The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [96]
“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.
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