The Istanbul Decision

by Nick Carter

  "Everyone's afraid to die. Everyone."

  Her dry, lined lips broke into a tiny smile. "Hand me my cane." She gestured toward a curved walking stick propped against the end of the bed. Carter fetched it.

  Stuffing the Luger back in its holster, he took hold of her arm, which was as light as a dry twig, and eased her forward. As he did, his gaze was drawn to the floor, to the blank features of the dummy.

  If they hadn't brought the dummy with them, he thought, beginning the logical sequence that had been interrupted earlier, men it must have been here to begin with.

  She was standing erect now, supporting herself with the cane. "Clear me a path," she snapped. The fear was gone from her voice.

  Carter pushed back the table and scraped away the broken glass and candles.

  And if it was here all along, then she must have known about it…

  She teetered suddenly and he came to her aid, holding her by the elbow and shoulder with his one good arm, and they proceeded together, she taking one tiny step at a time, and he guiding, shoring her up.

  And if she knew about it, then she's in on it; and all that bullshit about her life being in danger is just that, bullshit…

  Simultaneous with this last thought came the curious sound of metal being drawn across metal, and he became dimly aware she had grown suddenly stronger in his grasp. Abruptly she pulled away from him, and for a brief instant he stared in wonderment, amazed at how well she stood without his help. In the same instant he saw a flash above her head like light glinting off a blade, and he realized suddenly the walking stick had disappeared. He jumped back in barely enough time to avoid being run through by her initial thrust. The sword grazed his lower abdomen and opened an oblong slash in his shirt. He grabbed her wrist, twisted, and the blade clattered to the floor. He pushed her roughly toward the door, which he eased open a few inches.

  He held the Luger against her back as she stuck her head out and called down the hall.

  "Comrade Tremloff!"

  They waited several seconds.

  "Louder." Carter urged.

  "Comrade Tremloff!"

  The door at the end of the hall clicked open, then wedged shut, and footsteps came quickly down the linoleum. "Yes, Madam Konya?"

  "Invite him in," Carter whispered.

  "One of the candles has fallen to the floor and I fear a fire. Comrade," she said.

  "Where is Yuri? Can't he help?"

  He never received an answer. As he spoke he edged in through the door, exposing a long pink oval of scalp to Carter's waiting gun butt. Carter swung, and the man sank heavily to the floor. Carter rolled him over and extracted his revolver from the holster under his arm. It was a Graz-Buyra, identical to the one he'd taken off another flunkie named Mandaladov in an airport washroom in Phoenix. "Must be the gun of the day in Kobelev's private army," he muttered, but the thought struck him that he had not seen this man on the train, which meant he was probably stationed here in Hungary, another link in Kobelev's vast network that seemed to reach everywhere.

  "You will run now like a dog to save your skin, but it is too late," the old woman said above him.

  "My skin and others'," he replied.

  "My grandson will kill you," she said resolutely.

  "One of us will die, that much is certain."

  "He will hunt you on every continent after what you did to my poor great-granddaughter."

  "I don't have time to argue," said Carter, unloading the big Russian's automatic and pocketing the shells. He tossed the gun aside.

  "Crippling a girl in the prime of her life before she's had a chance to bear children…"

  Carter ignored her. He glanced around the room. It had been nothing more than an elaborate trap. He brushed past the old woman and hurried out the door.

  "She was beautiful," she shouted after him, her words ringing in the narrow hall. "The cream of Russian manhood sought her in every capital of the world, and now she must live in a wheelchair like a dried, juiceless old crone!"

  Outside he walked quickly to the Fiat and climbed in. As he started the engine, a bright silver gash appeared on the hood.

  Turning, Carter saw another of Kobelev's bodyguards crouched by the building entrance, his gun out in front of him and a pale ghost of barrel smoke disappearing over his shoulder.

  Carter gunned it. The car jerked forward, and the second shot missed.

