Her hands flitted over Wilhelmina's barrel like liver-spotted butterflies. "It's a gun."
"This isn't a matter of choice. You'll do as I say or I'll kill you."
"I'm ninety-three. What makes you think I'm afraid to die?"
"Everyone's afraid to die. Everyone."
Her dry, lined lips broke into a tiny smile. "Hand me my cane." She gestured toward a curved walking stick propped against the end of the bed. Carter fetched it.
Stuffing the Luger back in its holster, he took hold of her arm, which was as light as a dry twig, and eased her forward. As he did, his gaze was drawn to the floor, to the blank features of the dummy.
If they hadn't brought the dummy with them, he thought, beginning the logical sequence that had been interrupted earlier, men it must have been here to begin with.
She was standing erect now, supporting herself with the cane. "Clear me a path," she snapped. The fear was gone from her voice.
Carter pushed back the table and scraped away the broken glass and candles.
And if it was here all along, then she must have known about it…
She teetered suddenly and he came to her aid, holding her by the elbow and shoulder with his one good arm, and they proceeded together, she taking one tiny step at a time, and he guiding, shoring her up.
And if she knew about it, then she's in on it; and all that bullshit about her life being in danger is just that, bullshit…
Simultaneous with this last thought came the curious sound of metal being drawn across metal, and he became dimly aware she had grown suddenly stronger in his grasp. Abruptly she pulled away from him, and for a brief instant he stared in wonderment, amazed at how well she stood without his help. In the same instant he saw a flash above her head like light glinting off a blade, and he realized suddenly the walking stick had disappeared. He jumped back in barely enough time to avoid being run through by her initial thrust. The sword grazed his lower abdomen and opened an oblong slash in his shirt. He grabbed her wrist, twisted, and the blade clattered to the floor. He pushed her roughly toward the door, which he eased open a few inches.
He held the Luger against her back as she stuck her head out and called down the hall.
"Comrade Tremloff!"
They waited several seconds.
"Louder." Carter urged.
"Comrade Tremloff!"
The door at the end of the hall clicked open, then wedged shut, and footsteps came quickly down the linoleum. "Yes, Madam Konya?"
"Invite him in," Carter whispered.
"One of the candles has fallen to the floor and I fear a fire. Comrade," she said.
"Where is Yuri? Can't he help?"
He never received an answer. As he spoke he edged in through the door, exposing a long pink oval of scalp to Carter's waiting gun butt. Carter swung, and the man sank heavily to the floor. Carter rolled him over and extracted his revolver from the holster under his arm. It was a Graz-Buyra, identical to the one he'd taken off another flunkie named Mandaladov in an airport washroom in Phoenix. "Must be the gun of the day in Kobelev's private army," he muttered, but the thought struck him that he had not seen this man on the train, which meant he was probably stationed here in Hungary, another link in Kobelev's vast network that seemed to reach everywhere.
"You will run now like a dog to save your skin, but it is too late," the old woman said above him.
"My skin and others'," he replied.
"My grandson will kill you," she said resolutely.
"One of us will die, that much is certain."
"He will hunt you on every continent after what you did to my poor great-granddaughter."
"I don't have time to argue," said Carter, unloading the big Russian's automatic and pocketing the shells. He tossed the gun aside.
"Crippling a girl in the prime of her life before she's had a chance to bear children…"
Carter ignored her. He glanced around the room. It had been nothing more than an elaborate trap. He brushed past the old woman and hurried out the door.
"She was beautiful," she shouted after him, her words ringing in the narrow hall. "The cream of Russian manhood sought her in every capital of the world, and now she must live in a wheelchair like a dried, juiceless old crone!"
Outside he walked quickly to the Fiat and climbed in. As he started the engine, a bright silver gash appeared on the hood.
Turning, Carter saw another of Kobelev's bodyguards crouched by the building entrance, his gun out in front of him and a pale ghost of barrel smoke disappearing over his shoulder.
Carter gunned it. The car jerked forward, and the second shot missed.
He took the first comer standing on the accelerator. The rear wheels skidded crazily, and he ripped out a kiosk on the far side of the street. The little engine had more power than he thought. By the time he'd gotten himself righted and into third gear, he was doing better than sixty.
Side streets flew by at a dizzying rate. He looked frantically down each one, trying to find a likely route to the train station, but each of them was choked with horse-drawn carriages and carts. It was as though the whole of Hungarian peasantry had come to the city for a Sunday visit.
He came to an intersection marked with an international stop sign, ignored it, cranked the wheel to the left with his one good arm, and narrowly missed a knot of pedestrians in front of a cafe. A military-type van swerved to avoid a collision, and its several passengers glared at him from its windows.
He careened down three more blocks, spotted a likely alley, turned into it, and stopped. Rolling down the window, he listened anxiously. Nothing. Just the motor ticking under the hood. He listened for another thirty seconds, longer than he dared, and still nothing. No sirens, no screaming engines in pursuit. He started the car again, put it into gear, and drove much more slowly down the street.
He had lost the way to the train station. He had a feeling it lay further in the direction he'd been traveling when he first left the housing project, but he wasn't certain, and it was too dangerous to return that way to see. He would just have to wend his way through the lesser-used back roads and alleys and hope he chanced on it soon.
He turned into a promising-looking thoroughfare, but it soon reduced itself to a wagon rut that disappeared into someone's vegetable plot. Another street was blocked by a peasant's wagon hitched to an obstinate workhorse. The horse's master, a quarrelsome old man with no teeth, seemed in no hurry to move him, and it took several minutes of honking before two other men, obviously relatives, came out from one of the buildings, and amid much shouting and gesturing, finally convinced the old-timer to clear the way.
A half dozen blocks back the way he had come, he turned a corner and suddenly was there. He pulled into a parking spot several hundred yards from the station's entrance, got out, and went into a cafe across the street. Roberta was to have been waiting for him at the table by the window. The place, however, was deserted.
A short husky man wearing an apron came from the back.
"There was a girl here," Carter said.
The man stopped in his tracks and stared open-mouthed at Carter.
"The girl," Carter said, looking over his shoulder out at the street and across at the station behind which the Orient Express had been waiting. But it was pulling out now. It was leaving!
A black sedan jerked to a stop across the street. Its door swung open, and a young woman got out and rushed around the station, running after the departing train.
Someone aboard the train had opened a door, and hands reached down to help the running woman swing aboard.
But even from where Carter was standing, there had been no mistaking that graceful, athletic young figure. It had been Tatiana Kobelev, one hundred percent restored.