Once we were out of the village, we stopped so Pakeshi could take over the wheel.
“They’ve got a helicopter,” I gasped. Even as I spoke, I heard its loud clatter somewhere behind us. Pakeshi swore loudly in Hindi, and then in English. He flipped off the lights, and we drove for a couple of seconds in total darkness. We went over a bump, and then another, as we joined one of the main roads. He swore again and turned the lights back on. He reached into his pocket and got out his gun.
“Ever used one of these?” he asked. I had. My headmaster had given out pistols to everyone in the Upper Sixth, and we’d all had weeks of fun with the local wildlife—weeks of fun, that is, until the letters of complaint began flooding in from everyone whose cats had been shot or windows broken. Since then, I’d had only slightly more experience of shooting than of driving. But I nodded and took the heavy gun. I balanced it in my hand and felt for the safety catch. Pakeshi slowed the car and I wound the window down. I looked out and up. The helicopter sounded as if it were directly above us. As I wondered how many bullets Pakeshi had, its spotlight went on and showed that it was really about a hundred yards behind us. I pulled my head back in and closed the window. I climbed over the seat into the back of the car, and wound down the window on the driver’s side. Pakeshi was doing about twenty, and the helicopter was soon almost overhead.
Aiming from a moving car at a moving target is something you see in films, and it generally allows an effective battle. But even holding the gun in the right direction was a job in itself. Judging when to shoot was something else. I looked ahead. There was something large and solid looming over the road perhaps three hundred yards ahead. Until then, the road was straight and clear on both sides. I swallowed and pushed my whole upper body out of the window. I twisted round, and, holding the gun in both hands, let off a single shot in the right direction. I thought I’d snapped my spine with the recoil, but got myself back into the car before we could pass under what may have been a railway bridge.
I don’t think the pilot had even noticed the gunshot. When I’d travelled down from London, the noise of the rotor blades was deafening. The helicopter rose far overhead as we passed under the railway bridge. Then it was back, now travelling faster and pressing closer to us. I think the idea was to knock us off the road. Or it might have been to jump ahead and block the road as it landed before us. But Pakeshi had slowed the car still more. I pushed myself out again and fired straight up. It would have been nice to think I’d got the helicopter, and that we’d soon hear its impact and explosion far behind. But if the rotor blades kept up their loud clatter, the searchlight was suddenly switched off, and the clatter itself began to come from further and further overhead. I looked out again into the darkness. Far above, there were two red lights. For a few seconds, they seemed to keep pace with the car. Then, as we accelerated, it turned back, and it sound grew steadily more distant.
“They can still track us.” I said in Pakeshi’s left ear. “There’s some kind of transmitter on me.”
“Great minds indeed think alike,” he replied. We were passing over the brow of a low hill. As we looked down, the headlamps revealed a road straight as the eye could see. Pakeshi played with a lever beneath the steering wheel, and the headlamps dipped to show more of the road immediately before us. The good roads were still at least twenty miles ahead. For the moment, it would never do to break an axle in one of the inevitable potholes.
“How did you get off the train?” I asked.
“I didn’t” he said shortly. There was a long pause, then a gentle laugh. “I’d already guessed you were tagged,” he added. “Once you were out of the carriage, all I had to do was get myself and my dear, sweet little bag onto the roof. You can be sure that I arrived in York both frozen and very, very dirty.” He laughed again. I tried to get myself into the mood for plying him with questions. If hardly talkative, Pakeshi had the good cheer about him of one who’s just tried something clever and has totally succeeded. In little dribs and drabs, and accompanied by an increasingly sub-Continental whine of laughter, he told me how he’d jumped on Foot’s men as they thought they lay in wait for him outside the docks in Hull. He’d killed one of them, and then performed some unspeakable surgery on the two he’d left alive until he had as much as the need-to-know status of his “patients” allowed.
“But why did you come looking for me?” I asked once I’d finished giving my side of the story.
“Oh, dearest and most learned and brave Anthony,” he smiled in the darkness. “I came back because we were neighbours and fellow countrymen of a sort—and, I suppose, because there was no way out of England for me. If I had to present myself eventually to Inspector O’Brien, it might as well be with you under my arm.”
Now might have been a good moment to ask what Macmillan’s offer had been about—what was all that about new identities in Brazil? But, even as I thought of the words, I heard the renewed clatter of the helicopter. To be sure, it was now keeping its distance. From a few hundred feet up, though, we’d have been easily visible—even without whatever device had somehow been secreted about me. We came to a junction. Pakeshi slowed and looked carefully out at some road signs I couldn’t see from where I sat. He dithered a moment, then reversed back into the junction and took the left turn.
In silence, we bumped gently on through the darkness of South East England by night. Pakeshi had mentioned O’Brien. Yes—we probably should go and see him. On the other hand, Vicky had been specific about going to her. Or there was always Enoch Powell at the India Office. So many choices. But they could wait until morning. I might even let Pakeshi decide. I still didn’t know his own agenda. What had been said earlier was playing on my mind, if not to much effect. So far as keeping me alive was concerned, his current agenda appeared to overlap with mine. He might even find it convenient to pay some regard to the safety of England and the Empire.
I sank back into the leather upholstery and stubbed out my cigarette. Pakeshi was a better driver than I or Krellburger. All the hard drink I’d downed in Burch Grove was finally having a soporific effect. If I didn’t catch up now on what felt like a month of missed sleep, I wasn’t sure when the next chance would present itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
It was astonishingly late in the morning when the need for a pee forced me awake. We were still moving, though now it was through the dumpier streets of a small town.