Curtain of Fear (38 page)

He had been lying there no more than a minute when he heard sounds beneath him. Someone was pulling open the doors at the back of the van. There came a trampling of many feet approaching along the road, with which mingled cries and curses. The noise increased to a din as the twenty to thirty people who had made up the congregation were herded into the van. Gradually the commotion subsided. The engine started up, the van moved slowly at first until it had backed round to face the direction from which it had come, then drove off.

For several minutes Nicholas did not dare to put his head out from under the coverings, as it was possible that some of the police might still be at the door of the loft, or, if they had gone
into the farm, be looking out of one of its windows; but as soon as he felt confident that the van was out of sight of the hamlet he raised himself on one elbow and took a quick look round.

Behind the van the road was clear. In front the single-decker bus that had brought the raiding party was churning up the dust two hundred yards ahead. As he watched, it perceptibly increased its lead. In the distance, to the right, he could see the river; but they were veering away from it; so it was clear that outside the hamlet the van must have taken the left-hand fork and was on the road that led both to the airport and to Prague.

Now, for the first time since the raid, Nicholas had the chance to assess the new situation. That he and Fedora should have been caught up in the Communists' campaign to suppress religion was the most appalling luck. By what practically amounted to a miracle they had escaped from their pursuers, leaving no trace, and were by now almost certainly assumed to be dead; yet the arrangements for their flight from the country were in hand, and within another hour or so they should have been making their final preparations with Mr. Lutonský for a clean get-away. It was indeed a bitter pill to swallow that, through having chanced to spend a few hours in the Sova's barn, rather than in any one of the scores of others in the district, they should now again be prisoners.

That Nicholas had managed to escape actual arrest was true, but he was as much a prisoner as Fedora, because he could not get off the top of the fast-moving van without the risk of breaking his neck; and when it did pull up all the odds were that it would do so in the yard of some police headquarters, so to climb down then would mean immediate arrest.

Prague was only some twelve kilometres away, the van was going in that direction, and there was no town of any size nearer; so it seemed certain that it was going to the capital and would not stop before it got there. The fact that it would actually pass the airport added to Nicholas' bitter fury; but it seemed that his only possible chance of escaping capture lay in
remaining hidden under the coverings until night, then endeavouring to get away unseen from the garage or yard in which the van was parked after it had unloaded its human cargo. But, even if he succeeded in that, he would then have missed the plane, and all chance of stopping Bilto would be gone.

It was not until the van had covered a couple of kilometres that it suddenly occurred to him that he might manage to stop it while it was still out in the country. The bus containing the raiding party had gone on ahead and was now out of sight. It seemed certain that they would have left guards with the van, but he still had his pistol; so if there were not too many of them, and he could take them by surprise, there was at least a chance that he might get away.

Crawling to the back of the roof, he peeped cautiously over the ridge board. Six feet below, on the tail board, two guards were sitting. He could easily have shot both of them from above; but that was not necessarily going to stop the van. If the shots were not heard by the driver, the two guards would simply roll off the tail-board and the van go on. If, on the other hand, the driver did hear the shots and pull up, that would be far from the end of the matter. The driver was probably armed, and the odds were that he had one or two more guards sitting on the box with him. If so, they would jump out into the road with their guns ready in their hands, and before Nicholas could possibly get away he would be shot himself.

The only alternative was to do the job the other way about and, if possible, shoot the driver first. That would result in the van careering on till it ran off the road and crashed into a tree or overturned. The risk entailed was considerable, as Nicholas knew that he would be flung from its top, and perhaps be seriously injured. On the other hand the men on the box would almost certainly be trapped in the smash, and the two guards on the tail-board flung off. There was also a fair chance that if the doors of the van had not been fully secured the prisoners might break out. That offered a prospect of rescuing Fedora, and if they escaped injury, they might be able to get away in the confusion.

Having weighed the chances, Nicholas decided that the risk was worth it. He alone would know when the crash was coming, so would have a much better prospect than the guards on the tail, of landing safely. The question now was, could he get into a position from which it would be possible to shoot the driver?

On hands and knees he crawled forward to the front of the van. Beyond the ridge-board projected the lower roof of the cab. It appeared to be made only of match-boarding, and he considered shooting blind down through it, but decided that the possibility of missing the man altogether was too great. Turning to the side of the van, he peered over. He could now see the cab a few feet below him, but not the man in it. To lean over meant that he would have to fire into it from a very awkward angle, but that seemed to offer a much better chance of wounding the driver than firing through the roof.

The road in front was clear. A glance over his shoulder showed that nothing was coming up behind. They were passing through a wood, so there was no chance of his being seen from a distance, and it would provide good cover for flight if he survived the initial stages of his coup. Taking out his gun, he clicked a bullet up into its chamber. The van was approaching a bend in the road. With difficulty now he fought down the urge to get the desperate business over, and waited until they were within fifty yards of it. Then, leaning over as far as he dared, and with his elbow crooked, he fired three shots down into the driver's cab.

He heard a faint shout, but nothing else happened. He thought he must have missed. If he had it was to be expected that the van would pull up, and that frightened, angry men would soon be shooting back at him; yet it ran on steadily. It had almost reached the corner, and there was still no indication whether his shots had taken effect. He seemed to have been crouching on the angle of the roof for an age, waiting for the van to swerve and run off the road. Round the bend he glimpsed open country. If he could not halt the van before it came out of the wood his chances of getting away would be enormously
reduced. Seized by panic, he leaned over to fire again.

It was not necessary. Even as he gripped the front-board with his free hand, to prevent himself being sent over the side by an unexpected jolt, he saw that the van could not now get round the bend. It was still running straight. As he pulled himself back, its front wheels went over the grass verge. The grass was fairly level but sloped down sharply. Without changing speed, or even a perceptible bump, the van left the road. Another moment, and it was charging down the bank towards the trees.

