Gibraltar Road

by Philip McCutchan

  It was unjust. It was unfair.

  Had there been a patron saint of corns and hard skin, Pepe would have prayed to him—or her. But as it was, he invoked the ubiquitous Santa Maria. It was murder—sheer murder. He longed and longed for that blessed, blissful moment when those boots would come off in the cool, dark room of the little whitewashed cabin which he occupied with his mother. His mother would bathe the feet, and Pepe Caravolente would be in Heaven.

  Rolling his eyes in very present distress of hell-fire, Pepe glanced across the road at his companion, a morose and sedate guardia whose feet never seemed to trouble him, but whose long, thin frame seemed utterly weighed down with the heavy carbine. Carlos was a good man, saintly in his home life except when temptation pressed too heavily, and a most conscientious member of the Guardia Civil. But today he was feeling the strain too. As Pepe watched, a huge red handkerchief, not particularly clean, was swept out of Carlos’s pocket with a grand flourish, and Carlos’s helmet was lifted off. Carlos mopped his face, thus inducing yet more sweat to burst through into the vacated areas.

  Carlos too groaned aloud.

  In spite of the pain in his feet, Pepe mustered an encouraging grin. “Soon we will be back at the post, Carlos.”

  “Uh.” Carlos flourished his handkerchief. They trudged on in silence. They faced, in fact, mile upon mile of white, scorching roadway which would have to be traversed before they reached the village where the Guardia Civil post was, the village where they would be able to sink to rest for a while, take off their helmets and their belts and lay down their arms, and quench their thirsts with some vino in the shop of Teresa Bandera—Pepe could almost taste that vino now, and he drooled slightly at the corners of his mouth at the mere thought of it, coming all cool and fresh from the stone jar behind that shady bar. And Teresa Bandera could, on the occasions when her husband was away on his own business—which concerned the smuggling of spirits—be persuaded into dispensing other comforts to the Guardia Civil as well. . . .

  The two men walked for two more dreadful miles, and then Pepe stopped. He listened. It was a car coming up behind them, and now that the thud-thud of his enormous boots had ceased he could hear it more distinctly. It seemed to be in a hurry; all he could see for the moment was a cloud of white dust.

  “Carlos,” said Pepe, grinning happily, “why should we walk when there is a car?”

  Unslinging their rifles, they stood ready to wave the car down. Surely no one, whatever their hurry, would drive past two poor hombres asking for a lift—certainly no one ever had in Pepe’s experience.

  “Cuidado! Aqui viene la pareja!” Massias drew Garcia’s attention to the two figures moving into the roadway. “The Guardia Civil.”

  Karina, in the back, had seen the unslung carbines. She said curtly, “I don’t know what their business is, but I’m not having any delays. Fast as you can, Garcia.”

  “Perhaps they merely want a lift—”

  “They’re not getting one!” Karina sat forward, spoke sharply. “We can have no prying eyes in here.”

  “Señorita, I shall hit them—they will be so sure we shall stop—”

  “Hit them, then.”

  The other man, Massias, looked back at her, scared at the inflexibility in her voice, saw that her eyes were diamond-hard and bright. He shuddered a little. He knew that Garcia was right, and not from humanity alone. It was dangerous, very dangerous, to take risks with the Guardia Civil. If one should get hurt every official hand in Spain would be against them. He said as much to Karina.

  “Shut up.” Karina sat forward still, and now in her hand was the small pistol. She leant forward farther and prodded the pistol into the back of Garcia’s neck, and he jumped a little and the car rocked, and he drove on, drove on almost blindly, in a terrible fear.

  Pepe and Carlos saw the big scarlet-and-silver shape leap from the dust-cloud, a tearing, hurtling monster lurching wildly on its springs as it hit the pot-holes and the ridges. Pepe jumped back just in time. The car, with Garcia sweating away behind the wheel and his eyes almost shut to blot out the horror of what he was doing, tore on as he rammed his foot down hard.

  He hit Carlos fair and square, drove over him with a wild lurch and a bump that brought his passengers’ heads cracking against the roof; and then swept onward, leaving a red stain and a flattened hump on the road.

