The Heights of Zervos (3 page)

'Which railyard? What am I supposed to understand about this rubbish?'

'That there is no way out, that you have come to the end of the line. That railyard was the end of the line for you - literally.'

'I don't understand one damned thing,' Macomber rasped, 'but if you open the drawer in that other bedside table over there you may grasp what a bloody fool you're making of yourself? Then the Scot waited.

It was a chance, no more, and Macomber knew that within a few minutes he would be dead or free. He scratched at his knee as though it tickled and this covered the slight movement of his leg testing the cord. The cable felt to be looped firmly round his ankle, but he could only test it by feel; if he dropped his eyes for even a second Dietrich would guess that something was wrong. Macomber waited, saying not a word while the Abwehr man wondered about the closed drawer. Everything depended on whether Macomber's offhand tone of voice, his arrogant manner, had half-convinced the German there might be something important in the bedside table. The Scot's expression had changed during the past minute, had become a mixture of boredom and contempt, as though the pistol had no existence, as though he thought the Abwehr man an idiot and had proof of the fact - inside the closed drawer.

The bait was tempting. The little table was close enough for Dietrich to lean forward, to reach out with one hand and open it, to see what was there. And he still had Macomber safely on the far side of the bed, his hands pacificially clasped in his lap, unable to come anywhere near the Abwehr man without standing up and running down the narrow space between wardrobe and bed - with Dietrich holding his pistol.

'What is in this drawer?' the Abwehr man asked waspishly.

Macomber said nothing and the battle of nerves continued as the Scot used the only weapon available - silence. The German watched him a few moments longer and then he nodded again, as much as to say very well, we will have a look at this great revelation. He stood up from the door, took a step towards the table, his pistol aimed point-blank at Macomber's chest, but his prisoner was looking at the door with a bored expression. Dietrich used bis left hand to reach down for the handle, the hand closest to Macomber, who had foreseen his dilemma. With his gun in his right hand while the other reached for the drawer it was physically impossible for him to keep the pistol muzzle trained on the Scot. Macomber was sitting with his hands limply at rest when the telephone beyond the locked door began to ring.

'Who will that be at this hour?' Dietrich demanded.

Macomber shrugged his shoulders, made no reply. The Abwehr man was becoming rattled - the Scot's refusal to speak was getting on his nerves and the muffled ringing of the phone irritated him. And he wanted to see what was inside the drawer before he found out who was calling Wolff, so everything became urgent. He grabbed at the handle, jerked open the drawer, saw a leather-bound book which might have been a diary, and while he stared at the book he wasn't watching the Scot. Still sitting on the bed, Macomber gave his right foot a tremendous jerk. The plug came out of the wall socket, the room went dark, the table lamp fell onto the bed. Macomber lay sprawled on the floor, waiting for the first shot. But the German didn't fire, which showed extraordinary self-control and quick thinking - a shot would reveal his position. To avoid his boots making a sound, Macomber swivelled on his knees, felt up to the coat, scooped the .Luger out of the pocket, then pressed his shoulder against the wardrobe and waited for endless seconds. Had he heard the quietest of noises, a swift slither? He was certain the Abwehr man had changed position, that he had moved along the wall and was now standing with his back to the locked door, facing the other end of the unstable wardrobe. Still on his knees, Macomber heaved massively. The wardrobe toppled, left him, over a hundredweight of solid wood moving through an angle of ninety degrees. It struck something brutally and Macomber heard a muffled cry which cut off suddenly as the wardrobe completed its turn and landed on its side. He used his left hand to locate the coat still attached to the hook, fumbled inside the other pocket and pulled out the torch. The beam showed Dietrich lying under the great weight, the upper half of his body turned to one side, crumpled and motionless, although he still wore his glasses. The left side of his head was oddly misshapen where the wardrobe had crushed his skull.

