A/N: I wanted to get the next chapter up before New Year's Eve so it's slightly shorter than some of the others! Thanks again to those who are still with me!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE CHASE
"Ha!" Max barked triumphantly, turning back around in his seat to face the road ahead, trees blurring past the car on either side as they whipped through the country lanes, "I think we've lost them, you know!"
Georg only pursed his lips, gripping the steering wheel tighter, "I don't think we're out of the woods just yet," he gritted, taking a sharp bend a little too fast, but recovering control of the vehicle quickly.
Twisting around in his seat again and peering over his shoulder, the impresario observed the country lane stretching out behind them. It was completely deserted, save for the few tyre marks Georg had left in his wake when abusing the accelerator.
"It looks like the coast is clear to me!" Max chuckled with gleeful arrogance, "Besides, we have the advantage. You know these roads like the back of your hand."
"I imagine Rolf does too, after the number of telegrams he's delivered to my door on that blasted bicycle," Georg snarled bitterly, anger blossoming at the thought of how close he'd allowed the boy to get to his eldest daughter, "that little-"
"Arschgeige?" the impresario finished for him bluntly.
"Well, actually I was going to say-"
"Sohn einer Hündin?"
Despite himself and the dire situation they found themselves in, Georg chuckled, his anger gradually dissipating in favour of good humour, "I was thinking something perhaps a little more obscene than that."
"Ah," Max grinned knowingly, "ein kleiner ficker, then!"
Laughing fully now, Georg felt his mood instantly lift. As immature and outrageous as Max Detweiler could be at times, he couldn't deny the sponge always managed to lighten a sombre mood. In truth, it was a relief and a pleasure simply to share a joke with a good friend in the shadow of such dark circumstances.
"You know, Georg," Max broke the silence wistfully some time later, gesturing between them, "I've missed this."
Georg frowned in confusion, eyes still fixed to the road, "This, Max?"
"Yes. This," the impresario repeated, "Us. The adventures we used to have. Fighting foes. Escaping danger. Two young scallywags let loose on the open ocean," he chortled nostalgically, "We didn't have a clue, did we!"
While Georg couldn't quite bring himself to refer to the last hour of his life as an adventure, he did have to admit that he and Max had plenty of experience when it came to getting themselves into sticky situations there seemed no way out of. On many a night during their wilder youths at sea, they'd gone out looking for trouble, wreaking havoc in ports they'd most likely never see again, chasing fine liquor and finer women. Regardless of the fact that their lives had been on the line, it'd felt like a simpler time back then. With everything to gain and nothing to lose. Now, with the enemy in hot pursuit, it seemed as though hardly anything had changed in all of twenty years. The key difference however, was a colossal one: it was no longer only their lives at stake.
"I don't think we have a clue now either, Max," he replied gravely, "the sooner we get to the abbey and meet Maria and the children, the better."
Nodding pensively, the impresario said no more, apparently lost to his own thoughts. For quite some time they sat in an easy silence, though the air was still thick with inevitable apprehension. It wasn't until they reached a crossroads some minutes later however, that Max suddenly broke the quietude.
"Scheiße!" He shouted out of nowhere, bolting ramrod straight and squinting down the lane to their left, the blood draining from his face, "Scheiße!"
"What?!" Georg panicked, instantly alert, "What is it!"
But the impresario had barely formed a reply before Georg spotted the source of his distress, his own stomach dropping into his shoes. There in the distance, darting towards them down the adjacent lane in a cloud of dust, was a black car that he instantly recognised. On first glance it could've been any old vehicle - but the red flags and Swastika emblems on the bonnet, flapping frantically in the wind, left very little room for doubt.
"How the hell did they find us?!" Georg roared, throwing the car into reverse and sending it careering backwards down the road they'd just come down. Wrenching the steering wheel as far round as it would go, he spun the convertible a full 180 degrees with a sickening screech of the tyres, before slamming it into first. Within the blink of an eye they were off again, speeding away from the crossroads as fast as time and space would allow.
"It's no use, Georg!" Max yelled over the white noise of the roaring engine, clinging desperately to his fedora before it flew off his head, "they've already spotted us!"
