Codeword Golden Fleece (51 page)

‘Hell!’ muttered Rex. ‘Isn’t there some quicker way you can get yourselves happy about me than writing to the States!’

‘I fear, no.’ The sandy-haired Rumanian blinked through his
pince-nez
. ‘I can only repeat that someone themselves above suspicion must vouch for you to us. If you had the connection in Sofia, Belgrade, Athens, Rome, that would be all right. But you say you have never travel in South-eastern Europe.’

Suddenly, at the mention of South-eastern Europe, a light flickered and then blazed up in Rex’s mind.

‘How about Turkey?’ he asked, striving to keep his voice from betraying his excitement.

‘Yes. Turkey is not under German influence, so a person of
responsibility to speak for you there would serve good; and we could get a reply from Istanbul in a matter of few days.’

‘The friend I’m thinking of is in Istanbul and he’s British, so that should suit your book all right.’

‘Ah. He is not then an official of the Turkish Government,’ said Ferari warily. ‘That is not so good.’

‘In Mike’s name, why?’ exclaimed Rex, now frantically concerned to put over his new idea. ‘My friend is a Mr. Richard Eaton, and he’s British born and bred. No Britisher would be mutt enough to go surety for a German agent, and your only worry is that that’s what I might be. I’ve known him for years, and if you put your enquiry through to him I’ll bet my last dime you’ll get a satisfactory reply by return of post.’

The Rumanian shook his head. ‘I am regretting, but I do not like it. No, I do not like it at all. Turkey is as full of German agents as any other Balkan country. This Mr. Eaton has an English name, yes; but what proof should we have that he is not by reality some Nazi friend of yours?’

Rex suddenly roared with laughter.

‘Well?’ said Ferari patiently. ‘If I have made a joke let me please hear of it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rex apologised. ‘It was your suggesting that Richard Eaton might be a Nazi agent. He’s just about the most English thing that ever came out of that great little island. You’d get the joke all right, if only you could see him.’

‘Ah, if I could see him,’ Ferari took the suggestion up seriously, ‘that would be different. If he presented himself here with a British passport, and I could talk with him so as to make assurance with myself, then his word for you would be sufficient enough. Is he so close a friend perhaps that he would make the journey to Cernauti for securing your freedom?’

‘Yes, I’m sure he would,’ replied Rex without hesitation. ‘But the snag is that when last I had news of him he’d just been mixed up in a bad car smash. Maybe he’s not fit to travel yet.’

As he spoke Rex wondered just how far Richard had progressed in his recovery. When he had left Bucharest he had been able to hobble from room to room on crutches and was his old cheerful self to talk to; but his smashed hip was still a matter for considerable concern and there was small reason to believe that he would be fit enough to undertake a long and tiring journey on his own for some time to come. With Marie Lou to help him while bathing and dressing, and in and out of
trains and cars, he would be all right; but Rex knew that as long as the Iron Guard were after them Richard would never agree to Marie Lou re-entering Rumania.

The slim Rumanian was now looking down his rather long nose. The mention of the car smash had strengthened his suspicions that this Mr. Eaton might be anything but the pure-blooded Briton that his friend made out. After all, the journey from Istanbul to Cernauti could be made in from three to four days, and if they were such old friends, for one to suggest that the other should make such a trip in order to get him out of prison was not asking a great deal; so it looked like a hurriedly thought-up excuse to avoid a request which would either be ignored or result in some extremely dubious character turning up in Cernauti and making the prisoner’s case far worse than it was at the moment.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ said Rex, who had guessed the working’s of Ferari’s mind. ‘But I’d like you to put an enquiry through to Mr. Eaton, all the same, and ask him if he’s yet up to making the trip.’

‘As you wish. You understand, though, that only when I have assure myself by personal interviews that he is really English can I recommend to let you go. Do you wish also that I should write to your firm in the States?’

‘Sure, and the sooner the better. Why not cable both of them?’

‘That will not help. We cannot send your photograph by telegram. The firm of Stuyvesant may reply that they are representative in Europe by a Mr. Mackintosh, but that would not be proof that you are him.’

‘No. Still, you could wire Mr. Eaton.’

‘All right. I will do that. What is his address?’

‘Send it to the Pera Palace Hotel. He was there when I last heard, and as he’s been laid up it’s hardly likely that he would have moved on yet. I’ll follow it up with a letter, if you’ve no objection.’

