I Spy (22 page)

Looking around (now that he was able to take in where he was, without fear of falling off) he saw there were a lot more houses hereabouts, and quite fancy ones at that. Which
might
mean
that he was now actually not too far from Constantinople. But, considering the state of his ride, the only way he was going to get there was by Shanks’s mare, as Gramps liked to call walking.
Figuring that he’d better get the horse out of sight first, as The Enemy couldn’t be
that
far behind him, he was about to lead it between a couple of houses when a car roared
round the bend.

Trey panicked, not even stopping to see if it actually was The Enemy; this was possibly not the most sensible decision he could have made, but all he wanted to do was keep these men from getting
their hands on him again. Dropping the reins he found a reserve of energy from somewhere and pelted down the road as if his pants were on fire, only moments later to have the car overtake him,
fishtailing wildly as it came to a screeching stop sideways across the road.

Trey stopped, too. It was The Enemy.

Now that the worst had happened he was astonished to find that his mind cleared and he was able to think straight; in that moment the words of Trent Gripp came back to him: “If you
can’t run, the only alternative you’ve got is to stay and fight”.

It was obvious, if you thought about it.

Trey pulled the pistol out from where he’d stuck it in his belt and aimed it at the bearded man getting out of the driver’s side of the car. “Drop it!” he ordered, as the
man turned to look at him, his eyes momentarily flicking down at the pistol, registering that it was one of his own Lugers.

“I do not have a gun.” The man held his palms out.

“Hands up, then!” Trey stared at the man standing there, smiling at him as if they were having a polite conversation. Stared at his face, seeing the shape of it under his beard, and
not quite believing it...imagining what his hair would look like if it wasn’t brilliantined.

“Give that to me,
Junge
.
Bitte
.”

The man’s voice brought Trey back. “No – what d’you think I am, stupid?”

“I do not. I think you have proved you are no
dummkopf
, so I also think that you will see that now is the time to stop this.”

“Who are you?” Trey spoke before he could stop himself; he really didn’t need to ask: he was the man in the pictures Evren had taken. The man who
wasn’t
his
father.

“Give me the gun, before you get hurt.”

“Before
I
get hurt?” Trey shook his head in slightly overdramatic disbelief. “
You’re
the one looking at the wrong end of a bullet, Mr. Gessler.”

Trey was heartened to see that the mention of his name had stopped the man in his tracks and made him think twice.

“It seems you know somehow
far
too much for your own good.” Gessler’s eyes narrowed, and he snapped his fingers in irritation. “I have not got the time, or the
inclination, to discuss this any further – Viktor...”

Trey began to retreat as he saw the blond man get out of the car, holding an evil-looking sub-machine gun. The thought that this was not what you would call fair play fleetingly crossed
Trey’s mind as he wondered if
now
was the moment when he should shoot first and ask questions later, like his personal hero, Trent Gripp. Before he could make his mind up as to what he
should do, a dusty Citroën squealed to a halt, its driver leaning on his horn because the road was blocked and he seemed to be in something of a hurry to get past.

And then the weirdest thing happened...Trey heard his name being called.

He squinted at the car, the sun glinting on its windshield making it impossible to see who was inside – until Ahmet’s head popped out, followed by Evren’s and Christina’s
from behind him, and finally a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses appeared out of the taxi, a gun in his hand.

“Don’t worry, son,” the man said, in a voice that shocked Trey rigid.

“
Pops?
” Trey whispered to himself, thinking he must be dreaming, that any minute he’d wake up and find himself in his bed at the Pera Palas...until reality bit and
Gessler, moving like greased lightning, roughly grabbed him, snatching the pistol. And he found himself with a barrel pressed, hard, against the side of his head.

“Let him go, Colonel Gessler.” T. Drummond MacIntyre II kept what Trey could see was really quite a small pistol pointed somewhere between the two armed men he was facing, one of
whom had taken his son prisoner while the other was pointing quite a
large
sub-machine gun back at him. “He’s not a part of this.”

