Vintage Stuff (26 page)

'Back to Calais,' said Glodstone.

'So why are we on the road to Spain?'

'I just thought...' said Glodstone, who was too exhausted to.

'From now on, don't,' said the Countess. 'Leave the brainwork to me. Spain might not be such a
bad idea, but the frontier's the first one they'll watch.'

'Why's that?' asked Peregrine.

'Because, dumkopf, it's the closest. So Calais makes a weird sort of sense. Only trouble is,
can Old Father Time here last out that far without writing us all off?'

'Of course I can,' said Glodstone, stung into wakefulness by the insult.

'Then turn left at the next fork. And give me that map.'

For a few miles she pored over it while Glodstone concentrated on keeping to the right. 'Now
then,' said the Countess, when they had swung onto a road that led through thick oak woods, 'the
next question is, did anyone round here see this car when you came down?'

'I shouldn't have thought so. We did the last two hundred miles at night and we were on roads
to the South.'

'Good. That's a bonus. So the car's not what they're going to be looking for. It's clean and
it's too conspicuous to be likely for a getaway. But if they do stop us those guns are going to
put you inside for a long, long time. So you'll ditch them, and not in any river. The flics have
a penchant for looking under bridges.'

'What's a penchant?' asked Peregrine.

'What those gendarmes didn't have when you blew that van up. Now shut up,' said Glodstone.

'Yes, but if we get rid of the guns we won't have anything to defend ourselves with and anyway
they're supposed to go back in the School Armoury.'

Glodstone's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. 'Listen, you damned moron,' he snarled,
'hasn't it got through your thick skull yet that we aren't going to get back to the school unless
we use our wits? We'll be doing life plus thirty year in some foul French jail for murder.'

'Murder?' said Peregrine, clearly puzzled. 'But we killed some swine and '

'And however many gendarmes you blew out of that truck. That's all! So keep your murderous
little trap shut and do what the Countess tells you.'

In the back seat the Countess listened to the exchange with interest. It was beginning to dawn
on her that, by comparison with Peregrine, Glodstone was practically a genius. More to the point,
he was frightened and prepared to follow her orders. 'Stop the car here,' she said to test her
authority, 'and switch the motor off.'

Glodstone did so and looked at her questioningly.

'This is a good a spot as any,' she said after they had sat in silence for a minute listening.
'Now then, you, trot off into the wood a couple of hundred metres and bury those gats before
anyone comes.'

Peregrine looked at Glodstone. 'Must I?' he asked. But the look on Glodstone's face was
enough.

'Not a very advanced form of life,' said the Countess when he'd gone. Glodstone didn't reply.
From the depths of his exhausted mind the question had surfaced again. How had he ever come to be
in the power of this foul woman? He wasn't going to put it to her now but if they ever got back
to Britain he'd want an answer.

'One dead, another mutilated and how many missing?' asked Inspector Roudhon.

'Two,' said Dr Grenoy looking unhappily out of the window at the little helicopter perched on
the terrace. 'Madame la Comtesse and an Englishman called Pringle.'

'An Englishman called Pringle? Description.'

'Middle-aged. Medium height. Balding. Small moustache. A typical Englishman of a certain
class.'

'And he was staying here?'

'Not exactly. He rescued the dead American from the river yesterday morning and he was
exhausted so he was given a room and a bed.'

'If he rescued the man who was shot he doesn't sound like a killer,' said the Inspector.

'Of course he wasn't a killer. Ask your own men. They had to get him back across the river
with Professor Botwyk. He was on a walking tour.'

'And yet he has disappeared?'

'In the circumstances very sensibly, Inspector,' said Dr Grenoy. 'If you had been here last
night you'd have tried to leave.' He was getting irritated by the Inspector's failure to
appreciate the international consequences of the night's events. The Glory of France was at
stake, not to mention his own career.

'And the night before a man was here looking for Madame la Comtesse,' continued the
Inspector.

'That's what I've been told. But it must be said that he made the first attempt on Professor
Botwyk then. Last night the Professor was shot down in cold blood, capote-wise. And your men were
supposed to be on guard for his protection.'