Mouth set in a determined line, Georg didn't reply. Instead, he made a swift decision that would succeed in either saving or breaking their reckless necks. There was really only one thing for it. Without hesitation, he swerved violently off the road, sending the car hurtling through the thicket of tall trees that lined the country lane.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what do you think you're doing?!" Max screeched, but still he received no response, so fixated Georg was with his current task.
The steering wheel fought back angrily against his palms as the car juddered and bounced over thickets like a tin can hurtling down a hill. He'd never admit it - not to a single soul - but he'd long since lost control of the Mercedes and was simply praying for a miracle, wrenching the steering wheel this way and that to narrowly avoid all the tree trunks that seemed to be sprouting up out of nowhere in their path.
Leaves, twigs and branches whipped at their faces from all angles. Max began choking violently on what Georg assumed was some kind of airborne insect. The car groaned and lurched and ricocheted off various woodland obstacles at high speed, until the sound of the protesting engine was eventually drowned out by Max's high-pitched screaming.
One last boulder caught the edge of the front wheel then and sent the steering wheel jerking out of Georg's grip, the car careering headlong towards a particularly thick fir tree. Within seconds, they found themselves engulfed by the dense foliage, everything going black and the vehicle coming to an abrupt and violent halt as it smashed into the trunk.
Everything was instantly still - and for a sickening moment, Georg waited for the inevitable pain of broken bones and torn skin to shoot through his body. But a quick pat down told him that, by some miracle, he was still very much in one piece. The cushion of the coniferous evergreen had apparently saved them from a nasty fate - and it seemed his passenger was still very much alive as well, for he was still shrieking like a banshee.
"Would you shut up!" Georg hissed, slapping a hand blindly over his passenger's mouth through the thicket of branches, "do you want to give us away?!"
Falling immediately silent, Max spluttered and spat impatiently through the gag of Georg's palm until it was removed from his face.
"If you don't want us to get caught you really shouldn't have crashed the car into a god forsaken tree!" He huffed.
"I crashed it deliberately," Georg retorted, receiving only an incredulous snort by way of response.
"I did!" He insisted, feeling for the door handle and attempting to barge the car door open, sending fir needles flying everywhere, "The car was never going to stop on its own. And besides," he added, swinging a leg free and wrenching himself out into the daylight, "it's way too conspicuous, they would've caught up with us in no time. We need to abandon the Mercedes and go the rest of the way on foot."
"On foot?!" Max protested, his voice muffled by the blanket of leaves and branches that engulfed him in his attempt to exit the passenger side. Some moments later he managed to burst free of the evergreen with an undignified oomfph, the tree spewing him out as though he formed the remains of its breakfast.
"We can't go on foot!" He whined, patting himself free of greenery and wrenching his fedora from where it hung pathetically on a nearby branch.
"Of course we can," Georg argued, pointing through a gap in the trees where the onion shaped dome of Nonnberg was just about visible in the distance, "look - we're nearly there. It'll just take a little longer than we first planned. The important thing is that we stay off the roads."
"Well that shouldn't be too difficult," Max grumbled sardonically, throwing one last look of longing at the ruined convertible half consumed by the fir tree they'd smashed into.
"Come on," Georg instructed, "let's get a move on. Before they find us."
And so they set off through the woods, trudging through bushes and squelching through mud until their boots and trousers were caked up to the shins. A few cuts and scrapes nicked at their forearms and faces, but the dome of Nonnberg drew ever closer, giving them the motivation they needed to put one foot in front of the other. Luckily, they met no resistance along the way - save for a particularly vicious little squirrel that had taken great satisfaction in dropping from the sky in the manner of a trapeze artist and landing unceremoniously on Max's head - much to Georg's fiendish delight.
"That really wasn't funny," the impresario scowled some minutes later, having successfully wrestled himself free of the creature, rubbing his sore scalp, "the little pest could've taken my eye out, you know."
Georg didn't even bother attempting to hide his snickers, "yes, perhaps the woodland creatures of Salzburg are in cahoots with Zeller and have a warrant out for your arrest?"
Grumbling unintelligibly, Max continued to trundle along behind him until they eventually reached a small clearing, close enough to the abbey that they could make a break for it and sneak around the back without being seen.
