Gibraltar Road (32 page)

It was no distance to the exit. As Shaw and the little party plunged down into the cavern-like mouth and ran down the steps the crowd’s increased, stupendous roar, a deluge of sound, told them that the kill had been made. And then they were out into the open.

As they dashed out the hysterical aficionados, now that the fight was over, let the two gunmen past. They went fast for the exit, they and now the other pair of the four, drawing their guns as they ran, silently, and then they too came out into the open.

There was no hope now of getting aboard the Algeciras-Gibraltar ferry.

Shaw had tried five cars before he found one that was unlocked, rushing in desperation from one to the other; and by this time all four of the men were running out. Shaw’s gun came up, and he fired at them as he twisted behind the steering-wheel of the unlocked car. He saw one double up, and then, even before the car doors had slammed, he was on the move, steering between the lines of parked cars and the market-stalls. As he went he heard and felt the thud of bullets hitting the side of the car, and then a low exclamation of pain from Karina. Then he had the car—it was an elderly Citroen, big and heavy and old-fashioned, but he could feel its power potential—through into the clear, and he was getting all he could out of her as he shot into the San Roque road.

Behind him Debonnair said breathlessly, “It’s okay, darling, I’ve got it!”

She sounded triumphant, and he didn’t need to ask what she meant. And he thanked God in his heart; in the panic he’d quite lost sight of the possibility that Karina might not have had that missing part actually on her still—though come to think of it she’d probably consider that the safest and most sensible thing to do—but how wrong she’d been!

He asked, “She all right—she was hit, wasn’t she?”

“Uh-huh . . . but she’ll live!”

In a cloud of dust he saw the bonnet of a car behind, looming into his mirror. Then two flashes came from the dust-cloud and the handle of his driving door zipped away.

Shaw felt that he was on the last lap now, and he meant to make it; his one real, gnawing anxiety was whether or not he’d make it in time, though it was only some twelve miles into Gibraltar by road. He knew well enough what the shipping in Algeciras Bay meant, and all the time he drove that dreadful rhythm was thumping away inside his head. And, as though in sympathy with his thoughts, little Ackroyd alongside him in the front seat began again:

“Dum-da, dum-da, dum-da. . ."

“Shut up!” Shaw’s long chin jutted.

Ackroyd looked at him, hurt. “Eh, lad, ah was only—”

Shaw said, between his teeth, “I don’t give a damn what you were only. Just shut up, like a good chap, will you?”

There was something in Shaw’s tone that penetrated what still functioned of Ackroyd’s mind, and he subsided into indignant mutterings. Bloody hell, thought Shaw in anguish, is Gibraltar depending on this poor little bloke?

His mouth set in a thin, tight line which brought his chin up, Shaw drove fast, his foot hard down for most of the way, trying to concentrate his whole mind on the job of sending that Citroen for the frontier; his eyes glared redly ahead through the insect-spattered windscreen. He was away from Algeciras in a flash, headed for the Palmones river. He screamed across the bridge, hurtling along the white ribbon of road that tore away beneath his wheels, shaking up his passengers as he took the bends fast, the vehicles in the opposite traffic lane coming up to him like so many scurrying beetles, then sweeping past him with a momentary whoosh of wind and dropping back into the distance behind.

The countryside sped past, ever-changing—mountains, purple as the sun went down gloriously to set, glimpses of the darkening seas beyond the valleys, fields of corn and forests of cork-oak and the eucalyptus-trees between the Palmones and Guadacorte rivers . . . but, most of all, the great Rock of Gibraltar itself stood out, immense and strong and towering to the eastward for much of the way. In that brilliant sunset the whole Rock glowed a fiery red, the windows of its buildings reflecting back the light in huge pools of spreading flame, just as though the very rock was on fire—was it an omen, that burning redness which enveloped Gibraltar, an omen of the horror to come, a sign?

Shaw forced his mind away from that, concentrated on the road ahead again. But every now and then that magnificent sight would come up before him. And then it was quite dark, and he crashed on behind the twin probing beams of the headlights, never dipping, challenging anyone to stray into his path that night.

