The Istanbul Decision

by Nick Carter

The commandant slowly shook his head.

  "We are not like these Americans who believe in nothing but money. We have some appreciation for the value of a human life."

  The commandant looked hard at Carter, considering. Finally he said, "Very well. Twenty-four hours. No longer. I'll leave the helicopter and crew on hand to take him back as soon as you say he's up to it." He opened the door, then turned and looked directly at Carter. "We are not barbarians," he said and went out.

  The doctor came over and gently took the cigarette from Carter's fingers and dropped it with a hiss in a nearby water glass. "You must sleep," he said. "You'll need your strength."

  "Can't I make anyone understand?" asked Carter plaintively. "The lives of two young women depend on…"

  "Shh!" said the doctor harshly. "Sleep. I've bought you sometime. Hopefully enough to keep you alive. Don't ruin it by trying to do something foolish."

  He pushed Carter back on the bed and pulled the blanket up under his chin. Carter stopped fighting. He was afraid the doctor would give him something to make him sleep, and he needed his thinking sharp. The doctor pulled the crude homespun curtains over the low windows and crept to the door. He opened it, creating an oblong of light, and stepped out. Behind him, staring in, wide-eyed, was the boy.

  * * *

  When Carter's eyelids next fluttered open, he found himself surrounded by a pale yellow light. The boy was standing over him holding up a chimneyless kerosene lantern and staring. When he realized Carter was awake, he gave a little gasp of fright.

  "Don't be scared," Carter whispered. "What's your name?"

  "Milos," the boy replied softly.

  "Milos. Ever been to Budapest, Milos?"

  The boy nodded.

  "I'll bet you'd like to live there someday."

  The boy nodded again, vigorously.

  "I'd like to get to Budapest, Milos. I have some friends there waiting for me. But these men won't let me go. I have to go, and they won't let me. I need help, Milos. Your help, if I'm ever going to get there in time. Do you like knives, Milos?"

  The boy nodded again and produced an ancient jackknife from his pocket. It was Swiss but had been badly abused by one of its owners. Only two blades remained, one of them rusty and the other badly chipped. And yet, in the way he handled it, Carter could see it was worth its weight in gold to the boy.

  "I'll bet no one else around here has a knife as nice as this." He took it from the boy and held it up to look at it. "Two blades," he said appreciatively, pulling out the rusty one and running his finger along its edge. "Where did you get it?"

  "Traded for it," said the boy.

  Carter nodded sagely. "I have a knife, too," he said, "even nicer than this. I'd be willing to give it to someone who helped me get to Budapest."

  The boy said nothing.

  Carter took him earnestly by the arm. "My clothes, Milos. And my weapons. The soldiers have them outside. Bring them to me and I'll give you as fine a knife as you've ever seen, I promise you."

  The boy's gaze remained level, and Carter wasn't sure he'd understood. He thought of rephrasing it somehow but decided it was no use. Wilhelmina and Hugo were most likely locked away in a police vault miles from here by now. He fell back on the bed and sighed. The boy reached over, retrieved his knife, and put it back in his pocket.

  The door swung open suddenly, and the peasant woman appeared with a bucket in her hand. "Milos!" she shouted. "Get away from there!"

  The boy backed away guiltily.

  "Go on now. Go out and play. Leave the poor man alone." She flapped her apron at him as though she were herding chickens. The boy hurried to the door, opened it, but before going out he cast a hasty glance back at Carter. Then he ran off, and the woman slammed the door behind him. "Ruffian," she exclaimed, shaking her head when he was gone.

  She turned and poured the contents of the bucket into a large kettle on the stove. Then with a long match she lit a fire and fed it wood a few pieces at a time. There was something in her movements, the slow, ponderous way she worked, that was relaxing to watch. When the kettle was steaming, she picked it off the stove and brought it over beside the bed. "I have to change those dressings," she said.

