It was their climbing power that made the difference and Pudovkin saw that. He spun the wheel at the first right-hand intersection and that put us into a downslope of ruptured third-class mountain road. Rocks and stunted trees whipped by my door handle at shoulder height and one uncertainty would smash us on the narrow bends but here the horsepower was equalized and we had gravity on our side.
But instinct made me grope for the map and when I had it before me I yelled at him desperately: it was a dead-end road.
“How far?”
I had squirmed around to peer out the back; through the splintered glass I had glimpses of the black snout of the Skoda. Not far back—not far at alclass="underline" on a straight run they’d have been shooting, at this range. I could almost read the number plate.
“How far?”
“Not more than five kilometers.”
Now we ran out onto a shelf, close under the windward side of the mountains with a sheer cliff dropping away on the open side to our left; the tires chattered and whimpered on the bends and I saw the Skoda sway out onto the cliff-cut road behind us. And suddenly I realized we were losing speed and I stared at Pudovkin in horror. “What’s the matter?”
He didn’t answer but I saw his foot was off the gas. He had his right hand wrapped around the handle of the handbrake between the seats but he hadn’t lifted it yet. Ahead of us the road swept out of sight to the right around what appeared to be a very sharp bend—hairpin on a pivot of rock, and no guard rail at the outside. I spun my head to search for the Skoda but it took no finding: on the straight run it was barreling down on us like a black locomotive.
“Now hold tight.” Pudovkin was pulling the handbrake and I knew instinctively why: for some reason he wanted to slow us down without flashing the red brake-warning lights on the back of the car. At the same time we were swinging out into the left-hand lane of the road—the outside lane above the drop—and at first I thought he was giving himself the widest possible angle from which to hit the right-hand hairpin bend ahead. But it gave the Skoda its chance and I saw dust squirt from beneath its rear tires as the driver gave it full speed and I shouted at Pudovkin because I was sure he hadn’t seen the Skoda’s move:
“They’re going to overtake on the inside.”
“I know. Hold tight.”
A runoff ditch skewered the road and we crashed through it with a jar that made the beetle jump and scrabble but Pudovkin kept it away from the lip of the cliff. He was still far over to the left and the Skoda was within a hundred feet, roaring down the inside lane; the snout of the submachine gun appeared at the rear left-hand window and I shrank down in the seat.
The bend was coming at us and Pudovkin had the brake up several notches in his fist; we were slowing disastrously and the Skoda pulled almost even with us and I knew they were going to push us over the edge. I heard the submachine gun and then I felt the terrifying first touch of the Skoda’s bumper nudging our rear fender and I knew we would go over.
But then Pudovkin yanked the handbrake all the way up and because the emergencies were rear-wheel brakes we didn’t lose traction: we were stopping precipitously and I saw the Skoda shoot past and suddenly its driver must have seen the trap because I heard the wicked grab of his tires on the gravel when he jabbed his footbrake. The submachine gun roared virtually point-blank in my ears and I hunched my head down into the corner between the seat and the door; I did not see the rest but I heard the sickening shriek of burning rubber and the long jangling crunch when the Skoda went over the hairpin edge ahead of us—the bouncing impacts as it went down the mountain, the brittle shattering of glass and the long echo of crumpling steel as she hit bottom. Then I could hear the insistent steady cry of the jammed horn and I knew it had to be final.
Only then did I realize that we were not moving: the ratcheted handbrake had pulled us to a halt within six feet of the lip.
My skin crawled when my emotions realized how close it had been. I turned to Pudovkin.
He was dead. The submachine gun.
* March 27, 1973. Bristow had arrived at Bukov’s on the night of Saturday, March 24.—Ed.
The bullets had taken him straight through the temple and the neck. I had never seen a man shot dead but there was no question he might still be alive; nevertheless I tried to find a pulse and of course there was none.
Breathing deeply and regularly in a feeble attempt to calm myself, I left the car and staggered to the crumpled edge of the road where the Skoda had gone over. I doubted any of them in that car could be alive; something else concerned me and I needed to check it because I didn’t trust my memory—all I’d really had were frightened glimpses of the car.
The wreckage was crumpled and distorted. It had come to rest on one side wedged into the boulders more than a hundred feet below me. It was too steep a pitch to climb down without wasting a great deal of time. Nothing but boulders and loose sliding shale chips of rock, slightly reddish in the grey daylight. At the bottom a sinuous stream glittered and on the opposite slope a high tower of raw stone loomed like a gallows.
What I was looking for on the Skoda was a whip aerial; I didn’t recall seeing one but I needed to know. If it had an antenna then it had a two-way radio.
There was none in sight but then I realized it would have been the first thing to break away.
The Skoda had been crushed flat; its entire front axle had come away with one wheel and tire attached—it lay in the stream below—and the squashed condition of the roof left no likelihood anyone had been left alive. The doors had sprung open but from this angle I couldn’t see inside the wreckage: the rear deck-lid had come awry and lay across the upper side of the car.
On rubber knees I climbed back to the Volkswagen. We had left great ruts in the soft road. They veered close to the edge at several points. I remembered in a jumbled way that the gun had been firing before we stopped and I realized that Pudovkin had died while we were still moving: only the ratchet on the handbrake had kept us from going over after his lifeless thumb had gone slack on the button.
The bullets had shattered both windows, his and mine; the interior of the car was jagged with splintered glass and I had no recollection of that happening. When I touched my cheek my fingers came away sticky with blood that was already beginning to congeal in scabs: I had a number of small cuts and hadn’t even noticed.
Of course the engine had stalled out—the car was still in third gear—and I didn’t know if it would run again. I saw no bullet holes in the rear engine area. Both sides of the car were riddled and when I began to pull Pudovkin out of the car I saw that the expanding bullets had exploded away fist-sized chunks of the driver’s door. He had great wounds in his upper chest and shoulders that I hadn’t seen earlier. The gun had been firing down and I had been slumped below the sill of my window; the bullets had angled above me and down.
I handled the old man with gentle care—it’s odd how gently we treat the dead—and now my mind was working with a curiously cool detachment: my reasoning was ruthless and clear. I couldn’t take the time to bury him, I thought, but then I knew I couldn’t leave him in the road for the birds to pick at. I carried him to a trough in the shale above the road and piled some rocks on him and then went up above him and kicked at the shale until a little slide started. It covered most of him and I did the rest with slabs of loose rock.