Lubyanka started for his gun on a distant table, but I stopped him. “Hold it right there.”
He turned and saw the Luger aimed at his head. Then glanced at the distance between him and the Webley and decided it was a lousy risk.
“It is you again,” he said bitterly.
“I’m afraid so, old man. All right, on your feet. And keep away from your plaything on the table.”
Lubyanka rose slowly, blood dripping from his cheek and mouth. His lip was already swelling. I moved to the door and closed it, keeping an eye on the KGB man every moment. His eyes held a great dislike for me.
“Now,” I said, “you and I are going to have a nice talk.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” he answered grimly.
“I think we do.”
He grunted and moved his hand to the cut on his cheek. “You have come to the wrong man, I’m afraid.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if I have, it will be too bad for you.” I watched his face as the impact of that statement sunk in.
“We haven’t made a deal yet,” he told me. “Consequently, I do not have what you are looking for.”
“If Richter still has it, where does he keep it?” I asked.
“Richter?”
“Excuse the lapse. He’s Horst Blücher, to you.”
Lubyanka thought about that a moment. “I do not have any idea where the device is. He is very secretive and evasive.”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust you, Lubyanka,” I said, needling him a little.
He gave me a look. “I do not trust him.”
The corner of my mouth moved. It always gave me a little pleasure to see two unpleasant people trying to outsmart each other. “Well, there is one thing for sure, Lubyanka. You know where to contact him. And I want you to tell me that.”
Lubyanka had moved over to an unmade bed. I watched him closely and kept the Luger trained on him. “He has not told me where he is staying,” he said slowly.
“You’re lying, Lubyanka. And that will get you a 9mm slug in the head.” I moved closer to him. “I want the truth, and I want it now. Where can I find Richter?”
Lubyanka’s eyes suddenly looked flat, desperate. Surprising me, he grabbed a big pillow from the bed and turned toward me with it in front of him. I had no idea what he was doing, so I took no chances. I fired, and the Luger exploded in the small room.
The slug was buried in the thick pillow and never reached to Lubyanka’s chest. In the meantime, Lubyanka hurled himself at me, still holding the pillow between us. I raised the level of my aim and fired again at his head, but my shot narrowly missed as he fell on me.
Lubyanka hit at my gun arm and knocked it high, but I still held the gun. Now the pillow was gone, and Lubyanka was twisting violently at my arm with both hands. We hit against a wall, and I lost the gun.
Then we both slid to the floor, struggling for dominance. I threw a fist into Lubyanka’s already bloody face, and he managed to return the blow before breaking away from me. Then he was reaching for the Webley that was now near him on the table.
He grabbed the gun before I could reach him, but he could not get at the trigger assembly in time to fire it. When I reached him, he hit out savagely with the gun, striking me across the side of the head with the heavy barrel.
I fell back near a window, against the wall. Lubyanka then got to his feet and pointed the Webley at me again, but I found the strength to grab at his gun hand and pull him before he could fire. He sailed past me and crashed through the window. The glass shattered loudly and rained down around me as I turned and watched Lubyanka’s body hurtle into the open air outside — his arms were spread wide, as he grasped for something to save him.
There was a short silence as Lubyanka fell, then I heard a scream. I leaned out through the broken glass and saw that he had hit a second floor balcony. He was impaled on the pickets of an iron balustrade, facing up with his eyes still open, and two of the pickets protruded through his chest and abdomen.
I swore at myself. Lubyanka would tell me nothing now. Retrieving Wilhelmina, I quickly left the small room and hurried down the corridor just as the sound of footsteps came from the front stairs. I avoided them by using the rear service stairs to reach the street.
Eleven
“This is the place. This is where Richter went with the two men,” Ursula told me.
We were huddled in a dark doorway on a narrow street, staring through the night at an old building across the way. Ursula was becoming very anxious, but she tried not to show it.
“Do you think they might have seen you following them?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
The building across the street was an apartment house. Ursula had told me that they had entered the street room on the second floor, but there were no lights on at the moment.
“Well, let’s go up there and take a look,” I suggested.
“All right, Nick.” She reached into her purse for the Webley.
“I want you to keep me well covered up there,” I said. “This could be a trap.”
“You can count on me, Nick.”
When we got up to the room where we supposed Richter and his men had been, it appeared to be vacant I entered carefully, Wilhelmina out, but no one was there.
“Come on in,” I told Ursula.
She joined me, closed the door, and glanced around the place. It was a large room with a private bath. Paint was flaking off the walls, and the plumbing looked antique. There was a lumpy cot in a corner, a scarred wooden table, and several straight chairs to one side.
“Some place,” I commented. I slipped the Luger back into its holster. I walked over to the cot. It seemed that somebody had recently lain on it.
“There is no luggage or anything here,” Ursula noted. “We may have lost him already.”
“Let’s take a look around,” I said.
We tore the place apart. There was evidence that Richter had been there — a butt of one of his favorite cigarettes; a bottle of wine, almost empty; and in a wastebasket, his discarded train ticket I could find nothing that indicated he would be returning to this room. In fact, all the evidence indicated that he had left it for good.
“Now what do we do?” Ursula asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her. I wandered back into the bathroom and glanced slowly around. It seemed to me that there was some place in the room that we had overlooked. I looked into the empty medicine chest again.
Then I turned to the toilet. The top was down on it. I lifted the lid and looked into the bowl.
There I saw the piece of wet crumpled paper floating in the clear water.
I fished it out and took a look at it. It was only a fragment of paper from a larger piece that had evidently been torn up and flushed to oblivion, but there were several handwritten letters on it.
“I’ve got something,” I said.
Ursula came and looked over my shoulder. “What is it?”
“It looks as if Richter tried to get rid of this down the toilet. Can you make out what the letters are?”
She took a look at it. “This is Richter’s handwriting,” she said. She made a face as she turned the note slightly. “It looks like it is written in Serbo-Croatian, Nick. Perhaps the beginning of the word national. And another letter, the start of another word.”
I squinted at it “National. But what’s the second word?”
“M — U — S — museum, The National Museum.”
I looked quickly at her. “The museum. Does It have a checkroom?”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“Richter would have no reason to use the museum for a rendezvous,” I said. “We know he has already met Lubyanka at the Sava Hotel, and possibly here.”
“That is true,” Ursula said, but not following me.