18 - The Unfair Fare Affair

by Peter Leslie

  "Very well, very well," Illya growled. "But I still don't like it."

  "Now," the girl said briskly. "We must act. See, the watchman leaves to visit the kavarna." She waited until an elderly man in overalls had walked from the gates to the corner, and then vanished around it, before she continued, "You have the money with you?... So. Good. No, no—keep it. They will ask for it when it is time. Now, is there anything else before you go?"

  "Yes. How long shall I be cooped up in there? When does the van leave? I hate being shut in, not knowing when to expect action... and I've not eaten since this afternoon, either."

  "You would like to eat some food before? That also I can arrange."

  "Forget it. Just tell me how long," the Russian said ungraciously.

  "I cannot say. It is not for me to decide—it depends on too many things. Tonight sometime..." the girl said.

  "Can't be too soon for me," Illya grumbled. "Well, is that all then? Because if it is, I'll be off. Get the thing over with."

  "Yes, you may go now. And hurry while the man is away." Her long face creased into a smile, and for a moment, in the lamplight, she looked quite beautiful. "Perhaps I will say one thing more," she added, "I wish you the good luck…"

  She leaned across and opened the passenger door.

  The agent muttered something under his breath, got out of the car, and limped off down the pavement with his briefcase clutched to his chest, without so much as a backward glance. Before he got to the gates, he heard the Skoda's engine start and then the whine of gears as the girl turned in the narrow street and drove back the way they had come.

  It went very much against the grain for him, but he figured that in one thing, at least, he had played his role true to the real Cernic––the girl and the clientele of the kavarna in the square must certainly be confirmed in their belief that he was the rudest, the most boorish, the most bad-tempered man they had ever met! He smiled grimly to himself as he approached the pass door let into the big gate; there were more serious ways in which he would have to test the authenticity of his impersonation soon. .

  The door, as the girl had promised, was unlocked. He turned the handle, opened it, and stepped through.

  There was a light burning inside a glassed-in hutch where the watchman obviously sat between his rounds. Through the glass, Illya saw sausage, black bread and pickles laid out on a newspaper awaiting the arrival of the beer. And there was a low-powered bulb hanging above the platform at the rear of the loading dock behind the gates. But otherwise the place was in darkness.

  The van and its trailer looked enormous—two leviathans of the road silhouetted against the dim shapes of sheeted furniture bulked in the dark.

  He let the door snick shut on its return spring and listened. Very distantly, he could hear the sounds of the city— a roar of far-off traffic, shouts and a snatch of music from another street, a siren on the river, bells (could it really be only eleven o'clock?). But nearer at hand there was nothing—no footsteps, no demanding voice; just a scuffle and a squeak as a rat scurried away somewhere down the aisles of furniture, the thin, high, singing of silence in a large place.

  Satisfied, he walked openly to the space between the van and its trailer. The double doors at the back of the van were ajar. Pulling one open, he climbed up into the interior and edged his way between stacks of chairs and tables and crates exuding straw, toward the front of the vehicle.

  The wardrobe was roomy. And there were blankets and pillows stuffed into it as the girl had promised. Making himself a kind of nest in the dark, Illya settled down and prepared to wait.

  Soon after he had arrived, he heard faint sounds suggesting that the night watchman had returned. Not too long afterward—the luminous dial of his watch showed five minutes short of midnight—voices echoed under the high root of the loading dock. The doors at the back of the van were opened and then slammed shut. Retaining bars dropped into place. There was a clatter of mechanical activity as the great motor whined and then coughed to life... and the body of the truck began to vibrate as the diesel settled down to its normal idling speed.

  A few minutes later, they jerked into motion and rolled out of the warehouse into the night.

  It was easy enough for Illya to distinguish between cobbles and setts and asphalt; between town roads with tram-lines and country roads with potholes; between the surfaces of suburb and highway. But he soon lost all sense of direction and stopped trying to work out which way they were going. By and by, in the darkness, the monotonous rhythms of the vehicle and its trailer put him to sleep.