The phone bell had stopped ringing in the outer room but from its limited duration and the lateness of the hour Macomber guessed who had called him. He had difficulty easing open the door past Dietrich's sprawled body and then he went across the living-room and opened the front door. No sound from below. Locking the door, he went back into the bedroom, turned off the light switch, rescued the table lamp, fixed in the plug and then switched on again. The identity cards were inside the dead man's wallet which he levered from his breast pocket. Two of them, and Dietrich was who he claimed to be. One card - the card tucked away inside a secret pocket - identified him as a high-ranking officer of the Abwehr, but it was the other card which interested Macomber.
Dr Richard Dietrich, archaeologist
. He had heard of this practice - the carrying of a civilian card for use when the Abwehr wished to conceal its true identity. Amid the shambles of the room, with the body lying under the wardrobe he couldn't move without help, Macomber sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigar while he studied the card for several minutes. Then he went back to the living-room and called a number, puffing at his cigar while he waited for the operator to put him through. Baxter answered sleepily, became alert within a few seconds. 'Hermann here ...' Macomber began.

'I tried to call you a few minutes ago.'

'I know. Get over to Marie's - she's had some news from Munich.'

He slammed down the receiver, hoping the line wasn't tapped, but they had spoken in German and 'Marie's' identified no address; only the mention of Munich warned Baxter that a grave emergency had arisen. While he waited, Macomber sat calmly smoking because there was nothing more to do; the fiat held not a single piece of incriminating evidence and the only papers concerned the fictitious Wolff, papers prepared by the ingenious Baxter. Ten minutes after their brief call had ended, the Englishman who was posing as a Spanish mineralogist with Fascist sympathies arrived and he listened without speaking while Macomber explained what had happened, then looked at the two cards the Scot gave him. 'Roy, I want to use that card to take me out of Europe - the civilian version. Can you fix it up for me damned fast - you've still got some of my pictures, haven't you?'

'Should be able to.' Baxter, a wiry, sallow-faced individual in his late thirties stared up from his chair in the living-room, 'You really think you can get away with it - using the card of a man you've just killed? I'd say you were carrying it a bit far this time. The risk is colossal.'

Baxter studied the huge Scot who stood smoking his cigar without replying immediately. An impressive figure, Mac, he was thinking, but the last man he would personally have chosen to lead a sabotage team: he was too prominent, stood out too much in a crowd. It was characteristic of Macomber that he should have turned this seeming disadvantage into a major asset, always taking up an aggressive role when he was in the company of Germans, which in itself made his impersonation so much more convincing in Nazi-occupied Europe. The brutal thrust was absent from his personality now as, for a brief period only, he was able to be himself, to let the natural, dry-humoured smile show at the corners of his mouth. But to impersonate a senior officer of the Abwehr! The idea alone made Baxter want to shudder. Macomber smiled easily as he spoke.

'Look, Roy, as a cover Hermann Wolff is blown sky-high -the presence of Dietrich in there proves that. So I need a fresh identity. Audacity always pays - it's paid me all the way down through the Balkans and it will get me. safely home to Greece,'

'Sometimes, Mac, I think you like the big bluff. You play it that way because it suits your temperament as much as for any other reason...'

'I play it that way because it works. And I need that card fixed during the next few hours, so you're going to have to break all records. As soon as you've gone I'm clearing out of Bucharest and I'd like you to deliver the card to me in Giurgiu. I'll wait at that inn where we once spent a weekend. Can you manage it by noon? Today.'

'I might manage it.' Which was Baxter's way of saying he would be in Giurgiu by noon. 'There's the description to change as well as the photo, but the new quick-drying inks should help. I might even fix up the other one too,' he grinned quickly, 'just in case you want to go the whole hog.' He gestured towards the bedroom. 'Leaving the late Herr Dietrich in there?'

'No, he's got to disappear for several days, but if you'll help me shift that wardrobe I'll cope with the rest. And this, by the way, is your last job. Get that card to me and then make your own way home.' Macomber paused, a gleam of humour in his brown eyes. 'That is, unless you'd sooner come out with me?'

'Thanks, but no thanks. The sort of tricks you go in for would leave me a nervous wreck before we were halfway to the Turkish border.' Baxter grinned wryly. 'If it's all the same to you I'll creep out all by myself.' He looked towards the bedroom again. 'You really think it's wise trying to move him? The city is stiff with German army trucks swarming out to the railyard. Seems someone left a few bombs lying around the place earlier tonight.'

