18 - The Unfair Fare Affair

by Peter Leslie

  When he had spoken to Waverly the previous night, it had been mainly to hear about Illya Kuryakin's visit to Prague and the reason for it. He had said little about his own researches. He filled in the details of these now, and as soon as Waverly had signed off, he turned back to the fat man in the wheelchair and said, "There's the sum total of my investigations to date! About the only positive thing about them is that I know now that—at least mentally—I owe your little girl an apology."

  "My little girl?"

  "Annike. She is still with you, isn't she? I'm afraid I'd been thinking she was responsible for my being knocked on the head. I figured she'd engineered my return to the Terminus and suggested I needed a coat simply because she knew there was somebody up in my room waiting to sap me."

  "Well now," Van der Lee said, "I don't know about that at all. But Annike herself is away for a couple of days, Mr. Solo. She had two owin' from the bank holiday period, and she asked could she take them now. She'll not be back until the day after tomorrow, I'm afraid. Can I give her a message?"

  Solo shook his head. "I guess not. You don't know where she went, do you? I kind of like making apologies to blondes!"

  "Ah, no. That I don't. Her time's her own when she's away out of this."

  The agent sighed. "Okay then. I'll be on my way… unless you have any second thoughts about that information I wanted to buy from you?"

  It was the fat man's turn to shake a massive head. His jowls quivered in negation as he said regretfully, "A rule's a rule, Mr. Solo. Even among friends. Anyway, I doubt if it would be much use to you if I could talk—a name, a description, a probability of whereabouts. Which you'll latch on to soon enough yourself if Mr. Kuryakin's lucky. You already know they were asking about you... and you've had proof of why! That's all, I guess."

  Solo shook hands. "I'll get along then. And thanks anyway."

  "A pleasure, Mr. Solo. Always a pleasure. And one thing. Wait'll I tell you: remember—it's not always the new ones that travel the best..."

  "Not always the new ones...?" echoed Solo with a puzzled frown.

  But the Moroccan-Irishman refused to elaborate his hint––if hint it was—and Napoleon Solo went his way with the riddle unsolved, leaving the man in the wheelchair smiling blandly as he pulled a huge pile of daily newspapers toward him and reached into his pocket for a fistful of different colored pens.

  Solo had rented a Citroën DS21, a splendid car for covering a lot of ground quickly. Having skirted Antwerp and Brussels, he managed to make the gray, cobbled central place of Namur in time to buy beer and charcuterie and bread before the stores closed for lunch.

  Then, taking advantage of the midday traffic lull, he drove rapidly across the ragged, untidy Belgian plain, with it dull and grimy little towns, until he reached the Ardennes. Shortly before two o'clock, he pulled off the road not far from Bastogne and prepared to eat. Around him, the undulating country fell away in a series of interlocking wooded curves. And over all these acres of trunk and branch and dead leaf, the sky—which had been becoming more and more overcast since early morning—stretched a sullen yellow canopy.

  Wind moaned in the pines above Solo's head and stirred the needles around the boles of the trees further down the hill. It looked as though it was going to snow.

  He sat for a while with the engine running and the heater on, waiting for Illya's call to come through on the transceiver.

  They had had time only to exchange a few words on the ten o'clock transmission—Solo had been parked behind a highway café where he had stopped for coffee—before Kuryakin had been forced to hide the baton because his chauffeur was coming around to talk to him. From the fix Solo had been able to take from the small but sophisticated machine he carried in his valise, he judged the Russian to have been somewhere between Wels and Gmunden, in Austria.

  When he came through again at one minute to two, he told Solo that they had made very little progress during the day. Apparently the network preferred to travel mainly at night. He had been in the back of an empty cattle truck, a hearse, and a trailer truck since they had abandoned the electrical delivery truck near Linz hours before. He had no idea where they were now.

  Solo made it somewhere near the Alter See, a few miles from Salzburg.

