She was sitting well back as though keeping out of sight, but there was no mistaking her, nor the look of triumph which evidently she couldn’t help showing now. Then the cars had disengaged, Karina’s going down the road towards Ronda like a bullet while Shaw shot ahead to look for a turning-place.
He cursed savagely as he drove on. Karina had won out on this all right. Evidently Don Jaime’s message had never got through — phone-wires cut, probably. There would only be the one shaky line into a little place like Vercín, just the one telephone very likely, in the comisaria. And — Karina must have seen him; why hadn’t she tried to stop him with the guns she must surely have in that car? All this went through his mind in a moment as he looked out for that place to turn — the road was too narrow, too well lined with trees, to turn yet. And Karina’s car undoubtedly had the legs of his. His foot was well down on the accelerator, and the car was shooting forward, tyres whipping up the dust, as he saw his chance half a mile ahead. When he came up to the clear space he put the footbrake on hard, slewed the wheel to the right. There was a nasty bump, and then he’d brought the car off the road neatly between two clumps of trees, reversed her back on to the road again, and turned after that big flashy car, hurtling north. There was no sign of it now.
El Caballero, that ramrod-straight old man, sat his skinny horse behind the cover of the trees. His men lay behind boulders, rifles ready in their hands. El Caballero had been surprised that the señorita hadn’t stopped, for, if he had not been mistaken, she had seemed earlier to want to meet the man who drove the black car. And it had looked as though she meant to swing her car across the road to block the other one, until that last moment when she scraped, comparatively slowly, past. It had been bad luck, perhaps, that both cars had passed the wreckage together, for El Caballero had been forced to hold his fire for fear of hitting the señorita and her companions. However, the car was coming back and he would have another chance.
He called, “Aim to hit the tyres, or the petrol-tank. We must not harm the man if we can avoid it. Afterwards, we shall very likely hear from the señorita as to what she wants us to do with him.”
Bolts snicked, and rifles lined up on the roadway.
Shaw came back fast towards the wrecked car.
As he flashed past that cork-oak the window on his driving side suddenly flew into a thousand pieces, a shower of glass spattering over him. He felt the wind of the bullet as it zipped past his face, and he yelled out to Debonnair to duck, to get down on the boards. As she did so he felt the thud of heavy bullets smashing into the back of the car, and another bullet scored along the off-side front wing.
Keeping his own head low and trusting to luck, Shaw rammed his foot down hard, and the car bounded forward. A moment later they were clear and belting ahead along the Ronda road. Shaw felt his hands shaking on the wheel as he said to Debonnair:
“All right, darling — you can get up now. That was a near one.”
“What in hell was it?” Debonnair rubbed her shin— she’d scraped it during her hurried ducking manoeuvre.
“What was it?” he echoed above the racket of the engine and the whirling grit. “It was a nice little ambush, Debbie, but it didn’t come off!” Now that he knew where Ackroyd was, knew that he had the target, as it were, before him, his voice was almost boyish. “You all right?”
“Oh, I’m fine.”
He looked sideways at the girl. She was leaning towards him, staring intent into the driving-mirror, a hair-grip between her teeth, hands busy doing something to her hair. In a moment she was finished, and he saw her face, eager against the wooded background flashing past interspersed with the purplish open spaces, saw her hair come partly adrift again and blow out as the air drove in through the shattered, empty window on his left. She was fine all right — in more ways than one.
Shaw drove on.
He had one advantage in this chase, and that was that Karina would be at least half expecting him to have been caught by that ambush, so she might not be as alert as she would otherwise have been; that ambush must have been the reason why she hadn’t tried to stop him herself. Nevertheless, as they pushed on Shaw began to worry as to which way Karina would go; he had to catch up with her before she reached the turning into the San Pedro road — and either turned or kept straight on for Ronda. Except for its rail outlet, Ronda was a dead end, of course, but Karina might still take the precaution of trying to confuse the issue, just in case, before heading for Malaga or some other port. Shaw was still convinced that her ultimate destination must be a port.
In the car ahead Garcia was driving. Alongside him Massias, perpetually nervous, sat with one hand drooping to his sub-machine-gun. In the back with Karina, Ackroyd was lolling and moaning and crying a little now and then.
Karina was feeling calm, triumphant, gloating — this was going to be so easy now. She wasn’t in the least worried about Shaw. Once Ackroyd was clear of Spain, and safe, she would go back for Esmonde Shaw. El Caballero would take care of him until she sent instructions. She pushed Shaw from her mind.
A flicker of annoyance crossed her face as Ackroyd started his humming noise again. It was getting on her nerves. Turning sideways, she slapped the little man’s face viciously, a heavy ring on her finger cutting into his cheek.
She ordered, “Quiet!”
Ackroyd sagged, and whimpered a little. But he obeyed. Karina looked at him with contempt. This wretched madman wasn’t going to be worth all the trouble — for all the use he’d be, she might just as well throw him out of the car. She shrugged herself out of such thoughts — once Ackroyd was safely aboard the Ostrowiec, she’d have complied with her orders, done her job. It wasn’t her fault he’d proved such a weakling, not her fault that he’d gone crazy. Or was it?
Suddenly she laughed aloud. He’d probably recover — when he got away from her.
The two men of the Guardia Civil, walking abreast of each other along the road between Vercm and the San Pedro turning with their heavy carbines slung on their shoulders, their uniforms white with dust, had reached the end of their patrol area, had just turned back towards Ronda. They ambled on beneath the mounting sun and sweated into the thick green material which weighed them down like lead.
They were bored with life, these two — or rather, such part of life as compelled them to pound this endless beat — this endless hot march — of road patrols. And the corps d’elite of Spain had always to set an example, had always to look (more or less) alert, even though the head ached from the sun and the hard helmet, even though the upright, reinforced collar of the jacket bit into brown necks uncomfortably.
And the boots!
Holy Mother of God — the boots.
Pepe Caravolente, the guardia on the east side of the road — the one with the broad, good-humoured face and the ready, easy smile, who was so well-known to be ever willing to do a good turn or to give help where it was needed, who was the sole support of his old, widowed mother and the delight of her declining years — Pepe Caravolente could feel each individual corn and pad of hard skin aching and burning away like charcoals in a brazier. The stiff, unyielding leather touched up each one of them into a small but relentless volcano of pain which erupted every time his big feet clumped down on to the uneven surface of the Ronda road. Pepe, who had almost hobbled and minced along for the last couple of miles that morning, groaned aloud.