Nothing about it made sense. Meeting aboard the train which traversed the distance between Tirana and Durazzo was madness. And even if by some miracle all went well, once he was at Durazzo and had it, there were dangerous miles to be traveled down the Albanian coastline before reaching Valona and the quick transfer by night across the Strait of Otranto to the comparative safety of Italy. And once there, what?
When the previous president had begun his one-man crusade to replace dangerously but usefully planted agents with long-distance electronic intelligence gatherers, a number of the old-timers had predicted just this sort of thing: When a man was needed on the spot, he wouldn’t be there; no one would be there and someone would have to be sent in.
It was nice to know, Thomas Alyard thought as he gazed at his reflection against the night-black window of the train, that he was “someone.” He ran the fingers of both hands back through his dark brown hair.
The phone had rung. The girl he’d been keeping company with for the last six months had leaned across him, her bare breasts brushing against his face, answered, roused him to full wakefulness, told him, “Somebody who says his name is Mario, Thomas. He wants to speak with you.”
Thomas Alyard didn’t know a man named Mario, but he did know a code sequence that started that way. “This is Thomas Alyard. ”
“This is Mario. You need to come at once. Signore Brownlee is very sick.”
“What seems to be wrong with him?”
“His fever is one hundred and two how you count it.”
“Has the doctor been called?”
“It took one hour to reach him.”
“I’ll be right there.” Alyard hung up, reached for the Bible in the nightstand drawer beside the bed and glanced quickly at Appalonia. She was very beautiful and, more important at the moment, already asleep. He squinted in the yellow light from the bedside lamp as he flipped pages. At last, he turned to page 102 and read the first full verse on the page, the temperature of the nonexistent Mr. Brownlee giving him the page, the number one for how long it had taken to contact the doctor telling him the verse. Verse one of Leviticus, where the Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. The basement intelligence suite at the Embassy. That had seemed to make poor sense as well, going to so obvious a location for his assignment. And after he had been told what his assignment was to be, it had seemed even more nonsensical than ever.
It was a logical given that bacteriological work was never done near large concentrations of people. Just in case. Or, at least, never done near large concentrations of your own people.
Yet, a secure location was required. And the more remote the better.
Hence, Albania, a ragged bite taken out of the west face of the Balkan Peninsula between Yugoslavia to the north and Greece to the south. Communist, of course, but separated from the chaotic democracy of Italy by only forty miles of the Adriatic at its nearest point.
The compartment in which Thomas Alyard sat was empty except for him, the route between the capital of Tirana and the coastal city of Durazzo not the most heavily trafficked even during more conventional hours. Albania—a country comprised largely of farmers denied all but the most rudimentary contacts with the West, and hence stifled in the iron fists of a party leadership that was among the most reactionary of Communist governments.
Central Intelligence Agency Case Officer Thomas Alyard had flown from Italy to Greece, leaving the Athens airport that was uneasily shared with Helenikon United States Air Force Base by private plane which, after too many stops, had gotten Swiss businessman Thomas Rheinhold to Tirana just three hours before the train was to depart. There had, as yet, been no sign of David Stakowski.
And meetings delayed were frequently meetings compromised.
Alyard sometimes wished he was living in a book or a movie. As an American “agent,” he was certainly the good guy, and in books and movies, the good guy was easily able to enter enemy-occupied territory with all sorts of weapons. There was occasionally some daring-do required, but there was always the slavishly loving heroine to fall into bed with afterward. But this was reality and he had no weapon but his wits, and the edge of this solitary weapon was dulled by the lack of sleep and the sudden, prolonged travel since “Mario’s” wake-up call. He had left word that Appalonia be told some convenient lie so she wouldn’t be angry with him when he returned, but there was no way to know if anyone had bothered to tell her anything. He didn’t want to lose her. He was not in the market for a lovestruck gypsy girl or a defecting Russian cipher clerk. Appalonia satisfied him more than any woman ever had.
