"Now you boys can go," says the wog, and maybe Harry is a bit slow in starting. I don't know, but one of the other wogs taps him on the cheekbone with a cosh and he yells, and turns, and like lurches away and we follow, feeling like children, and the wogs move in on the bird. And then it happens—like Harry's yell was a signal.
A big black Jag comes roaring up, and suddenly its headlights go on full and its horns blare and we are blinded, and so are the wogs, and it is still moving when this man gets out, and believe me, Rodney, he moves. And he hits these wogs like a bomb. For a moment they can't even see him, and he is into the first one and I see what happens. His fist comes curling up from his hipbone and he hits this wog in the ribs, and while he is doing so, not wishing to be idle, his other hand comes out flat and the edge of it connects with the wog's ear and he drops him and the second wog lunges at him with his gun, and the new man swings his arm and blocks the blow, and his other hand moves forwards as if it had a knife in it, only there isn't a knife—just his fingers, and they stab into the wog's gut, so then the third wog comes behind him and grabs him around the shoulders and gives the second wog time to straighten up and try again with the gun. And as he comes in the new guy sticks one arm out straight, crooks it and brings the elbow back into number three's belly, and there's a noise like wet cement and number three is falling and as he goes the new guy twists and throws him into number two's way, and number two hesitates, and this is fatal because the new guy doesn't punch this time, he leaps in the air like he's Nureyev's brother and as he goes his right leg straightens and connects with number two's neck, then he's down again ready for more of the same but the wogs aren't ready to go on, being unconscious, and the bird is in his arms, yabbering in wog, and all this time I still haven't moved, and my mouth is open, and I feel about six years old.
Then the new guy puts the girl to one side and turns to face us, and he has one fist clenched and the other straight, like the blade of an ax, and I see this is a very hard man indeed. His clothes are sharp but he doesn't overdo it on account of he is old, and his body moves inside them like a V8 engine. He has very dark-brown hair and eyes gray as the Thames that tell you nothing except he'll kill you if he has to, and I want more than anything to be like this man, and I am afraid. Then I hear gravel crunch behind us, and I look round and there is another man behind us all the time, in the shadow of the Jaguar, but now he comes toward us and he is a deb's delight, curly bowler and all but instead of an umbrella he carries an automatic pistol, and there is what can only be a silencer screwed on to the barrel. And this one's eyes are blue, and screwed up at the corners like he's tired, but the pistol isn't.
He comes over and looks at the wogs lying nice and peaceful, and "Ah good," he says. "You chaps did a splendid job."
Then he kneels beside the wogs and searches them, and takes away the coshes and the shooter, and in each of their free hands he finds a lead plug, and he looks displeased and shows them to the other man.
"Nasty," he says. "These boys were really quite heroic."
"We didn't do anything," says Harry.
The man with the empty hands says, "You laid out these three. You found them trying to steal your bikes and you laid them out. Now call the police."
"The coppers won't believe it," says Jigger.
The sleepy one says: "They will, I promise you," and I believe him. Then he takes out a wallet the size of a briefcase and distributes five-pound notes—two each, except Lonesome. The All-England halitosis champ gets four.
Then the two men and the bird get into the Jag and go, and I realize how dull the rest of my life is going to be.
* * *
They telephoned Loomis from a call box, and he told them to go back to the nursing home. He wanted Selina where she would be safe. It was Schiebel's one piece of luck. Another search party in a Mercedes spotted them, and followed them, then radioed to Schiebel, who used two more cars, an old Peugeot with an astonishing engine, driven by a very fair Albanian, and a Mini-Cooper S which he drove himself. They took it in turn to follow the Jaguar, and never stayed behind it for long. Once the Peugeot cut out and passed it, and shadowed it for a while from in front, until Schiebel called the driver on the radio to leave the hunt, and it was the Cooper's turn to hang on and to leave when the Jaguar left the main road, and Schiebel followed until they turned off again, then switched off his lights and felt his way through the darkness, his eyes straining for the ruby tail lights ahead, until at last the Jaguar stopped at a lodge gate. There was a pause, then the car went through, the lodge gate swung back, and Schiebel waited in the darkness, then slipped out, wary, silent, to look at the defenses of the house.
The lodge gate was a sheet of steel, the windows of the lodge itself were tiny, and the men inside it would be armed. The lodge was built of solid stone, and would withstand direct assault from anything less than a tank. The walls were of smooth stone, ten feet high, and, he discovered when he climbed on to his car roof, wired for alarm bells. Above the powerline was barbed wire, held in position by steel angle irons, and in each of the angle irons was a photoelectric cell. From inside the house he could hear the hum of a generator. It would do no good to try to cut off their power supply; they made their own, and guarded it. The place was impregnable.
Schiebel let the Cooper coast down the road past the house, then switched on the ignition and drove back to London, flogging the car as if it had been a horse, yelling obscenities in his mind in German, Russian, Arabic, repeating them solemnly, as if it were a ritual, dragging out each phrase in an ecstasy of fury, then ceasing at last, braking, easing his speed as the houses began, driving decorously, cautious of policemen, while his mind grappled with the problem that the princess of the Haram had sent him.
He had underestimated her. She had warned him when he had hunted her down that night in Zaarb, and he had believed in her courage, but not her competence. That had been a mistake. She would have been so useful too, for acquiring the cobalt. Her father would surely have— Schiebel closed his mind to that thought. He had made a mistake. If it proved to be too great, he would answer for it, not to Zaarb but to Peking. That must not happen; the mistake must be rectified. He thought again of the two women. Selina would have been useful, but Mrs. Naxos was vital, if he were to get the British out of Zaarb. Somehow he must get Phihppa Naxos. Somehow, and soon. She was in a fortress, but her husband had left it—gone back to his yacht ready for the treaty negotiations that opened next day. Mrs. Naxos's place, he decided, was with her husband.
He went back to the embassy, up to the radio room where Selina and Sherif had escaped, and had a long, snarling conversation with Zaarb's president and commanding general. Their displeasure didn't worry him, so long as they would move when the time came. The army had some tanks now, old Russian stuff, and Chinese crews for them. They had field guns too, and a squadron of MIG-15's. The Haram had nothing bigger than a machine gun, in a country made for modem war. If the British didn't interfere, the whole operation would take a couple of days at most —and if he could get at Naxos the British wouldn't interfere. He extracted his promises at last, and gave his in return, then switched off on the cursing president. He began to imitate Loomis's voice using the carefully remembered words and phrases he had heard when the big man had interviewed him as Andrews. At last the speeches came together, and sounded right.