Background to Danger (30 page)

“Have you seen two men run through here?”

“Nein.”
The man looked at them suspiciously.

“We are police. Two criminals have escaped and are in the building. If you see them stop them at once. Is there any way they can get out except by the main entrance?”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän
. There is the fire-escape.”

“Where is that?”

“There is a door,
Herr Kapitän
, between this room and the engraving section. I will show you.”

He started towards the door.

“It is unnecessary,” said Zaleshoff brusquely; “we shall find it for ourselves. A man must be posted there immediately. Keep alert and report instantly if you see these men.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

The man hurried off importantly to tell his subordinates. As he did so the police burst in through the swing doors and shouted something. The foreman looked round uncertainly.

“Run for it,” snapped Zaleshoff.

They dashed through the door leading to the fire exit. To the left were two flights of stairs, one up, one down. Facing the stairs was the fire-exit door. Ahead was the entrance to the engraving plant. As Zaleshoff wrenched the fire door open a man came out of the engraving section. Kenton saw the startled look on the man’s face as he caught a glimpse of the police uniforms behind them and anticipated the attempt to stop them getting past. He lashed out with his fist. The man stepped back quickly to avoid the blow and slipped on the smooth stone floor. It was enough. The next moment the two were clattering down the fire-escape. A bullet rang on the steel stairs above their heads, but by the time they were two flights down they were well under cover.

At the foot of the stairs they found themselves in a concrete yard between the back of the
Prager Morgenblatt
building and the side of a building in the adjacent street. Kenton glanced up and saw that three of the policemen were half-way down the fire-escape. They dashed for the road. They were about six yards from the end of the yard when a policeman turned the corner in front of them. The man hesitated for a fraction of a second and his hand went to the holster at his belt. Zaleshoff hurled himself forward and his fist caught the man on the side of the head. The policeman staggered back against the wall and raised his gun. Kenton caught his arm as the gun exploded. The bullet hit the concrete and ricochetted off with a quick whine. Zaleshoff wrenched the gun away. The man began to get to his feet.

“Run for the car,” shouted Zaleshoff.

Kenton ran.

A few yards up the street was the Mercedes. As they sprinted towards it, Tamara reversed to get clear of the lorry in front. By the time they had reached the car she
had the near-side door open. As they tumbled in a bullet zipped through the safety glass of the back window and buried itself in the upholstery of the front seat.

“Keep down,” cried Zaleshoff.

The Mercedes shot forward and swung round, its tyres slithering over the wet asphalt, into the street leading to the Karlsbrücke. Tamara changed into second gear, rammed the accelerator down and cut in the supercharger. There was a whining roar from the exhaust and the big saloon flew up the street like a shot from a gun.

“To the Hotel Amerika, quickly!” said Zaleshoff.

The girl made a skid turn into the main road and they roared across the bridge over the Moldau. Zaleshoff drew the two halves of the envelope of prints from his pocket and tore them into minute pieces which he scattered out of the window as they went.

Kenton began to get his breath back.

“Not a bad guess of mine, was it?” he said.

Zaleshoff allowed the last of the fragments to trickle through his fingers.

“No,” he said grimly, “it wasn’t. But what we heard makes it all the more necessary to get the original prints. You heard what he said?”

“What who said?”

“That German. The Nazis are going to use those photographs as a jumping-off spot for another anti-Soviet drive. Rumania won’t be the only country to hear about it. I’m not taking any more chances, Kenton. We’ve got to have those photographs. Strategy or no strategy, I’m going straight out to bust Saridza wide open.”

Kenton laughed. He was feeling a little shaky.

“What’s the matter?”

“I was wondering what Saridza will say when he sees us.”

“You’ll soon find out.” He leaned over to the girl. “Turn
down a quiet street and run slowly for a minute.”

“What’s the trouble?” said Kenton.

Zaleshoff did not reply, but turned back the carpet and pried up one of the floorboards. The car slowed. Kenton saw the Russian catch hold of a mud-caked wire running beneath the floorboards and give it a sharp pull. Something clattered to the road and the car accelerated again.

“What on earth is that?”

Zaleshoff replaced the floorboard.