More cheerful thoughts were needed, but there were none to be had. So Alyard focused his attention on the details of the assignment, running them over again in his head. David Stakowski, age twenty-nine, was a CIA Case Officer as well, but assigned to the United States Embassy in Moscow as a cultural attache, the universal euphemism for “spy.” Stakowski had been running an Eastern European newsman named Wilton Voroncek. Voroncek had requested money through Stakowski, a quite large sum with which Voroncek would pay his agent-in-place who held a position of some responsibility at The Peoples’ Institute For Biological Progress, a biowarfare laboratory on the Drina, the river which knifed through the northernmost portion of Albania out of Yugoslavia, the laboratory all but inaccessible because of the rugged mountains which surrounded it. What Voroncek had paid his man for was the solitary existing sample (supposedly) of an as-yet-unnamed virus, as well as the destruction of the laboratory notes and tapes and any other data vital to its efficient duplication by the Soviet scientists who had created it from the work of a now dead (natural causes, it was presumed) German scientist of considerably advanced age.
It was estimated that it would take Soviet scientists at least three months to duplicate their work without the inspirational leadership of the dead German, about as long as it would take the teams of scientists already being assembled in the United States scheduled round-the-clock to analyze the sample of the viral agent and duplicate it. Each nation would quietly let the other know that it had the virus and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction would once again spare mankind enduring a weapon of unimaginable destructive capabilities. What the virus caused was something Alyard had not been told, if anyone knew.
The trick was to get the sample from Stakowski, who was as hot as a two-dollar pistol, and then spirit it to America. Stakowski would never be able to get out of Albania with it, might well have to sit it out in Albania for months until he could quietly slip over into Greece or get across the Adriatic to Italy.
The problem arose out of Stakowski’s inexperience. The logical procedure, once Stakowski was approached by Voroncek, would have been to get the agent-in-place out from under Voroncek’s control and put him under control of someone experienced in clandestine operations of such delicacy, cutting out Voroncek and Stakowski completely. If the agent-in-place would work for no one but Voroncek (some private liaison, for example; or, something as basic as a sense of comfortable security), then Voroncek would be put under direct control of the more experienced field officer. But any way the problem was viewed, logic would have to dictate Stakowski’s quick and total exclusion. Logic had not only been unable to prevail, but as Alyard understood, logic had never once been considered.
Alyard lit his pipe, watching the grey smoke as it curled round his reflection on the window.
Voroncek would have pocketed the bulk of the money for his own profit, of course. What would some laboratory supervisor who had spent the last decade or so living in the mountains of Albania do with that kind of money anyway? Why add to the fellow’s troubles? A hundred thousand dollars was allocated, likely meaning the agent-in-place who did all the dangerous dirty work had gotten a quarter of that or less. But, as Alyard understood it, the issue of money was academic now. The theft of the specimen and the destruction of the notes and lab tapes were discovered more quickly than any of the wizards planning the thing had supposed, the agent-in-place getting as far as Split on the Yugoslav coast where Voroncek was to have met him to receive the specimen and where Stakowski was to have met Voroncek. A boat was to have taken Stakowski across the Adriatic to San Marino. But nothing ever really got that far.
Once the theft at the laboratory was discovered—the security at the laboratory was KGB—the agent-in-place was immediately pegged as the culprit.
The agent-in-place (no name had been supplied Alyard at his briefing and he suddenly wondered if anyone knew it or thought it even important enough to bother knowing) had been cornered in Split. But whoever the nameless fellow had been, he had to have been tough. When Voroncek had rendezvoused—late—his agent-in-place had already been shot to death, twice in the throat and once in the chest, but managed to stab to death his assassin. Voroncek had taken the specimen and then compounded all the foregoing stupidity with a stroke of unbelievable idiocy: Voroncek had gone directly to the pre-arranged meeting with Stakowski. The KGB or the Albanian secret police—no one was sure yet—had been at Voroncek’s heels and an actual gunfight had broken out. The results included Voroncek’s death, Stakowski’s getting control of the virus and barely getting away, and some assorted deaths and gunshot wounds, Stakowski almost miraculously not among them.
