Prelude to Terror

by Helen Macinnes

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know why,” Grant said sharply. “It’s just a feeling. He was too damned interested in our talk about where Avril and I were going to stay.”

  Too damned interested? Renwick’s frown was back. If Braun had been over-curious, Renwick had missed noticing it. Part of his exhaustion? Come to think of it, Grant’s suspicions could be laid to his own fatigue. And Renwick’s earlier warning to Grant—be careful, watch out, as our chief witness against Gene Marck and his crowd you’re in real danger—yes, that hidden warning might have set him, tired as he was, to imagining threats in every small incident. Only, it wasn’t like Grant to go off half-cocked. In the short but intense time that Renwick had known him, he had seemed to be competent and decisive, a man you could trust in a crisis. “All right. Let’s not waste time arguing,” Renwick said. “Slevak can drive you to Grünau. Braun will go with me.”

  “No,” Grant said, pouring himself another cup of black coffee. “I’ll drive,” The odd thing was, his exhaustion had been dissipated and replaced by cold determination. He was good for another two hours. After that, he could sleep the clock round. “You square the bill and get Avril downstairs. I’ll see you both at the car.” He glanced at his watch—hell, he thought, here I go again measuring the minutes—and began studying the map once more, memorising each detail between here and Grünau.

  Renwick raised an eyebrow. Just who is in command here? he wondered again. “What’s the location of Fischer’s house?” he asked softly.

  “At the end of the main street, there’s a bridge; then a farmhouse. Keep on going uphill, curve round some trees. The house is on your right.”

  “Stands alone?”

  “Yes. But it isn’t far from the farmhouse.”

  Renwick nodded approvingly. “I’ll send your luggage tomorrow without fail.”

  “Not with—” Grant didn’t say Braun’s name.

  “Not with—” Renwick agreed. He half smiled, shook his head, went off to make sure of the final details. Slevak was still in the kitchen finishing his last plum dumpling. Braun? He was out in the backyard. Talking to himself? Renwick could have sworn he had heard a subdued voice. But as his footstep crunched on the gravel, Braun turned round to face him. It was a cigar case he held in his hand, not a transmitter. He was extracting a cigar, now, biting off the end as he slipped the case back into his pocket and found a match.

  “Nice evening,” Braun said. “Thought I’d get some air. Like a cigar, sir?”

  “Thanks, don’t use them,” Renwick said brusquely. Dammit, he thought. Grant has got me distrusting my own men. This won’t do at all. “Time to move. Just check that the Volkswagen is tanked up.” Somehow he didn’t mention the change in plans. It was enough to tell Braun he was driving to Vienna once Grant and Avril were safely away. He met Slevak at the kitchen door, sent him running to join Braun, and grew angrier with himself by the minute.

  * * *

  Avril looked more normal. She was even feeling hungry now that they were about to leave. Bad timing, she told herself, and kept silent. She was puzzled, though. Just Colin and herself in Bob’s Citroën? And was Bob driving to Vienna packed into that decrepit Volkswagen with Braun and Slevak? Until now, she had paid little attention to what was going on around her. She had emerged from a nightmare and entered a state of complete daze that had lasted all through the journey to this house. Then sleep, so deep and undisturbed that she couldn’t even guess how long—or brief—it had been. But she had come out of it at the touch of a hand on her shoulder, a gentle, friendly hand. She had said to the smiling girl who was offering her the green dress that no longer looked like a crumpled rag, “Time to get up?” Just as if this was an everyday morning. To get up for what; or where was she going, or how? Here she was, beginning to ask questions again. That was some kind of proof, wasn’t it, that her mind was alive once more? I’m free of those drugs, she thought, free of those brain-stealing drugs. Even her legs were steady now; as Renwick led her down the narrow staircase she no longer felt she was walking over a waterbed. “I’ll be all right,” she told his watchful eyes.

  He steered her towards the backyard, picked up a white plastic shopping bag he had left at the door. “I’ll check with you tomorrow—”

  “Oh, yes—my report. It isn’t much. They didn’t learn—”

  “I know that,” he said gently. “Just one thing puzzles me. How did they get into your apartment?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “I opened the door.”

