The Balkan Assignment (2 page)

I glanced up at him. The pistol was nowhere in sight, but the memory of his lightning fast sprint across the compartment was still very fresh in my mind. I had no choice, whether I believed him or not, and he knew it.

I shrugged and got to my feet. Ley handed over my parka and picked up the carton with the fuel pump and tucked it under one arm as if its thirty pounds were three. Then he motioned me to one side and slid the compartment door part way open while I struggled into the parka.

"Stay here," he muttered and slid out into the corridor and walked quickly down the length of the car. I noticed that he silently checked each door of each compartment as he went. Apparently satisfied, Ley placed the carton on the floor, slid his hands inside his topcoat and eased open the corridor door leading to the platform connecting with the next car. Satisfied that it, too, was empty, he came quickly back up the corridor and repeated the performance at the other, nearer, end of the car, glanced quickly at his watch, took the pistol out and motioned to me to hurry. I hurried. As I joined him on the swaying platform, he replaced the pistol, looking rather sheepish.

"It may seem like cops and robbers, but then . . ." and he left the sentence hanging. I thought of the dead Mistako, and suddenly I agreed with his caution wholeheartedly. It was cold on that platform, and dark. The corridor lights had been dimmed and frost glazed the windows. The light filtering through was barely enough for Ley to find the manual release that opened the car door and lowered the step. Ice had crusted along the seal, but three powerful kicks broke it away and swung the door open. The cold flowed in like an icy river, temperature hovering near the zero mark and the chill wind cutting through my parka. The snow-covered landscape slid by silently. The train had slowed to less than fifteen miles an hour as it groaned its way up the mileslong grade. For a moment, it seemed to stand still while the snow-covered ground slipped away in quiet undulations. A full moon was just clearing a ridge to the east and its icewater light flooded the narrow valley at once, reflecting from the fresh snow cover and turning the night to thick twilight. Ley muttered a curse in German at the moon and then nodded for me to get down onto the step.

"You first, my friend. That way there are no second thoughts."

"The hell with second thoughts," I muttered. "I haven't gotten past the first ones yet." Nevertheless, I did what I was told.

From the step, I could look back down the valley and see the ghostly twinkling of the lone mountain village in the exceptionally clear air. I could also plainly discern the masses of tall pines rearing in dizzy ascent up the valley wall . . . almost close enough to touch. Ahead, the railroad track began a long curve to our left, away from the steep embankment.

"Jump in the middle of the curve," Ley ordered. "Roll straight down the embankment." He gave me no time to argue but planted a foot in the middle of my back and pushed. Before I could spread my arms to take up the shock, I was rolling head over heels down the embankment, driving the coldest imaginable snow down into my collar and up under my jacket. I had the impression of snow literally exploding in all directions. The boot in the back was designed to knock the wind out of me to provide Ley with enough time to shut the door, jump after me and recover himself before I could regain my feet. It worked as he planned; I had decided to jump him while he was floundering in the snow. Instead, I did the floundering and by the time I had dug the snow out of my eyes and got to my feet, he was seated on the fuel pump carton some fifty feet up the track, waiting for me. Behind him, the last lights of the train were disappearing around the bend. A high-pitched double blast of its whistle floated back as it passed through the village of Tobruz. Ley got off the carton as I walked—perhaps staggered would be a more honest description—up to him.

"I am sorry that I had to do that, but I am sure that you understand."

"Perfectly."

"Shall we start our walk then?"

To say that the night was cold is to do an injustice to Yugoslavian winters. It was downright frigid. A light wind eddied the powdery, virgin snow around our knees as we plodded toward the distant lights of the village. Looking back along the way we had come, our footprints were etched as sharply as if done on silver plate by a master silversmith. If Ley cared that we were leaving a trail that a blind man could follow, he showed no sign. Anyway, the wind would probably cover any traces within an hour of two. On either side, the steep walls of the valley loomed a good two thousand feet above us. They were thickly carpeted with tall mountain pines that gave the appearance in the moonlight of a black, impenetrable mass.

