1954 - Mission to Venice (15 page)

H
arry settled himself in the seat beside Don, reached for the rucksack at his feet and opened it.

“Phew! Now for a little relaxation,” he said. He began to unpack a lump of salami sausage. He opened his pocketknife and cut off a generous slice. “Can you eat while you handle this kite, boss?”

“I can always eat,” Don said, and accepted the salami. “Don’t scoff the lot, Harry, we may still need some.”

“Aren’t we going to London in this crate? “

“Not a hope. We haven’t enough gas in her to last us twenty minutes.”

“Blimey! Don’t tell me we’re going to start walking again,” Harry said, his face alarmed.

Don nodded.

“I guess we are. We’ll be lucky if we get across the frontier.”

“Oh well, at least we’ve given his nibs the slip,” Harry said reflectively. He chewed for some moments as he stared down at the mountain range that was looming towards them. “Where are you heading for, boss?”

“We’ve got to get across the frontier, Harry. We know they are on the lookout for us there. Once we’re in Switzerland, we can take a train to Zurich and fly to London. Right now, we’re heading for Tirano which is the frontier town. When we spot that, we go a few points north, and if we’re lucky, we’ll get to St. Moritz. It’ll be a toss-up whether the gas holds out that long.”

“Don’t leave it too long,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t like to crash in this kite. It doesn’t feel very substantial.”

Don grinned.

“It isn’t. It’d be quite a bump.”

He glanced again at the petrol gauge. The indicator kept flicking over to zero. They were nearly dry; another three or four minutes would empty the tank completely.

“Any parachutes around, Harry?”

“Bad as that?” Harry said, his eyes popping a trifle. He looked hurriedly around. “Don’t see any.”

“Look! There’s Tirano now,” Don said.

Harry was looking behind the seats. He glanced over his shoulder at the small town below, then renewed his search.

“I’ve got them, boss. They don’t look as if they’ve been checked in years.”

“Dope that I am!” Don said angrily. “Of course! There’s a reserve gas tank on board. If it’s full, we’ll just about get over that mountain range.” A quick manipulation of switches brought a more welcome reading on the petrol gauge, and Don began to climb. “We’re safe for about another twenty minutes. Get your map out, Harry.”

Breathing heavily, Harry produced the map.

“We’ve got to find a spot where we can land. Look at these mountains!”

“I’m looking at them,” Harry said uneasily. “Mind you don’t knock them about, boss; they might knock back.”

Scarcely fifty feet below them were the rocky, snow-covered mountain caps, guarding the Swiss frontier, and Don climbed higher.

“Well, come on; we’re wasting time. How far is it from the plain?”

“Too far from the look of it, but I wouldn’t know, boss.”

“Let me have a look.” Don studied the map, grunted and handed it back to Harry. “We’ll just about do it if we have any luck.”

“That’s nice,” Harry said, staring down at the snow-covered mountain. “Fancy landing in that stuff!”

Some ten minutes later, with the petrol gauge registering zero, they swam out of thick cloud and saw below them the flat, grazing pasture land dotted with goats, and in the distance the wooden houses of the peasants, sheltering at the foot of the mountains.

“We’ve done it!” Don said and put down the nose of the hover plane.

A minute or so later he had made a perfect three-point landing a quarter of a mile from a secondary motor road that they could see winding up into the mountains.

“Let’s get out of here before anyone comes to ask us what we’re playing at,” Don said, slipping on his rucksack.

“More walking now, boss?” Harry said, regretfully leaving the hover plane.

“Unless we thumb a ride to St. Moritz.”

They set off across the grass towards the road, and a few minutes’ quick walking brought them on to the road.

They looked back.

The hover plane stood out against the mountain background far too conspicuously for their sense of comfort. They walked briskly along the road, and they had covered a mile or so before they heard a distant motor engine.

“We’ll try for a lift,” Don said, “but watch out. Have your gun handy.”

“I’ll watch it,” Harry said.

A big lorry came down the road and Don waved. The lorry slowed down, and the driver, a good-natured looking man with keen blue eyes, gave them a friendly grin.

“Can you give us a lift to St. Moritz?” Don asked in his impeccable French.

“Jump in,” the driver said. “I like company,” and he opened the door of his cab.

Harry and Don scrambled in, slammed the door and the driver sent the lorry forward again. During the ride, the lorry driver could talk of nothing but the hover plane he had seen crossing the mountains. Dressed as they were in their windbreakers and corduroy trousers, he took Don and Harry for ordinary hikers, and it didn’t cross his mind that they had anything to do with the hover plane. He was still wagging his head, and saying what an extraordinary thing it was, when they left him in the main street of the town.

“We’ll go straight to the station and get a train for Zurich,” Don said. “From there we can get a plane to London.”

At the station they learned they had just missed a train, and there wouldn’t be another for an hour.

“How about going to a restaurant, boss, and having a damn good blowout?” Harry asked hopefully.

Don shook his head.

“We can’t afford to waste a second. You can bet Natzka is organizing something for us. I’ll see if I can hire a car. You go and buy some food, and meet me here in twenty minutes.”

Harry’s face fell.

“Anything you say, boss.”

Fortunately, Don had spent several winter months at St. Moritz, and the manager of the Palace Hotel knew him well. Don arranged with a garage for the hire of a car, and in less than half an hour, he was driving down the main street towards the station in a powerful, black Bugatti.

Harry who was waiting for him, silently munching a hunk of sausage, grinned happily when he saw the car. Before the war Harry had been number one mechanic to an international motor racing star, and he lived and dreamed big cars.

“Phew! You’ve got something there, boss,” he said. “Did you have to pinch it?”