  Behind them Pepe, curses pouring from his mouth, which was now all puckered up in his ashen face, felt tears pricking at his eyes. He felt sick, and his hands shook as he brought his carbine up. He wasn’t capable in that moment of taking very good aim, and his bullets zipped harmlessly away into the distance, well clear of the speeding car, which was almost out of range anyway by this time.

  Pepe had forgotten his poor corns and his hard skin now; the main thing was to get his wobbly legs to hold him upright, hold him up so that he could chase after that car, run to the nearest Guardia Civil post with a telephone, so that these soulless murderers could be intercepted. He started running. Sick to the stomach, and with tears pouring down his face, he left that poor red mess that had been Carlos, the red mess that was beyond help, in its pool of blood round which the flies were congregating already, Carlos who must be avenged, Carlos who had been looking forward to a glass of vino in Teresa Bandera’s and who would never patrol that stretch of road with him again. . . .

  Pepe pounded along.

  Ahead of him Karina stopped the car, for she had had second thoughts—this guardia would be able to describe the car, have her stopped along the roads. She got out. And as Pepe came nearer a short burst of sound and light and smoke came from the sub-machine-gun in her hands. Only three bullets hit Pepe, but he fell; and the car drove on. As vultures fluttered up into the air from Carlos’s body, scared by the gunfire, Pepe staggered to his feet again, spitting out the welling blood, just in time to see the car swerve violently to the right to head along the San Pedro road.

  A little later Shaw caught sight of the vultures hovering above the track ahead of him. When he saw the body he slowed, and when he came up to it, scattering the indignant birds from their grisly meal, he edged round it, telling Debonnair not to look, talking the car half on to the verge with difficulty. A little farther on he stopped. Leaving Debonnair in the car—telling her, when she asked, that there was nothing anybody could do—he got out, walked back to the body, and dragged it laboriously off the road and into the shade of some trees, where he hid it in the scrubby undergrowth.

  When he got back to the car Debonnair asked, a little white about the lips and trembling, “Esmonde, why did you do that?”

  He started the car up. He said between his teeth, “A dead guardia’s too risky to leave; it’s obvious to us that Karina did that, but if that body had been found by anyone else and reported, all cars on this road would have been suspect—and remember, we’ve not seen any other vehicles since we got on to the San Pedro road early this morning.” He gave a hard laugh. “What we’re doing is too important for us to risk getting hooked up on a charge like that.”

  He drove just a shade more savagely than before. He could feel the girl’s body trembling against his. Then ahead he saw what he’d expected to see: the other guardia, second of the customary pair, and the man was lying on the dusty verge, gasping.

  Shaw slid to a stop, and he and Debonnair got out quickly and went over to the man. Looking at the big, blood-drained face and now angry eyes of Pepe, Shaw, with an effort, controlled his burning impatience and waited for the man to pull himself together—he was obviously badly injured. Shaw said quietly, “I know your friend was killed . . . that much I saw. Was it a big car, scarlet and silver and black?”

  Pepe nodded.

  “We’ll take you with us, amigo, and we’ll catch up with the car that did this.” He added, as he got out to give Debonnair a hand with Pepe, “Which way did they go, did you notice?”

  “Señor, they went along the San Pedro road.”

  “Right,” said Shaw grimly. “That’s all
I wanted to know.” There was a blood-flecked foam on Pepe’s lips as they helped him into the back of the car; Debonnair got in beside him, supported the dying man against her breast. As Shaw jumped in behind the wheel she told him that the man ought to be got to hospital at once. Shaw nodded, let in the clutch. He drove fast but carefully, trying to avoid the bad patches because of Pepe, swinging into the San Pedro road and heading for those wicked hairpin bends. Thank Heaven, the surface was pretty good in parts, perhaps the best in Andalusia.

  As they went along he got the story in gasps. He asked, “You would recognize the car—be able to describe it?”

  “Si, señor.” Pepe nodded, almost vigorously. “A big, powerful Chevrolet.”

  “Get the number, did you?”

  “It was going so fast,” said Pepe humbly, “and it was all so sudden, señor.”

