2 
Out of Vienna

On a train increasing its speed as it bore south out of the great Austrian capital of Vienna, Amanda Rutherford Halifax sat back in her seat with eyes closed, trying to steady her nerves, calm herself . . . and think.

Her heart was pounding like a hammer on an anvil.

The image and voice of her husband of less than a month, Ramsay Halifax, still rang in her ears crying after her in angry defeat as the train pulled out of the station.

“Amanda . . . Amanda!”

The echo of his shouts reverberated in her brain. She had never seen such a side of him before that moment. The look of wrath in his eyes pierced through her as if he was glaring at her even now, as in truth he was, though all he could see was the back of the last car of the train.

She could never go back to him, thought Amanda, not ever again. Not after what she had learned. Not after realizing what he was, and how she had been used.

The sickness gathering in her stomach right now was not about politics. It had nothing to do with conflict between nations. At this moment she was not thinking of the fact that the world was at war. Her personal anguish concerned no ideologies.

It was about another woman. Amanda felt dirty.

How could she have been so foolish as to marry Ramsay!

She thought she knew him. But she hadn’t known him at all. She had only seen the surface, what he had wanted her to see—the suave, confident journalist, so dashing and charming and worldly-wise. She had never paused to look beneath the smiling veneer, to ask herself what Ramsay might be like inside.

Now she was far from home. Reminders of the war were all around her—the propaganda posters lining the station walls, soldiers everywhere en route to the nearby battlefields in Belgium and France. She was trapped in a foreign country that was fighting against her homeland, alone behind enemy lines.

Tears gradually filled Amanda’s eyes.

They were not quite yet the tears of contrition, but rather tears of mortification at having been so blind. But at least she had awoken from the stupor that had landed her in this fix. Therefore, the tears were beginning to wash the cobwebs from her brain. Her heart would come in for its share of that same cleansing in time. When it did, full healing repentance would not be far behind.

But right now Amanda’s thoughts were on the present.

How was she ever going to get back to England!

If the little money she had stolen at her mother-in-law’s house in Vienna didn’t run out, surely someone would hear her accent and get suspicious.

If she could just get across the border into neutral Italy, and then maybe into France.

But how!

Oh, God, she moaned silently, help me!

Even as Amanda sat frantic and afraid, though temporarily out of reach of her husband in the southbound train out of Vienna, Ramsay Halifax stood on platform nine of the Südbanhof, peering into the distance where the train had disappeared from sight seconds earlier. He could still faintly make out the dim clacking of its iron wheels receding along the tracks.

Within seconds his mother hurried up, followed a moment or two later by their white-haired colleague Hartwell Barclay. Though puffing, his face showed no sign of red. He was, in fact, boiling over in a white wrath. Mrs. Halifax’s eyes, too, glowed with a fire into whose origins it would be best not to inquire. Their collective fury at that moment might have been enough to cause any but the most stouthearted angel to tremble.

Neither of the two older members of the triumvirate was accustomed to being outwitted, especially, as they judged her, by such a lightweight as Amanda. She had been so easily manipulated and brainwashed in the beginning. It never occurred to either that she would actually summon the gumption to resist them, much less make a run for it. They had turned her to their cause with so little effort, they had never considered the possibility of her defection. They had also underestimated the faculty her father had honed in her for vigorous thinking. Indeed, even Amanda was unaware of it. But in time the mental vigor that Sir Charles Rutherford had trained into all three of his children would find its muscle, and enable this wayward child to discover her way.

Now she was gone. All three who stood on the empty station platform knew that if Amanda was allowed to get to the West, she could seriously threaten their subversive spy network.

Barclay turned to Ramsay.

“You fool!” he seethed. “Why didn’t you see this coming?”

“Look, Barclay, don’t play your power games with me!” young Halifax shot back. “It won’t work. You don’t intimidate me.”

“How could the two of you let her out of your sight!”

“I told you before,” rejoined Ramsay, “the two of us happened to be gone at the time.”

“You should never both have left!” persisted the elder statesman of the three. Though an Englishman, he had cast his lot with the German and Austrian cause. He knew perhaps better than either of the others how much they stood to lose if Amanda divulged what she knew to the right people in London.

“Be that as it may,” Ramsay shot back, “you were the only one home when she bolted. Why didn’t you stop her?”

“Please, please!” interrupted Ramsay’s mother. “This is no time for argument. We still have to stop her.”

It fell briefly silent. Barclay calmed.

“Who do we know in Trieste?” he said at length.

“I believe we do have some people there,” replied Mrs. Halifax.

“Wasn’t Carneades planning to stop over there for a few days on his way back to Rome?” said Ramsay.

“That’s right!” exclaimed his mother.

“We need to send a telegram,” said Barclay. “There’s no time to lose!”

He turned quickly and led the way across the platform.

“Ramsay,” said Mrs. Halifax as they hurried back into the station, “run ahead and check on the next train south. If we make contact and Carneades is able to intercept the train, you will have to go after her yourself and bring her back. If not, we’ll get in touch with Matteos.”

Ramsay nodded, then broke into a run toward the platform tunnel.