Codeword Golden Fleece (54 page)

Next day, immediately after breakfast, Rex walked round to see Levinsky. There was still nothing from Simon, but he took the opportunity of collecting his suitcase and used that as an excuse to make the Jew a very handsome present, to consolidate his goodwill.

Richard came downstairs at eleven o’clock, and Rex accompanied him on the short walk that he now took every morning, increasing the distance slightly each day, so as gradually to get back the full use of his legs. On their return they learned that Levinsky had telephoned; consumed with impatience to get news of Simon, Rex jumped into a taxi and drove round to the Roebuck.

A letter had arrived for Levinsky by the ordinary mail, requesting that another enclosed in it should be handed to Rex when
he called for his suitcase. With trembling fingers Rex opened the enclosure. It was simply headed Bucharest, 10th Oct., ‘39, and read:

Mon Vieux,

I gather you’ve been in a bit of a muddle, but your letter was reassuring, and I felt sure you’d prefer me to get on with the firm’s business rather than remain in Cernauti until the 15th or thereabouts.

I’ve been in a muddle myself, as the beak took an extremely poor view of the fancy dress I wore at that party where last we met. I don’t think I’m a malicious chap, but when I learned that you had come unstuck, too, I could cheerfully have crucified our landlord upside down, for, to put it mildly, the ‘inconvenience’ resulting from his unfounded and slanderous inferences concerning my moral character. What a lesson for historians that the Fate of Nations may hang upon the imbecile mentality of a fellow like that!

However, on balance the Fates are behaving generously, as the far more serious threat to our business, connected with the gentleman we met at Lubieszow, has not matured; and for that I gather we owe a lot to the previous owners of the Chrysler. Moreover, the new political situation here opens up quite a number of avenues to the firm that were previously closed.

Your letter came as a bit of a shock to me, as I had been comforting myself with the thought that by this time you would have completed our big deal.

Having read it, I gave one gasp and leapt into the first train for Bucharest. Arrived there I hurtled into the office of
Lubieszow, Fils, Aîné et Successeurs,
but the partner you wanted me to see had left the capital three days before and, I am told, is now in Ploesti.

I am proceeding there in the next train, and will either be, or leave word for you, at the best pub that oil-soaked Rumanian Wigan can boast.

No news, alas, of Greyeyes.

We’ll have to work fast now if we mean to complete that contract.

Yours without frills, or, thank God, petticoats.

‘
S’.

Having returned to the Royal Bukovina, Rex went over the letter again with Richard. By ‘the gentleman we met at Lubieszow’ Simon evidently meant von Geisenheim, and by ‘the previous
owners of our Chrysler’ the two Communists whom the police believed guilty of the assault; so he, too, was no longer worried on that score, and had also realised that the heavy setback recently sustained by the Iron Guard had removed their gravest danger. ‘Lubieszow, Sons, Elders and Successors’ was an amusing way of referring to the Polish Legation, and it was clear that he had adopted exactly the course that Rex and Richard had forseen when they had discussed the matter the previous evening.

‘It’s cheerful enough on the surface,’ Richard remarked. ‘But reading between the Lines one can see that he’s really worried stiff.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ muttered Rex. ‘Today’s the 12th, and we’ve got only eight days to go.’

‘I know, but Simon’s letter is dated the 10th, and he will have been in Ploesti by yesterday morning, so he should have run Major Serzeski to earth by now.’

‘Well, we’d better hit the trail for Ploesti on the first train out.’

They found that there was a train leaving Cernauti that afternoon which arrived in Bucharest at six o’clock in the morning, calling at Ploesti at 4.45. The head porter at the hotel secured them sleepers on it, and they settled down to the long journey, their anxieties somewhat eased by the comforting thought that they were at last on the move.

On arriving at Ploesti they got a night-hawk taxi at the station and asked him to take them to the best hotel. The man drove them to the Hotel Carol, a new and imposing edifice, but at its desk they drew blank; Simon had not been there. The taxi-man then took them to the Boyar Hotel, an older place, but having an air of expensive comfort, and there the night porter answered their enquiry by producing a letter for Rex, which had been left there that evening.

