Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (25 page)

“I do realize it, of course I do.”

“Because I’ve grown damnably fond of you, you know.”

“Thank you,” she said gravely. The Genie and a guard with a rifle were climbing into the big dusty black car parked beside the road, the guard taking the driver’s seat, the Genie sitting beside him. The car started with a jerk, turned and left the road to bounce over the dry earth toward the rock that sheltered them. “They’re coming,” she said quietly. “They’re coming in the car, the Genie and another man. I think you’d better hurry.”

Farrell nodded and ran his tongue over parched dry lips. With one hand he lifted his gun, trying to steady it as he aimed at Mrs. Pollifax’s heart. “Is that really the best place?” she asked curiously. “Isn’t the brain faster?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” groaned Farrell, the pistol wobbling. “Just don’t talk, will you do me that favor please?”

Mrs. Pollifax sat up straight and primly folded her hands in her lap—as if she were about to be photographed, she thought—and waited patiently for oblivion. Again Farrell lifted the pistol and took aim. She did wish he would hurry because the car was racing toward them in a cloud of dust, but she feared reminding him of this lest she disconcert him again. Farrell carefully steadied his shaking hand and his lips thinned with the concentration this took. She could see the perspiration beading his nose and brow and watched a drop fall from his temple. Farrell lifted an elbow to clear his eyes and patiently took aim a third time.

But it was too late. The car was already upon them, and the Genie leaped from the opened door and knocked the pistol out of Farrell’s grasp. It fell into the dust, to be retrieved in an instant by the Genie. With a low moan Farrell hid his face in his hands, utterly drained and exhausted. It was the Genie who brandished the pistol now, gesturing them both into the car.

Mrs. Pollifax sat and regarded him without expression, her mind sifting a thousand reproaches and a few epithets, but if he was Chinese he would understand none of them. And if he
was Chinese he could not really be called a traitor either, nor could she call him a fool when she had proven the greater fool. Silently and wearily she climbed to her feet and bent over Farrell. “Come, they want us in the car,” she said, and then in a whisper, “I still have the Beretta, you know.” Without looking at the Genie she walked past him and climbed into the back seat. It was a Rolls, she noticed, looking over the accouterments that reminded her of childhood rides in the park with an aunt. “A very ancient one,” she amended. “Highly appropriate for funerals.”

Farrell sank down beside her in the rear seat and the guard slammed the door. This time the Genie slid behind the wheel of the car and started the engine while the guard climbed in beside him and propped his rifle between his legs. With the motor idling the Genie turned his head and smiled at the guard, his eyes bright and fathomless.

“Snake-in-the-grass,” thought Mrs. Pollifax, watching him.

With one smooth and effortless movement the Genie lifted the pistol he had taken from Farrell and astonished Mrs. Pollifax by shooting the guard between the eyes. As the guard slumped in his seat the Genie leaned across him, opened the door and pushed the man’s body into the dust. Slipping back behind the wheel he said over his shoulder in clipped, perfect English, “I think we’d better get the hell out of here, don’t you?”

Their shock was so complete that for a moment neither Mrs. Pollifax nor Farrell could utter a word. Then something like a small gasp escaped Mrs. Pollifax, and from Farrell came a brief, violent grunt. The Genie abruptly backed and turned the car and the sudden movement brought them to life. “Who the devil are you?” demanded Farrell.

“And why didn’t you tell us you speak English?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“Didn’t dare trust you—sorry,” the Genie said over his shoulder, and as the car regained the road he added, “I don’t know how long we can stick with this car. There are only something like four hundred cars in the whole country but there are wirelesses and things like roadblocks. And I’m not very good at driving the bloody thing, had to watch what buttons the guard pushed to learn how it started. Whole dashboard is full of buttons.”

He was leaning grimly over the wheel as he spoke, and noting the speedometer Mrs. Pollifax reached for Farrell’s arm. “We’re going one hundred miles an hour,” she told him in horror.

“That’s kilometers, not miles, Duchess. We’re in Europe now.”

It still felt alarmingly fast. Mrs. Pollifax turned to look out of the rear window, and the men who were scattered all over the landscape—guards, working prisoners and search party—were already receding into the distance.

