Hard Case Crime: Passport To Peril (5 page)

The baggage wasn’t the only surprise that awaited us. The local from Vienna for Budapest was ready to leave as soon as its passengers satisfied passport examiners, customs guards, money control officials, health inspectors, and the MVD. There was a note for Marcel Blaye from Countess Orlovska. And to make it a really gala occasion, there was Herr Doktor Wolfgang Schmidt promenading the platform, as big as life and twice as ugly.

Otto had driven us to Hegyshalom in the Russian staff car, over the same rutted road we had walked the night before, through the gate in the high wire fence, and across the railway tracks. Major Strakhov pointed out, in a strictly impersonal way of course, that we had been extremely lucky to fall into the hands of Otto and his friends. I had miscalculated our position when we jumped from the Orient. I had remembered the border as it was before the war. It had been easy enough for me to sound off about friendly farmers to drive us to Vienna. But there were no farmers for miles; the Red Army had cleaned them out of the border zone. And the frontier was three miles behind us when we left the express; we were well into Hungary. If we had eluded Otto and then escaped death from exposure, we should have faced a frontier solid with barbed wire, machine-gun emplacements, searchlight towers, and sentries with police dogs.

Our clothes had been returned to us, neatly pressed by Hermann, and we had breakfasted on ham and eggs and coffee with Major Strakhov in front of a roaring fire. We might have been an archduke’s weekend guests instead of a Russian major’s prisoners. Strakhov entertained us with stories of his boyhood in Leningrad, and Maria never blinked an eye when he addressed me as Monsieur Blaye. I might have relaxed and enjoyed myself if I hadn’t pictured what would happen when we reached Budapest, when Major Strakhov learned from Countess Orlovska that I wasn’t Marcel Blaye.

The countess’s note, produced by the stationmaster at Hegyshalom, served only to deepen the mystery. Maria had said Blaye seemed very much in love with the countess who visited his Geneva office. Strakhov had added that she was “upset” to hear that Blaye had brought Maria—“your pretty secretary.”

The note, written on heavily scented pink paper, only added to my confusion.

Darling: You have acted very foolishly.
A kiss and the back of her hand at the same time.
You gave me your solemn word you would faithfully carry out our bargain.
Was the Countess Orlovska included in this strange watch-and-clock deal? With Dr. Schmidt the homicidal competitor?

“What are you laughing at?” Maria said.

“It must be love,” the major said. “A charming lady, the countess.”

I read the rest.
You cannot, must not have any regrets at this late date. You are gaining a very powerful friend, one on whom you may always count. Suppose some of your so-called friends do object? You know you will get nowhere on your own. I anxiously await your arrival in Budapest, my love.

It was written in German and signed
Anna.

When Strakhov remembered he had not telegraphed the time of our arrival to Budapest and went off to the stationmaster’s office, I handed the note to Maria.

She said, “I’m sorry but I don’t know German. You’ll have to tell me what it says.” I translated it into French, but she said it didn’t mean anything to her.

“Did Blaye speak German?” I asked.

“Yes,” Maria said, “especially with the countess.” She added, “He also spoke German with Doctor Schmidt.”

“Was the countess supposed to be in on this big deal? Did Blaye ever mention her or Doctor Schmidt in that connection?”

Maria shook her head. “I don’t know. I told you I knew so very little about Monsieur Blaye’s business.”

“Was there any connection between the countess and Doctor Schmidt? Did you ever see them together?”

“No,” Maria said. “It was just the opposite. Monsieur told me that I was to keep them apart. He said that if either arrived while the other was there I was to say he was out. He was very definite about it.” She linked her arm through mine. “What do we do now?”

“Go on to Budapest,” I said. “There’s nothing else we can do. At least there’s still no alarm out for me. I expected to find half the MVD waiting. I don’t get it.”

The platform was lined with Hungarian gendarmes, their spiked silver-and-black helmets glistening in the sun. The only exit from the station grounds was guarded by Russian soldiers. I had thought wildly of boarding the train and leaving through the side away from the platform, trusting to find some escape through the yards, but there was a freight on the next track, apparently shunted there to discourage passengers with such ideas.