'So they were, but they weren't to know they were about to be attacked by terrorists. You said
it was Madame la Comtesse who was in danger.'

'Naturally. What else does one think when an Englishman with a gun...or an American, demands
to know where she is? It was your responsibility.'

'If we had been told they were terrorists it would have helped, monsieur. We can only act on
the information we are given. And the roads were guarded. They didn't come from Boosat or
Frisson.'

'And what about the river? They could have slipped past your road blocks in canoes.'

'Perhaps. It was clearly a well organized operation. The aim was to assassinate the American,
Botwyk, and...'

'Castrate the Soviet delegate. Presumably to put the Siberian gas pipe-line agreement in
jeopardy,' said Dr Grenoy. His sarcasm was wasted on the Inspector.

'But it is the Americans who oppose the deal. It is more likely the Iranians who are
involved.'

In the dining-room the exhausted delegates were being interrogated. They too were convinced
they had been the victims of a terrorist attack.

'The crisis of capitalism expresses itself in these barbaric acts,' Dr Zukacs explained to a
bemused gendarme. 'They are symptomatic of the degenerate bourgeois mentality and the alliance
between monopoly fascism and sectors of the lumpen proletariat. Until a new consciousness is
born...'

'And how many shots were fired?' asked the policeman, trying to get back to the facts.

Dr Zukacs didn't know.

'Fifteen,' said Pastor Laudenbach with the precision of a military expert. 'Medium-calibre
pistol. Rate of fire, good. Extreme accuracy.'

The cop wrote this down. He'd been told to treat these members of the intelligentsia softly.
They'd be in a state of shock. Pastor Laudenbach obviously wasn't.

'Your name, monsieur?'

The Pastor clicked his heels. 'Obergruppen...er...Pastor Laudenbach. I belong to the Lutheran
Church.'

The policeman made a note of the fact. 'Did anyone see the assailant?'

Dr Hildegard Keister pushed Badiglioni forward. 'You met him in the passage,' she said.

The Professor cursed her under his breath. 'That was the night before. It may not have been
the same man.'

'But you said he had a gun. You know you did. And when you '

'Yes,' said Badiglioni, to cut short the disclosure that he had taken refuge in her room, 'he
was a young Englishman.'

'An Englishman? Can you describe him?'

Professor Badiglioni couldn't. 'It was dark.'

'Then how did you know he was a young Englishman?'

'By his accent. It was unmistakably English. I have made a study of the inter-relationship
between phonetics and the socio-economic infrastructure in post-Imperial Britain and I would say
categorically that the man you are looking for is of lower-upper-middle-class extraction with
extreme right-wing Protestant inclinations.'

'Sod that for a lark,' said Sir Arnold. Ulster was going to be on the agenda again at this
rate. 'You were into Dr Keister's room before he had a chance to speak to you. You told me that
yourself.'

'I heard what he said to Dr Abnekov. That was enough.'

'And where did you pick up your astounding capacity for analysing the English language? As an
Eyetie POW, no doubt.'

'As a matter of fact I was an interpreter for British prisoners of war in Italy,' said
Professor Badiglioni stiffly.

'I'll put him down as English,' said the policeman.

Sir Arnold objected. 'Certainly not. I had a fairly lengthy discussion with the fellow and in
my opinion he had a distinctly foreign accent.'

'English is a foreign language in France, monsieur.'

'Yes, well I daresay it is,' said Sir Arnold, getting flustered. 'What I meant was his accent
was European-foreign if you see what I mean.'

The cop didn't. 'But he did speak in English?'

Sir Arnold admitted grudgingly that this had been the case. 'Doesn't mean he's British though.
Probably a deliberate ploy to disguise his real nationality.'

Another helicopter clattered down onto the terrace and prevented any further questioning for
the time being.

In Bordeaux Dr Abnekov was undergoing micro-surgery without a general anaesthetic. He wanted
to make sure he kept what was left of his penis.

