Chapter 6

Susan settled herself in the front seat of the BMW as they drove on to the autobahn and her father sent the speedometer needle trembling towards the 180 kilometers-per-hour mark.

"Gee, that's over a hundred!" she cried admiringly. "But how do you know they'll have taken this road, Daddy?"

"I'm playing a hunch," Colonel Templar said, twitching the wheel to surge past a group of trucks in the slow and center lanes. "They must know I have connections with the police here. They'll want to get out of town as fast as they can, now that they have what they want."

"But why do they want... Oh, I don't know; it's all a complete mystery to me!" the girl complained.

Her father permitted himself a wintry smile. "Like all good mysteries, it ends with a car chase!" he said. "The whole thing was obviously a set-up from beginning to end."

"A set-up? You mean... ?"

"I mean that youth, that boy your mother and I disliked so much, was deliberately planted in Konigswinter with instructions to make you fall for him. So that when the opportunity came, he could trick you into going away with him and they could take you to Hamburg."

Susan had told him briefly everything that had happened while she was in the hands of Lisa and her gang. But she had said nothing of the reasons for her running away from home in the first place.

"They must have been watching me for months," Templar continued. "Whatever they told you, the reason behind the whole operation was simply to get me to Hamburg."

"But why Hamburg? I don't see..."

The Colonel cleared his throat. "They'd have noticed that whenever I went there, I--uh--visited a certain place," he said awkwardly.

"I can't expect you to understand... but there it is. You were deliberately allowed to get away after the crash on the autobahn--just long enough to tell your story before they took you back. They knew I'd receive the police reports. They beat up the people you spoke to to make sure there were police reports. And they figured I'd rush up here as soon as I heard. They were right."

"Yes, Daddy, but-"

"Let me finish. They guessed, too, that even if I was looking for you, I'd still find time to see my--uh--friend in the Herbertstrasse. They must have bribed her to let them know when I arrived. All they had to do then was tell you some cock- and-bull story to make sure you'd play ball. It didn't matter too much if you revealed yourself to me or not. Once you were... once we..." The Colonel flushed and cleared his throat again. "Once their spies had taken their pictures, they were okay."

"But why did they want them?" the puzzled teenager asked. "Are they going to try and blackmail you?"

"Nothing so simple, I'm afraid," her father replied, shifting down to third to streak past a Mercedes roadster. "You know the aims these people profess?"

"They call themselves anarchists. Yes, they told me. They want to destroy-"

"They want to destroy everything. They're totally negative. And they'll do anything... anything... to discredit us the Americans. They pick fights with soldiers in bars. They provoke GI's to behave badly. They'll even commit murder so they can pin the deaths on us. There was a case in Bonn this week..."

"I know. I read about it in the paper. They were boasting about it."

"There you are, then. Now you know I have this new liaison job starting next month? Supposing they are able to print certain pictures in their goddamn underground newspapers... pictures proving that the man who's going to represent the United States in this new set-up not only visits... places like the one we just left... but that he... takes his pleasures with more than one lady." Templar was flushing awkwardly again, but he, continued valiantly: "Supposing also that those pictures show him having sexual relations with, uh, with his own daughter? Can you imagine the effect such a scandal would have on our image? On me? Can you imagine the headlines? Is this the kind of man we have to rely on for our good relations with the United States? Are these the kind of people we're supposed to trust? You can see why I've got to get those pictures back and destroy the negatives!"

Susan whistled. "My God!" she said feelingly.

Her father tutted irritably. "How many times do I have to tell you not to swear!" he said sharply.

They roared across the Elbe bridge. Soon afterwards a huge direction sign loomed up in the BMW's headlights: Bremen, Oldenburg--1000m.

"The turnpike splits here," Colonel Templar said. "Have they headed back south--or will they decide it's better to lie low in another direction until they can use their lousy photos? We have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing right."

"Oldenburg!" Susan exclaimed suddenly. "I think... I heard something, but I wasn't really listening... but I think one of them said something about meeting a friend who had studio, I think it was in Oldenburg."

"We'll take a chance!" Templar said crisply.

He swung the wheel over to the right and sent the BMW skimming towards the west. They caught up with the pale green Volkswagen on a deserted stretch of road only ten miles short of Bremen. The Westphalian countryside lay dark and featureless on either side of the autobahn. Beneath the low clouds blotting out the stars there wasn't a single light to be seen.

"Be careful!" Susan warned as the livid beetle shape of their quarry gradually increased in size at the far end of the tunnel carved from the flight by the coupe's headlights. "They had one gun already. Now they'll have yours, too!"

The needle on the speedometer dial was quivering on the 190 mark. Templar reached across and flipped open the glove box.

"I wasn't Small Arms Champion of the Pacific Theater for nothing!" he said grimly, taking out a small but beautifully finished target pistol. "She's only a.22 bore, but she shoots straight, and she shoots good!"

The firing didn't start until they had almost overtaken the Volkswagen. The gang must either have been keeping watch out the rear window or have spotted that they were being followed back in Hamburg. The sounds of the shots were lost in the howl of the BMW's motor, but orange flashes blossomed almost simultaneously from the side windows of the speeding beetle. With a crack like a giant whiplash, the windshield of the coupe went suddenly opaque as wind screamed through a small hole drilled beside the driving mirror.

Cursing, Templar stood on the brakes as he wrestled with the wheel. The BMW shuddered, lurched sideways with locked wheels, straightened up as he released the pressure on the pedal, ran on to the hard shoulder, bumped across a stretch of rough grass and then shot back on to the greasy tarmac with tires shrieking. Blinded by the opacity of the screen, the Colonel hammered his fist violently at the toughened glass and punched a hole through it at the height of his eyes.

As the icy wind whistled through the jagged aperture, he saw the steel fencing on the central reservation whipping past sideways in the swinging beams of his lights. The coupe, still traveling at over 100 kilometers per hour, was spinning around in the center of the wet road! Shifting down to third, and then to second, he sawed desperately at the wheel as the protesting motor drove the needle on the revolution counter far up into the red quadrant on the dial. The car straightened momentarily, was over- corrected, began to slide the other way... and then slammed its tail jarring against the metal barrier with a shock that rattled Susan's teeth in her head. She cried aloud with fright--but the impact knocked the BMW back onto the carriageway pointing in the right direction, and her father immediately put his foot down again and resumed the chase. The twin tail lights of the VW, tiny crimson specks in the distance, were just disappearing over the brow of a hill far down the darkened autobahn.

"Climb over into the back and drop down behind my seat," Templar ordered as the speedometer needle quivered around the dial once more and the noise of the wind blasting in through the holed screen rose to a scream.

"Daddy, please..." Susan began. "There are four of them and-"

"Get back there!" her father shouted. "And keep your head down!"

Meekly, Susan complied. When she was crouching in the narrow well behind him, he called over his shoulder, "Did you see their gun? Was it like mine, with a revolving chamber? Or was it an automatic with a magazine in the butt?"

"I don't know... I... I think it was like yours. Yes, it was."

He nodded and stamped the pedal flat to the floor. The needle mounted inexorably towards the 200 mark as the motor bellowed its challenge into the night. Lights flashed past them on the eastbound carriageway. They howled towards the dark bulk of a truck festooned with red position lights, roared past it, and caught the distant Volkswagen in the beams of their headlamps.

When they were a hundred yards behind the pale green car, Templar throttled back the BMW and stayed in position, swinging the coupe from side to side of the roadway as the dazzling high beams of his lamps raked the fugitive. The Volkswagen was swaying on the wet road surface, rising and falling on its swing axle suspension as the driver coaxed the last ounce of power from the robustly willing motor.