Gibraltar Road (24 page)

As they went along he got the story in gasps. He asked, “You would recognize the car—be able to describe it?”

“
Si, señor
.” Pepe nodded, almost vigorously. “A big, powerful Chevrolet.”

“Get the number, did you?”

“It was going so fast,” said Pepe humbly, “and it was all so sudden, señor.”

Shaw nodded. That was quite understandable. The next thing to do would be to get all the Civil Guard posts alerted, and then Karina’s number would be up. He asked, “Where’s the nearest post with a phone?”

“At the end of this road, señor, where it joins the Malaga-Algeciras road.”

“Okay. Soon as we get there, you’ll get some proper attention, and I’ll ask ’em to use the blower and alert all posts along the line . . . I’m after that car too.”

But it didn’t work out that way; a couple of miles farther on Shaw heard a horrible shuddering noise of laboured breathing behind him, a kind of bubbling. He heard Debonnair’s sharp intake of breath, and he half turned, saw the look on her face. He asked, “What’s up, Deb?”

“I—I think he’s going, Esmonde.”

“Hell!” Shaw took the car round a bend, stopped with a jab of the foot-brake, and leaned over the seat-back. The man looked ghastly. He got out, opened the rear door, and put a hand over Pepe’s heart. After a minute he looked up at the girl.

“He’s had it all right, poor beggar.”

He saw that there were tears sparkling on her lashes. He looked round, made up his mind fast. “I’m afraid he’s got to go, Debbie—nothing we can do for him, and if we get caught with a dead
guardia
we’ve had it too.”

She nodded, her lips appearing bloodless. She had an inkling of what Shaw meant to do; she knew he’d hate the idea as much as she, shrink inwardly from it, that it would be another of the things to remain indelibly upon his memory, but she knew too that he had no choice—there was too much in the balance to allow any squeamishness now. As quickly as possible Shaw eased the body from the car, out of its pool of blood, dragged it across the road ... he saw, thankfully, that Debonnair had turned away. He laid Pepe gently down by the roadside and quickly said a prayer. Then he lifted the body on to the low stone parapet which topped the steep drop into the valley, and, closing his eyes, rolled it over. He tried not to listen; but as he turned away and went back to the car he could hear Pepe crashing down, down through the stones and the rubble, to land as pulp some hundreds of feet below.

Shaking, he started up. Debonnair had come back into the front now, and she squeezed his arm understandingly.

Some way farther on, Shaw said, “Look, Debbie. It’s no damn use going to that Civil Guard post.” His face was worried, eyes puckered into a frown. “These deaths’ll involve us in explanations that’ll go on till doomsday if I mention them—and if I didn’t I’d have to give some equally tricky reason to get ’em to alert all posts to stop a car.”

“But surely—that’s the best way
to
stop them, to pick them up, isn’t it? However long it takes.”

“No, it isn’t.” He shook his head decisively. “I know the Spanish, bless ’em! We’d get hung up ourselves for so ruddy long—and they wouldn’t take any action to stop her until they’d asked questions and filled in forms and telephoned for advice and instructions . . . and come to that, Karina’s quite capable of driving right through a road-check—as we’ve seen. We’d do much better to press on after her ourselves, Debbie. She’s full of tricks; and the Civil Guard are simple folk.”

The girl said sweetly, “Well, my darling, you’re the boss.”

Shaw grinned. “I just like a bit of moral support, that’s all!” He sent the car lurching forward again, and soon he was turning out of the San Pedro road and heading up automatically, unthinkingly, for Malaga. He’d gone about a kilometre along that road when he saw a
guardia
patrol some distance ahead. Bearing in mind his earlier feeling that Karina might try to confuse the route—and also that he might be quite wrong about Malaga anyway—he decided to make a check; he drove on and stopped alongside the patrol, asked them if they’d seen any signs of a big scarlet-and-silver Chevrolet going fast for Malaga.

They looked blank, and Shaw’s lips tightened.

One said, “No, señor. Nothing of that description has passed us.”

Shaw cursed. “You’re quite certain?”

“Absolutely, señor.”

“
Muchissimo gracias
.” Quickly Shaw turned the car, headed back along the road towards San Roque. Farther on, he stopped a car coming up from that direction, and for confirmation asked if the driver had seen such a car as Karina’s. The driver had. And well he remembered it . . . Karina had apparently not slackened speed by the time she’d met him, and the driver was still shaking like a leaf at the way she’d come round a corner. He would be obliged if the señor would kindly pass on what he thought of her, when and if he caught the car up.

