The Istanbul Decision (9 page)

Carter watched the taxi round the comer out of sight, men he went in to talk with the woman behind the desk. It was she who had talked with the train staff by radio, and although her distaste for the Russians and what they'd done was admirable, she wasn't able to add anything to what the chef had already told him. Finally she said that if he were going to be a chef, he'd need a uniform, and she gave him the address of a store in Schillerstrasse.

The store's tailor turned out to be tight-lipped and efficient, like most German professional people; a slash of chalk along the sleeve and another across the from sufficed for altering the jacket, but the trousers were another matter. Carter took the man aside and explained his rather special problem.

He held out the Luger in its leather holster, which was shiny from constant handling. "Normally, you see, I wear her under here." He held the holster up under his arm. "But I can rig the straps around my waist, like this." He put the holster on like a belt and turned the gun until it rested in the small of his back. "This makes it more difficult for them to find in a search. What I need, then, is a little extra give in the pants to cover it. Maybe an insert or two."

The tailor nodded and quickly took some measurements of the gun and of Carter's waist with the gun in place. Then he left, and Carter took a chair in the front of the shop and began reading the Viennese daily he found lying across it.

There was nothing in the newspaper about the train or the kidnapping, and this pleased him. Apparently the authorities were cooperating as Hawk had said.

In less than an hour the uniform was ready. Carter tried it on, and the jacket and pants fit perfectly. Even Wilhelmina was snug and virtually undetectable in a V-shaped pouch at his back. A white chef's hat and he could easily have passed for a Cordon Bleu graduate.

He thanked the tailor and told him to wrap the uniform. Then he dressed again in his street clothes, gathered up the packages, and left. On the way back to the tour office he bought a secondhand leather suitcase covered with stickers from European resort cities.

He put the uniform on in a small washroom in the rear of the tour office, then pulled all the American labels out of his clothes and packed them in the old suitcase. Then he put on the chef's hat and looked at himself in the mirror.

He felt vaguely ridiculous, but that was to be expected. The big question was: would he be recognized? Kobelev would know him immediately, of course, having met him before, but he was fairly certain Kobelev would not be doing the preliminary inspection. According to the chef, members of the train's staff who had put in twice their normal shift had been allowed off in Salzburg and replacements allowed to board (which gave one some indication of the importance Kobelev placed on his personal comfort). These replacements had been given only the most cursory going-over by a big Russian guard whom the chef had described ("
Grand, monsieur, très grand.
As beeg as le grand Charles himself. Beegair.") and whom Carter was certain he'd never seen. All this assumed, of course, that this guard — whoever he was — had never seen Carter's photograph, and while Carter made it a point of professional caution never to have pictures taken, it was always a risky business betting what Russian intelligence did or did not let its underlings know and see.

At any rate, he felt he didn't need any more of a foothold than mere access to the train. Once on, he'd find Kobelev and do what he had to do.

As he stared at his reflection, a number of things went through his mind, including the fact that Kobelev was by far the most able adversary he'd ever faced. For a moment the thought made him uneasy. But then he felt Hugo strapped to his arm, Wilhelmina against the small of his back, and Pierre in its pouch high on his thigh, and there was solace in knowing they were close at hand.

After all, he was well-trained. Hawk saw to that. Refresher courses every six months in small arms and antipersonnel technology, not to mention constant workouts to keep himself in peak physical condition. And his instincts, too, honed by invaluable experience — a million refinements of the agent's art accomplished by years of grinding daily routine. He was, in short, the best the American side had to offer.

Unfortunately, he thought, as he packed up the suitcase where it lay across the toilet seat, Kobelev was the best their side had as well.

Outside, the woman behind the desk excitedly told him about a piece of luck she'd had locating suitable identification. One of the porters had lost his passport on board, and it had been found by a maintenance man and left in the office. It even had a card from the French caterer's union. Of course, she said, only a myopic customs official on a foggy day would ever think the man in the photograph and Carter were one and the same, but still it provided something for him to flash in case he was asked.

