Dark Star (52 page)

Szara and Vainshtok waited until five o'clock before they joined the line. Vainshtok was philosophical. “Back to dear old Berlin.” He sighed. “And dear old Dr. Goebbels's press conferences. How I've lived without them I don't know. But, at least, there'll be something for dinner besides beets.”

Vainshtok was skinny and hollow-chested, with thin, hairy arms and legs. He reminded Szara of a spider. “Do you really care so much what you eat? ” Szara asked. The line moved forward a pace. “You certainly don't get fat.”

“Terror,” Vainshtok explained. “That's what keeps me thin. I eat plenty, but I burn it up.”

The man in front of them, a minor Hungarian noble of some sort, stepped up to the table, stood at rigid attention, and, announcing his name and title, presented his diplomatic credentials. Szara got a good look at the two operatives at the table. One was young and alert and very efficient. He had a ledger open in front of
him and copied out the information from documents and passports. The other seemed rather more an observer, in attendance only in case of some special circumstance beyond the expertise of his partner. The observer was a short, heavy man, middle-aged, with wavy fair hair and extremely thick glasses. As his junior questioned the Hungarian in diplomatic French—“May I ask, sir, how you managed to find your way to this area? ”—he put an oval cigarette in the center of his lips, creased the head of a wooden match with his thumbnail, and lit the cigarette from the flare.

Where?
Szara asked himself.

The Hungarian's French was primitive. “Left Warsaw on late train. Night in eight September …”

Where?

The observer glanced at Szara, but seemed to take no special notice of him.

“Stopping in Lublin …” said the Hungarian.

“I don't feel well,” Szara said confidentially. “You go ahead.” He turned and walked out of the dining room. Maneuvered his way through the crowded lobby, excusing himself as he bumped into people, and took the passageway that led to the hydrotherapy pool and the treatment areas in the basement. The spiral staircase was made of thin metal, and his footsteps clattered and echoed in the stairwell as he descended. He took the first exit, walking quickly through a maze of long tile halls, trying doors as he went. At last one opened. This was a water room of some sort; the ceiling, floor, and walls were set with pale green tiles, hoses hung from brass fittings, and a canvas screen shielded a row of metal tables. The screen had a series of rubber-rimmed apertures in it—for arthritic ankles to be sprayed with sulfurous water? He hiked himself up onto a metal table, took a deep breath, tried to calm down.

Where,
he now realized, was in some lost Belgian mining town the night that Odile was debriefed after she got off the train from Germany. The observer was the man with the gold watch; Szara remembered him lighting a cigarette off a match flare, remembered him asking a single question: “Is that your answer?” Some such thing. Intimidation. A cold, watery stare.

And so? So he'd turned up at the Krynica-Zdroj, sitting behind a
table with a ledger on it. So? That's probably what he did with his life. Szara resisted a shiver. The little room was clammy, its air much too still, a cavern buried in the earth. What was wrong with him, running away like a frightened child? Was that all it took to panic him, two operatives sitting at a table? Now he'd have to go back upstairs and join the line; they'd seen him leave, perhaps it would make them suspicious.
See how you incriminate yourself!
No, there was nothing to fear. What could they do, surrounded by a crowd of diplomats. He hopped off the table and left the room. Now, which hallway led where.

He wandered a little distance toward where he thought the exit was, stopped dead when he heard footsteps on the staircase. Who was this? A normal, deliberate descent. Then Vainshtok, nasal and querulous: “André Aronovich? André Aronovich!”

Vainshtok, from the sound of it, was walking down the corridor at right angles to where he stood. “I'm over here,” Szara said.

Coming around the corner, Vainshtok signaled with his eyes and a nod of the head that someone was behind him, but Szara could see no one. “I've come to say good-bye,” he said, then reached out suddenly and took Szara in his arms, a powerful hug in the Russian style. Szara was startled, found himself pulled hard against Vain-shtok's chest, then tried to return the embrace, but Vainshtok backed away. Two men turned the corner into the hallway, then waited politely for farewells to be said. “So,” Vainshtok said, “let those who can, do what they must, eh?” He winked. Szara felt the bulging weight between his side and the waistband of his trousers and understood everything. Vainshtok saw the expression on his face and raised his eyebrows like a comedian. “You know, Szara, you're not such a snob after all. You'll come and see me when you get to Moscow?”

