by Fritz Galt
Through the rear window, Mick watched the mayor and Natalie pull up in the Jeep and hand over Mick and Natalie’s diplomatic passports.
The border guard would have a different procedure for diplomatic passports. Normally, he would take them into his guardhouse and write down the numbers.
Mick watched the border guard gather the two passports and enter his office. But he didn’t copy down the numbers. Instead he reached for the phone.
Mick cracked his door open and waved at the mayor to smash through the gate. But the mayor remained unresponsive behind the Jeep’s steering wheel.
In the Jaguar’s headlights, Natalie’s silhouette lunged at the mayor. The Jeep rocked in place.
Then Jack’s door popped open, and he ran toward the Jeep.
Mick stepped fully out of the Mercedes with a hand on the roof of the car. He felt the car begin to shudder. The agent had put the Mercedes in gear and he gunned the motor.
Suddenly stranded, Mick passed his revolver to his good hand, his left hand. He fired wildly at the tires of the Mercedes. Both left tires went out.
On the rims of its wheels, the car took a tight U-turn and headed straight for Mick. He lunged to one side and hit the road hard, landing on his sore shoulder.
The car screeched and fishtailed in the direction of the Yugoslav border, but veered out of control toward the edge of the dam. With an explosive crash, it rammed through the wall and sailed out of sight.
Meanwhile, Jack had shoved the mayor to the center of the front seat of the Jeep and jumped behind the wheel. He smashed through the gate, splintering it at its base.
The border guard lunged out of the guardhouse, trying to load his rifle.
Driving the Jaguar, Coleen brushed past him and roared over the splintered gate.
Mick grimaced as he crouched low and put the revolver in his aching right hand. He aimed at the guard’s shoulder. Before he squeezed the trigger, he would have to brace for the sharp recoil.
He blinked. He didn’t have to shoot. A blossom of red appeared on the border guard’s trouser leg. The man spun around and fell to the pavement clutching his thigh.
Natalie was leaning out of the Jeep’s passenger window, waving her revolver triumphantly in the air.
Several pairs of footsteps clattered on the guardhouse roof as soldiers reacted and prepared to fire.
Mick spun on his heels and sprinted toward the Romanian border. The Jeep raced ahead of him. Natalie calling out her window to urge him on.
With fifty meters to go, Coleen had no time to stop and pick him up. Instead, she pulled up behind him to create a protective shield. Bullets sprayed the road ahead of him and chips of concrete showered the backs of his legs.
He moved faster than he knew possible. The bridge, locks, generators and light poles became a blur. He trained his eyes on the back of the Jeep and zigzagged to present a moving target.
The Romanian guard froze at the sight. He stood in the path of a speeding Jeep, an erratic runner, a swerving Jaguar and bullets from Yugoslavia.
“Diplomats,” Mick shouted. “Let us through.” God only knew if the man understood.
Something, however, propelled the guard to action. He leapt for the end of his gate and pushed down on the weighted handle. The barricade was still rising when the Jeep zipped through.
“Diplomats,” Mick repeated breathlessly as he slowed to a fast trot.
A final barrage of bullets ricocheted and whined around him.
The guard ducked inside the guardhouse for protection as Mick stumbled past.
Two old women had taken to their heels, leaving behind hand-embroidered lace spread out on the ground for sale.
Coleen steered up to beside him and opened the passenger door. He fell in.
“You saved my life,” he told her.
Air whistled through the shattered glass of the Jaguar’s rear window.
Coleen’s face was full of resolve, but she concentrated on driving to safety rather than respond.
Well beyond the guardhouse and clearly on Romanian territory, Jack pulled the Jeep over to the curb, and Natalie jumped out.
Coleen pulled up behind the Jeep and came to ta stop.
Natalie raced back to Mick.
He slowly pulled himself out of the Jag.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, and ran a hand through his hair.
“No permanent damage. Just a little winded. You saved my life with that thing.” He indicated the revolver carelessly dangling against her leg.
Mick listened carefully to make sure that the shooting had stopped. Only then did he notice a line of Romanian guards on their knees with their rifles trained on the Yugoslav border.
On the far side of the dam, border guards ran to where the Mercedes, bearing the MUP agent and Inspector Stojanovic, had disappeared.
Mick looked over the edge as well. Had he lost the inspector, his new double-agent? He expected the worst, that the Mercedes had disappeared below the surface of the water. But instead, the car still dangled there, hanging over a water intake at the mouth of a turbine. Arms waved about inside.
It looked like the suave inspector would live to see another day. But would Mick?
Several Romanian soldiers broke rank and rushed back to the stopped cars. Mick turned to face them, his hands raised painfully overhead. Then, as he gazed beyond the ring of rifles and his small band of captive diplomats, his eyes fell on an incongruous sight. On a light blue background with a white globe and two olive branches, a UN flag hung over a group of army barracks.
“Oye!” an officer in a blue beret, a T-shirt and boxer shorts shouted as he emerged from the barracks.
Among the diplomats was the mayor, with Jack Hamlin kneeling on his chest.
“Que esta pasando aqui?” the UN commander bellowed. “What is going on here?”