Stakowski had then done something moderately intelligent. Instead of heading for freedom, he had gone into Albania, like a purposeful salmon going against the flow of the security stream. It had worked, up to a point. If Stakowski didn’t show up soon, apparently it hadn’t worked that well.
Alyard’s pipe had gone out and he started to refill it when he heard the knock at the compartment door, sharper sounding over the rattle of the train car as it sped over the tracks.
Thomas Alyard asked in German, the agreed upon language since Stakowski spoke it, and as a Swiss Thomas Rheinhold would speak it too, “One moment, please?”
He approached the door, his pipe stem turned outward in his hand. He wasn’t entirely weaponless, the stem a tough phenolic resin material and, when used properly, capable of inflicting considerable injury when thrust to a vital area.
Alyard opened the door a crack and peered into the corridor. It was Stakowski, looking a bit shopworn and rather tired but otherwise just as bland as his photograph. Hair that if a woman had worn it would have been called ash blonde, a little on the longish side for anything but a musician, an actor or a college boy; a chubby face with cheeks that in the photograph had seemed almost rosy but now seemed merely flushed with exertion, the lips grey and parched looking, gold-wire-rimmed glasses adding to the look of confused innocence the face seemed almost to exude; narrow shoulders under a rumpled, once-expensive looking Harris Tweed sportcoat, a khaki trench coat folded neatly over the left forearm; a double chin all but obscured the Windsor knot of the tie, some phantom regimental or old school stripes.
But the code phrase was still required, if only Stakowski knew it. “I, er, was needing to exchange a large note for smaller denominations so I could purchase cigarettes. Could I trouble you?”
“I have little on me in Albanian leks, I’m afraid. Only Swiss francs. Wait!” And Alyard started to dig in his pockets. “I may have a bit extra.”
“You would save my life.”
Thomas Alyard took his left hand from his jacket pocket and switched the pipe to it. He opened the door the rest of the way, Stakowski almost collapsing inside. “Thank God,” Stakowski whispered hoarsely. “I had no picture.”
“Here—sit down,” Alyard told the fellow, guiding him to the opposite seat from his own, then sitting down on the edge, staring intently at Stakowski for a moment. It almost seemed as though Stakowski was beginning to hyperventilate. “Wait …” And Alyard stood, pulled over his overnighter and dug into it for a moment, the pipe going back into his teeth. He found the beaten metal hip flask and opened it. “Here. Have some of this.” Stakowski seemed to hesitate. “It’s all right. I don’t have diseases or anything. And let’s hope you don’t.” Stakowski nodded then, taking the flask. “Looks like you’ve had a rough time.” Stakowski drank from the flask, coughed, wiped the mouthpiece on his sleeve and handed it back. Alyard wiped it again and took a swallow from it himself. “Do you have it?”
“Yes.”
“Were you followed?Or do you know?”
“I was followed to the train, but not to your compartment.”
“Do you have any kind of a weapon?”
“Yes, this.” Stakowski reached under his jacket, Alyard tensing just in case, Stakowski’s right hand reemerging with a pistol, but in no position to shoot it, the gun—a Walther PPK—hetd as though it were radioactive. “Here.” Stakowski offered it to him, Alyard nodding, pocketing it as he went to the compartment door and locked it. He took the gun back out and began to examine it. “I’m scared to death.”
Alyard removed the little pistol’s magazine, worked the slide back. No round had been cambered. “It takes a brave man to admit fear,” he told Stakowski to be more or less comforting. The PPK was in .380, 9mm Short in European parlance, the magazine containing only six rounds, solids. “Any more for this?” Alyard raised his eyebrows as he slapped the spine of the magazine against the palm of his hand and then shoved it up the butt.
“No.”
Alyard worked the slide, chambering a round, setting the safety to on. “Here. Work this lever on the slide and—”
“No. You keep it. I never liked guns to begin with. Since this thing started I’ve seen enough shooting to last a lifetime.”
“Not the gun, but the man behind it who’s good or evil, to like or dislike. All right. Anyway, where’s the stuff?”
