The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [93]
“Not on these roads.”
“Okay. Just keep going. Doesn’t look like a police car. I wonder …”
“Franz!” Fischer said suddenly.
“All set for a little hijacking operation, you mean?”
“Why not?”
“He could have done that better last night when he had us in the van,” said Miller.
“I’m not so sure,” said Harper. “He might have figured that it would be safer to wait until we were all outside the city.”
“But Franz didn’t know this end of the plan,” Miss Lipp objected.
“If he put a tail on you,” Fischer said, “he could have guessed.”
“Well we’ll soon find out,” Harper said grimly. “There are only two of them in that car. If it’s Franz we’re dealing with, that probably means that he’s set up an ambush somewhere ahead with his other two mugs. That makes five. We only have three guns, so we’d better take care of this lot first. We’ll pick a spot with some trees and then pull off the road. Okay?”
“May I look round at this car?” I asked.
“Why?”
“To see if I recognize it.”
I knew that I had to do something. If they started shooting at Turkish security agents, Turkish security agents were going to start shooting back—and they weren’t going to stop to ask questions or worry about who got hit.
“Okay,” he said; “but make it casual.”
I looked back.
“Well?” he asked.
“I don’t recognize the brown one,” I said; “but there’s another one behind it, a gray Opel.”
“That’s right,” Miss Lipp said; “it’s been there some time. But so what? The road’s too narrow for passing.”
“I’m almost sure it was outside that garage yesterday afternoon.” I tried to sound like a really worried man. It wasn’t very difficult.
“There are many gray Opels,” Miller said.
“But not with such a very long radio aerial. That is why I noticed it.”
Harper had swiveled the mirror again and was peering into it. “You’d better look, too, Leo,” he said grimly. “See the antenna?”
Miller looked and swore. “It could be a coincidence,” he said.
“Could be. Do you want to take a chance on it?”
“No,” said Fischer.
“I agree,” said Miller; “but what do we do about them?”
Harper thought for a moment. Then he asked: “How much farther to Corlu?”
“About three kilometers,” Miss Lipp answered.
“Then he must have it set up somewhere between Corlu and Edirne.”
“So?”
“So, instead of turning left at Corlu and going to Edirne, we change our plans and turn right.”
“But that would take us back to Istanbul,” Miller objected.
“Not all the way,” Harper said; “only as far as the airport and the first plane out.”
“Leaving the car behind?” asked Miss Lipp.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. We’ll all be able to buy fleets of Lincolns when we cash in this pile of chips.”
Suddenly they were all smiles again.
I tried to think. It was barely seven-thirty and the run from Corlu to the Istanbul Airport at Yesilköy would take little more than an hour. It was Wednesday, which meant that the Treasury Museum would normally stay closed until the following day. Unless the big brain had already started working, or unless Tufan had decided to stop uncovering nonexistent terrorist plots and let the police know what was going on, there was every chance that, within a couple of hours, Harper and the rest would be out of the country. In that case, if anyone were going to stop them it would have to be me. The question was: Did I want to stop them? Why didn’t I just go along with them and collect my two thousand dollars?
I was still tired and confused or I would have remembered that there could be only one answer to that—my passport was not valid and an airline would not carry me. But instead of the answer, another stupid question came into my mind; and, stupidly, I asked it.
“Am I included in this?”
Harper turned right round in his seat to face me, and gave me the cold, unpleasant smile I liked least.
“Included, Arthur? Why? Did you have something else in mind—like making a quick deal with Franz, for instance, or even the police?”
“Of course not. I just wanted to be certain.”
“Well, that makes five