He looked down at Ararat, the biblical mountain, and the white-capped Little Caucasus Range; beyond them, in a light haze, was Georgia and the endless expanse of the Russian Federation. London was only four hours away. He regretted that, in his haste to flee the assassins, he had taken the first and only flight to Heathrow instead of going via Paris or Amsterdam or Coonabarabran or Outer Mongolia.
Findhorn downed two bloody marys, but the images of violent death wouldn't go away. He stopped himself asking for a third.
It wasn't just that the bad guys had won the race for the secret.
It was also that he was a loose end; he could talk. And even with the deficiencies of the Armenian telephone network, his flight number would by now be known, arrangements would by now have been made.
'Why did you go back?' he asked.
Her eyes were still red. 'Isn't it obvious? Three of us were a threat, especially that idiot driver. I thought if I went back alone I could talk to him gently. Fred, he was still warm to the touch. It was horrible.'
It was practically their first exchange of words in three hours. He squeezed her hand.
It would, perhaps, look like an accidental encounter, something as innocent as a shared taxi with a stranger. Or they might use someone he knew and trusted.
Beside him, Romella stared morosely out of the window, and Findhorn wondered.
26
Escape
Like Newton's apple, it took a collision to jog Petrosian into a new thought. He mumbled an apology to the man with the newspaper, watched him as he hurried off, and then turned into the newsagent's.
And he didn't even have to buy a newspaper: there were a dozen cards stuck on a pin-board, and one of them said:
Pierce-Arrow VI2 Model 53 Roadster 6500 c.c. whitewalled tires servo-assistid breaks resently resprayed padded dash new chrome bumpers spots recent overhaul 50000 miles $500 o.n.o. ask for Tom.
The apartment door was opened about two inches. A dark eye surveyed him suspiciously. The girl, he thought, had beautiful eyelashes.
'Hi. Can I speak to Tom?'
'Maybe he ain't hair.' There was a scuffling sound from the rear of the flat. Petrosian glimpsed a naked black youth running between rooms. The girl said, 'He doan get up at this time, mister.'
'It's about his car.'
'He get up for that.'
The door closed.
It was opened again two minutes later by the youth tucking a shirt into his jeans, who sauntered out of the building to a builder's yard, Petrosian in tow.
And there it was, spare wheel attached to its side, a running board along its length, new chrome bumpers and painted a gleaming black.
'How does it run?'
'Like a dream, mister.'
'I mean, is it reliable?'
'Hey, I ain't never had a day's trouble with it.' The youth was a picture of injured innocence. On the other hand he wasn't offering a trial run.
Petrosian pretended to examine the car. The tyres were bald, and a patch of canvas was beginning to show through one of them.
'What's the mileage?'
'Fifty thou.'
Petrosian looked inside. The driver's seat was sagging and pedals were worn smooth; he estimated that it had done four or maybe five times that distance.
'You're asking for five hundred dollars?'
'Yassuh, faive.'
No time to waste haggling. But if I don't baggie it looks suspicious.
'Okay. But make it four.'
'Hey, I's a poorist, I cain't make charitable donations. I need four seventy five for this piece of luxury.'
'Four twenty-five, then.'
'Done for four fifty, mister. Cash, right?'
Anastas's air fare, Petrosian thought.
'Jurgen?'
'Hey, old pal.'
'They're onto me.'
'Don't say another word. Just listen. It's fixed up for tomorrow night, ten o'clock.'
Petrosian's voice was filled with dismay. 'Tomorrow? I won't last that long.'
'I said just listen.'
'All right, where?'
'A place you know, Lev, a lake where you once thought the planet would overheat. Now my phone's tapped and your call is being traced. So get off the line and get the hell out of there.'
Jesus. 'Thanks, Jurgen.'
'A night and a day, Lev, just hold out for a night and a day.'
'What about you?'
'I got a four-minute start on them. If I don't make it, say hello to the Motherland for me.'
There was a faint, peculiar click on the line. But Petrosian was on Interstate 93, and merged with the heavy evening traffic flowing towards Boston in less than a minute.
'It has been set up?' 'Yes, sir.'
'Nothing can go wrong?'
'Absolutely not. The Corporation need have no fear.'
'You had better be right, for all our sakes. Tonight, I will pray for his soul.' The Chairman sipped at his white wine with satisfaction. 'A good Orvieto is hard to beat, unless it is a better Frascati. And what about his secret?'
'He has been carrying a large briefcase around since he fled. It never leaves his hand. It will of course disappear along with him.'
Something in the man's body language. The Chairman said, 'Was there anything else?'
'There is one thing, a small item.'
The Chairman went still. In his long experience of life, it was small items which brought empires crashing down. 'Well?'
'Within the last hour, I'm told that the FBI have picked up his trail.'
'Yes?'
'He is very close to the Canadian border. If he crosses it…'
The Chairman continued: 'The FBI will have no jurisdiction.'
'Precisely, sir. They would have to cross the border illegally.'
The Chairman relaxed. The man worried too much; a line on a map was indeed a small matter. 'I will speak to Mister Hoover. But be assured, he understands the force of necessity.'
Exhausted, Petrosian saw the lights of a small town.
He had to eat, had to drink, had to sleep.
He had taken the Pierce-Arrow V12 Model 53 Roadster with whitewall tyres six hundred miles east while the faint engine tap gradually intensified until it turned into the deafening clatter of a crankshaft trying to tear loose. The Pierce-Arrow was a twenty-year-old car and bound to attract attention; in Petrosian's case, a Pierce-Arrow with a big end hammering out over the countryside was an invitation to the electric chair. Somewhere past Grand Rapids he had finally lost his nerve, turned off the highway onto some rural road, and driven the car for another fifty miles until steam began to pour out of the overheated engine. He drove it, without lights, as far as he could take it into a wood, and ditched it.
He wished he'd taken the time to look for a Model T.
There was one piece of good fortune. Through the trees, he could see Lake Michigan sparkling in the distance.
There were no buses that early and Petrosian could only have cleared off on foot or by train. The New York express had just left by the time they got to the station and it had taken a lot of phone calling to cover the halts. It was another half-hour by the time a dim-witted young railwayman at Ploughkeepsie identified Petrosian: the spy, they assumed, must have a cool nerve to get off at the adjacent station.
A saturation search of the town revealed no sign of the spy; neither had he taken a bus, called a taxi or hired a car. However, a trawl of early morning shops had turned up a newsagent who recognized him. The man had entered his shop, looked at the cards on the wall and left without buying anything. He'd only noticed the guy because he looked a bit foreign and had seemed in an agitated state.