'Then I'll avoid the trucks. But if I'm using Herr Dietrich's card he has to disappear for a while. So long as they don't find him his local people won't know for sure what's happened -don't forget the Abwehr operate on their own a good deal.'

'Better you than me.' Baxter stood up, hoping he wasn't showing too great an eagerness to get away from the flat. 'What do I do with the store of demolition charges? Smash the time fuses and leave them there?'

'Don't bother.' Macomber checked his watch and moved impatiently. 'The Germans have a few more of them, so it's pointless and takes time. Now, I've got to get that body out of here.'

'I'll help you to shift that evidence if you like ...'

'Just help me to shift the wardrobe and then push off. I'd sooner deal with this on my own.' A typical reaction, Baxter thought, and he marvelled at the Scot's steady nerves. Forester, Dyce, Lemaitre - all the rest of the sabotage team were dead and Mac was the sole survivor, possibly because of his habit of working alone. And he can have it, he told himself as he followed Macomber inside the bedroom.

Macomber felt a little more relaxed as he drove the Volkswagen through the still-dark streets of Bucharest, a reaction which would have astounded the less phlegmatic Baxter. Down side roads which led to the main highway the Scot had already seen several army trucks trundling through the snow and for a short distance he must travel along that highway himself. The army blanket, thawed out by the heat of the car on his journey from the railyard, was thrown over the back seat, but it still assumed an odd shape - it had proved impossible to disguise completely the hump of Dietrich's body underneath. So relaxation was perhaps not a correct description of the Scot's present frame of mind. Even so he was relieved, relieved to have accomplished the mind-numbing trip he had made down the apartment block's fire-escape with the Abwehr man looped over his shoulder. The iron treads of the fire-escape had been coated with ice, he had heard a window open in the darkness during his grim journey down the staircase, and there had been no cover to hide his progress across the walled yard to the back street where he had parked his Volkswagen. But for Macomber the worst phase of this problem was over - providing he could avoid those army trucks.

He drove very slowly as he approached the exit to the main highway, then pulled up with his engine still ticking ever. He waited half a minute and when nothing passed the exit he drove out and turned left, north towards the railway, the direction which would take him into open country most quickly. He drove steadily at a "medium speed and his headlights showed up sombre buildings, their iron balconies laced with snow; later a desolate square, the trees naked and frosted with a bowed statue in the centre; later still shabby tenements forming a continuous wall of poverty. Lord, he'd be glad to leave this place. He was close to the outskirts when the emergency began. Driving at a sober speed along the empty highway, although the fog of fatigue was settling on his weary mind, he still watched the road keenly as he glanced at his watch. 4.15 AM. A little over two hours ago he had been lying on top of that petrol wagon with the sounds of the dogs in his ears. He turned a bend, saw an army truck emerging from a side street ahead, and then he was driving behind it as the vehicle rattled forward over the uneven road. Headlights glared in his rear mirror, roared up behind him, only slowing when he thought he was going to be run down by the second army truck. He was boxed in by the Wehrmacht.

There was no side turning he could take now except the turning a mile ahead he intended using, so he had to put up with the unwelcome escort as they drove on into the countryside. He glanced back quickly, saw the truck behind within twenty feet of the Volkswagen, and when he looked back again where the road curved he saw a stream of headlights coming up. He had slotted himself inside a whole convoy of German trucks. Clenching the cigar more tightly, he concentrated on holding the same speed as the vehicle ahead, his eyes fixed on the red light, the closed canvas covers, while in his rear mirror the oncoming headlights behind remained a constant glare. Even leaving this damned convoy was going to be tricky. He timed it carefully, drawing nearer to the vehicle in front as the vital side turning approached, and he was on the verge of signalling when he saw the pole barricading the side road, the German military policeman behind it. They had blocked it off to prevent civilian traffic entering this route. He drove past his escape exit without a glance while he searched for a solution, tried to foresee the next move. A mile farther on the road forked; the left fork leading to the railyard, the right one across the plain. But logically they would have blocked this off, too, so he would be forced to continue with the convoy until it reached the railyard he had half-destroyed, an area which must be swarming with troops. Perhaps, after all, Baxter had had a point.