Hard Case Crime: Passport To Peril (18 page)

Hiram turned the car around after some difficulty, and we drove back to the main highway to head in the direction of the Russian air base.

“I thought you said we were going for a cup of coffee,” I said.

“There isn’t any coffee in the whole of Hungary,” Hiram said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“How would I notice?” I said. “Except for a warehouse, a nightclub, several assorted homes, and a country inn, I might as well have gone through Budapest in a fast train. I’d like to see what the city’s like these days.”

“Not this trip,” Hiram said. He started to add something but he shut up. He wasn’t kidding me. I knew the chances were pretty slim I’d ever get out of the country alive, much less see the sights of Budapest. He and Teensy had diplomatic status. At the worst, they’d be jailed until Washington locked up a Russian diplomat and arranged an exchange. Walter and I came under the heading of common criminals for a firing squad. At least Carr could tell my family what had happened.

Hiram said, “We’ll ditch the car about two blocks from the air base. Walter knows how to mess up the carburetor so it’ll look as if we had to abandon it.

“There’s a group of houses just outside the main gate of the field. The street is only a block long, from the highway we’re on to the gate. There are twelve houses on each side. We want the fifth house from the highway on the south side. Have you got it?”

We said we understood. Hiram asked us to repeat what he’d said, and we did in turn. Then he asked us to see that our watches agreed.

“That’s what they do in the comic strips,” I said. “They’re always synchronizing watches.” Nobody thought it amusing. It’s the kind of thing you say when your nerves are hopping.

Hiram said, “There are three doors to the house, front and back and one on the side away from the air base. I’ll take the front door, Teensy the back, and Walter the side.”

“What do I do?” I said.

If Hiram thought Maria was a prisoner inside that house, I wanted to go in.

“We’ve got to have a lookout, John.” It was the first time he’d addressed me as anything but Mr. Stodder. “You take the side nearest the air base. Get in the shadow of the next house. Can you whistle?”

I said I could, either straight or with two fingers.

“You don’t have to be fancy,” Hiram said with a grin. “If you see anyone heading for the house, whistle ‘Dixie.’ If they go past, stop whistling. If they come inside the grounds, whistle ‘Reveille.’ ”

“What do I do then?” I said.

“Run like hell,” Hiram said.

“May I ask who we are about to visit?”

“Major Felix Borodin,” Hiram said, “although from what Papa Szabo said, the major won’t be there to receive us. You see, he conducts a class in security at the air base during the next hour.”

Hiram stopped the car and let Walter out. “Eight-five sharp,” he said.

Teensy got out next. Hiram said, “Eight-five sharp,” to her, too. She walked off into the shadows without a word.

I got out a block farther on. “Eight-five sharp,” went for me as well. It was a clear, cold, starry night where a heavy snowstorm would have offered some concealment.

I had no trouble finding the street. I passed a couple of Russian soldiers off duty. I held my breath, but they never even glanced at me. It was hard walking on the uncleared sidewalks, and my feet still gave me excruciating pain, but I looked at my watch when I sighted the fifth house from the highway on the south side and I had two minutes’ grace. The gun was still inside my jacket in the shoulder holster, but I could have handled it just as easily with boxing-gloves as with the bandages on my hands.

There wasn’t a light in the house when I passed. There was no light in the next house, and, except for wading knee-deep in snow, I had no trouble in making my way across the lawn and into the shadows from the second house.

Major Felix Borodin’s residence was no cracker-box affair. Such might be appropriate for Budapest commuters, but Russian officers required something more substantial. Borodin’s, identical with the neighboring twenty-three, had two full stories and what appeared to be a spacious attic under a mansard roof. There was a cellar to be searched, too.

Eight-five became eight-ten, then eight-fifteen. The only sound came shortly after the appointed time when my ears caught the scraping noise of a window being opened an inch or two, so that I might be heard if I whistled. My three friends were apparently careful to draw the shades; at least, no light appeared.

