The American Broker

by Andrew Hill

  Chris had stayed at the entrance to the office, obeying Maria's instructions not to get involved. "Have a good trip, Mr Canterbury!" called out the first officer. Maria flashed a glance at Chris as she walked towards him, an anxious look in her dark eyes.

  "Thank you!" called Chris, guessing that Maria had given a false passport. The officer had a broad grin across his face. Chris couldn't help but wonder whether Maria made a habit of this sort of transaction. As she approached she couldn't restrain a smile herself but Chris remained serious. Once they were out of earshot he turned on her. "You could have warned me! I mean, I might have made a right balls-up!"

  "No you wouldn't. But you might have objected if I'd told you - and then looked nervous or whatever. As it happens I know that fellow pretty well but his boss can almost smell a forged passport and most definitely would not have approved."

  "But why bother. I'm not on some list, am I?"

  "No. But if our mutual friends come looking, Mr Christopher Austin hasn't left Greece."

  "How about Mr Robert Lindon?"

  "Yes. He has - about an hour and a half ago. We're lucky. He's travelling in a red Peugeot Estate - German registration - thinks it was München - the driver was getting on a bit - with another woman, probably the wife."

  "Fantastic! Well done. Now - he's got a choice of routes. Across and up the coast or straight up the middle. The roads separate near Pristina. That's, what, about 250 kilometres away so he could have got that far. I suppose two options are a damn sight better than the myriad we had before. But it still leaves us with a problem - unless you propose to follow the road up one way and back the other until we spot him!"

  In the plane they unfolded a map of Yugoslavia. From Skopje there were two alternatives. One: up the motorway via Nis, Belgrade and across to Zagreb, then to Ljubljana. The other was to skirt the Albanian border via Pristina, turning off at Kos Mitrovica and meeting the Adriatic coast at Kotor, descending from Titograd. From there the coast road ran up through Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar, Rijeka and then also Ljubljana. Routes into Italy at Trieste or on the eastern side to Gras were considered and discounted. For reasons he had never made clear, Italy was the one European country that Bob would not visit. He had told Chris one evening, as they had sat in front of a huge log fire at Chris's previous English home, how he would have loved to see Italy. "But . . . " he had started. "Why don't you?" Chris recalled querying. It was a time when Bob was travelling throughout Europe and finance would not have been a problem. "Some people there don't appreciate my work," he'd said, "and they'd know as soon as I set foot in the country." Chris had been unable to extract more that night and the subject had not been mentioned again.

  Gras was possible but if the couple he was with were indeed German, and from somewhere in the region of München, it would be Ljubljana that they would head for.

  "By the coast or up the middle?" said Chris.

  "That's the question. Either way he would be virtually impossible to find. We know there's only one obvious route from Ljubljana to Kranj . . . "

  "No - there's a new motorway that runs past Kranj now," interrupted Chris. "I can't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure that if you take the coast route and come up via Postojna then you bypass Ljubljana and join a motorway. The trouble is the old road is still there too - local traffic and people who don't want to pay tolls. We just couldn't be sure of spotting them - and once he's in Austria he could head off on his own a lot more easily. I reckon he's unlikely to get out and run in Yugoslavia. Not his type of place, or people."

  "The only places we can be sure of, then, are the two passes - " Maria moved a long finger across the map, hovering under Villach Wurzenpasse and Klagenfurt Lobl Passe. Chris nodded thoughtfully.

  "Two." he repeated quietly. "We've got to cover both - one each, I suppose."

  "There's no way one person can do it alone. Someone's got to watch every hour of the day. It's fourteen or fifteen hundred kilometres away. That has to mean at least one overnight stop and we've no way of timing that. It's eight now. If they stop soon then it might be two stops - the other in the north so their arrival at the border could be anytime between tomorrow evening and sometime Sunday morning." Maria lent back and stretched. Her dress tightened across her breasts outlining clearly a well-proportioned figure and sharp diagonal collarbones running to the material gathered round her shoulders. "It's been a long day," she said, stifling a yawn. "There's not a lot we can do tonight. There's an airfield at Ivangrad not far off our route, which I have used once before. There's a small motel nearby. God knows what it's like but we can make it in time for a late meal and then fly up to Ljubljana early in the morning."

