Background to Danger (27 page)

“Get behind it!”

Fighting for breath, Kenton dragged himself round the side.

“I …” he began.

Zaleshoff shook him.

“Quick … Kenton,” he gasped, “last chance … then sleep … quick!”

Through the roaring of the blood in his head, Kenton heard the other’s voice. With a tremendous effort, he straightened himself and gripped the end of the truck. He felt the Russian’s body slide against his.

“Now!”

The truck began to move. A sob broke from the Russian’s lips. Kenton flung himself forward. The truck screeched over the rails and smashed into the door. At the moment of impact there was a sound like the crack of a whip. Zaleshoff cried out. Dimly, Kenton heard him scrambling towards the door. Then he became conscious of being dragged forward over the rails. A moment later he realised that he was breathing cold air.

For a quarter of an hour neither said a word. It was Zaleshoff who eventually broke the silence.

“We’d better get our clothes on,” he said, “or we shall catch pneumonia.”

They groped their way back into the tank, secured their clothes, carried them to the air, and dressed.

The sky outside was beginning to lighten and the glass in the roof had become dark blue. Zaleshoff struck a match and looked at his watch.

“It says ten to five, but it’s smashed,” he said. “We must have been in that filthy hole over four hours.”

“Is that all?”

“Wasn’t it enough?”

“Quite, thank you. But I thought it must be about six.”

“We shouldn’t have lasted that long. There must have been quite a lot of rubber fumes in there. How do you feel?”

“Apart from a head that feels as if it’s falling in half and a pulse that’s still working overtime, not too bad. I’ve got you to thank for that, Andreas.”

“For what?”

“For saving my life—I shouldn’t have been able to do anything about it without you.”

“You wouldn’t have been in there if I hadn’t been so dumb. How do your legs feel?”

“A bit wobbly.”

“Good enough to get going on? We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’m ready.”

“Then we’ll start.”

“What about Grigori?”

“He stays where he is.”

“What’ll happen when he’s found?”

“Much the same as if we’d been found with him. The police will be called in.”

“Oughtn’t we to do something about telling them?”

“So that you can be arrested? Besides, I’d be held for questioning and I still have to get those photographs. Bastaki is due in an hour or two.”

“All right.”

They went into the main shop.

The door through which they had been carried in was locked. Zaleshoff produced the “engraver’s tool” from his pocket and attacked the lock. A few minutes later he straightened his back.

“I can’t do anything with it.”

“How did they unlock it?”

“Probably took the keys off the watchman.”

“What about a window?”

“I don’t think there are any, but we’ll look.”

A careful search proved him right. In the course of it, they came upon three more doors. One was padlocked on the outside; the locks of the remaining two would not yield to the Russian’s attempts to pick them. He swore impatiently.

“This tool’s no good for this sort of lock,” he said.

“There must be some form of ventilation in the place,” said Kenton.

“Probably in the roof.”

“Well, why don’t we go out that way?”

“How?”

“I noticed an overhead crane at the end of that vulcanising room. They must be able to get up to do things to it, if it goes wrong.”

“That’s an idea.”

Zaleshoff would not allow the lights to be switched on, and Kenton used up the best part of a box of matches before they found a steel ladder, bracketed against one of the stanchions supporting the gantry. Telling Kenton to stay where he was, Zaleshoff climbed up to the top of the ladder
and crawled along the gantry. The journalist watched him moving among the girders, a vague black shape against the smoky blue of the lightening sky. A minute later he called out that he was coming down.

“There is a window,” he reported; “it’s in the unglazed part of the roof and it’s opened from down here. We shall have to move the crane along until it’s just below the window before we can reach it.”

Further search revealed an ironclad switchboard. Adjacent to it was the crane control-box. The Russian grasped one of the switches and pulled. There was a flash and the handle of the switch flew back with a bang.

“Hell!” said Zaleshoff.

“That’s a starter for one of the motors,” said Kenton, “you have to pull them over gradually. But we don’t want to start the whole shop up. Let me have a look.”

Zaleshoff lit one of their few remaining matches and Kenton explored the board.

