Spy Story

her left hand under the shotgun's wooden foregrip and raised it level.

Mason came into the greenhouse like there was no door. In his fist he had one of those little Astra automatics with a two-inch barrel extender. It was just the sort of gun I would have expected Mason to choose: about thirteen ounces total weight, and small enough to go into a top pocket.

'Where did you get that?' said Sara. She laughed. 'Have you discovered the Christmas crackers already?'

But no one who has seem a.22 fired at close range will smile into its barrel. Except maybe Mickey Spillane. I didn't laugh and neither did Mason. He pointed the gun at Sara and reached out for her shotgun.

'Give it to him,' I said. 'Don't make headlines.'

Mason took the gun and, using one hand, he undid the catch and broke it open. He gripped the stock under his arm while he removed the shotgun cartridges, and then let it drop to the floor. He kicked it under the potting bench with enough energy to break some flower pots. The cartridges he put into his pocket. Having disarmed Sara he turned to me. He ran a quick hand over me but he knew I wasn't armed, they'd searched me immediately after I'd landed in the plane.

'O.K.,' he said. 'Let's move back up to the house.' He prodded me in the arm with his automatic: and I moved along the bench towards the door, looking at the potting bench in the hope of spotting a suitable weapon.

Mason was too near. Once outside the greenhouse he'd keep me at a distance and my chance to clobber him would be gone. Lesson one of unarmed combat is that a man with a gun muzzle touching him can knock the barrel aside before the armed man can pull the trigger. I slowed and waited until I felt the muzzle again. I spun round to my left, chopping at his gun with my left hand and punching at where his head should have been with my right fist. I connected only with the side of his head but he stepped back and put an elbow through a panel of glass. The noise of it was amplified by the enclosed space. Again I punched at him. He stumbled. Another panel of glass went and I didn't dare look round to see if it had alarmed those still at breakfast. The dogs in the courtyard began barking furiously.

The girl shrank away from us as Mason struggled to bring his gun hand up again. I seized his wrist with my right hand and the gun with my left. I pulled, but Mason had his finger on the trigger. There was a bang. I felt the hot draught as the slug passed my ear and crashed out through the glass roof. I swung my elbow round far enough to hit his face. It must have made his eyes water. He let go and fell to the floor amongst the rusty gardening tools. He rolled away rubbing at his nose.

Sara was already reaching for the shotgun. 'Good girl,' I said. I pushed the little Astra gun into my pocket and ran out into the blizzard. The path was slippery, and I cut off it into the cabbages. There was a rubbish heap against the wall at the bottom of the garden. That would be my best place for climbing over it.

I was halfway down the garden when there was the deafening bang of a twelve bore and a crash of shattering glass that seemed to go on for hours.

Even before the last few pieces broke there was a second blast that took out another large section of the glass-house. She hit me with the second shot. It knocked me full length into a row of brussels sprouts and I felt a burning pain in the arm and side.

I had no doubt that more cartridges were going into the breech. In spite of the damaged arm, I set a new world record for the kitchen garden free-style, and went over the wall in a mad scramble. As I fell down the other side of it, another shot hit the weeds along the top of the wall and showered me with finely chopped vegetation. The ground sloped steeply behind the house but my feet didn't touch the ground for the first half mile. I hoped that she'd have trouble getting over the wall, but with women like that, you can't be sure they'll have trouble with anything.

By the time I reached the stream I realized that Mason — not the girl — was Dawlish's contact and the author of the note. He'd pressed the gun against me reasoning that I'd know how to break free. It was the best he could do, if he was to have any chance of talking his way out of that one. I felt sorry for him but I was glad I'd hit him hard. He was going to need some corroborative evidence to show Toliver. Sara Shaw must have followed him when he took the sandwiches there for me. Then she'd waited to see who turned up and why. I hoped that she could not guess, for now I suddenly found it easier to believe Mason's contention that they were a dangerous mob.

