Read Online The Hidden Target by Helen MacInnes - Free Book Online Page B

him.”
    “Come on!” Tony said, catching Madge by the wrist. He glared back at the policemen, saw the little man dart off, one officer starting to give chase, the other still standing at the barrel organ. Tony’s spine stiffened. As the explosion burst out, he was already dropping flat on his face with Madge pulled down beside him. In the same split second, Kiley acted, shoving Nina on to the ground, falling partly over her with a protecting arm around the back of her head.
    There were screams, shouts, traffic screeching to a halt, children crying, a woman moaning near them. The two men picked themselves up, helped Nina and Madge to their feet. “Okay?” Kiley asked.
    Nina nodded. Apart from the sudden fall, jarring every bone in her body, and street dust clinging to her shirt and jeans, she was all right. Breathless and dazed, but all right. So was Madge.
    But it had been close. Near her, two women were bleeding, a man was covering his wounded eye, children had been knocked to the ground; and over by the twisted remains of the barrel organ, the policeman lay still.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Kiley said. Soon there would be more police, and ambulances, and possibly a TV news camera.
    “I agree.” Tony was shaking his head. “To think,” he added in a low voice, “you and I might have been put in a hospital for six months by some home-grown terrorists. Imbeciles! What did they accomplish?”
    A splinter group working on a small scale, thought Kiley: a half-baked operation, ludicrous. “Not German, at any rate,” he said thankfully. That would have brought West German Intelligence on to the Amsterdam scene. The sooner we get out of here, the better.
    “Indonesians?” Tony suggested. He couldn’t repress a laugh. South Moluccans putting him and Kiley out of business, the bloody fools.
    “Don’t think so.” So far the Moluccans’ protest against Indonesia had limited itself to occupying a train and holding its passengers as hostages, or secreting arms in their housing developments, or talking, talking, talking.
    Madge was still staring around her in horror. But Nina had recovered a little. She had heard that last interchange. “Indonesians?” she repeated. “Why should they do this?”
    “Let’s move,” Kiley said. He slipped an arm through Nina’s, steadying her. He set a slow pace. Both girls were obviously shaken.
    “They’ve been independent for thirty years,” Nina said. Shock was giving way to indignation and anger.
    “Some Indonesians want to be free from Indonesia,” Tony snapped.
    “Then why don’t they bomb Indonesia?”
    “Because,” said Kiley patiently, “they now live in Holland.”
    “Refugees? And so they take it out on the Dutch?” She shook off Kiley’s guiding arm. Her voice was more decisive than it had ever been. “Terrorist logic,” she said scathingly. “Cowards, too. All of them! They leave a bomb and run. Oh, no, they don’t get killed or mutilated. They’ll telephone the newspapers later, claiming they were responsible. How very brave—how noble!” She laughed unsteadily. Tears were approaching. “Don’t terrorists ever think of people?”
    “They are fighting for the people,” Kiley suggested, his tone mild.
    “So they kill them?”
    “We can get a drink in here,” Kiley said, and led the way.
    Nina said, “We ought to have stayed and helped,” but she followed him inside the restaurant. She suddenly noticed his arm had been bleeding.
    “Nothing,” he told her. It wasn’t much, actually—a glancing blow from a splinter of wood: it could have been a shard of glass from the store’s window. But the small wound was effective. Both girls became silent.
    Then, “Thank you,” Nina said to James Kiley; and Madge looked at Tony Shawfield, smiled shyly, and thanked him, too.
    “You were so quick,” Madge told him. “If I had been alone, I would have been caught standing up. Like that woman with the blood pouring over her face... Oh, God!”