  Slowly she began to undo the gauze bandage the doctor had put on earlier. The wound looked ugly, but her calm, purposeful expression never changed. Gently she dabbed at his shoulder with cotton and water from the kettle. "I'm the horse doctor around here," she said. "That's why they brought you to me. Show me a body can mend a horse, and I'll show you a body can fix almost anything." Her country accent had a delightful lilt.

  When she finished cleaning the area, she snipped off several lengths of gauze and tenderly pressed them into place. Then she taped him. When she was done she told Carter to roll onto his stomach.

  For several minutes her strong fingers kneaded the muscles of his shoulder and neck in a slow steady rhythm, then Carter lost track of the individual movements and gave himself over to the overall sensation of pleasure. The effect was miraculous. Pain and tension seemed to melt away. He relaxed completely and was soon fast asleep.

  * * *

  He awoke the second time in darkness. There was no light at the window or at the threshold of the door. At first he thought he was alone, then he heard a movement. Shoes shuffled across the wooden floor. Something heavy landed on the foot of the bed. Pulling himself up, he reached down to feel what it was. Wilhelmina.

  "Milos?"

  In answer, something else fell, this time lighter and more flexible. He ran his hand down and felt the rough shirt and trousers Schwetzler had lent him what now seemed like years ago.

  "Good work, Milos, my boy!"

  Carter got up and hastily began to dress. He was a bit shaky but too excited to care. He pulled on the trousers as best he could and was tucking in the shirttail when the boy struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp. When he had it flickering, he sat down in a chair and began to examine the stiletto, lovingly running his fingers up and down the blade.

  "That's right. She's all yours, Milos," Carter whispered, checking the Luger's cartridge clip, then stuffing it into the waistband of his trousers. "Here, let me show you something." He came over, picked up Hugo's special sheath, and fastened it to the boy's forearm. Then he loaded the stiletto into the spring mechanism. "Now flex the muscle," he said. The boy flexed, and the knife shot out and skidded across the floor. The boy started to retrieve it when Carter caught him by the arm and spun him around until they were looking directly into one another's eyes.

  "This is no toy, son. It's a weapon used to kill men. More than one has left his blood on it. Think about that and treat it accordingly." The boy nodded solemnly.

  While Milos was on the other side of the room, Carter bent down and blew out the lantern. The boy seemed to sense what was happening and stopped moving.

  Carter drew back the window curtain. The helicopter's long blades glistened in the moonlight. To the left, in the shadow of a low, oblong shed, the flames of a small fire danced in the wind. He started for the door, but the boy grabbed his arm. "So long," Carter said in English, squeezing the boy's shoulder. "You'd better hide that knife for a while, or they 're going to know who helped me out of here."

  For a moment the boy just held him as though he wanted to say something but was having trouble finding the words. Then he said, "Koszonom."

  "You're welcome," said Carter, ruffling the boy's hair. Then he pushed open the wooden door as noiselessly as he could and descended into the barnyard.

  The helicopter stood on a grassy plot between the house and the shed, a Soviet production model, the kind the NATO boys called a "hound." It was easy to see why the doctor had been reluctant to have him moved in it. In this particular version the passenger capsule had been removed and the after-cabin left open. It would be cold and breezy at five thousand feet.

  He crept along the stock fence to the far side of the shed, to the end opposite the glowing fire, then through the thick grass along the shed's outer wall
until he was close enough to see the long shadows the men cast and hear their voices.

  Silently he flipped off the Luger's safety, then crouched down to wait. Bits of conversation came to him on the wind, but nothing coherent. Then he heard the dry weeds crackle a few yards off, and he knew it wouldn't be long.

  A dark figure appeared around the corner of the building, unzipped his pants and spread his legs slightly. A soft hissing followed as Carter stole up from behind.

  "Not a movement, not a sound," he whispered as he placed the Luger's barrel to the back of the man's head. The man stiffened, and his stream abruptly terminated. "You're through here. Turn around and walk back to your friends."

