They came to rest on the wrecked tie-tamper nearby.
“What's that thing?” he asked, walking rapidly toward the mangled rig.
Kieffer followed.
“No idea,” he said. “Railroad maintenance equipment of some sort.” He frowned. “Why? It's smashed all to hell.”
“Yeah,” Marshall mumbled. He seemed deeply preoccupied. “Yeah…”
He climbed up on the battered tamping machine. “How's the damned thing powered…?”
He peered into the mass of twisted metal, broken wheel disks and tangled tubing.
“Looks like an internal-combustion engine all shot to hell,” he muttered. He tore at some cracked and buckled metal sheathing. He looked up, his eyes excited. “It is! Give me a hand.”
Working feverishly, the two men tore at the jagged metal, oblivious to the cuts and gashes they inflicted upon their bare hands.
“There it is,” Marshall said tautly. “The distributor.”
His hands worked deftly on the device. “Cross your fingers, Marty,” he breathed. “Cross everything you can — that it's still there.”
Carefully he reached.
He turned to Kieffer. He grinned.
“Got it!”
He held the small object up to his eyes for inspection.
“A Kraut rotor,” he said. “I'll be damned!”
“Will it fit?” Kieffer asked anxiously.
“Don't know.” Marshall frowned. “Looks about right.”
He jumped from the damaged tamper. Together they hurried to the jeep. Marshall at once bent over the engine.
Kieffer looked at his watch. He was acutely aware of time quickly draining away. How long would Decker wait? Would he think he'd been tricked after all? Would he play it safe and call the Gestapo?
Marshall straightened up.
“Shit'” he said with black disgust. “The fucking thing's too big.”
He examined the rotor closely. “Maybe…” He turned to Kieffer. “Give me that knife of yours.”
Kieffer at once reached under his greatcoat. He always carried a paratrooper knife in his belt. In the small of his back. It was a trick he'd seen in an old gangster movie. It had impressed him. He gave the knife to Marshall.
Carefully the sergeant began to whittle away at the German rotor. He ducked under the hood.
Kieffer waited tensely. Time seemed to rush by with breakneck speed. What was Decker doing now…?
Finally Marshall called softly.
“Try it. Try to start her up.”
Kieffer at once jumped into the jeep. He turned the ignition switch.
The engine caught, sputtered — and died.
“Hold it!” Marshall called.
Kieffer could hear him hacking and scraping at the hard little distributor part.
“Try it again!”
The engine caught — and kept running. Roughly. Faltering. But it ran.
Marshall pushed in behind the wheel. He nursed the uneven engine along.
“I don't know how long she'll last,” he said. “I wouldn't want to run no Indianapolis Five Hundred with that gizmo. But at least — she runs.”
“Let's get out of here,” Kieffer said. He glanced at his companion. “I thought you were supposed to be a top mechanic,” he said more calmly. “Sure took you one hell of a time just getting a jeep to start!”
Marshall eased into gear. Slowly, with an occasional cough and jerk, the jeep started off.
“Just you hope,” he said dryly. “Just you hope it'll take a lot longer before she stops….”
Kieffer motioned for Marshall to stop a couple of houses before Ostbahnhofstrasse No. 132.
“You wait here,” he whispered urgently. “I'll go take a look.”
He reached in the back of the jeep and brought out a small roll of webbing.
“If I get in trouble, you barrel the hell out of here, got that?”
“Got it.” Marshall sounded reluctant.
“If everything's okay, I'll wave you on,” Kieffer said. He looked closely at his friend. “Keep the engine running — and wait!”
“Okay, okay…”
Kieffer dismounted and walked rapidly toward Decker's house.
For a brief moment he had a strangely vivid sense of standing aside, detached, watching himself. Or rather — both sides of himself. One was deeply, desperately afraid; the other lucidly calculating. He knew he wasn't free to choose his course of action. And yet at the same time he realized coldly that the slightest miscalculation could cost him his life.
As he neared the front entrance to the Decker apartment building, he slowed down, every sense alert.
He stopped.
There was no sound.
He looked back at the jeep. Still there.
Did he need reassurance that badly?
He looked at the front door to No. 132. The faintest glow of light could be seen through the frosted-glass panes. He knew what it was. The feeble bulb showing night visitors the way to the LICHT button for the stairs.
He walked up to the door, opened it and walked through.
The thought lanced his mind: If they're laying for me, now's the time they'll take me.
The place was quiet, empty.
He glanced quickly around the darkened entrance hall.
Decker was not to be seen.
He went to the LICHT button and pressed it.
There was a soft sound behind him.
Pressed into the shadows of a corner, half hidden by the stairway, stood the figure of a man.
Decker.
White-faced, he stared at Kieffer.
“Gott sei dank!” he whispered. “Thank God! It is you.” He stepped forward. He was shaking badly. “I thought — I thought you would not come. I—”
“We are here,” Kieffer interrupted sharply. It was obvious— but he had to break in. The man was losing control. “Let's get on with it, Herr Professor.”
Critically he inspected the man standing before him. The rumpled raincoat was short in the sleeves, the hat not quite big enough.
“What do you have in your pockets?” he asked.
Decker looked startled.
“Pockets?”
“Yes. What are you carrying with you?”
Decker began to fumble through his pockets.
“My — identification—”
“Keep it”
“—a little money… Keys… A — a handkerchief…” Decker stammered through the list. “Nothing — nothing else. Only— only this…”
He brought out a small leather-covered notebook.
“Let me see it.”
Kieffer took the notebook. He opened it. It was a folder holding two photographs. An elderly man and an elderly woman smiling gently from opposite sides.
“My — parents,” Decker said. He sounded apologetic. He held out his hand for the photo folder.
“You'll have to get rid of it,” Kieffer said gruffly, angry at the man's stupidity. “It cannot be found on you if we are stopped and you are searched. A man being abducted hardly has time to pick up a family photo album.”
“No,” said Decker. His outstretched hand began to shake.
“It's for your own protection, dammit!”
“No. I shall keep it.”
Kieffer glanced at the German. He recognized the look of near-panic in the man's eyes. Perhaps the photos were his assurance, he thought. His link to sanity. He could not take the chance of having the man lose control. Not now.
“All right,” he said shortly. “But I shall keep it — until we are safely across the lines.” He put the little folder in his pocket.
“That's it,” he said firmly.
Decker looked down.
“Anything else?”
Decker shook his head.
Kieffer unrolled the webbing.
“Put your hands behind you,” he ordered.
Wordlessly the German obeyed.