Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (11 page)

“Could you get word to your friend in Washington?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I was given strict orders not to. I was also given strict orders never to contact Henry; but then I did, you see, in order to warn him he was being followed, and you know what a monstrous mistake that was. I led Stefan straight back to Magda. A cable to Mr. Carstairs might do the same thing. Do you need to show a passport to send a cable?”

“Probably. I have mine with me but of course by the time we get to Ankara the police may very well be looking for me, too.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax in a depressed voice, and resumed staring out of the window.

Beyond Izmit the road dipped down to Geyve and then wound up again through hills covered with fields of wheat and tobacco. Dawn found them on a high plateau beyond Goynuk, and then they reached a pass and coasted down into a plain. Beyond the town of Nallihan Colin suddenly pulled the van off to one side of the road and braked to a stop. “We’ve gone nearly a hundred and sixty miles and I’m tired,” he said, mopping his forehead with his sleeve. “Sandor’s going to have to pay his way now. Sandor,” he called. “It’s morning—half-past seven—and your turn to drive.”

“What the hell,” said Sandor, making a great deal of noise yawning. “This lady back here is staring at me,” he complained. “Is there breakfast?”

“There’s a camp stove somewhere,” said Colin, “and the water jug is full, I filled it myself—Uncle Hu is always very fussy about that. And I believe there are bouillon cubes, dusty but soluble.”

“But that’s wonderful,” said Mrs. Pollifax with feeling. She crawled back to Magda who was staring at the roof of the van with a puzzled expression. Seeing Mrs. Pollifax she said in a weak voice that bore a trace of irony, “Where am I now?”

“It’s a little difficult to explain.”

“Who was that man who snores so dreadfully?”

“That’s even more difficult to explain. How are you feeling?”

“Weak and very thirsty. I have been drugged again?”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “It might be wise for you to get some fresh air now. It’s very hot back here. Colin is making broth for you.”

“Colin! That funny young man is still here?”

“The situation is extremely fluid and unconventional,” Mrs. Pollifax told her, “but we
are
moving in the direction of Yozgat.” She helped her to her feet, and out of the van to the roadside where Colin had set up his sterno.

Colin was saying, “Presently we’ll be crossing the Anatolian plain and there will be even more sun, wind and dust.” The water he was nursing came to a boil, he stirred bouillon into it and carefully divided it among four battered tin mugs. “Here you are,” he said.

Never had Mrs. Pollifax tasted anything kinder to her palate: at first she rolled the broth on her tongue, savoring its wetness, and then she drank it greedily. “Purest nectar,” she said with a sigh, and saw that color was coming back into Magda’s white face for the first time. “At what hour do you think we will reach Ankara?” she asked.

Sandor was noisily smacking his lips. “With me driving we go like the wind. Another forty miles to Beyzapari, beyond that sixty maybe.” He was studying the van. “She has a Land Rover body?”

Colin nodded. “She’s a rebuilt Land Rover, yes. Four-wheel drive and all that.”

Sandor nodded. “Very good! By early afternoon we get there, or near enough. Then we go by back roads. They are very bad,” he added regretfully, “but very very private.”

“You are wanted by the police?” inquired Mrs. Pollifax companionably.

Sandor grinned. “You are a nice lady but you ask too many questions. In Ankara I have fine friends and I let you go free.”

“Free?” said Mrs. Pollifax with amusement. “I didn’t realize we’d been captured.”

He patted his pocket with meaning. “I have you under guard, beware. Now wotthehell, let’s go.”

For some moments Mrs. Pollifax had been aware of a small piper cub plane drifting lazily along the horizon at a distance; she had watched it as Sandor talked. Now with one foot on the running board of the van she said in an alarmed voice, “Colin, look!” For the plane, having momentarily disappeared behind a ridge ahead of them, had suddenly reappeared now and was flying toward them at a shockingly low altitude. Colin stood behind her carrying the camp stove and squinting at the sky. The sound of the plane’s engine grew frighteningly loud and for a moment Mrs. Pollifax wondered if they were going to be strafed: the plane passed so low that she could clearly see the face of the pilot, who in turn looked down at them; and then just as abruptly the plane’s nose lifted, it climbed and began a long circle that carried it over the ridge again and away toward Ankara.

