Thirteen
The scenery rushed at him through the Fiat's windshield, a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors without definition. He squinted into the sun, clinging to the wheel with his good arm, desperately fighting to stay conscious. The pain was no longer centered in his shoulder. It had spread throughout his body, and with each beat of his heart, his whole being seemed to throb.
The flat, monotonous fields outside Györ had given way to the rounded crests of the Transdanubian Mountains, and the driving was getting more difficult. The road dropped three or four hundred feet in the space of half a mile, then rose almost as quickly in short, unexpected curves. More than once Carter jerked awake to find himself on the wrong side of the white line, another vehicle bearing down on him.
He knew he needed doctoring and needed it fast. He had ignored the awesome pain in his ribs after his fight with Shurin, and it had eventually subsided. There wasn't much one could do with cracked ribs but tape them and let them heal. But a bullet wound was a different matter.
And yet whenever he thought about the pain, which was every few seconds, his foot only pressed harder on the accelerator.
He had lost sight of the train in the intricate byways of Györ but relocated it again several times out on the flats, its stack spitting out black coal smoke as it charged down the track under a full head of steam. Running parallel with it at times, it galled him to think Cynthia and Roberta were only a few hundred feet away yet impossible to get to. It galled him, too, to think Kobelev and his daughter were together again, and there was nothing preventing him from killing Cynthia and even Roberta anytime he wanted.
He'd lost track of the train again during its ascent into the mountains, and by now he hadn't seen it for almost thirty minutes. His only hope, he figured, was by some miracle to meet the train in Budapest ninety kilometers away. It would stop if only for coal and water, and he had to be there when it did.
For the thousandth time he rubbed his eyes and willed himself to stay conscious and forget about the pain, and for the thousandth time his body answered with a constant hum, a "white noise" of red-hot sensation. The white line began to waiver in front of the hood. Soon it was further to the right than it was to the left. A car hurled itself at him from the opposite direction, its horn screaming a warning. He twisted the wheel at the last minute and it sped past, its angry wail fading gradually behind him.
This time it had been too close for comfort. He pulled over to the shoulder and stopped, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his heart galloping in his chest. There was nothing he could do, no way to get help. He forced his mind through every possibility from calling Hawk and having him send out the militia, to giving up right here and now and curling up to die, but nothing was viable. In the end there was only one course and that was to do what he was doing. He started the engine and pulled out onto the asphalt, wondering if he would wake up in time the next time.
Within a few minutes, despite his resolve, his eyelids began to droop and then close. In a few seconds he heard a rapping against the right front fender as though someone were hitting it with a hammer. He jumped awake in time to see the boulders on the road shoulder close enough in the passenger window to pick out the grain in the rock. He tried to pull away, but the bouncing against the granite wall jerked the steering wheel from his hand. The car caught a particularly large outcropping, spun around, and came to a sudden halt, throwing Carter against the door shoulder first. The pain exploded in his arm like a fragmentation grenade. He made only the briefest pass at staying awake before black night overtook him.
An old peasant woman carrying a steaming basin of water in her arms peered at him shrewdly from a distance of less than a foot, then turned and waddled across the low-ceilinged, whitewashed room to a boy who sat by a crude wood-burning stove. She poured the water from the basin into the sink and without looking at the boy, told him, "Fetch the doctor. The American is awake."
In less than a minute the boy returned with a swarthy man in his mid-fifties, a thick salt-and-pepper mustache covering his upper lip and his shirt-sleeves rolled up. Encircling his eyes were a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, over the tops of which he gave Carter a studious look. "How are you feeling?" he asked in English. "You are American?"
"Shaky," Carter said, ignoring the second question.
"You've had quite an ordeal. I took this out of your shoulder last night." He held up a wad of blood-encrusted lead.
"Last night? What day is it?"
"Monday."
"Holy Christ!" said Carter, starting to get up.
"Easy," said the doctor, holding him with a firm grip on his arm and shoulder. "You're not in any shape to go anywhere just yet. You'll have that wound open if you persist."
"You don't understand! I have to be in Budapest! I was supposed to be there yesterday!"
Carter struggled against the doctor's hold on him, the effort playing havoc with his shoulder.
"Go!" the doctor shouted to the boy who had been watching just inside the door. "Tell the commandant I can't hold him."
Carter strained for a few minutes more, then fell back on the bed exhausted. "They're gone by now, anyway," he mumbled.
"You are quite right, my friend," said a low, cultured voice. Both Carter and the doctor turned around. In the doorway, filling it, was a tall, elegantly slim man in the blue serge uniform of the Hungarian People's Army. At least it looked like other Hungarian Army uniforms Carter had seen; the difference was this one didn't fit like a gunny sack. It had been custom tailored to smooth out every bulge and wrinkle. From the gold on his shoulders, Carter guessed a colonel or higher.
"Let him up, Doctor, if he wants to sit."
The doctor released him, and Carter pulled himself painfully into a position where he could lean his back on the whitewashed wall.
"The doctor tells me you have remarkable powers of recovery," the commandant said, coming closer. "I see now that he was right. Most admirable. Would you care for a cigarette?" He held out a gold case filled with dark brown cigarettes, which Carter recognized as Russian-made. Carter took one, then the commandant took out one for himself, tapped it firmly against the case, and lit it. He lit Carter's, then drew up a chair and sat down.
"Where am I?" asked Carter.
"In the mountains about halfway between Budapest and Györ. The village is called Diosd. One of the local peasants found you after your unfortunate accident while he was returning home from making a delivery. He was going to take you to the hospital in Budapest, but he recognized a bullet wound when he saw one and figured you were in some sort of trouble, so he brought you here."
"Some favor," said Carter sourly.
The commandant smiled. "You mustn't blame the peasant for my presence. He had no choice in that. Besides, I'm afraid you overestimate the effectiveness of your security. We've been monitoring your movements since you left Györ. We would have found you after you failed to pass through our last checkpoint, in any event. And after all, it isn't so bad, is it? Your wound has been tended to, and soon you will be given free transportation back to the Austrian border."
"I have a job to finish in Budapest."
"Doctor, would you excuse us for a moment?" asked the commandant.
The doctor raised an eyebrow, then without a word walked to the sink, gathered up several instruments that lay in a tray beside it, and went out the door.
When he was gone, the commandant pulled his chair several feet closer to the bed. "I think you should know," he said in a confidential tone, "my superiors regard you as nothing more than a common assassin and would like to have you shot. And they would have sent me here to do just that if it weren't for the Soviets themselves. None of them seems to be able to determine where Comrade Kobelev stands in the pecking order. They are afraid to serve his cause and afraid not to. They are very confused, and as long as they remain so, we Hungarians will wash our hands of both of you. Kobelev is speeding out of the country right now, and you are incapacitated. Things work out well in the end, no?"