Prelude to Terror (9 page)

“Is it central?” Grant had asked, searching for a polite refusal.

“Just off the Schotten Ring.”

“I had thought of a hotel nearer the Opera Ring.” The Majestic was close to that district, easy walking distance from all the big museums.

“And that will cost you an arm and a leg. Why don’t you look at the Two Crowns? Ask for Bernie, he owns the place—you could drop in to see him, bring him news of me and the family. Here’s his name and address.” Seldov had written them down on a small sheet of Schofeld stationery and pressed it into Grant’s hand: Bernard Mandel, the Two Crowns, Schotten Allee. “A fine man, you’ll like him.” As an afterthought Seldov added, “He’ll make a special rate for you. I’ll tell him.”

Grant had laughed. “And I’ll only lose an arm?”

“Perhaps just your little finger,” Seldov said smiling.

All right, Grant told himself now, let’s have a look at the Two Crowns. What about Gene Marck, though, with his news of the date and place of the auction? No problem: Grant had his Vienna telephone number, would notify him at once about any change of address. Marck would be shocked by the idea of the Two Crowns, yet it might be the place where an art critic would stay without cracking his budget to pieces. Too bad to give up all this comfort, he thought, as he glanced around the room. He liked luxury as much as the next man. But it just wasn’t in keeping with his cover story. He’d have to stay here, of course, until Robert Renwick made contact with him. After that, he could drop out of sight, and—what was the current phrase?—keep a low profile. For there was one thing that worried him most of all, was never far away from his level of consciousness: a man’s life could depend on his actions. One false step by Grant could end that man’s chances for escape.

It was a challenge, of course: a deed in a treacherous world. It was also a responsibility, growing heavier by the hour. This was not the way he had wanted to visit Vienna, but it was too late to back out. Keep your mind fixed on the challenge, he told himself as he stepped out of the Majestic’s impressive lobby into a broad thoroughfare and turned left towards the Opera Ring. Around him were handsome buildings of light stone, decorated and expansive in nineteenth-century style, with here and there structures in subdued contemporary, so that they fitted in with their older neighbours as well as filling the gaps made by bombs and shells. Sunshine and flowers and trees, bustling traffic, well-dressed people, a general feeling of optimism—it seemed as though the nightmare of 1945 was buried with the discarded rubble. Perhaps they were putting a good face on it all, like the modern buildings that obliterated the war damage. If I were a Viennese, thought Grant as he crossed the wide square before the Opera House, once gutted by flames and now duplicated in splendour. I’d always be conscious that Czechoslovakia’s barbed wire and Hungary’s armed watchtowers were less than thirty miles away. So what would I do? Enjoy today, and concentrate on tomorrow’s neutrality, that comforting if fragile word. Eat, drink—appropriately, he was approaching the Kärntnerstrasse, heading for one of its restaurants—and give a damned good imitation of being merry.

The Kärntnerstrasse had changed, miraculously. Its once crowded and noisy traffic had been banned. Only pedestrians allowed, and flower stalls, and café tables under bright umbrellas. This was where he’d lunch, even if it was only a sandwich and beer. He wouldn’t have to give that imitation of being merry. His depression had dropped away and was replaced by a sense of intense pleasure that he hadn’t known for ten months.

His euphoria would have been short-lived if he had been aware of the stranger who, loitering near the Majestic’s entrance, had picked up his trail, had seen him settle down at a café table. Only then did the man leave, straight for the nearest ’phone, and return—keeping a safe distance and careful watch until relieved of duty. It was almost two o’clock. She’d be here, any moment.

“May I join you?” she asked. “All the other tables are so crowded.” Avril Hoffman sat down across from him, signalled to a waitress, and ordered strudel and coffee. “The working girl’s lunch,” she told Grant. In an undertone she added, “Don’t recognise me.” She glanced around her at the people having a late and leisurely meal under bright-coloured umbrellas.

He recovered from his surprise. “That was quick,” he said, thinking of his ’phone call to O’Malley. He remembered to lower his voice. “You got my—”

“Yes. It seemed urgent.” Now, it was the large pots of petunias that seemed to catch her attention.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“Let’s talk of something else. Meanwhile. And not too much of that, either.” She made herself comfortable, hitching the strap of her handbag over the back of her chair, smoothing the skirt of her blue dress, picking up a paper napkin.