“Not Berlin?”

“Nah. Enough!”

“Lucky for you.”

“That's it.” His eyes glistened.

He turned abruptly and walked away. When he reached the end of the corridor, he turned toward the staircase, followed by one of the men. A moment later Szara heard them climbing the stairs. As
the other man came to join him, Szara saw that it was Maltsaev, dark and balding, wearing tinted eyeglasses and the same voluminous overcoat wrapped about him, his hands thrust deep in the pockets. He nodded at Szara with evident satisfaction. “The wandering troubadour—at last!” he said merrily.

Szara looked puzzled.

“You've given Moscow fits,” Maltsaev explained. “One moment you're landing at Warsaw airfield, the next, nothing, air.”

“A detour,” Szara said. “I was, how shall I put it,
escorted
by Polish military intelligence. They picked me up at a hospital in Tarnow, after a bombing on the rail line, and drove me to Nowy Sacz. Then we couldn't get through the German lines. Eventually, I managed to cling to the platform of a train that was going to Lvov. Once I got there, a policeman sent me out here to the spa, with the diplomats.”

Maltsaev nodded sympathetically. “Well, everything's going to be fine now. I'm up here on some liaison assignment with the Ukrainian
apparat,
but they wired me in Belgrade to keep an eye out for the missing Szara. I'm afraid you'll have to go into the city and tell some idiot colonel the whole saga, but that shouldn't trouble you too much.”

“No, I don't mind,” he said.

“Your friend Vainshtok's going back to Moscow. Probably you won't have to. I would imagine you'd prefer to stay in Paris.”

“If I can, I'd like to, yes.”

“Lucky. Or favored. Someday you'll tell me your secret.”

Szara laughed.

Maltsaev's mood changed, he lowered his voice. “Look, you didn't mind, I hope, the last time we spoke, at the station in Geneva …”

Szara remembered perfectly, a remark about Abramov:
his parents should have made him study the violin like all the rest of them.
“I understand completely,” he said. “A difficult time.”

“We're none of us made of iron. What happened with Abramov, well, we only wanted to talk with him. We were certainly prepared to do more, but it would never have come to that if he hadn't tried to run. We couldn't, you understand these things, we couldn't let
him disappear. As it was, I got a thorough roasting for the whole business. Any hope of getting out of the embassy in Belgrade—there it went. For the near future certainly. Anyhow, what I said at the station … I hadn't slept, and I knew I was in trouble, maybe a lot of trouble. But I shouldn't have taken it out on you.”

Szara held up a hand. “Please. I don't hold a grudge.”

Maltsaev seemed relieved. “Can we go back upstairs? Maybe get you a decent dinner in Lvov before you have to see the colonel? I'd rather not try the Polish roads in the dark if I don't have to. Driving through the Ukraine was bad enough, especially with Soviet armor on the roads.”

“Let's go.”

“It smells awful down here.” Maltsaev wrinkled his nose like a kid.

“Sulfur. Just like in hell.”

Maltsaev snorted with amusement. “Is
that
how they cure you! Sinner, cease your drinking and depravity or here's how it will be.”

They walked together along the corridor toward the stairway. “Your friends are waiting for us?” Szara asked.

“Fortunately, no. Those guys make me nervous.”

They came to the spiral staircase. “Is there a subbasement?” Maltsaev asked, peering down.

“Yes. There's a pool in it, and the springs are there somewhere.”

“Just every little thing you'd want. Ah, the life of the idle rich.” He gestured for Szara to precede him up the steps.

“Please,” said Szara, standing back.

“I insist,” Maltsaev said, a parody of aristocratic courtesy.

They both hesitated. To Szara, a long moment. He waited for Maltsaev to climb the stairs but the man stood there, smiling politely; apparently he had all the time in the world. Szara took the gun out and shot him.

He expected a huge, ringing explosion in the confined space of the stairwell but it did not happen that way. The weapon snapped, something fizzed—it was as though he sensed the path of the bullet—and he could smell burned air.

Maltsaev was furious. “Oh you didn't,” he said. He started to take one hand out of his pocket but Szara reached over and grasped
him by the wrist. He was curiously weak; Szara held him easily. Maltsaev bit his lip and scowled with discomfort. Szara shot him again and he sat down abruptly, his weight falling back against an iron rung of the stairway. He died a few seconds later. By then he just looked melancholy.

