Romantic Road

by Blair McDowell

  Tracy laughed in spite of herself. “So where are you from?”

  “St. Wolfgang. A small town in Austria, in the Salzkammergut, near Salzburg. As it happens, I have a month’s holiday, and I’m heading there now.”

  “That’s in the mountains, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. My place is above a lake, the Wolfgangsee, and is surrounded by mountains. Its principal claim to fame seems to lie in the fact The Sound of Music was filmed there.” He took a sip of his champagne. “I don’t get there very often.”

  The captain interrupted them to announce their departure, and the flight attendants gave their usual speech about seat belts and exits and life jackets.

  Once they were in the air the cabin attendant came around with menus and took their drink orders.

  “I’ll have the fish, and I’ll just stay with the champagne,” Lacy decided.

  “The steak for me. With red wine,” Max ordered.

  For the next couple of hours, they made desultory conversation as they ate. Lacy began to worry that Max Petersen was better at eliciting information than he was at giving it. Since their initial conversation about where they lived, she had learned nothing new about him, while he, on the other hand had nearly tripped her up several times. She wished she’d had more background preparation time. It was difficult being somebody else.

  Finally she took refuge in a book. She turned slightly away from her seat companion, put in ear plugs to listen to the piped-in music, and opened her Kindle to read. At some point she put her e-reader away and pushed her seat back.

  She must have slept because the next thing she knew the flight attendant was speaking to her. “Breakfast, Miss Thompson? We land at Frankfort in an hour.”

  “Thank you.” Lacy went to the washroom. When she got back to her seat, Max was well into his coffee and rolls.

  “Been to Frankfurt before?” he asked casually.

  “No.”

  “Where’re you staying?”

  “I don’t really know yet.”

  “The Steigenberger’s a nice place. Not too expensive.”

  Lacy had the uncomfortable sensation Max’s eyes were boring into her. Trying to see beyond her words.

  “Thank you. I’ll remember that.”

  “If you need any help…anything at all”—he pressed his business card on her—“call me.”

  “You’re very kind, Mr. Petersen. Max. But I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

  ****

  Then they were landed, at the gate and disembarking. Lacy went quickly through passport control and, with no luggage to pick up, found herself in main part of the large terminal building. She realized she’d either need to rent a car with a GPS or she’d have to get a good map of Germany. She shook her head. Why hadn’t she thought to buy one on her shopping expedition with Claudette? She had only the vaguest idea of where Rothenburg was.

  Lacy looked at the row of car rental counters. Where was her Tracy Thompson driver’s licence and credit card? In her purse, just where they should be. She sighed with relief. As she pulled the cards out of her wallet, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. She stooped to pick it up. Damn it. It was the confirmation of her dental appointment in New York. It was tomorrow and it had completely slipped her mind. She’d call Richard and ask him to cancel it for her. Dr. Krebs was not nice about missed appointments.

  She moved out of the main concourse and sat down at a café table. Taking out her phone, she entered Richard’s number.

  A sleepy voice answered. Too late, Lacy remembered the time difference. “Sorry I woke you, Richard.”

  “What on earth…Lacy! Where are you calling from?”

  “Fra…Quebec, of course.” Lacy realized this was making less and less sense. “It’s my dentist appointment. Dr. Krebs. Tomorrow. Could you please cancel it for me?”

  “Lacy, where are you? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  Richard sounded wide awake now.

  Lacy closed the connection and sat looking at her phone. That had been a mistake. How many more would she unwittingly make? She wasn’t cut out for this.

  Her phone rang. “Where are you, Lacy?” Richard sounded frantic. “I know you’re not in Quebec. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, Richard. I’m fine. I’m just taking a little holiday. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “I don’t understand, Lacy. Please…”

  Lacy closed the phone and looked around her. Could Richard tell where she was by her phone? Probably not, but still…She looked down at her phone as if it were a poisonous snake. Glancing around the café she saw that a man at the table behind her had his top coat slung over the back of his chair. Lacy buried her phone in the pocket of his coat. Let Richard follow that trail, she thought.

  Across from the café was a telecommunications store.

  “I need an unlocked phone and a SIM card for Germany.”

  “Certainly. We have a selection…”

  “Just something simple.”

  Five minutes later when she exited the shop, she once again had a phone. This one, with a different number, not easily traceable.

  She still had to rent a car. She looked around apprehensively. That man at the Lufthansa counter, wearing a dark raincoat. Had she seen him before? Is he the one who…She felt dizzy, her heart hammering in her chest, her hands clammy. She had to get out of here. The man turned, seemed to stare through her for a moment, and then began running toward her. How could they have found her so quickly?

  She spun around and ran blindly. She could hear him coming after her, closer, closer. She glanced over her shoulder and ran headlong into a solid body. Arms came around her.

  “There you are, liebchen!” he said. “I’ve been looking high and low for you. I thought I told you to wait for me by the information booth.”

  She found herself being pushed against the wall and soundly kissed by Maximillian Petersen, his body pressed to hers, blocking her from view. Footsteps hammered past them.

