The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(96)
Uzi Navot lowered the handset of the radio and looked at Shamron.
“Mikhail says they’re still in the same position that they were when they left the warehouse. One driving, one in the back with Gabriel. He says he can get the driver cleanly, but there’s no way he can get them both.”
“You have to make them stop, Uzi—someplace where an explosion won’t take innocent life.”
“And if they won’t stop?”
“Have a backup plan ready.”…
Gabriel tried not to think about them. He tried not to wonder how they had tracked him down, how long they had been watching and following, or how they planned to extract him. As far as Gabriel was concerned, they did not exist. They were nonpersons. Ghosts. Lies. He thought of anything else. The pain of his broken ribs. The burning numbness of his limbs. Shamron, leaning on his olive-wood cane. We move like shadows, strike like lightning, and then we vanish into thin air. Strike soon, Gabriel thought, because he feared he couldn’t keep his balance atop the bridge over Jahannam much longer.
He made a clock in his head and watched the second hand go round. He listened for other vehicles and read the road signs as they flashed past: HECKFORDBRIDGE…BIRCH…SMYTH’S GREEN…TIP-TREE…GREAT BRAXTED…Even Gabriel, Office-trained expert in European geography, could not place their whereabouts. Finally, he saw a sign for Chelmsford and realized they were heading toward London from the northeast, along the route of the ancient Roman road. As they were approaching a village called Langford, the driver slowed suddenly. Ishaq seized hold of his pistol and brought it up near his chest in a defensive position. Then he looked quickly at the driver.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured in Arabic.
“There’s an accident ahead. They’re waving for me to stop.”
“Police?”
“No, just the drivers.”
“Don’t stop.”
“It’s blocking the road.”
“Go around,” snapped Ishaq.
The driver turned the wheel hard to the left. The van heeled a few degrees to port as it tipped onto the shoulder and the machine-gun thumping of the tires over the rumble strips sent shock waves of pain through Gabriel’s body. As they shot past the wreck, he saw a tall balding man in his forties waving his arms plaintively and pleading for the van to stop. A man with pockmarked cheeks was standing next to him, gazing at his smashed headlight as though trying to concoct a suitable story for his wife. Gabriel looked at Ishaq as the van lurched back onto the road and sped on toward London.
“It’s Christmas, Ishaq. What kind of person leaves two motorists stranded on the road on Christmas morning?”
Ishaq responded by shoving Gabriel hard to the floor. Gabriel’s view was now limited to the soles of Ishaq’s shoes—and the base of the six barrels filled with explosives—and the wiring leading to the detonator switch on the console. Ishaq, in his rush to reach London on schedule, had inadvertently thwarted the first rescue attempt. The second, Gabriel knew, would involve no subterfuge. He closed his eyes and listened for the sound of the motorcycle.
Navot ordered Yossi and Yaakov back into the smashed cars and looked one final time at Shamron for guidance. “I’m afraid this has gone on long enough,” Shamron said. “Put them down in a field where no one else gets hurt. And get him out in one piece.”
Ishaq was reading quietly from a copy of the Quran when Gabriel heard the drone of the approaching bike. He focused his gaze on the gun, which lay in Ishaq’s lap, and coiled his bound legs for a single strike. The engine note rose steadily in volume for several more seconds, then went suddenly silent. Ishaq looked up from his Quran and peered out the windshield. When the bike didn’t appear, he looked at Gabriel in alarm, as though he had a premonition of what would come next. As he grabbed for the gun, there was an explosion of glass and blood in the front seat. The driver, hit several times in the head, slumped to the left and with a spasm of his lifeless hand took the wheel with him. Ishaq tried to level the gun at Gabriel as the van hurtled from the roadway, but Gabriel lifted his bound legs and kicked the weapon from Ishaq’s grasp. Ishaq made one last desperate lunge for it. And then the van began to roll.
56
He came to rest in wet earth, blinded with pain, struggling for breath. A woman was shouting into his face and pulling at the packing tape that bound him. Her voice was muffled by the helmet and her face invisible behind the dark visor. “Are you all right, Gabriel?” she was saying. “Can you hear me? Answer me, Gabriel! Can you hear me? Damn you, Gabriel! You promised me you wouldn’t die! Don’t die!”
57
RUNSELL GREEN, ENGLAND: 6:42 A.M., CHRISTMAS DAY
There had been a fine old hedgerow along the side of the road. They had burst through it, like the tip of a pencil through tissue paper, and plunged into a farmer’s field. The van had come to rest on its roof and its contents were now strewn over the muddy ground like children’s toys on the floor of a nursery. Not fifty yards away from the van’s final resting spot, a gathering of fat pheasant were pulling at the earth as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. At the edge of the field, lights were coming on in a limestone cottage, the first moments of a Christmas morning the occupants would not soon forget.