VI
“You almost got us killed over a damn cat?” McClain’s voice was a barely subdued roar.
“He was sitting in the middle of the drive. I couldn’t just run over him.”
“Those aren’t play bullets, you know. Those are real bad guys and they really would like to kill us.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”
“I can’t believe any rational human being would stop for a damn cat. …”
Clara ignored this mutter and concentrated on driving. The twisty road opened out onto a two-lane blacktop. She barely paused at the stop sign; the van’s wheels spun as she pulled out. Every few seconds she glanced in the rearview mirror. McClain had said that they would be followed. What was taking them so long?
“Where do you think you’re going, anyway?”
Clara looked over at him, surprised. The darkness was kind to his bruised and battered face, but he was certainly no better looking than she had thought him at first meeting. With his square, pugnacious jaw distorted, a swelling the
size of one of her fists just below his ear and an ugly looking gash the size of her middle finger behind it, a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth and a dark purple circle surrounding one bright green eye, he looked like he had been made up for Halloween. Only Clara knew that the marks were not makeup.
“Home,” she said, surprised that he should even ask. Then, thinking about it, she was surprised again at her own slow-wittedness. The drug they had sprayed her with must be having some residual effect. Of course she could not go home. If Rostov had sought her out twice, once at the home of the county sheriff, she was not safe anywhere. The thought was frightening.
“Dumb idea, huh?”
He nodded. “They’ll be looking for us. We’ll have to hide.”
“Explain something to me. If they had you, why did they want me?”
“The only thing that was keeping me alive was the idea that I might have passed on to a few people some information I have. Rostov didn’t dare kill me until he found out who I might have talked to. They tried to torture the information out of me. When that didn’t work, they decided to bring you in and see if I could stomach watching them kill my girlfriend by degrees. They were gambling that I couldn’t. But either way they would have killed us both.”
“I’m not your girlfriend.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Her voice and the eyes she turned to him were suddenly despairing. “It doesn’t matter that I never saw you before in my life until you popped up in that field and scared the life out of me. It doesn’t matter that I have absolutely nothing to do with whatever you’re
involved in. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know anything about anything. They want to kill me anyway, because of you. It isn’t fair!”
“Life isn’t fair.” His calm rejoinder set her temper to sizzling. She glowered at him, then switched her attention back to the road. He was right: life wasn’t fair. If it was, Rostov would have made hamburger of him long before she’d become involved in this nonsense.
“What’s that?”
A dull roar prompted her question. McClain frowned, then his eyes widened and he looked out the van window.
“Holy shit,” he said. “They’ve got a helicopter. Hit it, would you?”
Even as Clara took a quick, instinctive look out her window, the spotlight picked them out of the darkness and the copter swooped until it was flying just above and behind the van. Stepping on the gas for all she was worth, Clara concentrated on keeping the van on the twisting road. Driving at such speed under the conditions was suicide—but so was doing anything else.
The spotlight beaming down on them made it impossible for her to see the helicopter’s occupants, but from her recent experience with Rostov and his thugs Clara did not doubt that they had guns. She was right, and ducked reflexively as a hail of bullets strafed the van.
“Oh my God!”
Head still lowered so that her eyes just peeped over the steering wheel, she stood on the accelerator. The van tore down the road. McClain, hampered by his handcuffs, was practically thrown out of the seat. Cursing a blue streak, he kept his head down and watched the helicopter’s progress through the passenger side mirror.
“Turn right!”
“Where?”
“Here!”
Clara barely saw the narrow road that cut through a swathe of trees. But she swung the wheel for all she was worth. The van stood on two wheels as it obeyed her. Then they were passing safely under the overhanging branches, protected from the helicopter—for the moment. Clara barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before the van was shooting out into the open again.
The helicopter’s spotlight found them. Clara had to fight the urge to close her eyes as it dived around them like a demented seagull. It was swooping after them, bullets smacking into the pavement and the dirt on either side of the road. A bullet smashed through the roof to ricochet through the interior. Clara and McClain ducked simultaneously. The bullet whined over McClain’s head to smash through the window on his side.