“Just two strangers sharing a table,” he suggested, and politely moved his glass of beer to give her more space.

She nodded. “With an occasional remark, and lots of silence in between.”

Anyway, she could talk: this morning he had doubted it. “We can always discuss your favourite subject.”

She looked at him quickly, smooth dark head tilted, eyes large and wondering.

“The weather,” he said with a grin.

She laughed, and pretended it was over the slice of strudel that came with its dollop of whipped cream. “
Was für Kalorien!
” she told the waitress, who obviously paid little attention to calorie-counting. Avril pushed aside the cream with a fork, and began eating. “Slow up, there!” she warned him. He had almost finished his sandwich. “I should leave first.”

“And I follow you?” At least she knows where she’s going, which is more than can be said for me.

She tested her coffee, frowned, and added some sugar. “At a distance, of course.” She ate some more mouthfuls of strudel before she spoke again. “Kapuzinerkirche, Neuer Markt. Meet me there in ten minutes. I’ll be driving a white Volkswagen, German plates. Get in quickly. Make sure you aren’t followed.” She called the waitress and paid the small bill, explaining that the apple strudel was excellent but one had to suffer to keep one’s weight down,
nicht
? The waitress understood, shook her head in smiling sympathy as Avril left.

Did the gentleman want another beer? “This will be enough,” he told her, but she might as well give him his bill now and save herself another journey back to this table. He was ready to leave three minutes after Avril’s departure. The Neuer Markt was only a block away, but he’d better approach it indirectly.

This time, he was paying attention to anyone who moved when he moved, halted when he halted. Frankly, he felt ridiculous, yet her eyes had held a real warning, even anxiety. For him? Beautiful eyes, he thought, dark brown, soft and expressive—the
occhi parlanti
, speaking eyes, that Italians praised. He was reasonably sure that no one was following him; to make certain, he walked further up the crowded Kärntnerstrasse than necessary before he branched off, first by one, then by another of the several old streets that complicated this district. He circled around, chose another little street, and entered the long stretch of the New Market, where, at the far corner, stood the Capuchin Church.

He had barely reached it when he saw the white Volkswagen approaching. For the few moments that were needed, he became engrossed in the church’s baroque architecture. The car slowed down, its door opening, and he was inside.

“Quick enough?” he asked.

She nodded, but her eyes were on the traffic and the one-way directions of the narrow streets. “No one followed?”

“If anyone tried it—well, I made it as difficult for him as possible.” Seven minutes of weaving through crowds and winding his way along packed streets. “Who would be tailing me, anyway?”

“People who don’t want you to talk with us.” As he shook his head in amused disbelief, she added, “Didn’t you know you were followed today, right from your hotel to your table? If we could track you, then others can, too.”

Followed, and duly reported? So that was how she had reached him quickly and surely. “I’ll remember that,” he said, the smile wiped from his face, his voice showing his annoyance. “You had a man parked near my hotel? Or in the lobby?”

“He was there as a matter of protection.”

“I don’t need or want any protection, thank you.”

The silence lasted until she brought the car into the Ring, where driving was less tortuous along the wide and extensive boulevard of various names, but whose course was constant, encircling the heart of the city. “Do you like roses?” she asked suddenly. “There’s a park just up this way—it’s a quiet place to talk.”

“Talk is certainly needed.” He was more relaxed now, could even laugh at the idea of protection. “But will Renwick allow it?”

She didn’t answer. She was thinking of Bob Renwick’s last injunctions.
Be as frank as possible. Tell him what he needs to know. Get his co-operation. It’s up to you, Avril. You’ll handle it well.
“Oh dear,” she said, and sighed.

Grant studied her. “You’re his messenger-girl, aren’t you?” he asked gently. There had been something pathetic in that sigh.

“Such as I am.”

“How did you get into this work?”

Here come the questions, she thought. Bob had warned her to expect plenty. “Languages. French and German at school, and some Hungarian at home. My mother was brought up in Budapest—a diplomat’s daughter. Then on a summer holiday I visited Florence, and fell madly in love. And so, of course, I had to learn Italian. I knew it quite well before I found he had a wife and two children living in Perugia. So good-bye to nineteen-year-old dreams. But I kept on learning Italian. You see, languages do help you to travel. That became my next ambition—living abroad, seeing new places. Restless? Yes. But romantic, too.”

