Passport to Peril (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback)) Read online

  Then I knew another sound. Somewhere close behind us there was a running brook. Our only chance to get a head start on the Russian patrol was to follow that brook into the woods. If we left the road through the snow they’d follow our tracks in a minute.

  Luckily the icy water wasn’t much above our ankles, and we were already numbed with the cold. We made good progress into the woods, following the center of the stream by the sound of the water alone. I looked back once, and the road was bright with the light of the oncoming car. The siren had died away. The roar of the car’s engine and the rushing of the water beneath us were the only sounds.

  When we were well into the woods, the going became harder without even the little light from the stars. I stumbled and fell half a dozen times before I sensed that Maria was no longer close behind me. I didn’t dare call her. I turned back, putting my arms out straight in front of me the way a blind man does but I didn’t find her. I tried using my lighter, but it was dripping wet.

  I lost my head. I found myself trying to run through the stream, stumbling and crashing on my face when the stones on the bottom rolled under my feet, calling Maria’s name at the top of my lungs.

  Somehow I found her, down on her knees in the water. I picked her up in my arms and I knew she had fainted from exhaustion and the cold. I turned and went blindly forward again but slower so that I wouldn’t fall with her.

  I’ll never know how far I walked before I knew there was a light ahead. My eyes must have seen it long before my brain accepted it.

  Of course, when the Russians hadn’t found us on the road, they’d doubled to the other side of the woods.

  I put Maria down in the snow at the side of the brook, unslung the carbine from my shoulder, and started to knock off the safety. But I had no choice. I threw the gun upstream as far as my strength would let me. I picked up the girl again and started for the light. No matter what happened to me I had to get help for her.

  When the light grew brighter and brighter, I tried to run through the snow. Then I heard a shout. I heard the crack of a rifle bullet. I felt my knees give way under me. And then nothing more.

  Chapter Three

  DOUBTFUL SAFETY

  When I opened my eyes someone was bending over me. My first thought was to ask the Russians to take care of Maria, to tell them she was innocent and that I had forced her to leave the train with me.

  I tried to lift myself on one elbow, fighting to clear my brain enough to recall the Russian words. But a hand pushed me back on the snow, and a voice said, “Warten Sie einen Augenblick, mein Herr—wait a minute.”

  For a moment I thought I must be delirious. I had expected to hear Russian. I wasn’t prepared for German.

  If these men proved to be Austrian police, we might have an easier time with them. There wasn’t any love lost between the Austrians and the Red Army. Perhaps they weren’t policemen at all. They might be farmers or hunters who could be persuaded to let us go in return for the dollars in my pocket.

  The voice above me called out, “Er ist nicht verwundet,” and another voice close by answered, “And neither is the girl. You’re not the marksman you used to be, Otto.”

  “Hold your tongue,” said Otto. “It’s just as well I didn’t hit them. This man is carrying a Swiss passport. And a wad of traveler’s checks, too.”

  Why hadn’t I destroyed Marcel Blaye’s passport? I could have thrown it away after leaving the train without exciting Maria’s suspicion.

  Otto raised his voice, apparently addressing a third man who was some distance away. “Hermann, don’t stand there like a dunderhead with your mouth wide open. Quick, go get help. Hurry.”

  I must have passed out again and for quite a time because when I regained consciousness I was being carried on a stretcher. I was wrapped in blankets, and my wet clothes had been removed. I could raise my head enough to see that Maria was on a stretcher ahead.

  Then I heard Otto say, “Bring them in here. Quickly.” We were carried the length of a low wooden porch, then lifted into a brightly lighted room. It was the main room of a typical Central European hunting-lodge. A wood-paneled room with a high peaked roof, huge stone fireplaces at both ends, heads of deer and bear and mountain sheep on the walls, the rustic furniture. The kind of room to which Austro-Hungarian aristocrats repaired after the hunt, to wine and dine, gamble and make love to the music of a gypsy band. Perhaps we had been brought in by some rich man’s gamekeepers, if there were any rich men left other than commissars, someone who might hate Communism enough to help us get away. Otto and his helpers weren’t in uniform. They wore the short fur-lined jackets, the feathered felt hats, and the high laced boots of the Austrian countrymen.

