The Istanbul Decision (6 page)

Kliest stopped before reaching the top of the embankment and turned around. "Do you remember the address in the Eastern Sector?" he asked.

"Fourteen Mariendorfstrasse."

"And the Brandenburg?"

"At the end of Unter den Linden. That won't be hard to find."

Kliest nodded approval. The train was getting closer. "Good luck," he repeated.

Carter, with the long cylinder dangling from his back, began the arduous, hand-over-hand climb up the girders that formed the underside of the bridge.

The engine's headlight wobbled in the distance. It had rounded the curve at the far end of the yards and was beginning the straightaway that would bring it under the bridge.

Carter, watching its progress and realizing he might be late, began to scramble from girder to girder. The metal was wet from the rain and slippery underfoot. Twice the cylinder caught in the metal framework, and he had to stop and wrench it free.

The big engine passed underneath just as he got himself in place, rattling the bridge and nearly suffocating him with diesel exhaust. A string of boxcars followed with flat, hard roofs slick with rain. He watched them rattle by ten or so feet below and wondered if even fifteen kilometers an hour wasn't too fast. Next came flatcars loaded with farm equipment: tractors with sharp, gleaming plow blades. To fall onto these would mean certain death.

He looked down the train. Making the corner were a series of gondola cars loaded with coal. He disentangled the cylinder strap and let himself down until he was hanging from the girder by his hands. He let the first one pass, getting his timing on the second, then he let go. He hit the coal mound just below its peak, tumbled down it, and stopped with his back up against the well of the car. He pulled himself upright and took account of things. No bones broken, and the package seemed to be intact. He pulled it close to him, turned his collar up against the wind, and sat back to wait.

Twenty minutes later he felt the cars grinding to a halt. They had come to an outpost on the track. A barbed-wire barrier ten feet high extended up the embankment on either side, and on the track were a guardhouse and a gate. The gate was open and the train finally stopped just in front of it, no doubt for the guard and the engineer to exchange bills of inventory.

Ten minutes passed and the train started up again. Carter waited until he was well past the guardhouse, then jettisoned the cylinder and jumped, landing in the tall grass. He ran back and retrieved the cylinder, then scrambled up the embankment to the road.

He had made it. He was in the Eastern Sector. All that remained now was to find the building in which the meeting with Kobelev was scheduled to take place and scout it out. If Kobelev showed up at the appointed time, he'd kill him. If not and it was a trap, at least he'd know about it in advance.

Sister Marie-Therese kneeled before the crucifix in the chapel of the St. Denis Clinic and mumbled a Hail Mary. It had been a while since she'd prayed, and when she found herself rushing through it, she stopped and chided herself for a lack of piety. It was this new patient on the third floor. The young woman kept her running all day. After the seventh or eighth trip up those stairs, her joints got stiff.

Supporting herself with a gnarled hand on the altar top, she pulled herself slowly erect, turned, and eased herself into one of the wooden pews behind her. Then with a sigh she sat back and stared at the crucifix, not seeing it really, but fixing on it as the focal point of the room, and let her mind wander. As she did, a look of worry settled over her features.

What worried her was violence. She sensed it coming to St. Denis just as she had sensed it that day in 42 when the German soldier had come to say a prayer at the grotto in the garden and she'd seen the blood dripping from his coat. St. Denis was a haven then, a showplace convent for well-to-do girls who sought solace from a world that seemed to have lost its mind. The killing and the war were someplace else, in small towns to the south and east whose names were easily forgotten. Here the bells rang out four times a day, morning vespers, meals, and evening prayers, just as they had for centuries. There were smiles, even occasional laughter.

Then they'd come, their thick boots crusted with mud, streaked with red, dragging their dead and wounded with them, right through the garden, killing the flowers. They set up a hospital in the name of the Reich, and that day the bells had stopped ringing.