  Chapter XLV Mountains

  A red Peugeot Estate wound its way along the narrow mountain road. Bob Lindon focussed on the sign caught in the car's headlights.

  "Mojkovac!" he announced to his companions, cheerfully mispronouncing the name. "Where the hell's that?!"

  "About forty kilometres from where we shall stop tonight, Mr Lindon," replied a mousey-haired lady from the front seat, turning round to speak to Bob.

  There were no streetlights. Just a yellowish haze between the trees occasionally on one side. On the other, nothing, except a distant point or two of light, like stars, but far too low. It was an eery road, practically empty and it had climbed to over two thousand feet in the mountainous Slav / Albanian borderland.

  "Hey, that sounds like a good idea. How you doing, Fritz?" cried Bob to the driver, a chubby man in his fifties.

  "Fine, Mr Lindon, fine. Good to stop soon. Much driving. Too dark now. You OK?"

  "Yeah. Takes more than a few miles to put me down. Sure is a nice motor you got here. What's it called again?"

  "Peugeot."

  "Sure, that's it. Nothing like this back home. You want an estate car you buy a stationwagon. Fifty feet long and twenty feet wide. Not neat like this. Really comfortable ride back here too. You know, if I hadn't woken up I guess I'd still be asleep!"

  The lady laughed and Fritz joined in but it was more in response to the cheery banter from the back than understanding the joke.

  As Chris and Maria had correctly assumed, Bob had not bothered to look for a flight out of Thessaloniki. He's taken a bus outside to the town centre, walked to the nearest large hotel of international standard and sat himself down in the bar after a quick tidy up in the toilet. He had not been in a particular hurry - and yet within half an hour or so he had been talking with the couple he now found himself with. Who could refuse a lift to a smartly dressed, cheery, American of sixty something who seemed such good company? The couple were travelling to Germany, at the end of a month touring Halkidiki, and were leaving that afternoon. If they had not been agreeable he had already noted another couple for attention, having taken note of the foreign registrations outside and getting a little help from the bar staff in exchange for a few notes.

  It had not been continual mirth, however. Bob had had a glum, almost hapless, expression on occasion when he would stare out the rear side window but did not seem to look at anything in particular. The long silence had not concerned the German couple. He had more than made up for his moroseness by his endless stories and recollections at other times.

  "What in God's name is that?" exclaimed Bob again as a strangely flickering castle loomed through the clouds in what they had previously taken to be an abyss.

  "Oh good," replied Fritz. "That must be the Moraca monastery. There is a motel now. It is the one we make for."

  Another glance out of the window confirmed this. "Boy, that's some monastery. Looks like Frankenstein's castle!" said Bob.

  The flickering light was not easily explained. A full moon shone brightly above them but as the height of the road had steadily increased they had entered wispy clouds which either diffused the light or made it seem to shimmer on each tiny droplet. It was the only light source apart from the car itself. Another cause might have been the car's headlamps. When there was no other light at all a single sourc
e could have curious effects. Trees would seem to light up then black out. Distant objects would shine on the road as a full beam caught them at a particular angle only to disappear from sight an instant later. The monastery was a fine castle-like structure perched at the peak of an outcrop of rock. Misty, feathery clouds encircled the turrets and surrounding pines. There was no obvious access to it and Bob gazed in wonder as they drove slowly past.

  "Those guys must have one hell of a view up there," he commented.

  "Sorry?" queried Fritz.

  Bob was about to interpret when the motel came into sight. In contrast to the monastery it was a grim and boring affair. A three storey stone building erected on the edge of the gorge with a very plain porch and modern but dated sign. It was painted a sort of greyish white and, although clean outside, looked slightly dowdy. There were a couple of cars in the car park nearby - both from Yugoslavia, a blue Yugo and a green Zastava. Trees left most of the building in shadow and, on entering the glass front door, a tiny ceiling light did little to dispel the gloom.

