I no longer knew which streets we were running through or which direction I was going but the object of the operation was to let them hound me until I could leave the car and get to cover and vanish and hope to sight them, one of them or more than one, and wait until they believed I was clear and went back to their base.
A long shot, oh yes indeed it was a very long shot and for the first time I wondered if this had been the only way to shift Quickstep into the end-phase and get to the target in time, but the left brain was almost shut down by now and my hands moved the wheel of their own accord as the eyes sighted and the brain interpreted and instinct triggered the motor nerves and we hit a wall and bounced and ran on with torn metal screaming against a tyre while headlights swung in and blinded me time after time and I drove unseeing, with memory trapping the last image and the brain taking me through an opening and getting me to the far side where vision came in again and the kaleidoscope of the street's perspective was broken into a semblance of order and I hit the throttle and braked and swung the wheel and used the kerb to kick me straight and the corners to get me clear until the police sirens began and the flashing of lights coloured the night.
Then they came for me and I wasn't ready for it but there was nothing I could have done as a Mercedes came up very fast in the mirror and swung out and drew alongside and I felt the impact of something against my leg and heard it thud to the floor and knew what it was and hit the brakes and wrenched at the wheel to roll the car over and use its underside for a shield as the explosion came and its force blew glass and metal in a hot wind across the street and I was pitched headlong across the pavement as the fuel tank went up in a burst of orange light and the heat came against my back like a blowtorch and I got up and tripped and pitched down and got to my feet again and ran, ran anywhere, just away from the inferno in the street behind me with the sirens coming in, wailing and dying as the first patrol car slammed on its brakes and backed off as the black smoke billowed between the buildings.
A truck halted at the intersection as the driver saw the blaze and I dropped and slid underneath it and reached the other side and clambered onto whatever I could find that gave a hand grip and lay flat across the top of the huge fuel tank as the truck backed, bumping with its twin rear wheels across the kerb and then moving forward again, swinging full circle away from the heat, so that I had to drop and crawl underneath again to the other side because there'd be Volper's people in the area watching for me: if they were professionals they wouldn't assume the grenade had finished me before the Merc rolled over.
A Fiat went past the truck on the other side and I saw its reflection in a store window as it reached the street where the Merc was burning and hit the brakes and slewed sideways as a Vopo patrol waved it back.
They'd be moving in, all of them, the whole of the opposition hit team, and they'd be looking for me. Nothing could have survived in that inferno and there was no question of the police or fire crews trying to pull a body out, dead or alive, and none of the hit team could get close enough to find out if I were still inside the Merc or not.
Black Audi going very fast towards the blaze, underestimating its closeness and braking hard and slamming against a sandbin and bouncing off and spinning and getting control and coming back past the other side of the truck. I twisted on top of the fuel tank until I was lying with my back to the street, a black polythene and fabric bundle in the half-dark as the truck lumbered through its forced detour and another came up alongside, one of the drivers shouting something to the other.
A police car neared from the intersection with its lights splashing against the buildings and I waited until the truck was moving close to a wall and pulling up and then I dropped and rolled underneath, reaching for a handhold on the cruciform chassis beams, heaving myself up and hanging on as a wash of light flowed across the road surface And the wheels of a private car rolled past at a walking pace and then halted and turned as one of the Vopos shouted.
I shifted over as the big propeller-shaft of the truck began brushing my arm but the handhold was too smooth and I had to cling on to a brake cable, swinging with both feet lodged against a cross-member. The truck slowed again and turned between two rows of wooden platforms, coming to a halt as a man dropped from the cab; all I could see were his legs. The wheels of another truck were rolling to a halt behind us and I hung there taking slow shallow breaths as the diesel gas clouded from the exhausts.
Dropped, crawled under the platform and lay there among a litter of crates, pulling the nearest ones around me for cover.
Take stock. I was in a freight-yard and the trucks were coming in to unload for the markets that would open for shopkeepers, probably at first light. There would be Volper's people moving through the area, checking everywhere before they assumed one of two things: either the grenade had finished me or I'd managed to get clear. Then they would leave, moving in larger circles with the truck depot as their centre.
There was still a chance of making the switch: of keeping one of them in sight and waiting until he moved away and moving after him and staying on his track until led me to base, to the objective for Quickstep, to Horst Volper.
Must've been a drunk!
Or a stolen car, going that speed!
Truckers calling to each other they came alongside and began work on the ropes and the tarpaulins, big men in big coats, in from the country, mud on their boots.
Makes you sick, with him still in the car.
A woman, maybe.
Worse, then. Hans! Gimme a hand with this rope, the knot’s frozen!
I began checking the environment. There must be ten or fifteen platforms in the yard, a hundred feet long, with twenty or thirty trucks crawling between them and pulling up, the rattle of their diesels dying one after another and leaving only the shouts of the men and the banging of their boots as they moved about, stowing the tarpaulins and pulling the crates on their backs, the crates, baskets, sacks and bundles, dropping them onto the platforms.
What's he coming here for?
Give us a talk about bloody Lenin, what else?
He's all right, Otto, he's shaking things up over there!
Pity he doesn't knock the Wall down, now that'd be something!
Below the platforms, a backdrop of red brick walls and store fronts, doors, windows, sandbins, street lamps, two cars standing within fifty yards of where I was lying in cover, a man moving away from a BMW and coming into the depot, looking at no one, talking to no one, hands shoved into the vertical chest-pockets of his black anorak, his head turning left, turning right. I wasn't in hazard: this was good cover among the debris of broken crates and cardboard boxes, with the light factor so low as to be shadowless. I could lie easy, letting the body go through its healing processes and the nerves relax — I'd skinned a hand when I'd hit the door of the Merc open and pitched out, and my back had twisted as I'd started my run, falling and getting up and falling again and finding my feet and lurching towards cover; I didn't know what I looked like from the back, whether the rush of flame had actually seared the plastic jacket, how much attention I'd attract when I finally walked out of here. There was a lingering degree of shock from the instant when I'd known what they must have thrown into the car, worse than when the thing had blown up because I'd been expecting that. Relax, then, relax and observe.