  He took the first comer standing on the accelerator. The rear wheels skidded crazily, and he ripped out a kiosk on the far side of the street. The little engine had more power than he thought. By the time he'd gotten himself righted and into third gear, he was doing better than sixty.

  Side streets flew by at a dizzying rate. He looked frantically down each one, trying to find a likely route to the train station, but each of them was choked with horse-drawn carriages and carts. It was as though the whole of Hungarian peasantry had come to the city for a Sunday visit.

  He came to an intersection marked with an international stop sign, ignored it, cranked the wheel to the left with his one good arm, and narrowly missed a knot of pedestrians in front of a cafe. A military-type van swerved to avoid a collision, and its several passengers glared at him from its windows.

  He careened down three more blocks, spotted a likely alley, turned into it, and stopped. Rolling down the window, he listened anxiously. Nothing. Just the motor ticking under the hood. He listened for another thirty seconds, longer than he dared, and still nothing. No sirens, no screaming engines in pursuit. He started the car again, put it into gear, and drove much more slowly down the street.

  He had lost the way to the train station. He had a feeling it lay further in the direction he'd been traveling when he first left the housing project, but he wasn't certain, and it was too dangerous to return that way to see. He would just have to wend his way through the lesser-used back roads and alleys and hope he chanced on it soon.

  He turned into a promising-looking thoroughfare, but it soon reduced itself to a wagon rut that disappeared into someone's vegetable plot. Another street was blocked by a peasant's wagon hitched to an obstinate workhorse. The horse's master, a quarrelsome old man with no teeth, seemed in no hurry to move him, and it took several minutes of honking before two other men, obviously relatives, came out from one of the buildings, and amid much shouting and gesturing, finally convinced the old-timer to clear the way.

  A half dozen blocks back the way he had come, he turned a corner and suddenly was there. He pulled into a parking spot several hundred yards from the station's entrance, got out, and went into a cafe across the street. Roberta was to have been waiting for him at the table by the window. The place, however, was deserted.

  A short husky man wearing an apron came from the back.

  "There was a girl here," Carter said.

  The man stopped in his tracks and stared open-mouthed at Carter.

  "The girl," Carter said, looking over his shoulder out at the street and across at the station behind which the Orient Express had been waiting. But it was pulling out now. It was leaving!

  A black sedan jerked to a stop across the street. Its door swung open, and a young woman got out and rushed around the station, running after the departing train.

  Someone aboard the train had opened a door, and hands reached down to help the running woman swing aboard.

  But even from where Carter was standing, there had been no mistaking that graceful, athletic young figure. It had been Tatiana Kobelev, one hundred percent restored.

  Thirteen

  The scenery rushed at him through the Fiat's windshield, a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors without definition. He squinted into the sun, clinging to the wheel with his good arm, desperately fighting to stay conscious. The pain was no longer centered in his shoulder. It had spread throughout his body, and with each beat of his heart, his whole being seemed to throb.

  The flat, monotonous fields outside Györ had given way to the rounded crests of the Transdanubian Mountains, and the driving
was getting more difficult. The road dropped three or four hundred feet in the space of half a mile, then rose almost as quickly in short, unexpected curves. More than once Carter jerked awake to find himself on the wrong side of the white line, another vehicle bearing down on him.

  He knew he needed doctoring and needed it fast. He had ignored the awesome pain in his ribs after his fight with Shurin, and it had eventually subsided. There wasn't much one could do with cracked ribs but tape them and let them heal. But a bullet wound was a different matter.

  And yet whenever he thought about the pain, which was every few seconds, his foot only pressed harder on the accelerator.

  He had lost sight of the train in the intricate byways of Györ but relocated it again several times out on the flats, its stack spitting out black coal smoke as it charged down the track under a full head of steam. Running parallel with it at times, it galled him to think Cynthia and Roberta were only a few hundred feet away yet impossible to get to. It galled him, too, to think Kobelev and his daughter were together again, and there was nothing preventing him from killing Cynthia and even Roberta anytime he wanted.