“Damn fool,” Sandor shouted, shaking a fist at the horizon.

Colin said in a choked voice, “What the devil does that mean!”

“Reconnaissance, I think,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “But by whom?” She was rather unnerved by the incident; until now she had felt safely removed from Istanbul, but she resolutely put aside her anxiety, helped Magda back to her cot and insisted that Colin have the dubious honor of napping on the floor because he was the more tired from driving. Again she took the passenger seat, this time beside Sandor, and they set off—or rather flew off, thought Mrs. Pollifax, clinging to the sides of the leather seat, for Sandor drove with abandon, swerving gaily around the holes in the road, swearing in Turkish and English at the holes he did not miss, and frequently taking both hands off the wheel to rub dust from his eyes or to light an evil-smelling cigar which almost immediately was extinguished.

They climbed now to a ravined and arid plateau, and the dust they raised all but obscured the sun. It was hot, the van captured and retained both the heat and the dust, and their water supply was gone. Since leaving Nallihan they had passed only one car and that one had been abandoned beside the road—probably with a broken axle, thought Mrs. Pollifax ominously. Nothing moved except the mountains on the horizon, which swam in the rising heat like mirages, until far ahead of them Mrs. Pollifax saw an approaching cloud of
dust. “Dust storm?” she inquired—it was impossible to doze at all with Sandor at the wheel, and he had just finished telling her that dust storms were frequent in summer on the road to Ankara.

“Car,” he said briefly.

Mrs. Pollifax nodded; she had begun to feel that if Sandor said it was a car it would be a car—and as it drew nearer it was indeed a car, a very old dusty touring car of 1920 vintage. The sun shone across its windshield, turning it opaque, so that as it approached them it appeared to be driven by remote control. It was therefore all the more startling to Mrs. Pollifax when she saw a hand and then an arm extend full-length from the passenger side of the car. When she saw the gun in that hand she stiffened. “Watch out—a gun!” she cried, and ducked her head just as the windshield in front of her splintered.

Sandor virtually stood on the brakes. “Wotthehell,” he shouted, and fought the steering wheel to get them off the road.

Behind her Colin shouted, “Stay down, Mrs. Pollifax!”

Metal protested, tires squealed and Mrs. Pollifax’s hat fell off as the van lurched across the ridge that contained the road; they bumped uncomfortably over untilled ground. Sandor was tugging at his belt with one hand; he brought out his gun but the car had already passed them: the sound of a second bullet rang
ping!
against the rear of the van.

In alarm Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw that Colin was reacting with astonishing efficiency; he had remembered that he had a gun, too, and now he was slashing at the glass in the round porthole window in the back; as she watched she saw him lift the gun he had taken from Stefan and push it through the window. She thought he fired it, but there was too much confusion to know. Sandor was swearing as he fought the wheel again, turning the van to head it back to the road.

“Look out!” screamed Mrs. Pollifax as the van swung around, for the ancient dust-ridden car had also turned and was heading toward them at accelerated speed, hoping to ram them if it couldn’t shoot their tires first. For a second the van’s wheels spun uselessly in a gully, then Sandor roared the engine and the van shot back on to the road just as the
elderly Packard left it. A bullet zoomed over Sandor’s head, again just missed Mrs. Pollifax and went out the open window. But Sandor had fired, too. He seemed to have three hands, one for the gearshift, one for the wheel, and one for firing. With a wrench of the wheel he turned and backed the van and tried to shoot down the car but the Packard swerved, circled and returned to the road to face them head-on.

They remained like this for several seconds, each car facing the other on the road with a distance of perhaps twenty yards between them, each driver revving his engine and waiting. Then with a burst of noise the Packard started down the road at full speed, heading directly toward them.
“Hooooweeeeee,”
shouted Sandor, his eyes shining—it was clearly a game to him—and he recklessly steered the van straight at the Packard, not giving an inch. Mrs. Pollifax screamed and slid from seat to floor. From here she looked up to see a familiar face—Otto’s—almost at their window, saw the Packard hurtle past them, barely missing them. As the Packard passed from sight she heard Colin’s gun begin firing from the rear window, heard the scream of tires, a terrifying sound of metal twisting and turning, twisting and rolling, and Mrs. Pollifax put her hands to her face. “They’ve turned over,” cried Sandor, braking, and leaped out.