“I think you will find that, as my hostage, he is,” Gessler said, his grip tightening on Trey’s shoulder. “Who are you, anyway?”

Trey watched as his father took off the hat that was shading his face, putting it on the hood of Ahmet’s taxi, and removed his dark glasses. “T. Drummond MacIntyre II, at your
service,” he said.

“
Gott in Himmel!
” Trey glanced sideways and saw the blond man pointing, open-mouthed, at his father. “
Er ist Ihr Doppelgänger, Herr Oberst
– he looks
just like you!”

“Quiet! Keep him covered...” Trey thought Gessler sounded rattled, but the gun remained jammed hard against his head. “Explain this situation
immediately
, or I shall
shoot the boy.”

All eyes were on the drama unfolding, everyone’s focus on the deadly triangle. As the seconds ticked by anyone could, if they had not been concentrating so hard, have heard life elsewhere
carrying on as if nothing was happening (and, this being the case, it explained why nobody noticed Arthur Stanhope-Leigh’s surreptitious exit from Ahmet’s taxi, or heard him slink
oh-so-very-quietly behind it, allowing him the opportunity to line up his shot, take aim and fire a smooth pebble at the man with the sub-machine gun).

It was, all things considered, a cracking shot, which had the desired effect of laying Viktor Becht out cold as a fish.

As Arthur’s target keeled over, his machine gun dropping to the ground with a loud clatter, Trey felt the grip on his shoulder loosen as, without thinking, Gessler turned to see what had
occurred. Knowing that this was his now-or-never moment, Trey wrenched himself free, swung round and kicked out at his captor’s leg for all he was worth; like the title of a Trent Gripp short
story put it:
Second Thoughts Are For Losers!

“
Kleines Miststück! Was die...
” Gessler staggered sideways, grimacing, but aiming steady and straight at Trey, who reckoned he now knew what it felt like when your number
was well and truly up.

Trey saw the man’s finger tighten on the trigger...but there was no bang, no smoke, the gun did not fire. And then he realized why: the safety was still on! Opportunities, he knew, had to
be taken, grabbed with both hands before they disappeared. Which, leaping forward like a torpedo, is what Trey did to the gun barrel, the element of surprise allowing him to twist the Luger right
out of Gessler’s hands as they both fell to the ground.

Exactly how he did it Trey wasn’t quite sure, as it was all a blur, but he found himself, gun in hand and the tables well and truly turned. He made a show of pushing the safety catch to
“off”.

“I said ‘hands up’, mister.”

Later, when he looked back, Trey found that he didn’t really remember very much. At least not in any kind of order that made much sense. The main thing that came to mind
was that his father was there, taking charge (and toting a gun!) and there was a distinct feeling that it was all over.

The next thing, after Gessler and his flunkey had been tied up, it was like a party had started and he was the VIP guest. His father was hugging him like he’d
never
done before, his
back was being patted (more like thudded) and someone was mussing up his hair; he saw faces flash in front of him – Neyla and Evren, Christina and Arthur, and Ahmet, who had a grin so wide it
looked like he was going to split his face in half – and he couldn’t
ever
recollect feeling so alive.

It was hard to believe, but he had done
exactly
what he’d set out to do when he’d escaped from the hotel: he had found his father! Or quite possibly his father had found him,
but who was going to split hairs at a time like this?

EPILOGUE

T
rey felt he was trying to do a
huge
jigsaw puzzle that had no picture on the box to help him put all the pieces in the right place. That,
of course, was always the trouble when you were a kid (even one who had somehow managed to escape the clutches of a dastardly German spymaster). Because, no matter what people told you, you always
suspected they weren’t telling you
every
thing. And exactly how fair was that?

Not very, in his opinion.

To add to the day’s surprises (from his point of view, mainly his pop looking like he knew how to handle a gat), Arthur’s father and his men had then turned up – with Baba Duan
in tow – which was kind of an out-of-the-blue moment. It worked out that they’d actually left Constantinople
before
Ahmet, but there’d apparently been a puncture and
changing the tyre had developed into “a bit of a job”, according to the grease-and-dirt-covered, not-very-happy driver.

