"Ah — merchant navy myself, during the war, that is."
"I see."
"Atlantic convoys."
"You've worked here a long time, Mr Hoskins?"
"Just over a year, Professor. Used to work at the Admiralty itself, but I'm just about to retire. Easy job. I was only a boy when I did my first convoy, in 1940." He smiled mysteriously. "We had shoreleave in New York before we set out—" He was being deliberately mysterious. "Three ships and a cruiser escort. Special fast run, going by the southern route round Ireland—"
McBride hardly heard him.
"Sure," he said. Hoskins seemed about to repeat himself, then took a pocket-watch from his waistcoat and consulted it. "Must get back, late already. See you later, Professor."
Hoskins went out swiftly, pressing his trilby firmly down on his head, putting up his umbrella almost before he was through the door.
McBride sat until he had finished both packets of crisps and his beer, and only as he got up to leave did Hoskins" last words register. And they puzzled him. But he couldn't remember the date that Hoskins had supplied, and he rejected the coincidence. The file loomed more distinctly in his imagination, and he tried to work up some enthusiasm for his task as he walked back to the repository, its parking area still marked out as a netball court.
McBride slammed down the bonnet of the van, and moved to the door. Gilliatt was in the passenger seat, immobile and blinded by the light. McBride slipped the.38 № 2 revolver from beneath his jacket then turned on his heel, arm out straight like a duellist, and fired twice. Glass shattered, tinkled in the sudden darkness over by the silhouette of the truck.
McBride clambered into the driving seat, revved the engine wildly, and let off the handbrake. The Citroen heaved off the mark, careering as McBride swung the wheel.
"Get down, get down!" he yelled at Gilliatt, immobile as a stunned animal in the seat next to him.
An instant later, the windscreen shattered and emptied its fragments over the shoulder and back of Gilliatt's jacket as he crouched, head covered by his arms, below the dashboard. McBride swung the wheel again, hearing the thud and tear of heavy bullets along the offside flank of the van. He was in darkness, but he knew the direction of the barn and the narrow passage between it and the cottage.
A grey shape loomed, bounced off the offside wheel arch, and McBride spun the wheel again, feeling the rear wheels bite on some lump beneath them, then rush free, skidding hideously.
"What's happening?" Gilliatt yelled.
The van's nearside struck the wooden wall of the barn, more bullets ripped through the rear doors, angling out again through the driver's side above McBride's head — tyres still good, he thought, swinging the wheel, tearing off the nearside running-board, the van sliding with a groaning wobble into the narrow space. Starlight, then blackness, a heavy thump, a scream, and something rolling wildly across the roof over McBride's head and sliding off behind the van. More bullets, and one of the double doors at the back of the van began flapping open, magnifying the shouts, the noise of engines behind them, the shots. McBride punched out the remainder of the windscreen, cutting his hand, cursing and elated.
The Citroen lurched lamely out of the narrow gap between cottage and barn, engine screeching, wheels gripping the gravel of the track to the road.
"Christ, what's happening!"
"Don't worry, Peter, we're on our way!" McBride shouted, almost gaily. Lights dazzled in the rear-view mirror for a moment, then he had turned onto the road. The village lay ahead, a few poor lights defying the black-out. He pressed the accelerator, demanding more from the protesting engine. "Don't worry — you all right?"
Gilliatt climbed awkwardly up out of the footwell, very carefully brushed glass from the seat, and slumped next to McBride as he was overbalanced by the van's cornering speed.
"You're all right?"
"Ah, hell — I'm always like this!"
The first houses of the village. Lights behind them, spilling like ignited fuel up the road to engulf them.
"I'll try to shut the doors," Gilliatt grinned. He accepted the adrenalin madness, felt it coursing through him like a transfusion from the Irishman. It wasn't a sane world any longer. "Try not to shoot me out onto the road, there's a good chap."
McBride looked at him, then nodded, sensing a transformation in Gilliatt. He might now run almost as far, almost as fast as himself.
"Hurry back, I need a navigator."
The Citroen slowed slightly until McBride heard the doors slam, the road noise diminishing in his ears, then he accelerated again as Gilliatt clambered back over the seat. The map was in his hand. He flicked on a small torch.
"They'll know we're heading for Brest," Gilliatt observed.
"Sure they will. How did they know we were there — did they follow us, or were they told?"
"Told? Left here!"
The van swerved noisily, bumping into a lane overhung with leafless trees, rutted and puddled. McBride gripped the wheel like a rally driver, stiff-armed, ready to wrestle with its vagaries. "I don't know what I mean, either!" The noises in the van sounded as if it was tearing itself to pieces. "Hold on, you brave tyres!" he yelled, surrendering to Gilliatt's navigation and to the stupid, senseless excitement of the chase. Lights in the mirror, dipping and swinging into the lane. McBride felt the van lurch against the bank, tear at roots and earth, then pull free.
"Another turn on the right, in maybe fifty — there it is!"
McBride heaved on the wheel, the van slid in the opposite direction like an unwilling animal. McBride spun the wheel, evening out the skid, then he stamped on the accelerator as he met the slope of the new track and the Citroen almost refused.
"All I know, Peter, is that they get closer to me every time I come for a visit — and they're not that clever!" Gilliatt listened but kept his eyes on the map. "But, what the hell! They must have heard the Wellington, wondered about it, then found Hoffer and put two and two—"
The Citroen bounced off a low wall surrounding an isolated church. Gilliatt saw McBride cross himself with one hand, steering with the other, the grin never disappearing for a moment from his lips. Then they were over a rise, swinging down. McBride switched on the headlights for a moment to orient himself, then doused them again. He turned left into thicker trees that had thrown back the headlight beams in twisted, skeletal whiteness. McBride then drove totally on reaction, concentrating grimly, swerving innumerable times, hitting the boles of trees glancing blows twice, stalling the engine once, skidding frequently.
Then they were out of the trees.
"Nearest track?" he snapped.
"Keep ahead. We may have to open a gate or two, but eventually we'll find the road!"
McBride looked at him, and winked.
"That we will — we will." He laughed.
Behind them, the first of the pursuing vehicles, an open Einheits-programme VW Type 82, entered the trees, headlights on full, followed more cautiously by an Opel Blitz three-ton truck with a platoon aboard and the dead, glassless searchlight for which there were no spare bulbs. They were a little more than a quarter of a mile behind the Citroen van, fifteen kilometres from the outskirts of Brest.
He'd found two items by the time the records office was due to close, and he was tempted to take them with him, knowing they would be unlikely to be missed, perhaps for years. The first was a notification from the Admiralty that Lieutenant Gilliatt had been temporarily reassigned to shore duties, and that his replacement, Sub-Lieutenant Thomas, would be arriving in forty-eight hours. There were no other details. He could not find a later reassignment of Gilliatt to the Bisley, or any ship at Milford Haven.