Yep. He was the brains of the two all right. And experienced at this kind of thing, whatever this kind of thing was.
‘You’re not going to shoot me because of a bad choice of footwear?’ I said.
‘People have been shot for less.’
Yeah, I thought. But it’s not me that’s made the bad choice of footwear.
The world dimmed a little. And not because of my mood. The Highlands of Scotland were notoriously mercurial. A bright, sunny day could turn into a deadly snowstorm, a blinding fog or rain to make your head bleed without any warning. I could see a dark seething of clouds and the dark shafts of heavy rain rolling in from the far end of the valley, moving up in the direction of the village. Even where we were, a milky sheet of high cloud suffused and dulled the winter sun. The rain would have been a huge advantage to me, but I’d be in the car and long gone before it got this far up the valley.
I was running out of options. I scanned as much of the valley as I could without moving my head: measuring the distance to the car, the narrow, rough path leading to it, the steep flank of the valley rising up to my right, impossible to scale in any haste, and the equally steep slope on the left, down into the river. However I looked at it, I was a sitting duck.
But if I got into that car, I’d be a dead one.
I saw a vehicle on the other side of the valley, quite a ways back, heading towards the village. I kept walking. Then I decided to see how far Blondy’s obliging nature would extend.
‘Listen,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘Could you do me a favour?’
‘What?’ he asked, neither patient or impatient.
‘Could you grab hold of this?’
I spun round, swinging the rucksack and let it go so that it flew hard in his direction. Instinct told him to protect himself rather than take aim, but only for the tiniest shaving of a second. I used that tiny moment well. I made no attempt to run. Instead I half-dropped, half-threw myself forwards and sideways, my injured shoulder thumping painfully onto the grass. Then I rolled. After the first couple of rolls Isaac Newton did the rest and I bounced and tumbled down the slope towards the valley bottom. I slowed with the decreasing incline and somehow found myself running, my feet splashing in shallow water, then deeper water up to my knees, my boots slipping on the current-smoothed rocks on the river bed. I didn’t even take the time to look over my shoulder.
I heard Blondy shout for me to stop, which, even in my panic, struck me as one of the most redundant and stupid commands to issue, other than to ask me to stand still so he could get a better shot. I heard two cracks in quick succession and then the sound of bullets hitting the water and ricocheting off the rocks. But they were some way off.
He shouted again, and again two rounds zipped harmlessly into the river. I was splashing my way through fast-flowing, knee-deep water which slowed me to walking pace. The next rounds, I guessed, were going to hit me. But he didn’t fire again.
I allowed myself one desperate look behind me. Blondy was coming down the slope towards the river – I guessed to get a better shot at me – but his smooth leather soles were causing him to skid and slip all over the place. Curly was lumbering behind him – far behind him – and didn’t represent any danger. A third man had gotten out of the car and was charging towards the river. He was tall and in a dark coat and even from this distance I recognized him as the boss of the men at Larry Franks’s place.
I kept running. I was out of the river, racing across the river’s edge and then scrambling up the bank to the road, grabbing handfuls of turf to haul myself up.
I made it onto the roadway just as the car I had seen drew close. I recognized it as the mud-splattered Land Rover I saw the day before. The driver was a man in his fifties. He stared at me, shocked.
‘Did I see these men shoot at you?’ he said.
‘I need your help. Can you get me out of here?’
‘Get in …’ he said. And I did.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
‘What the hell is going on?’ the Land Rover driver asked, looking across me and down into the valley.
‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘The most important thing is we get out of here.’
‘It’s a long story for the police,’ he said. ‘As soon as I get you to my place, that’s exactly who I’m calling.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ I said. I was too shaken up to argue or spin some line to cover why I couldn’t have any dealings with the Stirlingshire Constabulary or the Highland Cow Squad or whoever the hell ran law and order around here. The important thing was I was in a car and my pursuers weren’t.
‘You maybe want to turn around,’ I said. ‘They’re parked at the other side of the village. If we keep going this way we’ll run into them.’
‘Leave this to me, young man,’ he said. We headed straight for the village, then suddenly swung to the right at an almost concealed entrance and up a narrow tarmacked lane.
I laughed.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Do you live in the big house?’
‘Yes I do, as a matter of fact. Why? What’s so funny about that?’
‘Not so much funny as ironic. I thought you were the Apaches but turns out you’re the cavalry.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t—’
‘Never mind, sir,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am to get your help.’ I twisted round in my seat, bounced along by the minimal suspension of the Land Rover, checking out of the rear window.
‘No one there?’ my benefactor asked.
‘No one there. But I have to tell you, in a place as small as this, it isn’t going to take them long to find us.’
‘Like I said, you leave this all to me.’
We pulled in through the gates of Collieluth House and the Land Rover ground to a halt on the stone-chipped driveway.
‘Come on …’ he said urgently and led me into the house, the front door of which had been left unlocked.
We entered a huge entrance hallway, walnut-lined and smelling of leather, polished wood and feudalism. He bustled me into what I guessed was the drawing room. Again ‘baronial’ wasn’t a style, it was the reality of the place. This was the hub and tiller of a whole rural community.
