The Cold War Swap (23 page)

Padillo turned and looked. So did Symmes and Burchwood.

“Three of them,” Padillo said. “As long as they keep that far behind, keep it around eighty. If they start to move up, then see how fast this thing will go. What’s our best bet?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror at the green Cadillac, which had fixed itself a measured hundred yards behind us. “It depends on what they want to do,” I said. “If they want to crowd us off, they’re going to have to get alongside, and I don’t think they’ve got the speed or the driver for that. If they just want to follow, they can probably keep up pretty well, considering the traffic. If it’s tuned right, that Cadillac can hit a hundred and ten—maybe a hundred and twenty if it’s blown; but I don’t know of many that are.

“Our best chance is when we turn off to Bonn. That’s up and down hill and they haven’t got the springs for the curves. This thing does. We can probably gain on them there, run up the river to the bridge instead of taking the ferry, and then cut back through Bonn. Any place in mind?”

“We’ll figure that out later. Let’s see if they’ve got the steam to keep up.”

“He’s got seat belts in this thing,” I said. “We may as well use them.”

“They can cut you in two or make you feel like it,” Padillo said. But he buckled his anyway. He turned to Symmes and Burchwood. “Put yours on. We’re taking another ride.” The two men remained silent but snapped on their belts.

“Shall we?” I said.

“Let’s.”

I pressed the accelerator almost to the floor board and the Chevrolet spurted past a couple of Volkswagens. The traffic was medium-heavy and I kept to the left-hand lane, flicking the passing-lights switch as we zipped by the slower-moving trucks and cars. The Cadillac moved out into the same lane and its driver began working his lights. He kept the hundred yards between us as if we were linked by a chain.

“What’s it say?” I asked Padillo.

“It’s bouncing off a hundred and twenty.”

I snatched a glance at the special tachometer. Its needle was hovering around red-line. I pressed the accelerator down the last quarter of an inch and held it hard against the floor board. A big blue Mercedes convertible took my passing as a personal challenge and swung out into the left lane to give chase. The Cadillac blew him back over with horn and lights.

The wind noise was almost a scream and, despite its tough springing, the Chevrolet was jumping around. On a hill an Opel moved out two hundred yards in front of us to pass a Volkswagen. It barely got its front fender up to the VW’s rear bumper when I leaned on the horn and flashed the lights. It was too late for the Opel to drop back and it didn’t have the juice to move ahead. It took the only course available and headed for the dividing strip. The VW made for the shoulder. We roared through, and I still think that my front left fender nicked the Opel. The Cadillac sliced through behind us.

“I haven’t done that since I was sixteen,” I yelled at Padillo.

Padillo reached into his raincoat pocket and took out his revolver and checked its rounds. I got mine out and handed it to him and he
reloaded it from a box of shells and gave it back. I glanced in the mirror and saw that the Cadillac was maintaining its distance. Symmes and Burchwood sat in the back seat, stiffly upright, their eyes buttoned tight, their mouths making little straight lines of fear and disapproval. I supposed that they were holding hands. It was none of my business.

It took us a little under fifty minutes to make the sixty miles from the place where we bought the brandy to the cutoff to Bonn. I double-clutched the Chevrolet and threw it down into third, not using the brake. I did it again and got it down into second. The engine braked the car and, without the rear brake light to warn him, the Cadillac’s driver was almost on our bumper before he could figure out what I was doing.

I went into the curve too fast, but the engine was still braking and the Cadillac didn’t have a chance. It overshot. I kept the Chevrolet in second and made the curve and shifted up into third again.

“They’re going to back up,” Padillo said.

“That’s a hell of a risk on that road.”

We sped through the Autobahn underpass and hit the blacktopped road that led to Venusberg and down to the ferry that crossed the Rhine to Bonn. I kept the car in third, shifting down into second as we scattered a few small children and ducks in a village and started to climb the twisting road to the top of the hill.

“I don’t see them,” Padillo said.

“We may have picked up a few minutes. We should gain another five or ten on these curves.”

The Chevrolet took them on rails, its hard tough springing reminiscent of an old MG-TC I had once owned. I shifted down into second to drift the first bend in an S-shaped curve. The engine was responding nicely on the short straight and I was estimating the rpm’s needed for the next bend when we went into it, came out of it, and hit the roadblock.

