“I will make contact with Horst and relay your message about being interested in the monitor. But I won’t make that contact until I’m sure the moment is right. In other words, I have no intention of giving his identity away to you or to anyone else who might be watching me.”
Then she drifted off with the crowd and I turned my attention to Ursula, who had come up behind me with our sandwiches.
“I thought you were trying to pick up another playmate,” she said, “until I heard a bit of your conversation. Who is Horst?”
“Just a man I want to meet. You keep your, mind on Richter, baby.”
Soon the Orient Express was pulling out of the station, going in the direction that it had come. In order to head east again, the train had to return to the mainland across a causeway. Dark was falling as the Express churned along the two miles of causeway and we saw behind us a dazzling display of yellow lights along the shoreline: the lights of Venice rising out of the blackness of the sea.
After a quick meal, Ursula said she wanted to take another crack at Hans Richter. “Let’s try his compartment. If he’s there, I’ll arrest him. If he isn’t, we’ll make a search of his belongings and find out what he’s up to.”
Richter wasn’t there and I wasn’t surprised.
“By now he knows that we weren’t killed. There should have been an explosion that never took place.”
“Nick, do you think I’ve lost him?”
“He didn’t get off the train at Milan,” I pointed out.
I picked the lock and we entered the Butcher’s compartment.
I switched on the overhead light. There were two pieces of luggage, both on the floor instead of on the racks. I took one, and Ursula reached for the other. After we picked the locks on the cases, we opened them carefully.
There was nothing of significance in the bag that I searched, but there was a handkerchief that surely did not belong to the man who had the radio. It had a slight scent of perfume, and the scent seemed vaguely familiar to me. I closed the bag and helped Ursula look through the other one. A moment later, she held up a piece of paper.
“Look at this,” she said. “He plans to get off at Belgrade.” It was his train ticket.
I grunted. “That doesn’t give you much time.”
I poked into a corner of the case, underneath some shirts, and found a couple of packs of European cigarettes. They appeared to be a custom blend. “Expensive taste,” I noted, holding one of the packs up for Ursula to see.
She took the cigarettes from me and looked at the package. “Hans Richter smoked a special brand of Belgian cigarette. This is that brand.”
“You’ll have to try to grab him at Belgrade, when he gets off the train.”
“The Yugoslav authorities have promised to help bring Richter to justice. I will have them meet us at the station with a couple of plainclothes policemen.”
“Wouldn’t you rather make the arrest alone?” I asked.
“He must be captured alive,” she said. “If I get that Nazi pig alone I’m afraid I’ll blow his brains out.”
We put everything back just the way it was and left the compartment. Ursula went to her compartment to draft a wire while I took a walk through the rumbling train.
We had made our stop at Trieste just after Venice. By nine-thirty we were due at Poggioreale del Corsa on the Yugoslav border. I decided that if Eva Schmidt had not contacted me by then, I would start looking for her.
I returned to my compartment in the hope that Eva would get in touch with me there. I had given her its number when she promised to tell Horst Blücher I wanted in on the bidding for the satellite monitor.
Company was waiting for me, but it wasn’t Eva Schmidt or her boy friend. Ivan Lubyanka, the KGB man, reclined on my bunk, his left hand pillowing his head. In his right hand he held a Webley .455 Mark IV revolver with silencer.
“Come in,” he said.
I closed the door behind me, thinking that I should have been more careful.
Lubyanka sat up on the bunk. “So you are Nick Carter. You don’t look so tough.”
“Who told you I was tough? I’m a pussycat.”
“If I had realized you were traveling on the train with me, Carter, I’d have dropped in to see you sooner.”
I grunted. “If you had been doing your homework, you’d have recognized me when you saw me in the dining car. I recognized you.”
He studied me petulantly. “You know, of course, that I must kill you.”
I hunched my shoulders. “Why bother?” I asked. “You’ll probably outbid me anyway.”
“I did not come here to bid,” he said flatly with a thick accent. “I came here as the only purchaser, and I want it to remain that way.”
“What about the Chinese?”
“I will deal with one competitor at a time,” he answered smoothly.
“If you do, you’ll have bodies all over this train. You ought to think about that.” I didn’t bother trying for Hugo because I knew Lubyanka would not give me time.
“I have thought about it,” he said. He rose from the bunk. He stood a couple inches shorter than me, and I could see that he did not like that very much. “You and I are moving down to the end of this train, Carter. We are walking very carefully. I will hold this gun in my pocket on the way, but it will be aimed at your spine. As you know, a spinal shot is very painful. So I hope you will not do anything foolish.”
“And what happens at the end of our nice walk together?”
“Don’t worry, it will be very quick.”
“How generous of you.”
“Please. You will go with me now.” He waved the big gun at me, and I realized that if that thing went off, it would make a hole in my middle big enough for a man to jam his fist into.
I turned and opened the door, hoping there was somebody in the corridor. There was not. I entered the corridor, and Lubyanka followed right behind me. The gun was still held out in front of him but as I watched, he stuck it into a jacket pocket. I could see the muzzle protruding under the cloth, aimed at my waist.
He closed the compartment door and nodded for me to start walking. I turned and moved slowly down the corridor ahead of him. The train rumbled and rocked under us, but not enough to disturb Lubyanka’s balance. He kept about three paces between us, so that I could not get to him easily.
We arrived at the end of Voiture 7 and moved out on the platforms between it and 5, where Eva Schmidt’s compartment was located. We had to pass through two sets of doors. As I passed through the second set, Lubyanka right behind me, I made my move.
I slammed the door back against Lubyanka with a violent motion. The door struck him and knocked him off balance, and he fell to the floor of the platform. But he didn’t lose the revolver. He fired as he fell. The first slug smashed glass in the door, passed through it, and narrowly missed my shoulder, burying itself in the wood paneling behind me. A second shot rang out, but it didn’t even come close.
As Lubyanka scuttled for position on the platform, I yanked Wilhelmina free. My shot hit the metal floor of the platform just beside the crouching Russian, ricocheting around him without hitting him.
Lubyanka fired again, chipping the door frame that I was using for cover. Then, while I was ducking back behind my door, he scurried back through the door of the other car. I saw him at the last minute and managed to squeeze off two more shots from the Luger. One slug tore into Lubyanka’s shoulder, and I could see him drop to the floor in the other car.
There was a long, empty moment as the wheels clattered loudly beneath us. Then I saw a raised hand holding a revolver. Lubyanka fired a quick shot at me, but it went wild. Next I saw his head darting along the bottom of the window. I fired at it but missed. Then he was gone, running down the corridor that led to the other end of the car. He had probably decided to go off and lick his wounds.