“Not yet.”
Ulanov frowned and consulted his watch again. He looked up. “What rooms do they have?”
“Four-ten and four-twelve. Why?”
The stocky major did not bother to answer but walked to the house telephone and spoke into one of them. He waited as the operator rang the number he had given her, a strange sense of unease beginning to grip him. The telephone rang and rang. Ulanov depressed the lever and raised it again, asking to be connected with the other room. Again the telephone rang without being answered. His suspicions solidifying, the major hung up and strode to the desk, a frown on his face. Of course the two might have simply gone for a walk, but he had a feeling they had not.
“Doctors Kovpak and McVeigh,” he said. “Their rooms do not answer.”
The girl at the desk looked at him blankly a moment and then consulted some cards. Her face cleared as the mystery was solved. “Oh,” she said, looking up. “They both checked out early this morning.”
The colonel leaned forward. “What! Their car is still in the garage!”
“Yes, sir. You see, it’s a rental car, and we’re an authorized agency to accept delivery. They turned it in this morning when they checked out.”
The colonel presented his warrant card; the girl paled slightly. “All right, miss,” the colonel said in his best police manner, “exactly what time did they check out?”
The cards were consulted again. “It was seven-thirty this morning, sir.”
“And how did they leave? By cab?”
“I don’t know, sir. They each had a small bag and they walked out the front door. I mean, we usually have to arrange a taxi for a guest the day before, and they didn’t ask for one. There aren’t many cabs in Rostock, sir, and—”
“Could they have picked one up outside?” Ulanov asked.
“I doubt it, sir. A cab would be here only by appointment, or if he dropped someone off here, and I remember nobody came in when they left. And cabs don’t cruise in this town; gasoline, you know—”
“Then how could they have left? By walking?” the colonel asked sarcastically.
“Most probably by tram, sir. Many people travel to and from the hotel by tram, sir. It’s cheap, and it runs by the bus station and the railroad station is the end of the line. It turns around there—”
Ulanov held up his hand to quiet the girl who seemed to have become compulsive in her talking since seeing the colonel’s warrant card. The major led the colonel to one side. “I imagine checking on the trams is quite a job, but it has to be done. Also the cabs. They might have been lucky and found one. Also the bus station and the railroad station. They might have been recognized — after all, they’re both foreigners.”
“This is a seaport, Major. We have lots of foreigners here, sailors—”
“I doubt that Dr. Ruth McVeigh is ever going to be mistaken for a sailor,” Ulanov said dryly. “In any event, we have to try and find them.”
“But — where do you think they might have gone?”
“I have no idea. Trains and buses go everywhere.” Ulanov frowned. “But in that case, why didn’t they simply drive?” The answer was self-evident. Ulanov looked at the colonel accusingly. “They knew they were being followed, Colonel! They knew their car was under surveillance in the garage!” He considered the colonel coldly. “There is no other explanation.”
Colonel Müeller swallowed. “I’m sorry, Major. I thought we had been most circumspect—”
“Well,” Ulanov said shortly, “there’s no sense in wasting anymore time than has already been wasted. We’re five hours behind them now. Start a check on cabs and trams, and the railroad and bus stations. And check on other car-rental agencies; they might have tried to be cute and merely rented another car. I’ll meet you here at six for your report.”
“Won’t you be coming with me, sir?”
“No,” Ulanov said. He glanced at his watch. “I’m going to get something to eat, and then I’m going to see the matinee at the circus.”
He might as well accomplish at least one of the things he had hoped to do that day, he felt...
Major Ulanov, the usual cigarette in the corner of his lips, was consulting a one-inch map of northern East Germany while Colonel Müeller made his report. The colonel was not happy making his report, but there was nothing else he could do.
“The trams on Monday, especially at that hour, with people going to work, are like sardine tins,” he said dolefully. “You know, of course, that our trams work on the honor system as far as payment for a ride is concerned; you can buy tickets at many places and when you get on the tram you put one into a machine to be punched to show the ticket has been used. The motorman doesn’t see you at all, unless you happen to get on by the front door, and even then he never pays any attention.”
“What you are saying,” Ulanov said without looking up from the map, speaking the words around smoke, “is that wherever they went by tram — if they went by tram — is a total mystery.”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel, of course, held a higher rank in the organization of East German Security than Ulanov held in Russian State Security, but one was KGB and the other was not, and neither organization ever forgot it. “If they took a cab, we haven’t been able to locate it. I think we have reports from all of them. The girl was right; there aren’t very many of them. And I checked the bus station myself. Nobody recalls anyone like them.”
“And the trains?”
The colonel sounded even more despondent. “The railroads are as bad if not worse than the trams on a Monday morning. People coming in from all over after the weekend to go back to work; people who should have gone home the night before all trying to get on trains and get back. You could take a herd of elephants through the Hauptbahnhof here in Rostock between six and eight or nine in the morning, and nobody would notice. In fact, it probably wouldn’t even seem to be more crowded. I’m told you simply cannot move in the station or on the platforms.”
“So nobody saw them, is that it?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.”
“And of course there is no record of their having rented another car.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No, sir.”
Ulanov sighed. He studied the map a few more minutes and then tossed it aside, looking up. ‘We’ve lost them, Colonel.”
“I’m sorry, Major.” A question that had been bothering the colonel for some time seemed to be forced from him. “Major, is it — are they — I mean, you never told me — is the case very important?”
“I didn’t think so before, but I’m beginning to now,” Ulanov said somberly, but did not expand upon the answer. He frowned into space as he tried to find a solution to their disappearance in the smoke of his cigarette. Where had they gone? And why? And how had he been so derelict as to let them get away, for although it had been the colonel who was primarily responsible, the colonel had been acting under his orders and the responsibility fell back on his shoulders and he knew it. Should he put out an all-points bulletin on them? On what basis? He’d look a proper fool if they merely gave up the car because it hadn’t been running well, and had taken a train back to Berlin.
A sudden possible answer to the problem came to him, and as he examined it in detail, his frown slowly changed to a faint smile. Why not? After all, despite the occasional failings common to all security operations — as witness Newkirk forgetting the DDR currency regulations in his haste to follow the Zis — the CIA was still far from a helpless giant. He looked up at the colonel, his eyes twinkling.
“There is a man named Newkirk,” Ulanov said, “being held at Volks-Polizei headquarters in Berlin on charges of attempting to smuggle DDR marks into West Germany—”