  Shaw nodded. That was quite understandable. The next thing to do would be to get all the Civil Guard posts alerted, and then Karina’s number would be up. He asked, “Where’s the nearest post with a phone?”

  “At the end of this road, señor, where it joins the Malaga-Algeciras road.”

  “Okay. Soon as we get there, you’ll get some proper attention, and I’ll ask ’em to use the blower and alert all posts along the line . . . I’m after that car too.”

  But it didn’t work out that way; a couple of miles farther on Shaw heard a horrible shuddering noise of laboured breathing behind him, a kind of bubbling. He heard Debonnair’s sharp intake of breath, and he half turned, saw the look on her face. He asked, “What’s up, Deb?”

  “I—I think he’s going, Esmonde.”

  “Hell!” Shaw took the car round a bend, stopped with a jab of the foot-brake, and leaned over the seat-back. The man looked ghastly. He got out, opened the rear door, and put a hand over Pepe’s heart. After a minute he looked up at the girl.

  “He’s had it all right, poor beggar.”

  He saw that there were tears sparkling on her lashes. He looked round, made up his mind fast. “I’m afraid he’s got to go, Debbie—nothing we can do for him, and if we get caught with a dead guardia we’ve had it too.”

  She nodded, her lips appearing bloodless. She had an inkling of what Shaw meant to do; she knew he’d hate the idea as much as she, shrink inwardly from it, that it would be another of the things to remain indelibly upon his memory, but she knew too that he had no choice—there was too much in the balance to allow any squeamishness now. As quickly as possible Shaw eased the body from the car, out of its pool of blood, dragged it across the road ... he saw, thankfully, that Debonnair had turned away. He laid Pepe gently down by the roadside and quickly said a prayer. Then he lifted the body on to the low stone parapet which topped the steep drop into the valley, and, closing his eyes, rolled it over. He tried not to listen; but as he turned away and went back to the car he could hear Pepe crashing down, down through the stones and the rubble, to land as pulp some hundreds of feet below.

  Shaking, he started up. Debonnair had come back into the front now, and she squeezed his arm understandingly.

  Some way farther on, Shaw said, “Look, Debbie. It’s no damn use going to that Civil Guard post.” His face was worried, eyes puckered into a frown. “These deaths’ll involve us in explanations that’ll go on till doomsday if I mention them—and if I didn’t I’d have to give some equally tricky reason to get ’em to alert all posts to stop a car.”

  “But surely—that’s the best way to stop them, to pick them up, isn’t it? However long it takes.”

  “No, it isn’t.” He shook his head decisively. “I know the Spanish, bless ’em! We’d get hung up ourselves for so ruddy long—and they wouldn’t take any action to stop her until they’d asked questions and filled in forms and telephoned for advice and instructions . . . and come to that, Karina’s quite capable of driving right through a road-check—as we’ve seen. We’d do much better to press on after her ourselves, Debbie. She’s full of tricks; and the Civil Guard are simple folk.”

  The girl said sweetly, “Well, my darling, you’re the boss.”

  Shaw grinned. “I just like a bit of moral support, that’s all!” He sent the car lurching forward again, and soon he was turning out of the San Pedro road and heading up automatically, unthinkingly, for Malaga. He’d gone about a kilometre along that road when he saw a guardia patrol some distance ahead. Bearing in mind his earlier feeling that Karina might try to confuse the route—and also that he might be quite wrong about Malaga anyway—he decided to make a check; he drove on and stopped alongside the patrol, asked them if they’d seen any signs of a big scarlet-and-silver Chevrolet going fast for Malaga.

  They looked blank, and Shaw’s lips tightened.

  One said, “No, señor. Nothing of that description has passed us.”

  Shaw cursed. “You’re quite certain?”

  “Absolutely, señor.”

  “Muchissimo gracias.” Quickly Shaw turned the car, headed back along the road towards San Roque. Farther on, he stopped a car coming up from that direction, and for confirmation asked if the driver had seen such a car as Karina’s. The driver had. And well he remembered it . . . Karina had apparently not slackened speed by the time she’d met him, and the driver was still shaking like a leaf at the way she’d come round a corner. He would be obliged if the señor would kindly pass on what he thought of her, when and if he caught the car up.

