The Secret Enemy (A Steve Carradine Thriller)

by John Glasby

  As they drove, he gave the girl a graphic account of what had happened since they had parted in Kazanluk. She listened attentively while keeping her concentration on the road ahead. In the inky blackness, it was difficult to drive and in places the road wound and twisted to such an extent that he would have felt better with snow chains on the wheels.

  “Do you know this man Kreznikov?” he asked when he had finished recounting his story to her.

  “I have heard of him,” she said quietly. “He’s from Kazakhstan. A fiend. I’m not surprised that they put him in charge of this operation to get the professor back to Russia. It’s a great pity that you did not kill him when you had the chance. The world would have been a far better place.”

  “I’m afraid there wasn’t time in which to think of that. I had to get the professor away from there and there was very little opportunity for doing it. If I’d stopped to take care of Kreznikov and his men I might never have made it. As it was, I managed it only by the skin of my teeth.”

  “How many men are left now?”

  “Up there at the castle, you mean?” Carradine shook his head. “I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea. Two men were killed in the castle when we got away, and another six or seven were accounted for when their car went over the edge. But for all I know, he may have had an army of men up there. Certainly no one in Balchik would have been any the wiser. Nerim did not mention them to me so he could not have known.”

  “I see. Somehow, I doubt if there are many more unaccounted for. He will be forced to telephone most of his orders now. They have cells all over the country. He may send word through to Turtucaia, although I doubt it. It would be insane for us to try to escape into Romania. Our plight would be just as bad there as it is here. He will argue that our best chance is back to Kazanluk and then through to Sofia, or better still, to try to head for the Turkish border. There we could be reasonably safe.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Carradine settled down into the seat of the car, allowing himself the pleasure of relaxing his taut muscles. “I’ve been through too much tonight to have to face up to them again.”

  The girl gave a brief nod. She glanced down at the speedometer, estimating the number of kilometres they had travelled since leaving Balchik. “We still have quite a way to go before we get close to the frontier,” she said, with a trace of concern in her voice. “I’ll wake you before we reach there. You can trust me.”

  Carradine leaned his head against the inside of the door, closed his eyes, then opened them again. “There’s one thing I forgot to tell you,” he said harshly. “That man who was in Tamariu, the fat man who took you away in the boat – ”

  “Yes, what of him?” For a second, he thought he detected a note of fear in her voice.

  “He was back there in Balchik. Nerim and I saw him. He was following us when we made our way through the outskirts on our way to the castle. He tried to shoot Nerim, but missed. He managed to get away along one of the alleys before I could get in a shot at him.”

  The girl let out her breath in a quiet hiss through her tightly-clenched teeth. But when she spoke, her voice was even, without a tremor. “So he is still alive. I thought he was dead. If he succeeds in following us, I shall have to make certain the next time.”

  The utter coldness in her tone sent a little shiver through Carradine. He did not like to hear women speak like that. He had always looked upon women as feminine creatures whose heads were filled with thoughts of love, of fashion, fast cars and adventure, but not of cold-blooded murder such as Francesca was suggesting now. Still, he thought wearily to himself, as he closed his eyes once more, she was in the same dangerous, and often dirty, businesses he was; and he knew only too well that it was a rat-race of the most deadly kind, that one was often forced to kill to stay alive. The other side was playing for keeps and it was no child’s game, even though on the surface, it often seemed like one. Cops and robbers, but with real bullets and sudden death that struck without warning from the shadows.

  Settling himself down against the springs of the seat, the purr of the wheels on the road a faintly-heard background noise, he closed his eyes again, shutting out the hypnotic sway of the headlights as they lifted and fell rhythmically to the bumps and depressions in the road. He fell asleep almost at once.

  *

  The faint shudder as the car slid to a halt woke Carradine, an interminable time later. He stirred himself, came wide-awake at once and pushed himself upright, peering through the windscreen of the car. It was a grey dawn now, with most of the western sky still dark and a few of the brighter stars just visible.

  “Where are we?” he asked hoarsely.

  “We passed through Turtucaia five minutes ago. Oltenita is just across the Danube.”

  “Are there any bridges across where they won’t have frontier guards?”

  The girl considered that for a moment and then shook her head. “It’s unlikely. But leave this to me.”

  Carradine said seriously: “You think you can talk your way through the Romanian frontier guards?”

  “If they haven’t been alerted by Kreznikov, I think I can.” There was a fresh note of confidence in her tone. “I know these men. There have been times when we have had dealings with them. They are inclined to turn a blind eye to things like this provided they get some kind of recompense.”

  Carradine did not bother to ask how much she intended to give them as a bribe to let them through. The Deuxieme Bureau probably provided its agents with an almost unlimited amount of funds whenever they were engaged on a mission of such vital importance as this. The big trouble was that Kreznikov might have more funds at his back then they had, and they were far closer to Russia than they were to France. If Kreznikov had managed to get word through the telephone to the frontier posts in this area, then they were finished and no amount of sweet talk from Francesca would get them through.