The instant Nicholas realised that his plan was, after all, succeeding, he turned and endeavoured to scramble to the rear of the roof. He hoped that if he could get there before the van crashed he would be able to shoot one, if not both, of the guards on the tail-board. He might have done it, had he known even half a minute earlier that he had accounted for the driver; but now it was too late. The sharp tilt the van took as it charged down the bank sent him slithering back. Scared now that he might be caught unawares if the van turned over, he got his feet against the front-board, wriggled round and sat up.

The wood was not dense; its trees were, on average, forty feet apart with low scrub between them. The van, now bumping wildly, was about to career through a gap between a big oak and a beech, but their boughs almost met, and the lowest were a little less than the height of the van. With dilated eyes Nicholas saw that he was about to be swept from its top: yet he managed to keep his wits. As the nearest bough of the oak scraped the roof of the cab, lifted and rushed upon him, he thrust the gun into his trouser top and grasped at the bough with both hands.

For a moment he fumbled wildly, as the twigs and leaves were dashed into his face, then his clutching fingers found a firm hold. The van careered on beneath him; he was dragged to the rear end of its roof, bumped painfully on the back edge-board, and over it. Now that there was nothing to support his weight the bough bent under him. Still hanging on to it, his toes were no more than five feet from the ground. Letting go, he dropped,
made an effort to keep upright but fell, and rolled into some bushes.

As Nicholas staggered to his feet the van hit another oak, fifty feet away, head on. He was just in time to see the two guards flung off the tail-board. He could have run for it then and there, and got away, but he was checked by the thought of Fedora. Given a little luck now he might save her, and the unfortunate peasant congregation, as well as himself. If he could catch the guards before they had a chance to recover from their shaking, he could hold them up and force them to undo the doors of the van. Automatically now, his hand went to the pocket in which he carried the pistol.

Before his hand was half way there he remembered that he had not had time to thrust it back before the bough hit him, so had stuffed its muzzle into his trousers' top; but it was not there either. It had been knocked or jerked away during his fall from the van. Hastily he began to search about for it among the bushes.

Barely half a minute had elapsed since the van crashed, but already muted sounds of commotion were coming from it. There was a banging on its doors, a dull thump and a loud creak as a concerted effort was made against them. The lock was not strong enough to withstand the weight of a dozen bodies. With a rending noise the doors burst open and out tumbled the mixed crowd of men and women.

At the sound, Nicholas looked up. He saw that one of the guards had been thrown head-first against a tree-stump, and was lying there either dead or unconscious. The other was on his feet and had drawn his gun. He was shouting at the crowd tumbling from the van to stand back and put their hands up.

From the front of the van a small figure scrambled down, and limped painfully away into the undergrowth. It was the boy who had acted as guide to the police when they had raided the barn. But no guards came running from the driver's cab, so Nicholas felt confident that, if any of them had been riding there, the crash had put them
hors de combat
. It looked now as if only
the survivor from the tail-board stood between the whole crowd of prisoners and their freedom; and his back was turned to Nicholas.

Frantically Nicholas resumed his search for his lost gun. If only he could find it, he could take the remaining guard in the rear; without it he was as helpless as the others, for, had he approached, the rustle of the undergrowth would have given warning in ample time for the man to turn and shoot him. On hands and knees he groped around beneath the bough from which he had dropped, turning his glance swiftly from side to side, but his desperately searching eyes were not rewarded by the glint of sunlight on metal.

Suddenly a single shot rang out. Jumping up, Nicholas looked anxiously across the bushes. The peasants were all bunched together just outside the doors of the van. In the second rank he caught sight of Fedora's pale face beneath his silk handkerchief. In front of it a wisp of blue smoke was curling up. Covered by the people in front of her she had got Kmoch's little automatic out of her satchel-bag and fired between them.

Her bullet had hit the guard in the thigh. As he staggered the peasants launched themselves at him in a body. It was only as they surged forward that Fedora was fully revealed to Nicholas with the wisp of smoke curling up in front of her. The guard's gun went off once. A woman screamed and fell. Before he could fire again the rest of them were upon him. He was seized, struck, scratched, kicked, borne to the ground and trampled upon. One moment he had been a fine powerful young fellow; the next he was a torn and broken body with not a flicker of life in it.

As Nicholas ran forward several of the crowd ran at the other guard, who had been knocked unconscious against the tree-stump. Sova was the first to reach him, and pulled his pistol from its holster. The rest seized the helpless man and treated him in the same way as they had his comrade. Like a pack of ferocious wolves they worried and milled round him, until his body was grotesquely twisted and his face an unrecognisable mass of pulp.

When Nicholas reached Fedora she was pushing the pistol back into her bag. Her green eyes were brilliant with fever and her voice a trifle hoarse as she cried:

“Nicky, by all that's wonderful! Wherever did you spring from?”

In a few brief sentences he told her; and waving aside her praise for his having brought about the release of the captives, he added quickly:

“We've got to get away from here, and the sooner the better. When the van fails to arrive the police will send a motor-cyclist to find out what has happened to it; then the whole bus-load of them will return, and probably more. They'll be searching every inch of these woods in an endeavour to round up their escaped prisoners.”

She nodded. “You're right! But they must have been taking us into Prague. That is a quarter of an hour's run from here. They'll give the van ten minutes' grace, then they've got to send someone out and he'll have to find the nearest telephone before he can report. We should have three-quarters of an hour clear, at least, and the airfield can't be much more than a mile away. We should easily be able to reach that pub, the Soviet Worker-Hero Air Mechanic, and go to earth there before the hunt gets going.”