The schedule, posted in the station, told me the local took more than five hours to reach Budapest, with twenty or more stops at village stations. Maybe something would turn up in that time. I told Maria the story of Grigori, the Sultan, and the Sultan’s favorite monkey. Grigori had been condemned to life imprisonment but won a year’s stay by assuring the Sultan he could teach the monkey to talk. If he succeeded, he’d go free. If he failed, he’d die by slow torture. “But you know you can’t teach that monkey to talk,” said his wife. “I know, I know,” was Grigori’s smiling answer, “but something’s sure to turn up in the year. Either the Sultan will die or the monkey will die or—”

“Or you will die,” said a voice behind us. Maria grabbed my arm. It was Major Strakhov. How long had he been listening? “Amusing story isn’t it, Monsieur Blaye? I didn’t realize it was known in Switzerland. It’s a favorite of prisoners in our Soviet jails. I like to think it shows the fatalism of our race.”

There was a first-class compartment for us, a sticker in Hungarian and Russian on the door:
Reserved for the Embassy of the USSR.
As soon as we had racked our baggage, Strakhov handed me Marcel Blaye’s passport and the traveler’s checks which Otto had lifted the night before. He returned to Maria her Swiss passport and the Manila envelope she had so carefully carried from the Orient. The red wax seals were intact. The major had no reason to withhold our papers, now that he was sure we couldn’t escape the rendezvous in Budapest.

From then on it was a cat and mouse game between Strakhov and me. I had to examine the contents of the envelope; Maria had passed it to me. I had to know something, anything, about Marcel Blaye’s game if we were to have a chance with Countess Orlovska and the Russians in Budapest. But I couldn’t rip open the envelope, supposed to belong to me as Marcel Blaye, certainly not in front of Strakhov. He might wonder at Blaye’s consuming curiosity regarding his own property. And the major had made it very plain by his actions that he intended to keep me in his sight, that he was with me solely for the purpose of seeing me to Budapest.

Maria and I, with the major close by, were standing in the corridor when the station bell rang for the train to start. That was the moment for Maria to spot Dr. Schmidt on the platform.

“I beg your pardon?” said Strakhov to Maria. “What did you say?”

“She was just commenting on the beauty of those farm women,” I said. “The ones down there with the geese.”

“Not bad,” said the major, “but you should see our Russian peasants.”

The doctor couldn’t have been more than fifty feet away. I caught the glint of sun on gold-rimmed spectacles, a gray Homburg on the bullet head, an almost ankle-length overcoat, yellow gloves, and a cane. I took Maria’s arm but there was no sign in her face of the fear she had shown the night before.

Strakhov saw Schmidt, too, but he gave his attention to the man with whom Schmidt was conversing, a tough-looking character with a great black mustache and a patch over one eye.

The major let down the window, popped his head out, and shouted in German, “Otto, I told you to get back to the lodge. Get a move on, you loafer.” He turned to me. “Didn’t I say those swine are just like children? Talk to strangers, anything to get out of work.”

Otto acted as if he’d been caught in the jam pot. He clicked his heels, saluted in Strakhov’s direction, and disappeared on the double into the station. Dr. Schmidt boarded the train just as it started to move.

What could I have done about Schmidt? I was sure he’d been discussing Maria and me with Otto but what could I have said to Strakhov? I couldn’t say, “There’s the man who murdered Marcel Blaye,” because I was Blaye as far as the major knew or cared. I couldn’t say, “Arrest that man. He’s following Mademoiselle Torres to rob her or kill her,” because such a statement was equally impossible of explanation. There was another side to the situation, too. As long as Strakhov was with us, we were reasonably safe from Dr. Schmidt. The little man on the platform had seemed about half my size, but I was sure he had a gun. I reproached myself for not having bought a revolver in Vienna but I had worried about being searched at the frontier and, anyway, Otto would have lifted it the night before. Strakhov had returned the passports, the traveler’s checks, and the Manila envelope but he wouldn’t have given me back a gun.

As soon as the train was rolling, the major settled himself in a corner, lit an evil-smelling black cigar, and poked his nose into a copy of
Pravda.
I picked up the Manila envelope, excused myself, and started out the door, but Strakhov dropped his paper and came with me. For the next two hours I tried every excuse to shake him. When I went for a drink of water he tagged along. When I expressed a desire to stand in the corridor to watch the dreary countryside, he stood beside me. When I followed the bearded conductor to ask how late we were running, Strakhov came along. I couldn’t even get away from him in the men’s room.

