Kerman was now watching the scanning screen. He said suddenly, “Stop! They’re coming back! Looks like they are returning to Paris and they are coming like a bomb!”
Girland stood on his brakes, stopped the car, reversed onto the grass as another car snarled by, its horn screaming a protest and in less than seconds, he was driving at a steady sixty kilometres an hour back towards Paris.
“Here they come,” Kerman said and moments later a Peugeot Estate Wagon swished past them at well over 120 kilometres an hour. Girland caught a glimpse of Malik’s silver head as the car roared past. He slightly accelerated, moving up to seventy-five kilometres an hour. The bleeps from the scanner were very loud.
“Our little friend at the back is strangely quiet,” he said to Kerman. “How is she getting on?”
Kerman looked over his shoulder at Ginny who was shivering.
“You all right, Nurse?”
“Yes.”
“She’s fine,” Kerman said to Girland, “but she looks cold.”
Girland laughed.
“That’s her long standing trouble. She was born cold. She even has doubts that I am a man.”
“Oh, I hate you!” Ginny said furiously.
“Careful, baby,” Girland said as he again sent the Jaguar surging forward. “It is said hate is cousin to love.”
The Peugeot Estate Wagon slowed and drove into the gate-guarded driveway of an old chateau on the main road through Malmaison. As the car pulled up, lights flashed on over the entrance and Merna Dorinska came down the worn steps to the car.
This woman, wearing a man’s red shirt tucked into black cotton slacks was slightly under six feet tall. Her age could have been anything from thirty to forty. Her black hair was plastered down over her dome-shaped skull and coiled in a small bun at the back of her thick neck. Her features seemed to have been chiselled out of stone: irregular, hard, flat nosed with paper-thin lips. Her big hands and her thick muscular limbs hinted that it had been a tossup whether she emerged from her mother’s body either as a boy or as a girl. Merna Dorinska was one of the Soviet’s most successful woman agents who like Malik had won through to the top by her complete dedication to the Cause, her utter ruthlessness and her needle-sharp intelligence.
Even Malik who hated her treated her with caution.
“Here’s your patient,” he said as he got out of the ambulance. “She is under sedation. She’ll be awake and ready for interrogation by nine or ten tomorrow morning.”
“Get her into the house,” Merna said. Her voice was hard and masculine. “Have you been followed?”
“Followed? What do you mean?” Malik snarled. Such a question infuriated him. He was convinced that women were inferior to men, but in the past, he had been forced to admit that this particular woman had proved herself superior to most of his men agents, but certainly not superior to himself.
Merna regarded him. Her dark-hooded eyes expressed her dislike for him.
“You are dealing with Dorey,” she said coldly. “He should not be underestimated.”
“I know who I am dealing with!” Malik said furiously. “Your job is to look after this woman! Don’t tell me things I know!”
Smernoff and Kordak carried the sleeping woman on the stretcher into the chateau.
Merna, by no means intimidated by Malik’s manner, said, “Then you had better get rid of this car. It could have been noticed.”
Malik resisted the vicious urge to slam his fist into the woman’s face.
“This is my operation!” he exploded. “Look after the woman! That’s your job!”
Merna stared steadily at him, her face expressionless, then she turned and with long swinging strides, walked up the steps and into the chateau. Malik, muttering, glared after her. But what she had said made sense, he decided. He must get rid of the car, but he hated her telling him.
Smernoff came down the steps.
“Now... what?”
“We’ll get rid of this car,” Malik said. “They can’t trace her here. Who, besides, Kordak, is guarding her?”
“Three of my best men. She’s safe.”
Malik hesitated. He remembered what Merna had said about Dorey. What did she know about Dorey? he asked himself. Dorey was old and a fool. He used men like Girland... a wastrel and a man always looking for a deal. He decided he could safely return to Paris, report to the Embassy and come back tomorrow morning to make this woman talk.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
As the Estate Wagon moved down the drive and onto the highway, he said, “Imagine that fool Girland wanted to make a deal... a deal with me!”
Smernoff grunted. He wondered at the slightly wistful note in Malik’s voice and looked sharply at him, then he shrugged.
Neither of them noticed the black Jaguar parked in a row of cars.
Girland nudged Kerman’s arm.
“There they go. Now let’s walk in and take her out.”
Chapter Four
Dorey surveyed the three telephones on his desk. His thin lips were compressed and his eyes uneasy. He was more than worried. The Russians had beaten him to the punch. He knew he had moved too slowly. As soon as O’Halloran had told him about this woman, he should have taken a chance and got her out of the hospital to somewhere completely safe and inaccessible. This comes, he thought bitterly, of being too cautious. He had stupidly wasted time finding Wolfert to check the tattoo marks. He had again wasted time finding Girland. Now the Russians had her and he thought uneasily of Washington. His first reaction was to call O’Halloran and take the operation out of Girland’s hands. Yet he had a strong instinctive feeling that if anyone could pull this chestnut out of the fire it would be Girland.
His hand hovered over the telephone which would put him in direct contact with O’Halloran, then like a gambler who pushes his last chip on the red, he picked up the receiver that was connected to Kerman’s Jaguar.
“Jack?”
“Right here, sir,” came Kerman’s brisk voice.
“I want to talk to Girland.”
“Hold it.”
There was a pause, then Girland came on the line.
“This is me.” The indifferent flippant tone made Dorey boil with fury.
“You listen to me!” He exploded. “Where are you and what are you doing?”
Girland winked at Kerman and slid further down in the driver’s seat.
“I am somewhere outside Paris, and I know what I am doing,” he said. “For Pete’s sake, Dorey, relax. You gave me this assignment and you’re paying me good money — at least I hope you are. I’m going to do the job so what are you getting so worked up about?”
“Girland!” Dorey’s voice rose a note. “This could be the most important and vital assignment I have ever given anyone! What are you doing? This could be on Presidential level! You’ve already lost this woman! What am I going to tell Washington?”
“Who cares about Washington? Just keep your big nose out of this,” Girland said. “I’ll deliver. Relax,” and he replaced the receiver.
He looked at Kerman and shook his head. “He should have been retired years ago! Let’s go, Jack. I have to be in Eze by tomorrow morning.”
Kerman laughed. It was a pleasure to work with a scatterbrain like Girland.
“You are an irresponsible bastard, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re not proposing to walk in there and shoot it out with probably a dozen tough Soviets, are you?”
“That’s the general idea,” Girland said. “You and I can take them. I’ll bet there aren’t a dozen of them, and who says the Soviets are tough?”
“We can do better than that,” Kerman said, sliding aside a panel below the dashboard of the car. “We have a couple of gas guns and gas masks here. When Dorey sets up an operation, he sets it up.” He handed Girland a flat heavy gun with an inch wide barrel. “Watch it. There’s enough paralysing gas in that gun to put a Battalion out of action.”