  He was awakened by a bright light shining in his eyes. He struggled awake and sat up in his nest of bedclothes. "Ah—so it's you all right, then," a gravelly voice pronounced. "You'd better hop out of there. You change here, and we have a bit of business to transact anyway."

  Kuryakin knuckled the sleep from his eyes and followed the man with the flashlight past the furniture and out into the dark. The van and its trailer were drawn up under a canopy of trees beside the road. But as soon as they were standing on solid ground, his guide rapped twice on the paneled side. The starter whirred, the motor caught, the headlights were switched on, and the double juggernaut lumbered back onto the road and disappeared down the tunnel of light it was carving from the dark.

  The Russian looked about him. The sky was clear, and in the moonlight he ould see hills on every side, most of them heavily wooded. The road showed as a faint ribbon twisting down into a valley, at the bottom of which water gleamed palely by a bridge.

  Beside him, the man with the flashlight presented a stocky, powerful figure. He was wearing overalls and a peaked cap, and his face, in the reflected light, was seamed and wrinkled above a jutting jaw.

  "What's the idea?" Kuryakin asked suspiciously. "Where are we?"

  "Not far from Krumlov," the hoarse voice said. "That's southwest of Budejovice. We bypassed the town. That's the Vitava you can see in the valley down there."

  "How far have we got to go to the border?" Illya asked, looking at his watch. He had slept nearly three hours.

  "Less than thirty kilometers. Then it's only about the same distance again to Linz."

  Kuryakin thought he had better put in a bit of character again. "That's all very well, my friend," he grated. "But how the devil are we supposed to get there, now that you have sent the transportation away? What are you playing at?" He hugged his briefcase to his chest and glared at the little man.

  The latter laughed. "Keep your shirt on, comrade!" he said. "I only paid Jan to let me bring the van out of the city, just to get you clear. He has work to do that's a genuine load that has to be delivered. He has to get back to Kralovice, beyond Pizen, by daybreak."

  "That's not my worry. Let him look after himself, whoever he is."

  "He's been looking after you well enough, friend. Do you think we could have got you past the three roadblocks between here and Praha without that genuine load, complete with its bills of lading and other papers, and the authentic van?

  "I tell you that's not my affair. What I'm paying you for—"

  "Ah, yes!" the man with the jaw interrupted. "Paying… Talking of which—let's have it!" He held out a hand for the briefcase.

  Illya hesitated and then passed it over.

  The little man counted the money carefully in the light of the lamp. Then, dividing it roughly in two, he stuffed one half in his pocket and put the other back into the case, which he handed to Illya. The Russian stared at him.

  "Matter of faith," the little man said. "We've always had a good reputation. Based on mutual trust. You don't seem too happy. So to show you we are on the level, I'm giving you half back. You can hand it over when we've got you safely to Zurich. Okay?"

  Kuryakin nodded, reflecting with a wry smile that if by chance the man was treacherous and intended to kill the client and keep the cash, it would hardy matter in whose hands the notes were at the time of his death!

  "We'll get on now," his guide was saying. "We cross the borde
r at a very small custom post on a back road. There's only two night men on duty, and they'll be half-dead from sleep now. I'd like to get there before they start freshening up to meet the six o'clock relief."

  "Yes," Kuryakin snarled, "but how the devil—?"

  Placing a finger on his lips, the other walked a few paces to one side and parted a screen of bushes. Hidden by the leaves, a half-ton delivery van stood facing the road. On its sides, Illya could just make out lettering announcing the name of a firm of electrical suppliers in Linz.

  "They're used to seeing this crate go through," the little man said. "At this time of night, it should be a piece of cake! They'll hardly look in the back... but we've taken precautions, just the same. Look at this..."

  He opened the rear doors. In the small delivery space were two half-dismantled television sets, a few old-fashioned radios, a brand-new electric cooker, and a huge refrigerator.

  "The refrigerator is empty," he continued. "All the shelves and so on have been taken out. When we get near the border, you can get in there, just in case. But until then, you'll be okay here in the back. I'll tip you off just before we get there." He handed the Russian into the van and then, with a curt nod, slammed the doors, ran around to the cab, and started the engine.