They’d eventually arrived to find the situation pretty much under control (Gessler and his blond-haired sidekick were trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys, as was the Russian in the back
of Ahmet’s car – a guy Trey thought he recognized as one of the men who’d been following his father). He assumed Arthur’s dad would be pleased that the job was done and
dusted, so he was a tad taken aback when Mr. Stanhope-Leigh appeared to be less than best pleased with his father. But then he discovered that his father had not only “disobeyed instructions
of the utmost clarity”, to quote, but also taken Arthur and Christina with him when he left the house.
And
let them get “unneccessarily involved in his mercifully successful
dealings with the Russians”. Also to quote.

Considering what a twerp he’d thought Arthur was when they’d first been introduced, Trey now judged him to be one of
the
most stand-up joes he’d
ever
met –
and not simply for beaning the blond, machine gun-carrying German. He’d also tried to take all the heat, and get his sister and Trey’s dad off the hook, by insisting it was all his idea
that he take them with him. The guy was definitely the bee’s knees!

Baba Duan had also been more than a little ticked off with Evren, but only because he’d forgotten to take his camera with him and thereby lost “the opportunistic moment of a
lifetime”, as he put it, to snap some possibly very historic pictures – which would no doubt have been quite profitable as well.

And while he was
kind of
interested in the ins and outs of what the Gessler character had been up to (apart from noticing that he was wearing a pretty slick false beard, he’d been
too busy telling the others what had happened to him since they’d last all been together to pay much attention) what he
really
wanted to know was
how come his father looked EXACTLY
like the German spy guy?
What was
that
all about, “Pater”?

But his father had so far been too busy (surprise, surprise) to explain anything to him. And so here he was, kicking his heels in the lounge of their suite, waiting to go down to the
hotel’s restaurant for dinner. Which was, he had to say, something of an anticlimax after all he’d recently been through.

“Trey, could you come in here a moment?”

Trey looked up from the issue of
Black Ace
that he wasn’t really reading and saw his father at the study door; he dropped the magazine on the chesterfield. “Sure,
Pops.”

His father ushered him into the room. “Sit down, son.”

Trey lowered himself into a chair, feeling, the way things seemed to be going, as if he was about to be given a serious talking-to, but for the life of him unable to think of what he
might’ve done to deserve it. And then there was his father, sort of casually perched on the edge of the desk, which didn’t quite fit the picture either...

“I think I, um...I think I owe you an explanation, Trey.”

Trey looked up from examining his toecaps. “You do?”

“I know this holiday was
supposed
to be time that we would spend together, and I’m afraid it really hasn’t turned out that way, has it?” Trey shrugged and shook
his head. “Before we go downstairs, I’d just like to explain a couple of things about circumstances which weren’t
entirely
under my control.”

“Like what? I mean I
know
you’ve had to do the business stuff and all...”

“Well, I admit there
has
been a lot of business, but, since Paris, most of it was
not
of the kind I normally do. You recall that rather grand place we stayed in just outside
Inverness, up in Scotland?”

Trey nodded; “rather grand” hardly described it, the place was a
castle
and staying there had been something of a high point in an otherwise dull-so-far trip. I mean, the
joint had swords on the walls, a couple of suits of armour and
battlements
!

“Something happened while we were there.”

“What?”

“Someone I’d never met before thought they recognized me.”

“You never told me that.” Trey sat up straighter. “Who was it?”

“A dinner guest...it’s quite possible you never even saw him. And it wasn’t until we went down to London that
I
found out; as a matter of fact, it was the day you went
to the zoo with the Hunter family.”

“And you were supposed to turn up later, and didn’t.” Trey couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice; this had been an outing his father had
promised
to come
on and then, kind of typically, at the last moment he’d not been available.

“I know, but there was a good reason, Trey.”

“What?”

“I got some visitors, including the man who thought he knew who I was. He asked, very politely, if ‘I would mind terribly accompanying these gentlemen’.” T. Drummond
MacIntyre II, to his son’s great delight, pulled off a not half bad English accent.