Passport To Peril

ON GUARD

I had visions of Hiram, Teensy, Walter, and me driving up to the main gate of the air base to attack the garrison. The six-foot Teensy with her bleached-blond hair, little Hiram in his coonskin cap, Walter, the perpetually smiling ex-prizefighter with a bum leg, and John Stodder alias Marcel Blaye alias Jean Stodder, the involuntary watch and clock salesman whose bandaged hands couldn’t hold a gun. Coxey’s Army would have looked like a West Point color guard alongside us. It was the strangest American expeditionary force on record.

“What are we going to do?” I asked Hiram.

“Call on a friend of mine for a cup of coffee.”

Hiram told Teensy to turn off the main highway into the Kossuth Lajos utca, about half a mile short of the air base. The car skidded and spun wildly in the narrow, rutted road, but we had less than half a block to go. The street was lined on both sides with identical cracker-box bungalows, the Hungarian equivalent of a hundred communities along the Long Island Rail Road.

“It’s all right,” Hiram said. “Let’s go in.”

I couldn’t figure how he knew until I noticed the shade was half raised in one of the windows of the bungalow we were entering.

“You’re a new member of the agricultural attaché’s staff,” Hiram said.

“I don’t know the difference between timothy and trailing arbutus,” I said.

“Never mind,” said Hiram. “Neither do I. Your hands and feet were frostbitten when you went skiing. That’s how Walter hurt his leg.”

“That gives American skiers a fine reputation,” I said. “Incidentally, what’s my name?”

“John Stodder,” he said. “I’ve got papers to prove it.”

I couldn’t understand why the briefing, if we were visiting one of Hiram’s agents, until we went inside the house. We were introduced in turn to Bela Szabo, his wife and seven children, the wife’s mother, somebody’s brother-in-law, and the serving girl who insisted on kissing everybody’s hand.

It seemed that Mrs. Szabo sewed for Teensy, and there were a couple of dresses ready to try on. The two women vanished into a back room, Hiram and Papa Szabo, a gaunt, bearded, melancholy man, repaired to the small porch to smoke a cigar, and Walter and I were left with the seven children, Mrs. Szabo’s mother, and the unidentified brother-in-law who volunteered to play the accordion. The serving girl, who answered to the name of Lilli, passed the apricot brandy.

I tried to answer Mrs. Szabo’s mother’s questions about America, but my mind was on Maria. Now that there was a possibility I might see her again, perhaps within a few hours, my feelings were uncertain. I’d thought of little else since I left her outside the coffeehouse with Schmidt. With reunion perhaps close at hand, I was filled with misgivings.

After all, what did I know about Maria Torres except what she herself had told me? How did I know she hadn’t voluntarily left the coffeehouse with the German doctor without waiting for me? What proof did I have, aside from the background she had given me, for believing she was a prisoner of Schmidt and not an accomplice?

I remembered how surprised I’d been when she’d responded to Schmidt’s command in German at Kelenfold to “Pick up your baggage,” although she’d told me she understood no German. There was no sign of emotion in her lovely face at that moment, none of the terror she’d displayed when she’d first sighted Schmidt aboard the Orient Express. I remembered how calm she’d been in the warehouse on Mexikoi ut and how I’d mistrusted her show of nerves when we’d met on the Orient. I’d started to put her down as a girl with too much imagination and too little control of herself. Maybe I’d been right. Maybe it had been clever acting.

But that didn’t make sense, either. She’d followed me off the Orient, with all the danger that involved. She’d played my game with Major Strakhov. She’d stuck by me when I decided to leave the train at Kelenfold. And hadn’t she thrown her arms around my neck and kissed me when I left her to enter the Keleti yards? Hadn’t she tried to go with me?

“I don’t get it.” I said it out loud in English because Mrs. Szabo’s mother said in Hungarian, “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking of. You were asking me about the Brooklyn Bridge?” The unidentified brother-in-law promptly pumped out an off-key rendition of “The Sidewalks of New York,” and Papa Szabo stuck his head in the door to tell him to be careful because the People’s Democracy does not favor fraternization with foreigners. Then Walter, who didn’t speak a word of Hungarian, told the fascinated children, who didn’t understand a word of English, the story of Br’er Rabbit.

I stood by during endless handshaking and the patting of small heads, toasts in apricot brandy, and more hand kissing by the serving girl who got the customary quarter from each of us in tips. Then we left.

Hiram turned the car around after some difficulty, and we drove back to the main highway to head in the direction of the Russian air base.

“I thought you said we were going for a cup of coffee,” I said.

“There isn’t any coffee in the whole of Hungary,” Hiram said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“How would I notice?” I said. “Except for a warehouse, a nightclub, several assorted homes, and a country inn, I might as well have gone through Budapest in a fast train. I’d like to see what the city’s like these days.”

“Not this trip,” Hiram said. He started to add something but he shut up. He wasn’t kidding me. I knew the chances were pretty slim I’d ever get out of the country alive, much less see the sights of Budapest. He and Teensy had diplomatic status. At the worst, they’d be jailed until Washington locked up a Russian diplomat and arranged an exchange. Walter and I came under the heading of common criminals for a firing squad. At least Carr could tell my family what had happened.

Hiram said, “We’ll ditch the car about two blocks from the air base. Walter knows how to mess up the carburetor so it’ll look as if we had to abandon it.

“There’s a group of houses just outside the main gate of the field. The street is only a block long, from the highway we’re on to the gate. There are twelve houses on each side. We want the fifth house from the highway on the south side. Have you got it?”

We said we understood. Hiram asked us to repeat what he’d said, and we did in turn. Then he asked us to see that our watches agreed.