“Here.” Stakowski—unbelievably—just reached into the outside pocket of his sportcoat and took out a long, rather fat velvet maroon jewelry box, passing it over.
Alyard dropped the little pistol into his right hip pocket and gingerly opened the jewelry box. It was lined with grey foam rubber inside, a french-fitted niche cut for an ampule approximately three inches in length and perhaps a half-inch in diameter. Rounded at one end, squared off with a screw-in cap at the other, the ampule was made of some heavy-seeming sort of glass. “What the hell does this stuff do? I mean, just in case I drop it or something, I’d like to know what symptoms to expect.”
“I don’t know. But I know it’s fuckin’ deadly. There’s enough in there to kill off a small city, from what I was told.”
Alyard looked once more at the ampule, then carefully closed the case. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t think of a better place for it than his pocket, so he put it there. “How many followed you?”
“Three.”
“Whose people?”
“Albanian secret police, I think. I don’t know. Could have been KGB. I gotta get outa here. You got what I need?”
Alyard crossed his legs, taking off his left shoe, twisting the heel, then turning it over. Three small, perfectly faceted blue-white stones tumbled into his palm. It would have been easy to give Stakowski only two, because Stakowski would have had no way of knowing what form his escape money would take. And Stakowski would most likely never get out of Albania alive. “These are for you. If you’re careful—I’ll give you the names of the right fences in Durazzo—you’ll have money to spare. There’s a lot of smuggling in Albania. It’s a long coast. You shouldn’t have trouble.” He was planning to use a smuggler himself to cross the Adriatic, but that was none of Stakowski’s business. He gave Stakowski the diamonds. This was a rich operation. “Here.” He reached into a breast pocket and took out a small notebook, careful to open the rings rather than rip out the sheets, handing them over to Stakowski. “The first five appointments are the names of the fences you can try. The last appointment breaks down into the name of the man you should contact when you feel things have cooled down. He can get you across the Adriatic, then. They said you knew Bright’s Shorthand Alphabet. Work the characters from back to front using numbers and then apply the numbers to the appointment names from the middle outward. If there’s an even number of characters, disregard the middle one to the right. Work left to right all the way through. Got it?”
“Disregard the double on the right and work left to right all the way through. All right.”
“Then you’ll need this.” Alyard went into his pockets again, taking out his wallet, giving the special packet of leks to Stakowski. “Should be enough dough to see you through until you can fence those stones. And take your gun back. You’re the one who’s more likely to need it.”
“I don’t want it. Get rid of it yourself if you don’t want it.”
Alyard nodded. Rather than making an issue of it, he could drop it in a trash can somewhere and, if Stakowski had led the KGB or the Albanian secret police to his door, however incriminating a gun might be, it might save his life, too. “Fine. Good luck, huh?”
Alyard extended his hand.
Stakowski took it, Stakowski’s hand clammy with sweat. “Thanks, man.”
“Look me up when you get to Italy, huh?”
“Yeah. Gotta. I owe you a drink.”
“You got it right there.” Alyard walked Stakowski to the compartment door, let him out and glanced up and down the corridor as he did. There was a woman with an ill-fitting grey coat, grey-steaked brown hair partially covered with a babushka. Alyard closed the door….
The train was slowing already and Ephraim Vots—it had been Volshinski once—started running, sticking his fedora down low over his eyes so it wouldn’t catch in the wind and sail off. Wave after wave of arctic fronts had been bombarding Europe since late fall, and by now he was used to the constant cold temperatures and snow. In the British Isles, he had heard, there was even now a terrible blizzard. He had liked Great Britain, serving out almost exactly halfway through a standard-length “illegal” tour there but having to get out when the project he had been working for just over three years went suddenly very sour. Instead of a rebuke, he had been given a promotion. Once he had no longer been an illegal, he had divorced his wife. To have done so before would have made him seem suspicious to his superiors and invited disaster. He saw his two children when he could, had been with them in Moscow when the man from Derzhinsky Square had come telling him that he was needed. Then a solitary flight to Albania and the rapid determination that the viral agent had been gotten out of the research complex. But the only personnel close enough to be of any use had been Albanian secret police, the English term assholes the best way to describe their ability level. And the man and the ampule of the viral agent had been lost. Then there had been a gunfight and the fellow Wilton Vironcek (whom he an hour afterward had found out had been a double worked by the GRU against U.S. Central Intelligence) had been killed and the damned viral agent lost again. This time to a man Vols had seen several times in Moscow, David Stakowski, the CIA resident.
