Richter paused and glanced at his two companions. Dekker nodded for him to continue.
‘That’s a fairly obvious crossing point for the Italians to be covering, because it’s the main route from Turin to Grenoble, so I’m almost certain they’ll have manned the border there, looking for Raya of course, and possibly me now as well. We’re probably listed as escaped convicts or murderers, something like that, and they’ll have orders to check every single car leaving Italy. So that’s why I think we need to split up. As far as I know, they won’t be looking for you, Colin, so there’s no reason why you can’t just drive across the border in your hire car, though it would be a good idea to lose the sniper rifle and your pistol before you do.’
Dekker didn’t look at all happy with this suggestion. ‘I’ve signed for them,’ he said, ‘and I can’t just dump them.’
‘Sorry, wrong choice of word. We’ll be hanging on to the weapons, but we’ll get them over the border by another route.’
‘How?’
‘See just here,’ Richter pointed, ‘beside this peak called Roche Bernaud? There’s a small place called Bardonecchia, near the tunnel that runs north — south through the mountain and across the border. There’s a minor road that runs roughly south from that point, across the French border and down to Névache. Then it turns east and south to join the N94 just east of Briançon. I’m hoping that will be our route out of Italy.’
‘So I drive you two up to Bardonecchia, drop you both there and then drive across the border east of Briançon and pick you up on the other side?’ Dekker asked.
‘Maybe, but I was rather hoping you might be able to take us a bit beyond that, perhaps a little way further up the minor road that crosses the border, but that will depend on what we find when we get to Bardonecchia. But I certainly think we should leave our car here, and ride in yours from now on, just in case Simpson or somebody has flagged my vehicle, too.’
‘OK,’ Dekker said. ‘That sounds like a plan. And when I drop you two off, you’ll take the rifle and my short with you?’
‘Short?’ Raya asked. ‘What’s a short?’
‘He means his pistol,’ Richter explained, then turned back to Dekker. ‘Exactly. So you should have no trouble at the border, even if the carabinieri, or whoever, stop you and search the car.’
Three minutes later they were on the move. Richter had left the locked Ford on a side street in Roure, with the keys tossed underneath the car, and the three of them were now riding in Dekker’s hired Peugeot — the car he’d picked up in Toulouse. Richter was in the front, while Raya sat in the back, trying to keep her head low, just in case the Italians had stationed any carabinieri in the area immediately to the east of the border.
Their route took them out of Roure, around the north slopes of Monte Albergian, and then south-west to Sestriere. Leaving the village, the road began twisting and turning its way down hairpin bends traversing the fairly steep side of the valley, until they finally reached the village of Cesana Torinese, and the junction there with the main road.
‘Beautiful scenery,’ Dekker muttered, as he approached the roundabout.
All around them rose mountain peaks: an artist’s palette of shades of green and brown, grass and trees and rocks, framed by the silver streamers of mountain rivers that tumbled down the sheer slopes below the white teeth of the mountain tops. It was, by any standards, spectacular.
‘Keep down,’ Dekker ordered, a couple of seconds later, after a glance to his left. ‘Reception committee.’
Raya ducked down in her seat, keeping herself below the level of the windows.
Dekker kept up the commentary as he turned right, and accelerated up the road heading north.
‘Half a dozen carabinieri just beyond the roundabout, with two blue and whites. Plus a couple of suits just observing. They’ve pulled over three cars that were obviously heading for the border, and they’re checking the boots and also the identification of the drivers and passengers. Could be a routine check, of course, but I doubt it.’
‘Just as well you didn’t turn left, then,’ Richter muttered.
‘You got that right.’
As Dekker accelerated, Richter peered cautiously out of the rear window. The Italian police were clearly taking their task seriously. Two of them stood on opposite sides of the road, sub-machine guns cradled in their arms, and covering the scene, while their colleagues, also armed but with riot shotguns and regulation pistols, carried out the inspections of the vehicles and their occupants. He glanced at the route map, then made a quick decision.
‘Change of plan now, Colin. I was expecting them to be checking people a lot closer to the border. But, looking at this map, I reckon they’ll have a roadblock on this side of Bardonecchia, because that way they can cover both the tunnel and the road over the col. I think we need to try to cross somewhere here, before we get too far away from the border. Can you pull over soon?’
They found a small pull-in on the right-hand side of the road, temporarily empty of other vehicles, and Dekker swung the Peugeot into it and switched off the engine. All three of them climbed out of the car and stared around.
‘Nice and quiet,’ Dekker remarked.
‘Good.’ Richter looked to the west, in the direction they had to proceed. The mountain rose quite steeply in front of them, riven with deep and inhospitable-looking valleys that also rose steeply towards the west. He had hoped they’d be able to follow a curving route around the mountain, keeping to more or less at the same level, until they started the descent towards the minor road on the French side of the border. But now clearly that wasn’t an option, for it would be a long, exhausting slog over very uneven ground, and climbing for most of the way.
‘How far is it?’ Dekker asked.
‘If this map’s accurate, about seven or eight miles. That’s in a straight line, so maybe ten miles actually walking.’
‘Ten miles?’ Raya echoed. ‘Over that sort of ground? That’s going to take us hours.’
‘Most of the day,’ Richter agreed, ‘but I don’t think we’ve got much option.’
‘We can’t crash through the border, that’s for sure,’ Dekker said, ‘if every crossing point’s got the same sort of police presence. Two pistols and a sniper rifle aren’t much use at close quarters against sub-machine guns and shotguns. They’d cut us to pieces. And if, by some lucky chance, we did manage to shoot our way through, they’d put out a Europe-wide watch order for us, because we would be bound to have wounded or even killed some of the carabinieri.’
‘What about hiring an off-road vehicle?’ Raya suggested.
Richter shook his head. ‘A good idea, but we’d probably have to drive back to Turin to get one, and that’s about sixty miles away. Getting there, finding one and getting back here could easily take three or four hours. But the bigger problem is that we’re trying not to be noticed, and if the Italians have any sense they’ll be flying helicopter patrols along the border on the lookout for us. If we’re on foot, we can just lie flat and hide. But you can’t hide a Jeep.’
‘On the other hand,’ Dekker said, ‘you’re a pilot, aren’t you?’
Richter nodded.
‘So how about flying over?’
‘Good plan, apart from the fact that we don’t have an aircraft.’
‘Ah,’ Dekker said, ‘but I think I know where you can find one. On the way up to Roure I passed a windsock on the right-hand side of the road, and there was a kind of cleared area in a field beyond that, and a barn. Five gets you ten, one of the local farmers has a Cessna or something parked there.’