Dark Star (8 page)

The Prague-Berlin night express left the central station at 9:03
P.M.,
due in at Berlin's Bahnhof am Zoo station at 11:51, stopping only at the Aussig border control post on the east bank of the Elba. Szara now traveled with two bags, his own and the leather satchel. The train was cold and crowded and smoky. Szara shared a compartment with two middle-age women he took to be sisters and two teenage boys whose windburned faces and khaki shorts suggested they'd been on a weekend mountain-climbing holiday in Czechoslovakia and had stayed on until Tuesday before returning to school in Germany.

Szara had some anxiety about the German customs inspection, but the officer's revolver now lay at the bottom of the Vltava and he doubted that a file written in Russian—something it would be normal for him to have—would cause any difficulty. Border inspections concentrated on guns, explosives, large amounts of currency, and
seditious literature—the revolutionary toolkit. Beyond that, the inspectors were not very interested. He was taking, perhaps, a small chance, that a Gestapo officer would be in attendance (not unlikely) and that he would know enough Russian to recognize what he was looking at (very unlikely). In fact, Szara realized he didn't have much of a choice: the file was “his,” but not his to dispose of. Sooner or later,
they
would want to know what had become of it.

As the train wound through the pine forests of northern Czechoslovakia, Szara's hand rose continually to his ear, slightly red and swollen and warm to the touch. He'd been hit, apparently, with the end of a metal salt shaker enclosed in a fist. As for other damage— heart, spirit, dignity; it had a lot of names—he finally managed to stand off from it and bring himself under control.
No,
he told himself again and again, you
shouldn't
have fought back. The men listening to the radio would've done far worse.

The border control at Aussig was uneventful. The train slowly gained speed, ran briefly beside the Elba, shallow and still in the late autumn, and soon after passed the brown brick porcelain factories of Dresden, red shadows from the heating kilns flickering on the train windows. The track descended gradually from the high plain of Czechoslovakia to sea-level Germany, to flat fields and small, orderly towns, a stationmaster with a lantern standing on the platform at every village.

The train slowed to a crawl—Szara glanced at his watch, it was a few minutes after ten—then stopped with a loud hiss of decompression. The passengers in his compartment stirred about irritably, said
“Wuss?”
and peered out the windows, but there was nothing to see, only farm fields edged by woodland. Presently, a conductor appeared at the door to the compartment. An old gentleman with a hat a size too large for him, he licked his lips nervously and said, “Herr Szara?” His eye roamed among the passengers, but there was really only one possible candidate.

“Well?” Szara said.
Now what?

“Would you be so kind as to accompany me, it's just …”

Entirely without menace. Szara considered outrage, then sensed
the weight of Teutonic railroad bureaucracy standing behind this request, sighed with irritation, and stood up.

“Please, your baggage,” the conductor said.

Szara snatched the handles and followed the man down the corridor to the end of the car. A chief conductor awaited him there. “I am sorry, Herr Szara, but you must leave the train here.”

Szara stiffened. “I will not,” he said.

“Please,” said the man nervously.

Szara stared at him for a moment, utterly confounded. There was nothing outside the open door but dark fields. “I demand an explanation,” he said.

The man peered over Szara's shoulder and Szara turned his head. Two men in suits stood at the end of the corridor. Szara said, “Am I to walk to Berlin? ” He laughed, inviting them to consider the absurdity of the situation, but it sounded false and shrill. The supervisor placed a tentative hand above his elbow; Szara jerked away from him. “Take your hands off me,” he said.

The conductor was now very formal. “You must leave.”

He realized he was going to be thrown off if he didn't move, so he took his baggage and descended the iron stairway to the cinderbed on which the rails lay. The conductor leaned out, was handed a red lantern from within, and swung it twice toward the engine. Szara stepped away from the train as it jerked into motion. He watched it gather momentum as it rolled past him—a series of white faces framed by windows—then saw it off into the distance, two red lamps at the back of the caboose fading slowly, then blackness.

