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“Batumi’s what we want.”
“Have we got any chance at all in this thing?”
“We have with me driving.” He gri
The tires snickered on the curves and Pudovkin drove at breakneck pace, using his horn on the blind turnings. We were climbing steadily into the foothills of the Caucasus range above the widening coastal plain of Poti and looking off to the right I could see the patchwork of farms on the flatlands—and a spume of spray on a wet road arrowing up toward a bisecting point somewhere ahead of us. It was quite distant; I looked away and looked again and it was still there, the wake of a fast-moving car. I pointed and shouted. Pudovkin nodded.
It couldn’t be accident. That one was coming up to block our route; he’d been signaled from the checkpoint. They’d have other cars on the other roads by now as well.
Pudovkin said, “We’ll just have to beat him to the crossing.”
The transmission was whining in third. Pudovkin cut across the insides of all the bends without taking his foot off and we were on two wheels more than once. The rain had quit but the surfaces were still wet and there were patches of mist; we burst through them like a projectile.
At intervals the road lipped out and we had glimpses of the flood plain from ever higher points. The car was out of sight in the lower hills somewhere. I tried to judge his course by the map but there were too many roads out of Poti. Most of them crossed the one we were on.
I saw the first intersection coming at us and I jammed feet and hands forward to brace but Pudovkin roared straight through it and the lorry to our left hit his brakes with an indignant yelp of horn. We rammed through a stand of timber and crossed a ridge and I saw the pursuit off to our right angling toward us from below. It was a big Skoda, black with four doors, a heavy Czech saloon climbing the steep rises with the arrogant power of its two-and-a-half liter engine.
The roads met at the head of an open meadow and we were watching each other as we squealed toward it. I saw one of the windows roll down and a weapon appear—something squat and ugly, a submachine gun.
We were into the crossing ahead of them and then the road made a painful turn: Pudovkin down-shifted for it and we almost rolled over but the wheels came down on the high crown and he accelerated us out of it.
We had a third of a kilometer’s straight run and Pudovkin disengaged his seat adjustment lever and pushed the seat all the way back; slid down until he was sitting on the back of his neck, eyes just high enough to see over the wipers through the crescent of the steering wheel. “You’d better get down.”
I followed his example and my knuckles went white gripping the hand strap. He had his driving: I had nothing but hopeless panic.
The big saloon closed rapidly on the straightaways but we had quicker brakes and better turning balance and Pudovkin regained the lead every time we hit bends. He had the engine full-out and I was waiting for a piston to burst through the engine block. In the end it wasn’t the Volkswagen which kept us out of their range—it was Pudovkin’s skill. A better driver at the wheel of the Skoda would have made better miles out of the big car’s horsepower. As it was, we’d hit the intersection nearly a quarter of a kilometer ahead of them and they’d lost a little ground making the turn but since then we’d lost a little bit of our lead with every hill.
It was their climbing power that made the difference and Pudovkin saw that. He spun the wheel at the first right-hand intersection and that put us into a downslope of ruptured third-class mountain road. Rocks and stunted trees whipped by my door handle at shoulder height and one uncertainty would smash us on the narrow bends but here the horsepower was equalized and we had gravity on our side.
But instinct made me grope for the map and when I had it before me I yelled at him desperately: it was a dead-end road.
“How far?”
I had squirmed around to peer out the back; through the splintered glass I had glimpses of the black snout of the Skoda. Not far back—not far at all: on a straight run they’d have been shooting, at this range. I could almost read the number plate.
“How far?”
“Not more than five kilometers.”
Now we ran out onto a shelf, close under the windward side of the mountains with a sheer cliff dropping away on the open side to our left; the tires chattered and whimpered on the bends and I saw the Skoda sway out onto the cliff-cut road behind us. And suddenly I realized we were losing speed and I stared at Pudovkin in horror. “What’s the matter?”
He didn’t answer but I saw his foot was off the gas. He had his right hand wrapped around the handle of the handbrake between the seats but he hadn’t lifted it yet. Ahead of us the road swept out of sight to the right around what appeared to be a very sharp bend—hairpin on a pivot of rock, and no guard rail at the outside. I spun my head to search for the Skoda but it took no finding: on the straight run it was barreling down on us like a black locomotive.
“Now hold tight.” Pudovkin was pulling the handbrake and I knew instinctively why: for some reason he wanted to slow us down without flashing the red brake-warning lights on the back of the car. At the same time we were swinging out into the left-hand lane of the road—the outside lane above the drop—and at first I thought he was giving himself the widest possible angle from which to hit the right-hand hairpin bend ahead. But it gave the Skoda its chance and I saw dust squirt from beneath its rear tires as the driver gave it full speed and I shouted at Pudovkin because I was sure he hadn’t seen the Skoda’s move:
“They’re going to overtake on the inside.”
“I know. Hold tight.”
A runoff ditch skewered the road and we crashed through it with a jar that made the beetle jump and scrabble but Pudovkin kept it away from the lip of the cliff. He was still far over to the left and the Skoda was within a hundred feet, roaring down the inside lane; the snout of the submachine gun appeared at the rear left-hand window and I shrank down in the seat.
The bend was coming at us and Pudovkin had the brake up several notches in his fist; we were slowing disastrously and the Skoda pulled almost even with us and I knew they were going to push us over the edge. I heard the submachine gun and then I felt the terrifying first touch of the Skoda’s bumper nudging our rear fender and I knew we would go over.
But then Pudovkin yanked the handbrake all the way up and because the emergencies were rear-wheel brakes we didn’t lose traction: we were stopping precipitously and I saw the Skoda shoot past and suddenly its driver must have seen the trap because I heard the wicked grab of his tires on the gravel when he jabbed his footbrake. The submachine gun roared virtually point-blank in my ears and I hunched my head down into the corner between the seat and the door; I did not see the rest but I heard the sickening shriek of burning rubber and the long jangling crunch when the Skoda went over the hairpin edge ahead of us—the bouncing impacts as it went down the mountain, the brittle shattering of glass and the long echo of crumpling steel as she hit bottom. Then I could hear the insistent steady cry of the jammed horn and I knew it had to be final.
Only then did I realize that we were not moving: the ratcheted handbrake had pulled us to a halt within six feet of the lip.
My skin crawled when my emotions realized how close it had been. I turned to Pudovkin.
He was dead. The submachine gun.
* March 27, 1973. Bristow had arrived at Bukov’s on the night of Saturday, March 24.—Ed.