They stayed on, and I thought. A warning device? The Repository computer had programmed erratic switch- offs, and notified the various cop shops and guard depots accordingly. Any variation from the plan meant somebody intruding. You wouldn’t need men watching. Police or other security teams’ computers would detect any unwonted variance within a split millisec. Clever. Not new, but on this big scale a definite deterrent. I smiled, wondering if the Commandant knew. I’ll bet he did. Was he watching even now, ready to go?
But fortified places aren’t. Not really. They
Off. Plunge into darkness. I waited, counting. The floods crashed-walloped on after more than two minutes. Erratic, planned to be. Good thinking, Lorela. A game girl—
Engines, faint in the distance. I strained to hear. No vehicle lights that I could see, but then I was looking along the hillside ridge, so naturally wouldn’t. Waspish, snarly sorts, two or three, churning and whirring. Jeeps? Something like them, anyhow. No pretence at stealth.
Nearer, savage gear changes, a swathe of headlights now, quickly extinguished, then on from another direction.
The floodlights plunged out with a crash. On in an instant. The vehicles’ band-saw engines nearing, no lights now. What the hell? The two security motors in the illuminated grounds below had crawled away, leaving the arena empty. Curious how like a stage set it was, a studio’s rig for some shoot-out, brilliant panto lights for the purpose.
The engines slumped. Silence. Me, the snow, the distant mansion elegantly occupying the illuminated terrain in that high perimeter wall
Something went thump, a couple of miles to my left. I was still looking that way like a fool, so missed the Repository roof falling in with a cloud and shatter. I gaped. Two more thumps, so horribly familiar. The windows imploded, the whole front Repository wall falling in, bricks and dust and snow everywhere. I saw rooms, furniture inside, tumbling upwards into the sky. Flames whooshed out. The explosion felt like a charring oven wind.
Thump, thump. Silence. Thump. And new explosions from the Repository. The main building was being incendiaried. No, that’s wrong. Past tense. The engines were already started, churning and snarling away. I stared.
The Repository erupted, crackling, burning, what was left of it. Only the storage place stood untouched.
“You silly buggers!” I yelled at the night sky, at the fires, at the beautiful buildings smashed to blazes in a few seconds. “You stupid sods! Couldn’t you have…?”
Couldn’t they have what? They’d destroyed the syndicate’s fakes, by the hundred. All of them, torched to oblivion. The result of all those child-bondeds. They’d created slave-labour factories, gone to absurd lengths to have the fakes accepted in the Repository, then blown them to oblivion? Not to mention hiring a mob of ex-Legionnaires, with the Legion’s famed “battery flash” of six one-twenty mortars. Why?
I’d seen it happen. Start to finish. The enslaved immigrant children, now the flaming rubble. Only the genuine antiques remained. Their building stood unharmed.
How long I stood there I don’t know. It was only the sight of those two security motors crawling back to halt in bafflement at the appalling sight that made me move again. I started down the hillside, blundering so fast I missed my footing and several times went tumbling, but got myself up and ran on. Lost my blanket, of course, but who can trace a blanket?
The metalled road’s surface jarred under my heel, practically knocking the teeth from my head. No sign of my red motor. I looked left, right. Which way had I come among the trees? The sky glow behind was brighter now, far more than the floodlight’s glim, and orange. No clues. Had I angled right, left? I was sure I’d climbed directly up. At least, I was almost nearly certain I was sure.
Right. Only a guess, but that was the way Marimee’s vehicles had come. The speed of the thing had been devastating. Famous Foreign Legion stuff, that, the flying column, the swift four-minute unlimbering, shell the enemy with one-twenties, and off. But mortaring the damned place to smithereens?
Something coming up behind me. I ducked into the trees, up a slope, ran and hid. The motor seemed familiar, if one ever can. I gaped as it came at a fast lick, slithering on the snow at the bend. I almost shouted, but something was closing on it fast. They arrived almost opposite me, the motor hitting a pine tree and sliding sideways, lodging there. In for the night, it seemed to say, after that run. The pursuing motor was a jeep. It stopped by simply sticking to the ground, the way four-wheel-drive militaries do.
A man got out, familiar, walking slow. He came at the saloon car. Its engine was still going, lights on.
And Gobbie looked out. Left-hand drive, of course, so he was my side. Marc walked at him, without speaking. He was armed, a long single-barrelled high-velocity job. I drew breath to bawl out, “Leave him alone, you bastard.” But shouted nothing.
Gobbie must have known what was coming, because he raised his fist to strike at least one blow before Marc clubbed him. Quite ineffectual, naturally. The Swiss simply swung his stock in through the car window, on Gobbie’s temple. It splatted on the side of Gobbie’s head, an abrupt, horrid thick sound that made Gobbie dead that instant. He fell away inside the car.
Marc opened the door, casually shoved Gobbie across with his foot, got in, moved the car a few feet to point downhill, and released the brake. He stepped out, watched the motor trundle down the slope. I thought, almost delirious, Hey, hang on, that’s Gobbie. And did nowt. Marc drove his own vehicle in watchful pursuit. I saw his red tail-lights go on. And Gobbie’s car slid, even where the road curved, straight into the trees. It crumped, burst into a guttering flame for a minute, then erupted with a whoosh.
Marc’s motor drove sedately off, its light fading among the trees. My mind went. He murdered a pathetic old man, my pal. And I did nothing. I was afraid, scared, too terrified even to try to distract the killer. Who had stood a second beside Gobbie’s car, pounding my old mate with the stock of his hunting rifle, a murderous washerwoman action.
That meant my motor was concealed upslope, my nonfunctioning brain went, or they’d have seen it, come
