He pulled the collar of his chef's jacket up around his ears and fastened the top button of the lapel under his chin. The groundwater was only a few inches deep, but it had soaked his pants to the thighs, and now the wind whipped the wet cloth against his skin, chilling him thoroughly.
As he walked he stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and after a few dozen steps he had to wade through a pile of wet weeds. They looked to be the refuse of some sort of dredging operation. They formed a small mound seven or eight feet high. He climbed the mound until he balanced precariously on a perch that afforded him a view of the entire area.
Dead ahead no more than two hundred yards, outlined in dark gray against an even darker background, stood a shack on a cluster of pilings. A pier ran off to the north from which a rickety ladder extended to the water's surface. Next to the ladder a small shallow-draft boat bobbed like a cork.
He hurried down the other side and splashed toward it. The water deepened quickly, and by the time he reached the ladder, it was up to his waist. He climbed until his eyes were level with the weatherbeaten pier, then he stopped, taking in every aspect. Everything seemed quiet. Except for the steady drip of water from his wet clothes and the soft sucking of the waves in the pilings, the night was quiet. An eider duck cooed to its mate in the distance. This place seemed deserted, and yet he was sure this was where he'd seen lights earlier.
He hurried across to the shack and listened at the door. The unmistakable drone of snoring came from within. Back at the pier, he looked down at the little open boat, bobbing in the moonlight.
She looked seaworthy, but there was no way to propel her. He looked around and for the first time noticed two sets of oars attached to the shack's outer wall. He went over and was lifting one down when something scattered over the boards by his feet caught his eye.
He stooped down, picked up some, and rubbed it between his fingers. Sawdust. But what on earth would someone be sawing out here? Then it dawned on him. It had nothing to do with carpentry. It was packing material, the kind used to fill the spaces between bottles and other delicate things during shipment.
Then he looked across to where the moon made stepping-stones on the water. The Neusiedlersee! He should have realized. Austria on one shore, Hungary on the other, and in the middle a hot little traffic in Western goods.
He pulled out his Luger, went around to the front, and boldly kicked in the door. A balding little man sat bolt upright in his makeshift bed on the floor, his eyes wide as saucers. "Wer ist da?" he stammered.
"Amerikaner," Carter answered, making sure the Luger in his hand was clearly visible in the shaft of moonlight from the open door.
The eyes narrowed. "Polizei?"
"Nein."
"Then what is it?" he demanded, indicating the gun.
"The next time you and your friends make a run, there'll be an additional piece of contraband floating across the lake."
"Ja?"
"Me."
Over the course of the next two hours Carter learned a great deal about the man in the shack and his dabbling in illegal exports. His name, he said, was Friedrich Schwetzler, although he'd been christened Ferenc Balassa. He was a Hungarian who'd fled during the uprisings of 1956. He'd crossed the border here by boat, planning to go west to France, or maybe even to the United States, but unforeseen circumstances forced him to leave his wife and small daughter behind, and he hadn't the heart to go any further than eastern Austria. So here he'd stayed, gotten a job as a waiter in the hotel in Bruck, and begun smuggling. His wife had since died, and his daughter now had children of her own. The smuggling allowed him to keep in contact with her and her family. His agent on the other side was his son-in-law.
They smuggled in more than just cases of wine and sought-after Western clothes, he told Carter. There were political items as well; Western newspapers, forbidden manuscripts, even parts of Solzhenitsyn's works had passed through his hands.
As they talked, the fog outside lifted, but Schwetzler said that the moonlight made it too dangerous to attempt a crossing tonight, and his son-in-law would not come. Tomorrow night would be safer. Carter was crestfallen. In his mind's eye the Orient Express steamed off into the night, putting another mile between them for every minute he delayed.
That night he slept on the floor of Schwetzler's tiny apartment in downtown Bruck, and in the morning stood with a line of tourists outside the telephone exchange, waiting to make an overseas call.
He felt much better than he had the night before, even though he'd slept only fitfully. The day had dawned bright and clear, and the weather forecast called for falling temperatures and fog by evening, which meant the son-in-law would definitely appear. He had at last shed his chef's uniform, which after his fighting and tramping through several miles of swamp had become little more than rags, and had donned instead some clothes Schwetzler had lent him: thick corduroy pants, a black wool sweater, and a peasant's cap that gave him a roguish, rural look. So now as the streets began to fill, and workers brushed by him on their way to work, and women in black babushkas and overcoats began to appear, pushing their carts to market. Carter blended right in and began to feel, to his own amazement, that he actually belonged here.
The telephone exchange opened at the stroke of eight, and Carter filed in with the crowd, gave the operator the safe number in Washington, then retired to a corner to wait for his connection to be made. In his borrowed clothes no one paid him any mind, and within a few minutes he was in a booth listening to the impatient voice of David Hawk.
"Our ruse with Cynthia didn't last two minutes with Kobelev. He knew immediately she wasn't his daughter, and now he wants Tatiana back or he's going to kill Cynthia. We need some sort of safe house somewhere along the train route in case we have to make an exchange. And I need Tatiana on this side of the Atlantic. I may have to dangle her under his nose a bit to get Cynthia away from him."
"It's not going to be that easy, Nick," Hawk grumbled.
Carter held his silence. He had a bad feeling.
"We don't have the girl. She escaped. This afternoon."
"She had help?"
"No. She evidently isn't crippled." Hawk quickly explained what had happened, at the hospital and then later.
"Why wasn't she stopped, sir?" Carter asked. This entire thing was starting to go very bad.
Hawk sighed deeply. "Wasn't much we could do about it, really. We covered up the fact she was the one who tried to kill the President. We held her in the hospital. We could hardly let that out now." Hawk was silent for a moment. "There were a lot of reputations on the line. We didn't want another Watergate, with the press all over us and the President. It would have been disastrous. I don't think they wanted her over at her own embassy either. But they took her." Again there was the silence. "In the end she was a defecting spy who'd had a change of heart. No waves."
"Makes things a bit difficult here."
"There was nothing to be done about it, Nick. Nothing."
"Is she still at her embassy?"
"We don't think so. Manville thinks she shipped out in disguise. Probably on the plane to Cuba. From there…?"
"Yes, sir," Carter said. "That means she'll be on her way here."
"I'm assigning you some help. Lieutenant Commander j.g. Stewart. Naval Intelligence."
"Never heard the name."
"Mediterranean fleet. East European Theater expert."
"What's the contact routine?"
"It's all taken care of, Nick. You have the passive role. You know when the time comes. Meanwhile, good luck."