“I don’t know. I wasn’t looking just then, I don’t know.”
“Be a sweet piece of luck if he didn’t. If he stayed on the Tralee road and passed us by. Of course, this road probably does a loop-the-loop and deposits us right back on the Tralee road anyway. Have you got that map yet?”
She got it and opened it.
“Try to figure out where the hell we are and where we’re going. I think we can forget about Shannon. Farrell’s too smart to leave that open. He’ll have got to a phone by now, and there will be men waiting in and around Shannon for us. If we can find a way, I’d just as soon bypass Tralee completely.”
“And go where?”
“I don’t know. Cork or Dublin — there are consulates both places. The embassy in Dublin, for that matter. Just so we stay away from them. That’s the only thing that matters.” He drew on his cigarette, blew out a cloud of thick bluish smoke. “Like the IRA flying columns in the Tan War. They didn’t have to win battles. All they had to do was stay in the field. As long as they existed, they were a thorn in the side of the British. They had to hit and run, but most important they had to preserve themselves. That was their most important objective.”
“And it’s ours, too?”
He nodded. “Right. It doesn’t matter how soon we get the film to the proper authorities. There’s no rush. Farrell and his men can’t get anywhere until they get us. You’ve got the film, and they’re stuck without it. As long as we can keep away from them, as long as we can stay alive, we’re ahead of the game.”
“David...”
“What?”
“Koenig saw us turn onto this road.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just saw him behind us. He’s a good way back. The last hill, there was a long view of the road behind us, and I saw him.”
“You’re sure it was his car?”
“Positive.”
“Check the map. Where does this road go?”
She found the road. “I think this is it. It doesn’t go anywhere in particular. It passes Tralee about seven or eight miles to the south—”
“Good.”
“—and then goes to some place called Castlemaine. From there you can take a big road north to Tralee or south to Killorglin...”
“Forget that. Does the little road continue?”
“Uh-huh. It goes to Farranfore and Scartaglen, and then it sort of trickles off. I don’t know how good this map is. But there are other little roads from Scartaglen.”
“It’s our route, then. Wherever it goes. It doesn’t really matter where we go, just so we stick to the back roads. Just so the gas holds out. We’ve got about half a tank, and I think we ought to get close to thirty miles to the gallon.”
“That much?”
“I think that’s what the ads say. No, wait a minute, we won’t get anything like that.” He stopped talking long enough to spin the car precariously around a hairpin curve. “If this weren’t so harrowing, it almost would be fun. Remember the roller coaster when you were a kid? Where was I? Oh. We’ll get about twenty to the gallon, driving like this. Wide-open throttle and plenty of hills, twenty will be good. Half a tank — I wonder how much a tank holds? Maybe ten gallons. So figure we have five gallons, which means we can go a hundred miles before it’s time to look for a petrol station.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we worry about that when we come to it. How are you fixed for money?”
“Not much cash. Some traveler’s checks. You?”
“Not much cash and no traveler’s checks. My money’s in my room. This is a fine mess you’ve got us in, Stanley.”
“I know.”
“Can you see Koenig behind us?”
“No.”
“I wonder if there are any special buttons on the dashboard. We could leave a smokescreen behind us or an oil film on the road. I’d love to send Koenig spinning off the side of a cliff, phony wife and all. Sean Connery always has a batch of buttons to push. All I can see are the windshield wipers and the headlights. I wish to hell we weren’t out of cigarettes.”
“So do I.”
“We’re going to make it, Ellen.”
“Are we?”
“Our strength is as the strength of ten because our hearts are pure. But I wish we had a faster car. And a couple of machine guns in the back seat.” His voice softened, the flipness suddenly gone. “We’ll make it, Ellen. We’ll make it.”
Sixteen
When they passed Castlemaine David braked the car at the summit of a rise on the eastern edge of the town. “Let’s have a look,” he said. “We can see the road a long way back from here. See anything?”
“No. Nothing that looks like — oh yes, I see him now. A long ways back. There are other cars with them. One could be Farrell’s.” She pointed it out. “We’ve got a good jump on them now.”
“Good,” he said. They got back into the car and started off again, and before long he had the Triumph up to its top speed once more.
The two cars, theirs and Koenig’s, were fairly evenly matched. They had the advantage on curving roads, while Koenig had better speed up and down hills and on the straightaway. Once already he had closed the gap to less than a hundred yards, and the woman with him had drawn a pistol and snapped off a volley of shots at the Triumph. But the bullets hadn’t come close.
David bent over the steering wheel. Ellen crouched low in her seat, her head cradled in her arms. David took a turn on two wheels, the tires screeching in protest, barreled out of the turn, and urged the car on. The Koenigs didn’t make that turn. Ellen heard the screech of brakes applied too hard and too late, then the crashing of the heavy American car into the stone fence alongside the road.
David thought that the Koenigs’ car might have been wrecked. “We can’t stop to find out,” he told her, “but I think they may be out of the play.”
But later it seemed that they were still pursued. The accident had given them an extra few minutes, some of which they lost in Castlemaine when they stopped to buy cigarettes and fill the Triumph’s gas tank. Since they didn’t know how long the Koenig vehicle had been out of commission, it was hard to say whether they were widening the gap. It scarcely mattered. Koenig was very much on their trail, and it seemed likely that he had picked up reinforcements. They were alive and in the clear, but it was anybody’s guess how long they would be able to hold their lead.
She drew on her cigarette. “There are plenty of roads that don’t show up on the map,” she said. “What would happen if we took one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it worth a try?”
“It may be, if we get desperate enough.” He took the cigarette from her hand, took a puff, and gave it back to her. “But I’d rather stay on roads we know, so that we know where we’re going. Some of the minor roads don’t go anywhere, Ellen. They turn out to lead to some farmer’s barn or wind up as dead ends. I’d hate to be on a dead-end road with Koenig and Farrell behind me.”
“You’re right.”
She lapsed into silence, turning from time to time to gaze through the rear window at the road behind them. Another car had come up behind them since they left Castlemaine, a local car, not one of their pursuers, and the car effectively blocked her view of the road. She watched, and the car gradually drew abreast of them, honked its intention to pass, and swung easily out around them and raced on ahead. It was a low-slung sports car, a Jaguar, and it rushed on by as though they had been standing still in their tracks.
She released her breath and realized for the first time that she had been holding it. She shuddered.
“Something the matter?”