  He finished his lunch and drove on into Luxembourg. On the eastern slopes of the Ardennes, snow had already fallen. There was a thin coating beneath the trees, and occasionally, along the surface of the twisty road near Esch-sur-Sure, powdery white trails snaked toward him in the wind. Farther south in the Grand Duchy, the fall had been heavier. Snow lay thickly on branches and roofs, filling the furrows between iron-hard ridges of plowland.

  But the streets of the capital were still bone dry. Solo slithered the DS around the cobbled square in front of the minuscule palace and crossed the high bridge to the biggest building in Luxembourg—the great gray mansarded rectangle housing the headquarters of the European Iron and Steel Federation. Beneath him, in the chasm that cleaves the city into two fairytale halves, lights were already gleaming in the dusk below the turreted cliffs.

  He drove on down the broad main shopping avenue, passed the railway station, and took the road for Thionville and Metz.

  By the time he was due to pull off the road and wait for Illya's next transmission, he was in the middle of the industrial complex between Metz and Sarrebruck. It was like a scene from some medievalist's idea of hell. Although the snow had not yet reached here, the night had come early with an unnatural overcast, and against the livid sky rows of gaunt iron chimneys belched flame. From factory to black factory, huge metal pipes fifteen feet in diameter writhed across the blasted countryside like the entrails of some galactic robot—bridging roads and railway yards, swerving around tips, linking furnaces and works and mines. And over it all, sandwiched between the fiery clouds and the dead surface of the earth, the polluted air hung sulphurous and heavy. Even with the Citroën's windows wound up, Solo could smell it in the car through the ducts of the ventilation system.

  It was time for him to stop, but he did not know quite what to do. The road was narrow and full of traffic. The sidewalks, below the high corrugated iron fencing, were crowded with homegoing workers. The few parking spaces he found were too busy—for although he did not have to have total privacy, holding the baton to his mouth and operating the direction-finding equipment would be bound to excite attention in any place that was not at least comparatively quiet!

  Finally he saw a patch of dusty grass bounded by a hedge white with some airborne waste. It was too public a place to carry out his task, but at least he could leave the car. He steered up over the sidewalk and stopped the DS by the hedge.

  Waiting until the press of cyclists and walkers had thinned, he got out with his equipment and looked around.

  On the far side of the road was a red brick building surrounded by transformers and generator housings and gantries bristling with insulators and wires. In front of it, tubs full of dispirited flowers bordered a parking lot.

  Beyond the hedge, stunted trees punctuated the rusty topography of an automobile junkyard. He could see, beyond the piles of crumpled fenders, the concertinaed witnesses to death and disaster and moments of inattention, a wooden hut by the entrance gate. It should be quiet enough in there, in the dark, for his purpose—provided he could get past the man on the gate.

  Or was there, perhaps, another way in, a back entrance?

  Strolling casually, he found that there was. A little way along the road, a lane cut up between the yard and the high brick wall of a foundry. And a hundred yards along the lane, there were tire tracks in the mud going through a gap in the hedge. Glancing swiftly back to make sure he was unobserved, Solo slipped though.

  A few minutes later, transceiver in hand, he was sitting comfortably enough on a pile of used tires, completely hidden by the stacks of wrecked ears.

  The larger heaps consisted of motor bodies from which everything of value had been removed—mangled steel skeletons minus engines,
wheels, instruments, springs, transmissions, seats and even the trim from the doors. But between these bigger piles there was a variety of other scrap.

  There was a mound of radiator cores, another of bolt-on-wheels, a third of bench seats, mildewed and torn, with springs and stuffing leaking forlornly from their worn surfaces.

  A pile of cylinder blocks from which the pistons and valves had been removed lay next to a great tangle of exhaust piping. And between the layers of unidentifiable pieces— the sheared-off fenders, bumper guards, side panels and rubbing strips—an occasional whole vehicle, or what was left of it, stood out.