"It's too dangerous to simply wander up to the front gate," Georg explained, scoping out the route from their hidden position among the bushes to the back walls of the convent, "Zeller will no doubt have men on their way to search the abbey."
"And how exactly are we going to get in?" Max snorted, eyeing the towering walls with apprehension in his eyes.
Georg smirked as though enjoying a private joke, "climb, of course!"
And with that he burst from the bushes out into the deserted street, hurrying across the way towards the impenetrable fortress, ushering a gawping Max after him. Cursing under his breath, the impresario followed, until they were both safely hidden around the back of the abbey, craning their necks up at the impossible barricade of brick and mortar.
"No trellis this time," the impresario gulped, his brow marked with beads of sweat, "I don't know how you can possibly think-"
"There's a broken part of the wall over there," Georg interrupted, pointing a few feet down the way, "there's a couple of loose bricks that stick out a bit. They make excellent foot holds."
Max's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"How in the world do you know that?"
"Well.." Georg stammered, suddenly looking very uncomfortable. Sheepishly, he rubbed at the back of his ear, mumbling some form of intelligible excuse.
"My God," Max clocked, "you've scaled it before haven't you!"
Despite himself, Georg grinned conspiratorially, "Oh alright, I used to sneak out here to see Maria during our engagement," he admitted, slapping the sturdy brick affectionately, "she told me she used to escape over this wall so she could go and visit her mountain without permission. But during the engagement, we found a much better use for it."
Spluttering in utter indignation, Max looked as though he could hardly believe his ears.
"Do you mean to tell me," he began, outraged, "that you used to scale the walls of a Benedictine abbey to cop a feel with your ex-postulant fiancé?!"
Georg's eyes sparkled with the joy of fond memories.
"What was it she used to say to convince me?" He recalled, "ah yes... the love of a man and a woman is holy too," he gave a hapless shrug, "I was hardly going to refuse her!"
Max only rolled his eyes, "once a rake, always a rake."
Chuckling whimsically to himself, Georg felt along the wall until he discovered the first hold, "this is the one," he muttered to himself, "here," he beckoned the impresario over impatiently, "I'll give you a leg up."
Muttering incredulously under his breath, Max acquiesced - though with some reluctance, placing his muddied left boot awkwardly in his friend's entwined hands and hoisting himself up the first hurdle. With a few firm instructions, he was able to climb the rest of the way, followed close behind by Georg as they made their way up the wall together.
"There's a bit of a jump down on the other side," Georg called, just a foot or two below him, "but we'll be just fine."
Nodding, Max managed to swing one leg over the top of the wall and waited for his partner in crime to do the same. Once Georg had finally joined him, they both abseiled over the edge together and dropped down onto solid ground without much difficulty.
"There we are!" Georg beamed triumphantly, straightening up and dusting off his trousers, "I told you. Easy as p-"
But the words immediately died in his throat when he was interrupted by the shrill peal of several ear-splitting screams. Whirling around on the spot in shock, the two men were mortified to discover a gaggle of petrified nuns staring at them in abject horror.
"Bugger!" Max breathed, much to the outrage of their current audience.
"Blasphemy!" one nun cried, appalled.
"Devils!" Another hissed in terror, crossing herself.
"Men.." a young postulant exclaimed in apparent excitement, her eyes raking appreciatively over the two of them before an elderly nun fixed the girl with a sharp glare that immediately silenced her.
Finding himself utterly tongue-tied, Georg could only open and close his mouth stupidly like a goldfish, feeling like a teenager caught out after curfew. All the times he'd managed to scale this very wall undetected so that he could pay Maria a naughty visit and yet this time he'd managed to drop smack bang in the middle of a superfluity of God's purist devotees. Facing Zeller and his men would've be less daunting than this.
"Gentlemen!" A sour-looking nun that Georg immediately recognised as Sister Berthe stepped out of the throng, steam practically coming out of her ears, "do you care to explain yourselves?! Or perhaps you'd prefer to save your excuses for the Reverend Mother!"
A/N: this one was fun to write! I hope it was as fun to read and took the edge off the tense previous chapters a little!