“It’s an old Chicago custom. I’ve shed the Austrian number-plates. There’s a Belgian registration showing now. Have you got the Belgian papers, Tamara?”

“Yes, Andreas.”

“Throw the others down a drain when we stop. Here, Kenton, you’d better have this with you if you want to hear what Saridza’s got to say.” He pulled a revolver, similar to the one he himself carried, from a pocket in the door and handed it to the journalist. “Take care. This one’s loaded.”

Kenton took the gun gingerly.

“That is, of course,” added Zaleshoff with a faint smile, “if your professional instincts are still functioning.”

Kenton slipped the revolver into his pocket.

“Andreas Prokovitch,” he said wearily, “you are one of the three most infuriating men I have ever met.”

“Who are the other two?”

“Saridza and Captain Mailler.”

Two minutes later they drew up in front of the Hotel Amerika garage. A man came out of a doorway opposite the entrance and walked across to the car. Zaleshoff leaned out of the window. There was a quick muttered conversation, then Zaleshoff withdrew his head and sat back, a grim look on his face.

“The map, Tamara.”

The girl passed a thick folded map over in silence.

“What is it?” said Kenton.

“Saridza and Mailler left in their car five minutes ago. Mailler was driving. Tamara, take the Brünn road; and for the love of Mike step on it!”

A
QUARTER
of an hour later they were speeding through the outskirts of the city along the Brünn road.

Zaleshoff sat hunched up in his corner, his face expressionless. To Kenton’s questions he replied with grunts. At last, he leaned forward and instructed the girl to stop at the next village.

“Why stop?” said Kenton.

Zaleshoff turned his head slightly. He spoke as if the journalist had invited his comments on the weather.

“We’ve got a man following Saridza’s car on a motor-cycle. He won’t go more than twenty kilometres outside the city. When he stops he should telephone Smedoff. I
want to get his report to make sure we’re on the right road.”

“I see.”

Three minutes later they pulled up outside a small post office. The Russian got out leisurely and went inside. In two minutes he came out again and got back into the car and slammed the door.

“We’re wrong,” he announced. “They must have realised from that call from the
Morgenblatt
offices that they were only one jump ahead. They’ve taken the road due east to the German frontier at Nachod. They aim to get out of Czechoslovakia as quickly as they can and go down through Cracow to Bucharest.”

For a minute or two he pored over the map, then folded it up.

“Make for Nimburg, Tamara. Smedoff is getting a check there. We shall have to try and catch them between there and Nachod. Have you got plenty of gas?”

“Plenty.”

“Then let’s go.”

The Mercedes leaped forward. A minute later, Kenton saw the speedometer needle edge past the hundred-kilometre mark.

After half an hour’s going they swung left and sped on in a north-easterly direction. Tamara drove with the skill and assurance of a road-racing professional and the Mercedes flew up and down the hills with scarcely any variation in speed. Zaleshoff stared out of the window and smoked Kenton’s cigarettes. The journalist tried to go to sleep but, in spite of his physical exhaustion, his eyes would not remain closed. Every time Tamara slowed for a corner his right foot moved, pressing down an imaginary acceleration to drive the car on faster, faster. It was, he told himself, merely the crude excitement of the chase. But he knew that there was more to it than that. Separated by miles of road
were two cars. In the first one were fifteen pieces of chemically-coated paper more dangerous than the most powerful high explosive, the deadliest poison gas; fifteen pieces of paper with a message of fear and suspicion and hatred for millions of peasants who believed that their God was good and just and that their destinies were in His keeping. If the first car were permitted to reach its destination, that message would be delivered. All that stood in the way of it doing so was a pitiful band of three—a worried Russian, a girl, a tired journalist with a severe headache and a gun that he didn’t know how to use. He smiled grimly. “Stood in the way” was not a particularly happy description of their position. Overhauling a fast car with a good start was not an easy task, even for a supercharged Mercedes with a good driver.

The early morning drizzle had now given way to a steady downpour that beat on the windows, obscuring the low hills through which they were racing. It took them forty minutes to reach Nimburg. Tamara slowed as they entered the town. Zaleshoff leaned forward.

“Stop outside the
Spielhaus.”

