The jeep was getting short of fuel, but there would be enough to get them as far as Innsbruck, where they could bank on finding a French garrison to fill up. The road down from the high village of Almrosen was atrocious but the day was bright and there was no other traffic. Wilde was at the wheel.

Halfway down, there had been another rockfall. Wilde slowed to a crawl to skirt the boulders that littered the road. On his left, the fall-away was sheer, with a precipice of close to a thousand feet.

‘Enjoying the drive, Professor?’ Heck said. ‘Let’s see if you can keep us alive.’

‘Was that a vote of confidence?’

‘Take it how you will.’

Wilde glanced in the mirror. Some way back, he spotted another vehicle, a light-green truck loaded with tree trunks. He and Heck maintained silence; concentration was critical. One minor error would do for them.

He gave the mirror another cursory look. To his surprise, the light-green timber lorry seemed to be gaining on them. It was going too fast for the road and he felt a stab of anxiety. How would it cope with the rockfall debris? Perhaps the driver was familiar with this way, but such a vehicle would be difficult to control when it came to negotiating difficult terrain, and braking would be grindingly slow. Instinctively, Wilde put his foot down gently, to maintain distance.

‘OK, Professor?’ Heck had seemed to sense the tension in Wilde’s hands.

Wilde’s eyes flicked between the road and the mirror. ‘What the hell is he doing?’ he said under his breath as the green lorry swerved its way through the scattered boulders.

Heck hadn’t seen the truck. Now he turned around. ‘Goddamn it, Wilde, I don’t think he can slow down. You’re going to have to motor.’

That was impossible. The road was narrow and passing places were few and far between. To their right was sheer rock wall, to their left, the precipice.

Despite his misgivings, Wilde accelerated again, but even thirty miles an hour was too fast for this stretch and he felt a real stab of fear; they were approaching the most severe of the hairpins.

And then they saw the second truck, a heavy black lorry, growling up the mountain road, straight at them.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Wilde couldn’t brake. The truck following them was now gaining at an alarming speed and had swept through the rockfalls like a racing driver cutting through chicanes. If the jeep stopped now, they would simply be crushed against the rock wall or swept over the edge to certain death. But how could they find a way past the oncoming vehicle grinding its way uphill, its driver seemingly oblivious of the immediate peril facing all three vehicles.