The rear door of the last car was opening and Vols quickened his pace. The Western concept of jogging for physical fitness was certainly paying off tonight. He reached the rear car and jumped, hands coming for his hands, and he was on the platform, losing his footing for an instant on the slippery metal, but then catching himself. “I am all right,” he said, at last seeing the face. He had thought the hands had felt strangely soft.
It was Anna, a half dozen last names supplied over the years, but the first name all he was ever certain enough to use. “Ephraim.”
He embraced her briefly, already feeling the sweat starting under his heavy winter coat from the exertion of the run. “Is Stakowski aboard?”
“He has transferred the ampule to another man. The conductor says he travels under a Swiss passport and is named Thomas Rheinhold. I think he is American.”
“Let’s see then.”
She opened the door and there was a wide shaft of yellow white light and he stepped through after her, closing the door behind him, trying to force out the sound of the metal wheels clacking over the metal rails. Vols opened his coat. He looked at Anna. He laughed. “You look twenty years older.”
She laughed, retying her floral-print scarf under her chin. “The dye in my hair washes out. Maybe I can show you after this business. And the coat is three sizes too large.”
“I must get this infernal thing back to Moscow after it’s over. Can you come to Moscow?”
“I could.”
“Come, then. I can show you how to make a Christmas tree. It won’t be that long.”
“You?”
“When I was in the West, I picked up some of their customs. The religious festival aside, it’s a wonderful excuse for a winter vacation for a few days.”
“All right.”
“Who’s watching him?”
“Two of the three men you sent, Ivan and Piotr. I sent Vassily to keep an eye on Stakowski.”
“Good girl.” None of the names were real, but then Anna probably wasn’t her real name either. He detested confusion, so had told her his real name the first time they had shared a bed together.
“Don’t you have some girl in Moscow?”
“I have several girls in Moscow, but none of them like you. Believe me or not, but it is true.”
“Should I trust a man who is skilled in disinformation techniques?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
“I think so, too.” She smiled. “Come on.”
He started after her down the corridor and they passed through three cars until they reached the one she said the dubious Swiss businessman was aboard. She knocked on a compartment door and it opened. It was Piotr, as Anna called him. Anna stepped inside, Vols after her, Piotr putting away his revolver. Certain officers in the KGB and their respective functionaries, at the discretion of the officer, were allowed considerable latitude in their selection of items of personal equipment. Vols was one of these and allowed his men the same privilege. So much of Russian equipment was inferior to the best available in the West.
“So, Piotr. You have been listening to him?” There was a suction-cupped listening device on the wall at his left.
“The fellow has not said a word. But, of course, he is alone now,” and Piotr smiled. “But the funny thing is he seems to be breathing very hard.”
“Yes. It is harder to deal with crazies, isn’t it. Where’s your friend?”
“The compartment on the other side. I don’t think Ivan would have heard anything either.”
Vols lit a cigarette, threw down his winter coat and took the pistol from the coat pocket, then stuffed it in the waistband of his trousers under the front of his sweater. “And you couldn’t get it going in time to hear what was said between him and Stakowski?”
“No, Comrade Major.”
“Let me have a listen.” He walked over and took the earphones from Piotr. The sounds of heavy breathing were odd, but perhaps the fellow they were monitoring had had as little sleep as he. Vols had ordered that all conversations for the mission be in English since very few Albanian secret police personnel understood English and he didn’t wish complications. “Where are the Albanians?” He surrendered the earphones to Piotr.
