horn.
There were no more streets or houses on the other side-just an infinity of pine trees. I had Michaelis go back and pick up the van, and sent the other three into the forest while I parked my car before following. It seemed as though the chase was nearly over-you can't be more private than in a Swedish forest. They made better time over rough country than I would have expected of two elderly men. Ashton had already proved his fitness to me, but I hadn't expected Benson to have the stamina because he was a few years older than Ashton. Once in the trees you couldn't see far and they kept foxing us by changing direction. Twice we lost them; the first time we picked them up by sheer luck, and the second time, by finding their abandoned bags. And all the time I was leading from the rear, directing the operation by radio. We had gone perhaps three kilometres into the forest and the going was becoming rougher. Where the ground was not slippery with snow and ice it was even more slippery with pine needles. The ground rose and fell, not much but enough to take your breath away on the uphill slopes. I paused at the top of one such slope just as Brent said in my ear, 'What the hell was that?' 'What?' 'Listen!' I listened, trying to control my heavy breathing, and heard a rattle of shots in the distance. They seemed to come from somewhere ahead, deeper in the forest. 'Someone hunting,' said Larry. Brent said incredulously, 'With a machinegun!' 'Quiet!' I said. 'Is Ashton spotted?' 'I'm standing looking into a little valley,' said Henty.
'Very few trees. I can see both Ashton and Benson-they're about four hundred yards away.' 'That's all very well, but where the hell are you?' 'Just keep coming ahead,' said Henty. 'It's a long valley-you can't miss it.' 'Everybody move,' I said. Again came the sound of firing, this time a sporadic rattling of badly-spaced single shots.
Certainly not a machinegun as Brent had suggested. It could have been the shootout at the OK Corral, and I wondered what was happening.
Hunters certainly didn't pop off like that. I pressed on and presently came to a crest where I looked down into the valley. Henty was right; it was relatively treeless and the snow was thicker. In the distance I saw Ashton and Benson moving very slowly; perhaps they were hampered by the snow, but I thought the chase was telling on them. Henty was at the valley bottom below me, and Brent and Larry were together, bounding down the hillside, closing in on our quarry from an angle.
Again came firing and, by God, this time it was machinegun fire, and from more than one machinegun. Then there came some deeper coughs, followed by thumping explosions. In the distance, not too far ahead, I saw a haze of smoke drifting above the trees on the far side of the valley. Henty had stopped. He looked back at me and waved, and said over the radio, 'I know what it is. This is an army exercise area.
They're having war games.' 'Live ammunition?' 'Sounds like it. Those were mortars.' I began to run, bouncing and slithering down the slope.
When I got to the bottom I saw that Brent and Larry were within fifty yards of Ashton and gaining on him fast. Ashton switched direction, and I yelled, 'Brent-Larry-fall back!' They hesitated momentarily but then went on, caught in the lust of the chase. I shouted again. 'Fall back! Don't drive him into the guns.' They checked, but I ran on. I was going to speak to Ashton myself, regardless of what Ogilvie had said. This was a sick game which had to be stopped before somebody was killed. Ashton was climbing the other side of the valley, heading towards the trees on the crest, but going very slowly. Benson was nowhere to be seen. I ran until I thought my chest would burst, and gained on Ashton. At last I was close enough, and I shouted, 'Ashton-George Ashton-stop!' He turned his head and looked back at me as a further burst of firing came, and more explosions of mortar bombs. I took off the fur hat I was wearing and threw it away so that he could get a good look at me. His eyes widened in surprise and he hesitated in his upward climb, then stopped and turned around. Brent and Larry were coming in on my left and Henty on the right. I was about to call out to him again when there was another single shot, this time from quite close, and Ashton stumbled forward as though he had tripped. I was within ten yards of him and heard him gasp. Then there was another shot and he whirled around and fell and came rolling down the slope towards me to stop at my feet. I was aware that Henty had passed me and momentarily saw a gun in his fist, then I bent over Ashton. He coughed once and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes still held surprise at the sight of me, and he said, 'Mal… colm… what…' I said, 'Take it easy, George,' and put my hand inside his coat. I felt a warm wetness. He scrabbled in his pocket for something, and said, 'The… the…' His hand came up before my face with the fist clenched. 'The… the…'
