Assignment - Budapest (12 page)

“You two must be starved. I’ve made arrangements at Victor’s for dinner for the three of us. I imagine you want to be briefed about McFee. Come this way.”

“We don’t want to go into town,” Durell said. “Ilona doesn’t think it’s wise, and neither do I.”

“Oh?” Wyman looked at the redheaded girl with appreciation. His smile was warm, his teeth big and white. He wore a dark-green, fuzzy Habig hat, a tweedy overcoat, highly polished London cordovans. He frowned slightly. “You might be right, at that, children. Some of the Hungarians spotted an AVO man just the other day. Damned near started a riot. What do you suggest?”

“Somewhere near the border. Can you drive us, say, to Eisenstadt?”

“Sure thing. Smart move. You want to go across tonight?” “If conditions are right,” Durell said.

“It won’t be easy. There’s a real terror campaign going on over there, I hear. Well, come on. I’ve got my car outside.” It was a small Topolino, an Italian car affectionately known as a “little mouse.” It was colder here than it had been at the Spanish airport. Roger Wyman’s big bulk crowded the little vehicle, and his Midwestern drawl began to grate on Durell’s nerves. The big man talked about his job, about the chances he’d had for advancement in the Foreign Service, about departmental politics that had kept several plums from his grasp because, as he put it, he hadn’t come from some swank Boston family with drag in the right quarters. He spoke cheerfully, but under his words Durell sensed a deep resentment at the job he was in. Durel did not bring up the subject of McFee’s disappearance until they were well away from the Vienna Airport, speeding eastward along a wide, concrete autobahn out of the city’s suburbs.

“I took your chief to the border myself,” Wyman told him. “I put him in this inn in Eisenstadt that I’m going to take you to. He wanted me to find the leak in the refugee screening apparatus we set up, and I’ve been working on that all day, checking dossiers on our people here. Of course, we’ve had to hire a great many Hungarian interpreters, and Aus-trians, too, and when we got orders to up the quotas, we had to work fast. Public opinion around here had us on a spot, because we weren’t passing through enough refugees in comparison to other European countries. It’s my feeling that in our hurry, we didn’t check some of the foreign help thoroughly enough. I’ve been doing that all day, but so far nothing has turned up to give me a clue.”

“When did you last see McFee?” Durell asked.

“At the inn, as I told you. He said he wanted to scout around for a day or so before going across the border. I advised him against trying it at all, frankly. The situation over there since the Russians came back is pretty tense. But I suggested the name of a professional guide, when he insisted, and then I had to get back to town. That was the last I saw of him.” 

“And he hasn’t made contact since then?”

“Two nights ago. That’s when I left him in Eisenstadt. Funny little chap. Not very talkative. I don’t even know who or what he was after.”

“You don’t have to know,” Durell said.

There was a faint change in Roger Wyman’s broad, good-looking face. Durell wondered if it was resentment at his bluntness. Wyman said: “I tried to find the guide I recommended—Tibor Szabo. Quick youngster, full of beans. He’s gone, too. I can only assume that McFee grew impatient the moment I left and took oS for points east.” Wyman leaned forward at the wheel of the Topolino to look at Ilona’s face in the shadows. “I can recommend another guide, if you’re going in after McFee.”

“We won’t need one,” Ilona said quietly.

“You’re Hungarian?”

“It doesn’t matter what she is,” Durell said bluntly.

There was something about Wyman that irritated him, and this didn’t make sense, except that it might be an expression of his own state of nerves. He had never felt quite as tense and touchy about a job before, and there was no point in gratuitously making an enemy of the man for no good reason at all. Wyman’s next words convinced him the man was only trying to be helpful.

“If you’re going across after McFee, I can tell you something about Tibor Szabo’s usual route. He went by way of Gyor—that’s about sixty miles from Budapest—and usually holed up at a farm in the outskirts of that town. Run by an uncle of Tibor’s, Geza Hegedus. Tibor had quite a system. Chances are if your McFee went across with him, they stopped at Hebedus’s farm for the rest of the night.”