Mick wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Please excuse our awkward entrance.” He coughed, still struggling to regain his breath, then pulled the mayor to his feet. “If you’re here to monitor the sanctions, you can start with this character.”
Chapter 27
In the first dim rays of the sun, Mick spoke into a secure phone at the UN barracks in Romania. “How’s Langley treating you?” he asked Bernie Fletcher.
“Pretty damn well,” the former Belgrade station chief said. “Too bad you’ll never set foot in this place again.”
“How’s that?”
“The State Department just received a diplomatic note. The Yugoslavs have officially kicked your butt out of there.” He paused before continuing. “Whatever happened to your low profile? You and Natalie are now personae non grata over there.”
Mick covered the mouthpiece and leaned toward his wife. “We’re PNGed from Yugoslavia.”
She held up a defiant fist in victory.
“I don’t know what you did to tick them off,” Bernie said.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I thought so. Get your sorry selves to Sofia where we can establish more secure communications.”
“Will do.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Bernie said, “there’s a whole collection of Yugoslav diplomats and their families sitting at a departure gate at Dulles right now, thanks to you.”
“It doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Just what the hell’s going on over there? I thought you were in Hungary. Now I hear reports of gunfire at the Romanian border.”
“Things got a little dicey. But we have all the evidence we need to close our case on the Germans. Using the UV ink, we identified who is sending the marks, we followed the marks to a bank in Belgrade and we’re holding the man who delivered the bank’s bribes to the Romanians in exchange for oil. He’s willing to name names at the UN Tribunal.”
“If that’s the mayor, the Yugoslavs want him back.”
“Fat chance. He’s in UN hands, and that’s where he’ll stay.”
“Good work. It’s a small step, but it might finally add teeth to
the sanctions.”
“As you probably suspected, there’s a lot more to this than oil shipments.”
“I don’t want to hear about it. I’ve briefed the Director about you, and he wants you out of there now.”
“I’ll call you from Sofia.”
He switched the field telephone off before Bernie could reply.
Two hours after his call to Bernie, Mick watched Natalie grip the wheel of the Jeep with fierce determination. Wind blew through the broken passenger’s side window as they followed the Jaguar across the mountainous border of Romania into Bulgaria.
“Why so tense, honey?” he asked.
“I just don’t like it when people shoot at you.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
“Not with that bad shoulder.” It sounded more like an accusation than an explanation.
Mick let it go.
Bulgaria didn’t look much different from Romania. It was hard to believe that any country could be more isolated from the West than Yugoslavia, but it was true. Like the thawed edge of a glacier, Yugoslavia was on the cusp of prosperity, while the eastern edge of Europe, countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria, had yet to be unlocked from the ice.
Natalie took her aggression out on the surrounding traffic. Honking at and threatening semis, canvas-covered trucks, campers and guest workers, she roared along the Timisoara-Severin-Vitez-Sofia route that bridged the affluent Western Europe with the open economies of Greece and Turkey. She didn’t give an inch.
He watched with amusement as they splashed through a blue disinfectant bath required to enter Bulgaria. No germs from the unwashed West would enter their sanctuary.
Along the way, they squeezed into unlighted mountain tunnels, careened along the edges of canyons and zipped past oxen and donkeys that pulled hay-laden carts.
An occasional enterprising Bulgarian sat in front of her house with a huge pile of watermelons or ten-pound sacks of red peppers.
Not long after crossing into Bulgaria, Natalie motioned behind her. Mick saw a dark Audi pull right up to their bumper. The car trailed them without passing for nearly a kilometer. Finally, it flashed its headlights.
The Jaguar ahead continued merrily along.
Natalie looked alarmed. “He’s signaling us.”
“Is there something wrong with the Jeep?”
She checked the dash and all the mirrors. “Nothing that I can see.”
In the wind that gusted through his broken window, he heard the car beep its horn.
“Do you suppose they’re police?” she said.
Mick checked the guy’s license plate. “It has regular Bulgarian plates. Flash your lights at Jack. We’d better pull over in case there’s something wrong.”
The three cars slowed down and eased off the pavement. Meanwhile, traffic whizzed by in a steady stream.
Natalie studied the rear-view mirror. “Here he comes.”
A young man walked around to the passenger side and looked through the shards of broken glass.
He wore black slacks and a casual white shirt. He pulled off his reflective shades.
“Hello,” he said in English. “Are you lost?”
“No,” Mick said. “We know where we are.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Greece,” Mick lied. “What do you want?”
The man looked up and down the road. Jack was staring at them from inside his car.
“Do you need to change money? Drachmas, lepas, marks?”
“Is that what this is all about?” Mick brushed a few pieces of glass off his shoulder and turned to Natalie. “We can go.”
The man jumped back as Natalie spun out of there.
Jack lurched ahead, and soon they were overtaking traffic again. Mick grinned at his wife. “Private enterprise seems to be alive and well in Bulgaria.”
“Who needs it?” She leaned on her horn and shooed a truck full of chickens out of her way.
The two-car convoy approached Sofia from a high, cold pass. At last they were back in civilization. The long valley gave way to a wide, treeless plain where clusters of houses marked the centers of giant collectives, each kilometers apart.
