The Lost Testament

70

With the rush of adrenalin, Angela recovered rapidly from the shock of being fired at. She opened the glove box and fished out a map of Madrid plus Bronson’s satnav.

‘I’m on it!’ she said as she plugged in the satnav and riffled through the pages of the map.

‘Right, make sure we don’t go anywhere too busy.’

Bronson had no doubt that both men in the car behind them would be armed, and if he was forced to stop the car, they could outflank him and approach him from two sides at the same time. They absolutely needed to keep moving.

The satnav finally got satellite lock, and Angela was able to see exactly where they were. She looked away for a few moments to study the map she was holding, then jabbed her finger at it.

‘Got it,’ she said, ‘take the next turning on the right, then right again.’

‘Done,’ Bronson replied.

Bronson sped round the corner, then drove up to the junction halfway down it just as the lights were turning red. He quickly checked for other traffic before spinning the wheel hard to the right and powering down the street, followed by the blasting of horns. He doubted very much if the red light would hold up the pursuing car for very long, but the crossing traffic might.

‘Where now?’ he asked.

‘Keep going straight. You pass two junctions on your right, and then take the third.’

As they passed the first junction, in his rear-view mirror he saw a white car make the turn at the crossroads. At that distance, he couldn’t be sure that it was the one containing the gunman, but his instinct told him that it was.

‘They’re still behind us,’ he said. ‘About three hundred yards back.’

As they sped towards the second junction, a car pulled out from it, directly in front of them. Bronson twitched the wheel to the left and overtook it, giving the driver a blast on his horn as he did so.

Angela looked down at the map, then pointed.

‘That’s the junction. Turn right here.’

Bronson eased off the accelerator for barely half a second and stabbed at the brakes as he checked that the road ahead was clear. Then he turned the wheel, accelerating the car again.

The road was wide, cars parked haphazardly on both sides. Half a dozen vehicles were heading towards him on the opposite side of the road.

‘Where to next?’ Bronson asked, his tone clipped. ‘A right turn is better than a left, so I don’t have to cross oncoming traffic.’

‘Don’t worry, I do possess a little intelligence,’ Angela replied. ‘So we’ll go for Plan B, which is the same as Plan A, but only turning right. If you can, take the next right.’

The tyres protested audibly as Bronson accelerated hard right.

‘You still know where we are?’ he asked.

‘You just drive, and leave the navigating to me.’

Bronson would have laughed if he hadn’t had to concentrate. Angela was always good in a crisis, and the blow she’d taken to the back of her head now didn’t seem to be troubling her at all.

Angela directed him from one junction to the next, the traffic lessening noticeably the further they drove from the centre of Madrid.

Bronson had been checking his mirrors constantly, and the white car had been getting progressively further and further back as he’d tried to keep up the fastest speed he could possibly achieve on the roads of the capital city. Yet at the last minute it kept reappearing. But there was one simple trick he could use that would almost guarantee to shake off the pursuit. He just needed to find the right road for it.