  There, for instance, was an American roadster that had obviously been in a head-on crash—the wheels and engine were in the passenger compartment, and the whole of the vast hood was crumpled into nothing, like a sheet of tissue. On the other side was an Italian minicar that had been squashed almost flat in some unimaginable collision. In contrast there were several trucks that looked as though they had died peacefully of old age. There was an old Unic with grass growing out of the remains of its driver's seat that must have been rusting quietly there since the year one. Beyond it was a delivery van that couldn't have had more than two square inches of its paneling that hadn't been dented or scratched—but that couldn't have been more than two years old at the outside. And nearer to Solo was a dump truck on which the back and sides were literally falling to pieces.

  It was odd, though, the agent thought idly, how different parts of a vehicle deteriorated at different rates. The engine of that one, for instance, looked quite clean and well oiled, from what he could see through the half-opened hood panel. Absently, he rose to his feet and sauntered over.

  Abruptly he stiffened. He stepped up to the derelict in half a dozen determined strides. The same white dust that covered the leaves on the hedge lay thickly over everything in the yard.

  Except, it seemed, in the case of this truck...

  He peered into the cab. The seat was threadbare, the rubber floor mat worn through, the controls shabby in the extreme. Yet there was hardly a trace of the all-pervading dust... and the cabs of the others were covered.

  Quickly and silently, he walked around and lifted off the hood panel. The engine was positively gleaming. The plugs looked new, and the leads must have been replaced within the last few weeks. He unscrewed one of the caps on top of the battery. The cells were full.

  Solo hurried over to the other trucks. As might have been expected, their engines were caked in dried grease, the wiring cracked, the top surface of everything strewn thickly with the white dust. The one with the dustless cab might just have been sold to the junk man, of course... but it looked to him much more as though it had been there for some time but had recently been restored to running order. It had been left looking decrepit deliberately, although in fact it could probably run quite well.

  Why?

  What use could anyone have for what was in effect a "Q-truck," hidden in a junkyard?

  Unbidden, Tufik's parting comment leaped into Solo's mind. "It's not always the new ones that travel the best."

  He dropped to his hands and knees. The street lamps, reflecting an adequate light over the rest of the yard, didn't help much at ground level. But as far as he could see, there were faint tracks leading from the truck's front wheels to the gap though which he had entered.

  And suddenly, in a flash of inspiration, he saw a reason. He saw why someone could want a serviceable truck disguised and kept hidden in a scrapyard. He saw why it could be important that the vehicle, however well it ran, should appear to an outsider to be derelict. "It's not always the new ones..."

  The transceiver in his hand was bleeping. Kuryakin was on the air.

  Solo pulled up the antenna and thumbed the button. He sank down once more on the pile of tires and spoke softly into the microphone. He was smiling.

  "Channel open," he said. "Come in, Illya... but before you say anything answer me a question: apart from the furniture van you left Prague in, has the rest of your journey been done in trucks and vans that have had their day? Old crates fit for the junk heap?... It has?... Then pin back your Russian ears and listen: I think I've found out how the network does the trick!..."

  Chapter 13

  A Parley Between Friends

  "I AM VERY PLEASED, Napoleon," Kuryakin said. "Tell me about it... You can talk for some time because my—er— conductor has gone off to find some food. We are both hungry."

  "Okay. Tell me first, though—where are you? Or don't you know?"

  "This time I do. We had to walk across the border. We left the trailer truck in some Godforsaken village near Berchtesgaden, but on the Austrian—"

  "The trailer truck," Solo interrupted, "was it by any chance left in a junkyard?"

  "Well, yes it was, as a matter of fact! How did you know? That's all the thing was fit for, the junkyard, believe me!"

  "I do believe you, Illya. You've no idea how pleased it makes me to hear it!... But you were saying..."

  "About the frontier. Yes, we sneaked over without being spotted. The actual border is not very well defined in that area. We seemed to walk over half the mountains in Europe. Part of the time we were above the snow line and I was frozen! Then at last we came to another village tucked away in a fold of the hills—and I was told we were in Germany. Big deal!"

  "You said you knew where you were now."

  "Still only fifteen or twenty miles from Salzburg. We picked up a closed truck at this village—"

  "From a junk heap again, I suppose?"