“Do you know anything about it?” said the Russian sceptically.

“Not much, but if there’s a switch joined by a cable to that control-box, I think we ought to try that first. Here we are!”

He pulled down a switch and went to the control-box. A second later there was a whirring noise from overhead and the rumble of wheels.

“Hold on,” said Zaleshoff; “I’ll tell you when it’s below the window.”

After a considerable amount of manœuvring, Zaleshoff called out that the crane was in position, and Kenton switched off the current. He found the Russian working at the winding gear that opened the skylight.

“It only opens about eighteen inches,” he reported; “it’ll be a tight fit.”

He led the way back to the steel ladder and started to
climb. Kenton followed. The ladder came to an end two feet from the top of the stanchion. By holding on to a roof truss, Kenton was able to steady himself while he got to his feet on top of the gantry.

“Be careful,” said Zaleshoff, “it’s greasy.”

The gantry was about eight inches wide. The rail, along which ran the wheels of the hoist platform, occupied about four inches in the centre, thus leaving two narrow ledges on either side of it.

Kenton edged forward cautiously to where Zaleshoff was standing by the hoist platform.

“I should go on all fours here, Kenton.”

He himself crawled out along the two transverse girders to the steel casing which enclosed the hoisting gear, clambered on top of it and stood up. A few seconds later, Kenton stood beside him. About eight feet above their heads was the open skylight.

“You go first,” said Zaleshoff. “You can take off from that joist there.”

Kenton grasped the joist, jumped and hauled himself up. For a moment he hung suspended in mid-air, then he got his foot in the crutch of two intersecting steel angles and shifted his hold to the window frame. A few seconds later he was lying face downwards on a sloping galvanised iron roof. A cold drizzle of rain caressed the back of his head.

There was a scuffling noise from below and Zaleshoff was lying beside him.

The sky was now grey and Kenton could see the jagged outlines of the rest of the cable works beyond a tall metal chimney at the end of the roof on which they lay. With the exception of the sound of a train rumbling past in the distance, and the thin patter of rain on the roof, there was silence. Then Zaleshoff moved beside him. His voice, when he spoke, sounded curiously remote in the open air.

“Let yourself slide down about half a metre. There’s a ridge you can catch your foot in.”

Kenton did as he was told.

Zaleshoff commenced to work his way along the ridge to the end of the roof. A few minutes later they lowered themselves down a drain-pipe to a cinder path running between the walls of two factory buildings.

“This way,” said Zaleshoff.

They walked to the end of the path. There the Russian stopped.

“We shall have to go carefully now.”

They stepped out of the shelter of the wall and found themselves in a large yard. Facing them were the main gates—steel frames filled in with rusty plating and surmounted by spikes. They were shut. Beside them was a small brick building with a window looking on to the yard.

Skirting the yard they crept up to the door of the building. Zaleshoff held up his hand for silence. They waited for about a minute; then a faint moan came from the interior.

“The watchman,” whispered Zaleshoff.

They stayed where they were for a few minutes. Then, hearing no further signs of life from inside the building, they crept round it to the gates. They were locked. Kenton glanced up at the spikes, then looked at Zaleshoff. The Russian shrugged his shoulders.

“The fates are against us,” he said; “come on.”

They retraced their steps to the point at which they had descended from the roof. Zaleshoff pointed to a space between the buildings a few yards farther on.

“We’ll try that.”

For a short way the cinders continued; but beyond a narrow door in the left wall it was overgrown with grass and weeds. The end of it was heavily shadowed, and for a
minute Kenton thought they were in a cul-de-sac. Zaleshoff gave a sudden crow of delight, and ran forward. Kenton caught him up.

“What is it?”

“A private railroad siding. Look!”

As they emerged from the passage Kenton saw what had shut out the light. Close to the end walls of the factory was a squat embankment, carrying a single rail-track. On it was a train of empty goods trucks.

“I don’t see where this is going to get us,” he said.

“The siding has got to leave the factory somewhere,” Zaleshoff explained irritably.