Farrell said with his old briskness, “This road leads into Shkoder. Hell, we don’t want to go there, do we?”

Mrs. Pollifax, surrounded by so much masculine profanity, said firmly, “Hell, no.”

Farrell turned to stare at her and his old debonair smile crossed his face. Gently he said, “No, Duchess, absolutely no more swearing. Absolutely.”

“All right,” said Mrs. Pollifax meekly. To the Genie she said, “We have a map, you know. There look to be two villages between us and Shkoder, and to the west of us there’s a huge lake called Lake Scutari. Shkoder lies at the southern tip of it. Would you like to see the map?”

“They’re following us,” interrupted Farrell savagely. “Damn it, they’ve found one of those four hundred cars the country owns.” He had turned around to look through the rear window and Mrs. Pollifax turned too. It was all too true: she saw first the cloud of dust and then the small gray car racing in front of it.

“Three, maybe four miles behind us,” said the Genie, his eyes on the rearview mirror. “No time for maps. I say we stick to the car as long as we can. A car moves faster than six legs, one of them broken.”

“They must have wirelessed—”

“I know, I know.” The Genie was peering at the panel in front of him. “There’s plenty of gas, thank heaven.” He shoved the accelerator to the floor and the car surged ahead in a burst of speed.

“One hundred kilometers an hour,” thought Mrs. Pollifax in dismay, and wished that she dared close her eyes. The landscape moved past them like a projector that had run wild: olive trees, scattered farms and wells all blurred together. Ahead of them Mrs. Pollifax saw the outlines of a village and had no sooner seen it than they were upon it and the Genie was braking to avoid an oxcart plodding through its street. The next obstacle was a sheep that stood its ground in the center of the narrow road and baa-ed at them indignantly. They swerved around it and through a cobblestoned main street with stone houses on either side, and then the village was behind them and the Rolls resumed its breakneck speed. Mrs. Pollifax wondered
how the Genie managed to hold tight to the wheel, for the ruts in the road, which could at best be called primitive, produced a strange undercurrent of jolts that not even the magnificent upholstery of a Rolls could overcome. At the same moment she heard a growing, indefinable noise and looked out and up in time to see a small plane zoom over them, bank and fly over them again at low altitude. Farrell said grimly, “They’ve heard about us in Shkoder, too.”

“We’ll have to ditch the car,” the Genie said. “But where and how I don’t know.”

Mrs. Pollifax didn’t know either, but her mind grasped at once that just ditching it wouldn’t be enough, not with a car following behind them and their progress observed from the air. They wouldn’t have a chance of getting away, not with Farrell unable to run. “An accident,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“An accident. Isn’t there some way to tip over the car and set it on fire? They would think for at least a few minutes that we were still inside.”

Both men were silent, fumbling with the idea, and then the Genie said, “You haven’t any matches, have you?”

“Two,” said Farrell.

“You said there’s a lake to the west of us, to the right?”

“Yes.”

The Genie had seen a cart track branching from the road into Shkoder and with a squeal of brakes the car slowed enough to turn its wheels down the track and head west. The car bounced hideously, and Mrs. Pollifax’s head hit the ceiling. “They’ll see our dust, won’t they?” she gasped. She had no sooner spoken than they left the cart track to plunge toward a copse of trees.

“In there looks the place,” said the Genie. “The trees will be cover for getting away. You’ll have to have a head start, Farrell—that’s your name, isn’t it? I doubt if any one of us has the strength to tip the car over but I’ll try to ram it into a tree. Start running as soon as we stop.”

As soon as they were in among the trees he braked the Rolls and jerked open the door next to Farrell. “Out,” he said. “Out and hurry in a straight line that way.” He pointed. “Go as fast as you can.”

“Me too?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

The Genie shook his head. “Out, but wait for me. I’ll need your help.”

They left the car, Mrs. Pollifax to stand uncertain and nervous as she watched Farrell hobble away for dear life. Dear
dear
life, she reflected, and how tenaciously people held on to it and what things they did to remain alive!—that is, physically alive, she amended, for to remain alive inside was far more intricate and difficult and defeating. Her thoughts were interrupted by the roar of the Rolls engine as the Genie pressed his foot to the accelerator. Aghast, she watched the car pass her at top speed, the Genie leaning half out of the door. Faster and faster it went, heading inexorably toward the largest of the trees, and then the tree and the Rolls met with such force that the front of the Rolls crumpled like an accordian and the tree shuddered to its roots. Then Mrs. Pollifax saw the Genie, shaken but entirely whole. He had leaped at the last minute and now was fumbling for the matches Farrell had given him. She ran to help. “How? Where?” she cried.