Sister Marie-Therese had been no more than a wide-eyed novice then — a mere girl — and although she had felt the same shame and outrage the others felt when the Germans came, she did not understand the profound sense of loss Mother Superior must have felt when she acquiesced without so much as a word of protest.

She understood it now, however, and they were coming again, these storm troopers. They wore different uniforms, spoke a different language, but they were the same selfish, unholy men who intruded, defiled, stole peace in a world where peace was on the verge of extinction.

And it all centered on this new girl on the third floor.

Russian, they'd told her. Hah! From an aristocratic émigré family in Paris. This girl was no more an aristocrat than Joan of Arc. Sister Marie-Therese had known aristocrats when she was a girl, barons and baronesses, counts and countesses, and this girl had none of their sense of responsibility to the aristocracy. She was a bore, with her penchant for American cigarettes and her nervousness she tried so hard to disguise. She spoke French like a schoolgirl and Russian like a peasant.

And yet, all in all, it wasn't the girl who worried her. It was the men who'd preceded her.

Two of them in long tweed coats, the hair along their ears and necks badly cut. They had come the day before she arrived, keeping their hands in their pockets always, the way men will do when they have something to hide. They wanted to inspect the hospital, they said. They represented a wealthy industrialist who would be paying a visit and who would need the best accommodations, especially seclusion. They'd chosen St. Denis because of it. He was a German, this master of theirs, and under a great deal of pressure, but it wasn't German with which they mangled the tongue of holy St. Augustine. It was.something more guttural, with origins further to the east.

One of them wore a gun under his coat. She'd seen it when he reached in to get a pad for making notes: a small, coal black gun that glinted in the sunlight. That was when she knew they were coming again, the killers who killed for money or country or some other false god, and she knew she could not fight them again. She was too old; she'd grown too accustomed to peace.

A pair of headlights swept the wall of the tiny chapel. Who could it be at this hour? she wondered. Then her old nun's heart began to beat wildly in her chest. It was them! The girl had been here less than a day, and they were here already! She grabbed the back of the pew with a gasp and tottered to her feet. She must stop them! She must bolt the door!

Cynthia Barnes watched the headlights break into a pattern and run across the wall.
Nick!
she thought excitedly.

She pulled on her robe and slid into the wheelchair. It was about time he'd got back. She had a list of complaints about this place as long as your arm, starting with that hoary old nun who badgered her night and day, and he was going to have to listen to every one of them.

She rolled to the window as the car stopped with a crunch on the gravel courtyard below. The sound gave her pause. It wasn't the sound made by a car making a leisurely call. There was an urgency in it she didn't like. It signaled danger.

Two sets of footsteps, one to the door, the other off down the drive.
Around to the back?
she thought.
Why is Nick sending someone around to cover the back?

A second pair of headlights appeared on the wall as she heard the insistent knocking of the man at the door. Her heart leaped into her mouth. It wasn't Nick at all! The baited trap was being sprung
too soon.
Much too soon.

The nun at the door told the man to go away. Everyone was sleeping. The man growled something in Russian, too indistinct to hear.

Cynthia rolled to the nightstand and picked up the pack of Benson & Hedges, pulled one out, and lit it. What was she to do? Wait?

The impossibility of successfully impersonating anyone's daughter suddenly came home to her, along with all she knew of Kobelev, his ruthlessness, his wild unpredictable temper… The cigarette began to shake uncontrollably.

A soft rapping sounded at the door. "Mademoiselle, mademoiselle," came a woman's voice in a hoarse whisper.

"Who is it?"

"Sister Marie-Therese."

"Come in. Come in."

The old nun lumbered into the room. "They've come," she announced sternly.

"Who?"

"Whoever it is you're running from. They have caught up with you and you must go quietly. We cannot have any violence at the clinic. We have our other patients of which to think."

"Have I asked you for protection?" Cynthia asked coldly.

"No, you have not. But nevertheless, we want these men off the premises as soon as possible. I'll help you pack your things." She turned with the slow calculation of a battleship and began pulling clothes out of the dresser.

