Passport to Peril

Sixteen

When they passed Castlemaine David braked the car at the summit of a rise on the eastern edge of the town. “Let’s have a look,” he said. “We can see the road a long way back from here. See anything?”

“No. Nothing that looks like — oh yes, I see him now. A long ways back. There are other cars with them. One could be Farrell’s.” She pointed it out. “We’ve got a good jump on them now.”

“Good,” he said. They got back into the car and started off again, and before long he had the Triumph up to its top speed once more.

The two cars, theirs and Koenig’s, were fairly evenly matched. They had the advantage on curving roads, while Koenig had better speed up and down hills and on the straightaway. Once already he had closed the gap to less than a hundred yards, and the woman with him had drawn a pistol and snapped off a volley of shots at the Triumph. But the bullets hadn’t come close.

David bent over the steering wheel. Ellen crouched low in her seat, her head cradled in her arms. David took a turn on two wheels, the tires screeching in protest, barreled out of the turn, and urged the car on. The Koenigs didn’t make that turn. Ellen heard the screech of brakes applied too hard and too late, then the crashing of the heavy American car into the stone fence alongside the road.

David thought that the Koenigs’ car might have been wrecked. “We can’t stop to find out,” he told her, “but I think they may be out of the play.”

But later it seemed that they were still pursued. The accident had given them an extra few minutes, some of which they lost in Castlemaine when they stopped to buy cigarettes and fill the Triumph’s gas tank. Since they didn’t know how long the Koenig vehicle had been out of commission, it was hard to say whether they were widening the gap. It scarcely mattered. Koenig was very much on their trail, and it seemed likely that he had picked up reinforcements. They were alive and in the clear, but it was anybody’s guess how long they would be able to hold their lead.

She drew on her cigarette. “There are plenty of roads that don’t show up on the map,” she said. “What would happen if we took one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it worth a try?”

“It may be, if we get desperate enough.” He took the cigarette from her hand, took a puff, and gave it back to her. “But I’d rather stay on roads we know, so that we know where we’re going. Some of the minor roads don’t go anywhere, Ellen. They turn out to lead to some farmer’s barn or wind up as dead ends. I’d hate to be on a dead-end road with Koenig and Farrell behind me.”

“You’re right.”

She lapsed into silence, turning from time to time to gaze through the rear window at the road behind them. Another car had come up behind them since they left Castlemaine, a local car, not one of their pursuers, and the car effectively blocked her view of the road. She watched, and the car gradually drew abreast of them, honked its intention to pass, and swung easily out around them and raced on ahead. It was a low-slung sports car, a Jaguar, and it rushed on by as though they had been standing still in their tracks.

She released her breath and realized for the first time that she had been holding it. She shuddered.

“Something the matter?”

“The way that car passed us.”

“You didn’t think it was them, did you?”

“No, I knew it wasn’t. Just the ease with which it got ahead of us. I wish we had a car like that.”

“See any beggars riding?”

“I don’t — oh, I see. Wishes aren’t horses, are they? Let alone Jaguars.”

“Uh-huh.”

“At least they don’t have a Jaguar either. They wouldn’t have gone into the fence if they did, would they?”

“No. While you’re wishing, you could wish we had a gun.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with one if we did. Would you?”

“I used to be fairly good with a rifle. And I’ve fired handguns, though not very accurately. There isn’t one in the back seat, is there?”

“I’ll look.”

There was nothing in the back seat.

“How about the trunk?”

“I saw the inside of the trunk when I put the blanket away. I didn’t notice anything inside, but I suppose it’s possible. Do you want to stop the car and look?”

He shook his head. “Not very likely there’ll be anything there. People who carry guns aren’t apt to stow them in the trunk. I wish we had some sort of weapon. Next time I stop the car, remind me to get the tire iron from the trunk. It’s better than nothing.”

“Against a gun?”

“It’s still better than nothing.”

Then she remembered. “He said he had a knife, under the driver’s seat. He told me all about the knife.” She shivered again, involuntarily. “He may have been lying.”

“Take a look.”

She fumbled under his seat. Her hand touched something cold and metallic. She drew it out. It was just as Farrell had described it — a knife with a long, thin blade. She tested the edge with her thumb. It felt very sharp and looked deadly.

“A knife and a tire iron,” she said. “Bit by bit, we’re developing an arsenal.”

“Put it in your purse.”

They swung around another hairpin turn, and Ellen felt something slide out from under the seat and strike her foot. Looking down, she exclaimed, “David!” She reached down, and her fingers closed around a revolver.

“What luck!” said David. “Put that in your purse too. It won’t fit in my pocket, I’m afraid.”

She did as he said and was barely able to snap the purse shut over the revolver.

“That gun may come in handy,” he said. “Let’s just hope we don’t have to use it.”

