To begin with, my fear kept me from calling the gaps that Sean had demanded. I rapidly discovered that if I didn’t do it he pulled out anyway, putting my side of the car into the firing line first. Gradually, as I realised just how quick the Nissan was, just how catapult-like its acceleration, I relaxed my death grip enough to begin to participate more fully.
And almost – but not quite – to enjoy the ride.
The Alpine navigation system not only showed a small-scale map of the immediate area on the screen, but also gave out verbal instructions in female tones so calm they were almost tranquillised. The only trouble was that whoever designed it obviously hadn’t been expecting its end user to be driving like a lunatic. Once or twice it directed us to take turnings which seemed to flash up too fast for us to make them. When that happened the system instantly re-routed, without so much as a sigh to rebuke the driver. Sean was very taken with its uncritical approach and I mentally christened it
Although I trusted his abilities, it was still a relief when we hit the main A81 to the west of Stuttgart and I no longer had the responsibility for our safety. Sean flexed his fingers on the steering wheel as we pulled on to the twin-lane road, and then he really put his foot down. It hadn’t occurred to me until that point just how much he’d been holding back.
Over the next half-dozen kilometres or so I watched in amazement as the speedo needle climbed. Where before it had never dropped below sixty, now it rocketed past a hundred, then one-fifty. Was that in kilometres an hour? The peril sensitivity section of my brain shut down, totally refusing to compute the numbers.
“Sean,” I said carefully as a truck in the next lane was sucked backwards past us like it was falling, “just how fast are we going – in real money?”
His eyes dipped fractionally. “In miles an hour?” he said. “About one-seventy.”
His face was cast pale in the instrumentation lighting, his jaw clenched in pure concentration, eyes narrowed. But I could tell that some small part at the back of his mind was smiling. This must have been every car-mad schoolboy’s fantasy come true, and Sean lived for danger. It was his life, his work.
If I let it, it could be mine, too.
The LCD display at the top of the centre console gave out vital engine temperature readings as the car thundered relentlessly on into the night. It was hot enough to grill steaks on just about any part of the motor you could name.
At Heilbronn the Alpine’s voice politely directed us to turn east onto the A6 for Nurnberg. For a long time none of us spoke further, trying not to distract him.
Sean had settled into a rhythm that kept the Skyline barrelling along at around a hundred and fifty miles an hour. After a while the speed became almost hypnotic. At Nurnberg we took the A9 for Bayreuth and Leipzig. We were eating up the miles, tearing them up and scattering the pieces behind us, but Berlin still seemed an impossible distance away.
“At this rate,” Hofmann said from the back seat, his voice betraying his surprise, “there is a chance we will get there in time.”
I twisted round just far enough to be able to see Hofmann’s face. “By the way,” I said, loud enough to be heard above the roar of engine, wind and tyre noise. “What did you and Elsa argue about that first day, on the terrace?”
Hofmann leaned forwards slightly to catch the words and frowned, remembering. “Ah yes,” he said. “She thought she recognised me, from her time in the police no doubt. I thought my cover was blown. I had to tell her she was mistaken more forcefully than I would have liked.”
I shifted my feet, my boots disturbing the weapons piled in the footwell. The action jogged my memory. “And it was you, wasn’t it, who set off that damned alarm in the armoury?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “It wasn’t my idea to do that to you, Charlie, but Major Konig was in the bathroom in your quarters relaying orders over her radio. She thought you were also trying to locate Ivan and she wanted you stopped.”
I recalled Jan’s particular irritation the night I’d attacked Rebanks. Unlike Elsa, she hadn’t been interested so much in what I’d been up to, I realised now, as how I’d managed to get away with it.
“I didn’t know anything about Ivan at that point,” I said. “I was just trying to find out what happened to Kirk.”
“Ah yes, Kirk Salter,” Hofmann rumbled, “we knew all about him, of course.”
“And you did nothing about it?” I asked, incredulous.
“What could we do?” he asked with a shrug. “By the time we found out what Major Gilby was up to, the boy had already been taken and Salter was already dead. We would not have sanctioned such an operation had we been told about it in advance, but afterwards, well, we would have been foolish to ignore the possibilities.” He sighed heavily, his contrition apparently sincere. “It might have helped prevent more deaths. Already there have been so many.”
Ahead of us, a car pulled out to overtake a convoy of trucks. The driver must have been doing over a hundred, but to us he was little better than a moving roadblock. Sean swore softly and I just had time to snap round straight in my seat as he stood on the brakes and dropped down two gears. As soon as the obstruction had cleared he was back hard on the gas again, romping the big bruiser of a car back up to its cruising velocity in sixth.
It was only then that I turned to Hofmann again. “If you wanted to prevent further bloodshed, why did Jan take Ivan now,” I demanded, “when all our lives are at stake?”
“We knew that Herr Meyer had been asking questions about Venko,” he said, nodding to Sean, “and naturally we knew of his reputation in hostage situations. When he turned up at the school Major Konig assumed that an exchange was imminent and she must have decided to act.”
“Without consulting you,” Sean put in, his voice clipped either with anger or just by the fact that the majority of his brain was taken up with keeping us rubber side down on the black stuff.
“I know you find it difficult to believe that I am being honest with you,” Hofmann said, “but I had my own theory about these kidnappings. One Major Konig did not want to entertain.”
“And that was?”
Hofmann paused, as though reluctant to put his ideas forwards just in case we, too dismissed them out of hand. He hutched forward a little further, so his head was nearly between the seats and he could speak to both of us more easily. I hoped he realised he was in perfect launch position for the front screen if we crashed.
“These kidnappings are not Gregor Venko’s style. They’re too violent, too unpredictable. He’s an old-style gangster who still believes in honour among thieves,” he said, and I still had difficulty hearing him speak so fast and fluent. “To leave children slaughtered for no reason, to go back on his word – it’s just not Gregor.”
“You almost sound as though you like him,” Sean said tightly.
“Gregor’s a ruthless criminal. You need have no qualms that I’m going soft on you, Herr Meyer,” he said grimly. “Two weeks before Christmas I went to the funeral service of a man from his organisation who had agreed to pass us information. Gregor sent the man’s tongue and his ears to his widow gift-wrapped in a Tiffany box. We never found the rest of his body.” He shook his head and finished with great sadness that seemed for all the world to be genuine, “A pair of ears and a tongue do not go far towards filling a coffin.”
“And still you think these kidnappings are not his style?” I said with just a hint of sarcasm.
“No,” Hofmann said seriously, then added, “but they
“Ivan?” Both Sean and I said the name simultaneously. He flashed me a quick grin.
“Yes,” Hofmann went on, not noticing our brief, silent exchange. “He’s shown all the classic psychopathic tendencies since childhood. He started torturing animals, then worked his way up to other children. His mother sits in a sanatorium just outside Odessa and drinks like there will be no tomorrow. Who or what do you think drove her to do that?”
I listened to Hofmann’s speech and yet I remembered Gregor’s pride when he spoke his son’s name. Parents could be blind to the faults of their offspring. Or were supposed to be, at any rate. Sometimes I wondered if mine had my shortcomings under a magnifier instead.
“And what does Gregor do about his son’s nastier side?”
“He’s aware of it, of course. He’s taken him to every disreputable shrink in Europe, but they can do nothing.” Hofmann shrugged. “So, all Gregor can do is surround him with bodyguards and try to keep him out of trouble.”
“So you think Ivan’s been doing the kidnaps off his own bat, that Gregor really didn’t know about them?”
