He drove with a kind of controlled violence now, taking blatant risks to get past other vehicles. Yet still he seemed to maintain a light deft touch on the Skyline’s controls as it screamed and scrabbled and snorted along the narrow roads. Like a master rider on a horse that was totally insane.
***
Ten o’clock.
The deadline came and went, and still we were half a lifetime from Einsbaden. The village had always seemed so close to the Manor, but now some giant joke of fate kept moving it further away.
But, when we finally skittered between the griffin-topped gateposts and I checked my watch, I discovered that despite the increased congestion we had shaved a further two minutes off the outward trip from the Manor to the autobahn. Nevertheless, it was now ten-ten.
Ten minutes too late, perhaps?
The barrier on the driveway was down. Sean cursed, shifting his foot off the accelerator and beginning to brake. We’d barely shaken off speed when two figures stepped out from behind the guard hut and pointed submachine guns meaningfully in our direction.
For a second I thought that Major Gilby had posted a couple of his men to watch for our return, but as soon as the thought had formed I dismissed it. He didn’t have two to spare.
I registered the fact that they were strangers at the same instant that the Uzis they were carrying began to sing. The flashes from each muzzle became a continuous blaze as they opened fire. I ducked down behind the level of the dash top as my side of the windscreen crazed.
Sean got back on the power without any thought to a progressive throttle. The Skyline leapt forwards, snarling, and ran towards the men with the guns. I heard the whiz and twang of the rounds hitting the bodywork, but the big car shook them off and kept coming.
Too late perhaps, our attackers realised Sean wasn’t trying to evade them. The front edge of the bonnet hit the barrier, snapping it off and hurling it aside like a broken lance. One of the men jumped for cover, rolling into the trees.
We clipped the other man’s thigh with the front wing as he moved just too slowly to avoid us. He flew backwards with a grunt, dropping the Uzi and disappearing from view. Sean never even looked in the mirror.
“Well, that gives you your answer about Gregor,” he said tightly. “He’s here.”
I sat up again and shook the fragments of broken glass off my clothing. I’d picked up a couple of scratches from the splinters on the backs of my hands. Other than that I’d been lucky.
The holes in the windscreen would have been at head height if I’d been taller. Sean’s height, for instance. I realised they’d been aiming for the driver, but they’d been thrown by the fact that – to them – he was sitting on the wrong side of the car.
I readied the PM-98, keeping my finger outside the trigger guard for the moment. Hofmann released Ivan’s hands from the grab rail, re-cuffing them in front of him so we could get him out quickly. Gregor’s sighting of his son could be vital if we were going to avoid being shot to pieces.
The front of the Manor forecourt was deserted, but Sean must have spotted something because he snatched the wheel over at the last moment and headed for the parking area at the rear of the house.
Gregor Venko had parked his bullet-proof black Mercedes stretch limousine at a slant under the terrace. His men held the high ground above it. Gilby and his ragged crew had been forced into retreat as far as the rear of the car park, and were dotted among the school Audis and the wreckage. By the looks of the damage to the stonework and the cars, they’d been exchanging cordial amounts of ammunition.
Two separate sets of guns swung in our direction as Sean made his dramatic entrance. We had a few seconds’ respite while shock kept fingers away from triggers. Gilby, of course, must have recognised his own car, but to Gregor’s troops this was an invader, to be repelled. They began to do so then, with enthusiasm.
Sean slewed the Skyline into as sheltered a space as he could find in the split-second he had to make the decision. We ended up between the trucks, nose facing outwards, so when we flung the doors open they afforded us a little protection at least. The bullets splattered around us, zinging off metalwork like hailstones. Gilby’s men started to lay down covering fire.
The Major had strung his people out into sniping positions along the back line of the parking area. Considering the length of time he’d had to plan his campaign, and the fact that he was severely outnumbered, he was well dug in and holding his own.
Sean dragged Ivan out of the back of the car without regard to hurting him, yanking his head back so Gregor could get a look at his face. Hofmann and I dived behind the back end of the car with Hofmann yelling, “Hold your fire!” over and over in half a dozen different European languages.
I glanced at Sean, standing half exposed with Ivan gripped wriggling in front of him. He refused to drop into cover with the boy and his defiant stance made me shiver. To come this far and then lose either of them to a stray bullet would be unthinkable.
Gregor recognised his son in an instant, bellowing to his men to stop shooting. He had to give the order three times before the firing finally ceased, and the look he threw at the last man to take his finger off the trigger was pure poison.
After the noise, the silence deafened me. The only sound that emerged over it was the quiet tickover of the Mercedes’ engine and the breathless whirr of the Nissan’s cooling fans as they battled to stop the overheated turbos from going into terminal meltdown.
And then, into the stillness, came the click and rattle of a dozen magazines being changed and hastily rammed home, and first rounds being racked into chambers.
Gregor Venko, no personal coward, stepped out from behind the limousine. He was wearing another beautiful long cashmere coat, this one the colour of a field of summer corn, over a double-breasted suit that was well cut enough to almost conceal his expansive gut. He advanced as far as the front wing of the Merc, then stopped and gestured impatiently to someone still behind the car.
Sideburns, the bodyguard whose knee I’d kicked out from under him, appeared then, propelling a young girl in front. I recognised Heidi Krauss from the photographs Elsa had displayed.
She seemed to be in a better physical condition than Ivan perhaps, but I wouldn’t like to vouch for her mental state. Her eyes showed a mind well past being terrified and into a shock so deep it was almost catatonic. She was shuffling like a convict who’s been too long in leg irons, stumbling over her own feet. If it came to making a run for it, I calculated, we were probably going to have to carry her.
“So,” Gregor called across the distance between us. “We make the exchange without further – unpleasantness, yes?”
“Yes,” Sean agreed. “Two men only. We meet in the middle.”
Gregor nodded slowly, but was unwilling to surrender complete control by accepting the suggestion without his own stipulations.
As Hofmann went to walk out with Sean, Gregor stopped them. “Wait!” He pointed at Sean, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you,” he said. He waved in my direction, the light flashing from the diamonds on the Rolex at his wrist. “Miss Fox can bring Ivan. Just her and the German. She gave me her word.”
I cursed under my breath and edged out from behind the car. Aware of the eyes watching me, I took over Sean’s grip on Ivan’s collar. The boy curled his lip at me. I smiled sweetly back at him and jammed the Lucznik into his ribs.
“You don’t have to do this, Charlie,” Sean muttered in my ear, scowling. “There’s no way he’ll refuse to make the swap because of it.”
“No, I’ll do it,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “And he’s right. I did give him my word.”
With Hofmann alongside me, we moved forwards. Every step seemed to make us more exposed, more vulnerable. The parking area had grown in size until it was a very long way to the middle. Opposite us, Sideburns and the other bodyguard I remembered from Gilby’s study shifted carefully to meet us, shoving Heidi before them.
I was watching Sideburns’s face carefully. The look on it was sly and I knew he was itching for a chance of revenge for the humiliation he’d suffered at my hands. I kept my eyes locked on his, waiting for the first indication that he was planning to double-cross us, despite his boss’s wishes.
It just so happened, therefore, that I was watching at the precise moment that the right-hand side of his face exploded in a welter of bone shards and brain, and the high-pressure spray of viscous, scarlet blood.