  A moment later, they in their turn bumped out onto the road and sped on their way.

  In the black interior, Illya made himself as comfortable c he could among the rattling, banging, bouncing items of electrical ware. The longer he could stay out of that refrigerator the better!...

  But after that things started to happen rather quickly. As a prologue, Kuryakin took the baton transceiver from his breast pocket and pulled out the telescopic antenna. Thumbing the send switch, he bent his lips close to the tiny microphone aperture and spoke over the clattering of the little van.

  "Hello?" he said. "Hello... Kuryakin to Solo. Channel open. Kuryakin to Solo. Channel open. Kuryakin to Solo—come in, please…"

  Chapter 12

  The Advance Of Napoleon

  "THANK GOD you've come in," Solo said. "I was beginning to get worried!" He rolled over in bed, holding the transceiver above the sheets, and switched on the lamp standing on the bedside table. The hands of the travel clock beside it pointed to three-twenty-two.

  "Listen, Napoleon," Kuryakin's voice came faintly from the miniature speaker. "I may have to cut out at any moment. Do you read me?"

  "I read you," Solo said. He turned off the light and snuggled down into the bed again, taking the transceiver below the covers. "You are aware that it's between three and four A.M., I suppose?"

  "I haven't time to joke, Napoleon."

  "Then why call me at this hour, for heaven's sake? Not that it isn't good to hear your Slavic voice."

  A chuckle floated from the baton. "I'm sorry about that. This is the first chance I have had. Listen—I've made contact. They've taken me on."

  "What! But that's great, Illya—that's fine!" Solo was siting up again, reaching for a pencil and a notepad, feeling for the light.

  "I'm being taken to Zurich. At the moment I'm in a small truck somewhere near the Austro-Czech border. We're heading for Linz."

  "Have you come all the way in the truck?"

  "No. I started out from Prague in a furniture van. With furniture."

  "Okay. Seen much of the organization?"

  "A girl in Prague. The driver of this truck. That's all."

  "Never mind. It's a start. I'll contact Waverly and tell him. In the meantime, I'll try to join up with you, okay?"

  "Yes, I think that would be best, Napoleon. If we could work it so that I was on the inside, as it were, and you were nearby, on the outside...

  "We'd stand some chance of getting the complete low down on the setup? I agree. Look—when will you arrive in Zurich? Tomorrow afternoon?"

  "I should think so. We have three frontiers to cross—the Austro-Czech, the Austro-German and the German-Swiss. And don't forget that I am supposed to be an escaped murderer; so in my adopted role all three should prove equally difficult. The people taking me, that is to say, do not only have to be careful getting me through the so called Iron Curtain."

  "I see what you mean," Solo said. "Tell you what, Illya— I'll grab a rented car at dawn and come to meet you."

  "How will you know where I am? I mean, we're supposed to be heading for Zurich, but all kinds of things could—"

  "Sure, I know. I'll head generally east and south, but we'll keep in touch on the transceivers. I've got a DF/7 with me, so I can get a fix on your position every time we speak. That way I can keep a constant check on your whereabouts."

  "Very well, Napoleon. You'd better call me at fixed… No! On second thought, you'd better not call me at all. The transceiver might bleep at an awkward moment."

  "Like when you were crossing a frontier? You could always hand the thing to the customs man and say, 'It's for you!'... No, I see the point, though. Okay, we'll do the don't-call-us-we'll-call-you bit. When do you want me to stand by for your calls?"

  "Every three hours, I should think. Starting between ten and eleven. Then between one and two, and so on. If I miss out on one, listen for me at the next. Right?"

  "Right, Colonel!"

  "And Napoleon—don't forget to make with the fixes, eh? As an illegal—er—cargo, I may have to travel most of the way cooped up somewhere. And I may not know within hundreds of miles where I am."

  "Okay," Solo said. "Take it easy, boy."

  "I think I must go now, Napoleon. We are slowing down. It may be because the frontier is near."