They had the two junkers parked across the road: a couple of battered but still solid Mercedes of the early-1950 vintage. I was still in
second, so I hit the brakes with my left foot and jammed the accelerator down with my right, trying to spin the car into a tight U-turn, but it was too late and the Chevrolet crashed into one of the Mercedes and I was slammed forward against the steering wheel.

There seemed to be dozens of them. They got the Chevrolet doors open and dragged us out. I was stunned, and my stomach ached where the seat belt had cut into it. I felt them lift the gun out of my pocket. I slid down on the ground and vomited. It was mostly wine. I lay there for what seemed a long time, and then I looked up and Padillo was still standing, held by two men in gray felt hats and belted coats whose colors kept changing in the light that filtered through the trees. One of them reached into Padillo’s pocket and took out his revolver. They patted some more pockets and found the knife and got that too. I was sick again.

Two of them grabbed me under the arms and helped me to stagger over to a car and then tumbled me into the back on the floor. I lay there panting and trying not to be sick again. I managed to grab the back of the front seat and haul myself to my knees. It took all day. Padillo was sprawled across the backseat, his mouth slightly ajar. His eyes opened and they blinked at me a couple of times and closed again. I knelt on the back floor and looked out the rear window. They had moved the two Mercedes and the Chevrolet over to one side of the road. They were dragging one of the Mercedes off into a clump of trees. It was being pulled by a Ford Taunus. At least it looked like a Ford Taunus, but the light was getting bad. A man climbed into the front seat and aimed a gun at me. He had a sallow ugly face and his long nose was spotted with ripe blackheads.

“Pick up your friend and make him sit up,” he said. He spoke German, but it was heavily accented. I couldn’t place the accent. I turned and picked up Padillo’s feet and swung them down to the floor. Then I pushed and shoved him into a sitting position, but he slumped forward and I had to push him back again. He had vomited over his uniform and there was an ugly dark spot under his right ear that oozed
blood. I sat in the back seat beside him and looked at the man with the gun and the blackheads on his nose.

“Nothing foolish, please. No heroics,” he said.

“Nothing foolish,” I agreed, and spit out one of the sponge-rubber things that had come loose in my mouth. While I was at it I dug some of the wax out of my nose. I didn’t have any manners. I didn’t need any. I started working on the other sponge-rubber piece with my tongue. It came loose and I spat it out, too. I also peeled off my mustache.

The man with the gun watched me curiously but said nothing. The car we were in was English, I noticed: a Humber with walnut panels built into the rear that let down into tea trays. Or cocktail trays, if you were so inclined. It was an export model with the steering wheel on the left-hand side. Next to that was a two-way radio set made of gray metal. I offered myself nine to two that green Cadillac had one just like it. I looked out the rear window. They were pulling the Chevrolet into the clump of trees. Somebody might find it tomorrow—or next week. The tall Negro down in Frankfurt hadn’t had much faith and I wished I had listened to him. We could have gone someplace and talked about cars and drunk beer.

Another man got into the driver’s seat. He turned around and looked us over without much interest, grunted, turned back, and started the car. We followed another Humber down the curving narrow blacktop. There were four men in the car ahead. The two in the backseat were Symmes and Burchwood. I couldn’t tell if they were speaking to anyone yet.

At the Rhine we turned left and drove along the highway for a half-mile or so before we came to a spot that curved out slightly toward the river. It had a few picnic tables and a trash can and a place to park cars. A stone retaining wall bellied out into the Rhine, and there were steps leading down it to a small dock, where an inboard launch about eighteen feet long was tied up. The green Cadillac was parked in the picnic area, and I decided it must have gone by while I was flat on the ground. I noticed that it was a Fleetwood.

The driver of our car parked, got out, and talked to the driver of the other Humber, which carried Symmes and Burchwood. Then that driver got out and walked over to the green Cadillac and talked to someone in the backseat. The man with the gun stayed with us. There was another man in the front seat of the other car. He probably had two guns.