  “You what? Without checking?” He was aghast.

  “Well, I—” She paused again. “It was almost one o’clock. I expected Colin. I—” Once more she halted.

  “Avril, Avril,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t have it both ways.”

  “It’s either—or?” She tried to smile. She was remembering Bob’s early warning: no emotional entanglements while we’re on a job; that can be deadly.

  “Today proved that, didn’t it?”

  They reached the Citroën. Colin Grant was already at the wheel, welcoming her with a broad grin. “Better take the back seat—you can catch more sleep there.”

  “Better this one,” she told him, and stepped in beside him. “My job now is to keep you talking and awake.” She glanced at Renwick for his approval. I haven’t lost my wits altogether, she told herself. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  Grant gave a flicker of a glance in Braun’s direction. Renwick said, “Hey, Colin—you didn’t pack away your driver’s licence in that suitcase of yours?”

  Grant shook his head. His licence was one item that never left his wallet. He hadn’t the necessary Austrian permission to drive, though. Better not bring that up at this moment. Braun was looking longingly at the Citroën as if he wished he were behind the wheel. Of course, Grant told himself, some men become addicted to certain cars, can’t bear anyone else to handle them. He switched on the engine. It had a good sound.

  “All set?” Renwick asked, and dropped the plastic shopping bag in Avril’s lap. Quickly, he tucked the grey cape she abominated more closely around her shoulders. “You’re stuck with it,” he told her, and won a real smile. “I’ll send your mink tomorrow.” That made her laugh. Yes, she is recovering, he thought, and waved. And they were off.

  He turned away to climb into the Volkswagen. Braun wasn’t too happy about the car; neither was Slevak for that matter. Choosy blighters. “I’ll catnap,” he told them. “You drive like hell.”

  “To the Embassy?” Braun asked.

  “Why not?” Where I go from there will be my own business, Renwick thought, curling himself in the rear seat’s space.

  “Quite a party we had today,” Braun said. “Wasn’t it?”

  “That it was,” Renwick said, signalled a final goodbye to Uncle Winkelman. He closed his eyes, didn’t have to answer Braun’s next question. No post-mortems; no slipped information. Sleep was his best excuse.

  23

  The Citroën handled well. Grant skirted the town ahead, took the road for St Pölten. From there he had only to follow the highway that led away from the flat plains into the rising hills, aiming for Annaberg. Just beyond that village, he remembered, was the side road to Grünau with its encircling mountains. “An hour’s drive, and with luck we’ll be at Fischer’s house.”

  “Helmut Fischer?” Her eyes were surprised. “Does he know of our invasion?”

  “I relayed a message to him.” Watching her automatic disquiet, he added with amusement, “Don’t worry. I was careful.” There was a strange tenseness in her face. “Are you always so security-minded?” he teased, but the joke fell flat.

  Barely audible, she said, “No, I forgot it today.”

  “Well, it all ended well. Except for your wrist. How is it?”

  She brushed that question aside. “And because I forgot, Bob had to be dragged away from Vienna. He ought to have been there this afternoon, in contact with Brussels and Geneva and—” She broke off, her voice strangl
ing. “After so much work, so many weeks—” She didn’t finish.

  “What’s in that package he dumped on your lap?” At least the question had switched off her outbreak of emotion. She wasn’t really back to normal, yet. He concentrated on the road as she opened the shopping bag and began pulling out its contents.

  She found two wrapped sandwiches, miniature bottles of Scotch and brandy, a thick slab of chocolate, cigarettes, an imitation-silk scarf with Lippizaner horses prancing around its borders and Vienna’s emblem complete with motto in its centre, a comb, a compact and lipstick, a package of paper handkerchiefs, and—right at the bottom of the bag, the heaviest item of all—a .22 calibre automatic with a silencer.

  “Where did he scrounge all that?” Grant was grinning broadly, but he wished he had thought of it. He hadn’t. Where had Renwick found the time? He glimpsed the pistol. “That’s Frank’s.”