They crossed a ring road and began to see groups of apartment buildings across the fields. The sun dropped quickly behind the range of mountains that rose abruptly to the west the city.
Increasing numbers of cars appeared on the highway. Each had a removable taxi sign, but no passengers.
The city never got too large or too menacing for Mick. They ventured past single-family houses and crept over the Lion Bridge. The last rays of sun glinted through the trees and painted a yellow glow on the buildings.
Mick began to notice many statues, principally of animals. Bears, eagles and penguins were a safe subject for state-employed sculptors.
One-way roads ferried them around the center of town and past Mrs. Zhivkov’s modern Cultural Center.
The Jaguar headed for the Sheraton Hotel, where they pulled into an exclusive parking lot. Several rail-thin boys emerged to mob their cars. Each took a window and vigorously wiped the dust in circles.
One older boy stood with a bucket and supplied the rest with water. He checked on their work and tried to lend a professional touch to the frenzy.
Natalie smiled at Mick. She knew he didn’t like others touching his car. “Let them do their job,” she said. “They’ll take some money and go.”
Jack and Coleen stretched their limbs and retrieved their suitcases from the trunk. The Pierces’ only possessions had long since been lost to the vandals in Kladovo.
The men each paid the youngster with the bucket. Two American dollars each seemed to satisfy him. Then the boy and his gang stood back to admire their handiwork.
Coleen led the travelers to the hotel entrance. “We watched you get stopped by the money trader. Those guys prey on foreigners.”
“You should have warned us,” Natalie said.
“They’re just a part of life.”
“Seems like a lucrative business, judging from his car and his English.”
“Just consider it a roving bank service.”
The women laughed.
Jack turned to Mick. “This your first time to Sofia?”
“Sure is. It’s impressive in an Old World sort of way.”
“Never was bombed during the wars. What you see is late 19th Century.”
They followed Coleen into a wood-paneled lobby.
Natalie faced the group. “We may need to formulate a plan of action, but first let’s check in, clean up and get a bite to eat.”
“That sounds perfectly civilized,” Coleen said.
Mick spotted a bank of telephones. “Just sit tight while I call a friend. His accommodations are probably cheaper than what they charge at this place.”
“Cheapskate,” Natalie grouched.
Grudgingly, they sat down to wait.
Mick consulted a little black book he carried with him, then dialed a phone.
“Hello?” came a confident voice over the line. It was Foster Young, a friend from his rookie days in the Agency.
“This is Mick.”
“Mick. For God’s sake, where are you?”
“Right here in Sofia.”
“Christ, you’re safe. I’ve been following the cable traffic. Sounds like you hit a rough spot leaving Yugoslavia.”
“Where isn’t it rough there?”
“I hear you. Where are you right now?”
“We’re at the Sheraton. But it looks a little rich for my blood.”
“Forget the Sheraton. I’ve got extra room.”
“Maybe,” Mick said. “Can we get together for dinner? We’re with Jack and Coleen Hamlin.”
“God love them. I know them well. Only, it’s Coleen Temple.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as her body is a temple. Of that I’m quite sure. How about I pick the four of you up and straighten this whole thing out over a cup of sake
and some sashimi?”
“Where? Here in Bulgaria?”
“There’s a lot you have to learn about this place.”
“I’m sure there is. For starters, how do I get a suit for myself and a change of clothes for Natalie at half past five on a Thursday evening?”
“The suit, I’ve got. Coleen can help with the women’s clothes.”
“You don’t carry spares for the unexpected visitor?”
“Not here. Not yet. This is still a non-fraternization post.”
What a shame.
“Is seven o’clock too early?” Foster sounded eager. “I’ll send your suit around by taxi.”
“One of your ubiquitous taxis?”
“Yes. But I’ll pick you up in my Politburo mobile.”
“Your what?”
The line clicked dead.
Chapter 28
Foster whisked his visitors through the dimly lit streets of Sofia in a black Mercedes Benz that he had bought from a member of the former Bulgarian Politburo. They arrived at the dark hulk of a building surrounded by a parking lot that brimmed with new cars.
A young watchman saw the Mercedes approach and removed a sawhorse that blocked a particularly exclusive parking area.
Foster shoehorned the car in between a BMW and a Land Cruiser and slipped the young man a bill.
The place was some watering hole. It was a hotel plus, and radiated a harmonious mixture of the occidental with the oriental. Occidental in the mirrors, paintings and ponderous furniture. Oriental in the rugs, vases, rock garden and Japanese restaurant.
“Irasshaimase,” the Bulgarian hostess greeted them in Japanese.
“Doomo arigatoo,” Foster replied in kind
“I’m impressed,” Mick said.
“Benefit of serving in Japan for many years.”
“Ah so,” Mick said, having served on a Marine base in Okinawa. But the base could hardly count as living in Japan.
“Shall we take a tatami room?”
“Quite,” Jack said. “Shall we?”
“You won’t mind,” Foster assured them. “It has a Westerner’s pit.”
The hostess took them to a paper door. There, Foster kicked off his shoes, and the others followed his lead. Then the hostess slid the door open, revealing a simple white room with mats around a low table.