“You definitely got into adventure when you teamed up with Renwick. When did that happen?”

“A few years ago. I was working in my father’s office in London—he imports and exports. And Bob walked in one day on business, and heard me trying to pronounce Russian.”

“So that was your next language. Any more?”

“Some Flemish. For a time, I lived in Brussels.”

“And now you’re in Vienna, speaking most beautiful Austrian. You’d pass as a
Wienerin
any day. Where are you working?”

“At the American Embassy. There’s a shortage of translators at the moment. I fitted in—temporarily, of course.”

“But you’re British, aren’t you? How did our Embassy—”

“Dual citizenship. My parents lived in New York for almost six years. I was born there.” They had turned off the Ring into a space for cars before a large park. “We weren’t followed,” she said as she switched off the engine and pocketed the keys. “Shall we walk?”

This corner of the park was all garden, Grant saw, enormous acreage, and with nothing but roses. Trees and bushes, laden with clusters of velvet petals, every hue, every size and shape and variety, flanked the long paths or circled into beds of vivid colour. He stood quite still for a few moments, and then he looked at Avril and raised an eyebrow. She smiled in delight at his approval. “My favourite place in Vienna,” she said.

They began their stroll between the lines of roses. There were other people around, but the garden was so extensive that there was plenty of choice in solitary paths. It seemed as though the tourists, like Grant himself, had never heard about this section of the park: either that, or there was too much else to visit in their short stay here.

She wasted no time. “We hear you have some questions.”

“I have. Who is Robert Renwick? Who is Frank? You, I know about: a translator working for Renwick at the Embassy.”

“No, I work mostly for Prescott Taylor. Bob calls on my services occasionally—just as he does with the other girls in the secretarial pool. Bob and Prescott avoid each other as much as possible. Publicly, that is.”

“You’re their link?” A neat arrangement.

She nodded. “Frank, however, belongs to another—another organisation. He isn’t an American. That’s all I can say.” Not a word about Israeli Intelligence, she thought, until we can clear it with Frank, and that I doubt.

“But he’s working along with you?”

“Our interests coincide.”

“And what are they? Can you tell me?”

“Well—” She considered for a moment. “Completely confidential, you understand?”

“Completely.”

Her eyes searched his. Hesitation vanished. “It might be best for me to describe our fields of interest. That could give you an idea of our joint effort here.”

So they were three men—a diplomat, an Intelligence-officer, and a non-American—who shared a common problem in Vienna. “I’m listening.”

“Prescott Taylor is an attaché, and one of his jobs is dealing with defectors. He sorts them out, as it were, and if he thinks they are the real thing, not just KGB-trained infiltrators, he will steer them into the right department in Washington, where—after examination and further testing—their information can be put to use.”

Grant waited. She had paused, perhaps for breath, more probably for a careful selection of her next words.

“Frank,” she went on, “deals with refugees. Vienna is a gathering-place for them these days—just look at a map and see how it’s situated. He helps them after they get across the frontiers; sometimes before that, too.”

“Is he an Israeli?” The Jewish refugees from Russia made Vienna their first stop.

She side-stepped a direct answer, said tactfully, “Several countries are interested in the refugees. After all, some of them are fakes trying to take up residence in the free world.”

“Time-bombs?”

“If they slipped past—yes.”

“So we have a man who deals with defectors, and another with refugees. Pretty similar interests. Where does Renwick fit in?”

“There’s quite a difference in interests,” she corrected him, postponing the subject of Renwick himself. “Defectors slip into an embassy or consulate and ask for asylum and secrecy. A matter of safety: they’ve been Communists, often in important or sensitive posts. They bring hard information as a guarantee that they are authentic. But refugees are quite another problem. Usually they are anti-Communist, private people, not connected with their government. All they have to bring is their possessions—usually only a suitcase. However, there are others, too, who have managed to hide their valuables and want to smuggle them out. It’s too dangerous to risk carrying them. So they are sent by other ways—by a friendly foreigner, for instance, with special diplomatic privileges, or by some businessman who travels regularly—before their owners cross the frontier.”