  They lifted me from the stretcher and carried me to a chair in the middle of the room. Otto stuck a glass of apricot brandy in my hand. Otto was a dark, mean-looking character, with a great black mustache and a patch over one eye.

  “Where’s the girl?” I said. “Is she all right? What have you done with her?”

  “You speak German like a Berliner,” Otto said. “The girl’s all right. We put her to bed. You’ll both be all right in the morning. It’s lucky we found you. You might have spent the rest of your lives on crutches.”

  There were two doors at the far side of the room. I guessed they led to bedrooms, the kitchen, and the servants’ quarters.

  The room reminded me of a stage setting and it turned out to be just that. The cuckoo clock on the mantelpiece struck ten. Almost immediately, as if with the rising of a curtain, one of the doors on the far side opened, and a man entered. He was wearing a uniform, complete to gold epaulets and several rows of ribbons. It was a Russian uniform, and the wearer might have come off a Red Square parade. Otto and his helpers clicked their heels and snapped to attention. I should have remembered that the Red Army had recruited thousands of former Wehrmacht soldiers for guard duty in Central Europe. Germans like Otto knew no other trade. Just as their fathers had joined foreign armies after Imperial Germany’s defeat in the First World War, so Otto and many like him were serving their Russian conquerors until they might again wear the uniform of a resurgent Reich.

  The Russian made a stage bow in my direction as he closed the door, then in German banished Otto and the others from the room. He turned his back to the fireplace, locked his hands behind him, and bowed again. He was tall and thin, with graying hair and the bushiest pair of black eyebrows I’d ever seen.

  “Good evening, Monsieur Blaye,” he said in excellent French. “Please, you will permit me to introduce myself. I am Major Ivan Strakhov at your service, Monsieur.”

  Of course Otto had returned to the lodge with the passport before we’d arrived. Major Strakhov had addressed me as Monsieur Blaye for want of another name. He had no way of knowing I was John Stodder, American.

  “I had expected the pleasure of welcoming you at the frontier, at Hegyshalom,” he said with a broad smile. “I’m sorry you did not advise us you were planning to leave the Orient Express somewhat short of the station.”

  It was the major, then, in the military car which had passed us when we first turned off the railway tracks into the side road. The train guards had radioed to Hegyshalom as soon as we jumped.

  “These German peasants aren’t much good,” he said, waving his hand in the direction in which Otto and his men had disappeared, “but it’s lucky they found you. I’m afraid they were trying to jack deer with a lantern when you ran into them. They’re just like children.” It was the speech a German officer would have made about the Russians, a few years and one lost war earlier.

  “I’m sorry to say, Monsieur Blaye, that your failure to arrive at Hegyshalom proved a great disappointment to Countess Orlovska,” the major continued. “She came with me from Budapest to meet you but she has returned to the capital in the Orient. She requested me to tell you that she looks forward eagerly to seeing you as soon as you arrive.” He added in an offhand manner, “I must say I thought her somewhat upset when she heard you h
ad brought your pretty secretary.”

  I was so tired and confused that I didn’t catch on. I thought the major possessed an exceedingly macabre sense of humor. Maria had said that Blaye “seemed to be very much in love with a Polish girl, a Countess Orlovska, who used to come to the office.” And what did Strakhov mean “as soon as you arrive”?

  “Excuse me, Major,” I said, “but what are you planning to do with us?”

  “Monsieur Blaye,” he said, “I am a soldier and I obey orders. My instructions are to accompany you and your secretary to Budapest as soon as possible, to see you safely to the Russian embassy. Judging by what Otto tells me of your condition, I do not think you will find it burdensome to travel tomorrow morning. We will catch the morning train.”