Shaw was already moving. He called, “I’ll be telling her a packet, don’t you worry. And thanks!”

Shaw was really worried now. Maybe he had been quite wrong about the
Ostrowiec
, but surely Karina couldn’t possibly be going to La Linea again? Or could she? There were the other ports. Shaw reviewed the possibilities, and all at once it hit him: Algeciras! Algeciras was one of the most cosmopolitan cities of Andalusia, and from there it was so easy to slip across to Tangier. It must be Algeciras! He drove flat out, past the mountains, through the valleys bright yellow with the little clover-leafed oxalis; flat out, to make up for the time and distance lost, stopping only to top up his tank and a couple of cans at Guadiaro. As he sat wiping sweat from his eyes, waiting impatiently as the petrol went in, Shaw said grimly:

“Let’s hope they get copped for speeding at the San Roque check-point. It looks about the only hope.”

General Hammersley felt his hand shaking on his pipe-stem as Rear-Admiral Forbes came into his office so early before breakfast that morning. Forbes’s face was tired, lined, strained, the bird-like figure had lost some of its perkiness— the man was beginning to look hopeless, almost. Hammersley had no doubt that he was starting to show the same signs himself, though, like Forbes, he had done his level best to stay cheerful, or rather to show a cheerful front to his subordinates. It was the grinding uncertainty which was getting him down; the never knowing when the whole show might go up, to say nothing of having had no word from Shaw since that brief and uninformative telephone-call which the agent had put through to Staunton a couple of days earlier.

Since then—nothing.

Nothing but alarming reports from the technicians, working the clock round in Dockyard Tunnel.

Every time Hammersley saw his two sons—and there hadn’t

been much time to do that since they’d arrived—he had that frightening vision more vividly. The vision which would keep coming to him was of those millions of tons of rock going up in the air, to fall shatteringly down upon what had been Gibraltar—the Rock destroying itself—flattening all buildings, all the ships in the harbour, killing every soul there, making matchwood and rubble of all that had been the fortress-key to the Mediterranean; and after that the fall-out, and the boiling seas rushing in to fill the gap that was left. Hammersley didn’t doubt that other responsible people— those in the know, and with imagination enough to visualize it all—had had the same nightmares. He’d seen it in their faces, particularly when they thought they were unobserved; he’d seen it in their slightly shaking hands—like his—and in their air of preoccupation as they wondered, as he did, how they would react when they knew that the last moment was almost upon them.

He saw it again now in Forbes’s face.

Forbes came towards him with the gait almost of an old man, a man played out before his time; up to only a few days ago, he’d always thought the naval man’s hair looked too old for his face! Hammersley gestured him to a seat. He asked: “What’s the latest report, Forbes?”

“Damn thing’s speeding up, sir, so they tell me.” Forbes sat and passed a hand over his eyes. “I’ve just been down there myself. You can hear the difference now—and the safety indicator shows it’s nearing the danger mark.”

“I see.” Hammersley tapped out his pipe, trying to keep his calm demeanour. “Does the last time limit still stand—seventy-two hours?”

“Officially, yes.” Forbes hesitated, screwing up his eyes in a characteristic gesture. “The technicians say so—seventy-two at the outside, that is. And that’s only a guess, really. They base it on the rate of rise over the last few days, but anything may happen towards the end—it may start rising much quicker, and, of course, that could cut the time quite a lot.” The Rear-Admiral pulled nervously at his bottom lip. “I . . . think it’s a good thing you’ve started the ball rolling for the evacuation, sir. I’m not sure you oughtn’t to hasten it.”

Hammersley grunted, didn’t answer directly; he put down his pipe, felt in his pockets for another one, a cool one; couldn’t find it, fished in a silver cigarette-box, and absent-mindedly pushed the box over to Forbes. Forbes shook his head; Hammersley lit up and walked over to the window and looked out, cigarette-smoke trailing back behind him. The Rear-Admiral watched him in silence.

Hammersley said abruptly, “That feller Shaw. I liked him. London says he’s first-rate. What did you make of him?”