  As they entered the firelight, the conversation suddenly stopped, the others turning toward them.

  "Throw your guns down," Carter shouted. The men obeyed. There were two AK-47 machine guns and several small arms.

  When they were disarmed. Carter motioned for them to stand, then waved them away from the helicopter. "Turn around and start walking away. Now! Move it."

  For a moment or two it seemed as if the soldiers would not obey his commands. He raised his weapon a little higher, and they turned and hurried away.

  He let them get at least a hundred yards away before he scrambled aboard the chopper.

  The machine started easily, and in a moment or two the oil pressure had come up, and the engine steadied. The soldiers were running toward the house. Probably more weapons.

  Carefully Carter eased the pitch and speed controls forward, and the machine slowly lifted off the ground, the pain from his wound making him nauseated. But he was on his way, the thought of Kobelev blanking out all other considerations.

  * * *

  Budapest with its geometric grid of lights and black Danubian abyss in its center came and went, as did the local air traffic control, whom Carter managed to convince he was on an important military exercise. Word had evidently not caught up with him yet.

  From the charts aboard, Carter figured Kobelev and the kidnapped train had passed Budapest hours ago. By now it would be nearly to the Rumanian border to the south.

  South of the city he picked up the mainline tracks, dipped in low, and cranked the throttle full.

  The land flattened, and the tracks ran like knife edges toward the horizon. He kept his altitude low, rising only for bridges and overhead wires.

  Within half an hour he had reached Szolnok on the Tisza River. He skirted the town and continued south, the steady beat of the rotors almost lulling him to sleep. It seemed as if he had been flying forever, toward a goal he would never reach…out of touch with the world and with his own past, Kobelev the only thought that mattered any longer.

  Fourteen

  Carter crossed into Rumania in the twilight just before dawn. The ground elevation had risen sharply in the last hour and a half, and as the first shafts of light struck the terrain, it wasn't sand and grass that turned pink, it was snow. This was mountain country. To the east and south stood the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps, floating on the horizon like huge ships. Towering in the center, old Moldoveanu herself, rising to a height of over eight thousand feet, was visible even though the peak was more than seventy miles away.

  The track began to rise, too, winding in and out of valleys, hugging the mountainsides, a speckled band of black dirt and gleaming steel against the whitened rock. Carter followed it relentlessly. His arm ached terribly, and he estimated he'd come almost two hundred miles, but there was still no sign of the kidnapped train.

  Worried thoughts began to haunt him: maybe he'd taken the wrong set of tracks; maybe they'd stopped somewhere along the way and he'd missed them; or maybe they'd gone south from Budapest to Belgrade instead.

  His fuel was getting low. If he went much further, he'd crash out here and be stranded in the snow and wind.

  He'd almost convinced himself to give up and turn around when he saw a telltale plume of black smoke hanging in the air opposite a curve. He rounded the breast of land and there she was, steaming for all she was worth, engine black as night, pushrods pumping, billows of coal smoke streaming out of her stack. Behind her followed the fifteen antique cars, each painted slightly differently, making her look at first glance like some sort of a show train.

  He swung to the right and pulled back around the edge of the mountain, not wanting to be seen. This was going to take some strategy. He pulled up on the collective pitch and immediately gained altitude, although he realized there was a limit as to how high he could go. The air here was colder and drier than it had been the night before, which meant it wouldn't work as well in the rotors. Also, he was going to have to consume more fuel to go the same distance.

  He flew over a low peak and descended into the valley on the other side, then found the track again and followed it for another two miles. By this time he figured he'd gained fifteen minutes on the train and began to circle, searching the mountain for a particular type of snow formation, one that bulged conspicuously at the bottom of its shelf.

  He found what he was looking for hanging well above the track, and he made a pass at it, coming in very close, the sharp chop-chop of the rotor blades reverberating within the narrow cut of the valley.

  A clot of coal smoke appeared around the curve below.