  “What’s this all about?” I said. “And why do you continue to call me Monsieur Blaye?”

  Major Strakhov smiled. “I don’t think there’s any doubt of your identity. First of all, Monsieur Blaye, there is your passport. Then there are the labels in your clothing and the signature on your traveler’s checks.” In my desire to do a thorough job I’d even signed the checks with that name. “And there is the baggage which you and Mademoiselle Torres left aboard the train.”

  He crossed the room to fill my empty glass.

  “Monsieur Blaye, as I’ve already explained, I only know my orders. I was sent to Hegyshalom to meet you and to escort you to Budapest. When the sergeant of the train guard radioed ahead that you had vanished, I naturally called Budapest for instructions. I was commanded to find you and to bring you to that city. That is all I know, please.”

  I told the major I would very much like to get to bed. He called Otto and Hermann to carry me, but I found I could walk with Otto’s arm supporting me. The major led the way to a bedroom, wished me a pleasant good night, and bowed himself out the door.

  Well, I’d started out to play the role of Marcel Blaye when I thought the name was a passport forger’s dream. Now that I knew that the passport was real I was stuck with the part. At least, I was stuck with it until I had to face the Countess Orlovska or someone else in Budapest who’d known the genuine Marcel Blaye.

  I had been so sure that Marcel Blaye was dead. Now there was nothing certain. Had the man Maria called Dr. Schmidt murdered him in, Vienna? It could be that his body hadn’t yet been found or that an alarm had not reached the Hungarian frontier station. Or maybe he was still alive, waiting for a new passport in Vienna before proceeding to Budapest?

  Who was Marcel Blaye, anyway? The passport said he was a thirty-five-year-old Swiss from Geneva, a man whose description almost exactly matched mine. Maria Torres, his secretary, said he called himself a watch and clock exporter but otherwise she didn’t know much about him. He was supposed to have been on his way to Budapest to close a big deal with the Hungarian government, but who ever heard of a government so hard up for watches and clocks that it sent Russian majors in full uniform to meet salesmen at frontiers? And to track them down when they jumped off trains?

  I got out of bed and pulled aside the curtains. Even if I’d had my clothes and my strength, even if I’d been willing to leave Maria, there wasn’t the slightest chance of escape. The windows were solidly barred. Otto and his friends weren’t asleep. The major had said his orders were to find us and take us to Budapest. He looked like just the man to do it.

  Of course. That was it. They thought that Blaye had decided to back out, to welsh on the deal at the last minute. They would reason that was why he’d left the train. It sounded less and less like watches and clocks. And they—whoever they were—weren’t having any backing out from Monsieur Blaye.

  As long as I was going to have to play the part a little longer, there was nothing to do but to tell Maria. No matter what she’d think, I’d have to give her the whole story about the passport. She was in just as much trouble as I. She had a right to know what was going on, if only for her own safety. Otherwise, I couldn’t risk what she might say or do when she heard Major Strakhov address me as Monsieur Blaye in the morning.

  I didn’t dare turn on the light. I tiptoed to the door, expecting to find it locked from the outside, but it opened.

  The corridor was dark, but there was light showing under the door of the room next to mine. I raised my hand to knock and stopped in mid-air. I had no way of knowing whether Maria or Major Strakhov was in that room. I decided to knock anyway. If the major answered, I’d ask for an aspirin.

  I knocked and there was no answer. I knocked again and nothing happened. I knocked a third time and then I heard Maria’s voice say, “Who is it? What do you want?” so I opened the door, walked in, and shut it and said, “It’s me, John Stodder. I’ve got to talk to you.”

  I could see I’d wakened her from a sound sleep. When she’d rubbed her eyes and propped herself up in bed on one elbow, she took a look at me and started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I said. “Let me in on it. I need a laugh at this point.”