He was wrestling with the cover to the gas tank, his hands trembling. Mrs. Pollifax gave it a twist and lifted it off. “Start running,” said the Genie as he lighted one of the matches.

Mrs. Pollifax obeyed, too numb to protest. She did not look back until she heard the explosion, and then it was only to see if the Genie was still alive. He was both alive and running, with more vitality than she possessed, and she envied him. Together they came out into the open country beyond the copse of trees, and there they discovered Farrell leaning on his crutch and looking very ill again. It was obvious that he could go no farther.

The landscape offered no hope of concealment, and when it was discovered that their bodies were not in the Rolls General Perdido would expect to find them nearby. Mrs. Pollifax could see the roof of a
han
some distance away, a good many rocks, another dried-up creek bed, and a pen of some kind where goats or sheep were kept at night. Her eyes moved over and then swerved back to an object in the corner of that pen: a two-wheeled primitive wooden cart filled to the brim with hay.

“Look,” she whispered and without a word they moved toward it, recognizing it as only a slim hope and not at all sure what to do with it. But it did have the advantage of being out of sight of the
han
, which presumably housed the owners of the farm, and it was the only object in sight that could possibly shield them. They stood and looked at it; rather stupidly, thought Mrs. Pollifax, until she realized that both Farrell and the Genie were exhausted and that as the senior member of the
party—rather like a Scout leader, she thought with blurred, semihysterical humor—she was going to have to assume command whether she was exhausted or not. At that moment, as if to emphasize the need for decisiveness, she heard the plane returning. It was still some distance away but obviously it was flying back to scour the countryside for signs of life.

“Into the cart,” she cried, pulling out tufts of hay. “Quickly, both of you.” There was barely room for the two; both Farrell and the Genie had to curl up in womblike positions and she prodded them mercilessly.

“What about you?” demanded Farrell.

“They don’t know I’m in peasant clothes,” she pointed out, devoutly hoping this was true. “And they’re looking for three people.” She was recklessly piling the hay back on top of them. “For heaven’s sake don’t move.”

One of them replied by sneezing.

“And don’t sneeze either,” she added crossly. The plane was circling now over the woods where they had abandoned the car and she saw what she had not noticed before—a plume of fading black smoke above the trees. The Rolls was still burning then, or had been until a moment ago, and presently the remains of it would be cool enough to examine. Hadn’t she read somewhere that bodies, turned to char, still held their shape until breathed upon or touched? She supposed it depended upon the heat of the fire. At any rate they couldn’t remain here indefinitely. The first time she was seen from the air she might be mistaken for the farmer’s wife contemplating clouds or earth, but if she was seen a second time in the same place such rootedness would be suspicious. Mrs. Pollifax regarded the cart speculatively, glanced over the terrain and then kicked the rock from under the wheels. Bracing herself she picked up the tongue of the axle, moved between its two shafts and tugged. Oddly enough the cart moved quite easily, being high enough from the ground to balance the weight of two grown men, and the earth sloped conveniently downward to aid momentum. With a squeak of wood against wood the cart began to make progress toward the next copse of trees with Mrs. Pollifax feeing rather like a ricksha boy. At any moment she expected to hear shouts from the direction of the
han
, but none occurred. Without any challenge, and having achieved a precarious speed, Mrs. Pollifax marched sturdily on, the cart at times pushing her in front of it. It was rough pastureland they crossed now, but a wood lay less than half a mile away. The
noon-hot sun glared down but there was grass—green grass—in this pastureland and it led Mrs. Pollifax to hope that they were nearing the coast. She was in the middle of the pasture when another plane passed overhead. Its presence ought to have alarmed her, but as it roared over them and then headed west Mrs. Pollifax saw its pontoons and her heart quickened. “It’s a seaplane, and where there are seaplanes,” she thought with a flicker of excitement, “there has to be water.”