‘Wait here …’ he commanded. Commanding seemed to come naturally to him.
He went back out into the hall, leaving the drawing room door open, picked up the telephone and dialled two numbers.
‘It’s the Major,’ he said. ‘Get over here with two of the men. Tell them to bring their shotguns and shells …’
He listened to the person on the other end for a second, his face clouded with impatience.
‘Just do it … I have a man here and his life appears to be in danger … yes, from the strangers we saw in the village. Get over here now. I’m going to telephone the police in Crianlarich and get help.’
I wanted to stop him calling the police, but I couldn’t for the life of me come up with a credible reason why he shouldn’t. I’d have to play it all by ear.
I heard him dial again. Three numbers this time. I heard him tell the police about the attempt on my life, that there were men roaming the countryside with small arms, and to get people over here as soon as possible.
‘All right …’ he said, smiling, when he came back into the drawing room and making his way to the window to check outside. ‘The cavalry, as you put it, are on their way. My men are on their way from the farm and the police will be here as soon as they can.’
I thanked him again. I had my first chance to examine him. He was a handsome man with greying temples and deepening creases on his face. He had the kind of face you trusted and had a quiet authority about him. He wore country clothes, but of the more expensive and stylish look that Hopkins had gone for.
‘Please …’ he indicated a leather chair. ‘Sit down.’
‘I’m afraid I’m rather wet …’ I said in apology, looking down at my waterproof trousers. What he couldn’t see was that the flannels beneath the
m were soaked through.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said, almost irritated. ‘We’ll deal with your clothes in a minute. Please sit down and tell me what this is all about.’ As he spoke, he went over to a large mahogany desk that was set against one wall, beneath a huge portrait of some Victorian whom I assumed was my benefactor’s ancestor, despite the lack of any familial similarity I could see. He went into the drawer and pulled out an Enfield revolver and a box of shells. He looked at me inquisitively, breaking the revolver open and filling the chambers from the box, as matter-of-factly as if he had been filling his pipe.
I told him about being surprised in the bothy by the blond man whom he had seen taking potshots at me, how they had frogmarched me down into the valley and how I had made my escape.
He snapped shut the revolver and placed it on the burnished surface of the desk, going to the window once more and checking.
‘That’s all good and well …’ he said. ‘You have explained the what but not the why. Why did these men try to abduct you?’
I explained that I was an enquiry agent and I believed these men were responsible for the murder of Andrew Ellis, a Glasgow businessman. I explained that they believed I knew the whereabouts of funds Ellis had withheld.
‘Funds for what?’
‘A Hungarian émigré group. Ellis was Hungarian by birth and had patriotic leanings. He was helping – illegally – refugees get out of Hungary and into the West.’
‘But there is no need, surely, to do so illegally. Great Britain has offered hundreds asylum.’
‘Yes, but not the numbers and not the type that Ellis was helping.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ellis was a straightforward kind of guy. Not a lefty, but no rabid nationalist either. He thought he was helping liberals and intellectuals get out of Hungary – even a few dissident communists.’
‘But he wasn’t?’
‘No. I don’t know what happened – maybe he saw a face in a photograph, or a name he recognized – but something must have made him realize that he was actually helping former members of the Arrow Cross.’
‘Arrow Cross?’
‘Hungarian Nazis. Many of them were executed for war crimes at the end of the war. Hungary had a breed of Nazi all of its own that started while Adolf was still a corporal. Rabid anti-Semites and Magyar racial purists. The communists had a lot of them locked up and others reduced to life in menial positions and under constant surveillance. The Hungarian Uprising was the ideal cover for getting them out and into the West.’
He shook his head. ‘This is all very interesting, but what has this to do with us up here. Listen … sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Lennox,’ I said, too tired to lie. The truth I was giving him was incredible enough without adding any fiction to it.
‘Listen, Mr Lennox, we are as far removed from international politics as it is possible to be. The only border disputes we have are over fences and grazing rights. I can’t see why the devil we have men rampaging over our countryside firing shots at each other because of events in Moscow and Budapest.’
‘Because there is something up here … or around here … I don’t know what … A meeting place.’
‘I see …’ he said contemplatively. There was an urgent knock at the door and he checked through the window before going out into the hall, leaving the revolver on the desk. I heard him open the door and issue orders.
‘That’s three men from the farm, armed with shotguns,’ he said when he got back. ‘They will keep guard until the police get here. What you said about this meeting place … when we were in the Land Rover you said you had thought I represented the Apaches when I was really the cavalry. I take it by that you thought this house was this group’s meeting place?’
‘I did. At least it made most sense.’
He froze for a moment, something troubling him.
‘These men who are chasing you, the men from this Hungarian group … you didn’t mention your suspicions about this house to them?’
‘No, why?’
‘Because they might then have worked out that this is where you would head, with or without my help.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘But you still haven’t explained why you found your way here, of all places. Why you thought the meeting place would be anywhere around here?’