Szara stared at the weapon. It was the blued-steel Steyr that Vainshtok had carried. Why had he given it up? Why had he not defended himself? Szara found the safety device, then put the automatic in the side pocket of his jacket. He listened hard, but there was no running, no commotion above him. The shots had not been heard. Perhaps the powder load in the bullet was minimal; he really didn't understand. He pulled Maltsaev's hand free of his pocket and went looking for the weapon he knew was there, but he didn't find it. Nor could he find it anywhere else. That meant Maltsaev's crew, perhaps the same one that had finished Abramov, was nearby. Maltsaev wasn't a murderer, Szara reminded himself, he was an arranger of murders. Szara found a car key in an inside pocket and a set of identity papers. Running his hands down the overcoat, he discovered a flap sewn into the sleeve that held a sword and shield NKVD pin in a soft pigskin bag with a drawstring. There was also a wallet with a thick sheaf of roubles, zlotys, and reichsmarks. Szara put everything in his own pockets. Next he grabbed Maltsaev's ankles and pulled. It was difficult, he had to use all his strength, but once he got the body moving, the smooth wool overcoat slid easily across the floor. It took at least two minutes to drag Maltsaev down the hall and into the unlocked room, and the trip left a long maroon streak on the tile. The lock on the door was simple enough, it worked on a lever. Szara thumbed it down and pulled the door closed until he heard it click.

At the foot of the iron stairway he paused, retrieved both ejected cartridges, then climbed, shoes in one hand, gun in the other; but there was no one waiting for him on the landing and he dropped the weapon into his pocket and hopped on one foot to put his shoes back on. The lobby was as he'd left it; people milling about, affable confusion, a line working its way up to the table. “Well,” said the Spanish official who'd shared the sunporch with him, “your friend has finally made it out of here. It's given us all hope.”

“He's known to be clever—and lucky,” Szara said, clearly a bit envious.

The Spaniard sighed. “I'll be going back to Warsaw eventually. As you know, Germany is exceptionally sympathetic to our neutrality. Perhaps it won't be too long.”

“I hope not,” Szara said. “Such disorder helps nothing.”

“How true.”

“Perhaps we'll dine together this evening.”

The Spaniard inclined his head, an informal bow of acceptance.

Szara used a wall mirror to assure himself that the observer was still at the table, then avoided his line of vision by taking a back door, walking behind the kitchen area where the two young Polish women were preparing beets over a wooden tub, saving every last peeling in a metal pan. They both smiled at him as he went past, even the shy one. He entered the sunporch by a side door and looked out through the screen. There were two black Pobedas parked in the gravel semicircle. One was coated with road dust and grime, the other spattered with mud and clay. Recalling what Maltsaev had said about Soviet armor on the roads, he decided to try the latter. He picked up his valise, took a deep breath, and walked off the sun-porch onto the lawn. He nodded to a few diplomats strolling along the paths, then slid into the front seat of the muddy Pobeda as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do.

The car's interior smelled strongly: of pomade, sweat, cigarettes, vodka, mildewed upholstery, and gasoline. He put Maltsaev's key into the ignition and turned it, the starter motor whined, died, whined on a higher note, produced a single firing of the engine, sank to a whisper, suddenly fired twice, and at last brought the engine to sputtering life. He wrestled with the gearshift—mounted on the steering column—until it went into one of the gears. Through the streaked panel window on his left he could see the diplomats staring at him: who was he to simply climb into a car, valise in hand, and drive away? One of them started to walk toward him. Szara lifted the clutch pedal—the car lurched forward a foot and stalled. The diplomat, a handsome, dignified man with gray wings of hair that rested on his ears, had raised an interrogatory index finger—
oh, just a moment.
Szara turned the ignition key again and
the starter motor whined up and down the musical scale as it had before. When the engine at last fired he blinked the sweat out of his eyes.
“Un moment, s'il vous plaît,”
the diplomat called out, only a few feet away. Szara gave him a tight smile and a shrug. The gears meshed and the car rolled forward, crunching over the gravel. Szara looked in the rearview mirror. The diplomat was standing with hands on hips, the caricature of a man offended by simply unspeakable rudeness.