  “Nothing,” she said, “except you’re the first man I ever met who came calling in a blanket.” I hadn’t realized I was still wearing the blanket that Otto had wrapped around me when he’d removed my clothes. My bare legs and feet were showing, I needed a shave, and my hair was matted like a hermit’s.

  I didn’t know how to begin so I told her about Major Strakhov and how he had taken me for Marcel Blaye.

  “You do look a lot like Monsieur Blaye,” Maria said. “I told you so when I first saw you in the compartment. You fooled me when your back was turned. But I don’t understand why Major Strakhov should think you’re Monsieur Blaye. I can’t imagine that he’d know anything about Monsieur.”

  “Look,” I said. “It’s much simpler than that.” It wasn’t easy to say. I must have fumbled for words. “You see, I’m traveling on Marcel Blaye’s passport.”

  I expected her to scream or faint or point her finger at me and call me a murderer. She didn’t do any of those things. She just looked at me with those big black eyes and said, “You’d better tell me the whole story.”

  “Well,” I blurted out, “I told you my reasons for wanting to come to Hungary. I tried to get a visa on my American passport more than two years ago, but it never came through. I finally discovered that the Russians didn’t like what I’d written about them in a book. It was one of those correspondent books about my experiences in Budapest when the war began in Europe. But I’d made up my mind to get to Hungary, visa or no visa. So when I reached Vienna, one of my friends who’s still in Intelligence put me in touch with Herr Figl. He’s supposed to be the smartest document forger in Europe. I paid Figl five hundred dollars, and he handed me Blaye’s passport. I thought the name Marcel Blaye came out of Figl’s imagination.”

  Maria didn’t say a word. She just kept looking at me. I knew then how important it was that she believe me—more important than Major Strakhov or what might happen in Budapest or anything to do with the jam I’d led us into.

  “You can’t think I killed Blaye,” I said. “You don’t believe I had anything to do with getting the passport from him?”

  It seemed an hour before she answered.

  “No,” she said slowly, “I believe you.” Then she smiled. “You see, if you’d killed Monsieur Blaye you’d have killed me, too. You could have killed me in the compartment on the train. You could have killed me anytime after we left the Orient or you could have left me in the brook when I fainted. You didn’t have to take care of me but you did. No, I don’t think you’re a murderer.”

  “I got you into this jam in the first place,” I said. “I promised I’d get you back to Vienna.”

  “If you’d left me on the train,” Maria said, “I’m sure I wouldn’t be alive. I told you Schmidt was following me.”

  I said we didn’t have a chance of escaping from the lodge. I said we’d have to play along with Major Strakhov. We’d try to get away from him on the train to Budapest. Maybe we’d have to wait for an opportunity until we reached the city.

 
; “I’d give a lot to know what Blaye was up to,” I said. “It would make things a good deal easier.”

  “Why don’t you look in the envelope he gave me to carry?” Maria asked. “It must have something to do with the deal or he wouldn’t have been so insistent that I take it.”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Otto has it,” the girl said. “He took it from me out there when they found us.”

  “I can’t go wandering around,” I said, “looking for an envelope. Maybe there’ll be a chance in the morning. What do you think is in it?”

  “I don’t know,” Maria said, “but I’m sure that’s why Doctor Schmidt is following me. Monsieur made me promise in Vienna, before he left me, that I would keep the envelope with me. It has to have something to do with all this.”

  “Look,” I said, “once we get to Budapest, I’ll leave you. I’ll put you on the first plane or train for Vienna or maybe you can go straight back to Geneva.”

  Maria didn’t say a word. She put out her hand and drew my face down to hers and kissed me.

  Chapter Four

  UNWELCOME ESCORT

  Our baggage was neatly stacked at one end of the platform when we arrived at the Hungarian frontier station the next morning. It had been carefully removed from the Orient and even more carefully searched. The job had been skillfully done, and we’d never have known except that the snooper had neglected to wash his hands and the odor of garlic was on everything.

  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.