Ferari shook his head. ‘No, I cannot allow that. Remember you are suspect of being a Nazi agent, and for all we knows he may be another. I cannot risk your communicating to him.’

This refusal was a sad blow to Rex, but he had no option other than to accept it, and, their business being concluded, he asked Ferari if he could get him some more suitable clothes than the Polish uniform he was still wearing, shaving tackle,
washing things and some books and magazines, out of the money that had been taken from him when he had been arrested.

The Rumanian agreed to do so, and Rex’s two visitors left him.

When they had gone he pondered the prospects of Richard’s being able to come to Cernauti. That now seemed his only hope of getting out of prison before the option expired. Rex knew that, if Richard realised how much was at stake, he would charter a private aircraft and come to the rescue, even if he were at death’s door. He would bring Marie Lou, too, if need be. But the trouble was that they could not possibly know what had happened since they left Rumania. They did not even know if their friends had succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece from Teleuescu, let alone the difficulty and urgency of getting it out of the country. And, unless Richard had made the most remarkable progress in the past week, or Marie Lou believed that the life of one of their friends hung upon his making the trip, Rex greatly doubted if she would allow him to leave Istanbul.

If only Rex had been allowed to write he could have indicated that his regaining his freedom was a matter of vital importance; but all the Eatons would get was an enquiry as to whether they knew an American motor salesman named Mr. Rex Mackintosh, with the information that he was now in prison at Cernauti and would be released if Richard cared to come and identify him. There would be no suggestion that he was in any danger or that the duration of the war might be enormously shortened by his swift release.

Rex could only hope for the best and endeavour to console himself with the thought that he now at least had one lifeline out that might possibly prove effective.

In the afternoon Ferari returned with a selection of outsize ready-made clothes for Rex to choose from and a number of other items he had bought for him in the town. Rex selected a dark blue lounge suit and two of the quietest from a rather gaudy selection of ties. Then with considerable relish he shed his dirty Polish uniform and dressed himself in his new things.

At midday the following day Ferari appeared again and greeted his prisoner with considerably more affability than he had shown the day before. He had received a reply to his telegram to Richard, and it ran:

‘Rex MACKINTOSH CITIZEN OF UNITED STATES IS AIRCRAFT EXPERT HAVE KNOWN HIM INTIMATELY MANY YEARS STOP OWING TO
INJURIES REGRET DOCTORS FORBID TRAVEL TO CERNAUTI FOR AT LEAST A FORTNIGHT BUT FOR PURPOSES OF IDENTIFICATION MACKINTOSH SIX FOOT FOUR IN HEIGHT BROAD IN PROPORTION BROWN WAVY HAIR BROWN EYES STRAIGHT NOSE CLEFT CHIN GOOD TEETH READY SMILE VERY LARGE HANDS STOP IF FUNDS REQUIRED BY HIM DRAW ON ME OTTOMAN BANK ISTANBUL UP TO FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS STOP PREPARED TO VOUCH FOR MACKINTOSH’S INTEGRITY ABSOLUTELY AND CONVINCED HIS ARREST MUST BE THROUGH MISTAKE IN IDENTITY STOP TELL HIM ALL OF US SEND FONDEST LOVE.’

‘Hell!’ thought Rex. ‘A fortnight!’ But the blow was softened for him by his having half expected something of the kind.

Meanwhile Ferari was saying with a smile: ‘This Mr. Eaton must certainly be a good friend to you to make offer of five hundred pounds. But why does he say, in reply to my question, “What business does Mr. Mackintosh make for a livings?”, that you are an aircraft expert?’

It was Richard’s only slip, and even in that he had made a pretty good guess, which enabled Rex to answer casually:

‘Well, I was in aircraft before I went into motors. The Stuyvesant is a new venture, and it’s many months since I’ve seen Eaton so he wouldn’t know about that.’

The Rumanian nodded. ‘In all other ways the telegram is good for you. It make no mention of his car smash but he implies it by his mention of injuries. Also his description of you is very good.’

‘You’ll let me go then?’ Rex asked eagerly.

Ferari shook his head. ‘No, no. That the description is good makes nothing for us. If he were a Nazi and knowing you he could give it just as well. To know if he is good to vouch for you I must see his British passport and then talk with him. But, after all, a fortnight is not so great.’

