“El Caballero, señorita, at your service. I am instructed to assist you, and it will be a pleasure to carry out those instructions.”
“That is kind of you, señor,” she answered. “The — other man, he has not come? No other car has come here before me?”
“None.”
The woman studied him intently. He was smiling at her now, kindly. The lined, leathery face, mahogany in the light from the car, had an old-world distinction still. And his manner seemed gentle: Karina wasn’t used to this. An old fool, very likely, she thought, an old fool who’d been good enough in his day but had lived too long — just an old-fashioned liberal who had never really earned the name of Communist; Karina had no respect for liberals. However, this was an old fool who had managed to cut the telephone line into Vercin, and who had been well recommended, so she must make such use of him as she was able to.
She asked, “You know what it is I want?”
“The madman who was taken to Vercín.” He added: “The dead were left for official examination, but I buried them.” He pointed to a patch of ground concealed by scrub. “I respect the dead, and I do not like officials!” He twinkled. “Now I will come with you to show you the road to Vercín.”
“That will not be dangerous for you?”
He laughed. It was a rich, deep laugh that seemed too youthful for the wizened old frame. “If it is dangerous, señorita, then it will be my penance for having been — shall I say, employed elsewhere? — when the madman’s car hit the tree. By the time you enter Vercín the sun will be coming up above the mountains. I shall leave you before then. Naturally, it would not do for an old man to put his head too obviously into the lion’s den.”
Karina nodded, and her eyes narrowed. Curtly she said, “It is possible that this other car will yet arrive along this road. It will probably pull up near here, when its driver sees — this.” She indicated the wreckage.
El Caballero bowed. “I understand that the señorita does not wish the occupant of this car to reach Vercín. Those were the orders.”
Karina smiled briefly. “Correct. But that is not quite all.” She reached out, took the old man’s arm. “Señor, the man in this car, if it comes — I think you know he will be a tall man, thin. You were told he would look like a Spaniard, and as such indeed he will probably be dressed. But — he is in fact English, an English gentleman — you understand me?” She was distraite, she took a deep breath, and despite herself she found that she was trembling a little, and she even noticed a slight mistiness before her eyes… this looked a dangerous old fool in many ways, trigger-happy. When she went on her voice was urgent: “I do not wish him to be killed. Only taken. You will see to that, señor?”
“As you say, señorita.” In the car’s light she could see the twinkle in his eyes; she’d betrayed herself a little, and not only to El Caballero — until this moment Karina had scarcely realized herself that she still had this feeling for Shaw, and the suddenness of it seemed to shake her. El Caballero went on, gently, “That I already understood, for my orders said he was not to be harmed, since you had a use for him. What do you wish me to do with him, after he is taken?”
She said hurriedly, “Only hold him until I return from Vercín. Then hand him over to me.”
“I will make quite sure, once again, that my men understand.” He walked away towards the watchful little group in the darkness, leading his horse. As he went Karina spoke to the man beside her driver.
She said, “I have something to do before we go, Massias. You and Garcia, get out.”
The two men got out stiffly, flexed their muscles in the fresh, cool air. Karina indicated the veiling scrub where the corpses lay so unlawfully buried. She said harshly, “Start digging the bodies out. Use your hands — anything — perhaps these bandits will have some kind of implement, but do not let them come too close. I am looking for something — a small, thin piece of metal which must not pass to anyone but me.” At that moment there was something horrible about her; it was something in her expression. “Tell me when you have reached the bodies.”
The men stared at her, muttered. She stared back; her voice was cutting, icy, as she said, “Do as you are told, Garcia and Massias, or you will join those bodies.” The jewelled pistol nosed at them. The heavy weapon was still in the car, and Karina, keeping the pistol levelled, groped for it. By the time she had it in her hands the two men had begun work, pale and trembling in the silver moonlight as they scooped the fresh earth from the shallow graves. Karina left her car, moved towards the wrecked one, keeping the sub-machine-gun with her. What she sought might be in among that twisted metal, could have fallen from a pocket.
There was no repugnance, no hesitation. She struggled in, through the rear door, which was hanging on one hinge. The vehicle’s interior was a mass of dried blood; the steering column still had human flesh clinging to it. But Karina went through every inch of that car; and she found nothing. The madman Ackroyd would not, surely, have been clear enough in his mind after that crash to have thought of looking for that little flat piece of metal, even though it had been of such enormous importance to him that he had refused to talk about it despite his beatings; he must have been too injured to have got his hands on it in any case, so it must be on the smaller of those bodies still.
Massias and Garcia were still shaking and feeling ill after El Caballero had joined the señorita in the back of the car and it was on the move again. Even their hardened stomachs hadn’t been up to the business of digging out the dead in the night, lifting out by the side of that lonely road poor mangled corpses who had been their friends in life, and who had died serving this terrible woman who now sat behind them holding the sub-machine-gun. Both of them could see her yet, kneeling beside those shallow graves, impatient, scarcely able to wait until they had lifted out the corpses before she began searching and plucking like a vulture, going through pockets — and cursing.
Cursing because whatever it was she wanted to find hadn’t been there. Cursing at the dead, the dead of the Faith — and she an infidel.
Karina’s face was pale and anxious, her mouth hard, as the car moved ahead in a great swirl of dust which billowed up before them in the headlights which pierced into the diminishing night. When they began the long, slow climb upward to Vercín dawn was already bringing out the mountain crests around them, and they could see the steep roofs of the little old town glinting back those early pearl-gold rays.
Above them church bells rang out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That dawn, breaking over Gibraltar, found the Defence Security Officer already in his office, speaking in a clipped voice into the telephone. As Staunton slammed back the receiver and wiped sweat from his forehead John Harrison, A.D.C. to His Excellency, looked over at him questioningly.
Staunton snapped, “Flag Officer — speaking from The Mount. He’s up early too, it seems.”
“Anything fresh?”
Staunton answered obliquely, “He wanted to know if there was any news from Shaw. That’s what they all want to know.” He made a gesture almost of hopelessness. “Apparently that bloody machine’s speeding up all the time.”
“Seventy-two hours was the last estimate, wasn’t it?”
Staunton nodded.
Carefully, as though the efficiency of his action was somehow important, the A.D.C. stubbed out a cigarette, blew a last trail of smoke. Avoiding Staunton’s rather baleful eye, he asked, “You know something, Major?”