“I gave them some money to buy a bottle of vodka and told them to guard the first car so the Americans couldn’t—” Piotr started to laugh “—couldn’t reach the engine compartment and—what is the word—hijack!—couldn’t hijack the train.”
“You are insane, but it is a humorous idea at that.”
“What will we do?” Anna asked, taking off her coat, leaving on the scarf. Underneath the coat, it was the old Anna. Great figure, breasts upthrusting proudly against the heavy sweater, the perfect swell at the hips beneath the trim waist, the gorgeous legs the coat had all but hidden.
“I think we talk with Mr. Stakowski. Is Vassily in radio contact?”
“Yes.”
“Reach him, Piotr. Find out where Stakowski is.”
Piotr started working the hand-held radio. Anna started back into her old-lady coat, Vols helping her with it. “Thank you.”
“You stay here with the listening device, Piotr. Anna and I will talk with Mr. Stakowski.”
“He is in the second car. But remember, Comrade Major, the Albanians are in the first car.”
Vols nodded and started out of the compartment, entering the corridor first, holding the door for Anna, then closing it behind them. He looked at the door to the compartment where the so-called Swiss businessman was as they passed it, tugged at his sweater to make certain the Walther P-5 was covered sufficiently, and followed Anna into the next car, through it, on to the next car, where there were no compartments, only seats, most of which were unoccupied, none of the few riders seemingly awake, then through it.
“This is the second car, Ephraim,” she told him as she stopped on the platform between cars. He froze with the wind blowing, almost envying Anna the ugly-looking coat.
“Go in first, walk past him and find someplace to sit. I’ll follow you in a minute.”
“Be careful. He should be armed.”
“I’ll be careful. He’s a fancy gatherer and nothing more, not a field agent. Go on.”
She went inside, Ephraim Vols hanging back, hugging his arms across his chest against the bite of the wind. He looked at his watch. In less than an hour, they’d be in Durazzo station. He was tempted to find out what he could from Stakowski and then let the courier Stakowski had given it to off the train, follow him and pick the time and place to recover the viral material. He certainly had enough men (and, of course, Anna) to meet the task.
“Fuck it,” he said in English, tired of waiting in the cold and wrenching open the door, going inside, the suddenness of the warmth almost stifling to him.
He saw Stakowski, seated alone, wearing a trench coat, both hands in the coat pockets. One of the hands could be holding a gun, he told himself.
Anna sat beside an old woman, chatting it seemed from the movement of their lips. Vassily was nowhere to be seen, logically at the other end of the car on the outside. Poor fellow.
Vols decided to try the soft approach. He left his hands at his sides and walked straight up the aisle, toward Stakowski, the American not yet looking up. Vols stopped right in front of him, smiled and said, “David! Of all things!”
Stakowski looked up. “Vots—”
“We’ve met a few times. I hadn’t thought you’d remember. May I join you? I’m traveling with some friends.” He sat down opposite Stakowski, reached into his trouser pockets and found cigarettes and a lighter, the American watching him intently, fear etched in his eyes.
“I don’t have it.”
Vols smiled as he exhaled. “Now that’s a silly thing to say, David. I mean, really. What if I were just traveling with some friends and didn’t know anything about the little ampule you got from Voroncek? Wilton was a clumsy spy, as I’m sure you’d agree. But he had a certain audacity. Which almost paid off for you and your people. But, I’ll tell you what, David. You tell me all you can about the Swiss businessman or whoever he is that you gave the thing to, and I’ll let you off the train with an hour’s head start. I can’t promise you more than that, actually. Bit sticky for me at that, if you get my meaning. But, for old times’ sake, I’m willing to extend myself.”
Stakowski’s voice trembled when he replied. “Go to hell!”
“That’s the spirit, David! Now, between you and me, I’m not really an atheist as I should be. I believe in God, Heaven, and, well, in my line of work, I certainly hope there isn’t a hell. But I’m willing to risk a hell after death. But, the question before you, David, is, are you willing to risk a hell before death? Because we can make that. I mean, not me. I’m not into extracting information from people. But let me tell you, some of my associates are bloody rough on uncooperative sorts. Talk and you get that hour’s start, David. And if you do get caught, I’ll go to bat for you and pull some strings in the right places and make certain they just swap you back for someone right away. One of our johnnies is always getting caught at something or another in your country. So, what about it?”
