Lindsay
ate, and drank, and the bockwurst and potato salad and beer were good. Then he
had coffee, and glanced at his watch. Nearly half an hour had passed, and he
must be moving.
A young man, vaguely paramilitary in khaki shirt and slacks, closed on him as he got to his feet, and Lindsay knew that he wanted a lift. He thought he might well agree, because he had eaten well, and was feeling magnaminous.
The young man smiled deferentially. ‘Bitte, gehen Sie westlich zum Rheinland?’
Lindsay nodded. He had a big shiny Mercedes, and was in a mood to do good turns.
‘Wuerden Sie mich bitte mitnehmen?’
‘Ja. Warum nicht?’ Lindsay spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance and welcome. Human company can often be a sight better on a long drive than any radio programme. He could practise his German for an hour or so, and drop his hitch-hiker off, and his generosity would make him feel good.
He led the way to the Mercedes. The young man paused to appraise the car, and was plainly impressed. ‘You come from Berlin?’
Lindsay nodded as he unlocked the car.
‘A diplomat?’
He nodded again. Some questions were better deflected.
The Mercedes rolled back onto the autobahn and built up speed. The autobahn surface was now smooth and fast, and Lindsay accelerated until the car was passing the 160 kph mark, but the engine was barely a whisper, and he knew that he still had plenty of power in reserve. The young man in khaki settled back in his seat, and Lindsay took the car up past 200 kph, because the steering was as smooth as silk, and it was like flying.
‘She’s fast.’ The young man’s voice broke into his thinking.
Lindsay smiled, edging the Mercedes up to 230 kph. Now he really was starting to shift, and he had to concentrate on his driving. He spoke from the side of his mouth, without taking his eyes from the autobahn. ‘Do you drive?’
‘Not me.’ The young man shook his head. ‘Maybe one day I’ll learn.’
‘It’s a good way to travel.’
‘I’d never be able to drive a Mercedes.’
They were both silent. Lindsay began to feel a little uncomfortable. He had forgotten to relieve himself after lunching, and his need was building. He shifted in his seat, but his movement only worsened his discomfort. It was an accelerating thing, like the Mercedes. He knew that he was desperate for a slash, and realised that he must stop very soon. He would pull into the next parking area and use the nearest tree.
A sign signalled an approaching rest area and he lifted his foot from the accelerator and began to slow. He was holding himself back, but it was a struggle of will against need.
The young man in khaki eyed at him curiously. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Comfort stop.’ Lindsay bit the words out. Now he was really on the verge of wetting himself. He drove into the rest area and leaped out of the Mercedes, grabbing the briefcase with his papers, but leaving the engine running. The young man presented no threat if he could not drive.
He was urinating against a larch when he heard the motor start to gather power. He struggled to zip up his trousers, and turned. The Mercedes was pulling away. For a moment Lindsay could not believe his eyes. He tugged the gun Delahaye had given him free from its holster, sighting at the back of the big black car. The Mercedes was fast accelerating out of effective range. For a split second he tightened his finger on the trigger, but the safety catch was engaged. Then he eased his pressure. There was no point in firing. Slowly he secured the safety catch again, replacing the gun in its holster. The bastard, the dirty lying bastard. One day misfortune would catch up with him, and wipe him from the face of the earth.
He brooded for a moment on the thought, standing in the sunshine, lost and alone, wondering what to do. But there was not much he could do, except walk out of the rest area onto the verge of the autobahn and try to thumb a lift. He stared at the neat little picnic tables and benches, feeling thoroughly murderous, and then took a deep breath. He had country to cover. Losing the Mercedes had been a pity. But it was not his car, and he had not really lost very much apart from time. He might be delayed, but delay would just be an incovenience. He weighed Delahaye’s briefcase in his hand, and suddenly felt rather better. He had money, lots and lots of money, two passports, and his return ticket from Berlin to London. A lift to Hannover, a taxi to the airport, a plane to Gatwick, and a train to Victoria, and he might well get back in London just in time for dinner – maybe a nice bit of fish at Wheelers, with a bottle of celebratory chablis. With a little luck he might sleep comfortably in his own bed.
The autobahn was quiet, twin strips of concrete stretching to the horizon through an empty landscape of cornfields and grassland. Something hummed in the distance. A car, coming up fast. Lindsay waved excitedly. The car blared at him in reply, and raced past, another big Mercedes. Lindsay thought of unpleasant things he would like to do to Mercedes drivers. An explosion thudded distantly away to the west, and column of black and grey smoke began to climb in a lazy spiral, and he wished the young man in khaki into perdition.
Then a car slowed, to drift towards him. Lindsay hurried across the grass. He would beg for help, and heaven would come to his aid. A man got out to urinate against a tree and Lindsay waited respectfully for him to finish. The man was portly, maybe in his forties, balding, and with a hard face. Lindsay could see a young woman in the car, a top of the range BMW.
