A guard at the door nodded to Klaus and greeted him by name. Inside, there were four civilians standing behind a counter and an officer in a gray-green uniform sitting at a desk behind them, reading a newspaper. Klaus unfolded his manifest and stacked the truck’s papers and his passport on top of it.
One of the civilians turned them around and began to check the documents. Carter took out his phony passport and, matching Klaus’s brusque manner, dropped it onto the counter, then turned and looked the place over with a nonchalance he was far from feeling.
Two men, apparently the crew of the first truck, were slouched over the counter a few feet away, patiently waiting for their clearance. They glanced at Klaus, but they didn’t speak.
The man checked everything including the fine print in Klaus’s papers, then carried them over and laid them on the desk of the officer. He glanced at them casually, hammered the manifest with a rubber stamp, and turned back to his newspaper. Carter’s blood pressure went down another few degrees... despite the tense buildup, this was a routine crossing.
The civilian gave Klaus his documents and picked up Carter’s passport, fingered it open, and glanced at him with flat blue eyes. “Where’s Foss?” he asked.
“What?”
“The regular man, Foss? Where is he?”
The uniformed officer looked up and frowned. Carter did the same toward Klaus.
“Drunk,” Klaus said, and shrugged. “I wasn’t going to take a relief driver, but Bunder here wanted to take his holiday in Budapest.”
By this time, the officer was on his feet examining Carter’s passport. “Three days? Where will you stay in Budapest?”
“Galpi, the Pension Galpi on Lenin Korut.”
“Wait.”
He crossed the room to a telephone. He had to dial three times in order to find the right person. When he did, he talked for a full three minutes, scowling now and then at Carter.
Finally he returned and tossed the passport on the counter. “Ja,” he said, and returned to his paper.
Outside, Carter said in a low voice, “Was that usual?”
“No,” Klaus grunted, and climbed up into the cab.
Great, Carter thought, just great.
A few seconds later the barrier was raised and they were on the road to Budapest.
Well, I’m in. Now the trick will be to get back out when the time comes!
The Pension Galpi was in the old part of Buda, close to the Danube and the downtown section. But it was also remote, in that it seemed a town within a town, bearing little resemblance to the newer part of the city. The streets were narrow, most of them cobblestoned.
“You have a reservation, mein Herr?”
“Ja,” Carter replied, pushing his passport across the desk toward the concierge, a gaunt man with wavy yellow hair.
The man took one look at the name on the passport, and a key appeared from beneath the desk. “Number Seven, second floor, rear.”
He turned away as if he were afraid he would catch something, and Carter headed for the stairs.
The room was small, neat and clean. Piled in the center of it was Carter’s gear, all used with local labels, just as he’d asked for. It took him fifteen minutes, but he finally found the gun, a Frommer 7.65 Stop Model 19. The seven-shot clip in the butt was full. Carter put it back in the heavy lining of the ski parka, undressed, and fell into the bed.
He slept the sleep of the dead until just after ten, and called around for a car until eleven. An hour later, he picked it up and parked in front of the pension. In no time he was packed and on the road north.
It had stopped snowing, but the fresh wind, which was breaking up the clouds, also whipped up the snow, kiting it crazily into drifts. All the way to Hatvan he could see snowplows in action on the main and secondary roads.
Just north of Hatvan the road began to climb into the Bukk Mountains. It was there that Carter spotted the tail. It was a small, two-door Volga sedan, black, with one occupant.
In the village of Nearing, he stopped for lunch. The Volga raced on by before he could get a good look at the driver or get a read on the plate number.
Over pork smothered in onions, Carter tried to reason it out. Lorena’s instructions to him from her brother were clear and precise. He would have to enter Hungary on his own. From Budapest he should drive northeast into the Bukk Mountains. There, he should check into the Cozamor ski resort, where he would be contacted.
By whom?
That would be determined by Vinnick at the last minute. If possible, he would come into Hungary to meet Carter. If not, a way would be found to get Carter over the Romanian frontier.
Just before Eger, Carter saw the Volga fall in behind him again. This time the car was close enough to spot the driver, a very pretty blonde somewhere in her twenties.
Just to make sure, Carter speeded up. The blonde speeded up. When he slowed, she slowed.
Well, Vinnick, it’s your move, Carter thought, and then took a deep breath. At least I hope this move is yours!
Four
The Cozamor Lodge was a sprawling, attractive-looking place nestled against the backdrop of snow-covered mountains and black forests.
Carter took a turn around the parking lot before heading for the entrance. There were several two-door Volga sedans, several black, so it was impossible to tell if the blonde — who had disappeared somewhere in the village below — had preceded him.
There was valet parking, and the young man informed Carter that all his gear and bags would be delivered to his room.
Inside, a sloe-eyed beauty behind the reception desk gave Carter a nice smile, a room key, and copied down all the details from his passport. Two bellmen appeared with his belongings and led him through a maze of corridors.
The cell-like people’s luxury room had bare, unpainted cement walls, a single, narrow bed, a chair, a washbasin, and sound-deadening wall-to-wall rubber matting on the floor.
Carter tipped the two bored bellmen and succeeded in wrestling the window up an inch to let out some of the stiflingly excessive heat.
He built a drink from a bottle in his bag, and shaved. At seven sharp, sporting a change of clothes, he walked back out to the lobby. He was passing the desk, when the girl with the sloe eyes called out to him.
“Herr Bunder, there is a message for you.”
She handed him a small white envelope. The alias, Emil Bunder, was scrawled across the front of it along with his room number. The hand was definitely feminine, and the flap was tightly sealed.
He tore it open. The message, in the same hand, read, I am in the bar.
Carter turned to the receptionist. “Who left this?”
“I really don’t know, mein Herr,” she replied with a shrug. “I was in the rear at the switchboard, and when I returned it was here on the counter.”
“Danke.”
He pocketed the envelope and the note and moved on through the lobby. At the entrance to the disco, he paused and glanced inside.
The music blasted through the small, darkened room, amplified by several hundred watts of electronic equipment. The crowd was varied, men in suits and ties and women in clinging dresses, dancing hip to hip with young boys in jeans and child-women in tight sweaters and unbelievably tight stretch pants.
Carter couldn’t spot the Volga-driving blonde, and moved on through the nearly empty dining room into the bar.
There were three men at the bar and two others at a nearby table. But what caught Carter’s eye was the woman who sat alone at a table next to the windows. She must have just come in because she still had snow in her dark brown hair. She was wearing dark corduroy slacks and a short leather jacket.