8: SKIDDER
There wasn't a chance because the width of the car was filling the alleyway and there was no door I could reach and the walls were too high and there was nothing to climb so I waited until the headlights were close enough and then jumped and hit the bonnet with the flat of my hands and pulled my legs up and got thrown against the top of the windscreen and over the roof, hitting the CB antenna in the centre of the boot and feeling it flex and break but the base held and I got one foot against it and used it for leverage and smashed the rear window with a heel-palm and got a grip on the frame and held on while the car accelerated through the alley like a bullet down a gun barrel and burst into the street and began weaving from side to side with the tyres shrilling and the suspension taking the shock and the bodywork heaving and recoiling and heaving and throwing me from side to side as my foot lost its hold against the base of the antenna and I clung on with one hand, side to side, weaving and bucking as he sped up and zig-zagged from kerb to kerb.
He'd been sure he could shake me loose but I found purchase again on the antenna base and he went down on the brakes and my shoulder hit the window frame and I got both hands on it now but he was going to pull up and get out and come for me and he'd have a gun and if I dropped off and tried running clear he'd shoot me down at close range and my skin began crawling because this was going to be it, finis.
Lights.
They swept across the street's facade and flooded the rear of the Mercedes and he came off the brakes and hit the throttle and the tyres spun and then gripped and the rear went down and all I could do was hung on because if I dropped now I couldn't deal with the speed and there'd be no chance of shielding my head. A siren had started up and the flashing lights came on from behind us and the Mercedes began slewing again from one side to the other because this man's orders had been to wipe me out and this was the priority he wanted to take care of before the police could close in.
It carried the same signature: they'd gone for Scarsdale in the same way but this time they'd assumed I'd be more difficult so the 'd chosen the alley and set up the kill with the girl for the lure and the timing precise and it must have looked certain and would have been certain if I hadn't got things right.
I couldn't see where we were going, couldn't see street names because I was prone with my face down, one cheek sliding across the cellulose and my foot slipping, catching again and slipping with both hands burning on the chips of glass in the frame. I didn't know what the speed was in actual figures but he was moving flat out for the terrain and hitting the kerb and bouncing with the springs heeling, straightening and heeling as he shook the car like a ship beam-on to a running sea, the siren howling close behind us now and the reflection of the headlights dazzling on the bodywork against my eyes.
We turned and the car slewed through an intersection with the tyres sending out a long-drawn whimper that echoed from the buildings and my weight shifted under the pull of the centrifugal force and my foot lost its purchase on the antenna base and my legs swung clear and one hand was tugged from the window-frame and I half-rolled with my hip smashing against the rear quarter as the brakes came on again and the lights of the police car grew suddenly intense and then swung away as it lost traction in a slide that took it across the kerb and into a glass window and the thought came into my mind that this would be a good place to chance it and let go and try to roll and minimise the damage because he wouldn't stop and come back for me with the police here and they'd pick me up and get me somewhere if I were still alive.
But I had my priorities too and the chief of these was to move in on this man if I could and force something out of him, even if only a name, one name, or a clue, one clue that would to take Quickstep a stage further towards the access I had to have, the access to Horst Volper.
A siren sounded again, a different one from somewhere ahead of us: the Vopos had been using their radio and calling in some support and at this hour with the streets almost empty there'd be patrols cruising the city with nothing to do. Lights swept the intersection ahead of us and the driver braked and swerved to the right and hit the kerb and bounced into a wrenching U-turn and my legs were swung back and my foot caught the antenna-base and I got my other hand back to hook onto the edge of the window but I began worrying about muscle fatigue setting in before we hit something and I could move into close quarters with the man at the wheel. I was also worrying about the Vopos because if he smashed up the car and they came for him he'd probably pull his gun on them and then he wouldn't stand a chance because he'd be outnumbered and they'd blow him away and I'd never be able to ask him what I wanted to know. I was within minutes, inches of forcing answers out of him that would give me access to the objective but he was pushing himself closer and closer to death and taking me with him.
Headlights in front of us and a siren howling and he swerved and grazed a lamppost and the Mercedes shuddered, rocking on its springs and heeling to one side before it hit the police car at an angle and the deceleration forces pushed me forward and I kept my foot hooked against the antenna to anchor me but it slipped free and I hit the rear quarter with one shoulder and lost all conscious thought for a while because the metalwork shrieked as the two cars glanced together and glass smashed and threw a shower of fragments across the Mercedes in a sudden hailstorm and the siren's volume rose until the eardrums went dead and all I could do was hang on and wait till it was over. A man shouted something and then we were clear and slewing across the road surface and swinging at right angles into the interesection, bouncing against the kerb and straightening with only the street lights ahead of us because one of the headlights had been ripped away and blown a fuse and shut the other one off. Stink of burnt rubber on the air from the torn treads of the tyres.
He could see me in the driving mirror and one of the things I expected him to do was get at his gun and snatch a half-second to swing round in his seat and fire into me and there was nothing I could do to stop him except let go and drop off and leave it to happen that way instead of with a bullet. He was having to concentrate on driving char of' the tightening police net and he was hoping he could shake time off at some point along the way and leave me lying at the front end of a long red smear on the road surface, but even so I was beginning to wonder why he didn't go for his gun and one answer could be that he didn't have one: he could be a specialist with the hit-and-run routine and have a certain degree of contempt for side-arms, just as I do.
We were going very fast now and the street was wide and I thought it could be Karl Marx Allee again. They'd flushed him out of the side-streets into the open and that was another worry because he was a clear target and they could bring in a dozen more patrols if they wanted to, fifty if they wanted to, and fill the whole of the avenue and shoot his tyres off and wait till he spun and crashed. The speed felt like something close to a hundred kph and the backwash of the slipstream was tugging at my clothes and I thought that if he smashed the Mercedes now there wouldn't be any question of forcing anything out of him and I had a sudden feeling of rage because we were only two days into the mission and Shepley was manning the signals board for Quickstep and all he'd get from Cone was the routine phrase for a terminal situation, shadow down, and upstairs they'd punch the uncoded equivalent, executive deceased.