  A tall, dark-haired man loped across from a room inside and dark brown eyes looked at the three visitors. His head was long and thin with a distinctive narrow straight nose with large nostrils. He wore an off-white shirt beneath a dark grey woollen waistcoat and he had clean but ancient black cotton trousers. He hadn't shaved for two or three days and his long fingers were stained brown with nicotine on his right hand. He held up two keys, which he had lifted, from a shelf under the dark wood counter.

  "Zwei Zimmern? Ein nacht?"

  "Bitte." said Fritz.

  The man nodded directly and indicated that they should follow him.

  "We too late for some food?" shouted Bob.

  "Kann man hier essen?" asked Fritz, translating loosely. This the man understood. Another nod then he pointed back along the corridor before continuing forward.

  "Verstehen sie Deutsch?" asked Fritz again.

  "Nein . . . Ja, nein, Zimmer, essen, wie viele . . . dass ist alle," he replied, slowly and with a thick accent. It was more than Bob could have managed, however.

  "Looks like we're in for a fun evening!" said Bob. Fritz and his wife laughed. The man carried on walking.

  Chapter XLVI Mr & Mrs Canterbury

  The air was noticeably colder as the little plane travelled north and had to gain height to clear the mountains along the border. Now pitch black outside Maria had to navigate by the cockpit instruments but Chris was watching the tiny specks of light, which pinpointed the villages every few kilometres below.

  "I shall be glad when we land," said Maria. "I hate night flying. I'm not a terribly good pilot."

  "Now you tell me," said Chris ruefully, but with a smile on his face that, whilst unseen, was evident in his voice. "I'm pretty sure that's Pec over there," he went on, pointing to some lights, "but if you're going straight up the Bistrica valley it will be out of sight shortly. The mountains - the Hajla - are about two and a half thousand feet . . .”

  "Christ! What's that in metres?" exclaimed Maria.

  "About eight hundred . . .”

  "Oh. Thank God. If it had been two and a half thousand metres we would not have made it!"

  "You really are making me feel relaxed and comfortable, you know. First you tell me you're a lousy pilot - now you don't know how high things are!"

  "You want to take over?" she retorted angrily.

  "No, no. Don't get annoyed. I didn't mean anything."

  There was nevertheless tenseness in the cabin and this intensified as the shapes of mountains either side moved slowly beside them, blocking out any lights apart from a few single houses below, and those were very few and far between.

  "I really don't want to go into Albanian air space," she said after a long period of silence. "I don't how they get on with the English but they sure hate Greeks."

  "Royalist Greeks too?"

  "I expect I wouldn't have much chance to explain the difference. And from what I've heard they wouldn't understand a word either you or I said anyway."

  "Perhaps I don't want to go to Albania just yet, either," said Chris.

  Suddenly, moving lights appeared on their right. The crazy thing was that they appeared to be on almost the same level as the plane. A solitary car, winding its way across the high Kriciste pass shone alternately white then red lights. Maria pulled back on the controls and the engine roared purposefully. The nose lifted and they climbed a few hundred feet further. As they did so the mountaintops thankfully came into sight and beyond them the hazy pattern of sky and the unmistakable, slightly less black, hue of habitation below it. They were still flying high but in the nearer distance now were more lights and Maria made contact with Ivangrad airfield. Hardly used commercially it was essentially a military strip with a stretch of 1940s asphalt for light aircraft. The Slavs were most suspicious of Maria's request but were probably more baffled by a woman's voice than the reason for her being there. The exchange was, as ever, in broken English and didn't allow for much conversation. Fuel was available there but not until morning. They made it clear that they would have preferred her to head for Titograd but Maria insisted that she could not make it that far, using an endearing charm in her voice that Chris reckoned no authority would have resisted.

  A few minutes later, Maria had landed the plane efficiently, swearing, as she did so, about the ill-lit facilities and haphazard activities of a mass of uniformed personnel on the ground.