Kenton followed him up the embankment and along the side of the track to the end of the trucks. In the gloom, he could see the wet rails curving away from the factory towards a high corrugated iron fence some distance away.

“There must be a gate that shuts across the track when it’s not in use,” said Zaleshoff.

They crossed the rails and started towards the fence across what was evidently the works refuse dump. Loose coils of wire caught round their feet, they sank ankle-deep into ash and cinders. Then there was a sharp drop, and they walked on through wet grass towards the point at which the siding curved round to the fence. They were walking in silence. The grass deadened the sound of their footsteps. Suddenly, from ahead, came the creak of rusty hinges. The two stopped dead.

“Stay here,” muttered Zaleshoff, “I’ll see what this is.”

Kenton saw that the Russian had picked up a short length of lead-covered cable, about an inch thick, from the refuse heaps, and that he was weighing it ominously in his hand as he went on ahead. He dissolved into the shadows by the fence and for a minute or two the journalist could see nothing. Suddenly he heard a quick rustle of feet on the grass and a cry. He dashed forward. He saw two
figures locked together and swaying from side to side.

He stopped short. One of them was Zaleshoff. The other was Tamara.

W
HEN
the man Peter had come running out of the darkness with Mailler, Heinrichs and Berg at his heels, Tamara had very nearly lost her head. That she did not do so was due, as she afterwards explained, less to her presence of mind than to the fact that her right foot was resting on the electric starter of the Mercedes. In her agitation she pressed it. The roar of the engine startled her. Thereafter she acted with decision. Almost before Peter was on the running-board she had the car in gear and the wheel locked round to get the Mercedes clear of the lane. As she accelerated, her hand dropped to a pocket in the door, came out again with an automatic and fired the three signal shots out of the window of the car. Mailler’s answering shot smacked
into the rear offside door panel by Peter’s legs.

A kilometre down the road she switched on the lights and stopped the car.

Peter climbed in beside her.

“What happened?” she asked in Russian.

“They came upon me in the dark. I heard their footsteps and thought it was Andreas Prokovitch and the Englishman returned. Then, a few paces from me, two of them spoke, and I knew that they were enemies. I made to go. They did not see me, but in the darkness I stumbled and they heard.”

“How did you know they were enemies?”

“I heard what they said. One said ‘Who will shoot them?’ The other laughed and said: ‘We will play cards for the job.’ ”

Tamara tapped the steering-wheel thoughtfully with the automatic.

“You, Peter,” she said at last, “must go back and keep watch from the road to see if they leave. I will come back as soon as I can.”

The man got out.

“You will not be long, Tamara Prokovna? If they leave I can do nothing.”

“I will not be long.”

Tamara drove to her brother’s headquarters, dialled a Prague number, and had a short telephone conversation, as a result of which two nondescript-looking men, each with a photograph of Petre Bastaki in his pocket, and very precise instructions concerning the original of it, spent the night near the Berlin arrival platform in the station at Prague. Then she went to a cupboard, got out a pair of Colt revolvers and a box of ammunition, and went back to the car. Five minutes after she had rejoined Peter near the end of the lane, she saw the two cars leave for the cable works. She followed at a discreet distance and waited for
half an hour a short way beyond the works entrance. When the four men left, she trailed them back to the Bastakis’ house. While she had been gone, Peter had been joined by the reinforcements from Prague which she had asked for—a small man with a very large motor-cycle who announced that he was from Comrade Smedoff. To this man she gave careful instructions, then turned the Mercedes and headed once more for the cable works.

She spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to find some way of getting inside. Finally she abandoned the attempt, and drove towards the city until she found a telephone booth. She talked and listened for five minutes. Then she hung up, went back to the car and drove to a quiet road near the cable works. There she sat, drinking coffee from the Thermos flask and smoking until the first pale streaks of dawn appeared in the sky. Then she started out once more to reach her brother.

The reunion of Zaleshoff and Tamara was affectionate but hurried. Zaleshoff gave a brief and, Kenton thought, grossly understated account of their night’s adventure and demanded anxiously to know what had been done in his absence.