  "Kind of. From a lot behind a garage full of unbelievably old cars. They were labeled for sale... Anyway, we pried out this truck and drove to a little place called Siegsdorf, just off the Salzburg-Munich Autobahn. There's a river, a railway station, a beer cellar, a Gasthof —and us. And we're stuck unseen in the back of an old heap. Or at least I am!"

  "When are you leaving, Illya?"

  "'At night' is all I'm told. I think we're supposed to get into Switzerland through the tunnel beneath the Boden-See—and I imagine they want to wait until the night shift is on again. It seems easier for escaped murderers."

  "Especially the way this routine works. Look... Illya… Waverly briefed you on such background as we have, didn't he?"

  "I think so."

  "Well, it all figures, man. It all figures. Listen—Waverly was picked up in an ancient Minerva taxi that nobody has ever seen before or since, right?... He met the men with the new passport in a lane leading to a junkyard, if I remember correctly—and they were standing by an old truck."

  "Yes, Napoleon. That's right, but—"

  "Mathieu, the man the French were after, got away from Paris in a dust cart... and it was of a pattern that is obsolete now, the kind you'd only find in a junkyard. He changed into a 'beat-up delivery van,' to quote my friend in the Police Judiciare. And then they lost the trail near Avallon—where there are several yards full of wrecks from the dangerous section of N.6. What d'you bet that van ended up in one of those yards, eh?"

  "I'm sure you are right."

  "Neither the dust cart nor the delivery van have ever been found. Nor has the prewar dump truck in which the insurance embezzlers were traced as far as Limoges before they disappeared into thin Spanish air. Nor has the van from which I escaped near Maastricht the day before yesterday—although I was telephoning the police and Interpol within minutes of leaving it. Nor, I am sure, has the old deux chevaux that nearly ran me down in Paris."

  "Napoleon," Illya said. "This sounds most conclusive, but—"

  "Right now, I'm actually in a junkyard," Solo continued excitedly. "This program comes to you by courtesy of the European Iron and Steel Federation, Oxydized Division… and among the rust is a truck that looks finished but has been restored mechanically to fair running condition."

  "Napoleon…"

  "What's the odds that all these mysterious disappearances, Minerva and all, have been into junkyards? What better place can you think of for hiding old vehicles? And c
onversely, suppose that a whole string of yards like this, a chain of them right across Europe, were fitted up, each with a 'Q' vehicle like the one I found here—what better system could you find for running a clandestine transport service?"

  "If you would just let me—"

  "It's perfect! There are wrecking yards everywhere, all along the length of every traffic artery on the Continent. There have to be, with the amount of accidents there are. And as far as the network goes, it's simple—the escapee is taken a certain distance in one of the trucks or whatever. Nobody pays any mind to an old truck—and they always travel at night anyway, you say. Also, there's nobody to complain about the truck being improperly used, as it doesn't belong to anyone."

  "Yes, that's it. And you see—"

  "If there is any doubt, however, or if for security reasons they want to switch vehicles, then they just rum into the nearest yard on their list, leave the truck and continue the journey in another tattered wreck that's ready waiting for them. They use the yards in fact exactly like horsemen and coaches used to use the stages, the coaching inns."

  "I'd like to say just a word. One word—"

  "But it's perfect! It's brilliant! A near write-off is difficult to identify. In the yards, nobody is likely to notice the absence of one vehicle and the addition of another. After all, one wreck is much like another! Even at the frontiers, I guess, they could pretend to be driving the thing through as scrap. It's easy enough to forge papers verifying a deal like that."

  "Napoleon!" Illya Kuryakin said loudly and firmly into the transceiver. "You are absolutely right. I know this. I can prove it!"

  "Eh? What's that? How do you know?"

  "That is exactly how the network operates. My chauffeur told me."

  "Well, why didn't you say so, for God's sake!" Solo grumbled. "What is this fellow like, anyway? He seems the only member of the gang we've actually run up against."