They lifted me from the stretcher and carried me to a chair in the middle of the room. Otto stuck a glass of apricot brandy in my hand. Otto was a dark, mean-looking character, with a great black mustache and a patch over one eye.
“Where’s the girl?” I said. “Is she all right? What have you done with her?”
“You speak German like a Berliner,” Otto said. “The girl’s all right. We put her to bed. You’ll both be all right in the morning. It’s lucky we found you. You might have spent the rest of your lives on crutches.”
There were two doors at the far side of the room. I guessed they led to bedrooms, the kitchen, and the servants’ quarters.
The room reminded me of a stage setting and it turned out to be just that. The cuckoo clock on the mantelpiece struck ten. Almost immediately, as if with the rising of a curtain, one of the doors on the far side opened, and a man entered. He was wearing a uniform, complete to gold epaulets and several rows of ribbons. It was a Russian uniform, and the wearer might have come off a Red Square parade. Otto and his helpers clicked their heels and snapped to attention. I should have remembered that the Red Army had recruited thousands of former Wehrmacht soldiers for guard duty in Central Europe. Germans like Otto knew no other trade. Just as their fathers had joined foreign armies after Imperial Germany’s defeat in the First World War, so Otto and many like him were serving their Russian conquerors until they might again wear the uniform of a resurgent Reich.
The Russian made a stage bow in my direction as he closed the door, then in German banished Otto and the others from the room. He turned his back to the fireplace, locked his hands behind him, and bowed again. He was tall and thin, with graying hair and the bushiest pair of black eyebrows I’d ever seen.
“Good evening, Monsieur Blaye,” he said in excellent French. “Please, you will permit me to introduce myself. I am Major Ivan Strakhov at your service, Monsieur.”
Of course Otto had returned to the lodge with the passport before we’d arrived. Major Strakhov had addressed me as Monsieur Blaye for want of another name. He had no way of knowing I was John Stodder, American.
“I had expected the pleasure of welcoming you at the frontier, at Hegyshalom,” he said with a broad smile. “I’m sorry you did not advise us you were planning to leave the Orient Express somewhat short of the station.”
It was the major, then, in the military car which had passed us when we first turned off the railway tracks into the side road. The train guards had radioed to Hegyshalom as soon as we jumped.
“These German peasants aren’t much good,” he said, waving his hand in the direction in which Otto and his men had disappeared, “but it’s lucky they found you. I’m afraid they were trying to jack deer with a lantern when you ran into them. They’re just like children.” It was the speech a German officer would have made about the Russians, a few years and one lost war earlier.
“I’m sorry to say, Monsieur Blaye, that your failure to arrive at Hegyshalom proved a great disappointment to Countess Orlovska,” the major continued. “She came with me from Budapest to meet you but she has returned to the capital in the Orient. She requested me to tell you that she looks forward eagerly to seeing you as soon as you arrive.” He added in an offhand manner, “I must say I thought her somewhat upset when she heard you had brought your pretty secretary.”
I was so tired and confused that I didn’t catch on. I thought the major possessed an exceedingly macabre sense of humor. Maria had said that Blaye “seemed to be very much in love with a Polish girl, a Countess Orlovska, who used to come to the office.” And what did Strakhov mean “as soon as you arrive”?
“Excuse me, Major,” I said, “but what are you planning to do with us?”
“Monsieur Blaye,” he said, “I am a soldier and I obey orders. My instructions are to accompany you and your secretary to Budapest as soon as possible, to see you safely to the Russian embassy. Judging by what Otto tells me of your condition, I do not think you will find it burdensome to travel tomorrow morning. We will catch the morning train.”
“What’s this all about?” I said. “And why do you continue to call me Monsieur Blaye?”
Major Strakhov smiled. “I don’t think there’s any doubt of your identity. First of all, Monsieur Blaye, there is your passport. Then there are the labels in your clothing and the signature on your traveler’s checks.” In my desire to do a thorough job I’d even signed the checks with that name. “And there is the baggage which you and Mademoiselle Torres left aboard the train.”
He crossed the room to fill my empty glass.
“Monsieur Blaye, as I’ve already explained, I only know my orders. I was sent to Hegyshalom to meet you and to escort you to Budapest. When the sergeant of the train guard radioed ahead that you had vanished, I naturally called Budapest for instructions. I was commanded to find you and to bring you to that city. That is all I know, please.”
I told the major I would very much like to get to bed. He called Otto and Hermann to carry me, but I found I could walk with Otto’s arm supporting me. The major led the way to a bedroom, wished me a pleasant good night, and bowed himself out the door.
Well, I’d started out to play the role of Marcel Blaye when I thought the name was a passport forger’s dream. Now that I knew that the passport was real I was stuck with the part. At least, I was stuck with it until I had to face the Countess Orlovska or someone else in Budapest who’d known the genuine Marcel Blaye.
I had been so sure that Marcel Blaye was dead. Now there was nothing certain. Had the man Maria called Dr. Schmidt murdered him in, Vienna? It could be that his body hadn’t yet been found or that an alarm had not reached the Hungarian frontier station. Or maybe he was still alive, waiting for a new passport in Vienna before proceeding to Budapest?
Who was Marcel Blaye, anyway? The passport said he was a thirty-five-year-old Swiss from Geneva, a man whose description almost exactly matched mine. Maria Torres, his secretary, said he called himself a watch and clock exporter but otherwise she didn’t know much about him. He was supposed to have been on his way to Budapest to close a big deal with the Hungarian government, but who ever heard of a government so hard up for watches and clocks that it sent Russian majors in full uniform to meet salesmen at frontiers? And to track them down when they jumped off trains?
I got out of bed and pulled aside the curtains. Even if I’d had my clothes and my strength, even if I’d been willing to leave Maria, there wasn’t the slightest chance of escape. The windows were solidly barred. Otto and his friends weren’t asleep. The major had said his orders were to find us and take us to Budapest. He looked like just the man to do it.
Of course. That was it. They thought that Blaye had decided to back out, to welsh on the deal at the last minute. They would reason that was why he’d left the train. It sounded less and less like watches and clocks. And they—whoever they were—weren’t having any backing out from Monsieur Blaye.
As long as I was going to have to play the part a little longer, there was nothing to do but to tell Maria. No matter what she’d think, I’d have to give her the whole story about the passport. She was in just as much trouble as I. She had a right to know what was going on, if only for her own safety. Otherwise, I couldn’t risk what she might say or do when she heard Major Strakhov address me as Monsieur Blaye in the morning.