  A reminder of danger, she thought: all right, Bob, I’m listening to you. She replaced it in the bag, and dropped it out of sight. She combed her hair, twisted the present-from-Vienna scarf around her head, looked in the compact’s mirror. “I’ll have a yellow face,” she predicted: the compact’s powder was a deep tan, one to be avoided by her fair complexion. The lipstick was scarlet—another colour she never wore. She applied it lightly. “It’s supposed to make one feel better,” she said with a smile. “Actually, I think I’ll have a sandwich.” She offered the other, but he refused. “Scotch? Brandy?”

  “After we’ve arrived.” This road was running through easy countryside now; soon enough, he would need all his reflexes for the winding climbs ahead.

  That was wise. She decided to be wise, too. The effect of the drugs had gone, but there might be some of them still wandering around her bloodstream. She was about to suggest a quick stop for a large cup of black coffee, dropped the idea as she sensed it might only add to his problems. She’d drink coffee by the gallon once they had arrived at Fischer’s house. No delays now. “Where is this house? Is it hard to reach?”

  “It’s at Grünau. In daylight, it’s easy enough to find. But when the dusk sets in—we could miss the turn-off to the village. We won’t though. We’ll be there before night arrives.” Thank heaven I resisted the idea of coffee, she thought, beginning to feel the urgency that lay behind his impassive face. There were certain types—Bob Renwick was another of them—who seemed to talk less when they had most to tell. “Frank’s pistol—how did Bob get hold of that?”

  “Oh,” Grant said vaguely, “he needed it.” Then more precisely, “He had to use it, too. Three times, actually. Close range—it has to be close with that little pea-shooter. He was right up at the door, waiting for Rupprecht and his Luger.” In retrospect, it wasn’t a comforting picture.

  “I heard no shots. Just an explosion—”

  “Rupprecht didn’t even have a split second’s time to pull a trigger. The .22 doesn’t make much of a sound when it’s fitted with a silencer.”

  “And the explosion?”

  “A grenade tossed under the car.”

  Bob had been at the door of the house, she remembered. “You threw the grenade?”

  He nodded. Then he grinned. “I didn’t count on a fire. It makes me sweat, now, to think what I started. Damn fool. Still—it got results.”

  “What about the third man? He left me and went downstairs.” Heavy footsteps, receding slowly, while all she could do was lie and listen and wait for them to return. As they would have.

  “Knocked out for ten minutes or so.”

  “Oh,” she said, her voice rising in aggravation, “tell me what happened. Stop being so cryptic. I feel as if I had lost hours of my life. A total blank. Please, Colin, tell me. Fill it in for me.”

  So he did. “Now, what’s your story?” he asked as he ended.

  “It isn’t much. They took me—and you saw that. Then there was a house—somewhere in Vienna—but you know that. Next, a car. They had drugged me some more. I passed out—didn’t know where I was when I half opened my eyes—again. Kept them closed. That’s all.” There was a long pause. “I don’t remember very much that happened after you got me out into the meadow. It was you, wasn’t it?” Another car ride, with now a feeling of safety, or unbelievable safety. With arguments too, about hotels and Traunsee. “What were you and Bob fighting over? I thought you liked each other.”

  “He’s heavy competition.” Grant’s eyes left the road and looked at her. Then he went back to driving. The flat dull landscape and its spread of houses had been left behind. The highway was now climbing through woods and rising hills.

  Avril’s stillness matched her silence.

  “He’s in love with you,” Grant said.

  She shook her head. “No. We wouldn’t be working together if we were in love. Bob has strong opinions about that. It makes us too vulnerable. Today, for instance—oh, I don’t have to explain. You saw it for yourself.”

  “You’re saying that today was an emergency where Renwick needed a cool, calm head and didn’t go to pieces because you were his girl?” What nonsense, he thought, Renwick was as up-tight as I was about Avril’s danger. We took chances, that was all; we didn’t lose our heads.

  She was embarrassed. “Something like that,” she said briefly.

  “Would you fall apart, be unable to think and act, if you were in love with him and he was the one who was in extreme danger?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t buy that. You wouldn’t panic.”