  He'd lost track of the train again during its ascent into the mountains, and by now he hadn't seen it for almost thirty minutes. His only hope, he figured, was by some miracle to meet the train in Budapest ninety kilometers away. It would stop if only for coal and water, and he had to be there when it did.

  For the thousandth time he rubbed his eyes and willed himself to stay conscious and forget about the pain, and for the thousandth time his body answered with a constant hum, a "white noise" of red-hot sensation. The white line began to waiver in front of the hood. Soon it was further to the right than it was to the left. A car hurled itself at him from the opposite direction, its horn screaming a warning. He twisted the wheel at the last minute and it sped past, its angry wail fading gradually behind him.

  This time it had been too close for comfort. He pulled over to the shoulder and stopped, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his heart galloping in his chest. There was nothing he could do, no way to get help. He forced his mind through every possibility from calling Hawk and having him send out the militia, to giving up right here and now and curling up to die, but nothing was viable. In the end there was only one course and that was to do what he was doing. He started the engine and pulled out onto the asphalt, wondering if he would wake up in time the next time.

  Within a few minutes, despite his resolve, his eyelids began to droop and then close. In a few seconds he heard a rapping against the right front fender as though someone were hitting it with a hammer. He jumped awake in time to see the boulders on the road shoulder close enough in the passenger window to pick out the grain in the rock. He tried to pull away, but the bouncing against the granite wall jerked the steering wheel from his hand. The car caught a particularly large outcropping, spun around, and came to a sudden halt, throwing Carter against the door shoulder first. The pain exploded in his arm like a fragmentation grenade. He made only the briefest pass at staying awake before black night overtook him.

  * * *

  An old peasant woman carrying a steaming basin of water in her arms peered at him shrewdly from a distance of less than a foot, then turned and waddled across the low-ceilinged, whitewashed room to a boy who sat by a crude wood-burning stove. She poured the water from the basin into the sink and without looking at the boy, told him, "Fetch the doctor. The American is awake."

  In less than a minute the boy returned with a swarthy man in his mid-fifties, a thick salt-and-pepper mustache covering his upper lip and his shirt-sleeves rolled up. Encircling his eyes were a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, over the tops of which he gave Carter a studious look. "How are you feeling?" he asked in English. "You are American?"

  "Shaky," Carter said, ignoring the second question.

  "You've had quite an ordeal. I took this out of your shoulder last night." He held up a wad of blood-encrusted lead.

  "Last night? What day is it?"

  "Monday."

  "Holy Christ!" said Carter, starting to get up.

  "Easy," said the doctor, holding him with a firm grip on his arm and shoulder. "You're not in any shape to go anywhere just yet. You'll have that wound open if you persist."

  "You don't understand! I have to be in Budapest! I was supposed to be there yesterday!"

  Carter struggled against the doctor's hold on him, the effort playing havoc with his shoulder.

  "Go!" the doctor shouted to the boy who had been watching just inside the door. "Tell the commandant I can't hold him."

  Carter strained for a few minutes more, then fell back on the bed exhausted. "They're gone by now, anyway," he mumbled.

  "You are quite right, my friend," said a low, cultured voice. Both Carter and the doctor turned around. In the doorway, filling it, was a tall, elegantly slim man in the blue serge uniform of the Hungarian People's Army. At least it looked like other Hungarian Army uniforms Carter had seen; the difference was this one didn't fit like a gunny sack. It had been custom tailored to smooth out every bulge and wrinkle. From the gold on his shoulders, Carter guessed a colonel or higher.

  "Let him up, Doctor, if he wants to sit."

  The doctor released him, and Carter pulled himself painfully into a position where he could lean his back on the whitewashed wall.