The pursuing car was on his tail all the way, its big headlights beaming into his rear window and lighting up the Citroen’s interior like day, sending odd shadows chasing across the windscreen and the roof, vague spears of light which came and went as the following headlights flickered up and down with the sway of the two headlong-rushing vehicles. That car, Don Jaime’s car, seemed neither to gain nor to lose. Shaw wondered what those men intended to do. There were good reasons now why they couldn’t open fire, but they must have something up their sleeves.

Karina sat in a corner, her face quite blank; Debonnair had quietly ripped up some of her own clothing to provide a bandage and tourniquet for Karina’s flesh-wound, which had bled a lot. After that Debonnair kept her revolver pointed at the woman; Karina’s own little jewelled one, together with a knife, had gone out of the window somewhere back by the Palmones river crossing, and some lucky hombre scavenging there one day was going to come into a small fortune. . . . Now and again, as Shaw glanced into his driving-mirror, he saw the odd, appraising looks which Debonnair kept giving Karina sidelong fashion. Shaw smiled rather bitterly to himself; he felt troubled. He knew just what Debonnair must be thinking—after all, whatever she might say to the contrary, it couldn’t be particularly pleasant for her to be sitting alongside a woman who’d been his mistress, and with whom he’d been associated so closely in business and danger as well as pleasure for so long.

His attention went back to those so-near headlights which were still weaving shadows round him—should he get Debonnair to put a shot astern into their tyres? Not yet, anyway—he didn’t want to risk the attention which a running gun-battle would focus on him, not until he’d reached the point he’d already decided on as his bolt-hole out of Spain.

And then things fell into place and he realized what the driver behind him meant to do: wait for him to be stopped at the San Roque control post. When that happened the men would run from their car, guns nicely concealed, and protest to the
carabinero
that Shaw had abducted Karina—a story which Karina would naturally be only too happy to substantiate—or some such yam equally difficult to discredit. And then Ackroyd and Debonnair and he would be arrested. That would be the end.

Very well, then!

They were nearly at the control post now. Shaw called back to Debonnair, “Keep your eyes on Karina, darling. See there’s no funny business as we come up to the post.”

“Okay. What’re you going to do?”

“You’ll see.”

The road from Algeciras took a right-incline towards the busy junction where the control post was situated, where that road and the roads from Malaga and from La Linea converged. After the right-incline, and just before the post itself was reached, the route swung hard right for La Linea and the frontier. Approaching the incline, Shaw put the wheel over gently, and then his foot slammed the accelerator viciously, almost sending it through the boards, and held it there. His teeth clenched tight as the Citroen seemed to take off from the surface, zipping forward, the extra spurt jolting its passengers hard back into the seats. Shaw’s hands gripped the wheel like vices, clenched down hard on the siren, taking the car skilfully and coolly through the traffic.

The big car tore for the control post at the roadside beyond the turn, blaring out in a continuous signal which sent other vehicles scurrying into the sides of the roads as it drew their attention to the hurtling headlights lancing into the night. Then, easing a little for the turn itself, Shaw put the wheel over. The Citroen banked, tilted, reared up on two wheels but took the turn. They held their breath as the wind rushed past them and the car rocked with a horrible light feeling as though it had no substance; and then it bounced back, rocking on its springs now, settling on to the four wheels again. Once more Shaw accelerated, shot past the stream of traffic coming down from the Malaga road, saw the terrified
carabinero
leap for his life, heard the crack of revolvers.

And then he was past, pounding down the road to La Linea and the British lines, the traffic in a mad tangle behind him. Twenty-four thousand lives depended on his using his advantage, and using it well and truly and in time.

The traffic was thicker along the La Linea road, and they couldn’t see for certain whether or not the following car had been stopped at the control post. It seemed rather as though it had at least got bogged down in the melee behind them. Debonnair asked, “How are you going to get through the Customs control at La Linea, darling?”

He grinned almost savagely along the beams of his headlights. “I’m not!” Even if the aduana wasn’t already being alerted from San Roque, the queue of waiting cars—waiting for the routine search and check of documents before passing into the neutral ground, and so to the last point before British territory—would be far too long, and so would the consequent and inevitable delay. He couldn’t risk that, and neither, of course, could he hope to crash that barrier, to drive fast through a pile-up of cars and people at the bottleneck of that narrow stone archway. It wasn’t like the open control of San Roque. However, this was precisely what Shaw had anticipated all the way along, and he’d planned for it.