When my watch told me it was nearly eight-twenty, I began to feel uneasy. It shouldn’t have taken three veteran housebreakers fifteen minutes to find—my mind almost accepted the word body—to find Maria. The house wasn’t that big. It couldn’t be that they’d walked into a trap. One of the three would have cried out.

It took all my willpower to keep from moving. It was bitterly cold, my muscles were cramped and sore from the beating Schmidt had given me, but I didn’t dare leave the shadows. It occurred to me that Hiram hadn’t said what was to happen when they were ready to leave. Were we expected to meet at the car? We couldn’t risk walking back together. How would I know when they left? If we didn’t return to the car, how did we get back to Budapest? I cursed myself for not asking.

I think it was almost eight-thirty when I heard the plane take off. I know it was only a minute or two later that the two men appeared, coming from the direction of the air base.

I whistled “Dixie” as loud as I could. I’m sure they heard me inside.

When the two men turned in at Borodin’s gate, I whistled “Reveille,” but the plane was only a few hundred feet overhead, and the roar from its engines would have drowned a siren. By the time the noise from the air had subsided, the men were inside the house.

If I could have used my hands, I’d have fired a shot in the window. If there’d been a stone, I’d have thrown it to smash the glass.

I expected to hear shots, the sounds of a struggle, shouting. There was only silence except for the drone of the airplane engines in the distance. I expected more men from the air base, but none came. Perhaps they’d already entered, through the back door and the door on the other side, the way Teensy and Walter had gone in.

I waited five minutes, the longest five minutes I’d ever known. I couldn’t make my nerves obey me longer.

I went to the window that had been opened. The drifted snow came almost to my waist. I put my ear to the opening and I could hear voices somewhere in the house but not in that room.

I managed to raise the window three feet or so, using my elbow as a lever, but I couldn’t think how to remove the shade. I pulled on it with my elbow, thinking to rip it from the roller, but it snapped back and climbed the window with what seemed to me a monstrous screeching. I flattened myself against the wall next to the window, but nobody appeared.

The room was dark, but there was light in the hallway beyond.

I put one foot on the narrow ledge over the cellar window, intending to pull myself onto the windowsill with my elbows and into the room. But I stopped. What business did I have going into that house? I ought to be following Hiram’s advice. I ought to run like hell. I couldn’t handle the gun I was carrying. Once inside the house I’d be useless in a fight.

The proper course would be to seek help. But where? Who could I go to? The American legation couldn’t and wouldn’t interfere. When an intelligence agent is caught red-handed, his government disowns him. I didn’t know any of the men who worked for Hiram. I couldn’t go back to Papa Szabo even if I could have found Hiram’s sedan, repaired the carburetor, made the engine start without keys, and then driven without the use of my hands. If anything was to be done to save Hiram, Teensy, and Walter I had to do it then.

All those considerations went through my mind in a few seconds that I paused in front of the open window. But I had to swing myself into that room in any case. I couldn’t have fled without first knowing what had happened to Maria.

I stood just inside the window. I thought of closing it behind me but I decided it was smart to leave one possible avenue of escape.

The voices I had heard from outside were speaking Russian. Probably discussing what to do with Hiram, Teensy, and Walter. My knowledge of Russian is strictly limited, but I remembered some of the words from the G.I. handbook and I recognized “spy” and “enemy” and “shooting.”

There was enough light from the hallway for me to cross the room without bumping into the furniture. When I reached the doorway, I realized the voices were coming from somewhere down the corridor, toward the rear of the house, on the same floor. I listened for that warm, low voice that I’d heard for the first time in compartment seven on the Orient Express. I tried to identify the voices of my three friends. But the speakers were Russians, without an accent.

They were the two men who had entered the house. They were doing all the talking.

I remembered Hiram’s voice, the way he’d said, “Run like hell.” There was no place for me to run to. I’d be picked up in five minutes if I tried to get back to Budapest where I had no friends. I even lacked an identity. Hiram had lifted my passport in the name of Jean Stodder, Swiss. He’d told me I was John Stodder, American, again, but the papers were in his pocket.