  "The doctor tells me you have remarkable powers of recovery," the commandant said, coming closer. "I see now that he was right. Most admirable. Would you care for a cigarette?" He held out a gold case filled with dark brown cigarettes, which Carter recognized as Russian-made. Carter took one, then the commandant took out one for himself, tapped it firmly against the case, and lit it. He lit Carter's, then drew up a chair and sat down.

  "Where am I?" asked Carter.

  "In the mountains about halfway between Budapest and Györ. The village is called Diosd. One of the local peasants found you after your unfortunate accident while he was returning home from making a delivery. He was going to take you to the hospital in Budapest, but he recognized a bullet wound when he saw one and figured you were in some sort of trouble, so he brought you here."

  "Some favor," said Carter sourly.

  The commandant smiled. "You mustn't blame the peasant for my presence. He had no choice in that. Besides, I'm afraid you overestimate the effectiveness of your security. We've been monitoring your movements since you left Györ. We would have found you after you failed to pass through our last checkpoint, in any event. And after all, it isn't so bad, is it? Your wound has been tended to, and soon you will be given free transportation back to the Austrian border."

  "I have a job to finish in Budapest."

  "Doctor, would you excuse us for a moment?" asked the commandant.

  The doctor raised an eyebrow, then without a word walked to the sink, gathered up several instruments that lay in a tray beside it, and went out the door.

  When he was gone, the commandant pulled his chair several feet closer to the bed. "I think you should know," he said in a confidential tone, "my superiors regard you as nothing more than a common assassin and would like to have you shot. And they would have sent me here to do just that if it weren't for the Soviets themselves. None of them seems to be able to determine where Comrade Kobelev stands in the pecking order. They are afraid to serve his cause and afraid not to. They are very confused, and as long as they remain so, we Hungarians will wash our hands of both of you. Kobelev is speeding out of the country right now, and you are incapacitated. Things work out well in the end, no?"

  "No," said Carter resolutely. "There are two women aboard that train, American citizens, and my government is going to take it very much amiss if any harm…"

  "Ach!" the commandant exclaimed harshly. "You have no rights here. You have all entered the country illegally. All except Miss Stewart, which I am told is her real name, and she is nothing but a spy masquerading as a Hungarian schoolteacher. You are all undesirable aliens, and we shall be glad to get rid of the lot of you
!" He punctuated this last statement by snapping the ash from his cigarette onto the immaculate wooden floor, and for several minutes this ended the conversation.

  They smoked. The commandant watched Carter, but Carter ignored him and stared at the floor. He was thinking of Cynthia and Roberta and his dwindling chances of rescuing them.

  "You know," said the commandant finally, "it isn't that I dislike you, my friend. You are an impressive man, and I must admire your training. For instance, your Hungarian is very good, almost accent-free. And you have come a long way against formidable odds. The doctor tells me you've had several ribs cracked recently. Your capacity for punishment is astonishing. But I have a job to do."

  "You don't like Kobelev any better than I do, do you?" asked Carter.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "It's true, isn't it?"

  "I dislike the man, I'll admit it. He's a legend in the KGB. The stories they tell are frightening. Let me put it this way — I disapprove of his methods. To me he typifies the entire Soviet approach to government. Ruthless, power-for-the-sake-of-power. Altogether a despicable man. But one can't always choose one's bed partners in this day and age. A small country such as mine must be aligned with someone strong."

  Outside, an engine started up. "What's that?" asked Carter.

  "The helicopter to take you to Austria. I imagine a man of your extraordinary endurance is up to traveling."

  The door swung open and the doctor rushed in. His hair was windblown, and behind him out in the barnyard the grass was being whipped flat by the wash from the chopper's big rotor.

  "You can't move this man now!" he shouted.

  "Why not?" asked the commandant calmly.

  "Because his condition hasn't had a chance to stabilize. Move him now and you may kill him."

  "Orders are orders, Doctor. I'm afraid our friend here is something of an embarrassment."

  "You let me save his life. You don't expect me to stand by and let you kill him, do you? Give him twenty-four hours."