The Istanbul Decision (14 page)

"Why wasn't she stopped, sir?" Carter asked. This entire thing was starting to go very bad.

Hawk sighed deeply. "Wasn't much we could do about it, really. We covered up the fact she was the one who tried to kill the President. We held her in the hospital. We could hardly let that out now." Hawk was silent for a moment. "There were a lot of reputations on the line. We didn't want another Watergate, with the press all over us and the President. It would have been disastrous. I don't think they wanted her over at her own embassy either. But they took her." Again there was the silence. "In the end she was a defecting spy who'd had a change of heart. No waves."

"Makes things a bit difficult here."

"There was nothing to be done about it, Nick. Nothing."

"Is she still at her embassy?"

"We don't think so. Manville thinks she shipped out in disguise. Probably on the plane to Cuba. From there…?"

"Yes, sir," Carter said. "That means she'll be on her way here."

"I'm assigning you some help. Lieutenant Commander j.g. Stewart. Naval Intelligence."

"Never heard the name."

"Mediterranean fleet. East European Theater expert."

"What's the contact routine?"

"It's all taken care of, Nick. You have the passive role. You know when the time comes. Meanwhile, good luck."

"Thanks," Carter said. He hung up, paid the operator at the desk, and stepped outside. Somehow the sunlight didn't seem nearly as bright and hopeful as it had ten minutes before.

Carter spent the remainder of the morning at the sidewalk cafe attached to the hotel. It was virtually deserted in October, most of the tourists having either gone home or moved on to the Alps to await the snow for skiing; and although it was cool in the shade, Carter managed to stay warm by sipping hot coffee and eating apple strudel while he pored over the Parisian papers.

At noon the whistle blew in the shoe factory down the street, and in a few minutes the cafe was inundated with sallow-faced secretaries and pimply mail clerks eager to enjoy the favorable turn in the weather. They talked amiably and joked until one o'clock, when they all disappeared as suddenly as they'd come, leaving Carter alone to drink his sixth or seventh coffee and to peruse a week-old edition of
The New York Times
the waiter had found for him in the lobby. He was leafing through the front section when he chanced to look up and notice that not all the young people had left. An attractive girl in skin-tight designer jeans and an American ski parka sat three or four tables away, staring at him. He quickly turned back to his reading, but not before he'd taken account of the lovely auburn tint in her hair, her wide, sea green eyes, and most particularly, her tanned skin.

He'd read another half dozen paragraphs, not really digesting any of it, when he heard her chair scrape against the pavement. Looking up, he saw her standing over him, the parka hanging open, revealing a beautifully suggestive curve beneath her buttoned-up sweater. She had prostitute written all over her.

"Mind if I sit down?" she asked in a street German.

"Macht nichts,"
he shrugged. He turned a page and studied the headlines. He looked up shortly and found her staring at him again.

"I'm wondering what kind of man you are."

"A busy one. Too busy for fun and games, I'm afraid. Maybe some other time."

"What do you think I am?" she protested indignantly but with a shade of astonishment, as though what he were implying were so out of line it wasn't to be believed.

"I don't think you want me to tell you. Let me just say I haven't any money for your services today."

Her mouth fell open in surprise, then a cloud of anger rolled in behind the sea green eyes. "Schweinhund…" she started to say, but he was ahead of her, having already stood and folded the paper under his arm.

That's not to say you're not pretty," he went on, "or that I might not enjoy it another time, but not today."

If this were an attempt to smooth things over, it failed miserably. A mixture of surprise and anger continued to mount in the girl's face until it seemed as if she'd lost the ability to talk. "W-What? W-What it'?" she stuttered.

Carter didn't bother to reply. He turned his back to her, crossed the cafe, paid his bill at the bar, then left the hotel by the front door.

He went straight to Schwetzler's apartment. Schwetzler was sitting in an armchair, gun oil, rags, and pieces of revolver laid out on the table beside him.