The change was sudden, and complete. Civilization had simply vanished. He felt a light wind against his face, the faint rime of frost on a furrowed field sparkled in the light of the quarter moon, and the silence was punctuated by the sound of a night bird, a high-low call that seemed very far away. He stood quietly for a time, watched the slice of moon that dimmed and sharpened as haze banks drifted across it in a starless sky. Then, from the woodland at the near horizon, a pair of headlights moved very slowly toward a point some
fifty yards up the track. He could see strands of ground mist rising into the illumination of the beams.

Ah.
With a sigh Szara hefted the two bags and trudged toward the lights, discovering, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a narrow country lane that crossed the railroad tracks.
General Bloch,
he thought.
Doing tricks with the German rail system.

The car reached the crossing before he did and rolled gently to a stop. Somehow, he'd missed a signal—this meeting had the distinct feel of an improvised fallback. He was, on balance, relieved. The heart of the
apparat
had skipped a beat but now returned to form and required the parcel from Prague. Well, thank God he had it. As he approached the car, its outline took shape in the ambient glow of the headlamps. It was not the same Grosser Mercedes that had carried General Bloch away from the station at Ulm, but the monarchs of the
apparat
changed cars about as casually as they changed mistresses and tonight had selected something small and anonymous for the
treff,
clandestine meeting, in a German beet field.

The middle-age sisters in the train compartment that Szara had recently occupied were amused, rather sentimentally amused, at the argument that now began between the two students returning from their mountain-climbing exertions in the Tatra. Sentiment was inspired by the recollection of their own sons; wholesome, Nordic youths quite like these who had, from time to time, gone absolutely mulish over some foolery or other, as boys will, and come nearly to blows over it. The sisters could barely keep from smiling. The dispute began genially enough—a discussion of the quality of Czech matches made for woodcutters and others who needed to make outdoor fires. One of the lads was quite delighted with the brand they'd purchased, the other had reservations. Yes, he'd agree that they struck consistently, even when wet, but they burned for only a few seconds and then went out: with damp kindling, clearly a liability. The other boy was robust in defense. Was his friend blind and senseless? The matches burned for
a long time.
No, they didn't.
Yes,
they did. Just like miniature versions of their papas, weren't they, disputing some point in politics or machinery or dogs.

As the train approached the tiny station at Feldhausen, where the track crosses a bridge and then swings away from the river Elster, a bet of a few groschen was struck and an experiment undertaken. The defender of the matches lit one and held it high while the other boy counted out the seconds. The sisters pretended not to notice, but they'd been drawn inexorably into the argument and silently counted right along.

The first boy was an easy winner and the groschen were duly handed over—offered cheerfully and accepted humbly, the sisters noted with approval. The match had burned for more than thirty-eight seconds, from a point just outside Feldhausen to the other end of the station platform and even a little way out into the countryside. The point was made: those were excellent matches, just the thing for woodsmen, mountain climbers, and any others who might need to light a fire.

As Szara approached the car, the man next to the driver climbed out, held the back door open and said, “Change of travel plans,” with a smile of regret.

His Russian was elementary but clear, phrased in the slow cadence characteristic of the southeastern reaches of the country, near the Turkish border. “It won't be so inconvenient.” He was a dark man with a great belly; Szara could make out a whitening mustache and thinning gray hair spread carefully over a bald head. The driver was young—a relative, perhaps even a son of the passenger. For the moment he was bulky and thick, the extra chin just beginning, the hair at the crown of his head growing sparse.

Szara settled himself in the back seat and the car moved forward cautiously through the night mist. “You tried to contact me in Prague?” he asked.

“Couldn't get your attention, but no matter. Which one do we want? ”

Szara handed the satchel over the seat.

“Handsome old thing, isn't it,” said the man, running an appreciative hand over the pebbled hide.

“Yes,” Szara said.

“All here? ”

“Except for a pistol. That I dared not take through German border control. It's at the bottom of the river.”

“No matter. It's not pistols we need.”

Szara relaxed. Wondered where and how he'd be put back on his way to Berlin, knew enough about such
treffs
not to bother asking. The Great Hand moved everyone about as it would.

