Eric Ambler - The light of day

And then Miss Lipp began to worry again about the Peugeot and the Opel.

“They’re still tailing us,” she said. “I don’t get it. Franz must have guessed where we’re heading for by now. What does he think he’s going to do?”

“Supposing it isn’t Franz?” Miller said suddenly.

“If it isn’t Franz, who is it?” Fischer demanded irritably. “They can’t be police or they would have stopped us. Could it be Giulio?”

“That is an imbecile suggestion,” Miller retorted. “Giulio is of our company. You are not. If you were, you would not say such a stupid thing.”

I have a unique capacity for self-destruction. I said, helpfully: “Perhaps it is Franz. Perhaps he thinks that we are going back to the villa. If we were, we would still be on this road.”

Harper looked back. “When will he know better, Arthur?”

“Not until we turn right for the airport.”

“How far is the turn-off?”

“About six miles.”

“How far then?”

“A mile and a half.”

He looked at Miss Lipp. “Do you think you could lose them so that they wouldn’t see us make the turn?”

“I could try.”

The Lincoln surged forward. Seconds later I saw the red speedometer needle swing past the ninety mark.

Harper looked back. After a minute, he said: “Leaving them cold.”

“We’re going too fast for this road” was all she said. It didn’t seem to be worrying her unduly, though. She passed two cars and a truck going in the same direction as if they were standing still.

I already knew that I had made a bad mistake, and did my best to retrieve it. “There’s a bridge a mile or so ahead,” I warned her. “The road narrows. You’ll have to slow down for that.”

She didn’t answer. I was beginning to sweat. If the surveillance cars lost us, that was really the end as far as I was concerned.

She beat a convoy of army trucks to the bridge by fifty yards. On the other side, the road wound a little and she had to slow down to seventy; but when I looked back there wasn’t a car in sight. As she braked hard and turned right onto the airport road, Harper chuckled.

“For that extra ounce of get-up-and-go,” he announced facetiously, “there is nothing, but nothing, like a Lincoln Continental.”

There’s nothing like feeling a complete bloody half-wit either. When we drew up outside the airport building, my legs were quivering like Geven’s lower lip.

Miller was out of the car and into the building almost before the car had stopped. Miss Lipp and Harper followed while Fischer and I handed the bags inside the car, mine included, to a porter.

I couldn’t help looking back along the airport approach road and Fischer noticed. He smiled at my lily-livered anxiety.

“Don’t be afraid. They are on their way to Sariyer by now.”

“Yes.” I knew that at least one of them would be; but I also knew that the men in the cars were not incompetent. When they failed to pick up the Lincoln again, the second car would turn back and try the airport road. How long would it take them to get the idea, though? Five minutes? Ten?

Harper came out of the building and hurried to the car.

“There’s an Air France jet to Rome,” he said. “Seats available. Boarding in twenty minutes. Let’s get moving.”

I drove to the car park, a chain-fenced area just off the loop of road in front of the building and beyond the taxi rank. There were only a few cars already there and, on Harper’s instructions, I backed into an empty space between two of them.

“Where is the screwdriver?” Fischer asked.

“On the floor.” I was still backing the car and could see that he was already searching for it.

“It must have rolled under one of the seats,” Harper said impatiently. “Okay, Arthur, that’ll do. Let’s get the doors open so we can see.”

I pulled up, got out, and immediately began trying to peer under the seats. With a Lincoln there is not much to see. The seats are snug against the floor.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Harper said angrily. Suddenly he grabbed at my jacket. “You must have put it in your pocket.” He started slapping them to find out.

“I put it on the floor.”

“Well, it isn’t there now,” Fischer said.

Harper glanced at his watch. “It must have been pulled out with the baggage.”

“Shall I go back and look?”

“No, get one out of the tool kit.”

“There isn’t one there,” Fischer said. “I noticed that before.”

“Okay, see if it’s on the ground back there.” As Fischer hurried off, Harper looked at the next car to us, a Renault, and tried the front doors. They were locked, of course. Then he tried the front luggage compartment. To my horror, it opened. The next moment he had a tool roll in his hand and was taking a screwdriver from it.

He grinned. “If the owner comes back, we’ll buy it off him as a souvenir,” he said, and quickly went to work on the door panel of the Lincoln.

I was utterly desperate or I could never have done what I did; but as I stood there gaping at him I became aware of the sound of the engine running. I hadn’t finished backing the car into line with the others when he had made me stop. Then I had simply forgotten to switch off.

The door to the driver’s seat was open and so were both back doors. He was crouched over the panel of the right-hand one on the opposite side of the car from me.

I glanced at the car-park entrance to make sure that Fischer wasn’t coming back; and then I moved. I went to the door by the driver’s seat, leaned across it as if I were going to switch off the engine, and looked across the back of the seat.

Harper was bending down to undo one of the screws by the hinge.

I slid into the driver’s seat gently so as not to rock the car, and eased the transmission lever from “Park” to “Drive.” The car gave a slight jerk. At the same moment I stamped on the accelerator.

I heard a thump as the door sent him flying, then I spun the wheel and was heading for the car-park entrance.

About twenty feet from it, I jammed on the brakes and the two rear doors swung shut with a slam. Through the rear window I could see Harper scrambling to his feet. As I closed the door beside me I accelerated again and went through onto the road. A moment later I was halfway round the loop. Another car ahead slowed me for a moment. In the driving mirror I saw Harper running towards the taxi rank. I leaned on the horn ring and the car in front swerved. Then I was out of the loop and on the approach road.

I had gone about a mile when the Opel passed me going in the opposite direction. I waved frantically, but kept on going. I didn’t care whether they thought I’d gone mad or not. All I wanted was to get away from Harper.

I went on driving fast towards Istanbul until I saw in the mirror that the Opel was behind me. Only then did I stop.

It wasn’t my fault that they took all that time to catch up with me.

“The Director is not pleased with you,” Tufan informed me.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him what the Director could go and do to himself; but I managed to keep my temper. “You got the stuff back,” I reminded him sharply; “you have the names and descriptions of the people who took it. You know what was done and how it was done. What more do you want?”

“The woman and the three men,” he snapped.

The nerve of it! “It wasn’t I who let them get on that plane to Rome,” I said.

“It was your stupidity that did. If you hadn’t panicked, if you had stopped immediately when you saw the Opel instead of driving off like a madman, they would be in prison now. As it was, they got a close enough look at my men to realize their mistake. We had had no information from you. By the time we were able to re-establish contact with you, naturally they had gone.”