The Kremlin File

She didn’t need to tell me. Their bullets stung past us almost as soon as I heard the shots. I passed her the Luger.

“Try for a tire. Draw a line across it and keep pumping lead.”

She used both hands, but shooting at a moving target from a moving station doesn’t allow much aiming. This was one of those times when I wondered if my name was about to be added to the list Hawk keeps in his safe, a star beside each line to signify deceased.

Mitzy yelped. I thought she was hit, but she had sat back on her knees, straight up. In the rear-view mirror I saw why. I was just in time to catch the car behind us go into a drunken swerve at full speed. It spun and went tail down in the swamp. As it sank, marsh gas boiled up around it in bursting bubbles. The headlights glittered on just before they blanked out.

Mitzy put the Luger on the seat then squared around. We limped ahead on the broken tire. It wasn’t the only sound in the night. Off in the jungle there was a rattle of bamboo rods beating against a log drum.

It was a dim sound, eerie in that it seemed to fill the air as light fills it and is part of it. I wondered if Caco and Lambie were getting out a wireless message to the tribe, or whether it was a progress report on us, sent ahead by dark figures invisible in the jungle forest.

The tempo quickened. I sensed an urgency. From the back seat Dr. Fleming spoke, his voice weak with pain.

“We are being followed, and they’re coming on fast.”

I leaned on the jeep, wheedling the last jet of speed it had left.

Six

Ahead on the road a torch was being held high, waving us to a turn. I didn’t stop to ask questions. I took the angle. I fought the car through the sand toward another torch down at the shoreline, skidded to a stop and cut the engine.

Noah was there, tall, scrawny without his white robe, wearing only a narrow cloth around his groin. In the silence, as the motor died, I heard a full-throttled roar on the highway. We were out of time. Out of running room. Our back was to the sea. And my Luger was empty. I didn’t think the stiletto was a match for the rifles bearing down on us. Mitzy was already out of the jeep, kicking off her sandals, beckoning to me. Noah bent into the back, scooped Fleming into his long arms, and lifted him out.

Noah said calmly, “Come along, Carter. Take Mitzy’s hand, don’t let go. Keep behind me.”

I shoved the Luger under my belt, took the girl’s hand and followed. Noah walked into the water.

What was to argue? There wasn’t an alternative left that I knew of. We were going to be dead in a short time anyway. And maybe, if we could swim far enough before our pursuers hit the beach, our heads wouldn’t be seen if we kept them low enough in the dark swells.

The bottom sand gave under my feet, slurring away. Noah moved deliberately, cradling Fleming against his chest with ease. The sea surface rose around the big man’s legs, halfway up his thighs, then he began rising in short lurches, a foot at a time. Behind him Mitzy Gardner sank to her breasts. Then she began to rise too.

With my next step my toe stubbed against rock. I stumbled, almost pitched down, then raised my foot, scraping it against the stone while the two people ahead of me stopped, waiting while I caught my balance. I moved my foot forward and found a step, put my weight on it, straightened my knee and felt a second step above the first. We climbed four of them, then leveled off, walking on a rough, flat top of something six inches below the water.

I had a belly laugh. This kind of magic I understood. This was the straight path on which I’d watched Noah come to us the first time. Now I realized there was some old structure here, probably an ancient breakwater that had sunk in an earthquake long before the memory of the present inhabitants. I didn’t think Noah was old enough to have seen it above water. He had probably discovered it accidentally, swimming, and wily old showman that he was, had made capital of it to spook his superstitious tribe.

Ahead of me Mitzy giggled. “You’re being honored, Nick. Let in on the secret nobody else knows. Just watch for slippery spots and don’t wander. The top is only two feet wide.”

I squeezed her hand hard enough to hurt. She had it coming.

“You knew it and tried to snow me, ratfink. How did you find out about it?”

“Swimming. I butted my head against it good, knocking myself out. I was half-drowned when Noah hauled me ashore. He didn’t tell me what I’d hit until I said I was going to find out anyway, then he made me promise not to blow it to anyone else.”

We were almost at the headland when two light beams swept across the water and shouts came to us, angry and frustrated. The jeep had been found but the prey was gone. We were beyond the reach of the beams and couldn’t be seen.