“Oh my God!”
For just a moment they were safe beneath another group of trees. But then they were in the open again. This time the helicopter swooped and dived at the van’s roof. Its runners scraped against the metal over Clara’s head. She cringed, stomping down on the accelerator so hard that the van’s wheels were barely touching the narrow, dark road. The speedometer needle climbed past seventy. The left rear wheel hit gravel at the side of the road, and for a moment Clara thought that it was all over. But with a desperate swing of the wheel she managed to right the van, although her correction sent it careening amidst a spray of gravel down the wrong side of the road.
“The object of this is for us to end up alive,” McClain said through clenched teeth when Clara finally had the van in the right lane again. “The
KGB
doesn’t want us dead at
this point, remember They want to take us alive so they can find out if I’ve told anyone what I know. Just keep calm, and try not to run off the road. Wrecking the van is the worst thing we can do.”
“Keep calm!” Clara wanted to laugh hysterically, but she was too busy trying to get away from the swooping helicopter. It dove in front of the van, its runners nearly touching the pavement. Clara stood on the brakes, then at a shout from McClain tromped on the accelerator again and headed straight toward it through a hail of gunfire.
For a moment it looked as though the copter and the van would collide. Clara shut her eyes and kept the gas pedal pressed to the floor. There was a curse from McClain, a whooshing sound, and then she opened her eyes to find that they were safe under more overhanging trees. At the last minute, the helicopter had lifted out of the way.
“Do me a favor,” he said, sounding as though his calm tone was costing him an effort. “Next time we play chicken, keep your eyes open, will you?”
Then they were out in the open again, briefly, so that the helicopter only had time to swoop once before the van shot under the protection of more trees. This time there seemed to be a lot of them. Clara felt some of the tension ease from her body. They were safe for the next couple of minutes, at least.
As far as she could tell through the enveloping darkness, the road wound up the side of a wooded hill. It was a two-lane blacktop. She only hoped that they didn’t meet anything coming the other way.
“Cut the lights.”
McClain sounded tense, but in control. Clara looked at him. Surely he didn’t expect her to drive this unfamiliar narrow country road in pitch darkness? His expression was
unreadable, but his green eyes glittered as they met hers. He looked vibrantly alive, she thought. With a sense of shock she realized he was enjoying this! The knowledge scared her even more than she had been.
“Did you hear me? I said cut the lights!”
There was an edge to his voice this time. She thought, this is a dangerous man.
Then, on the verge of an acute attack of hysteria, she doused the lights. Immediately the darkness enshrouded them. Clara could no longer see the road. Instinctively she hit the brakes. The van slowed its precipitous rush with a squeal and a sideways skid. By the time it straightened out, she was—just barely—able to see the road again. Keeping the van at a crawl, she cast a quick, shaken look at him.
“Who are you anyway—James Bond?”
Despite the bravado she tried to inject into it, the question had a squeaky note. He looked over at her, unsmiling. Funny, she was getting to know him better than she wanted to. She was able to recognize that unrelenting look. It was the one he had worn the night before in the tobacco field. When he had held the gun to her head.
“Something like that.”
“You’re telling me you’re a spy?” Her voice rose two octaves on the last word. James Bond existed only in the movies. Even real life spies—and she knew that they existed—she read the newspapers, but not in Virginia, for God’s sake!—were sort of glorified gossipmongers and pencil pushers. All that James Bond stuff was so much fiction. She knew that. Didn’t she?
“Agent.”
“Oh my God.” That seemed to be all she could say. Driving along the dark, twisty road with a man who scared the daylights out of her when she thought about it, praying
that the overhead branches would shield them from the helicopter, Clara felt she was caught up in a nightmare. Real life wasn’t like this. At least, not in Virginia.
“Look, suppose I get out here and let you go on by yourself? I really don’t want to be involved in this.”