  Carter made a second pass, the sweat beginning to bead on his forehead as he cranked the throttle full forward. Again the tremendous din of the helicopter engine and rotors hammering at the snow shelf.

  The train steamed into view at the bottom of the long grade as Carter maneuvered the helicopter up and around in a gut-wrenching tight curve, and the snow began to slide off the side of the mountain, slowly at first, then faster and faster, covering the tracks.

  The train was already slowing down as Carter lifted the stick and disappeared over the summit. He flew down into the preceding valley, found a convenient flat spot, and landed.

  In the nose he found a heavy parka and a medical kit. He stripped off his shirt and looked at his wound. The doctor had done a pretty good job. The stitches looked as though they'd hold, except liquid had begun to form around the ends of the black thread, a bad sign. Fortunately it had gotten so cold during the course of the night that it was too numb to hurt much.

  He rebandaged the wound, then put his shirt back on. He pulled on the parka and checked Wilhelmina. There were only nine cartridges left in the Luger. He stuffed it into one of the coat's big side pockets and climbed out into the snow. The sun was just coming over the horizon.

  * * *

  Carter trotted up the tracks. Ahead, a cloud of vapor billowed from around the curve, and the air was full of the hiss of escaping steam. He ducked behind a series of boulders alongside the track and proceeded from one to the next until he was able to see the rear of the train.

  Two of Kobelev's guards stood on the small railed platform at the end of the last car, each with a light machine gun slung over his shoulder. They were dressed in furs and leather like two Sherpa mountain guides and were laughing. The words were garbled, but the tone was unmistakable. Obviously, they'd come prepared for the weather.

  Carter was going to have to take them both out, but in such a way that neither of them fired a shot. One burst from those machine guns and the whole train would come running. The last thing he needed at this point was a shoot-out.

  He moved up behind another boulder until he was within fifty yards, the furthest he could be and still be dead certain of his marksmanship. Then he leaned forward, screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel, steadied his hand on the rock, and waited.

  The two men continued to talk and laugh. One seemed to be telling the other a story. Occasionally, disjointed shouts floated to Carter from the front of the train, and every so often he had to put his gun down and blow on his fingers to keep them from freezing.

  Finally the one guard reached the punchline, and the other man laughed heartily while the first turned his head out of the wind to light a cigarette.

  This
was the moment Carter had been waiting for. He aimed at the laughing man, gently squeezed, and put the bullet into the back of his throat. The guard's head slammed against the back of the car, bounced forward, and he ended up folded over the low railing.

  The second man looked up, the cigarette falling from his mouth. In his astonishment the whites of his eyes were visible even at fifty yards. Carter put his second shot in the man's neck behind his left ear. The bullet blew out part of the man's head, spraying blood for several feet. He fell onto the first man, then slumped to the floor, his body twitching.

  Carter ran to the train, relieved both men of their machine guns, flinging one as far as he could into the valley below and shouldering the other, then he entered the car. It was empty. These were servants' quarters, tight little berths with no more than a pull-down bed and a window, but none of the beds was pulled down, and each of the narrow sliding doors stood open. There was no sign anyone had been in here recently.

  He went on to the next car — a sleeping car with old-fashioned upholstered seats. It was empty as well. A small heater at the end of the aisle was blowing out warm air. He stooped to warm his hands, listening. There wasn't a sound; the train seemed deserted. He wondered if the passengers hadn't gotten off somewhere along the way.

  He went on to the next car. More berths, although these were for the paying customers, bigger than those earlier and better appointed, with tasseled curtains and small porcelain basins for washing along one wall. Carter eased up the passageway, looking into each compartment with the machine gun at the ready, no longer sure what to expect.

  "Nick?" someone whispered behind him. He spun around. Roberta, her hair disheveled, her eyes brimming with relief, ran to him and buried her face in his good shoulder.

  He let her cry for a moment, then pulled away. "Get yourself together," he told her.

  "I could have taken him," she said with sudden force. "But my gun jammed.