The Glory Boys

'He's right on us. Not sixty metres away… ' The shout from the back was cut off as the glare of the pursuing headlights illuminated the interior of the car. The passengers ducked down, only the driver remaining upright.

'All right. All right. We're nearly out now. He has to come through this crowd too.' Before he was clear of the herd he was changing up, running through the gears, weaving to avoid the leading animals before bursting back on to the open road. He caught only the briefest sight of the farmer, walking proud and straight at the head of his herd.

The car rushed forward. Ahead the road stretched into the emptiness beyond the reach of their lights. It was then the three men heard, all together, the first blast on the siren as the vehicle behind them attempted to untangle itself from the shuffling barricade. The piercing, sing-song wail of the amplified call drove through the windows and doors and roof of the car, filling it with noise, and they could see flashing among the confusion of the cows' backs and heads was the blue, rotating police lamp.

The man in the back pulled the grip towards him, slid back the fastener and plunged his hand in amongst the shirts and socks and underpants and books, before he fastened on the hardness of the Luger pistol. Some of the grip's contents spilled out on to the leather seat-work, snagging on the raised foresight of the gun as he pulled it from the case. The magazine was in position.

'There's your answer,' he said quietly. 'Now we know who we have running with us.'

There was no reply from the front. He cocked the gun.

From his office in police headquarters in St Omer, twenty-five kilometres to the north, the man who had been issuing orders for the last hour could plot exactly the position of the fleeing car. His size, not grotesque but huge, belied the efficiency of his work. The big wall map where an aide continually moved coloured pins demonstrated this. The position of the car, kept up-to-date by the constant radio calls from the pursuing police vehicle, was shown by a yellow marker; his own men, barely separated, by a red one. Stretched out ahead of the path of the three Arabs was a near-continuous line of blue pins, straddling the minor and principal roads that led to the coast and to the port of Boulogne.

He had not expected the car to turn off from the main coast road across which his major force was concentrated, but as a precaution he had placed single police cars, each manned by two officers, on all parallel B routes. It had been his intention that the car that held his interest would be unaware that it was under surveillance before it was stopped by any one of the sixteen blocks now in place.

The use of the pursuit car's siren and lamp had changed that.

It had been a brutal day's work since the teletype message bearing the instructions from Paris had forewarned him of the need to set a major operation in readiness. By late afternoon, at a time when he would normally have been thinking of home and his supper, the fleet of black Citroens had started to arrive in the discreet yard at the back of his headquarters. He had shaken several hands. Men from the Ministry, from the security services. There had been one who wore no tie, was dressed in creased jacket and slacks, and to whom everything was relayed. That one spoke his French adequately, but was not fluent, had a Central European accent and dangled a silver, six-pointed Star of David round his neck. He was treated with something close to deference.

The local man had been told little, informed of only a part of the background to the event, but had established, and forcibly, that if a car was negotiating his personal territory then it was preferable to have his own men on its tail.

'These lanes will swallow you up,' he'd said with the certainty of intimate knowledge. 'If you have no local experience, you will lose them, easy as a flea in a rug.'

The point had been accepted. One of the canniest of his drivers had taken over from the security services' surveillance that had shadowed the car across two-thirds of French territory. It had been going well, earning congratulations from the big men of the Paris counter-espionage division, until the angry and staccato bursts over the radio had warned of the intervention of the cows. But little, he had reflected, was lost. The men he hunted were still being shepherded into the fine mesh net that he had laid for them.

'When will they reach the blocking point, on their present route?' He spoke to his aide.

'Four to five minutes, sir. Not longer. Just the far side of Fauquembergues, at the cross-roads. Where the petrol station and the cafe are.'

'Two men?'

'Two, sir. Roben and Miniux. We're in touch with them.

They are alerted and have been told they have only to hold the fedayeen a few minutes. The larger force is already heading toward the point.'