Durell looked at Ilona, and she nodded slightly, indicating that she was familiar with the route. He felt the warm pressure of her body against him as they sat squeezed together in the little car, and he was suddenly impatient to keep going, to be rid of Wyman as soon as possible and get on with the job. There was no reason, actually, to assume that Dickinson McFee had met with personal disaster, despite the desperate risk of probing into Budapest these days. McFee might have decided not to check back until he found some definite trace of Dr. Tagy in the ruined city; or his line of communication may have broken down somewhere. Durell began to feel more optimistic. Ilona’s gloved hand crept into his and he squeezed her fingers lightly against the slight nervous trembling he felt in her. They had arrived here in good time. Even granted that Bela Korvuth, back in the States, got wind of Tagy’s presence here in Hungary, it would take Korvuth days to double back on the physicist’s trail. By that time, Durell hoped, their swift probe behind the Iron Curtain would be successfully finished.

It was eleven o’clock when they arrived in the small town of Eisenstadt. Durell felt no sense of weariness, despite the vast distance they had traveled since noon in Washington that day. His sense of time had become slightly distorted by their race eastward, into the night, away from Washington’s Sunday calm. His wounded arm felt cramped and stiff from being crowded in Wyman’s little car, but it was not enough to trouble him seriously. He was more concerned about Ilona’s growing tension as they neared the border. It was not easy for her to go back into a terror she knew so intimately.

The inn Wyman took them to in Eisenstadt was small and unobtrusive, and Wyman, in poor German, ordered a late supper for them. Durell did not object as Wyman cheerfully went on to arrange for two rooms for their use that night. The place was not crowded. The dining room was rustic, dimly lighted, and they were the only occupants at the tables, although a small bar across the common room was noisy with several men in rough clothing, drinking beer. Except for the first curious glances at them, nobody paid much attention. Durell tried to spot anybody who might have a more than usual interest in a couple who looked like Hungarians in the company of an obvious American like Wyman, but he didn’t see anything to alert him and he relaxed gratefully over the hot food served by a plump and cheerful hausfrau.

For some minutes he probed Wyman about McFee, looking for anything that might yield a hint of trouble for the little man; but Wyman’s impression of McFee was mostly negative, even resentful of the way McFee had shut him out of information. Durell got Wyman to talk about himself, mainly to set Ilona at ease, and Wyman was not averse to yielding his history as a Nebraska farmboy, a football star, a scholarship man whose ambitions in the Foreign Service had come up against the grueling reality of bureaucracy and frustration. Yet the man seemed competent and able, efficient in the manner he sketched in his preliminary efforts to probe the screening personnel for anything suspicious.

“Will you be taking off tonight?” Wyman asked finally.

“I haven’t decided yet. Ilona is rather tired.”

“You both look a little beat. After all, another night shouldn’t crack too many eggs. Is something wrong with your arm, Durell?” he asked suddenly.

Durell felt a swift rise of alarm and anger. His voice was quietly savage. “You know what my name is here.”

“Oh, sure. Sorry. But this place is safe as a church. Nothing to worry about. But you’re holding your arm as if it troubles you.”

“It does,” Durell said. “I got a bullet in it recently.” Wyman looked flustered under Durell’s steady, dark stare. “You don’t have to get sore. It was just a slip. Nobody heard us.”

“I think you’d better take off,” Durell said.

“Well, all right. I’m really sorry.” Wyman stood up, smiling. There was a burst of heavy laughter from the bar, but the backs of the men there were all turned toward them. “If you’d like, I’ll leave my car. There’s a bus back to Vienna at midnight. If there’s anything I can do—by the way, you have your money changed to forints, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Durell said. There had been a packet of thick Hungarian currency among the papers Colonel Smith gave him at the Spanish airport. “We’ll take the car, with thanks. I’m sorry I snapped. It’s a touchy business.”

“My fault, entirely.” Wyman looked grateful as Durell relaxed. “I’m always talking too much. Big fault. Not the sort of thing a man in the Foreign Service should have on his record. I guess it’s just that you people intrigue me—• I often wish I were in your branch, instead of doing the routine paperwork they give me.” He flushed and broke off again. “There I go once more. I’d better leave before you think I’m a complete ass.”

He went out quickly, waving to the fat waitress who brought Durell and Ilona their coffee. Durell watched the big blond man out of sight, and he was silent until the waitress left the vicinity of their table. He saw that Ilona was very pale again.