  They drove around a wide, sweeping S-bend. In front of them, the still waters of the Danube stretched from left to right. The frontier post here loomed up out of the dim greenness and the girl brought the car to a halt at the posts. A plainclothes man stepped forward from the small building on the side of the bridge. There were two uniformed men close by, rifles held in their hands. They looked sullen, suspicious men. A car driving here at this time of the morning was bound to arouse suspicion, he thought as he sat back. One hand rested on the slim cigarette case in his pocket. An ineffective weapon under these circumstances, but the best he had. He wondered whether the girl had a gun anywhere.

  Leaning out of the window of the car, Francesca handed her papers to the plainclothes man, said something in Bulgarian, her voice deliberately pitched low as though intending that only he should hear her and not the two uniformed men standing nearby, their eyes watching everything. The plainclothes man nodded, examined the papers, then thrust them back. He retained a hold on a small wad that looked like bank notes. Then, turning, he snapped a sharp order, one of the uniformed men moved back into the building and a second later, the barrier was lifted and they were motioned through.

  Slowly, Carradine let the breath whistle through his teeth. That was the first obstacle successfully passed. They still had to go through the checkpoint on the Romanian side of the river. If the girl had showed any anxiety about this, she certainly did not show it outwardly.

  In second gear, they drove over the bridge towards the checkpoint. Again, there was the same procedure. Another short speech, this time presumably in Romanian and then they were allowed to proceed. It seemed utterly incredible, yet they were through and inside Romania.

  “I won’t ask you how you managed that,” Carradine said softly. “Because to me it was little short of a miracle. I only wish you would pass on that incantation to me for future use.”

  “I’m afraid it might not be of any help to you,” she said, smiling a little. “Unless you had the money to go with it.”

  “And a pretty face,” Carradine remarked. “I suppose that helps.”

>   “With some of them, it does,” she said softly. “Money and influence. Even here you will find the police officials can be bribed. They are often so poorly paid that these things are more common than you would imagine. Naturally they are very careful about those for whom they do it. But my name is known reasonably well here and some big talk to them sometimes opens many doors which would otherwise remain closed.”

  “Of course.” Carradine nodded. “Now that we are across the frontier and in Romania, what next? Or haven’t you been thinking that far ahead?”

  She gave him a sharp, oblique glance. “Now you are making fun of me,” she said coldly. “Of course I have been thinking. I know that we are still not safe. Once Kreznikov gets word from Kazanluk that we are not there, he will start thinking, and sooner or later it will occur to him that we may have slipped through his net into Romania. We must head for the Hungarian border where I also have friends. There it will be easy to move down into Yugoslavia or west into Austria.”

  “It sounds all right,” murmured Carradine.

  “Once in Austria, we can take the plane out to Paris,” went on the girl quickly, forcing home her point.

  “Very well.” Seriously, Carradine said: “But once we reach Paris, the professor comes with me to London by the first plane. I won’t feel easy in my mind until I get him to London.”

  The girl shrugged her shoulders delicately. Clearly she had been hoping that the Deuxieme Bureau might get a chance to question the other on their arrival in Paris, but she said nothing more, merely depressed her foot on the accelerator and let the car go.

  “One other thing,” Carradine said. “Do you have a gun anywhere? I feel naked without one.”

  The girl hesitated, then inclined her head towards the glove compartment. “There’s one in there,” she said shortly.

  Opening the compartment, Carradine found the small automatic. He took it out, checked that it was loaded, then slipped it in his pocket. He felt a little better now. The girl’s charm and money had worked at the two frontier posts they had already passed through, but there was no cast-iron guarantee that they would pull strings for them next time.

  Turning his head, he glanced into the rear seat. The professor was asleep, his head resting on the back of the seat, his mouth hanging open slightly. He must’ve been through more than they had. Let him sleep while he had the chance, he thought. There might be more trouble ahead for them and this might be the only opportunity he had.

  Bucharest came and they stopped only long enough to fill the tank of the car with petrol and for a quick breakfast, a meal of silences, soon over. Even though he was outwardly calm, Carradine could smell the danger of which surrounded them, still hanging close to them every second of this long journey. It was a physical thing, something he had known for a long time now and he had learned never to ignore. He was alive now and not dead in some dingy back alley because he had known fear and it had somehow sharpened all of his senses. He was alive and some other men were dead because they had not been afraid, they had been so sure.

  Leaving Bucharest, they drove north-west again, across Walachia, through the tiny, picturesque villages which dotted the roads, onto where the great, towering, snow-covered peaks of the Transylvanian Alps rose stark and tall against the vivid blue of the sky. Carradine recognised a few of them, as he took his spell at the wheel while the girl slept easily beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, that faint lingering perfume he had smelled so long ago at Tamariu in his nostrils.

  Mount Mandra, towering more than eight thousand feet above them with Retezat and Mount Gugu almost as high. He had once come here to ski, more than eight years before and he recalled gliding down those smooth slopes, with the wind shrieking insanely in his ears and the smooth sound of the skis on the soft snow, his body crouched slightly as he leaned forward, exulting in the feeling of sheer speed.