Maria had tried to pry the major loose, but he wouldn’t follow
her
when she left the compartment. He must have read
Pravda
word for word at least half a dozen times when he wasn’t following me up and down the corridor. Maria produced knitting from somewhere. I sat and stared out the window and grew more and more fidgety at the thought of meeting the Countess Orlovska at the station in Budapest.

We couldn’t have been much more than an hour out of Budapest when Maria came back to the compartment to announce that lunch was being served in the dining car and that she was hungry. Strakhov said he didn’t care much about eating. I said I thought lunch was a fine idea, so then the major quickly agreed he’d like it after all. Maria said she’d run into the steward in the corridor and had taken tickets and she gave us each one. We went through the train in single file, pushing our way through half a dozen third-class coaches, the corridors jammed with peasants on their way to market, live geese and chickens and quacking ducks under their arms, the odor of garlic and sour red wine on everything, the cars strung with red banners proclaiming:
Long live the People’s Democracy.

We were met at the door of the diner by a smiling, bowing waiter. I thought the effusive welcome somewhat unusual, even allowing for Maria’s beauty, and I put it down to the fact that Strakhov was in uniform. Most porters and dining-car stewards in the Iron Curtain countries are police informers. They know enough to be polite to Russian officials if they want to keep their jobs.

The little waiter bowed us up the aisle to the end of the car.

“May I have your tickets, please, your excellencies,” he said, halting in front of a table for four, already occupied by a man and a woman. “Ah, yes, Madame is here.” He seated Maria with a grand flourish. “Monsieur here.” He put me across from Maria. “And Excellency Major, this way, if you please.” Strakhov looked as if he would choke. His eyes nearly closed under those bushy black eyebrows but he shrugged his shoulders and followed the steward down the aisle, getting a seat with his back to us. I think he failed to put up a row because he figured we couldn’t leave the diner without passing him; our end of the car was coupled to the electric locomotive, and there was a Russian guard plainly visible on the platform.

At that moment I didn’t care whether the others at the table spoke French or not.

“Some luck,” I said to Maria. “I couldn’t figure out how we were ever going to shake that guy.”

Maria’s black eyes flashed. “Luck, nothing,” she said. “I like your nerve. When I got the tickets from the waiter, I gave him a big fat tip. I told him we were newlyweds and we wanted to be alone.”

“And you’re right, too,” said the man who sat next to Maria—in French, but with an American accent if I’d ever heard one. “What Europe needs these days is more romance. Isn’t that what Europe needs, Teensy?”

“Oui,” said the woman who sat next to me. “Uh, oui.”

I was so intent on getting to Marcel Blaye’s Manila envelope, now that we’d escaped Strakhov for the moment, that I was hardly prepared to have two strangers butt into our conversation.

“Romance is the thing,” said the man. Then he spoke American: “By the way, do you folks speak any English? I’m afraid I’m not too good at this frog talk myself.”

I said I spoke English. I couldn’t see any reason why a Swiss businessman shouldn’t know English. I said it before I realized I was opening the way to complications while the Manila envelope was burning a hole in my pocket. Maria said she spoke some English, too. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask her.

The man grinned. “I think you both speak English real good. Don’t you think they speak English real good, Teensy?”

“Yes,” said Teensy. “Uh, yes.”

“Folks, my name is Hiram Carr—Hiram G. Carr, to be exact. I’d like you to shake hands with Mrs. Carr.” Teensy had a grip like a stevedore. “Married twenty years next February, folks. More in love than ever. Hope you young folks’ll be as happy as we are. Isn’t that right, Teensy?”

“Uh-huh,” Teensy said.

Hiram Carr reminded me of a well-groomed sparrow. He looked to be somewhere in his early fifties. His high-pitched voice came from an incredibly small body. A good foot shorter than I, Carr had a round, pink baby face. Twinkling blue eyes shone through pince-nez, the first I’d seen in years that carried a thin gold chain hooked over one ear. His sparse gray hair, parted in the middle, looked as if it might have been barbered by Teensy, an extraordinary exhibit herself. Nearly six feet tall and big all over, she must have been a good ten years younger than her husband. Her abundant yellow hair, obviously dyed, was swept on top of her square head and held more or less in place with big black hairpins. Her expressionless face might have been made of granite with a bright dab of orange rouge on each cheek.