“A few more minutes with that man,” she said, “and we might as well have worn some signs around our necks.” “Take it easy,” he told her. “You’re too keyed up.”

“I can’t help it. I didn’t like Mr. Wyman.”

“Are you nervous about staying here tonight?”

“I think the sooner we move on, the better.”

“We can use Wyman’s car to get near the border, anyway. Do you know the road?”

“Quite well. It will not be easy.”

Durell looked at the fine bones of her face, the softness of her mouth when she smiled, even though the smile was forced. He touched her hand.

“None of it will be easy. Let’s go.”

A thin, cold mist lay along the swamps of the border. The night was white and frozen, with hoarfrost on the brittle reeds and the still, bare branches of clumps of birch trees. The ground felt like iron, frozen underfoot. Durell ran the Topolino into a barn a mile from the boundary and hoped it would still be there when they returned—if they were lucky, and if they returned. From the barn, they walked along a progressively deteriorating lane, picking their way by means of the cold blue starshine that gave an unearthly aspect to the landscape. Somewhere far off a dog barked and barked. To the south, across the rolling fields of Burgenland, a spotlight suddenly shot straight up, probing the sky, and then swept down in a leveling arc and blinked out. Durell walked along with the girl in silence. She seemed familiar enough with the road. It was past midnight, and nothing living stirred in the frozen white stillness around them.

“We are almost there,” Ilona said, halting. “See, you can make out the banks of the canal—that wall of earth there. It is in Hungary. About a quarter of a mile to the noith, you will see the wooden watchtower.”

“Is it manned?”

“With the new R Troops—the old AVO personnel. And probably the Russians, set to watch the AVO. Two miles beyond the canal, if we get through the marshes, there is a rather good road and some farms where we might be able to borrow a cart or a truck. But the swamps ahead are difficult.”

The girl’s voice was quiet and firm now. Now that they were on the move, she seemed to have lost some of the tension that had possessed her earlier. In the starlight, her face was calm, her glance objective. Durell looked toward the watch tower. For a moment he could not define it, then it came clearly through the white mists that gave the night a strange luminosity. There was no sign of movement in the tower, and he could not tell if it were occupied. Ilona made a sign with her hand and they moved forward toward the bank of the canal.

It was little moie than a wide ditch at this point, and the temperature fortunately had frozen the surface. Durell tested the ice with his weight, then walked quickly across, with Ilona behind him. The marshes below the canal embankment stretched in every direction, seemingly limitless, with reeds clashing softly, taller than his head. He had heard how some refugees, fleeing from the return of the Russian terror, had wandered lost, for days, without a guide. But Ilona moved forward with confidence, every aspect of her changed. She turned left, slid down the canal embankment, and indicated a footpath that was swallowed up by the reeds ahead. Durell nodded and signaled her to lead the way.

The strange white night was perilous in its silence. Now and then Ilona paused and they listened. From far away came a faint, rapid thudding noise, and he knew a machine gun was being fired.

“A Russian guitar,” Ilona whispered. “We will have to be on the watch for patrol dogs.”

There was nothing to see. The footing was uncertain and treacherous as the path meandered from hummock to hummock in the frozen swamps. Now and then a breeze stirred and the reeds clashed and rattled in brittle reply. But if the marsh reeds cut off his vision, it served equally well to screen them from the eyes of the border patrol. They went about a quarter of a mile and rested for a few moments.

“A road begins up ahead. We will have to cross it,” Ilona whispered. “I think you had better be ready for trouble.”

Durell took his gun out. It felt clumsy in his gloved hand, and he pulled the glove off with his teeth and held the gun in his bare fingers, feeling the quick bite of the cold.

“After you.”

An opening appeared in the reeds ahead. Mist moved in thin, tenuous streamers over a graveled road, and from a distance not far off, Durell heard the sudden sound of a car or truck engine starting up. He could see the watch tower now, a gaunt, spidery structure of heavy timbers, topped with a machine-gun platform, two spotlights, and a small enclosure with glass windows. Directly ahead, on the other side of the road, was a heavy fence of barbed wire. He knew that this would be their most formidable barrier. He could not tell if it were electrified, and he was not equipped with wire cutters. They would have to get through the best way they could.