My arm was bleeding enough to leave a trail behind me. I changed course for enough time to make it: look as though I might be going to the bridle path. There I slipped the donkey jacket off, bound the silk scarf around the bloody part of my sleeve, and pushed my arm down into the donkey-jacket sleeve to jam it tight. It hurt like hell but there was not time to do anything more. I hoped the pressure would stop the bleeding. A shotgun spreads an inch per yard of range. I'd been far enough to get only the edge of it. My clothes were torn but the bleeding was not serious. I kept repeating that to myself as I hurried on.

I made good progress, avoiding the outcrops of rock upon which the flailing snow had settled to make a glaze of ice. But losing the use of my arm made keeping my balance more difficult, and twice I fell, yelping with pain and leaving a dull red mark in the snow.

In spite of the low visibility in the snowstorm, I felt sure that J could find the tail of Great: Crag. After that, it was merely a matter of keeping close to the edge without falling over. But everything is; more difficult in a blizzard. I even had trouble finding the big clump of conifers that marked the stepping-stones over the burn. When I did get there I became entangled in the brambles and undergrowth and had to kick hard to get out of it.

I didn't curse the weather. As soon as it cleared I would become visible to anyone with the sense to ascend to the Crag's first terrace And there were plenty of people back there with enough sense far that. And more, much more.

The clifftop path required care. I had not walked it before, though I had seen the course of it from my solitary picnics on the heights of Great Crag. The path was an old one. Here and there along its course there were metal markers. They were simple rectangles of tin, nailed to stakes that had almost rotted. The paint had long since flaked away and the metal was rusty but there was no mistaking their military origin. There is something common to all artifacts of all armed forces, from tanks to latrines. I hurried along faster whenever I had the rusty patches to guide me. I feared that the snow storm was passing over. The dark clouds were almost close enough to touch. They sped over me, mingling with flurries of snow and allowing me sudden glimpses of the rocky seashore nearly a hundred feet below.

Not only the markers, but the path itself, had in places eroded. I stopped for a moment and made sure that: my arm was no longer leaving a blood trail. It wasn't, but there were ugly retching noises from inside my sleeve and I guessed that I was still bleeding. I was looking forward to that period of numbness that doctors say happens after wounding but I was beginning to suspect that that was just their rationalization for prodding the painful bits. Both my side and my arm were throbbing and hurting like hell.

I looked at the tiny footpath where the metal tags led. It was no better than a man-made ledge along the windy cliff face. Not at all the sort of place I ever visited, outside of nightmares. But ahead of me there was an acre of underbrush, so I took the cliff path, edging along it carefully, but dislodging pieces that spun of into space and fell somewhere that I dared not look.

After a quarter of a mile the blazed path narrowed suddenly. I stepped even more gingerly now, edging forward a step at a time, cautioned by large sections of path edge that crumbled under the touch of my toe. The ledge continued round a gently curving section of cliff. Soon I reached the point at which I could see below me a tiny bay. Through the driving sleet I studied the path ahead. I had hoped it would soon rejoin the clifftop but it continued to be a ledge. The section at the far side of the bay was especially worrying. The sharp edge of cliff resembled the prow of some gigantic ship far out over the fierce green sea. The curved profile of the cliff continued above the path. It looked as though a man would have to bend almost double to pass along it.

Standing still, in order to see through the whirling snow, brought a resurgence of doubts and fears. I decided to retrace my steps. I would go back to the bridle path and continue up over the higher part of the cliff. But as I studied the face of the promontory I saw that there was a thick tangle of thorn dangling over the cliff, like a lace tablecloth. The men who'd made the path had not laboured on it without good reason. If it was easier to make a path along the cliff face than along the cliff top then surely I would find it easier to follow it.

The overhang was not such a severe test as I feared. It's true that I spread my arms and flattened my body against the cliff face in a fearful embrace, leaving a ghost of blood there, but I edged along crablike and gave up the testing probes of the path ahead.

'No atheists in a foxhole,' they say. And none on a narrow cliff path around a headland cither, if my journey was anything to go by. Spreadeagled close against the cold wall of stone, I felt a gust of wind batter against it; hard