Then he fell back, his eyes still open and looking at the sky with deeper surprise. A snowflake fell and settled on his left eyeball, but he didn't blink. In the distance mortars thumped and machineguns rattled, and there were more single shots, again from quite close. I looked down at Ashton and cursed quietly. Brent crunched over the snow. 'Dead?' I withdrew my hand and looked at the blood. Before wiping it clean on the snow I said, 'You try his pulse.' I stood up as Brent knelt and thought of the unholy mess we-I-had made of the operation. The snow around Ashton's body was changing colour from white to red. Brent looked up at me. 'Yes, he's dead. From the amount of blood here the aorta must have been cut. That's why he went so fast.' I had never felt so bad in all my life. We had driven Ashton towards the guns as beaters drive an animal. It was so stupid a thing to do. I didn't feel very human at that moment. Henty came crunching down the slope, carrying a pistol negligently in his right hand. 'I got him,' he said matter-of-factly. I could smell the faint reek of cordite as he came closer, 'Got who, for Christ's sake?' 'Benson.' I stared at him. 'You shot Benson!' He looked at me in surprise. 'Well, he shot Ashton, didn't he?' I was stupefied. 'Did he?' 'Of course he did. I saw him do it.' Henty turned and looked up the slope. 'Maybe you couldn't see him from this angle-but I did.' I was unable to take it in. 'Benson shot Ashton!' 'He bloody nearly shot me,' said Henty.
'He took a crack at me as soon as I showed myself up there. And if anyone shoots at me I shoot back.' It had never occurred to me to ask Henty if he was armed. Nobody else was on Ogilvie's instructions, but Henty was from another department. I was still gaping at him when there was a grinding rattle from above and a tank pointed its nose over the crest and began to come down into the valley. Its nose was a 105 mm high-velocity tank gun which looked like a 16-incher as the turret swivelled to cover our small group. They wouldn't have bothered to use that, though; the machinegun in the turret of that Centurion was capable of taking care of us much more economically. As the tank stopped I dropped to my knees next to Ashton's body. The turret opened and a head popped out, followed by a torso. The officer raised his anti-flash goggles and surveyed us with slightly popping eyes. Henry moved, and the officer barked, 'Stopp!' With a sigh Henty tossed his pistol aside in the snow. I opened Ashton's clenched fist to look at what he had taken from his pocket. It was a crumpled railway timetable of the route from Stockholm to Goteborg.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR I don't know what sort of heat was generated at a higher level but the Swedes never treated me with anything less than politeness-icy politeness. If I had thought about it at all that cold correctitude would have been more frightening than anything else, but I wasn't thinking during that period-I was dead inside and my brains were frozen solid. The Swedes had found two dead men and four live men on army territory. One of the dead men had two passports, one stolen and the other genuine; the other had three passports, all false. The passports of the four live men were all genuine. It was claimed that one of the dead men had shot the other and, in turn, was shot and killed by one of the live men, an Australian living and working in Sweden. He had no permit for a gun. It was all very messy.
Ogilvie was out of it, of course, and so were Michaelis and Gregory.
Michaelis had waited with the van at the road, but wh en a squad of infantry in full battle order debouched from the forest and systematically began to take my car to pieces he had tactfully departed. He drove back into Strangnas and rang Ogilvie who pulled him back to Stockholm. And what Ogilvie heard from the Embassy made him decide that the climate of London was more favourable than the chilliness of Stockholm. The three of them were back in London that night and Cutler was saying, 'I told you so.' The four of us were taken to the army barracks in Strangnas, HQ the Royal Sodermanland Regiment and HQ East Military Command. Here we were searched and eyebrows were lifted at the sight of our communication equipment. No doubt conclusions were duly drawn. We weren't treated badly; they fed us, and if what we ate was representative of army rations then the Swedish Army does a damned sight better than the British Army. But we were not allowed to talk; a stricture reinforced by two hefty Swedes armed with submachine-guns. After that I was led into an empty room and, just as I thought the interrogation was about to begin, a civilian arrived and began being nasty to the military. At least, that's the impression I had judging by the rumble of voices from the office next door. Then an army colonel and a civilian came in to see me and, having seen me, went away without saying a word, and I was transferred into a cell in which I spent the next three weeks apart from an hour's exercise each day. During that time I didn't see the others at all, and the Swedes wouldn't give me the time of day, so I ought to have been pretty lonely, but I wasn't. I wasn't