  "Well done, young lady." said Chris. "I suppose it'll be a full-scale search now - this is obviously a pretty special place and you and I are dead ringers for a couple of terrorists."

  "No. They'll ignore us. They won't want anything to do with us provided we don't want anything to do with them. It's their way. What they don't ask us about doesn't have to go in the file. What doesn't go in the file doesn't have to go to headquarters and what doesn't go to headquarters doesn't come back with yet more questions. Sometimes I think they'd rather deal with terrorists than their own State security people. A country like this is just what we don't want Greece to become. Grey. Lifeless. Bureaucratic. The military rule where the Party doesn't. The poor sod in the middle gets bugger all from anyone except a pat on the head if he produces more than the average farm produce or spends an extra hour in the factory. The soldiers get promoted if they keep quiet and don't mess with anything to do with the Party. Meanwhile Bulgarians run freely across the country making everyone nervous and carrying threats from their mutual Soviet masters and everyone worries about Albania."

  "You mean we just get out and wander off?"

  "Well, almost." They'll want us to be seen going through the building and out the other side but that's it. I've already told them we leave tomorrow at eight so unless we oversleep there's no problem."

  "Oh, by the way," said Chris, as they jumped down. "Am I still Mr Canterbury?"

  "Er, yes, you may as well be - makes life simpler if anyone asks," Maria replied, thoughtfully.

  "And who are you - you, just in case anyone asks?"

  "I'm Mrs Canterbury." said Maria, firmly. "Makes a lot of things simpler," she added, intentionally.

  Chapter XLVII Ill

  A curtain was pulled aside. Mrs Collins peered out between it and the window frame, straining her eyes in the grey evening light to watch the figure walking by. The bright orange street lamp reflected off the white carrier bag that he held and Mrs Collins' gaze stayed fixed on him until he had turned the corner.

  "New one's back again, puss," she said, picking up the grey and white cat from the sofa and placing it in her lap as she sat down on the armchair next to the fire. A television screen silently flickered in the opposite corner - news items passing unseen in front of her. "Looks ill. Very ill I'd say. Not like you, eh, puss? All alone that one, too. Said to Joan I did: 'All alone that man - lives at number 32'. She's said that 'e'd come to see someone but 'e'd gone away and so 'e'd got to wait. 'Urgent' he'd told her. 'Urgent', puss, 'matter of weeks before it's too late'. Ah, but what would
your silly Auntie Joan know of such things, puss? No. That's what I thought. Reckon 'e'll be lucky to make it for more than a few weeks, though, the way 'e looks. Nasty cough, too. Stops 'im right in 'is tracks, it does. Should keep 'isself warm like we do, shouldn't 'e?"

  The cat purred and stretched out a paw lazily. Mrs Collins put on a disapproving look and leaned back in her chair to watch the pictures on the screen.

  Chapter XLVIII Ten Bob

  Bob Lindon's cheeriness turned abruptly into steely determination when he closed the bedroom door behind him. Fritz and his wife had brought the cases upstairs and had agreed to meet downstairs in a while. Bob opened the door again and walked quickly back along the corridor towards the entrance lobby.

  Making the sign of a telephone being held to his ear, and pointing at a list of numbers in his pocket book, Bob approached the tall man at the desk. He was shown through to a small, windowless room, which appeared to be used as an office.

  "International code - person-to-person?" Bob flailed his arms wildly, searching for some common denominator in their language. The man picked up a receiver and dialled three digits. In a gruff voice he spoke into the phone and looked at the clock on the wall. He pointed deliberately at this and wrote down the time on a piece of paper. Bob said, "Yeah. OK." to indicate agreement with the rudimentary method of costing the call. The man held the receiver towards Bob. "Hello." called Bob, "Can you speak English?" he demanded.

  "Deutsch better please," came the reply.

  "I don't know how to go to the john in Deutsch! I'm not Deutsch. I speak English only - is there someone there I can talk with?"

  "A moment please," then a different voice: "Hello, can I help you?"

  "Jesus, you don't know it but you've just made an old man very happy!" cried Bob.