Hard Case Crime: Passport To Peril (8 page)

“Even if the police don’t look for the envelope,” I said, “those international trains are always cleaned before they’re sent back to Vienna. Somebody is bound to find the envelope if you don’t hurry.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” the doctor said.

I looked at Maria and I thought I saw encouragement in her lovely eyes. “You don’t know I’m not lying,” I said to Schmidt, “but you want that envelope and you haven’t much time to waste. You’re in a hurry. You’ve got to take a chance. You’ve got to get the envelope before the Russians get it.”

“I still think you handed it to someone on the train,” the doctor said. “What do you think, Otto?”

It was plain enough what Otto thought and what he wanted. “Please, Excellency, let me get the truth.” He hadn’t liked being called a goon. He took a couple of steps toward me.

“Listen,” I said. “It would be easy enough for me to say I gave it to someone on the train. I could invent a name. But you’d find out it wasn’t true. And the Russians would beat you to it.”

“Why are you suddenly so anxious to help?” Schmidt said. “Could it be that you don’t fancy being entertained by Otto?”

“I wouldn’t like it much,” I said. “Not under these circumstances. But I think I could handle him if you’d throw your guns away.”

“Excellency, please,” Otto said. The grin had disappeared.

I looked at my watch. “That train has been in the Keleti station more than half an hour. If the Russians haven’t found the envelope, the cleaning women will.”

Schmidt went behind the desk and stood looking at the Fuehrer’s portrait.

“Look,” I said. “I’ve told you a dozen times I’m not interested in your game. Neither is Mademoiselle Torres. You know why I’ve come to Hungary and you know why she’s here. I want to start looking for my brother. Mademoiselle Torres is anxious to get back to Geneva. We don’t want to get mixed up with the Russians any more than you do. The quicker you get your envelope, the quicker we’ll all get straightened out.”

“Suppose I send you to the railway yards with Otto?” Schmidt said. He was thinking out loud. “How do I know it isn’t a trap?”

“What kind of trap could it be?” I said. “You know the Russians and the Hungarians are looking for me and Mademoiselle Torres. I’m taking the biggest risk.”

“Hermann should return any minute,” the doctor said. “I could send Hermann and Otto to search the train.”

“You could,” I said, “but they wouldn’t know where to look. How long do you think it would take them to search a twelve-car train?”

“If I sent them both with you, you couldn’t get away,” Schmidt said. “You could be back in an hour.”

“Not here,” I said. “That isn’t part of the plan. The moment you get that envelope, Mademoiselle Torres and I part company with you then and there.”

The doctor pounded the desk again with the butt of his revolver.

“I’m the one who gives orders here.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d gone too far not to gamble the rest of the way. “Just as you say.” I held my watch in front of my eyes. “But you’re losing valuable time.”

The doctor pulled at his ear. He said, “All right, but if either of you tries to trick me, I’ll kill you both.”

We went out just as we had entered except that Otto wore the civilian clothes Hermann had brought him. Schmidt and the two goons saluted the Fuehrer’s portrait and muttered, “Heil Hitler,” as they passed through the sliding panel in the armoire. I managed to get behind Maria going down the stairs but I didn’t dare speak for fear Schmidt might change his mind. Our only slim chance lay in leaving his hideout. But I had no illusions about his ultimate plan for us. Whether or not we found Marcel Blaye’s envelope for him, Maria and I were scheduled to die. We knew far too much.

The old woman led us down the rickety stairs in single file with the smoking oil lamp in her shaking hand. She didn’t utter a sound, but amazement was written deep in her wizened face; it could have been the first time any of the doctor’s guests had left the place alive.

Hermann had exchanged the Russian staff car for a small black sedan. Schmidt told him to drive us to the Keleti station, but Hermann shook his head. “They’ve blocked off the station, Excellency. There must be a hundred men with tommy guns.” Hermann grinned at me. It was the first time I’d noticed his bright red hair.

When we came out of the Mexikoi ut onto the main avenue, we could see the lights of the police cars where a roadblock had been set up in the direction of the station. Hermann plunged into the side streets to make a wide detour and approach the railway yards from the south. It had begun to snow again and it was hard going through the narrow curving alleys that skirted the Kerepesitemetö, the municipal cemetery two short blocks from the station.

Schmidt commanded Hermann to stop the car in front of a small coffeehouse, opposite the gates of the cemetery.

“Mademoiselle Torres and I will wait inside,” the doctor said. “See that you return quickly.”

He wasn’t going to risk prowling through the railway yards with Otto, Hermann, and me. Maria was to be the hostage. Schmidt knew I’d come back to the coffeehouse for her if I came out of the yards alive.

I started off without a word, but Maria grabbed my arm.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “I can’t let you go alone.”

I didn’t trust my reactions at that point so I found myself saying, “What good could you do?” There was pain in her deep black eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. You stay here with Schmidt. We won’t be more than half an hour. Then we’ll be free.”

Before I could stop her, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me. It didn’t look as if we’d just met twenty-four hours earlier. I knew it would reinforce the doctor’s belief in his own version of our association.

We were turning the corner when Schmidt opened the door of the coffeehouse and we heard the sobbing of the gypsy violins.

There’s a Romany tale that up in the moon,

Each midnight a gypsy is playing a tune.

The melodies sweet from his fiddle that flow,

Are heard only by lovers as silent they go.

Then, my love, let us try while the moonlight is clear,

Amid the dark forest that fiddle to hear.

There wasn’t much light except for the flickering gas lamps on the street corners, and because of the drifted snow it was difficult to tell where the sidewalk ended and the street began. When we reached the main avenue which parallels the yards we found we were well below the roadblock. There was no one in sight.

We crossed the avenue, wading through snow above our knees. There was an iron fence beyond the far sidewalk. On the other side of the fence were the dark and silent trains under a mantle of white.

Otto stood aside and motioned to me to climb the waist-high fence.

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “There may be a sentry.” There was a space between the fence and the first line of coaches and it looked recently swept. “We’ll wait five minutes.” Otto, who didn’t like me at all, started to say something, but he and Hermann were so accustomed to authority that they followed me to a billboard which screened us from the tracks.

It was five minutes before the sentry plodded past us on the other side of the fence, then another three minutes before he returned. I timed him carefully because a knowledge of his position would be handy when the time came to leave the yards.

As soon as the sentry was again out of sight, we went behind the billboard. Otto indicated that I was to go first. Thereafter I led the way. I would draw first fire if we were surprised. And, should I attempt a getaway, they had a clear line of fire without the risk of hitting each other. I didn’t like the way Otto kept his hand on his gun in his pocket although I felt sure they wouldn’t shoot until we had found Marcel Blaye’s envelope.

I hadn’t much idea how I’d identify the right train when I saw it but I remembered the photographs of Innsbruck and Salzburg in our compartment so I looked for the
O.B.B.
marking of the Austrian State Railways—the Oesterreichische Bundesbahnen. The only cars on the first siding were third-class Hungarian coaches.

Snow had drifted under the cars, and it would have been much easier to have climbed into a car vestibule and to have gone out the other side, but the doors were locked, and we crawled on our hands and knees under the couplings.

I think we were at the fifth or sixth track from the street, making escape from the yards almost impossible if we were surprised in force, when Hermann spotted an Austrian car. We moved to the head of the train and there was a blue Wagons-Lits diner, still carrying the plaque:
Wien-Gyor-Budapest.
We were far enough out in the yards so that there was some light from the arcs.

Hermann boosted me onto the coupling at the head end of the diner, and I pulled myself into the open vestibule. I tried the door into the car, and it was unlocked. We had no flashlight. I used my lighter until the wick burned out. Then we took turns lighting matches.

Visit the Riviera,
said the ads in the dining car.
Sunshine All Year ’Round. King David Hotel, Jerusalem—American Bar. Hungary Welcomes You to Her Ancient Festivals.

It was colder in that train than outside. Our footsteps echoed down the empty corridors. Doors opened and shut with a crash that shook the windows.