It took us nearly twenty minutes to walk the mile to the village, so thick was the snow. It was a choice between plowing through drifts or breaking our necks on icy ties. Ley wisely chose the drifts. By the time we reached the village, I was not only half-frozen, but my legs felt as if they had been carrying me for a week. Ley led me in a circle through the scrub pine until we approached the small wooden depot, deserted and dark now that the last train had passed for the night. We stopped behind a thin screen of pines while Ley carefully examined the depot and the small yard. I nudged him.

"If you expect them to be waiting for me in Mostar, how do you plan to put me back aboard the train? It doesn't stop again before it reaches the coast . . . at Mostar." Ley grunted and motioned me to silence. A man was coming around the far wall of the depot and heading across the wooden platform that separated it from the tracks. Both of us watched him narrowly, Ley with his hand inside his coat, resting securely, I was sure, on his pistol. The man crossed the platform and stopped at the base of the signal tower, opened what looked like a small panel door and made some adjustments. A green light came on high up on the tower and he stepped back for a look. Apparently satisfied, he reclosed the panel and

walked back around the building. A few moments later we heard the sound of an automobile start up and whine away out of the depot parking lot. Ley sighed and removed his hand from inside his coat.

"Railroad worker," he said needlessly.

"You still haven't answered my question," I reminded him. "How do you expect to get me back aboard the train?"

"We will cross that bridge when we come to it. Before that, we have many things to do. Come."

We pushed through the stand of pines and walked across the narrow field separating us from the depot. Naturally, the snow here had to be deeper than along the tracks. We crossed the depot yard, circled around to the far side of the building and found ourselves in a small parking lot.

An old-fashioned, bare-bulb street lamp hung over the entrance to the parking lot. A narrow street led straight as an arrow two city blocks or so to the village proper. Ley examined the only occupant, a snow-covered automobile, then walked back to where I was waiting. He nodded at the road and gave me a gentle push in that direction. We made quick time up the road walking more easily on the hard-packed snow surface. The village, with proper development, could have made a magnificent ski resort. Some of the best slopes in Europe were only minutes away, slopes that would have been the envy of the proprietors of Vale, Sun Valley or Innsbruk. I could picture a ski-lift terminal set in the middle of town, two or three modern, all-glass, A-frame-type ski lodges, the local stores filled with skiing merchandise . . . and was damned glad that it hadn't yet been converted to a ski resort.

Both sides of the street were lined with the gingerbread structures that you automatically associate with Switzerland, but in fact are common throughout the alpine areas of Europe. High-peaked roofs are the most logical solution to heavy snow accumulation and the street-side overhang is a proper answer to the problem of limited, flat building land. Ley led me rapidly up the deserted main street of the village directly to the only lighted structure in sight . . . the local hotel, which, from the size of the stack of skis leaning against the front wall, also doubled as the local ski hostel. It was probably the single major reason why the village was not more famed as a ski resort. In the dark, it was hard to tell exactly how long ago or by whom it had been built. I guessed the Turks. All old buildings have a distinctive smell compounded of ancient wood full of dry rot, effluence of closed human habitation and just plain age; you detect it as soon as you step inside. With this hotel you encountered its age odor while still in the street. Through the window I could see that the decor was an odd mixture of cheap Scandinavian-style furniture squatting boredly on an aged oriental rug.

"Come on," Ley ordered, not one to be deterred by architectural monstrosities, and I followed him through the door. I was wrong about the source of the odor; it came solely from the curious Slavic custom of overheating all dwellings in winter until you feel as though you are forever trapped in a sauna. The abrupt transition from below-zero cold to the eighty-degree fahrenheit interior left me gasping for breath and wishing I was back outside. The heat literally poured into the street when the door was opened. The lobby was separated from the rest of the ground floor, which was mostly bar or restaurant, by a flimsy partition across the width of the room. The clerk was half asleep behind the desk and he roused only enough to give Ley a slow, knowing nod. So, my big German friend had been here before. Curiouser and curiouser as Alice said. And about now, I was beginning to feel like Alice.

