I walked through the daycoaches that contained both first and second class sitting compartments. The second class part was much noisier and less civilized than the first class part. The first class compartments had closeable doors, and many of them had curtains drawn for privacy. I moved from one car to the next slowly, watching the faces of the travelers as they chatted or played cards or just sat and dozed, letting the movement of the train draw them into slumber. On the last car before the sleepers, I saw the brown-haired woman again. She was sitting with two men; neither of them was Lubyanka. One of the men was the one with the radio who had passed me getting back on board at Milan. She sat and knitted, glancing out the window, and did not appear to know either man. The man with the radio was immersed in an Italian newspaper. The other man, a fat, bald fellow, was munching happily on a lunch he had brought aboard with him and was seemingly oblivious of the other two. I walked past the compartment before the woman could see me, and headed for Voiture 5. This was my chance to take a look in her compartment.
I was alone in the corridor when I arrived at her door. I knocked once to be sure no comrade of hers, or a porter, was inside. Then I picked the lock quickly and entered, closing the door behind me.
It was a typical sleeping compartment, with a single bunk on one side of the small room and a nightstand and mirror on the other wall. There were racks for luggage, just as in the day coaches, and the woman had several suitcases.
I took down one piece of luggage at a time and went through all of them. I found nothing, not even the photographs that she had mentioned in her talk with Lubyanka. I did find an immigration paper that identified her as Eva Schmidt, a Swiss national.
I was disappointed in the luggage. I began a systematic search of the compartment, looking through bedding and everything else that might conceal the device. I was almost finished when the door burst open. One of the two men who stood there was the Chinese I had seen earlier in the dining car. With him was his dining companion, an Occidental with a swarthy, pockmarked face.
Each of the intruders carried a revolver. And each of the weapons was pointed at me.
I smiled at them. “Gentlemen, you should have knocked.”
The swarthy man kicked the door shut. “Do you want me to kill him now?” he asked the Chinese.
There was very little to stop them. Their guns carried silencers. If they put a few bullets in me, no one outside the compartment would know.
“Don’t be impatient,” the Chinese told the swarthy man in excellent English.
Although the Oriental’s face was pudgy and his thick neck rippled with rolls of fat, his shoulders looked powerful and his hands were immense. I didn’t doubt that he had the ability to take care of himself in a fight.
The swarthy man was short and heavy and his belly lapped over his belt. He looked as though he spent too much of his spare time boozing. The eyes in his pockmarked face were set close together. I rated him behind the Chinese as an adversary, as slower and possibly less intelligent than his companion.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” the Chinese asked me.
I shrugged. “What do you think I was looking for?”
“That sort of response is very stupid, Mr. Carter. If you are going to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I might as well let my friend here go ahead and shoot you.”
“I certainly wouldn’t want that to happen.” I spread my hands out, palms up. “I’m empty handed, as you can see.”
“Perhaps Eva Schmidt is not carrying the device,” said the swarthy man.
“That is, of course, a possibility. How do you feel about it, Mr. Carter?” the Chinese asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t had a chance to get acquainted with Miss Schmidt. How is it that you know my name?”
“It’s in our files, along with your photograph. You are close to being a celebrity in our field, you know. I had hoped we might be running into each other.”
“Your files must be more complete than ours. I tried to place you when I saw you in the dining car. I couldn’t.”
The Chinese chuckled. “There aren’t any photographs of me in western files, Mr. Carter.”
That gave me something to think about. It put him in a very special category.
The Chinese sat down on the edge of Eva Schmidt’s bunk. “Enough about me, Mr. Carter. I am a modest man. I’d rather not discuss myself. I prefer to have you tell us how much you know about the organization that calls itself Topcon.”
I saw no reason for keeping that a secret. “Very little,” I said. “I don’t even know if Eva Schmidt is the organization’s boss or only one of the hired hands.”
“As a matter of fact, she is neither,” the Chinese remarked. He appeared amused that he had more information on Topcon than I had. “The Schmidt woman is not the boss and yet she is certainly more than a mere underling.”
The swarthy man, who was leaning against the door, stirred restlessly. “You’re telling him more than he’s telling us,” he grumbled to the Chinese.
“Since we intend to kill him, that hardly matters,” replied the Chinese in his deceptively amiable voice.
I shifted my feet slightly so that I was in a position to move toward either man. I didn’t plan to be shot down without trying to take them first. When I made my move, I would go for the one who was closest.
“You aren’t even supposed to be here. Topcon is selling the device to the Russians,” I told the Chinese.
“They also offered it to us. We weren’t willing to pay their price. We decided to take it instead.”
I leaned forward slightly, letting my weight go with the movement so that I was prepared to spring toward the man on the bed. “You mean this train may be swarming with all kinds of agents who hope to steal the device from the people who stole it in the first place?”
“That’s the trouble with what you capitalists call free enterprise. It arouses the spirit of competition,” the Chinese said with a chuckle.
The swarthy man spoke again. “We’d better get on with this. The woman could come back at any time.”
“And we will get on with it, my friend. But it isn’t every day that one has an opportunity to talk firsthand to an American Killmaster. How many of my comrades have you disposed of in your infamous career, Mr. Carter?”
I shrugged. “I’m a modest man too.”
“You have been quite a thorn in our side. When I report that I have gained possession of the monitor and have eliminated you as well, I may be commended by the Chairman himself,” said the Chinese in a gloating voice.
They were a lovely pair, I thought. The swarthy man wanted to kill me instantly out of sheer impatience and the Chinese was interested in the glory he could win by returning to Peking with my scalp on his belt.
With his left hand, the Chinese gestured to his companion. Then he raised the revolver in his right. He was ready to execute me and he wasn’t going to take any chances. He planned for both of them to pump slugs into my body.
“I lied to you,” I said.
The Chinese hesitated, his finger on the trigger. The man at the door cursed. “He’s stalling, Sheng Tze.”
Sheng Tze, I thought, and suddenly the memory bank was working. Sheng Tze, the legendary Chinese Communist agent who had been so successful at shielding his identity that he was more like a ghost than flesh and blood. At various times I had heard him described as an old man; at others, I had heard people insist that, no, he was only in his thirties. And none of those people had known him well. They had only caught fleeting glimpses of him, apparently in a variety of disguises. For the secret of Sheng Tze’s remaining a mystery man was that people who knew what he actually looked like had an awkward habit of dying violently.