Now might be her one chance of killing Radleigh. All she had to do was point this heavy gun and try to keep it steady as she squeezed the trigger. But could she keep it straight? Wouldn’t she need all the bullets to get out of here? From all over the house, she could hear distant shouting and a clattering of boots. Far beneath the window, she could hear more tramping on gravel. Could she spare even one bullet? Still keeping the gun on Robert, she glanced at Radleigh, who was lighting another cigarette beside him. She couldn’t doubt he’d betrayed her parents—just as he was engaged here in some act of betrayal—but she still hadn’t questioned him. Could she kill Radleigh? She might have killed once before—but that wasn’t in cold blood.
Radleigh caught her uncertain glance, and smiled through a cloud of smoke, “It’s time to grow up, Jennifer,” he said in his sternest voice. “This isn’t a game. So give me that gun before someone gets hurt. Hooper wants the boy, and won’t stop until she gets him.” The old man began a confused protest. “Oh, shut up!” Radleigh told him. “You’ll get your oil concessions—but it will be Hooper’s way, not yours.” He turned once more to Jennifer. “My dear girl,” he said, as smoothly as if he were already sitting down to his late supper, “that boy is the key to a better world. One way or the other, he’s going back to London. You can make that easy for us or hard for the pair of you.”
Jennifer forced herself to make a decision. “Cover them with your sword,” she said to Michael. His face was dark with anger and with shame, and he waved his sword menacingly. She went over to the window. After the comparative darkness of this room, the outside floodlighting was like the day at noon. She stared down at a dozen bearded and waiting faces. She pulled back the hammer and held the gun hard between both hands and aimed it down. The crash was deafening as she pulled the trigger. Even before she was really aware of that, she’d come close to knocking her head on the upper sash from the recoil. This was like nothing she’d ever fired. She was lucky she hadn’t dropped it out of the window. She looked over the dark outline of the gun for something that might resemble a safety catch. Finding nothing that looked obvious. She stuffed it into the back waistband of her shorts, and tried not to think how far down the ground was as she climbed backwards out of the window.
“Go down alone,” Michael said. “I’ll follow.” Unable to speak, she shook her head and tried not to slide uncontrollably down the smooth fabric of the sheet. She was half way before she could get a proper hold. By then, Michael was also inching down from above her. She could feel rather than hear the ripping of cotton as it slowly gave up on supporting what must be a combined weight of sixteen or seventeen stone.
“Tell them I want no violence,” she heard Radleigh say with hard finality. “Hooper knows all about your dealings with the towel heads, and doesn’t care. Harm that boy, and it’ll be Ireland if you’re lucky.” She looked up, but saw only the off-white bottom of Michael’s shorts. The old man was above her, shouting in Arabic, as, with a stab of relief, she felt the gravel beneath her feet.
Chapter Thirty Five
Dark shapes fanned out all round them while Jennifer hurried a bare-footed Michael round to the front of the house. “Make for the trees,” he hissed. He pointed with his sword at the fifty yard distance to the open gateway and the darkness beyond. “I’ll try to hold them off.” He yelped as he stepped on one of the large stones that marked off a flower bed before one of the ground floor windows. Ignoring him, Jennifer took his right arm over her shoulders and helped him across what seemed the impossibly wide expanse. She was just in time with her free hand to stop the gun from working its way out of her shorts. She held it in one hand and waved it theatrically at a man who’d come within a few feet of them. He fell back with a shrill cry of alarm in Arabic.
It really was bright as day out there. Mindful of the continuing overhead cry in Arabic from the old man, no one pointed his own gun. But there were perhaps a dozen men about them, all dressed in Eastern robes, and all in a circle that was tightening by the second. They’d never make it to the gate. If they did, they’d never find where the bicycles had been propped out of sight. If, by some continuing miracle, they got this far, it was almost a joke to wonder how far they’d get on bicycles.
“The—the vehicle,” she cried wildly. But Michael had already seen the dark and shining car, and was pulling her in its direction. He slashed out with his sword at a man who’d come too close, and nearly got him. Over by the gate, two big Arabs stood in their way. Their own curved swords glittered wickedly in the floodlighting. Behind her, in the house, there was a crash of many feet, and angry shouts. There would soon be dozens of men out here.
The gun shook with a life of its own as she pointed it at the driver. “The keys—give me the keys!” she screamed in Latin at him. Somehow, he understood, and pointed inside the car before getting his hands up. “Get in!” she shouted at Michael, now in English. He shouted something back in Greek and waved his sword to cover her as she got in. Putting the gun into her left hand, she pulled her door open and fell into the seat.
“Oh, Jesus, Jesus—no!” she sobbed with a thrill of horror. She’d noted the odd lettering on the number plate, and seen the ring of yellow barbed wire above the D for Germany. It still hadn’t got to the front of her mind that this wasn’t an English car. She was sitting in the passenger’s seat, staring at the glove compartment. They’d got so far. They’d got so far—and she was sitting in the passenger seat, with a boy right out of the middle ages sitting in the driver’s seat. Her heart thudding away like a tribal drum, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to blot out the sound of shouting that was soon all about the car. Michael had spoken earlier of a “moment of free choice.” She could have laughed at the use they’d made of this—only there were now men banging on the roof and doors.
She opened her eyes to a universal clicking of locks, and looked left in time to see Michael turn his attention from the controls on the door to the mass of dials and levers before him. “I have seen these things driven,” he said calmly. “This one’s all the wrong way round,” he added with a turn to fierce concentration. “But I think you still need to turn the key to the right of the steering wheel.” She heard him patting about until he found the ignition key. He turned it so the internal lights came on. He frowned and pushed one after another on the pedals. Before Jennifer could find any Latin that might describe the next step, he rubbed his nose and grinned. “Silly me!” he said brightly. He twisted the key fully and shouted something as the engine roared into life. He let his left foot slip off the clutch pedal, and the car lurched an inch forward, before falling back to where it had been parked. Someone was hammering on the rear window. A sword blow left a bright crack near the top of the windscreen. Jennifer shrank into her seat and pressed her eyes shut.
“Oh!” he cried. He laughed and pointed at the handbrake. “I should have moved this lever down.” She closed her eyes again in time to another sword blow, opening them to see how her own side of the windscreen was become a mass of shining cracks. Still calm, still concentrating, Michael was pushing his feet up and down on the pedals. He found how to turn the key fully back and then all the way forward to get the car started again and put it into second gear. He poked a bare foot at the accelerator, remembering just in time about the clutch. There was a loud crash of shattered glass as one of the rear passenger windows caved in, and a series of what sounded like hammer blows on the roof. There was a sword already stabbing through the broken window when he got the car moving slowly forward and turned the wheel sharp right.