The Scotsman and the young French partisan led Michael up a set of stone steps, and into a small cave lit by green-shaded lamps. The illumination gleamed on a long, black, hard-topped Mercedes-Benz touring car. It was a beautiful machine, and Michael couldn’t even tell where the bullet holes had been patched and repainted. “Fine machine, eh?” McCarren asked, reading Michael’s mind as Michael ran a gloved hand across a fender. “The Germans know how to build ’em, that’s for sure. Well, the bastards have got cogs and gears in their heads instead of brains anyway, so what can you expect.” He motioned toward the driver’s seat, where a uniformed figure sat behind the wheel. “André there’s a good driver. He knows Paris about as well as anybody, seein’ as he was born there.” He tapped on the glass, and the driver nodded and started the engine; it responded with a low, throaty growl. McCarren opened the rear door for Michael as the young Frenchman unlatched two doors that covered the cave entrance. The doors were thrown open, letting in a glare of morning sunlight, and then the young Frenchman began to quickly clear brush away from in front of the Mercedes.
McCarren held out his hand, and Michael gripped it. “You take care of yourself, laddie,” the Scotsman said. “Give ’em hell out there for the Black Watch, eh?”
“Jawohl.” Michael eased into the backseat, a luxury of black leather, and the driver released the hand brake and drove through the cave entrance. As soon as the car was clear, the brush was put back into place, the green-and-brown-camouflage-painted doors were sealed, and it looked like a rugged hillside again. The Mercedes wound through a patch of dense woods, met a rutted country road, and turned left on it.
Michael sniffed the air: leather and new paint, the faint whiff of gunpowder, engine oil, and an apple-wine fragrance. Ah, yes, he thought, and smiled faintly. He looked out through a window, studying the blue sky full of lacy, billowing clouds. “Does McCarren know?” he asked Gaby.
She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Her black hair was pinned up under her German staff driver’s cap, and she wore a shapeless coat over her uniform. His gaze, that piercing glare of green, met hers. “No,” she said. “He thinks I went back to the field last night.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She thought about it for a moment as she jockeyed the car over a rough section of road. “My assignment was to get you where you want to go,” she answered.
“Your assignment ended when you got me to McCarren.”
“Your interpretation. Not mine.”
“McCarren had a driver for me. What happened to him?”
Gaby shrugged. “He decided… the job was too dangerous.”
“Do you know Paris?”
“Well enough. What I didn’t know I learned from the map.” Another glance in the rearview mirror; his eyes were still on her. “I haven’t spent all my life in the country.”
“What’ll the Germans think if we run into a roadblock?” he asked her. “1 imagine a beautiful girl driving a staff car isn’t a common sight.”
“Many of the officers have female drivers.” She concentrated her attention back on the road. “Either secretaries or mistresses. French girls, too. You’ll get more respect with a female driver.”
He wondered when she’d decided to do this. She certainly didn’t need to; her part of the mission was over. Had it been the night of their chilly bath? Or later, as Michael and Gaby had shared a stale loaf of bread and some musky red wine? Well, she was a professional; she knew what kind of dangers lay ahead, and what would happen to her if she were captured. He looked out the window, at the greening countryside, and wondered where her cyanide capsule was hidden.
Gaby reached an intersection, where the rutted dirt road connected with a road of tarred graveclass="underline" the route to the City of Light. She turned right and passed a field where farmers stood baling hay. The Frenchmen stopped their work, leaning on their pitchforks as they watched the black German car glide past. Gaby was a good driver. She kept a constant speed, her gaze darting to the rear view mirror and then back to the road again. She was driving as if the German colonel in the backseat had somewhere to go, but was in no hurry to get there.
“I’m not beautiful,” she said quietly, about six or seven minutes later.
Michael smiled behind his gloved hand, and he settled back into his seat to enjoy the journey.
They went on in silence, the Mercedes’s engine a polite, well-oiled purr. Gaby glanced back at him occasionally, trying to figure out what it was about him that had made her want to-no, no, need to be with him. Yes, that ought to be admitted. Not to him, of course, but in the chapel of secrets. It was most probably, she reasoned, that the action against the Nazi tank had fired her blood and passions in a way she hadn’t been flamed in a long while. Oh, there had been other cinders, but this was a bonfire. It was just the nearness of a man who craved action, she thought. A man who was good at his job. A man… who was good. She hadn’t lived so long to be a poor judge of character; the man in the backseat was special. Something about him was cruel and… beastly, perhaps. That was part of the nature of his occupation. But she’d seen kindness in his eyes, there in the chilly water. A sense of grace, a purpose. He was a gentleman, she thought, if there were indeed any of those left on this earth. Anyway, he needed her help. She could get him in and out of Paris, and that was the important thing. Wasn’t it?
She glanced in the sideview mirror, and her heart stuttered.
Coming up behind them, very quickly, was a German BMW motorcycle and sidecar.
Her hands tightened on the wheel, and the motion made the Mercedes swerve slightly.
Michael sat upright with the jerk of the car, and caught the high whine of the motorcycle’s engine: a familiar noise, last heard in the desert of North Africa. “Behind us,” Gaby said tautly, but Michael had already glanced back and seen the vehicle overtaking them. His hand went to the Luger. No, not yet, he decided. Stay calm.
Gaby didn’t slow down, nor did she speed up. She kept her speed steady, an admirable accomplishment when her pulse was beating so fast. She could see the tinted goggles of the helmeted driver and the sidecar’s passenger. They seemed to be fixed on her with murderous intent. On the floorboard at her feet was a loaded Luger. She could pick it up and fire out the window in an instant, if need be.
Michael said, “Keep driving.” He settled back in his seat again, waiting.
The motorcycle and sidecar pulled up behind them, perhaps six feet from their bumper. Gaby looked in the rearview mirror and saw the sidecar’s passenger motioning them over. “They’re telling us to pull off,” she said. “Shall I?”
Michael paused only a few seconds. “Yes.” If it wasn’t the right decision, he’d know very soon.
Gaby slowed the Mercedes. The motorcycle and sidecar slowed as well. Then Gaby pulled the heavy car off the road, and the motorcycle came abreast with them before its driver cut the engine. Michael said, “Say nothing,” and furiously rolled down his window. The sidecar’s passenger, a lieutenant from the markings on his dusty uniform, was already pulling his long legs out of the vehicle and standing up. Michael stuck his head out the rolled-down window and shouted in German, “What the hell are you trying to do, you idiot? Run us off the road?”