With no slackening of his onrush, he belted through the speed-trap, overtaking dangerously, headed into the outskirts of La Linea. Very soon he was running along the road which bordered the water, the beach where the fishermen drew up their boats along the northern shores of Algeciras Bay. Standing blackly out in the seascape to his right, Shaw could see the big oiling-hulks—old British tankers now moored out in the Bay and used for fuelling shipping, tiny oases of Britain, outposts of Gibraltar in an alien sea; and, away beyond them, that towering Rock, close now, the lights of the town glimmering below the craggy heights, and the lion-like eminence of the North Front behind the airstrip. And in the Bay and the inner harbour—ships. The evacuation fleet, assembling still.

Shaw was just about half-way along this sector of the road when he yelled, above the engine and the rushing air, “Debbie—hold on tight, and stand by to get out fast!”

Then, as he reached the La Linea end of the beach road, he applied the foot-brake and pushed out the clutch; the car screamed on the road, almost going into a dry skid, tyres protesting, sending up a stink of burning rubber. Shaw released the brake, swung the wheel, swerved violently right, sent the car off the macadam roadway down a narrow stone ramp to grind and flounder over the shingly beach.

His door was open, and his gun was ready, before the car had grated to a stop.

Jumping out, he swung the rear door open. “Out!” he snapped. “Fast as you can, Debbie—no time to waste. Don’t worry about Karina.”

As he spoke his gun was covering Karina; Debonnair bundled out, went round to give Ackroyd a hand. Shaw snapped, “Down to the water—get one of those small boats, push it into the sea, and get Ackroyd aboard. I’ll be down in a tick, but if those blokes catch up meanwhile and anything starts happening you’re not to wait for me, nor try and help —that’s an order.” He looked at her kindly. “The whole of Gibraltar expects you to carry it out, Debbie.” He saw the fearfulness and the hurt in her face, but he went on resolutely, “You’ll row for the nearest hulk, board it, and get the watchman to send a signal to the Tower asking for a powerboat—send the signal as from me. After that you’ll be told what to do and you’ll only have to do it. Got that piece of metal, Deb?”

She nodded. She couldn’t speak.

“Whatever you do, don’t lose it.”

The girl stood there, tears pricking at her eyelids. Shaw heard the sound of the passing cars. It couldn’t be long now. He put a hand on Debonnair’s shoulders. “Get going now, Debbie.”

“All right, darling.” She put out a hand; he took it, pressed it. Hesitated, wanting to take her in his arms once more. Then he gently pushed her and turned away. Debonnair bit on her lip, got hold of Ackroyd, turned, and hurried him down to the edge of the Bay.

Shaw put his head inside the Citroen then. Karina smiled at him bitterly, sardonically. She said, “I suppose you couldn’t tear yourself away without saying good-bye, whatever you have done to me.”

Shaw disregarded the irony. “Know what I’m going to do with you?”

Her eyes were angry, hard. She said coolly, “I imagine you will shoot me—or take me to Gibraltar.”

“Neither, my dear.” There was an almost wistful look on Shaw’s face just then. “I’m going to leave you here, that’s all. You can’t do any more damage now—and I think the Civil Guard will be pleased to see you somehow—after those deaths on the Ronda road—”

“They can’t prove that was me, Esmonde.”

"—and at the moment you’re sitting in what amounts to a stolen car.” He grinned. “Maybe they can’t prove you killed those two guardias, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Also, don’t forget last night.” Shaw knew there was no point in taking Karina back to Gibraltar—she’d only be an embarrassment. All they could do would be to deport her again —since all her business had been conducted on Spanish soil, there was really nothing to hold her on—one could scarcely force an agent into British territory and then have her on an espionage charge, while to charge her with abducting Ackroyd, a British subject, would probably be to defeat the ends of security anyway. There was, though Shaw hardly admitted it to himself, another reason: a sense of chivalry towards a woman he had physically loved. But he knew she couldn’t give anything away because she didn’t know anything more than her Government already knew—and they wouldn’t thank her for spilling any beans to Spain.