  Shaw was already moving. He called, “I’ll be telling her a packet, don’t you worry. And thanks!”

  Shaw was really worried now. Maybe he had been quite wrong about the Ostrowiec, but surely Karina couldn’t possibly be going to La Linea again? Or could she? There were the other ports. Shaw reviewed the possibilities, and all at once it hit him: Algeciras! Algeciras was one of the most cosmopolitan cities of Andalusia, and from there it was so easy to slip across to Tangier. It must be Algeciras! He drove flat out, past the mountains, through the valleys bright yellow with the little clover-leafed oxalis; flat out, to make up for the time and distance lost, stopping only to top up his tank and a couple of cans at Guadiaro. As he sat wiping sweat from his eyes, waiting impatiently as the petrol went in, Shaw said grimly:

  “Let’s hope they get copped for speeding at the San Roque check-point. It looks about the only hope.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  General Hammersley felt his hand shaking on his pipe-stem as Rear-Admiral Forbes came into his office so early before breakfast that morning. Forbes’s face was tired, lined, strained, the bird-like figure had lost some of its perkiness— the man was beginning to look hopeless, almost. Hammersley had no doubt that he was starting to show the same signs himself, though, like Forbes, he had done his level best to stay cheerful, or rather to show a cheerful front to his subordinates. It was the grinding uncertainty which was getting him down; the never knowing when the whole show might go up, to say nothing of having had no word from Shaw since that brief and uninformative telephone-call which the agent had put through to Staunton a couple of days earlier.

  Since then—nothing.

  Nothing but alarming reports from the technicians, working the clock round in Dockyard Tunnel.

  Every time Hammersley saw his two sons—and there hadn’t

  been much time to do that since they’d arrived—he had that frightening vision more vividly. The vision which would keep coming to him was of those millions of tons of rock going up in the air, to fall shatteringly down upon what had been Gibraltar—the Rock destroying itself—flattening all buildings, all the ships in the harbour, killing every soul there, making matchwood and rubble of all that had been the fortress-key to the Mediterranean; and after that the fall-out, and the boiling seas rushing in to fill the gap that was left. Hammersley didn’t doubt that other responsible people— those in the know, and with imagination enough to visualize it all—had had the same nightmares. He’d seen it in their faces, particularly when they thought they were unobserved; he’d seen it in their slightly shaking hands—like his—and i
n their air of preoccupation as they wondered, as he did, how they would react when they knew that the last moment was almost upon them.

  He saw it again now in Forbes’s face.

  Forbes came towards him with the gait almost of an old man, a man played out before his time; up to only a few days ago, he’d always thought the naval man’s hair looked too old for his face! Hammersley gestured him to a seat. He asked: “What’s the latest report, Forbes?”

  “Damn thing’s speeding up, sir, so they tell me.” Forbes sat and passed a hand over his eyes. “I’ve just been down there myself. You can hear the difference now—and the safety indicator shows it’s nearing the danger mark.”

  “I see.” Hammersley tapped out his pipe, trying to keep his calm demeanour. “Does the last time limit still stand—seventy-two hours?”

  “Officially, yes.” Forbes hesitated, screwing up his eyes in a characteristic gesture. “The technicians say so—seventy-two at the outside, that is. And that’s only a guess, really. They base it on the rate of rise over the last few days, but anything may happen towards the end—it may start rising much quicker, and, of course, that could cut the time quite a lot.” The Rear-Admiral pulled nervously at his bottom lip. “I . . . think it’s a good thing you’ve started the ball rolling for the evacuation, sir. I’m not sure you oughtn’t to hasten it.”

  Hammersley grunted, didn’t answer directly; he put down his pipe, felt in his pockets for another one, a cool one; couldn’t find it, fished in a silver cigarette-box, and absent-mindedly pushed the box over to Forbes. Forbes shook his head; Hammersley lit up and walked over to the window and looked out, cigarette-smoke trailing back behind him. The Rear-Admiral watched him in silence.