'Shit, that's torn it,' said Major Fetherington as they ground to a halt at a road block
beyond Boosat. Three gendarmes carrying sub-machine-guns circled the car while a fourth aimed a
pistol at Slymne and demanded their passports. As the man flicked through the pages, Slymne
stared in front of him. He had been staring at the road ahead for hundreds of miles while the
Major had dozed beside him and it had all been in vain. Obviously something catastrophic had
happened. Even the French police didn't man road-blocks and keep the occupants of cars covered
with machine-guns without good cause, but Slymne was almost too tired to care. They'd have to
send a cable back to the Headmaster and then find a hotel and he could get some sleep. That would
be some consolation. What happened after that didn't matter now. He wasn't even worried about the
letters. If Glodstone had kept them, nobody could prove he'd sent them. And in a sense he was
relieved. It was all over.

It wasn't. He was woken from this rhapsody of exhaustion by the car doors being opened and
with the guns aimed at them they were ordered out.

'Can't,' said the Major adamantly, 'Ce n'est pas possible. Ma bloody derrière est blessé et je
m'assis sur une tube de pneu.' But in spite of his protests he was dragged out and made to stand
against a wall.

'Bloody disgraceful,' he muttered, as they were frisked, 'I'd like to see a British bobby try
this sort of thing with me. Ouch!'

'Silence,' said the sergeant. They were prodded apart while the car was searched and their
luggage was laid out on the road. It included the inner-tube and a bottle the Major had used to
save himself the agony of getting out for a pee. After five minutes two police cars drew up on
the far side of the barrier and several men in plain clothes moved towards them.

'Seem to be taking an interest in our passports,' said the Major and was promptly told to keep
his trap shut. Slymne stared over the wall at a row of poplars by the river and tried to keep his
eyes open. It was hot in the sun and butterflies soared and dropped about the meadow in the still
air, alighting for no apparent reason on a small flower when there was a larger one only a foot
away. Slymne took comfort in their random choice. Chance is all, he thought, and I am not
responsible for what has happened. Say nothing and they can do nothing.

To the little group of policemen studying his passport, things looked rather different. The
ferry ticket was in it. 'Entered France yesterday and they're here already?' said Commissaire
Ficard, 'They must have driven all night without stopping.'

He looked significantly at the Major's bottle and its murky contents. 'Occupation,
schoolmaster. Could be a cover. Anything suspicious in their luggage?'

Two plain-clothes cops emptied the suitcases onto the road and went through their
contents.

'Nothing.'

'And what's the inner-tube doing there?'

'The other man was sitting on it, Monsieur le Commissaire. Claims to have a wounded
backside.'

The mention of wounds decided Commissaire Ficard. 'Take them in for questioning,' he said,
'And I want that car stripped. Nobody drives here from Calais that fast without good reason. They
must have exceeded the speed limit in any case. And check with the ferries. I'm interested in
these two.'

As the Major was hustled into the van he made things worse. 'Keep your filthy paws off me, you
oaf,' he snapped and found himself lying on the floor. Slymne went quietly. Being arrested had
come as a relief to his conscience.

Outside Poitiers the Countess put the boot in. 'So we need gas. Now if you want to pull in at
the next station with a description of a glass-eyed man circulating that's your problem. I don't
want any part of it. You can drop me off here and I'll walk.'

'What do you suggest?' asked Glodstone. He had long since given up trying to think for
himself.

'That you drive up the next quiet road and you and Al Capone Junior take a break and I drive
on and have her filled up.'

'A car like this isn't easy to drive, you know. You have to have had experience of
non-synchromesh gears and...'

'You double-declutch. I'll practise.'

'I suppose it might be a good idea,' Glodstone admitted and turned onto a side road. For ten
minutes the Countess drove while Peregrine sat in the back and Glodstone prayed she wouldn't
strip the gears.

'OK?' she asked finally.

Glodstone nodded but Peregrine still had reservations. 'How do we know you'll come back? I
mean you could just drive off and...'

'Leave a clever boy like you for the cops to pick up? I've got more sense. Besides, I wanted
to be rescued and that's what you're doing. But if it'll make you any happier I'll leave my
passport with you.'

She got out and, rifling in her suitcase, found the right one. 'I'll buy some food while I'm
about it,' she said. 'Now you just take it easy in the field. Have a nap and if I'm not back
inside two hours, call the cops.'