As he tore it open Richard leaned over, and they read:

Mon Vieux,

That damn’ friend of yours has unconsciously given me the slip, I arrived in Ploesti late on the night of the 10th and located him as staying here, but he had gone out to dine with friends and not yet returned.

I sat up in the lounge waiting for him until four o’clock in the morning, but he didn’t come in, so I went to bed, having left word
to be called at eight. The fool of a porter mucked my call, and I didn’t wake till ten. By the time I got downstairs the Major had packed, breakfasted and gone, but not, apparently, to the station.

I questioned scores of servants and garage hands, but it was not until the night porter came on duty last night that I got anywhere. According to him our friend was still in the Ploesti district and had moved from the hotel to stay with friends outside the town, but he couldn’t give me the name of the people or the least idea where they lived; so I had to chuck it for the night.

This morning I tried the head waiter again to see if he could give me the names of anyone our quarry might have entertained while staying here. He then recalled that our friend had given a luncheon party for five men on Sunday last, the 8th.

Two of the guests were strangers in the place, but he gave me the names of the other three, all of whom were locals mixed up in the oil game. I got their addresses and spent the rest of the day chasing them up.

Only one lived outside the town, so I naturally went for him first. With him my luck was out as he had not seen the Major since the luncheon party, but he gave me the name of one of the others that the head waiter did not know; he was a chap named Vimeru, a tanker man who lives in Constanta, so the Major couldn’t be with him.

On getting back here I gatecrashed the two others, and the second one, a Greek called Zimovobodos, told me that the Major had spent the previous night with him at a weekend chalet that he owns up in the mountains to the north of the town. Our friend had, however, left that morning to go up to Cernauti again on some job connected with the Polish airmen who are interned there.

The next train for Cernauti is the night express, so I’ve booked a sleeper on it and am writing this after dinner. As the journey takes longer by road than rail I expect to be in Cernauti within an hour or so of our friend arriving there; so with luck I’ll have good news for you by the time you’re a free man again.

The odds are that you’ll never get this letter, as I shall leave another for you with Levinsky; so, if you’re not out till the 15th, you’ll get this news via him, and I hope more; and of course realise that there’s no point now in your coming to Ploesti. I’ve only written this on the offchance that you might get out earlier than expected and act on a letter I sent you two days ago from Bucharest.

Yours as ever, but quite breathless,

‘
s.
’

‘Well, thank goodness he did leave a letter here,’ remarked Richard, ‘otherwise, we’d be at a dead end again.’

‘What god-darned awful luck, though,’ Rex muttered. ‘Just to think that old Simon and Serzeski were both sleeping in this caravanserai and that Simon missed him in the morning because he wasn’t called in time.’

‘I know, and d’you realise that we must have been within about ten feet of Simon only about three hours ago? Our trains must have passed each other somewhere round half past two this morning.’

‘Sure! Still, we’ll catch up on him tomorrow. There should be a morning train that will get us back to Cernauti before midnight.’

It proved that the day express from Bucharest for the north called at Ploesti at 9.25. So, having given the night porter a handsome tip in advance to ensure their being called at 7.30, they went upstairs to get a couple of hours’ sleep in comfortable beds.

This extra two hours and hot baths in the morning did much to refresh them after their wearisome night journey and the always unpleasant business of having to turn out of a sleeper in the small hours of the morning.

After breakfast they listened to a French broadcast and learned that Russia was now exerting pressure on the Finns, who were proving much more stubborn than had been the case with the smaller Baltic States.

At a few minutes after nine a taxi that they had ordered to take them to the station was reported at the door by the head porter. Having distributed the usual tips, they went out to it and drove off, thoroughly glad to be leaving so soon this dreary town in which everything smelt and tasted of petroleum.

The taxi had not covered a quarter of a mile and was still in the main street when Rex sat forward with a jerk.

‘Hi!’ he shouted to the driver, and added in German: ‘Quick! Turn round and go the other way.’

‘What the devil’s the matter?’ exclaimed Richard.

‘That car!’ gasped Rex. ‘The one that just passed us. It was the Ford V8! I saw its number.’

