“How could they?” replied the gravelly voice in barely accented English. “I am the answer to their black-market prayers. I haven’t heard from you in an age. You must want something.”
“I have to go over,” Carter said, “and I don’t want to be made.”
“When?” The voice suddenly got serious.
“Tonight, if possible.”
“That might be arranged. You’re in Salzburg?”
“Yes. I’ll arrive in Vienna around seven.”
“Should be enough time. Take a taxi from the station out to my country place. You remember it?”
“I do.”
“I’ll try to have everything ready.”
Carter hung up, bought a paper, and boarded his train.
He had a light lunch in the dining car and slept fitfully all the way to Vienna.
The snow had turned to a light rain, making the streets of the old city glisten. Clutching his light bag, he ignored the taxi queue outside the station and walked several blocks before hailing a passing cab.
“Where?”
“The country. I’ll direct you.”
In no time they had left the city. The windshield wipers flicked steadily. They drove past stolid-looking houses surrounded by stone walls and dripping trees. The streets were as silent as the hills that rolled behind them. Eighteen miles out of the city they exchanged the highway for a mountain road that climbed up through dripping fir trees to a sodden expanse of pastureland. The farmhouses were dark and isolated. Dogs barked as the headlights lit the barns and outbuildings.
They had climbed another three miles, when a building loomed out of the mist, fields stretching behind it into wet darkness.
“Here,” Carter growled.
The driver braked. The headlights shone on a wooden chalet surrounded by an ugly wall built of stone and iron piping. Water ran from the gutters. The shutters were closed. Not a single light showed. Carter gave the driver his shillings and added a large tip.
“Thanks for your trouble.”
The man pocketed his money, glanced across at what looked like a deserted chalet, and drove off.
Carter walked around to the rear and opened a gate in the stone wall. He could see light in the first-floor-rear room, mostly obscured by heavy curtains. He waited a minute or two before crossing a patch of broken concrete and then onto a stretch of lawn.
Interesting, he thought. Gunter Forbin was probably worth millions, yet his “country house” was little more than a dump. But then, when one made one’s millions by not paying duty on Western goods smuggled into Eastern bloc countries, it didn’t pay to advertise one’s wealth.
The ground sloped down and there were steep steps to the basement. The opaque glass door was open as promised. Carter stepped into the passage; there was a wedge of light at the far end. As he moved, the light widened until the whole of the far end was illuminated and Gunter stood silhouetted like a giant against the far wall.
“It’s me,” Carter said.
“I know,” came the reply with a peal of laughter, “I could hear your catlike stealth from the grave. Come in, I have schnapps.”
The room was plain. Carter supposed that the two doors leading off were to a bedroom and kitchen. There was a new armchair, and a table pushed into a corner looked new. There wasn’t much else. Photos of impossibly structured nude women hung from walls badly in need of paint and plaster.
The Killmaster took the offered tumbler of schnapps and set his bag on the table. “You really should spend some of your money, Gunter,” he said with a grin, making a face as he surveyed the room.
“Oh, but I do, I do!” the big man roared. “In Paris, Rome, New York! But not here. Here, I am a poor man. Prosit!” He drank and wiped his mustache with his fingers.
“What have you got for me?” Carter asked, draining his own glass.
“You have my fee, of course?”
“Of course,” Carter replied, withdrawing an envelope from his jacket and dropped it in the big man’s lap. “There’s a little extra in there. I’ll need a few things on the other side.”
“No problem.” As if by magic, a passport and a fist of papers appeared on the table in front of Carter. “For the time you are there, you are Emil Bunder, a relief lorry driver. I used one of your photos from the last time. Here is your union permit, your driver’s license, and your visa for three days of holiday. I assume your business will take no longer than that?”
“Let’s hope not. I’m going over in a lorry?”
Gunter Forbin nodded. “As a relief driver. You’re in luck. I have a shipment going over legally at midnight... seed and packaged manure.”
“In the dead of winter?” Carter said.
The big man shrugged. “My Communist customers like to look ahead.”
“What’s under the seed and shit?”
Forbin grinned. “Perfume, cosmetics, blue jeans, rock and roll tapes... just more shit. Come along, my friend, and we’ll wardrobe you.”
From a closet and drawers in the bedroom, Carter outfitted himself from the skin out in used, locally labeled clothing. The pants and shirt were worn denim, and the old fur-collared leather jacket was cracked with age.
“What will you need over there?” Forbin asked.
“I’m going skiing. Everything should be used. Oh, and a gun... something local to the country.”
Forbin nodded. “Check into the Pension Galpi, on Lenin Korut. It will all be waiting. Will you be shooting anyone?”
“I hope not,” Carter said.
“Then you won’t need extra clips. What about wheels?”
“I’ll rent a car there.”
“Good. Let’s have another schnapps and talk about women.”
An hour later, a knock came on the rear door and Forbin admitted a man nearly his own size, with long, lank black hair and a simian forehead that practically covered his eyes.
His name was Klaus, and he would drive the lorry over.
There was little traffic on the main road east out of Vienna to the frontier, much less than Carter had hoped for. It would be a lot easier to move across a busy frontier than a deserted one. Most of the traffic was trucks. Carter hoped they would blend in and he passed across like so many ants.
About two miles from the border, the trees disappeared and the road narrowed. A little farther on, they slipped into a long line and moved forward in fits and starts.
“How long does this usually take?” he grumbled.
Klaus shrugged. He was a man of no words. He hadn’t said one since they had left Gunter Forbin’s chalet.
Eventually they reached the Austrian barrier. The bills of lading were scarcely glanced at and they were waved through.
The second barrier, into Hungary, was a different story. The two trucks ahead were surrounded by a score of armed border guards. Carter glanced across at Klaus, hoping for some sign of assurance, some indication that that number of guards was not unusual. He was hunched forward, his thick arms crossed on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. His phlegmatic expression said nothing.
The thin arm of a wooden barrier lifted and the first truck moved slowly ahead. Carter would have given a year’s earnings to have been sitting in that truck. Klaus eased forward a length and pulled on the brakes and switched off his engine. The guards in greatcoats and fur hats watched them approach incuriously, their hands dug deep into their pockets, their rifles slung from shoulder straps. When the lorry stopped, they sauntered toward it.
Klaus buttoned up his leather jacket, opened the door, and with a short, curt “Kommen,” stepped out. Carter climbed down his side and the guards moved back to give him room. Klaus strode stolidly toward the large building constructed of rough-cut, unpainted planks. Carter tailed along behind him.