I put one foot into the hallway, and the floor creaked under me. I thought it loud as a pistol shot, but the voices droned on without a break. I crossed the hallway into the front room on the far side of the house.

There was only the dim light from the hallway. As soon as my eyes became adjusted, I found I was in what Europeans like to call the music room. There was a piano in one of the corners toward the back of the house and an old-fashioned overstuffed sofa in the other. Between the two pieces of furniture there were double doors, undoubtedly leading to the dining room. Light was streaming under them and through a slit in the center where they didn’t quite meet. The voices were in that room and so were Hiram, Teensy, and Walter. I moved right up to the doors and I could see the three Americans sitting together on a sofa at right angles to me. I didn’t see Maria. The Russians were out of my line of vision. They were still doing all the talking.

Had I been able to handle my gun, I could have surprised the Russians without difficulty. There was only one other possibility, to get my gun into the hands of my friends, tricking the Russians into dropping their guard for the moment.

I decided I’d have to draw them into the hallway, at the same time opening the double doors and kicking my gun along the floor to the sofa where one of the three Americans could quickly pick it up. I realized it was a slim chance.

I managed to drop my gun from its holster onto the sofa by bending over and hitting the bottom of the holster with my wrist. I found I could pick up the gun by using both my bandaged hands. I placed it carefully on the rug. I’d shove one of the double doors open with an elbow, then kick the gun with the opposite foot.

There was a large vase on the piano. I picked it up in my arms. I tiptoed to the door into the hallway. The Russians’ voices seemed louder, as if the speakers were about to discard talk for action.

I measured the distance with my eye between the door into the hallway and the double doors into the dining room.

I raised my arms and tossed the heavy vase down the hallway, toward the other door to the dining room. I was a foot from the double doors when the vase landed with a crash that shook the house.

One of the double doors rolled back easily under the pressure from my elbow.

At the same time, I kicked the gun. It slid across the bare, polished floor. It stopped almost at Hiram Carr’s feet.

In a split second, I had ducked under the piano. I expected one of the Russians to investigate the crash in the hallway, the other to fire where my head had been. The double diversion would give Hiram his chance to pick up the gun and use it.

But there was no shot, and I realized the door to the hallway hadn’t opened.

That meant that my trick wasn’t good enough, that the Russians hadn’t left Hiram uncovered long enough for him to seize the gun at his feet.

Then someone moved. I heard his shoes scrape the bare floor and I saw his shadow move ahead of him through the doorway. The shadow moved to where I was crouching.

Then he spoke.

“Get up,” Hiram Carr said. “Get up, John, and join us in the other room.”

For a moment I was faint with relief. Then relief gave way to anger. No man likes to know he’s made a fool of himself.

“Goddamit,” I said, “how the hell was I supposed to know? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t someone come out and tell me?”

I was so let down and ashamed of myself and angry with Carr that I could only stare at him.

“I’m sorry,” Hiram said. “It’s my fault. I should have let you know. But I wanted you to stay out there in case we have any more visitors. That was a smart plan of yours just the same.”

I was damned if I was going to be patronized by that birdlike little man with the pince-nez and the ridiculous coonskin cap on his grotesque head. But I noticed the two Russians seated against the wall and I shut my mouth. I could tell Hiram Carr what I thought of him sometime in the future—now that we had a future again.

It wasn’t until I sat down on the sofa next to Walter that I noticed that Carr had a gun in his hand. The Russians were his prisoners all right; I guessed one of them had to be Major Felix Borodin. The other was a captain.

“Where is Maria Torres?” I said.

Carr shook his head. “She isn’t here,” he said. “There’s no reason to believe she’s ever been in this house.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I’m trying to get Major Borodin to tell us. He swears he doesn’t know.”

I was surprised to find that Hiram spoke fluent Russian. I suppose I was still thinking of him as the hick he’d pretended to be when Maria and I had met him in the dining car. Of course he wouldn’t have received his assignment unless he’d known Russian.