"No bloody fear!" George erupted. "Get her out. And you'd better tell him to get away, too. He can go down to the House and spend a day thinking he's governing the country. Damn it all, if he Had His Way with her in Prague, his is the first place they'll come looking."
"What about the police?"
"I don't want them. They'll need to know why they can't turn her over to Box 500, and that'll leak and then we'll have a security scandal even if there isn't one. The Headmaster is not going to enjoy this. You just get her away, take her to an afternoon at the movies, a drive in the country, anything, while I whisper in a few well-bred ears."
"She's pretty frightened. She's expecting rough stuff."
"If they've only had two hours, I wouldn't expect anything too uncouth just yet. Their first reaction is usually to run around counting the spoons. By the by, did she bring any paperwork or photographs?"
"I haven't asked her."
"Well… are you armed?"
"It was you who said I wouldn't need it."
"Let's hope I was right."
"The Prime Minister is being told about Miss Kindl at this moment, sir. George is sure he'll be delighted with the way you've handled things." Maxim was choosing his words with the dishonest care of a man hand-picking his ammunition for a Bisley shoot. "But he does think she ought to be got to somewhere more secure. You did exactly the right thing in calling me in, that's just why the Prime Minister appointed me, so now…"
I've mentioned the PM twice and you didn't call me in, George sent me. You pompous old nirk, anybody would think you were retired as an Air Marshal instead of just a… No, that's why you never made Air Marshal.
Mollified, Neale went to try and phone a taxi.
Maxim examined the mews from behind the nylon net curtains. It was narrow, too narrow to do a U-turn, and ended at a tall blank wall about a hundred yards to the left. The only way out was through an ornate arch onto the main road, a hundred yards up to the right. A single watcher beyond the arch could see everybody who went in and out of the mews, and if he were watching for Zuzana Kindl, he'd already know which house she'd gone to.
Anybody wanting to invent a better mousetrap could beat a path to this mews for a start.
Neale came back. "Sorry, there doesn't seem to be anybody answering at this time of day, but you should get a cab on the road."
"Do you have a gun in the house?"
The Wing-Commander looked startled. "No. No, not here."
"A knife, then. Anything serious, or just a kitchen knife."
A little worried, Neale showed him into the dolls'-house kitchen. Maxim selected a five-inch vegetable knife and plugged its tip with a champagne cork. There was an empty bottle standing on top of the refrigerator.
Zuzana was waiting for them in the hallway, now wearing a dark tartan coat with a wrap-over belt and furry collar. She carried a plastic airline bag without any insignia on it.
"Is that all you've got?" Maxim asked.
"I could not bring more. You know we have to share apartments, I have two other girls, so we can watch each other. If I had walked out with a suitcase… I would not have walked out, that is how it is."
"It'll all be different now." Neale said soothingly. Zuzana suddenly wrapped her arms around him and kissed him thoroughly. The Wing-Commander went pink. Maxim led the way out.
The mews was empty of anybody and everything except Dustbins. Not even a single illegally parked car. Maxim stayed on the girl's right, his hand holding the knife in his pocket. He was worried, and worried that he couldn't work out why he was worried. Perhaps he was just catching it off Zuzana, but perhaps there was a better reason…
The main road, lined with fat Victorian houses that were now mostly residential hotels, was wide but not wide enough for its rows of parked cars and the busy two-way traffic. There were perhaps fifty people in sight, and any one of them could be a watcher, and of course there were no empty taxies.
South or north? North, Maxim decided. He grabbed the girl's arm, and her muscles were locked solid as stone. She was scared, all right. Why?
They hurried, making themselves conspicuous but making anybody who was following conspicuous as well. Maxim kept looking back; he knew all about the theory of tailing and shaking tails in a city, but almost no real experience. Born a townee, as a soldier he was a professional countryman by now. But an unarmed soldier, except for that piddling little knife.
That cork, that champagne bottle. Had they been celebrating her defection at ten in the morning? Or at midnight? Oh God, she hadn't jumped off this morning, she'd got there last night, and the other side had had twelve hours to blow the baboon whistle, not just two, Then a sweet chariot, a taxi with its FOR HIRE light on, coming up behind them. Maxim waved it down, yanked open the door and pushed Zuzana in, turned to shout an address at the driver-It happened very fast. A blue car swerved in to block the taxi, somebody pulled Maxim aside and he saw a hand with a pistol reach at the taxi's open door. As he went down, he grabbed the arm that was pulling him, and the man came over with him, the gun banging into the air.
Maxim rolled free, kicked at the man's head and missed, then tore the knife from his pocket. As the gun hand came up towards him he just swiped at it. The knife skidded off bone and the hand loosened. The man grunted and Maxim snatched away the gun, left-handed.
On the far side of the taxi, another man was standing calmly pumping shots through the window, now opaque with cracks and starred holes. Zuzana was lying flat on the floor. A bullet ricocheted out past Maxim and clanged into a shop front.
He fired twice through the blind window, and couldn't tell if he'd hit anybody, but the shooting stopped. He dropped the knife and dragged Zuzana out, pushed her behind him, kneeling in wait for the next attack.
An engine yowled above the traffic noise and the blue car screeched away, trailing blue smoke. Maxim ducked to look under the taxi and there was no one on the other side.
"Did you get hit?" He turned to Zuzana and she was already ten yards up the street and accelerating. For a moment the good citizen and the soldier in Maxim clashed, then he was back on the streets of Belfast and moving, too. Let the police pick up the pieces.
If she'd been wounded, it wasn't anywhere vital. Despite her shoes and shape, Zuzana could run, the way only a trained sportswoman or dancer can run. She weaved between pedestrians who were trying not to know about gunshots and that side of life, except for one old lady who swung her umbrella at Maxim and screamed. He realised he still had the gun in his hand and the chase could be misconstrued. Just as he caught up with Zuzana, she swerved left into a one-way street, running against the flow of traffic. It was a quieter, residential street. Then she turned right; Maxim said nothing, just keeping up with her. Nobody seemed to be chasing them.
Around the next corner she slowed abruptly to a walk, gasping.
"Are you hurt?" Maxim asked.
"I do not think so," She rubbed her left shoulder. There was a long rip in her coat, but no blood on her fingers when she looked.
Maxim was still holding the pistol. He glanced at it – a Heckler amp; Koch such as West German police forces use – and shoved it into his ripped coat pocket. That cork hadn't done much good. He should never have let go of the knife to open the taxi door.
"Where are we going now?" he asked.
"I thought you were organising me."
"You might have told me you went to the Wing-Commander last night, not this morning."
She said nothing.
"All right," Maxim said. "I'm organising you." And at least he now had a gun.
10
Even on a dull, chill day there were still a number of resolute outdoor lunchers and duck-feeders sitting around St. James's Park lake. George and Agnes met at the Cake House, bought packets of sandwiches, and started to walk.