do I take it you’re going through to Moscow?”
Henderson nodded. “There’s room to sleep in the back,” he said easily. “With every comfort at hand, too. As you may have noticed, this happens to be an Embassy car.” He laughed, rather gloatingly. “Belongs to one of the First Secretaries from the Commercial Section, as a matter of fact. He hasn’t stinted himself.”
Shaw looked back through the glass panel. The compartment was in darkness but he could see the sumptuous outlines in the light from a car coming up behind. It wouldn’t be long before he and Virginia were catching up on some sleep in that elegant interior. He asked curiously, “How did you fix it, Henderson?”
“Easy enough,” Henderson answered casually as he overtook a heavy transporter with a long blare from twin horns. “I rang Worth-Butters, you know. Such a help — knowing someone. I told him I’d booked for the coach-trip especially to see all I could of the Soviet Union by road — not by rail, which was what he had the nerve to suggest in the first place! Well, to cut a long story short, Butters told me this man was in Minsk with a delegation and only needed his car for the journey from Moscow and back. The Minsk people had laid on all the transport he needed. Butters said he’d ring and ask him, as a personal favor, to put it at my disposal temporarily. Well, I said thank you very much — wouldn’t you have done?”
“I would indeed.” Shaw spared a thought for the long-suffering taxpayers back home. “What about his driver?”
Henderson waved a hand, airily. “He got some unexpected days off. I could have had his services, of course, but I thought it might be rather fun to drive myself across Russia.”
“I wonder you didn’t wait till daybreak…” Shaw stifled a yawn.
“Well, you know,” Henderson said confidentially, as he sent the car ahead fast, “I did think about it… but I came to the conclusion I might just as well spend as much time as possible in Moscow, and this was my chance to do just that. So much to see, you know… I’d never have done it all in the time alloted by poor Pope’s itinerary … it’s an ill wind, isn’t it? Though I shouldn’t say that in the circumstances. Some of those poor devils…” he broke off, shaking his head.
“I suppose you were taken to hospital with them?”
Henderson nodded. “Yes, I was. I believe there were six killed, apart from Pope and Tanner, and some very badly injured, but not as many as I’d have thought, thank God! I can’t tell you who was which, I’m afraid. I gather a couple of Russians were killed as well. Anyway, the police helped me out of the coach and put me on my feet — I’d been knocked out, you know, but no ill effects once I was in the open, apart from a nasty headache, and that went after I’d had a good, stiff brandy and then some aspirins. The MVD were most polite when I mentioned my Embassy connection,” he added. “They took me off to hospital for a check-up, then I was told I was free to go on Worth-Butters’s word that I was a friend of his — he talked to the man in charge, you know. Very accommodating of all concerned, I must say.”