Milton felt as if he was caught between reality and the dream. He was balanced on a precipice, teetering there; it would only take a little for him to fall. He moved through the annex, staying low, stumbling a little, the gun up and his finger held loosely around the trigger. He cleared the sitting room and then the bedroom, finally reaching the door to the garage. The door was closed; he slid next to it, pressing himself against the wall. His breath was coming in shallow gasps and he was sweating, drops rolling down his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.
He heard a car door open and close, took a deep breath, wiped his eyes again, reached for the handle and pulled it down. The door was unlocked. He opened it and, after waiting for a moment, he stepped back so that he could look through the doorway.
There was a car in the garage. The engine was turning over and the cabin lights were lit, casting a greenish glow over the silhouette of the man who was sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked into the back and saw another person: a woman, perhaps the one who had just shot at him.
Milton raised his weapon and aimed at the driver.
He straightened his arm and started to tighten his finger around the trigger, but before he could pull it all the way back, he caught the reflection of a second man in the window of the car. He had been around the corner, hidden, but now he moved into sight, a shotgun clutched in both hands. The man brought the stubby barrel around and fired; Milton fell farther back into the bedroom as the doorframe exploded. He was showered with another cloud of wood and plaster.
He heard the sound of a car closing and then the whine of the engine as the driver fed it gas. Milton rolled low out of the door as the car pulled out onto the drive. He fired a burst into the car, aiming for the engine and the driver’s side window. The bodywork chimed with each impact and holes were punched through the glass, but the window held.
The car kept going.
“Targets are in a Porsche Cayenne,” Milton said into the radio, his voice hoarse. “They’re heading toward the gate. Over.”
He saw the silhouettes of two people in the back of the car: the man with the shotgun had joined the woman. He heard the buzz of the hydraulic motor; the doors were closing again. The light from outside narrowed and dimmed as the doors drew together but, before the light was snuffed out altogether, he saw a woman’s body on the floor. He recognised the jacket that Conway had been wearing.
“Ten is down. Repeat: Ten is down.”
38
Pope retraced his steps and, the UCIW clasped in both hands, he ran back into the drawing room, into the hall and then out of the front door. He ran hard, reaching the corner of the building and poking his head around it in an attempt to scope out the garage. A car raced out of it and went by him, the brake lights flaring bright red as it slowed for the turn in the drive, and then the engine roaring loudly as it straightened out. Pope ran after it, making his way around the turn as the car started to accelerate toward the closed metal gates.
He raised the machine gun and pulled the trigger, five short bursts to stop the muzzle climbing on him. The gun chewed through the magazine, sending rounds slapping into the back of the vehicle. The rear window spiderwebbed as bullets punched through it. The car remained on course, the engine whining as it plunged into the dead centre of the gates. The metal screamed as it was torn apart; the gates were ripped from their hinges and spun onto the asphalt, clanging loudly as they slammed down hard. The car raced across the short fringe that separated the gates from the road, the brake lights showing again as it fishtailed right and then left, then winking out as the driver buried the pedal and raced away to the west.
Pope sprinted after it, ejecting and reloading as he ran. He came out of the gates just as the glare of a motorcycle’s headlamp approached along the main road. Pope jumped out in front of it, waving his arms. The motorcycle was travelling slowly, and the rider brought it to a halt and put his foot down. Pope grabbed the man and dragged him off the bike, dumping him on the road. Pope caught the bike before it could fall, mounted it, shoved the UCIW around so that it hung from its sling across his back and twisted the throttle. He raced away from the house and sped after the fleeing spies.
Beck found that he was biting his lip. The atmosphere in the car was tense. Nataliya had cursed as the rounds had punched through the rear window, and Beck had reached over to brush away the small fragments of glass that had fallen onto her. They had been lucky: most of the bullets had missed, and the rest had been stopped by the chassis of the car or the luggage in the boot behind them.
Mikhail was driving fast, hitting sixty as he raced out of the village and then squeezing up to seventy despite the narrow, twisting road. Nataliya had half-turned in her seat so that she could look back through the window for signs of pursuit. She was beautiful. Beck sometimes thought of her and Mikhail as the children that he had never been able to have. He had often daydreamed about what it might have been like if they had been allowed to return to Russia together. The two of them had been good enough to let him indulge his fantasy, and he knew that they would have stayed in contact with him even after their professional relationship had come to an end. It was unprofessional, but he loved them. He loved them, and, because he did, he knew what he had to do.
Mikhail glanced up into the rear-view mirror. “Someone’s behind us,” he said.
Beck craned his neck around and saw the glow of a single headlight in the distance behind them.
Mikhail turned the wheel to the right and swept into a minor road that ran to the north. He put his foot down, quickly racing up to sixty and then seventy. Beck turned around again and saw that the glow of the headlamp was still behind them. Mikhail swung the car onto another minor road and then immediately turned right, making a series of unpredictable manoeuvres that the vehicle behind would be unlikely to match unless it was following them.
They raced through the countryside. Beck turned back. The headlamp was still there.
“Pull over,” he said.
“Beck—” Nataliya started to protest.
“I’ll slow them down. The longer we wait, the more coverage they’ll have. That’s a motorbike. Maybe that’s all they have now. You won’t be able to get away if we give them the chance to bring more.”
“But you’re still coming?”
He turned to the front, said, “I am,” and hoped that she wouldn’t be able to read his face. “There,” he said, pointing to a track on the right. “Stop there.”
Mikhail braked suddenly, the seat belts biting and holding them all in place even as the wheels slithered across the dusty road.
Beck had rested the shotgun next to him. He took it, opened the door and stepped out.
“Go,” he said. “Don’t wait. Remember: Popham Airfield. I’ll see you in Moscow.”
He slammed the door before either of them had a chance to speak and waited until the car lurched ahead once more. He could see the glow of the headlamp suffusing the night above the meandering hills. He clasped the shotgun in both hands and walked out into the middle of the road to meet it.
39
Pope gripped the handlebars and gritted his teeth. The targets had a head start and they were driving aggressively and quickly. He knew that it would be impossible for him to follow them without them noticing, and that had been confirmed as the Porsche had taken two sharp turns and then accelerated away at high speed. They were going to try to shake him; Pope would have to try and stay on them until he was able to summon reinforcements. Control’s preference that the operation remain limited to Group Fifteen looked fatuous now; they were going to need to call on the police to bring the car to a stop. Pope just had to stay on them until that was possible.