“Must keep to form,” said the man, reaching inside his coat. He brought out a pair of handcuffs and held them out to Szara over the back of the seat. The car entered a farming village, every window dark, thatched-roof stone barns, then they were again among the fields.

Szara's heart pumped hard; he willed his hand not to rise and press against his chest.

“What?” he said.

“Rules, rules,” said the fat man disconsolately. Then, a bit annoyed: “Always something.” He shook the handcuffs impatiently. “Come, then …”

“For what?”
Za chto?

“It isn't
for
anything, comrade.” The man made a sucking noise against his tooth. He tossed the handcuffs into Szara's lap. “Now don't make me irritable.”

Szara held the cuffs in his hand. The metal was unpolished, faintly oily.

“You better do what we say,” the young driver threatened, his voice uncertain, querulous. Clearly he wanted to give orders but was afraid that nobody would obey him.

“Am I arrested? ”

“Arrested?
Arrested?”
The fat man had a big laugh. “He thinks we're arresting him!” The driver tried to laugh like the other man but he didn't have the voice for it.

The fat man pointed a blunt index finger at him and partly closed one eye. “You put those on now, that's plenty of discussion.”

Szara held his wrist up to the faint moonlight in the back window.

“In back—don't you know anything?” He sighed heavily and shook his head. “Don't worry, nothing will happen to you. It's just
one of those things that has to be done—you're certainly aware, comrade, of the many things we all must do. So, humor me, will you? ” He turned back around in his seat, dismissively, and peered through the ground mist rising from the road. As he turned, Szara could hear the whisper of his woolen coat against the car upholstery.

Szara clicked the handcuff around his left wrist, then put it behind his back and held the other cuff in his right hand. For a time, the men in the front seat were silent. The road moved uphill into a wood where it was very dark. The fat man leaned forward and peered through the window. “Take care,” he said. “We don't want to hit an animal.” Then, without turning around, “I'm waiting.”

Szara closed the cuff on his right wrist.

The car left the forest and headed down a hill. “Stop here,” the fat man said. “Turn on the light.” The driver stared at the dashboard, twisted a button; a windshield wiper scraped across the dry glass. Both men laughed and the driver turned it off. Another button did nothing at all. Then the dome light went on.

The fat man leaned over and rummaged through the open satchel between his feet. He drew out a sheet of paper and squinted at it. “I'm told you're sly as a snake,” he said to Szara. “Haven't been hiding anything, have you?”

“No,” Szara said.

“If I have to, I'll make you tell.”

“You have all of it.”

“Don't sound so miserable. You'll have me weeping in a minute.”

Szara said nothing. He shifted in the seat to make his hands more comfortable and looked out the side window at the cloudy silhouette of the moon.

“Well,” the fat man said at last, “this is just the way life is.” A shrill whine reached them from around a bend in the road and the single light of a motorcycle appeared. It shot past them at great speed, a passenger hanging on to the waist of the driver.

“Crazy fools,” the young man said.

“These Germans love their machines,” the fat man said. “Drive on.”

They went around the bend where the motorcycle had come
from. Szara could see more woodland on the horizon. “Slowly, now,” said the fat man. He reached over and turned off the dome light, then stared out the side window with great concentration. “I wonder if it's come time for eyeglasses? ”

“Not you,” the driver said. “It's the mist.”

They drove on, very slowly. A dirt track for farm machines broke away from the road into a field that had been harvested to low stubble. “Ah,” the fat man said. “You better back up.” He looked over the seat at Szara as the car reversed. “Let's see those hands.” Szara twisted around and showed him. “Not too tight, are they?”

“No.”

“How far? ” said the driver.

“Just a little. I'm not pushing this thing if we get stuck in a hole.”

The car inched forward down the dirt path. “All right,” said the fat man. “This will do.” He struggled out of the car, walked a few feet, turned his back, and urinated. Still buttoning his fly, he walked to Szara's door and opened it. “Please,” he said, indicating that Szara should get out. Then, to the driver: “You stay here and keep the car running.”