  "Off you go, then. Let the Don flow quiet to the sea."

  "What was that?"

  "A quotation. Let it pass. It means 'I'll be listening at ten.'"

  Solo went back to sleep until six o'clock. At eight, having showered, shaved, checked out of the hotel, and hired a car, he was on the Sint Pietersstraat.

  Hendrik van der Lee was already at work, covering a huge sheet of paper with hieroglyphics as he held the telephone clamped to one ear. He waved Solo to a seat and went on talking.

  "… from the Rembrandtsplein, did you say? And then out on the Arnhem motor road?... Yes, of course. But look, boy, we have to make sure... Very well, then; you do that. But remember you have to have witnesses who saw her leave... Sure I will, then. But first see what the chambermaid has to say, eh?..."

  Eventually he replaced the instrument on its cradle and turned to Solo with a crooked smile. "Hello, you," he said. "You wouldn't believe the trouble we have. There's this little fellow, a military attaché of one of the Latin American countries. They want the lowdown on his private life—but, sure, the man's so active; moving from girl to girl from place to place so fast that my people cannot tell whether it's a miss or a missile he's after!"

  "My heart bleeds for you," Solo said. "Can I please use your shortwave transmitter again to call Waverly?"

  "You can that. Though it'll be a rare shock to the dear fellow, I doubt not."

  Solo shook his head. It would be just after two in the morning in New York. "Waverly never goes to bed before half-past one or two," he said. "With luck I'll get him before he's got his head down for the night!"

  "Well, ask the lad how things are, for me," Van der Lee said, "for I've had no word from him for many a long month."

  "Oh, come now! That's enough of your Celtic hyperbole!" Solo chided. "It can't be more than a week since you were in touch with him."

  "What are you talkin' about?"

  "Well, he must have been in contact to arrange about our meeting."

  "Our meeting? I don't follow you at all." The Irishman was staring.

  "You mean he didn't? You weren't tipped off I was coming?"

  Van der Lee shook his head.

  "You hadn't come to the Terminus especially to contact me? Our meeting was a coincidence? But that's fantastic! I never thought of asking…"

  And a few minutes later, when Waverly's irascible voice was crackling over the ether, Solo asked, "How come you h
adn't warned Tufik—Van der Lee, I should say—that I was coming? I mean, after I had received the tickets and room reservation you sent, I naturally expected to meet someone, either here or on the journey. But weren't you leaving it a bit vague if you—"

  "Tickets?" Waverly's voice interrupted. "Reservation? Have you taken leave of your senses, Mr. Solo? I have made no communication with you since you left."

  Solo whistled softly. If neither Waverly nor Van der Lee knew anything about that special-delivery letter with the tickets in it, then it meant he had deliberately been decoyed to the hotel! Which in turn meant that someone—the person who had tried to run him down in Paris, presumably—had changed his mind and decided to attend to him in Holland.

  But why?

  If they were going to shoot at him when he was on a balcony or knock him on the head and abduct him from a hotel room, why did this have to be done in The Hague? After all, there were plenty of balconies and plenty of hotel rooms, in Europe!

  There could be only one answer—because the person of persons who had to do the shooting and abducting found it convenient. And in practice, surely, this must mean that they had to be in The Hague; they were unable to leave the city... and so, having failed in Paris, they arranged for Solo to come where they were.

  The instigators of both decoy and attempted kidnapping, it seemed obvious, must be the men behind the escape network; they had somehow found out that somebody was asking too many questions and they had tried to remove him.

  The realization didn't get Solo much further forward. He had asked a lot of questions in a lot of places. Many of the people he had questioned had themselves demanded information of others—who had in their turn probably talked. And the people who were after him could have found out from any of them; he had no means of knowing where the leak had occurred. His discovery that he had been duped therefore gave him no pointers from which he could deduce anything about the network or its operators.

  It had, on the other hand, even if coincidentally, brought him into contact with Van der Lee. And it had made him realize that he might have misjudged the girl Annike, in thinking her a party to the kidnapping!