  “I don’t think he was chasing you,” Max said, glancing at the retreating figure. “He’s just late for a flight. But he could have been chasing you, couldn’t he? What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into? And why are you still hanging around in the airport if you’re trying to avoid someone?”

  Lacy looked at him in astonishment.

  He sighed. “Never mind. We can discuss it later. At the moment we have to get you out of here and to someplace where they, whoever it is you’re afraid of, won’t be looking for you.”

  Without giving her time to object, he threw his raincoat around her shoulders and bustled her out of the terminal, across the covered link to the Sheraton. They went through the lobby, his firm hold on her brooking no interference, and down the elevator to the parkade.

  There Max walked through the rows of parked cars, stopping finally beside a black Mercedes.

  The door was unlocked. “Get in,” he ordered.

  Lacy glanced around the parkade and thought briefly of running again. What did she know about Max Petersen? For all she knew he could be one of them, one of the men who were after Igor’s Manuscript. But no. She had met him at Jean-Paul’s. Jean-Paul and Claudette trusted him. He was here, and he was offering her an immediate escape from Frankfurt. She could always get away from him later.

  She threw her bag in the back seat beside his and by the time she got in he had the motor running. Perhaps this wasn’t the safest thing she’d ever done, but somehow she trusted Max Petersen. She’d been scared out of her wits when she thought someone was chasing her in the airport.

  Five minutes later they were humming along the autobahn. They seemed to be flying. Lacy looked at the speedometer. They were going a hundred and forty kilometers an hour, and cars were whizzing by them.

  She looked back apprehensively. Were they being followed? A car came up fast behind them and blinked its high beams. She drew in her breath sharply.

  Max moved to the slower lane. “It’s just German drivers. Th
ey all drive as if they’re competing in the Grand Prix.”

  Lacy realized her hands were shaking.

  Max glanced at her. “You’re safe for the moment. We’ll get off the autobahn onto smaller roads soon. Then you’ll tell me what this is all about.”

  They were almost past the exit when he swerved to take it, glancing in his rearview mirror to see if anyone followed. Twenty minutes later, satisfied they were alone on a rural road dotted with farms and fields of cattle, Max pulled off and parked. Then he turned to her.

  “You’ll tell me now, please.” It wasn’t a request, it was a demand. “You’re running from someone or something. Is it the law?”

  “No. No, of course not. I’ve never done anything illegal.” She added as an afterthought, “Unless you count traveling with a false passport.”

  “A false…” Max shook his head. “Who’s chasing you? Lover? Angry husband? And just how did you come by a false passport?”

  “I’m a widow. And I don’t have a lover.” She drew a sharp breath. “My husband arranged the passport for me before he died. I don’t know how he did it. And I can’t tell you who’s chasing me because I don’t know.”

  “You were frightened back there in the airport. You were terrified. Why?” His voice was harsh.

  “I tell you I don’t know!” she shouted.

  His voice when he answered was deadly calm. “You know. And you’re going to have to level with me because you need my help. If you keep on as you’ve begun, you’re going to run right into the arms of whoever’s chasing you. You’re particularly inept at deception, my dear.”

  Anger chased away Lacy’s momentary weakness. “I’m not your dear, and I’m not inept and I’m…”

  Max’s voice was kinder when he spoke. “No. I don’t suppose you are inept. But you need help. And I’m here. And I’m offering help. But I can’t help if I don’t know what you’re up against.”

  He started the car and pulled back onto the road.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m heading home to the Salzkammergut. I have a month’s holiday coming, and I mean to spend it there. I don’t know where you’re going.”

  “I need to get to Rothenburg.”

  “Ah. The Romantische Strasse. As it happens it’s on my way. If anyone was really following you, I’m pretty sure we’ve shaken them off. At this moment they’re probably scouring the hotels in Frankfurt for you.” He smiled at the thought.

  He glanced at her. “Unless you’re in a terrific hurry, I suggest we stop for a late lunch and overnight in Miltenberg. It’s a small, off-the-beaten-path town on the Main River. No one is likely to look for you there. And I know a charming small inn, the Zum Riesen, where we can spend the night.”

  Lacy looked at him in astonishment. “Why are you doing this for me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m bored with my life. Maybe I just like rescuing damsels in distress. Does it matter? Do you have a better option?” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth as he turned his warm brown eyes on her.

  For the first time since leaving Toronto, Lacy laughed. “No. I can’t say as I do. And lunch in Miltenberg sounds like a great idea. But as to the charming small inn, it will be two rooms, not one.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting…”

  “Of course you would. You’re a man.”

  “Two rooms it is, then. And over dinner you’re going to tell me what this is about, Tracy. And that includes what your real name is. I know it’s not Tracy.”

  ****

  It was early afternoon when they arrived in the ancient town on the River Main. They parked near the city gates in a public parking lot near the banks of the river.

  “We’ll leave our suitcases in the car. We can pick them up later.” They slung their backpacks over their shoulders and walked along the river bank toward the main town gate.

  Not far from where they parked, a large riverboat, the Königin Beatrix, was docked, its gangplank down.

  “Riverboats are common on the Main,” Max commented. “It’s a great way to see the area.”