“I got it from the hotel,” Don said, sliding into the passenger’s seat. Although he was a first-class driver himself, he knew Harry had the edge on him when it came to driving at speed. “Take her Harry, and let’s go.”

Harry gulped down the last of the sausage wiped his greasy fingers on the back of his trousers and got in under the steering wheel.

“I’ve got a sausage for you if you want it,” he said, dumping his rucksack in the boot behind him.

“Not yet,” Don said, busily examining his map. “We’ve about a hundred and fifty miles to go to Zurich on a good road.” He looked at his wristwatch. The time was twenty minutes

to four. “Allowing for traffic and the hairpin bends, we should be there by about half-past eight.”

“I’ll do it faster than that, boss,” Harry said, engaging gear and driving the car slowly down the main street. “This beauty can go.”

“We can’t afford to take any risks,” Don said. “So watch out for accidents, Harry.”

“How about petrol?”

“The tank’s full, and I’ve got four two-gallon cans in the boot. We’ll have more than we want.”

“Okay,” Harry said, and slightly increased his speed as the traffic ahead thinned. But it wasn’t until he got clear of the town and on to the Silvaplana road that he showed what he could get out of the big Bugatti. They reached Silvaplana in just under ten minutes, swung to the right and went storming up the mountain road towards Chur. The road, carved out of the mountain side, twisted and turned like the back of a coiled snake, and in spite of the traffic coming down into Silvaplana, Harry kept up an average speed of forty-five miles an hour.

He had an uncanny talent of anticipation. It was as if he had a radar screen inside his head which warned him whether or not some lorry or car was coming from around the hidden bend.

Don noticed he automatically slowed down on some bends and sure enough a car would appear, more often than not in the middle of the road, whereas on other bends, Harry ripped around them to find a clear road “We’ll have to watch our step at the airport,” Don said, once he was satisfied that Harry’s mind could cope with conversation at the same time as he was concentrating on his driving. “Once we get on a plane to London, Natzka is beaten and he must know it. He’ll stage his last trick at the airport. Our best plan is for you to drop me off outside the airport, go in and get two tickets. They don’t know you as well as they know me. I’ll join you at the last moment on the plane.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if I dropped off and you stayed with the car, boss?” Harry said. “If I run into trouble, you can hop it in the car.”

Don nodded.

“Sure, that’s right. We’ll do that. We may not run into trouble, of course. Natzka may think we’re making for Milan. But we’ve got to be on the lookout. It’s his life or ours.”

“We’ll watch out,” Harry said, and settling himself further down in the bucket seat he gave himself up to his driving. Forty minutes later, ten minutes better than Don had hoped was possible, Harry was slowing down to pass through Chur.

Once clear of the town, he again pushed down the accelerator and the big car surged forward along the mountain-flanked road towards Sargans. They were ten miles out of Chur, when Harry suddenly swore softly under his breath, and Don fe
lt the speed of the car sharply
fall off.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Can’t be out of gas,” Harry said looking at the petrol gauge as the car slid slowly to a standstill.

“Of course we can’t. I shoved in fifteen gallons at St. Moritz.”

Harry opened the car door and got out.

“Maybe it’s a choked feed,” he said as he lifted the bonnet. Don reached in the boot and found the tool kit. He joined Harry in the road. Harry had been trained to trace faults quickly. It didn’t take him more than a few minutes to find the trouble.

“Someone’s put water in the petrol, boss.”

“I certainly was kidding myself when I said Natzka’s last trick would be tried at the airport,” Don said. “Well, okay, let’s get rid of it Every minute we stay here gives him the chance of catching up with us.”

“I’ll drain out the tank and we’ll fill up again. That’s the quickest way.”

Don went to the boot and lugged out the four petrol cans while Harry let the watered petrol run into the road. It took a few minutes to empty the tank, then Don unscrewed the cap on one of the cans, took an experimental sniff at the can, and his mouth tightened to a hard line.

“This isn’t gas, Harry,” he said. “It’s water!”

“Properly done it on us, haven’t they?” Harry said, his face expressionless. “Well, we’ll have to do something about it, won’t we?” He began to strip down the carburetor. “We’ll have to get some more. Maybe we could get a lift back to Chur.”

“What a dope I’ve been!” Don said savagely. “I should have checked the gas. Tregarth warned me what we were up against. We won’t give up the car, Harry. It’ll be quicker to go back to Chur and get more petrol than thumb a ride in a car or a lorry.”

“There was a garage just outside Chur,” Harry said as he carefully cleaned the carburetor filters with his handkerchief.

“I spotted it as we came out. A small place on the left-hand side.”

Don began to empty the water out of the petrol cans.

“I’ll go; you stick with the car. With any luck, I’ll get a lift You wait for me, Harry.”

“I’ll have everything checked and ready by the time you get back, boss.”

Taking two cans in either hand, Don set off down the road, covering the ground with long, swinging strides. He walked about half a mile before he heard a car coming. He set down the cans, shifted his automatic from his hip pocket to the side-pocket of his windbreaker and kept his hand on the butt.

He was now much more conscious of Natzka’s long, powerful arm than he had been, and he was determined to take no risks.

A small car came into sight, and, stepping into the middle of the road, Don waved.

The driver seemed reluctant to stop, but Don gave him no alternative. If he had gone on, he would have run Don down. The driver was a fat, elderly man; probably a commercial traveller, Don thought, and he stepped up to the driving window, his finger around the trigger of his hidden gun.

“Will you take me to Chur? I’ve run out of petrol,” he said.

The fat man shrugged and opened the car door with bad grace.

“I’m not supposed to carry passengers,” he grumbled, and scowled still more when Don put the petrol cans on the floor at the back of the driving seat. He didn’t speak the whole way to Chur, and when he dropped Don outside the small garage Harry had noticed, he drove off before Don could thank him.