When they crossed the boundary line into County Cork she thought of the other time she had crossed that same border, from Cork into Kerry. It had been a matter of days ago, and yet her world then had been entirely different from what it had since become. She remembered how she had roamed over this same countryside, her guitar over her shoulder, her eyes continually going wide in fascination at the beauty of the land and the charm of its people. Now she was seeing this same countryside for a second time, and its charm and beauty were quite lost to her. It had become transformed from a phenomenon in its own right to a backdrop for the drama of which she and David were a part.

How very different it had all been then. And what a different person she had been, concerned only with songs and their singers, busy recording songs and learning them and meeting people and enjoying life. Spies then had been creatures in books and movies, and death something that happened to the very old. She clutched her purse close and thought of what it contained, the sinister scrap of microfilm, the equally sinister knife. Tangible evidence of this new world inhabited by a new Ellen Cameron.

They drove to Newmarket, then took the northern branch of a fork leading to Freemount. The sky was clouded over now, the sun no longer in view. She wondered if it was going to rain. Rain would cut their top speed, but it would also lessen the speed of those in pursuit. She didn’t know whether it would work out to their advantage.

She turned automatically to look out the rear window. No one in sight. She reported the fact to David, and he replied with a nod. His hands were tight on the wheel, his face drawn. He too was feeling the strain. She wondered how much more of it they could take. Sooner or later they would have to stop. They couldn’t drive all night. And then what would happen? Where would they go?

They could stop in a town, she thought. If they drove straight to a gardai station, the police would give them protection. And if they picked one of the larger towns, they would have a good chance of finding police officers who would believe their story and understand the depths of their difficulties.

She opened the map and studied it intently. Tipperary City seemed to fit the requirements. It was large enough to boast a sizable police force, and it could be reached by back roads that would give them an advantage over the fast cars behind them.

She told David her idea.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“How long can we keep running?”

“That’s a point, but I hate to stop. Once we stop, they catch up with us.”

“But the police...”

“The gardai might have a little trouble believing our story. And I don’t know how well they can protect us. Farrell strikes me as a fairly daring man, Ellen. I don’t think he’d draw the line at shooting his way into a police station if he had to.”

She drew a breath. “Then you don’t want to stop at Tipperary?”

“We’ll see. It might be a good idea after all. And maybe we’ll get lucky and shake them off our trail by then. If we don’t...”

“Then what?”

“Then maybe we’ll stop.”

The little car rolled on. She kept looking back to check, and she didn’t see any car she could recognize as Koenig’s.

The road grew curvier, and the rain, a threat for some time, became a reality. It came down hard and fast, and the little car’s windshield wipers struggled to keep up with it.

“How’s the driving?”

“Bad.”

“Very bad?”

“Rotten visibility, and the road surface is slippery. It’ll be a little better in fifteen minutes or so. When it first starts to rain, the water piles up on the accumulated oil slick on the highway surface. After it’s been raining awhile, the oil washes away. It’s still worse than dry pavement, but not as bad as it is now.”

“Do you think we should slow down?”

“I don’t dare.”

“David...”

And then it happened all at once, far too quickly for her to realize what was going on. They came around a blind curve, the throttle wide open, and suddenly the road in front of them was filled with sheep. A farmer, crooked stick in hand, dog at heels, was leading his sheep across into another field, and she stared at the sea of wooly white creatures and shouted “David, look out,” and felt the brakes grab and the car careen wildly out of control.

The impact was terrible. The car plowed into the middle of the flock, scattering bits of sheep in all directions, spinning out of control, almost tipping over on its side, then coming to a sudden violent stop.

They got out of the car. The farmer could not pay any attention to them at first. He was on his knees in the middle of the mass of torn and bleeding animals, his own voice as shrill and strained as the awful bleating of the sheep. Sobbing, he moved among them. He took a jackknife from his pocket and opened it, and he moved among the mass of woolly forms, talking to them gently, sadly, and using the knife to cut the throats of the hopelessly crippled beasts, putting an end to their misery.

She had never seen such carnage. She clutched David’s arm, certain that she was going to be sick, fighting off wave after wave of nausea. She looked at their own car, crippled like the sheep, its front shoved in through the radiator, steam or smoke pouring forth from under the hood. The sheep would never walk again and the car would never be driven again, and she clung to David’s arm and closed her eyes as the world swayed around her.

The man was saying, “Oh, my beauties, my pets. Ah, my poor beauties. Six, seven of them, gone, gone.”

From the east a motorcycle came into view, its engine audible over the bleating of the surviving sheep, which were milling about in terror, filling the road. The motorcycle screeched to a stop. A rural policeman, his uniform a rich forest green, the visor of his cap shining brilliantly, stepped down from the cycle.

And far off to the west she heard, or thought she heard, the engines of approaching cars. Farrell and the Koenigs, coming their way.