To Rex, at the thought of the Golden Fleece and that at any moment Serzeski might have his car thoroughly cleaned up, a fortnight seemed an appalling time, but he could not possibly mention that, and he had no other reason that he could give for being so desperately anxious to get out.

‘Personally,’ Ferari went on, ‘this telegram, after our talk yesterday, satisfies me. I think the Poles have raised a mare’s-nest into which you have unfortunately got. But officially it is up my duty street to make assurance before I let you go. Still,
while you are waiting for your friend we will do all possible to make you comfortable here.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rex. ‘That’s decent of you. Perhaps you could spare the time to come and talk to me now and then—tell me the war news; and that sort of thing?’

‘But certainly. I forget that you cannot read our papers. I must go now as I have other duties to make; but I will come in each day with papers and translate the highlight interesting pieces for you.’

It was on the following day, Saturday the 30th of September, that Ferari paid his first social call and brought Rex up to date with the progress of the war, of which he had heard practically nothing for the best part of ten days.

He learned that Germany and Russia had agreed to partition Poland, but that isolated groups of Poles were fighting on and Warsaw still remained uncaptured. A widespread revolt had broken out in Czechoslovakia which the Germans were endeavouring to suppress with all the brutality and vindictiveness of which they were capable. Nothing of any interest had happened on the Western Front, but the Luftwaffe had attacked the Home Fleet at Scapa, and the R.A.F. had paid a return visit to the Heligoland Bight, neither side scoring any spectacular success.

The major war interest of the week lay in the intense diplomatic activity that continued unabated in Moscow. Having divided the still living corpse of Poland between them, Ribbentrop and Molotov were discussing on the one hand how best Russia could help Germany with warlike supplies, and on the other the formula in which their two countries, ‘acting in Military and Economic accord’, should ‘offer Peace Terms to the Democracies’. In attendance they had both the Turkish and Esthonian Foreign Ministers and, only the day before, Esthonia had agreed to become a Russian ‘protectorate’. The Turks were, however, refusing to be browbeaten and had just completed a mutual assistance pact with the British.

None of these goings and comings seemed to Rex to be of any great importance, as it was clear to him that with the war barely a month old most of the nations were still shuffling for position; and, as it turned out, he found the internal Rumanian news of much greater interest.

Although he had been far too occupied, and too cut off from news sources, to learn of it before, it seemed that the Prime
Minister’s assassination on the 21st had aroused the most furious indignation throughout the country. Far from assisting the Iron Guard to pull off the
coup d’état
, for which this bloody deed was thought by many to be the prelude, it had resulted for them in a
débăcle
. Their organisation had been proscribed, thousands of them were being rounded up into concentration camps, and hundreds of them had already been shot, with the full approval of the great majority of Rumanians.

For Rex these were tremendous tidings because, apart from Simon’s arrest, inspired by the officious landlord of the Peppercorn, he and his friends had not at any time come into conflict with the Rumanian police. It was the German-inspired Iron Guard organisation that had made things too hot for them in Bucharest. The scores of secret agents of this private army who a week before had been hunting for them were now being hunted themselves, so, if only he could secure his release, the likelihood of his running into trouble while searching for Major Serzeski and the Golden Fleece would be immensely lessened.

‘I guess the Germans must be pretty sick about their friends in the Iron Guard being beaten up like this,’ Rex remarked.

‘Yes,’ Ferari agreed. ‘They are not, as you say, so cock-a-hoop these days. They have never been favourite here. I do not think the German is favourite in any country, really. They have not the manners, and either cringe in time of weakness or become overbearing when they think themselves strong. Lately they had become intolerable quite; but now that their bullies in the Iron Guard are being disarmed our authorities will not sit down any more for their insults. Our police will get some of their own back too. I would make bets that is why they let the two French Communists slip through their fingers.’

‘What French Communists?’ asked Rex.

Ferari turned to an inside sheet of the newspaper that he was holding. ‘It is an item here that I have not mention because I did not think it would be much interesting to you. Some big-spot Germans were kidnapped and most badly beaten up on the night which follow Calinesco’s assassination. These two Frenchmen were suspected. It is now known that they stole two passports and successfully made a get-away on the Athens plane three days ago. It would not surprise me if for them our police winked the eye.’