'We must shift those bombs.'
'Risk it,' said Pestovitch. 'Leave them alone.'
'No,' said the king. 'Shift them near the frontier. Then while they
watch us here--they will always watch us here now--we can buy an
aeroplane abroad, and pick them up....'
The king was in a feverish, irritable mood all that evening, but he made
his plans nevertheless with infinite cunning. They must get the bombs
away; there must be a couple of atomic hay lorries, the bombs could be
hidden under the hay.... Pestovitch went and came, instructing trusty
servants, planning and replanning.... The king and the ex-king talked
very pleasantly of a number of subjects. All the while at the back
of King Ferdinand Charles's mind fretted the mystery of his vanished
aeroplane. There came no news of its capture, and no news of its
success. At any moment all that power at the back of his visitor might
crumble away and vanish....
It was past midnight, when the king, in a cloak and slouch hat
that might equally have served a small farmer, or any respectable
middle-class man, slipped out from an inconspicuous service gate on the
eastward side of his palace into the thickly wooded gardens that sloped
in a series of terraces down to the town. Pestovitch and his guard-valet
Peter, both wrapped about in a similar disguise, came out among the
laurels that bordered the pathway and joined him.
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