And that’s the thing about a crossfire in the dark. If it misses its mark, it’s very likely to kick up the dust around gunmen supposedly on the same side. That’s what happened now. One of them was winged in the ankle. As he fell, he cursed loudly, and anger must have made him lose his head for a moment. He drilled one of his fellow hoods across the clearing straight between the eyes.
“Hold your fire!” one of the remaining men shouted authoritatively. In the silence that followed, Lagula’s loud chuckle rang out over the area.
I watched as the remaining foursome huddled in the shelter of the trees. The man who’d been hit in the ankle was helped to his feet. He put his arm around Domino’s shoulder, and she helped him start to hobble back down the hillside to the Mercedes. The other two split up to continue the hunt. One of them was wearing the Basque beret favored by the native Maltese. He was a small, lithe man and had the flowing moustaches typical of them. The other was larger, bulkier, and seemed to have on some sort of uniform.
The Maltese spotted Lagula crouching behind an outcropping of rock. He opened fire, and Lagula shot back. The larger man crept up on Lagula from another angle and also started shooting. For a moment it was like a Coney Island shooting gallery with the sitting ducks shooting back.
But Lagula was one sitting duck who was fast running out of ammo. They had him pinned down, but strategically they couldn’t move in on his sheltered position as long as he was able to shoot back. But then he stopped shooting back. When they started for him and he threw the empty revolver at one of them, I realized his predicament.
In a moment they’d have him—dead or alive, and they didn’t seem to care much one way or the other—if I didn’t act. So I acted. What the hell, Lagula might have pegged me as a traitor, but I knew better. I knew which side my I-spy bread was buttered on. He was my friend and my ally, and I had to do what I could to save him.
I was unarmed, so the only thing I could do was create a distraction. The shoot-up party was about twenty feet away from the tree in which I was hiding. As they started for Lagula, I stood up on the branch and dived.
I covered half the distance to them skidding on my belly. The two men whirled around and started shooting as I dived into the bushes off to one side. When they realized they’d lost me, they turned back to Lagula again.
I stood up and thumbed my nose at them. “You missed me! You missed me!” I sang out. I dived back into the bushes before they could start firing with any accuracy again.
They were too fast for Lagula, though. He tried to dive for the bushes himself, but they turned firing, and he had to plunge back behind the shelter of the rocks. They started for him again, and again I bounced up shouting.
“You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!” I jumped up and down until I’d drawn their fire and then managed to disappear again.
They went into a huddle. The strategy they’d planned became apparent the next time they started closing in on Lagula, and I found it necessary to act up again. This time only the larger man responded to my jack-in-the-box appearance and insulting cackling.
“Ringalevio! Ringalevio! One-two-three! One-two-three!” I hollered. “First one shoots is a rotten egg! ”
I overdid it. The big fellow shot. “You’re a rotten egg!” I yelled, bouncing into view again. I should have looked first. While I’d been down, he’d moved fast. Now I practically landed in his arms as I jumped up. He waved the gun under my nose, and I reached for the stars.
My jaw dropped open as I recognized my captor. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it because, like him, I was struck by the sudden silence back where Lagula had been. He wasn’t there any more, but the Maltese was. He was sprawled face-up over the rocks, and he didn’t have his gun any more. There was a small poisoned dart neatly embedded in the exact center of his throat. It was the mark of a Maltese fall guy—deceased as deceased could be.
Lagula’s voice broke the silence. Neither my captor nor myself could tell from where it was coming. “Good-bye for now, Comrade Karenkov,” he called. "Thanks for your help. Sorry I can’t guarantee to return it. But if you ever want to really defect, let me know and I’ll try to help you.”
“Lagula, you idiot!” I called back. “I’m Steve Victor. Help me.”
“Sorry! First things first.”
A few minutes later I appreciated what he meant by that. He’d crept up on the Mercedes and, using the gun he’d lifted from the dead Maltese, he’d taken Domino and the wounded man prisoner. My own captor and I watched as he led them to the Porsche.
“Want to swap?” Lagula called up.
My captor didn’t answer. I had the feeling he might have answered with a bullet, but it was too far away for him to shoot with any accuracy.
Lagula’s shrug said he recognized that his offer had been turned down. He put bullets through two of the tires on the Mercedes and got back into the jump seat of the Porsche. Domino was driving and his gun was nuzzling the hair at the nape of her neck as they pulled off down the road. I guessed they’d had no trouble switching to the auxiliary gas tank.
“Harumph!” My captor cleared his throat. “It seems that we must face up to a rather long walk, Mr. Victor,” he said.
“Seems so,” I agreed. “Life certainly is full of surprises, isn’t it? I never would have figured you to be involved in S.M.U.T.” I didn’t bother trying to hide my surprise at finding myself the prisoner of Major Dwight Worthby of the Malta garrison of Her Brittanic Majesty’s Royal Army. “Just how do you figure in all this, anyway?”
“I’ll ask the questions, Mr. Victor. Start walking.” He nudged me with the gun.
And ask the questions he did as we trudged down the hillside to the road and then back up the road toward the farmhouse I’d fled only a short while before. But the questions he asked surprised me, and once again I found myself not only without any answers, but also without any facts worth concealing from him.
“Who is the Prince?” Major Worthby wanted to know.
“Huh?”
“What is he Prince of?” he asked.
“I don’t think I understand—”
“What was his mission in London?”
“What the devil are-—?”
“What sort of agreement did he come to with the Home Office?” he persisted.
“I’m completely conf-”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Victor,” he said impatiently, prodding me with the gun to take longer steps as we marched up the road. “I overheard enough in the casino so that it’s ridiculous for you to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Now, S.M.U.T. has a vital interest in Malta-—for reasons that are none of your business. It’s important to me to know just what changes in the military setup here are due to transpire at the behest of some foreign potentate. So suppose we start all over again and you stop trying to play innocent. Just who is this Prince?”
By now it had clicked. All these questions had to do with the put-on Lagula and I had indulged in just for the hell of it when we’d first encountered Major Worthby in the casino. The Major, it was now obvious, had swallowed our little fun-dialogue hook, line, and sinker. He thought he’d stumbled onto something important, and now he wanted “the facts” behind it. It was ludicrous, but I knew that he’d never in a million years believe the truth. So that’s what I told him—the absolute truth.
“Who is the Prince?” He repeated the question.
“He’s an African Pigmy from Rhodesia—from the interior, the bush country, that is.”
“You are in no position to attempt levity, Mr. Victor. Now-—just what is the nation of which he is a Prince?”