I told him about Ellis’s map and the T marking the location.
‘And what it the significance of the T?’ he asked.
‘It stands for Tanglewood, which is the code word for their meeting place. The significance of it escapes me, I’m afraid,’ I said.
He picked up the Enfield from the desk and pointed it at me. I made a start but he shook his head.
‘Don’t be silly, Mr Lennox. It’s really very simple,’ he said. ‘You’re sitting in Tanglewood … without boring you with etymologies, the name of this house, Collieluth, is an anglicization of the Gaelic Choille Thiugh Dhlùth. It means “the crowded, dark wood”. Tanglewood.’
‘And you are what?’ I asked. ‘Some British Arrow-Cross fellow traveller? Or do you have deep Hungarian roots.’
‘You have no idea who or what I am. And I have absolutely no interest in or intention of telling you …’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I know exactly who you are. I know the name you’ve been using and I know how long you have been in Scotland.’
‘I really don’t care …’ He started to move towards the door. ‘Now, just stay exactly where you are …’
‘Or what?’ I said, standing up. He brought his aim up, straightarmed, to my head.
‘Don’t be stupid …’ he said.
‘Well, you see, I have a habit of being stupid. I’ve gotten just about everything wrong, every step of the way. But you I didn’t buy. Not for a minute. That’s why I emptied your gun when you were at the door …’
I held out my hand and let the shells fall onto the floor. He squeezed the trigger and when he heard the click he made a rush for the door, but I was already on him. I swiped him across the throat with the blade edge of my hand, just like they’d taught me in training. It shut off his air supply immediately. When you can’t breathe, you can’t do anything, can’t think of anything else. I pulled out the Femaru-Frommer automatic from under my anorak and, hauling him back by the collar, threw him down on the floor.
‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Mr Lang. This is for Andrew Ellis …’
I slashed the barrel of the automatic across his temple and the skin burst, blood flowing into his hair. Beneath his desperate gasping, he made some kind of noise. I hauled him to his feet. And jabbed the muzzle of the pistol into the small of his back.
‘Now, Ferenc, we are going to take a walk out to the Land Rover. You are going to tell your monkeys out there to pile their shotguns into the back of the Land Rover, then lie face down on the ground. If you don’t, or if they don’t do as they’re told, I’ll blow your spine through your belly. You got that?’
He nodded.
‘Because I want you to understand something, Ferenc, I really want to kill you. Just give me an excuse and I’ll do it in a heartbeat. You got that, too?’
‘Yes …’ he said, his voice hoarse.
I led him out into the hall. My plan was to get as far as I could as quickly as I could. I just hoped that the Land Rover had enough gas in it to get us to Glasgow and St Andrew’s Square.
The tricky part was getting out of the drive.
I swung open the door and pushed Lang through, lifting the gun and pushing the barrel into his cheek to show his men that I meant business.
Except they weren’t there.
Blondy and Curly stood next to the Land Rover. And they weren’t alone.
‘Well, well …’ I said. ‘Mr Hopkins, the disappearing intelligence man.’ I pushed Lang down the steps and he fell onto the gravel. Curly hauled him up to his feet and dragged him off to a waiting car. A second car had Lang’s hired help bundled in the back.
I gave them both a cheery wave: after all, I hadn’t seen them since we met on the stairwell of my office.
Hopkins was wearing the same dark coat I’d seen him in earlier, at the car, and before that, outside Larry Franks’s apartment. The warrant cards hadn’t been fake, after all.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Blondy, ‘I’ll take that.’
‘Certainly, constable,’ I said and handed him the automatic. ‘By the way, I’m glad you’re such a lousy shot. That was when I worked out which was the side of the angels.’
‘You’ve caused us a lot of extra work,’ he said.
‘Have I? I kind of thought I’d cleared the whole thing up for you. By the way, if I can give you a tip … try not to be so ambiguous. When you said I was getting in the way and it was your job to take me out of the way, I started to get the wrong idea.’
‘I think you’re being paranoid,’ he said.
‘Oh I am that. I’ve been paranoid for over a week now. And it’s getting worse. I’ve even been getting this crazy idea that you didn’t identify yourselves as police officers because you wanted me to make a break for it and flush out your little Hungarian network. It’s got nothing to do with expatriates, has it?’
‘It has and it hasn’t,’ answered Hopkins. ‘I think I’d better explain.’
And he did.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I was driven back to Glasgow in a grey Rover with red leather seats that, after everything I’d been through, felt better than a woman’s touch. Hopkins explained about Lang and how he had infiltrated the Mátyás Network, as the Hungarian émigré organization was known.
Ferenc Lang had skipped out of Hungary at the end of the war and before the Iron Curtain had closed around him. If he hadn’t got out, Hopkins explained, Lang would have faced awkward questions about his Arrow Cross party membership. Then, when the Uprising had started to take shape, Lang had seen an opportunity to cash in on the situation in Hungary and get some of his cronies out amongst the others fleeing the coming Russian crackdown.
Dead Men and Broken Hearts: A Lennox Thriller (Lennox 4) Page 34