"No. D'you think Moscow hasn't heard of back doors? It's routine to cover back and front, and they're great ones for routine. "
Clare Hall glanced fearfully towards the back of the house. Her jitters were showing; no matter who her father was, the Moscow Bravoes were still something that happened on late-night TV, not in Matson, Illinois.
She rounded on Maxim: "So you're the tough guy, why don'tyou do something?"
"You say there must be somebody at the back?" Maxim said to Agnes. "They've split their force. If I neutralise him or them, then the back way could be open."
Agnes had never been in such a situation before: she had been on the outside, among the watchers of a house, moving two steps back on the rare occasions when the police or people like Maxim had been unleashed to go in, and shrugging sadly that things could not have been settled in a more civilised way. Now she was on the inside, and there was no civilised way out that she could see from there.
What they could see was the watcher himself, around the corner on the cross-street and about a hundred metres on a direct line across the lawn, at the only place where hehad a clear view between the shrubs and full-grown trees. He was bending over the open engine of a parked car.
"He wasn't there when we circled the block," Agnes said. "But a hundred to one that motor's in perfect nick."
Maxim was calculating the cover given by the trees and shrubs. "If I can slip out of a side window…"
"Are you sure?"
"This is my end of the business."
"All right-but, Harry: try not to neutralise him too hard."
Agnes planted Clare Hall in the kitchen to cover the back while she herself scurried to and from the front, checking on the Gleissner house.
Standing behind Clare for a few moments, Agnes said quietly: "With the effort Moscow's put into this, at short rime and long distance, your father seems to get more and more alive."
Clare gave a vague snort.
"Living in England?" Agnes suggested.
"If that's what you want me to say."
"If they do catch you," Agnes went on calmly, "it would be nice if I could warn him that they'll be after him as soon as you're through talking to them. Given their methods, you won't last long. "
"Iknow about their methods."
"Really?"
"I worked at Langley in, you'd call it the 'registry', until Dad resigned."
Yet another little something Mo Magill didn't tell me, Agnes thought, hurrying back for a look from the parlour window. All secret services recruit from families-not for nepotism, but just a pious hope that trustworthiness, whatever that was, was genetic.
When she got back, Clare Hall said irritably; "Yourfriend's taking his time."
"I hope so. That way, he's likely to get it right. Why didn't you ring up your old friends at Langley and tell them what's going on here? They'd get something organised pretty quickly."
"It was a long time ago."
"Youknow what your father's doing with that Crocus List, and you just don't want to wreck his little games."
Clare Hall looked at her coldly, downwards, since she was some inches taller. "Get mad at me and I'll paste you one, little girl."
"You and a freshly broken arm."
A watcher merely pretending to fiddle with his car's wiring has to turn his head away at times; the pretence demands it. When he turned back, there was a slim man in a new-looking fawn windcheater shambling across the quiet street and glancing from a paper in his hand to the houses around, obviously seeking an address. The watcher bowed his head into the engine again; he didn't want to be asked.
He wasn't. Maxim said softly: "Do you see where this gun's pointed?"
The watcher straightened slowly, looking down. The automatic was aimed at his crotch from about eighteen inches.
Maxim reached and took the humming CB radio, half-hidden by oily rags, from the engine compartment. "Now shut the bonnet-the hood," he remembered the American word. "And into the car, please."
Later, the watcher would think of all the other moves he might have made-if he had been prepared. He would also remember being taught about those paralysing first seconds after meeting an unexpected and horrible threat. At least he'd be able to say the teaching had been true.
At the front window, Agnes hadn't seen them get into the car. What she heard was the muffled roar of an engine, close, then the garage doors banged open and a silver compact swerved around her own car and hit the road in a squealing turn. She knew Clare Hall must be in the car, but had no idea of what to do about it.
The men in the Gleissner house had no doubts. Two of them were in the truck and it had jumped off by the time she looked back at it. Agnes looked around for her handbag, car keys-it was too late.
The compact had swung round the corner, roaring uppast the watcher's car; the truck didn't bother. It charged across the road, bounced up the sidewalk and across the lawn-no hedges or fences-weaving between the bushes and trees.
At first, Maxim didn't know where the silver car had come from, but the style of driving didn't belong on those quiet streets. Then he saw the truck bucketing through the bushes he had crawled among so slowly and started cranking down the window, but the truck was long out of range. And then Agnes came sprinting across the lawn.
She can run, he noticed. Not just hurry with her bottom sloshing from side to side, butmove.
"Swing around," he ordered. The watcher was in the driving seat, Maxim behind him.
The watcher took his time, fumbling the key, mistaking the gear. He had recovered from his fright. The car reached the far kerb as Agnes arrived. She-and a tap from the gun-moved the watcher to the passenger seat.
There was a distant bang.
Agnes drove off. "Where did they go?"
"Left at the corner." He tapped the watcher again. "Put your seatbelt on, friend. It could save your life."
"I don't know what in hell all this is about-" the watcher began. He had, to Maxim's un American ear, a fairly standard American voice.
"Something to do with what I found in your pocket. Now shut up."
Agnes swung the corner smoothly and accelerated, not wasting a second or an inch, and in a strange car. Then she braked. Ahead and to the right, a puff of black smoke was rolling up above the houses and trees.
"Oh God." She drove on slowly.
The fire was at an intersection, a pyramid of flame and smoke boiling above the interlocked pickup truck and silver car. Already there was a circle of people forming around it, swaying back as the wind toppled the flames towards them. One man was hopefully spraying an extinguisher on the edge of the flame pool; a police siren whooped from the town centre.
Agnes stopped a block away, watching, then turned to Maxim. He shook his head. "It's over already. Either they got out fast or they didn't get out at all." He had seen burnt-out vehicles, and their occupants, before.
Agnes moved off slowly, keeping north towards the edge of the town. Maxim asked: "What about your car?"
"I'd like it, but it could be a mistake to go back now. Better keep moving."
"Won't they trace you from a hired car?"
"Yes, in time. But they've got a lot to think about already."
After a few minutes and one zigzag they were out on a straight if not wide road between the cornfields strewn with rotting stalks. Agnes speeded up, then abruptly slowed to a stop. She sat there, her head bowed and her shoulders shivering; when she lifted her hands off the wheel, they shook "God, Harry, I'm sorry…"
"Take your time."
"Just… you're speaking to somebody, and a minute later she could be…"
"I know. And you don't get used to it. Not unless you're the wrong sort of person to start with."