Ley stopped in the middle of the room. "Go into the bar and wait for me. I will return in a moment."

With that, he was gone up the rickety flight of stairs to whatever lay above. Standing there by myself, I considered turning right around and going back out into the night. The only problem with that was that I had nowhere to go. There would be another train going east to Belgrade about noon, which gave me only ten or eleven hours to hide from Ley and his friend or friends in a village small enough to be hidden under a postage stamp. And it was too damned cold to head for the forest, even if they wouldn't be waiting for me at the depot when the next train came through. And the next village in either direction was twenty miles or more away; one back down the valley, the other on the far side of the crest. There was no real danger that I would run out on him, and Ley knew it. So, I followed his advice and went into the bar.

A huge and roaring blaze eating up the fireplace was supplemented by a fancy hooded stove in the middle of the room around which a group of drunken students and ski bums were working on their final steins of beer under the watchful eye of the barkeep. He gave me the same kind of disgusted glance previously reserved for the students as I paused on the top step leading down into the bar. I set the fuel pump carton down on a table near the door and hooked a finger at him. He came, reluctantly.

"Dobro vetchay," I said in passable Serbo-Croatian. Surprise and faint pleasure replaced the scowl.

"It is rare that we have Americans in Tobruz who trouble to speak any Yugoslav," he grinned around the three chins that ended his face in pendulous bag.

"I didn't think it showed that much."

He looked surprised for a moment. "Ah, my knowing that you are an American? It is your clothes and haircut. Only American men are wearing their hair short these days."

"Short," I muttered, fingering the locks that were threatening to engulf my collar. But when I glanced over at the students near the stove I saw what he meant.

"How about something stiff . . . it's pretty nippy out there."

"Rakia . . . hot. Just the thing," and he scurried off. I pulled off my parka and loosened my shirt. The heat inside was so intense that within three or four minutes I was sodden. The bartender brought back the rakia in a heavy mug and then went over and pushed his way through the students to the stove, banked the dampers and kicked the logs in the fireplace apart.

Ten minutes went by during which the students gradually exceeded their blood-alcohol capacity and in the process quieted down. I heard the telephone on the front desk burr softly and the sleepy voice of the clerk talking. A few moments later he came into the bar and over to my table.

Droog Boyd, molim . . . Herr Ley . ." he struggled with his rusty English, "wished you to come . . . number four."

I looked up at him, seeing an ancient, sleepy face peering anxiously at mine. I nodded and picked up the carton and my parka, dropped a coin on the table and followed him back into

the lobby and to the stairs There he stopped and motioned me upwards.

"Hvala lepo," I muttered and started up.

At the top of the stairs, a low-wattage bulb burned, casting barely enough light in the narrow hall to read the room numbers. I found number four readily enough, and when I knocked Ley opened the door immediately . . . and stepped aside. The body lying on the floor at the foot of the bed had been strangled. The agonized expression would have been enough to tell me that even if the cord knotted around the neck hadn't been visible.

Surprisingly, I didn't drop the carton. Ley took it from me while I slumped against the wall and gagged. The hotel was not as old as I thought, because the room contained a small bathroom. After I had used it, my stomach, now empty, felt a hell of a lot steadier. Ley had removed the cord and covered the body with a blanket from the bed. I came back into the room and sank down in an overstuffed chair near the partly open window. The fresh air was welcome.

"Who was he?"

"My superior, Major Bowen. He came in from Amsterdam this afternoon." I noticed that Ley had removed his top coat and opened his jacket. He looked hard at me, hesitated then tossed a medium-sized automatic pistol across the bed.

"Do you know how to use that?"

I nodded. It was a Walther P-38 automatic, a standard European police side arm.

"Good, then stay awake because Bowen's murderer is still in the hotel."

"How do you know?"

"The desk clerk has seen no one come up the stairs or go down. To go either way they would have to pass him."