"Fog tonight," he said, greeting Carter cheerfully. He sighted up the barrel to see if it was clean. "That's how it is. During the day sun. Then at night the air cools and fog. A climate suitable for smugglers, yes? And the air is damp today. Should be a thick one."

Carter went to the window and pulled back the drape. Down in the street on the opposite corner the girl strained to look first in one direction, then in the other. Apparently she'd lost him when he turned in from the main street.

"Friedrich," he said, calling him over. "Know her?"

Schwetzler looked down over Carter's shoulder. "No," he said after a moment's study. "But I'd like to, even at my age. Is she an agent?"

"I don't know."

They watched as the girl shrugged and retraced her steps up the side street. "If she isn't," Carter said, "I just blew one of the better opportunities of my life."

The fog was everything Schwetzler had promised. It hung in the air like a curtain, impeding pedestrians and slowing automobile traffic to a crawl. They drove out the lake road until it became little more than a cart path, and they lost sight of it even in the high beams. Schwetzler parked, and they went the rest of the distance on foot.

The skiff was moored to a single piling in a sea of reeds that obscured it completely from view. Carter was amazed his companion was able to find it.

"We do this two, sometimes three nights a week in heavier fog than this," he explained. Tonight is easy. Usually I have heavy boxes to carry."

They got into the boat, and Schwetzler began rowing. In the fog the night seemed to close around them with only the occasional bleat of a foghorn to the northwest to orient them.

"How do you find the shack in all this?" Carter asked.

"I hear it. The waves play a tune on the pilings. Listen!" He held up a finger for quiet. There it is!" He turned several degrees starboard and continued to row.

Even with Schwetzler's sonar guidance, it took them half an hour to reach the shack. Once there, they waited another hour and a half before they heard the first
slow chug-chug
of a diesel engine growing steadily closer.

"Hallo! Wer ist da?"
called a voice.

"Why is he speaking German?" Carter asked suspiciously, grabbing Schwetzler's arm.

"What would you have him speak in these waters? Hungarian?
Hier!"
Schwetzler called back.

The lumbering hull of a fishing boat appeared out of the mist and nuzzled itself against the pier. Her sole occupant, a young man in a black sweater and sailor's watch cap, threw over a line and Schwetzler secured it.

"Nicholas, this is my son-in-law, Emo Vadas," Schwetzler said as the young man stepped onto the pier.

"Emo, this is Nicholas Carter. He is…"

"Ein Amerikaner,"
finished Vadas, shaking Carter's hand.

"Is it so obvious?"

"No, but every frontier guard from Bratislava to Szombathely is looking for you. They have orders to shoot to kill."

"Where did you hear this?" demanded Schwetzler.

"They are talking about it as far east as Györ."

"Kobelev," said Carter, turning to Schwetzler.

"But I don't understand. Why would he want you dead when he has still to negotiate for his daughter?"

"His daughter escaped. She's probably on her way to him right now."

"Then your position is very grave," said Schwetzler, shaking his head.

"Not as grave as the girl's he's holding captive."

"Do you think she is still alive?"

"Maybe. Kobelev isn't on the best of terms with his home base. It's possible he hasn't been told yet. Maybe he figures that now that I've had a chance to relay his demands to my superiors, I'm expendable. He's wanted me dead for a long time."

"Then I pity you, my friend. You are a hunted man. As a man who has also been hunted in his time, I know how it feels."

"This is idle talk," Vadas put in impatiently. "And it is not getting us any closer to Hungary. We must move now. The guard boats are double tonight."

The three men quickly set to work emptying the shack of its contents: cases of French wines, bolts of brightly colored cloth, boxes of perfume and other luxury items, and stacks of Western clothing, including denim jackets and blue jeans. They stashed the contraband belowdecks, men Schwetzler gave Carter's hand a solemn, knowing shake, and stepped from the gunwale onto the pier. The diesel sputtered into life, and Schwetzler threw the mooring line onto the deck. Carter watched from the bridge as Schwetzler waved once; as the boat moved away, he was quickly swallowed by the fog.