Forbes said, “I agree with London. Matter of fact, he served in the same destroyer group with me when he was a midshipman. I was a two-and-a-half-striper, Number One of the leader. I didn’t get to know him personally, but I do know he was well thought of even then. Had guts, and was thoroughly dependable. Why, sir?”

“He doesn’t seem to have done much so far.” For a moment the nerve-strain showed through, and Hammersley spoke bitterly. Everything hinged on Shaw—that was the terrible thought; London had tied his own hands, except for this infernal, somehow negative and defeatist business of leaving to him the decision, already taken now, to start the evacuation at precisely the right moment. How the devil was he, or anyone else for that matter, to know whether or not his decision was right? All this damnable guesswork . . . Hammersley had an idea it could all have been handled very differently if Whitehall hadn’t been so scared of international complications. He admitted the urgent need for secrecy, but still . . . he had the feeling that if he could have put a couple of battalions of British infantry into Spain things would have started happening a long while ago, and the Spaniards would have got their hands on Ackroyd by now and handed him over. Stupid, of course, to think like that in these days, but sometimes he couldn’t help it.

Catching Forbes’s glance, he smiled at him. “Sorry,” he said ruefully. “I’m quite confidant Shaw’s doing his best. It’s a hard job. And I don’t suppose he’s got the time or the opportunity to make reports.”

Wearily he crossed over to his desk again and sat down. From a locked steel-lined drawer he brought out a sheet of paper and pushed it across to the Rear-Admiral. Forbes took it up, scanned it. It was a transcription of a Top Secret cypher from Whitehall, and it contained a warning that a Polish merchantman, the
Ostrowiec
, was expected to obtain clearance from the port of Malaga within the next few days, and would be bound through the Straits for Gdynia, possibly (though by no means certainly) with Ackroyd aboard; the message went on to say, in guarded terms which the uncharitable might have described as intentionally equivocal, that ‘a situation might arise’ in which the Navy could be furnished with a more or less washable excuse (unspecified) for boarding this ship and carrying out a search. Meanwhile no international situation was to be provoked, no excuse given to the Communist bloc to make propaganda out of the illegal searching of their ships on the high seas, until something more definite was known; and Hammersley’s ‘discretion’ was relied upon absolutely.

Hammersley, who felt that the message left something unsaid, something in the air, asked, “What d’you make of that, Forbes?”

“Boils down to Shaw again, doesn’t it?” said Forbes briefly. “I expect he passed this information to London, and it’s up to him to act on it from his end, to get hold of Ackroyd before they put him aboard. Meanwhile we’re not to do anything unless and until it’s established beyond doubt that Shaw’s failed and Ackroyd is in the ship. By which time,” he added bitterly, “it’ll very likely be too late.” Hammersley looked at him sardonically. “That’s all?”

“Not quite.” Forbes scowled. “London’s passing the buck, I rather fancy!”

“Forbes, you couldn’t be more right.”

The Rear-Admiral’s face was hard now. “I’m quite prepared to take a chance on ordering the
Cambridge
in to intercept as soon as this ship goes to sea, sir. I’d take that on my own responsibility.”

Hammersley shook his head. “I just wanted to know your opinion—I’m the only one who’s supposed to have seen this signal so far, and the order would come from me. And do you know, Forbes, I believe that’s precisely what London’s after? In the last resort, of course, they’ll act—probably, as you said, too late. Meanwhile I’m liable to take the law into my own hands now I’ve got that information.” He grinned. “I’ll get a barony for doing so, too—if all goes well! Forbes, I know your people mustn’t stop ships at sea, I know it would provoke hell’s delight if Ackroyd isn’t aboard, but personally I’d rather see an international situation blow up than take any chance that the Rock of Gibraltar might blow up first. An international situation can be smoothed out. What we’re up against is . . . rather final. So—I’m going to adopt Whitehall’s unspoken suggestion.” He tapped the signal. “You haven’t seen this, Forbes. You don’t know that London’s passing the buck and prodding me into making a decision so that if things go wrong they’ve got a scapegoat.” He grinned a little bitterly. “A posthumous scapegoat, of course . . . one can’t help seeing their point, too. After all, it does look better to explain things away afterwards by saying that some damfool soldier-govemor was a bit headstrong—doesn’t it?” He took a deep breath, and stood up. All at once he looked younger and more alive. He asked: