Codeword Golden Fleece (35 page)

‘No, Richard, I’m afraid we must leave you out of this.’ The Duke’s tone was sad but firm. ‘You know how we shall miss you, but you couldn’t run ten yards, and anyone who comes on this party must be able to take care of himself.’

‘You can count me in with knobs on,’ cried Rex enthusiastically. ‘I’m just pining to have a second crack at old von G.’

‘He wouldn’t have turned up in Bucharest if I’d been on that landing at Lubieszow,’ Simon remarked with unusual sharpness. ‘Don’t like firearms, but you leave him to me if we run up against him tonight.’

‘O.K., Simon,’ Rex grinned good-naturedly. ‘He’s your meat next time; but I only hope there’s not a darn’ great door between you to interfere with your shooting.’

‘That’s settled then,’ remarked the Duke. ‘You two will come back with me, unless we are prevented from getting off the train. Richard, Marie Lou and Lucretia had better go straight through to Istanbul, since the Iron Guard have been considerate enough to pay their fares that far. Once they are there it shouldn’t be difficult to secure passages to England.’

‘No fear!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘We’re not going back to England until we know you’re safely through with this. We’ll sit tight in Istanbul at the Pera Palace Hotel until you three can join us there. Now, what about some lunch?’

They opened the baskets and found them to contain excellent fare. De Richleau took his into the next compartment to keep Lucretia company; but she ate automatically and roused from
her lethargy only when he told her that Rex, Simon and himself were returning secretly to Bucharest that evening.

‘Oh, be careful, darling!’ she pleaded. ‘Be careful, please, I have so little to cling to now, and you are my biggest sheet anchor. I can’t think what I should do if I lost you.’

‘I will,’ he assured her. ‘I’ve never taken a risk yet that was not justified by the circumstances. It’s you who must take care of yourself and, hard as it may be for you now, try to realise that time heals all sorrows.’

Over an hour had sped by while they were lunching, and soon afterwards the three who were to attempt to leave the train began to make their preparations. They repacked their suitcases, filling one bag with their most immediate requirements, then the good-byes were said, and the Duke, Simon and Rex made their way to the extreme end of the train.

They did so in the hope that, the train being very long, the rear coaches might be left standing outside the platform, and their hope proved to be justified. With Rex carrying the suitcase, they slipped off from the last exit before the guard’s van.

The guard shouted something after them, but they ignored his cries, and within a minute had disappeared behind an array of coaltrucks in the outer sidings of the station.

Having reached the street by one of the entrances to the goods yard, they gave the train ample time to pull out. Then, silent from anxiety as to whether they would find a posse of angry Iron Guards searching for them, they made their way round to the station’s front entrance.

No Iron Guards were present in the booking-hall, and they learned that there was a train leaving for Bucharest in twenty minutes.

They took their tickets and went on to the platform. Still no Iron Guard uniforms were to be seen, except for two worn by obviously casual travellers, both of whom had bags beside them at their feet.

The anxious moments ticked away. The train drew in, they boarded it without anyone paying special attention to them. There was another agonising wait, then it rolled out, and all three of them sighed with relief.

There were three stops before Bucharest, but only a ticket collector came in to disturb them for a moment. On reaching the capital, they felt increasingly nervous. If for some reason or other their absence on the train had been reported from the
frontier, the little dark man would be there to meet them, and every exit to the station would be guarded. But it seemed that their luck was in. They passed through the barrier among the crowd of passengers, and the collector who took their tickets did not even look at them.

Outside in the station yard the Duke caught sight of a clock. It stood at ten past four, so they still had several hours of the day before them, and he thought it most unlikely that Teleuescu would give up hoping to see them before midnight.

‘We’ve as good as done it,’ laughed Simon.

‘Yes,’ the Duke agreed. ‘Thank God the Prime Minister was to sign the thing this morning, and not tonight. We’ve only got to get out to Teleuescu’s house and collect it now.’

It was at that moment that he saw an unusual stir among the crowd outside the station, and noticed that there were many more people to be seen about the adjacent buildings than was usual at that hour, before the siesta was fully over.

Newsboys were shouting excitedly, and the people were grabbing their papers from them. The Duke knew little Rumanian but that language has a marked resemblance to Italian, and he spoke Italian fluently.

For a moment the repeated cries rang meaninglessly in his ears, then he stopped dead as he grasped their terrible import. The newsvendors were shouting:

‘Prime Minister assassinated! Calinesco murdered by Iron Guard this morning!’

‘What’s it all about?’ asked Rex, as the Duke stopped, turned and stared with an expression of shocked distress at the crowd. ‘What are all those palookas so het-up over?’

‘The Prime Minister!’ gasped the Duke. ‘He’s been assassinated by the Iron Guard. It happened this morning.’

‘Now we
are
in a muddle!’ Simon’s head jerked in a nervous spasm. ‘What time did it happen? We must try to find out.’

They turned in their tracks and hurried back to the station entrance. The Duke bought a paper, and the other two peered over his shoulders at the black banner headlines and the apparently incomprehensible script underneath.

The Rumanians are now a mixture of many races, but their purest stock comes from the Roman Legions that were left stranded in the ancient Province of Dacia after the fall of Rome. When the nations of the west were still semi-barbarous tribes Rumania was already a civilised country with Latin as her most commonly used form of speech; and through all the centuries the Roman influence has never been entirely submerged.

In consequence, although de Richleau could speak only a few phrases of Rumanian, his knowledge of Latin and Italian enabled him to get the rough sense of the front-page news. Few details were, however, as yet given. The Prime Minister had been attacked in the street on his way to his office that morning. His car had been held up by a lorry driven across the road, and a score of men both in it and on the nearby pavements had drawn pistols and fired upon him.

He had been riddled with bullets before the police could come to his aid, but some of his assailants had been caught and they had all proved to be members of the Iron Guard.

‘Wonder whether the poor chap signed before they got him?’ muttered Simon, when the Duke had finished translating the few paragraphs.

‘We’re sunk if he didn’t,’ said Rex.

‘I’m afraid so,’ agreed the Duke. ‘If the Iron Guard felt themselves strong enough to perpetrate a national outrage like this it can only be because they feel confident that whoever replaces Calinesco will be much more favourable to them; and any man who is well disposed towards the Iron Guard would certainly refuse to countersign our option.’

‘That’s so,’ Rex nodded. ‘But better the Golden Fleece with no Prime Minister’s signature on it than no Golden Fleece at all. Let’s get along out to old man Teleuescu’s place and learn where we stand.’

‘Not yet,’ said the Duke. ‘We have plenty of time before us, and I think we would be wise to secure some sort of base before we go out to the Chaussée Kisseleff. The Prime Minister’s assassination may be the opening act of a
coup d’état
by the Iron
Guard. By tonight the police may be openly under their control and all the stations be guarded to prevent their political enemies escaping from the capital. If it becomes known to them that we have returned we shall be among the hunted; so, if only as a reasonable precaution, we ought to find a place where we can go to ground should the need for it arise.’

‘Sure. Let’s find a place where we can dump this, anyway.’ Rex looked down at the heavy suitcase he was carrying. ‘And beds where we can doss down for the night.’

‘Pity we haven’t got that shooting-brake you brought Richard in from Poland,’ Simon remarked. ‘Would be jolly useful now to get us to the frontier if we have any difficulty in getting on a train.’

‘It is still in the hotel garage,’ said the Duke. ‘But I don’t think we dare risk going there to get it. You’re right about our needing a car, though. I think we’ll try to buy one.’

He thought for a moment, then went on: ‘As for accommodation, I think we will make our headquarters some little hotel in the Dambovita; that is, at the far end of the city among the wharves down by the river. It is very unlikely that we shall run into anyone who knows us there.’

They hailed a passing
droshky
and half an hour later had installed themselves at a clean, unpretentious-looking hotel called the Peppercorn.

While they were upstairs unpacking their solitary bag, Simon remarked: ‘How are we off for boodle to buy a car?’

They all produced their wallets, and a check-up showed that, while a luxury car was out of the question, they had ample to buy a moderately priced model in good secondhand condition.

Leaving the hotel they went in search of a car-dealer and found a big garage in an adjacent street that had cars for sale. As Rumania was not yet involved in the war, secondhand cars were still plentiful and their prices at pre-war level. Having selected a Chrysler that the proprietor said he had bought only that morning from two Frenchmen, Rex drove with him in it round half a dozen blocks and then spent a quarter of an hour inspecting its engine. After a little bargaining they closed the deal, had their purchase filled up to capacity with petrol and drove away in it.

‘Clothes are the next thing,’ said the Duke. ‘So many people are mixed up in this Iron Guard business, and unfortunately there are scores of them that we don’t know but who might
recognise us. Most of the servants at the Athenée Palace must have tumbled to it that we were run out of town by the Iron Guard this morning, and if any one of them happened to catch sight of us he might put them on our trail; so we ought to alter our appearance as far as we can.’

Rex pulled up at a large secondhand clothes shop a few blocks further on and they went inside. Simon’s beaky face lent itself so naturally to his posing as a Jew from the Bukovina that he at once selected one of the tall hats trimmed with red fox fur that they had worn as a distinguishing mark of their caste for centuries, and a rather threadbare black coat to go with it. Rex bought a long caftan and a shiny peaked cap in which he could easily pass as the driver of a hired car, and de Richleau contented himself with a cheap gaberdine suit in which he would look as much like an underpaid clerk as was possible for him.

Having carried their purchases out to the car they drove up a deserted dockside
cul de sac
between two warehouses and changed, packing their own clothes into the boot. It was now half past six and, not knowing when they might have another chance to get a meal, they decided to feed before going out to Teleuescu’s.

After driving round for a little they selected a fish restaurant in which the unadorned marble-topped tables looked suitable to the clothes they were now wearing. The choice proved a good one as they dined off deliciously fresh écrevisses, those miniature lobsters found in the Danube which are almost all claws, and Black Sea sturgeon stewed in a paprika sauce, and finished up with big plates of wild strawberries; so that even the epicurean Duke declared that they could not have fared better had they dined at Prunier’s in Paris.

According to Rumanian habits their meal had been a high tea rather than dinner, and as most of the restaurant staff were off duty the service had been slow. By the time they had settled their bill it was getting on for eight o’clock, and dusk having fallen they decided to delay their visit to Teleuescu no longer.

On their arrival at his mansion the servant who opened the door at first displayed some reluctance to let them in; but recognising them after a moment, despite their shoddy clothes, as visitors to his master of the night before, he took their hats and left them in the colonnaded vestibule while he went to ask if Teleuescu would receive them.

A few anxious minutes elapsed, then he returned and ushered them into the millionaire’s private sanctum.

Teleuescu was seated behind his table, but he made only a show of rising to greet them. He looked much older than he had on the previous night, and tired and depressed. As he took in their shabby raiment his eyebrows lifted, and he exclaimed:

‘My poor friends! I see from your clothes that you are on the run. I was informed that you would receive a visit from the Iron Guard. Oh, what a day it has been! You find me plunged in grief. I have lost a dear friend, and I fear too that my country may now fall into the clutches of this gang of murderers.’

For a few moments they condoled with him and Rex described how, after the Iron Guard had attempted to deport them, they had managed to get back to Bucharest.

The Rumanian nodded gloomily. ‘You have shown much courage as well as resource in returning here, because you will receive short shrift now if the Iron Guard catch you. I will not conceal from you that your visit tonight has placed me also in danger. Some of them came to see me first thing this morning. They told me that they meant to deport you and warned me that, should you succeed in evading them and come here, if I receive you I should pay for it with my life. I only hope that the men who have been on watch in the street outside most of the day have gone now.’

‘May have been someone on the other side of the road,’ Simon volunteered, ‘but there was no one loitering near enough to recognise us—especially dressed as we are.’

‘Let us hope you are right,’ Teleuescu sighed. ‘Yesterday I would have laughed at such a threat, as the play-acting of a lot of blustering young fools. But not today—no, not today. If they are bold enough to kill the Prime Minister they are capable of killing anyone.’