The man zipped up his trousers, and Lindsay took a step forward. ‘Please help me. My car has been stolen.’ He tried to infuse his words with as much distress as he could. The man did not look sympathetic, but would surely not refuse help.
The man scowled, preparing to get back into the BMW.
‘Please.’ Now Lindsay was desperate, almost ready to go on his knees. He closed on the man. ‘I gave a lift to a hitch-hiker, and stopped to relieve myself. I was stupid, and left the engine running. He said he couldn’t drive.’ He added his last words lamely. He had been a fool, and could not hide it.
The man paused, as though to reply, and then shook his head without speaking.
Lindsay put his hand on the BMW door, hope against hope. But his gesture only served to unlock a small torrent of abuse.
‘Get your hand off my car; I’m not giving you a lift.’ The man’s jaw was hard, his eyes steely. ‘I don’t know who you are, and I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Go and use one of the emergency telephones on the autobahn. They will call the police.’
It was too much. Lindsay remembered Delahaye’s gun, and reached inside his jacket. He pulled the gun free, remembering to cock it, and it was suddenly as though things were happening in slow motion. The man’s jaw dropped, and his face crumpled from granite hardness into a kind of mushy pulpiness, his eyes widening with terror. He looked down, and it was a gesture of surrender. ‘Where do you want to go?’
Lindsay backed up until he was level with the back door, and gestured with the gun. ‘Get in and I’ll tell you.’ He followed the man into the car, making himself comfortable. ‘Ok, now get going.’
The car accelerated smoothly, and suddenly everything was unreal. Lindsay felt as though he were acting out a part in a third rate crime thriller, or some kind of dream, seated comfortably in the back of a big car pointing a gun at the driver, calling the shots. He realised that the man’s companion was watching him out of the corner of her eye, and smiled apologetically.
‘I’m sorry for all this. I hope I’m not frightening you.’
‘You’re a foreigner?’ The woman’s tone was friendly. She did not seem afraid.
Lindsay nodded.
The driver of the BMW said something harsh under his breath. It sounded like an order forbidding her to fraternise. But the woman ignored him.
‘Did somebody really take your car?’
Lindsay nodded again. ‘I was driving a big Mercedes from Berlin to Brussels.’
The BMW slows. A group of cars had stopped at the side of the autobahn ahead of them, and a column of dark smoke was curling into the air from something down a bank at the side of the road.
‘Keep going.’ Lindsay spoke automatically. He can see that a car had gone off the autobahn, the remains of a big Mercedes.
The woman half turned, so that he could see the side of her face. She had fair hair, cut in a bob, and blue eyes, and was dressed in white summer linen. ‘A car like that?’
Lindsay shrugged noncomitally. But inside he was smiling to himself. Heaven had dealt a young man his just desserts, and settled an account very neatly.
The BMW gathered speed, through country that changed from open farmland to dark forest. A sign signalled a junction ahead.
Lindsay made up his mind quickly. ‘Turn off here.’
The driver slowed. ‘Where are we going?’ His voice held an edge of fear.
‘Into the woods.’ Lindsay developed a plan as he spoke. ‘Turn off along the first forest track you see, and go deep into the trees. I’ll leave you there, and take the car.’
‘You won’t …’ The man’s voice began to shake.
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ Lindsay saw the woman watching him with growing interest, because it was plain that she foresaw no danger. An adventure perhaps, but no danger. ‘I’m going to make you strip off, tie your hands behind your back, and take all your clothes with me. That’ll give me a bit of time to get to the border.’
Suddenly the woman giggled. ‘Both of us?’
Lindsay saw the entrance to a track approaching, and tapped the driver’s shoulder. ‘Down here.’ The car turned slowly off the road, to advance bumpily, and he smiled quickly. ‘Both of you. I’ll be safer that way.’
The track was a grassy lane between twin walls of pine trees. The BMW driver held his steering wheel tightly, as though terrified that his end was near. The car continued for perhaps a couple of kilometres, occasionally crossing side lanes.
Lindsay tapped the driver’s shoulder as the lane widened into a grassy clearing. ‘Now stop, and turn the car round, until it faces the way we came. Then get out very slowly, both of you.’
The BMW slowed, turning on the grass, and the man climbed out of the car, to stand in the clearing looking fearful. But the woman stayed in her seat.
‘Go on.’ Lindsay gestured, and his voice was insistent.
‘You could take me with you as a hostage.’ Her voice was low, even seductive.
‘I can’t. You’ll shop me to the police and I’ll end up in a German jail.’
‘Maybe I wouldn’t.’ Now she had turned in her seat, and was staring straight at Lindsay, and it was a hard task for him to keep his eye on both his prisoners.
‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’d rather not take a chance.’ He gestured with the gun. ‘Get out and strip off. I’ll get my thrill that way.’
‘Are you going to rape me?’ The woman’s eyes widened.
‘No, I’m not going to rape you.’ Lindsay gestured again. ‘But I’ll blow a hole in you if you don’t get a move on.’
‘Hmmph.’ The excitement hardened in the woman’s eyes to ice. She opened her door and got out.
Lindsay followed cautiously, ready to loose off a shot. ‘Right, now undress. Both of you.’
The man began to take off his clothes awkwardly, in little bursts of movement, as though fearing that each movement might be his last. But the woman moved with grace, taking off her dress as though stripping in a nightclub, before unfastening her bra and pushing down her pants, and her movements formed an invitation. Lindsay watched, and felt himself mightily tempted. But the world was full of nubile women, and he did not have a great deal of time.
He bent to pick up one of her stockings. ‘Now tie his hands behind his back, and make him lie on the grass.’ He watched as she secured the nylon, pushing the man down on the grass, and picked up her second stocking. ‘Now put your wrists together behind your back.’
The woman arched her body in the most open invitation, but they had also reached the most dangerous moment. Lindsay rested his gun on the bonnet of the car, close to his side, before fastening her hands deftly, tense and expectant, because for a moment he was unarmed. But the woman held still as he secured her, as though waiting for him to make a move, and a moment later he had bound and secured her. He placed his hands on her shoulders, pushing her gently down to the ground, and she looked up at him as he took the gun again, and she was smiling. But he ignored her. He must get going, and out of Germany at top speed.. He scooped up the man’s clothing, then the woman’s, and tossed them onto the back seat of the BMW.
‘Bye-be, lieblings.’ He lifted his hand in farewell. ‘Hopefully I’ll be in Belgium before you get help.’ He got into the car and let it into gear, to roll slowly back towards the road, glancing briefly in the rear view mirror. Two bodies lay white on the grass, and neither presented any threat.
The journey back to the autobahn took a fraction of the time taken getting into the forest. Lindsay drove as fast as he dared along the track, because time was now of the essence, and all hell would break loose once the couple made it back to the real world.
Fortunately the link road to Hannover airport was well signed, and he was soon cruising into the airport carpark. It was Sunday afternoon, and there were not many cars. He circled the carpark slowly, seeking concealment, and spotted an area reserved for airline employees. The area had a corner slot almost hidden from the main carpark, and looked ideal. He parked the BMW neatly, and remembered the man’s clothing on the back seat. He must search it, and then hide it in the boot. The inside pocket of the man’s jacket held a wallet. Lindsay riffled through it quickly, and tucked it back into place. It held the equivalent of more than a hundred in sterling, but he was not a thief. He took both sets of clothes, and the woman’s handbag, dropped them in the boot of the car, and locked it. He had amassed the equivalent of two years’ earnings in just two days, with every penny tax free, and he had no need to steal.
Hannover airport terminal building was an anonymous structure, dozing in the Sunday afternoon heat. A few people dotted the concourse, waiting for planes to leave or arrive, and a scattering of staff manned a handful of service desks. Lindsay looked up at the departures screen, and saw just one foreign flight: a British Caledonian link to Gatwick, just half an hour off.
A tubby German girl in incongruous tartan booked him deftly. ‘You have a ticket from Berlin to London, sir.’ She was all respect. ‘Do you wish me to change it?’
Lindsay beamed his most charming smile. A clock was ticking, but it would take time for the man and the woman to walk several naked kilometres through the forest and then find salvation, and he expected to be well on his way before the first police sirens wailed. ‘I guess you owe me some money. Can you upgrade me in lieu?’
The girl nodded. ‘You won’t have much company.’
Lindsay took his boarding pass and beamed. This time he faced no hurdles. He walked to the airport exchange bureau, to change all his deutschemarks and Swiss francs into dollars, and then joined the departure gate queue. Momentarily he felt a twinge of regret about the woman he had left in the forest. But safety survives longer than lust.
The telex warning airline staff to keep a watchful eye open for Britons attempting to leave Germany in a hurry arrived twentyfive minutes after British Caledonian’s flight had left the ground. The girl in tartan glanced at idly, crumpled it into a tight ball, and pitched it into her waste bin. He had been a goodlooking criminal.
Meanwhile a fairhaired airhostess with delectably chinablue eyes, features of almost doll-like perfection, and a shape to match, stood pouring Lindsay free champagne somewhere high above the Netherlands. She smiled at him encouragingly as she poured, because he was her only first-class passenger. Lindsay returned her smile with interest. He was on his way home, with plenty of cash in his pocket, and a Sunday evening ahead of him.