Mrs. Pollifax slid from her side of the van and jumped to the road. The Packard was lying upside down in the dust after rolling over several times. Mrs. Pollifax began to run. “We must help them,” she cried, and then suddenly the silence was rent by a great explosion and flames turned the Packard into a funeral pyre. Mrs. Pollifax stepped back and covered her eyes. “Did anyone get out?” she gasped in horror.

Colin was beside her with a hand on her shoulder. He looked pale and shaken. “No,” he said. “I watched. It was Otto driving, and a man I’d never seen before doing the shooting.”

Sandor said belligerently, “What the hell goes on here, they maniacs? Nuts? They tried to kill us!” He looked incredulous. “What the hell they want?” he said, shaking a fist.

“Us,” Mrs. Pollifax told him in a trembling voice.

He gaped at her. “Those jerks were gunning for
you
?”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded a little wearily. “Yes. First they sent
the plane—there must have been radio communication, and then—”

Sandor looked from her to Colin and back again. “But why?” he demanded indignantly.

Mrs. Pollifax said weakly, “They apparently didn’t want us to get to Ankara.”

“That I could see for myself but what the hell’s going on?”

Mrs. Pollifax hesitated and then recklessly took the plunge. “You might as well know, Sandor, that not only
those
men are after us but the police, too.”

“Police!” He stared blankly. “You?”

“Yes.”

His mouth dropped. “You
did
shoot the guy you was unloading in the cemetery!”

“No,” she said patiently, “but Otto did—the man driving the Packard.”

A light of comprehension dawned in Sandor’s eyes. “I’ll be damned,” he said, and to Mrs. Pollifax’s surprise he gave her a look of grudging admiration. “I’ll be damned,” he said again, scratching his head, and then he began to laugh. “You’re crooks too!” he cried delightedly.

Colin interrupted primly. “I say, I resent that very much!”

Sandor was wiping his eyes with a filthy handkerchief. “No offense, I know we’re not in the same league.” He grinned at them both. “So when I picked you up in the cemetery back there—and you let me come along like that—you was really picking me up!” He shook his head admiringly. “I thought I had you two scared to death of me.”

Mrs. Pollifax said soberly, “I don’t think we should stand here talking like this. I think we should leave before someone sees the smoke and comes to find out what’s happened. Colin, do go back and reassure Magda.” Still she remained standing and staring at the smoldering wreckage. “It could have been us,” she said with a shudder. “They intended it to be us. Sandor, you did a remarkable job of driving.”

He was still regarding her with amazement. “That guy Colin had a gun—he had it all the time. And you got gangsters after you—I picked a helluva bunch of people to hitch a ride with!” The expression in his eyes was one of infinite respect. “I know a guy could use you. You want to make some real money? I’ll introduce you when we get to Ankara.”

“I’m not sure Ankara’s a good place for us to head,” said Mrs. Pollifax sadly. “Not now. There may be roadblocks. And thank you but I don’t need any ‘real money,’ I just want to get safely out of Turkey.”

Sandor nodded wisely. “That bad then,” he said, escorting her back to the van. After handing her up to the front he appeared to have reached a decision. “You come to Ankara,” he said firmly. “Ankara’s the place for you. I got good friends there, you hear? A little crooked”—he shrugged and grinned—“but wotthehell, you need help. If anybody can smuggle you into Ankara it’s me, Sandor, and there my friends help you, wait and see.”

Mrs. Pollifax looked into his face and was touched by his concern. “Thank you, Sandor,” she said simply.

From the rear of the van Colin said bitterly, “He probably thinks he’s bringing his pals two bona fide members of the Mafia.”

In Langley, Virginia, it was Tuesday morning, just half-past eight and already over ninety degrees in the streets. Carstairs had arrived in his air-conditioned office high in the CIA building and was sipping a second cup of coffee as he read over dispatches that had come in during the night. He had just lighted a cigarette when Bishop walked in. “Sir,” he said.