  He took her arm and led her through a massive arched stone gate.

  Inside the wall, the old town seemed caught in a time warp, exactly as it had been for centuries. Lacy gazed in wonder at the timber-frame houses and the castle dominating the hill.

  “It looks like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” she said. “Just how old is this town?”

  Max frowned in thought. “Well, the Romans were here in AD 155, but of course these houses and the castle are much more recent.”

  “How much more recent?”

  “They date from about the twelve hundreds.”

  “Yes, of course. More recent. Positively modern, you might say,” she laughed.

  “Wait until you see where we’ll be staying. The Zum Riesen is reputed to be the oldest inn in all of Germany.”

  “It sounds wonderful. I hope they’ve updated the bathrooms.”

  “Of course. The plumbing is from a far more recent date.” Max rubbed his head. “It is, as I said, a charming place, but you’ll have to watch your head.”

  “Why?

  “I can’t tell you how often I’ve cracked mine when I walked through a doorway there. People were shorter nine hundred years ago.”

  “Should we check in now?”

  “It’s too early. Check-in’s usually three or later. But we can have lunch at the Riesen while we wait. There shouldn’t be a problem getting rooms. It’s mid-week and out of season.”

  Max steered her down a narrow cobblestone street toward the inn.

  Halfway down the block Lacy grabbed his arm. “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “There, in the shop window!”

  Max looked in the window at the display and then at the sign hanging over the doorway. “It’s a puppeteer shop.” His voice was puzzled. “So?”

  “There’s a pig in the window.”

  Max followed her gaze and saw the pig hanging from the puppet strings, its pink face artfully painted porcelain, and its body made of burlap.

  “Yes.” He frowned in question. “It’s a pig. So?”

  “But don’t you see? It has wings.”

  Max looked again. There, projecting from the burlap body were two small wings, open as in flight.

  “I have to have it.” Lacy started up the steps into the shop.

  “In God’s name, why?”

  “When I was a little girl, whenever I wanted to do something my mother thought foolish, she’d say when pigs fly.”

  Max smiled. “We have a saying like that in Austria, too.”

  “Well, I’m doing something incredibly foolish, perhaps even dangerous now, and I need that pig.”

  Laughing out loud, Max followed her through the door into the shop. “Then you shall have it.”

  A few minutes later they left the shop with the pig securely and beautifully wrapped in bright green paper, tied with red and gold ribbons.

  “Thank you, Max. That was sweet of you.”

  “I have to say it’s the strangest present I’ve ever bought for a girl.”

  A short time later they were seated in high-backed, carved benches in the Riesen with a charming young woman dressed in a colorful full-skirted dirndl and apron taking their order. Max ordered a bottle of the local Franconian wine and poured them both a glass.

  After taking a sip, he sat back and said, “So we’ll start with your name. Who are you and where are you from? I know you’re not Tracy Thompson, and you’re not from Kitchener, Ontario.”

  “Am I that easy to read?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve had some experience with deception. And you’re not very good at it.”

  Lacy sighed. What harm could come from talking to him? He had shown a willingness to help. And clearly she hadn’t been doing very well on her own. Perhaps she could tell him some small part of the truth.

  Lacy took a sip of her wine. “My name’s Lacy. I’m from New York.
Recently widowed. By profession, a simultaneous translator at the U.N.”

  Max nodded. “That explains the ease with which you spoke German with the shopkeeper. But who are you afraid of? Who are you running from?”

  “I wish I knew. You might say I’m on a quest. When my husband died, he left a letter asking me to retrieve something he’d hidden away. I want to do this for him.”

  “You couldn’t perhaps be a little more specific? Like, what did he leave? And where are you to retrieve it from? And what are you to do with it once you have it?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel I can say more. He impressed the need for secrecy on me. I have to get to Rothenburg and meet with someone.”

  “So who’s chasing you? And why?” Max’s eyes never left her face.

  “There are people who don’t want me to succeed. Who want what he hid away to be destroyed or to stay lost. I can’t tell you who they are, because I don’t really know.”

  “I see.” Max sipped his wine and looked into the distance. “What makes you so sure you’re being pursued?”

  “There were incidents. I was stopped and intimidated once by two men on the road. My apartment was ransacked. And in Frankfurt airport…”

  “Yes?”

  Lacy told him about her foolish phone call home and her subsequent disposal of her phone.

  “Smart girl!” Max laughed. “It may buy us some time. Wonder where the guy with the overcoat was going?” Then he became serious. “Who’d you call?”

  “A family friend. My husband’s lawyer.”

  Their food arrived. They’d both ordered the roast pork with knödel, and apfelstrudel for dessert. By mutual agreement, they spoke only of unimportant things as they enjoyed the feast before them.

  After their coffee, Max suggested they take a stroll through the town before retrieving their bags from the car and checking into the inn.

  It seemed natural when Max took her hand as they wandered the narrow streets, enjoying the flavor of the old town.

  An hour or so later they headed back to where Max had parked the car. As they strolled through the town gate, Max pulled Lacy back sharply.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Max held up his hand. “Somebody’s interested in our car. Stay here.”