The driver had slowed down and drawn in to the kerb. Tense with excitement, Rex bellowed fresh directions at him, while craning his neck out of the window so as not to lose sight of the Ford, which was now half-hidden in the stream of traffic.

The taxi banged, rattled and coughed as the elderly Rumanian
who was at its wheel hove it round regardless of the indignation of the other drivers of vehicles in the crowded street.

‘Go on!’ yelled Rex impatiently. ‘Go on, man! That dark blue, dusty Ford. Triple fare for you if you catch up with it.’

The man needed no further urging. He had got the taxi round, and it was now doing twenty miles an hour again as it wove dangerously past a bus and two lorries.

The Ford had a lead of about three hundred yards, and there were still a dozen vehicles separating it from the taxi.

It was well driven and moving fast, but gradually they edged up on it, passing five more cars and vans in the next half-mile. Then it reached the main cross-roads of the town and turned south. For a few minutes they lost sight of it, but it came into view again as they swerved round the corner, and there were now only another bus and two cars between them and it.

They passed the bus and were gaining on the two cars when one of them signalled that it was turning right at the next corner and so forced the taxi to slow up. As their pace increased again, they could catch an occasional glimpse of the Ford’s number-plate beyond the one remaining intervening vehicle. It was UCZ827 all right, and Rex and Richard were now both leaning forward, breathless with excitement, as they urged their driver on.

While they were running through the suburbs they neither lost nor gained upon either of the cars ahead. The taxi was now rattling along at thirty-five miles an hour, but its engine was old and worn, so that seemed to be the maximum pace that could be got out of it.

Soon there came gaps between the houses on each side of the road, and through these openings glimpses could be caught of the desolate treeless country and a skyline broken only by oil derricks. They passed an ugly water tower, and Rex, recognising it from his previous visit to Ploesti, realised that they were on the road to Bucharest.

‘We shan’t do it,’ Richard muttered at that moment. ‘He’s gaining on us now.’

‘Yep!’ Rex nodded grimly. ‘This old tin can will never be able to catch the Ford once we’re on the open road.’

The car immediately ahead of them was a long low limousine. As it reached a fork where the trunk road to the capital broadened out it put on a burst of speed and passed the Ford,

All unconscious that he was being pursued, the Ford’s driver
slowed a little to let the bigger car pass, but then he put on speed again and gradually drew ahead at a steady forty to forty-five miles an hour.

Rex and Richard both sat craning forward, wondering how on earth they could attract the attention of the man in the car ahead, or at least keep up with him.

It flashed into Richard’s mind to start shouting ‘Stop, Thief!’ as a means of getting him pulled up by some approaching vehicle that, hearing the cry, might slew across the road and block the Ford’s path; but he did not know the right words in Rumanian, and, even if he had, his voice would never have carried far enough to be effective.

The gap between the taxi and the Ford had now widened to nearly half a mile. The taxi-man turned and shouted:

‘It is no good! He is too fast.’

‘Go on!’ yelled Rex. ‘Stick to his tail!’

They were well away from the city on the open road now. On each side of them stretched the hideous waste scarred by the wooden oil towers and ugly tin-roofed Hutments. The air was so heavily laden with the horrid reek of petroleum that it seemed as if the lighting of a match would have caused the whole sordid landscape to disappear in one terrific sheet of flame.

The Ford was still gaining, while its pursuers sat with their hands clenched in impotent fury. In the car ahead lay the all-important document for which so much blood had already been shed, or at least the means of tracing it. There in the Ford, which was still moving at no more than a moderate, unhurried pace, lay the means of cutting off four-fifths of Hitler’s oil supplies; of permanently grounding two-thirds of the Luftwaffe or rendering the bulk of Germany’s Armoured Divisions impotent.

To secure it would be of more value to the Allied cause than the sinking of all Germany’s capital ships in a general Fleet action, and be a more far-reaching victory than any the Allied Armies could at present hope to achieve for years to come. For it the Supreme Allied War Council would unhesitatingly have sacrificed fifty thousand lives, knowing that the loss of a mere three divisions was a bagatelle compared with the infinitely greater losses their countries must sustain if the war had to be fought out, as was the 1914-1918 war, until both sides were bled white and rocking from exhaustion.