His eyes gleamed catlike through the darkness as he looked at her.
“You
are
involved in it. And you can’t get out of it just by walking away. Rostov will never let up until he has both of us, and as we’ve both learned, he’s good at finding people. Besides, I can’t drive with these damned handcuffs On.”
“That’s hardly my problem.” She was short on sympathy at the moment. This man was likely to get her killed, and she didn’t even know him. Didn’t know anything about him. Didn’t
want
to know anything about him. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry if it puts you out, but I’m driving straight to the nearest police station. After that, you’re on your own. Tell them anything you like, I won’t say anything about you being a spy, but I’m not going to be involved in this any longer. It’s dangerous.”
“Look, lady—Cora, whatever your name is—”
“Clara!”
“Clara. Whether you like it or not, you
are
involved in this. Going to the police is out. There is no one you can trust. No one. Do you understand?”
“No, I do not.” Clara felt better now that she had made a decision. “The Virginia State Police are in no way involved with the KGB, if it’s even the
KGB
who’s after us and not some sort of crooks you ripped off in some sort of dope deal or something. Not that I care,” she added hastily, not wanting him to get the idea that he had to kill her to silence
her. “You do what you want, but that’s where this van and I are headed. To the police.”
“Oh no you’re not.”
“You can’t stop me! I saved your life! Besides, you can’t drive. Remember the handcuffs?”
Fear made her voice shrill. He looked at her for a moment through the darkness, his eyes glittering. Then she heard him take a breath. When he spoke, his voice was low and harsh.
“You don’t trust me. Fair enough. I probably wouldn’t believe this myself. Let’s take it point by point, shall we? Reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet. My agency ID is in there.”
Hesitating, casting a long, considering look at him, Clara finally did as she was told. Her hand touched the hard muscle of his lower back—he had gestured to the left rear pocket of the faded jeans that fit him like a second skin—and drew back instinctively. She did not like touching him, even for so straightforward a reason. There was something … sexual about it. He was too male. Primitive male force seemed to emanate from his pores. And she had reason to know that he could be violently aggressive. No, touching him wasn’t a safe thing to do. But she wanted very much to look at his ID to see if he was telling the truth about this whole misadventure being tied up with the government, at least. So she forced her hand to slide inside his pocket and extract the flat leather wallet she found there.
“Flip on the overhead light,” he directed. She did. Keeping one eye on the road, she nevertheless managed a thorough look at the wallet’s contents: a reasonable amount of cash, a MasterCard, American Express and a Sears charge card, a picture of a very pretty blonde woman slightly thinner than herself, his Maryland driver’s license,
and the
ID
card that proclaimed him one John Thomas McClain, employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Both the driver’s license and the
CIA
card bore identical photos of the man sitting beside her: There was no mistake. She flipped the wallet shut, tucked it back inside the breast pocket of his black sweatshirt, and turned off the overhead light, all without a word. She could feel him looking at her, but she steadfastly refused to look at him again. Funny, the knowledge that he worked for her own government should have made her feel safer, but it didn’t.
“Look, Clara. I know you’re scared, and you’re right to be scared. The people who are after us—us, not just me—are killers. You think you’ll be safe with the police. And you’d be right, if it were only the
KGB
we were dealing with. The chances of a state police trooper being a mole are remote. But ask yourself this: would the police turn you over to the FBI or the
CIA
or any one of the other federal agencies? Yes, they would. In a minute. And in due course you would find yourself facing exactly the same situation we just escaped from. Because there is a Soviet mole at a high level in the U.S. Intelligence service, and until he’s identified and exposed he will be using every bit of his considerable muscle to have us found and eliminated. To the agency we are very likely already the bad guys on the mole’s say-so. We could be killed by our own side just as easily as by Rostov. Do you understand now?” There was a pause. Then Clara said, “You’re exaggerating.” “Am I? Do you really want to risk your life to find out?” He had a point. Clara, glaring impotently out the window into the shifting darkness through which they were driving, conceded it.