The young captain spun the helm to port and headed for open water. "This boat isn't built for speed, so I take it you use the fog as a screen rather than trying to outrun them, is that it?" Carter shouted over the engine.

Vadas nodded, keeping his eyes riveted on the windshield. Carter stared uneasily at the seemingly impenetrable barrier of gray-white mist.

"The question is, how do you navigate in this pea soup? How do you keep from running aground?"

Vadas suddenly cut the engine and held up a finger. Across the water came the faint
bong
of a buoy bell. "They are placed wherever there is danger," Vadas said. "All of them sound slightly different. If one knows them well, they will lead one directly down the lake."

It was a good thing they were a musical family, Carter thought, or he'd have been reduced to trying to row across this lake in a skiff. He turned and went belowdecks. There he found a narrow bench and sat down, picking up an East German fishing catalogue from the map table, but he didn't read any of it. He just held it open on his lap and stared into space, wondering how Cynthia was doing and if she'd regained consciousness, and thinking perhaps it would be better if she hadn't.

The engine ceased while Vadas listened for a buoy. Carter listened along with him. Vadas started the engine again and veered starboard for several minutes, then pulled around to the left. At this rate their progress was erratic. Carter thought with some satisfaction, so even if the frontier guard was outfitted with sonar detection equipment, the old trawler would still be tough to intercept.

The gentle motion of the boat made him drowsy. He laid his head back against the bulwark and closed his eyes. Another stop, another moment of listening, then start again. The galley and his surroundings began to move into the unconscious part of his mind, mixing with other images, when the engine stopped once more, and this time no bell sounded. Instead, the drone of another, much more powerful engine reverberated through the fog, growing steadily louder.

Carter jerked awake and hurried up to the bridge. Vadas turned from the helm as Carter rushed into the cabin. Two hundred yards and closing. Vadas cut the power, plunging the cabin into darkness except for a shaft of light streaming out of the gangway from below. Carter dashed down the stairs and pawed until he hit the switch. It was pitch black only for a second when a bright light beamed in through the porthole. The noise of the approaching engine whined to a peak, and the old trawler began to rock violently. Carter estimated the distance at twenty-five yards.

The lights disappeared quickly, then the engine noise diminished as it steamed into the distance. Carter came slowly up the stairs. "I can't believe they didn't see us," he said.

"The fog," said Vadas. "Be prepared. There'll be others."

They moved slowly ahead in complete darkness for the next quarter of an hour, then stopped again and listened. In the silence the night pulled itself around them, black and damp. The very atmosphere of the cabin had turned to fog. It had penetrated Carter's clothes, and its dampness filled his nostrils. In the distance a buoy tolled like a death knell.

"Funny," said Vadas. "I would have sworn that should have been on the starboard side, not the port." He hastily swung the wheel to starboard when it suddenly dawned on Carter that this was the direction from which the guard boat had been coming.

"Hey!" he shouted. "Maybe they changed the…"

He never completed the sentence. A deafening screech, like a million gulls all diving at once, tore through the cabin, and the deck pitched crazily, tossing Vadas off-balance and ramming his head into the control panel. He rolled against the bulwark, then onto the window, which broke. He hung for a moment by the window frame, black water surging up beneath him, then he slipped through and disappeared.

Carter had caught hold of the pilot's chair, and he clung to it, trying to keep from sliding down the floor and following Vadas. He hung by his hands for what seemed many minutes, although in reality it couldn't have been more than one or two, then managed to wedge a foot against the bulkhead alongside the gangway and swung over. Below him waves of black water lapped the cabin windows, gushing in the hole through which Vadas had vanished.

He crawled down the wall of the gangway, which now had become its floor, and found belowdecks to be in worse shape than the cabin. A fist of wet rock had pierced the hull, and water was steadily running in.

They'd run aground, although whether near shore or on some outcropping of rock in the middle of the lake was impossible to tell.

The boat creaked suddenly like a door being swung open on rusty hinges, and his perch in the gangway shifted another ten degrees from vertical. She was on the verge of rolling out. If he were caught in here, he'd drown.