Carter, who carried his own false papers, could not bring himself to disappoint her. He thanked her with a tip of his chef's hat and stuffed the passport in the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he said good-bye and strode out the door.

Two blocks away in front of the Osterreicher Hotel he caught a cab and told the driver to take him to the headquarters of the Viennese police. The driver turned into Goethestrasse, jerked to a halt in front of a gargoyle-encrusted building. Carter got out of the cab and went in.

At the front desk he identified himself as the American agent come to handle the kidnapped train. He was immediately ushered in to see the superintendent who turned out to be a small balding man with a Prussian mustache. The police chief studied his papers, then tossed them back across the desk. He said he assumed Carter was in disguise and had not come to cook him dinner.

Carter assured him he would make no attempt to take over the train while on Viennese soil, and the superintendent asked if he could extend that to include all of Austria and not move against the Russians until the train reached the Austro-Hungarian border sometime the following morning. After all, he explained, the Russians still enjoyed favorable relations with the Hungarians, and one must live with one's neighbors, wasn't that so? His friends in State Security would appreciate it.

Carter agreed to the superintendent's request, even though in truth he hadn't the vaguest idea of what he was going to do once on board. The superintendent then made a call and when he hung up, told Carter he was cleared to board the train whenever he wished. Carter thanked him and left.

Surprisingly, the train was not surrounded by police barricades and crowds of onlookers as Carter had expected. The entire fifteen cars of the Orient Express, including its gleaming black antique steam engine, rested on a side track in a far corner of the rail yard awaiting the time it could resume its scheduled place in the scheme of European rail traffic, and although movement was visible behind the dusty car windows, the area around the train seemed deserted. All the same, as he made his way across the tracks, he had the feeling he was being watched.

The feeling was confirmed when a door opened in a small weathered shack nearby and a policeman wearing the typical Austrian helmet, similar to those worn by the Kaiser's army in World War I, came out to intercept him. "Who are you?" he asked in German.

"The chef," Carter replied. He didn't know if the cop had been informed of what was happening or not.

"Your papers."

Carter handed him the passport the woman in the tour office had given him. The man studied it, shook his head, and gave it back. "I don't know who you people think you're fooling," he said with disgust. "Special forces. Secrecy. Nonsense, if you ask me. Hit them hard and fast. That's the way we would have done it in the old days."

Carter nodded and grunted and shoved the porter's passport back into the pocket of his jacket and continued his solitary way to the train.

He chose a middle car, threw his bag to the top of the boarding ladder, and was about to climb up when a snub-nosed revolver appeared out of the darkness at the top of the stairs. The barrel looked to be the size of a bazooka. Carter raised his hands and backed off.

As the hand holding the gun emerged from the gloom and became an arm, then a shoulder, Carter's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Coming toward him was one of the largest, most simianlike men Carter had ever seen: head as large as a bowling ball, covered with short black hair and looking about as impenetrable; forehead of an ape, only inches from widow's peak to bushy brows and yet two handspans across, framing a lantern-jawed face in which each feature was grossly outsize, including huge lips that ill concealed a set of broken, ragged-looking teeth. And yet, big as it was, the head was too small for the body. An enormous physique stuffed into clothes that looked as though he'd swum in them, let them dry in place, and they'd shrunk several sizes. Biceps, deltoid, and pectoral muscles threatened to burst every seam. Carter assailed the man first in German, then in French, neither of which seemed to have any effect. The monster only grunted several times and motioned with his gun for Carter to raise his hands even higher.

Then his huge hands reached out and began groping Carter's clothes. Carter held his breath while large fingers closed almost completely around biceps and thighs. He felt them on his legs and shoulders, even his ankles, but they missed by some miracle the V-shaped pouch at the small of his back where Wilhelmina lay hidden.

