Colin Forbes: The Heights of Zervos

Macomber stared back at Gunther's silhouette, moving only his eyes to take in this new source of danger. He was boxed in: observed from a distance and trapped by the soldier below. His eyes swivelled back to his watch. Four minutes to zero and still no way out, not even the ghost of a diversion he could take advantage of. It was his swansong as a British saboteur, the end of his dangerous passage down through the Balkans, a trail not only blazed by the series of devastating explosions which had destroyed vast quantities of strategic war materials – but also a trail which the German Abwehr Intelligence service had followed, often only one step behind him. He weighed up his chances.

With a great deal of luck the Luger in his coat pocket would eliminate the soldier below the wagon, but then there was the German in the signal-box who had apparently noticed nothing amiss, who had left the window while he talked to the signalman again; there was the wire fence he could never hope to climb; and there was the line of Wehrmacht troops posted along the train with instructions to watch that wire, to shoot on sight. His mind raced, estimating possibilities, and his watch raced faster. Three minutes and thirty seconds to go. He had calculated the odds and decided they were loaded impossibly against him. The sound of the car starting up so startled him he almost lost his balance; he hadn't even realized it was there, but now the driver switched on a light inside the vehicle and he saw it parked close to the signal-box on the far side of the wire. A Mercedes. The driver was having trouble firing the motor. A chance in a thousand – but the repeating rattle of the car's engine struggling to fire revived his hopes enormously, stirring the blood inside his half-congealed body as he worked out how to exploit this heaven-sent diversion.

Between the misfires of the numbed engine he heard feet dumping below the wagon as the unseen soldier stamped the ground to bring back the circulation into his frozen system, then the wheezing cough again. The feet began tramping through the snow, moving away from the wagon and over the empty neighbouring track, and Macomber guessed that he was improvising his own sentry-go to neutralize the appalling cold. The open window in the signal-box was still unoccupied as the marching German moved farther away; if only that bloody engine would start, would begin shifting the Mercedes -because stationary the car was useless. His nerves prickled with desperate impatience as the driver tried again and again to wake up the dead motor, and Macomber's prayers were with the driver as he went on struggling to spark life from the sullen engine. The motor caught, ticked over unenthusiastically, died again. God, he'd really thought it was going. He gritted his teeth to prevent them chattering with the cold, stared at the empty window in the signal-box, watched the marching German cross a second track close to the lamp. Another laboured spasm when the car seemed to be going, another false start which faded away – and Macomber suddenly realized that the wheezing German was growing curious about the car because he was marching towards the wire now. Then the engine caught, ticked over, continued ticking as the Scot moved for the first time in ten minutes, breaking the stiffened rigidity of his posture to reach inside his coat pocket and haul out the Luger.

He aimed the Luger, fired once. The car was moving slowly, and he had aimed at the rear window – away from the driver who must remain in control of his vehicle, who must be panicked if the plan was to have any chance of working. The bullet shattered the rear window and its report echoed in the darkness as a voice roared out across the railyard in German. 'He's in that car… on the other side of the wire… Don't let him get away!' The darkness, the falling snow, distorted the direction from which the voice came, but Macomber's bellowed command carried a long distance. Someone opened fire, a burst from a machine-pistol which sprayed the rear of the accelerating Mercedes. A fusillade of shots crackled in the darkness and men ran forward, leaving the train. A German, finding the wire barring his way, shouted a warning, retreated behind the signal-box, threw a grenade, then another. The explosions were bright flashes, muffled assaults on the eardrums, the men were pouring through the hole in the shattered wire, a muddle of field-grey figures rushing past the hooded lamp as men already beyond the wire fired long bursts at the retreating vehicle. The Mercedes was still moving, turning a sharp corner and accelerating afresh when the patrol left behind the wire and vanished into the night.

Macomber wasted no time on the ladder. Levering himself over the side farthest away from the signal-box, he fell heavily in the snow, cushioning his fall by rolling away from the wagon. The shock of the impact was still with him as he forced himself to his feet, glanced quickly in both directions and scrambled under the tanker between its wheels. He emerged from underneath gripping the Luger, and his gaze was fixed on the point of maximum danger – the signal-box. Gunther had taken up position, was leaning out of the window with his rifle, unaffected by the headlong rush away from the railyard.

There's always one who uses his head, Macomber thought grimly as the German leaned out farther, raised his rifle and took swift aim at the blurred shadow moving away from the last petrol wagon. Macomber jerked the Luger high, hoped the damned barrel wasn't blocked with ice from bis fall, steadied the gun and fired. The sound of his shot was drowned in the rattle of firearms beyond the wire as the German flopped over the window ledge, lost his rifle and hung in mid-air, face downwards. Macomber ran towards the wire, ran awkwardly because his legs were still stiff and unwieldy from the long wait, and as he ran he hoped to God the signalman wasn't the courageous type who raised alarms, but from a brief glance at the window he saw no sign of him – he was crouched on the floor between bis levers.

He slowed down to pass through-the tangle of wire and then began running in earnest, running to the left – away from the signal-box and away from the road where the Mercedes had driven off. Behind him, some distance up the yard, dogs were barking excitedly; the other section of the patrol had gone to the front of the train to start a systematic search. He ran slowly but steadily, his eyes growing accustomed to the unlit darkness as he threaded his way between man-high piles of wooden sleepers, ran with his Luger held well forward so he could aim it quickly in case of emergency, but this fringe area of the railyard was deserted and he reached the parked Volkswagen safely. Now to start his own engine. At the sixth attempt the car fired and he paused only to haul off the German army blanket he had draped over bonnet and radiator, stuffing it on the passenger seat before driving away across the snow. The blanket had frozen into a natural canopy and it retained its strange shape as he left the field and drove onto a road which would take him the long way back into Bucharest. Remembering what he had deposited under the petrol train, he pressed his foot down as soon as he reached the road, building up speed dangerously as the wheels whipped over the ice-coated surface. His watch registered thirty seconds beyond zero.

He swore in German, the language he had accustomed himself to speak always, to think in, even to dream in as part of his German cover. Surely all the bloody time fuses couldn't be defective? Or had he gone through all this for nothing? He shivered uncontrollably as he accelerated to even greater speed, gripping the wheel tightly to overcome the tremor. Reaction? Probably. Beyond his headlight beams the flat countryside was a mystery, a realm of darkness which might have contained anything, but from frequent reconnaissance in daylight hours he knew there were only bleak, endless fields stretching away to the Danube. A paling fence rushed towards him, disappeared as he lost speed and started to take a bend, then the skid began. He reacted instinctively, guiding rather than forcing the steering, following the spin while the headlights swept a crazy arc over the snowbound landscape. When he pulled up, by some miracle still on the road, the Volkswagen had swung through one hundred and eighty degrees, so he faced the way he had come at the moment of detonation.