We went through half a dozen third-class coaches before we reached the car in which Strakhov, Maria, and I had traveled. The coaches hadn’t been cleaned, another reason for us to hurry. The train was scheduled for early-morning departure for Vienna; the cleaning crews were due any minute.

I looked for the sticker on the door of our compartment—
Reserved for the Embassy of the USSR
—but there was none. I thought I’d made a mistake and went to the next car back; there was no sticker there either.

I imagined the police had detached the coach the moment Strakhov’s corpse had been found. Maybe the car was on another siding, for the photographers and the fingerprint experts of the MVD.

I went through the two first-class cars again, looking for a compartment with framed photographs of Salz burg and Innsbruck, but that didn’t help. All compartments had pictures of Salzburg and Innsbruck.

Otto and Hermann followed me up and down those cars without a word. When I closed the door in the last compartment, I became aware that Otto had taken his revolver from his pocket. Hermann stood behind Otto, peering at me over his shoulder.

“What’s the game?” Otto said. “What are you trying to put over?”

“I’m not trying to put anything over,” I said. “I can’t find the right compartment. Keep your shirt on.”

I led them to the head compartment in the first car but there was no envelope stuffed behind the seat cushions. I saw that Hermann, too, had his revolver in his hand.

“It’s in the other car,” I said. “It’s in the head compartment in the other car.” But the envelope wasn’t there, either.

“I’ll give you two minutes,” Otto said.

“There’s something very wrong,” I said. I had to stall those two killers. “I know,” I said. “They must have
backed
the train into the station. They’ve changed the position of the diner for the run back to Vienna. I’ve been looking in the wrong compartments.”

I didn’t believe it though; I walked as slowly as I could. It came to me that Schmidt never had any intention of letting me leave the train alive. Otto’s instructions were to murder me in that train, whether or not we found the envelope.

I thought I heard a door bang. Maybe it was the cleaning crew.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Nothing,” Otto said. “Nothing but your imagination. It seems to have been working overtime. So you did hand that envelope to someone after all?”

There was nothing behind the cushions in the compartment in the first car.

“I’m freezing to death,” Hermann said. “What are we waiting for, Otto?”

“He’s got another minute,” Otto said. It was too dark to see their faces.

“The hell with another minute,” Hermann said. “It’s warm in that coffeehouse and there’s plenty to eat and drink.”

I kept on walking, into the second car and down the corridor, the two Germans’ footsteps echoing mine. By that time we’d run out of matches, but it made no difference. They could pump me full of bullets in that narrow corridor without aiming.

I took as much time as I could to slide back the door in that last compartment. The metal handle was burning cold through my glove. Otto stood just back from the doorway as I went in. The compartment was as black as the inside of your pocket.

I fumbled along one end of the compartment but there was nothing behind the cushions. I thought of attempting to escape out the window, but Otto would hear me. He’d kill me before I could lower the sash.

I turned and leaned over the seats on the other side. Maybe Otto wouldn’t squeeze the trigger until he’d examined the envelope. If I found it.
If.

My mouth was dry, and I was shivering with the cold. I was sure Otto could hear my chattering teeth.

I felt in the corner but there was nothing behind the cushions.

I edged toward the center. There still was only empty space where an envelope wrapped in a newspaper should have been.

I put out my left arm to search the corner. But my hand never reached the corner.

Someone grabbed my wrist. I tried to shout but I had no voice. I crashed to the floor with the explosion.

For a split second I thought it was Otto who had fired. Then Otto’s body pitched through the doorway to land on the floor on top of me. Whoever had seized my wrist out of the dark had fired.

The explosion was deafening. It was a few seconds before I made out a voice saying quietly, “Get on your feet. Get on your feet and open the window. Hurry.” It was a vaguely familiar voice, speaking English.

I started to my feet, and my hand touched Otto’s face. I said, “Be careful. There’s another one out there.” I felt someone brush past me, then a shot crashed down the corridor. I stood stock-still. There was no outcry, there was no answering shot.