Our driver came back and said something in a language I couldn’t even place, much less understand. But the man with the gun understood it and he told me to get out and to help Padillo out. Padillo opened his eyes and said, “I can walk,” but his voice didn’t carry much conviction. I walked around the car, opened his door, and helped him out.

The man with the gun was right with me. “Down the steps. Get him into the launch,” he told me. I draped Padillo’s arm around my neck and half dragged, half led him down the stairs. “You’ve picked up a few pounds,” I said. I helped him into the launch and he sank down on the cushioned seats that ran along the side. It was getting quite dark. Symmes and Burchwood came down the steps to the dock and got into the boat. They looked at Padillo, who was hunched over. “Is he hurt?” Symmes asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t say much. Are you hurt?”

“No, we’re not hurt,” he said, and sat down next to Burchwood. The man who had driven our car walked up to the bow and got behind the wheel. He started the engine. It caught and burbled in neutral through its underwater exhausts. We sat there for five minutes. We seemed to be waiting for something. I followed the gaze of the man at the wheel. A light across the Rhine flashed three times. He picked up a flashlight that had been clamped to the dash, aimed it across the river, and flicked it on and off three times. It was a signal, clever McCorkle decided. The interior light of the green Cadillac flashed on as the back door opened and a man got out and started down the stairs to the dock. He was short and stocky and waddled a bit as he walked across the dock to the boat. It was growing too dark to see his face clearly, but I didn’t have to. It was Maas all right.

Maas waved at me cheerfully from the dock and climbed into the launch. One
of the drivers let go of the stern line and the launch headed out into the Rhine, taking an oblique course upriver. I nudged Padillo in the ribs with my elbows. “Company’s here,” I said. He lifted his head and regarded Maas, who smiled cheerfully at us from his seat near the stern.

“Christ,” Padillo said, and dropped his head back down on arms folded across his knees.

Maas talked quietly with one of the men who had driven the Humbers. The other two men sat across the launch from us and smoked cigarettes. Each held a gun casually in his lap, pointing at nothing in particular. I decided that they could keep them. Burchwood and Symmes sat next to me and stared straight ahead. It was dark now.

The boat driver reduced his speed and angled the launch sharply to the left. Down river, a half-mile away, I could see the lights of the U.S. Embassy. They looked warm, inviting and safe, but they didn’t get any closer. I hadn’t really expected them to. The dark outline of a self-powered barge loomed ahead of us. It was anchored in the channel about fifty feet from the riverbank and sat low in the water as if heavily loaded. It was the kind of barge that you see plowing up and down the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel, the family wash snapping merrily in
the breeze. They are almost always family owned and operated. Children get born on them and old men die on them. The occupants sleep and eat and make love below decks in compact quarters located near the stern that are about the size of a smallish American house trailer. The barge we approached was about 150 feet long. The pilot of the launch cut the engine and we drifted, stern first, toward its bow.

Somebody shined a light on us and threw a rope, and the man in the stern next to Maas caught it and pulled us up snug to a rope ladder and wooden rungs. Maas was first up the ladder and he had trouble with one of the rungs. I hoped he would fall, but someone on the barge caught him and pulled him up. The two men with the guns were on their feet and one of them waved negligently at Symmes and Burchwood. They got the idea and went up the ladder after Maas. Padillo had raised his head from his arms and watched Symmes and Burchwood climb the ladder.

“Think you can make it?” I asked.

“No, but I will,” he said.

We got up and I let Padillo precede me to the ladder. He grabbed a rung and started to pull himself up. I boosted him from behind and some hands reached down and caught him under the arms and pulled. I started up and the strain knotted and twisted my stomach where the Chevrolet’s seat belt had cut into it. Some more hands, not particularly gentle, fastened on and helped me. The barge had its parking lights on for navigational safety and the only other light was from the flash that somebody kept shining around.

“Straight ahead,” a voice muttered in my ear, and I put my hands out and started to take some small careful steps in that general direction. A light suddenly appeared from an open door that led down into the living quarters. I could see Maas backing his way down the stairs, holding onto the rails. Burchwood and Symmes followed, then Padillo and I. I heard the launch pulling away. Only the two men with the guns remained, and they motioned for me to follow Padillo.