Stakowski didn’t speak.
Vols laughed. “Damn! You drive a hard bargain. All right! You win!” The cigarette was between his lips and he spread both palms outward toward Stakowski.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you where to get a boat—tonight. Or this morning, I should say, that’ll spirit you to safety right across the Adriatic up to San Marino where you were going in the first place. But, you’ve got to promise you’ll never breathe a word of my complicity in the thing. It’d be bloody awful for me when it came time for May Day bonuses!” And he laughed. Stakowski laughed. “Well, what do you say, David?”
“What’ll happen to Alyard?”
“That the fellow’s name?”
“Thomas Alyard.”
“Well, we’ll make a big flap over it, of course, but he’ll be traded out rather quickly. Instead of you. What about it? We have an understanding?”
David Stakowski’s eyes looked on the verge of tears and there as a puerile smile on his face. “You mean what you say, Vols?”
“Yes, I do. And I’ll tell you something else. There’re Albanian secret police on this train. I could tell you horror stories about their incompetence, believe me. The fact of the matter, basically, is that all of us are rational. You, me, this chap—Thomas Alyard?”
“Yes.”
“CIA?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. But you see,” Vols said, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial whisper as he leaned slightly forward, smoke exhaling through his nostrils, “this ampule of virus or whatever. I mean, my people will be careful with it. Just as yours would be. But I hear it’s rather nasty stuff, if you get my meaning. Shouldn’t want these Albanian secret police fellows to get their hands on it. Bunch of positive twits. They’d probably open the bloody thing and, well, it might well be over for everyone on this train and for some miles around. Ugghh,” and he shivered, not faking the reaction.
“What do you want to know?”
“Good man.” Vols nodded. “Right then.” He decided on asking something easily enough verifiable. “What name is this Alyard chap traveling under?”
“Thomas Rheinhold. Swiss, as I said.”
“And what’s his status. I mean, is he a reasonable sort of fellow? Is he armed?”
David Stakowski’s face soured. “I armed him. I picked up a gun when I took the ampule off Voroncek. I mean, you know I’m not that kinda guy, Vols. But I was scared.”
“Shouldn’t blame you a bit, David. But what about this gun?”
“I gave it to Alyard. He didn’t want it, but I made him take it. ”
“What sort of gun?”
“I don’t know. It was an automatic of some kind.”
“Right. What’s his escape plan?”
“He told me to wait it out for a while until the heat died down, then get out of the country.” Vols didn’t push and ask how, just let David Stakowski keep talking. “He didn’t get specific, but I bet he’s got somebody to smuggle him across the Adriatic.”
“Likely correct, David. He didn’t mention any names? Anything more specific?”
“No. There wasn’t any reason for me to need to know.”
“Well, there you go. Good to see this Alyard chap evidently knows what he’s about. Make it easier to talk sense with him. Now. You wait here until the train stops. Won’t be all that long, now, and I’ll make certain you walk out of the station with me. Then you get to that boat we talked about and your end of this whole affair is done with.”
Stakowski audibly sighed. Vols felt sorry for him. There was no way that Stakowski wouldn’t wind up in the hands of the Albanians, but he would try to do what he could to get him as quickly as possible back to Moscow. The treatment would be considerably more humane. He told Stakowski sincerely, “Thank you for your help, David,” then stood up.
He caught Anna’s eye and she nodded that she understood and he walked out the door, shivering as he crossed from one car to another, hurrying into the warmth. A half-hour remained until they pulled in at Durazzo station.
As he passed the compartment where Ivan was listening he knocked and entered, Ivan wheeling toward him with a gun in his hand. “Relax.” He closed the door behind him for an instant, leaning against it.
“Yes, Comrade Major?”
“Meet me in the corridor in sixty seconds.”
“Yes, Comrade Major.”