  But that was a long time ago, he thought with a faint sense of nostalgia. There was a part of his life that had been forgotten, swallowed in the welter of events that had followed so quickly on the heels of those long-lost and carefree days. Death and destruction had meant very little to him in those days. For some reason, the realisation sent a pang almost akin to pain through his body. How well the world spins backwards in the eye of memory, he thought a trifle sadly. But there was no sense in dwelling on the past. He had a task to perform and he would need all of his wits about him to carry it through to its successful conclusion.

  There was a plan being built up against them somewhere and he wished he knew what it was. Kreznikov would have men watching for them throughout the whole length and breadth of the Balkans, and it was no use thinking otherwise. These men were no fools. He had worked against them long enough now to know how stupid it was to ever underestimate them or their organisation. The Soviet spy organisation was perhaps the most efficient in the world, and certainly the most ruthless. A man either made no mistakes, or he was removed, quickly and permanently. It was as simple as that.

  It was late afternoon before they drew close to the frontier with Hungary at Salonta Mare. Francesca had chosen this point for crossing over and Carradine had not argued with her. After all, she had already shown that she knew what she was doing and he realised that if they were to get out of the Balkans safely, he would have to trust her completely. Only when they got to Paris would he have to keep his eyes open and his wits about him, or she would do her best to spirit Ubyenkov off to the Deuxieme Bureau and grab all the credit for herself. He could just imagine what the Chief would say if he allowed that to happen.

  There was no difficulty getting past the guards on the Romanian side of the border. Evidently the girl had not been boasting in vain when she had said that money and influence talked as far as these men were concerned. Besides, reflected Carradine, it was unlikely that they would care about anything that was be taken out of Romania. There would be men on the other side who might have orders to watch for anyone bringing stuff into Hungary. But these Balkan states were all alike. In spite of what they claimed outwardly, there was just as much guile and corruption in high places here as anywhere else in the world.

  The hard-faced Hungarian guards scrutinised their papers closely, took their time with the forged ones that Ubyenkov carried, then spoke rapidly with the girl. For several moments, there was a heated conversation, which Carradine did not understand. He knew only a word or two of Hungarian, but he guessed that Francesca was warning them as she had the others, that she had contacts in Hungary, men who could make things difficult for these men. Eventually, they were allowed to go on. Sitting back in his seat, Carradine relaxed his tight-fisted hold on the butt of the gun in his pocket, uncurled his stiff fingers.

  They crossed the Black Crisul River. There was a flaring red sunset over Bekes, the beginning of a brilliant starlit night as they passed through Gyoma. Francesca was driving the car as if they were on a racetrack, but now there was some more traffic on the road and they were forced to slow on several occasions.

  Sitting forward in his seat, Carradine said: “I think we can take it easy now Francesca. We don’t want to finish up in a ditch, not after we have got so far without any trouble.”

  The girl gave him a sideways glance, then laughed softly. “You sound as though you have very little confidence in my driving. It may interest you to know that my father was an international racing star back in the late thirties and some of his skill must have passed on to me.”

  “All right. But don’t take any unnecessary chances now. The way I see it, if Kreznikov had phoned through, he would have made a move before now. He can’t afford to let others get too far. I’m beginning to think that he must have headed for Kazanluk, especially if those men in Balchik gave him the wrong information as they promised.”

  “Men can be made to tell the truth,” said Ubyenkov from the back seat. “They will not take their word as true. I know enough of Kreznikov to know that he will continue to hunt us down until we reach London. And, who knows, he may have men the
re too.”

  “Relax. We’ll get you through all right,” said the girl. There was something entirely new in her voice, a ring of confidence perhaps that has certainly not been there when Carradine had first met her at Tamariu. Leaning back in his seat, he turned his head slightly to watch her. She held that wheel in a completely relaxed way, even though the road was still treacherous in parts, with sharply-angled bends coming on them quite unexpectedly out of the growing darkness. Her eyes were wide, sparking a little with the thrill of the excitement.

  A white sign loomed up in the glare of the headlights. There was a sharp turn to the right and the girl took it fast. For a moment, the car went into a skid, then straightened out again as Francesca eased her foot off the accelerator pedal. They glided down the sloping, winding road that led down into a broad valley and out on to the Hungarian plains.

  It was now completely dark, with the last shred of colour having vanished from the sky. They passed through a small village, a cluster of houses that showed briefly on both sides of the road as the light of the headlights played over them. Coming out of the village, they passed a couple of slow-moving cars, the girl blaring the horn at them as she roared past.

  Ten kilometres further on, motoring across the flat smoothness of the plains, Carradine glanced back through the rear window. Behind them, the road lay in utter blackness. Not a single light showed anywhere. It was almost as if they were moving at a snail’s pace along the bottom of a deep well, shut in by the night and—

  Suddenly he woke up from his reverie. The darkness was not quite absolute. There were lights behind them, just visible, winking on and off in an oddly inexplicable manner. Seconds passed before he realised what he was seeing. The twin headlights of another car, moving swiftly along the road that led down from the mountains, vanishing whenever the car took one of the hairpin bends, reappearing when they came out into the straight.