The man stood, looking down with beady, dull eyes from about the same height as an adult looks down on a child, and jerked his head in the direction of the train.

Carter saw no reason to wait to be asked twice. He climbed hastily up the stairs, opened the door, and went inside.

As it turned out, he'd found the rear of the dining car on the first try. The assistant chef and two waiters, who were standing and talking in a gleaming white, although very compact kitchen, looked at him when he came in, their eyes registering puzzlement and fear. Partly because they had no idea who he was, thought Carter, and partly because after all that had happened in the last sixteen hours, they'd come to fear everything.

Although Nick was considered, among some of his friends, to be a pretty fair gourmet cook, he had never prepared a meal for such a large group before. The situation was further complicated by the presence of Vasili Shurin (which Carter soon learned was the Russian giant's name).

He stood like a huge piece of misplaced furniture at the end of one of the preparation counters, hands behind his back, grinning a ragged-toothed idiotic grin, blocking the flow of traffic so that whenever a tray of dishes or a pan of food needed transportation from one end of the narrow kitchen to the other, the transporter had to yell to Shurin to stand back, a situation made even more difficult by the fact that the man understood neither French nor German, and his Russian vocabulary seemed to be limited to the simplest words. Still he stood, smiling moronically and nodding in a mockery of understanding whenever spoken to, and watched pop-eyed as each new ingredient was added to the main dishes.

Fortunately, Carter had arrived late, and the assistant chef had taken it upon himself to prepare
coq au vin
casseroles in case the chef were delayed or unable to board for some reason. It was upon this contingency that they now fell back, fixing the accompanying French-cut string beans almondine and thin, buttered noodles, and crepes filled with pureed chestnuts for dessert — all in all, an admirable dinner, although Carter was able to convince the assistant chef to sabotage it in small ways to keep Kobelev from sending for the chef to thank him in person.

As far as the actual cooking, Carter's role consisted of running back and forth tasting and clucking his tongue and watching others do the work, mostly for Shurin's benefit, and cornering each waiter, porter, and anyone else who had been outside the kitchen to learn as much about the layout of the train and the habits of the guards as he could.

The salon car where Cynthia was being held was the second car forward from the dining car. In between was a club car with a small bar and some additional seating for diners. At the bar sat a hatchet-faced man with a submachine gun on his knees. The weapon seemed to be a physical part of him; no one had seen him put it down, even to eat.

The salon car itself consisted of another small bar, some swivel chairs, tables, and a piano. A guard stood at either door and allowed entrance to no one, not even to the waiter with the dinner cart, so what was going on inside — what condition Cynthia might be in, and the mood of Kobelev — was unknown.

After Carter had learned everything he could, he decided to do a little exploring on his own. Swearing loudly in French, which startled everyone, he said he'd forgotten some indispensable, very special ingredient for the beans almondine. Begging his pardon, he squeezed past Shurin and slipped into the storage area at the back of the car. He watched for a moment to make sure Shurin was occupied elsewhere, then opened the rear door and stepped out into the narrow enclosure over the coupling between the cars.

Here the smell of exhaust and engine oil was strong. On either side was a hinged half door that opened inward. Carter opened it, stuck out his head, and looked up and down the track. Southby had not exaggerated about the age of the cars. A narrow ladder ran up the side to the roof of each of them, as it did on most passenger cars before the advent of streamlining and as it still did on freight cars.

Carter closed the door and went back inside. In the roof of the kitchen was a small square portal for ventilation such as were used before air conditioning. Through the pass-through be could see there was one in the dining area as well.

His mind began to churn, formulating a plan, as he walked toward the front of the kitchen. He'd turned sideways and was slipping between Shurin's enormous chest and the counter when Wilhelmina knocked against the Formica with a metallic clunk. Anxiously Carter looked up to see if Shurin had heard, but the little apelike eyes were fixed on the other end of the car where the assistant chef was checking on the chicken.