“You’re too formal, Ivan.” He let himself out, passed Alyard’s compartment and let himself in to see Piotr. “Come with me.”
Piotr nodded.
As Ivan came into the corridor, Vols could see Anna coming down the corridor.
Vols gestured with his thumb toward the door, Piotr taking the right side, Ivan the left. Anna held back, a Walther like his own coming out of her purse. Piotr and Ivan had their guns drawn as well.
Vols knocked on the compartment door. “Mr. Alyard? My name is Ephraim Vols. I’m a friend of David Stakowski.”
There was no answer.
“I’m coming in, if I may. I’m not here to harm you.”
He glanced to Anna, then Ivan and Piotr.
Vols licked his dry lips and turned the door handle.
“Shit!” He started under his sweater for the P-5 automatic, crossing the compartment in two strides, the compartment window cut out neatly just inside the frame, his breath making steam as he exhaled. He leaned out into the slipstream, gun in hand. He heard the excited voices of Ivan and Piotr. He thought he heard Anna laugh.
He saw nothing but darkness, drew his head inside. “Up on the roof. Be careful. If he’s up there, comer him and one of you come back. Quickly!”
He looked at Anna. She showed no evidence of laughter, except in her eyes. “This American or Swiss—”
“He’s American. CIA.”
“He’s very good.”
“Probably got off the damn train when I got on.” He closed his eyes, shook his head. He opened his eyes. “Heavy breathing when he was sleeping!” And he looked again at the cut-through window and cursed his own stupidity. He folded his arms around Anna and he embraced her.
“I still think you’re a marvelous secret agent,” Anna cooed.
And Ephraim Vols started to laugh….
Thomas Alyard, the PPK in his fist, moved through the windward edge of the woods just a hundred yards or so from where the tree line broke into the open snowswept pastures beyond. He had used the fourth diamond, the one given him just in case, locking it into his nail clipper when the train had slowed for no apparent reason back some miles ago. It had been cheap glass, thank goodness. He doubted the improvised cutter would have done nearly so well on good old American safety glass. He had cut out a handhold that he had knocked out with the butt of the PPK, scarring the plastic grips and nearly breaking them, then kept one gloved hand through the handhold while he’d cut out the rest, then juggled the glass adroitly enough to get it inside rather than letting it fall out and crash. But by that time, the train had picked up speed again and he had doubted whether he would be able to jump from the train. Without killing himself.
But the train had slowed again for a grade and he had decided it was then or never and clambored through, held on, thrown himself outward, prayed. His suitcoat had tom, but he had thrown his overcoat out ahead of him and pulled it on over the torn jacket. His suitcase had gone with the overcoat, and once he had made it deep enough into the tree cover, he had changed into the heavy sweater and pulled a second pair of trousers on over the ones he already wore. The neck scarf had gone up over his head and ears to guard against frostbite. But he had still felt silly tying it under his chin. An extra pair of socks on his feet and then another pair over his shoes, the trouser bottoms bloused inside this outer pair to keep the snow at bay. And then he had started on. There was no need for a compass with the tracks and power lines to guide him. He knew where he was going, coming at it from the opposite direction. A once privately held farm with an abandoned barn, a car inside it. If he could get the damned thing started with the cold.
The barn with the car had been for a British operation that had been scrubbed—how the CIA had found out about it from SIS was something he hadn’t been told. But the car was his only way out now, his only way to the boat waiting for him in Valona that he hoped would still be able to get him across the Adriatic. And he had to be there by dawn when the fishing fleet went out or else he’d never get out at all.
Something had gone wrong. He had sensed it in more than David Stakowski’s manner, more than Stakowski’s words.
As he forced his way partially over and partially through a snowdrift that rose to his waist, he patted the little maroon box with its deadly cargo.
If there had been KGB on the train, then when the train had slowed it had slowed to pick up someone who was responsible, in charge. That was the only thing that fit. And Alyard couldn’t risk a battle with the ampule on him. A bullet could punch through the little protective box and rupture the ampule. And then the horror would be unleashed.
Alyard kept going, despite the numbing cold.