Tamara drove on for a minute or two and then pulled up. Zaleshoff got out.

Kenton wiped the mist from the window and saw the Russian walk over to a man standing on the pavement under an umbrella. The man was fingering ostentatiously a piece of red ribbon in his buttonhole. Zaleshoff raised his hat politely and the owner of the buttonhole said something and pointed in the direction in which the car was facing. To an onlooker it would have seemed as if a motorist were asking a bystander for directions. Zaleshoff raised his hat again and walked back to the car.

“Quick, Tamara,” he said as he got in, “they passed through here eight minutes ago. That means we’re about twelve kilometres behind them. It’s only two hours from
here to the frontier. We shall have to go fast to pick up that lead.”

The car shot forward again. As they left the town behind them, the speedometer crept steadily round to the hundred-and-forty-kilometre mark and stayed there. Kenton had never been driven so fast in his life before. There was little traffic on the road and for this mercy he was thankful, for Tamara’s estimates of the space required for the safe passage of the Mercedes seemed to be based on a scale marked in centimetres. The road, though straight and good, was narrow and slippery from the rain. The girl seemed unaware of these limitations.

“Have you been in many smashes with your sister driving?” said Kenton after one specially hair-raising moment.

“She’s never had an accident in her life.”

But Kenton thought the tone of the assurance a little too emphatic to be altogether convincing.

Twice they were held up by level crossings. Once, on the outskirts of a small town named Königgratz, they were stopped by a police patrol. Zaleshoff pulled the blind down over the bullet-holed rear window and showed the Belgian registration papers. The man examined them, handed them back and waved the car on with apologies and the information that he had been told to stop all cars with foreign registrations, as a gang of international thieves had that morning broken into a newspaper office in Prague. Somewhat overwhelmed by the narrowness of their escape, they drove on.

After the first and, for Kenton, interminable hour, Zaleshoff began to peer ahead through the segment of windscreen cleared by the electric wiper.

They were passing through hilly country dotted here and there with tiny white villages clustering round church spires. Now, the rain no longer beat on the windows but the clouds were very low and the car kept running into
patches of thin, drenching mist. The girl was forced to slow down a little. Then, on a clear straight stretch of road, about a quarter of a mile ahead, they saw the black saloon car.

Almost immediately it ran into mist, but the sight was enough to send a thrill of excitement surging through Kenton’s veins.

“Overtake it until you’re about fifty metres behind it, then follow for a bit,” ordered Zaleshoff. “Get down, Kenton. We can’t afford to risk their seeing us.”

The two crouched on the floor. A minute or so later the Mercedes slowed and Kenton could hear the faint hum of the other car. Tamara spoke over her shoulder.

“They’re doing about ninety kilometres an hour.”

Zaleshoff raised his head cautiously until he could see over Tamara’s shoulder.

“Wait until you’re round the corner,” Kenton heard him murmur, “then pass them and get about a hundred metres ahead.”

Tamara accelerated and sounded the horn. Zaleshoff bent down again. His heart thumping against his ribs, Kenton listened to the noise of the car in front coming nearer.

Suddenly Tamara spoke.

“They’re accelerating.”

“Crowd them in on the next corner.”

Kenton heard the supercharger whine and felt the car leap forward. A moment later it swerved violently. The roar of the other car grew suddenly. There was a sharp crash and the Mercedes rocked and swerved again.

“Caught them with a fender,” said Tamara.

“Pull up quickly and back across the road.”

There was a shriek of brakes, and Kenton was hurled forward against the back of the driving-seat. He felt the car skidding wildly. Then gears crunched and the Mercedes lurched backwards. The motor stalled. There was a
moment’s silence, then Kenton heard the roar of an exhaust.

“They’re turning round,” cried Tamara.

“Quick, Kenton! Out!”

Zaleshoff scrambled on to the road. Hauling the revolver out of his pocket, Kenton followed him. Twenty-five yards away was the black car reversing to turn round. There was a spit of flame from one of the side windows and a bullet hit the body of the Mercedes a foot from Kenton’s head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zaleshoff raise his gun deliberately. The Russian fired. The next instant there was a stream of flame from the petrol tank in the rear of the black car.