  “I’d make mistakes.” I made two beauties today, she thought, all because I was worrying about you. I scarcely know you and yet your safety—getting a warning to you in time—no, panic wasn’t my trouble; it was dumb stupidity. I relaxed when I should have kept taut, stayed alert.

  “Small ones, surely,” he said to lighten her sudden depression.

  “Yes,” she said bitterly, “two small ones, lasting less than a minute each. One was outside Klar’s Auction Rooms; the second in my own apartment. Because of them, I nearly ruined everything.”

  “Not everything, surely,” he said. But she wouldn’t be comforted. “We have all got guilt,” he tried. “You about your two small minutes. I, about drawing you into danger when you came to warn me this morning. Renwick, because he recruited you and brought you into this kind of life. Sure, he’s got guilt about that. Must have.”

  “This kind of life?” she quoted back to him. She was angry. “What’s so wrong with it? There’s a job to be done, a necessary job. Someone has to do it, we can’t all sit back and watch the totalitarians take over.” She eased her voice. “And Bob didn’t recruit me, not in the way you make it sound. I wanted to help. I had some skill in languages. So why not me? No one forced me into this job. It was my own free choice.”

  “You enjoy it?”

  “I believe in it. I know it has to be done. Or else we’ll all end up as regimented nonentities, scared to death to step out of line or raise our voices. Everything and everyone in place according to the book of Marx. What kind of life is that?”

  He agreed, yet he couldn’t resist asking. “The terrorists you are trying to discourage—they don’t fit into that scheme of everything and everyone in place, do they?”

  “They prepare the way. What about human rights, then?”

  Yes, first terrorism, disruption, anarchy; next, the totalitarian grab for power. That was the pattern. “Some might say you had done enough.” He glanced at her wrist, bandaged loosely with white gauze. “You’ve done your share, more than most of us. Your whole life can’t be given up to this job. A girl as pretty and intelligent as you—there must have been a lot of men in love with you. How many wanted to marry you? A couple of hundred?”

  She laughed, then. “Only eight. I nearly married two of them.”

  “Polygamist,” he said, keeping the light mood going.

  “Not quite. There was a year between.”

  “Why didn’t you marry one of them?” Was it Renwick, he wondered, always there in the background
, pulling her unconsciously to him? Grant couldn’t get rid of that thought.

  “I found I wasn’t in love. Oh, they were attractive, bright, amusing—great fun to be with—I had some happy times. However—” She shrugged her shoulders. There was the soft smile of sweet memories lingering around her lips.

  “However what?” he insisted. He had to know.

  Her smile vanished. “I couldn’t make the choice.”

  “Choice? Between your job and marriage?” He could feel his heart sink. Goddamned fool, he told himself. Did you ever imagine she’d fall for you?

  “Which proved I really wasn’t in love, didn’t it?” You can’t have it both ways. Bob had reminded her today. Only, that’s what we all want when we’re faced with a difficult choice: to have it both ways. Whatever made me even think, feel, imagine, that Colin Grant was attracted to me—in spite of himself? Just because I was attracted to him—in spite of myself? Abruptly, she changed the subject by reaching for the map on his knee. “You need help with this. You can’t drive and check our route and talk to me, all the same time. Where are we?” She bent her head over the map. The scarf had slipped; she removed it impatiently, stuck it back into the shopping bag, added the rest of her presents.

  “Keep out a pack of cigarettes. I’ve run short,” Grant said.

  “Want one now?”

  He nodded, concentrating on the curves of the steadily ascending highway. There were some cars ahead, others behind him, all driving into the country for the week-end. Fortunately, their speed was brisk, no loitering, no delays. As the last of the small towns had given way to far-separated villages, the landscape had changed dramatically from gentle undulations to forested heights pressing closer and closer to the road. The sun had set, but the beginning of dusk had been scarcely perceptible, just a gentle and steady greying of blue skies. He switched on his headlights, and took the cigarette she had ready for him. She was studying the map once more, tracing the red lines they had been following from St Polten. “Where are we, Colin?” she asked again, annoyed with herself for having noticed so little about this journey.