“That’s what they do in the comic strips,” I said. “They’re always synchronizing watches.” Nobody thought it amusing. It’s the kind of thing you say when your nerves are hopping.

Hiram said, “There are three doors to the house, front and back and one on the side away from the air base. I’ll take the front door, Teensy the back, and Walter the side.”

“What do I do?” I said.

If Hiram thought Maria was a prisoner inside that house, I wanted to go in.

“We’ve got to have a lookout, John.” It was the first time he’d addressed me as anything but Mr. Stodder. “You take the side nearest the air base. Get in the shadow of the next house. Can you whistle?”

I said I could, either straight or with two fingers.

“You don’t have to be fancy,” Hiram said with a grin. “If you see anyone heading for the house, whistle ‘Dixie.’ If they go past, stop whistling. If they come inside the grounds, whistle ‘Reveille.’ ”

“What do I do then?” I said.

“Run like hell,” Hiram said.

“May I ask who we are about to visit?”

“Major Felix Borodin,” Hiram said, “although from what Papa Szabo said, the major won’t be there to receive us. You see, he conducts a class in security at the air base during the next hour.”

Hiram stopped the car and let Walter out. “Eight-five sharp,” he said.

Teensy got out next. Hiram said, “Eight-five sharp,” to her, too. She walked off into the shadows without a word.

I got out a block farther on. “Eight-five sharp,” went for me as well. It was a clear, cold, starry night where a heavy snowstorm would have offered some concealment.

I had no trouble finding the street. I passed a couple of Russian soldiers off duty. I held my breath, but they never even glanced at me. It was hard walking on the uncleared sidewalks, and my feet still gave me excruciating pain, but I looked at my watch when I sighted the fifth house from the highway on the south side and I had two minutes’ grace. The gun was still inside my jacket in the shoulder holster, but I could have handled it just as easily with boxing-gloves as with the bandages on my hands.

There wasn’t a light in the house when I passed. There was no light in the next house, and, except for wading knee-deep in snow, I had no trouble in making my way across the lawn and into the shadows from the second house.

Major Felix Borodin’s residence was no cracker-box affair. Such might be appropriate for Budapest commuters, but Russian officers required something more substantial. Borodin’s, identical with the neighboring twenty-three, had two full stories and what appeared to be a spacious attic under a mansard roof. There was a cellar to be searched, too.

Eight-five became eight-ten, then eight-fifteen. The only sound came shortly after the appointed time when my ears caught the scraping noise of a window being opened an inch or two, so that I might be heard if I whistled. My three friends were apparently careful to draw the shades; at least, no light appeared.

When my watch told me it was nearly eight-twenty, I began to feel uneasy. It shouldn’t have taken three veteran housebreakers fifteen minutes to find—my mind almost accepted the word body—to find Maria. The house wasn’t that big. It couldn’t be that they’d walked into a trap. One of the three would have cried out.

It took all my willpower to keep from moving. It was bitterly cold, my muscles were cramped and sore from the beating Schmidt had given me, but I didn’t dare leave the shadows. It occurred to me that Hiram hadn’t said what was to happen when they were ready to leave. Were we expected to meet at the car? We couldn’t risk walking back together. How would I know when they left? If we didn’t return to the car, how did we get back to Budapest? I cursed myself for not asking.

I think it was almost eight-thirty when I heard the plane take off. I know it was only a minute or two later that the two men appeared, coming from the direction of the air base.

I whistled “Dixie” as loud as I could. I’m sure they heard me inside.

When the two men turned in at Borodin’s gate, I whistled “Reveille,” but the plane was only a few hundred feet overhead, and the roar from its engines would have drowned a siren. By the time the noise from the air had subsided, the men were inside the house.

If I could have used my hands, I’d have fired a shot in the window. If there’d been a stone, I’d have thrown it to smash the glass.

I expected to hear shots, the sounds of a struggle, shouting. There was only silence except for the drone of the airplane engines in the distance. I expected more men from the air base, but none came. Perhaps they’d already entered, through the back door and the door on the other side, the way Teensy and Walter had gone in.

I waited five minutes, the longest five minutes I’d ever known. I couldn’t make my nerves obey me longer.

I went to the window that had been opened. The drifted snow came almost to my waist. I put my ear to the opening and I could hear voices somewhere in the house but not in that room.

I managed to raise the window three feet or so, using my elbow as a lever, but I couldn’t think how to remove the shade. I pulled on it with my elbow, thinking to rip it from the roller, but it snapped back and climbed the window with what seemed to me a monstrous screeching. I flattened myself against the wall next to the window, but nobody appeared.

The room was dark, but there was light in the hallway beyond.

I put one foot on the narrow ledge over the cellar window, intending to pull myself onto the windowsill with my elbows and into the room. But I stopped. What business did I have going into that house? I ought to be following Hiram’s advice. I ought to run like hell. I couldn’t handle the gun I was carrying. Once inside the house I’d be useless in a fight.

The proper course would be to seek help. But where? Who could I go to? The American legation couldn’t and wouldn’t interfere. When an intelligence agent is caught red-handed, his government disowns him. I didn’t know any of the men who worked for Hiram. I couldn’t go back to Papa Szabo even if I could have found Hiram’s sedan, repaired the carburetor, made the engine start without keys, and then driven without the use of my hands. If anything was to be done to save Hiram, Teensy, and Walter I had to do it then.

All those considerations went through my mind in a few seconds that I paused in front of the open window. But I had to swing myself into that room in any case. I couldn’t have fled without first knowing what had happened to Maria.