"You mean you'd hand me over to them even if you knew they had every intention of killing me?" Cynthia asked incredulously.

"That's no concern of mine or the clinic's. Our patients' outside lives are their own affair. There are times when even a sister of the Church must look the other way."

"Thanks a lot," mumbled Cynthia, snuffing out what was left of her cigarette.

The commotion at the front door had ceased. Now footsteps too numerous to count came tramping up the marble stairs toward the third floor.

"What if I told you they plan to kill me?"

The old woman stopped and stood still for a moment, a stack of underwear in her hand. "I would not want to know." She dropped the clothes, then bent and pulled out the lowest drawer.

"A man is with them. A Russian. A man who wants to be head of their secret police. He has killed a good many in his time, and I'm sure he won't hesitate to kill me either."

The woman stopped again, this time more briefly. "It is none of my concern," she said emphatically.

"I have friends who were going to protect me. They'll be back. You must tell them."

The old woman shook her head. "I cannot. You must not ask me."

The footsteps were in the hall.

"Dammit it, old woman, they didn't leave me a weapon."

The old nun threw the last of the clothes on the bed and glared down at Cynthia. Then her eyes softened and her lips pursed in a mass of wrinkles as though she were weighing something in her mind. A loud banging at the door made her jump.

"You're my only hope," Cynthia whispered as the old woman labored across the room to open it.

Two burly men pushed their way in, almost knocking the sister down. They wore identical black turtlenecks, and their heads had been shaved to an even stubble. One held a machine pistol on the old woman while the other quickly searched the room.

A few seconds later a third man came in and stood just inside the doorway. He was taller than the other two, his bearing more regal. His snow white hair was swept back off his forehead in a sharp widow's peak, and from beneath his arched brows his dark eyes darted, taking in everything at a glance.

Cynthia didn't need an introduction. The mad glint in those eyes was unmistakable. It could only be Nikolai Fedorovich Kobelev himself.

"Tatiana!" he exclaimed when those eyes finally lit upon her.

She tried to force a smile.

"I cannot let you take her," said the old nun, stepping forward.

"What?" asked Kobelev in French, turning to her in bemused amazement.

"She is a ward of the hospital. She must remain here until the doctor has signed her letters of discharge. I am sorry, but these are the rules."

"I don't care about your rules. This is my daughter."

"I am sorry, but I cannot allow it." She pushed herself between the goon with the gun and situated herself squarely between Kobelev and Cynthia. She was being foolish, thought Cynthia, but brave. "You have no right to barge in here and take one of my patients!" the old woman snapped. "We have procedures to follow and they simply cannot be ignored."

Kobelev snorted a short laugh, then turned to Cynthia. "Such is the security with which the Americans provide you," he said to her in Russian. Then he motioned to one of his men, who took the old woman forcibly by the arm and pulled her out of the way.

"You must not take her!" the old nun shouted, stamping her foot on the toe of the man who held her. He raised his foot in pain, and she pulled away and hobbled toward Kobelev. "In the name of the Church and all that is holy to man and God, I demand you leave these premises immediately!"

She reached him and grabbed him by the arm, although whether to restrain him or support herself was not altogether clear. Kobelev s eyes flashed angrily, and with a quick jerk of his head, he signaled the man with the gun. A short burst of gunfire and the nun collapsed against the bed.

"Sister!" Cynthia shouted mournfully, and Kobelev swung around to her wide-eyed. And in mat brief instant the weeks of work by the team of plastic surgeons, the hours of studying films of Tatiana, the way she moved, tossed her head, held herself in her wheelchair, of memorizing every known fact of her background, and of imitating her voice until every intonation and nuance was honed to perfection, were lost. For that anguished moment, she was Cynthia Barnes, not Tatiana Kobelev.

Carter peeked out from a darkened doorway in the headquarters of the
Freie Deutsche Jugend,
the Communist youth organization. The street was deserted in either direction except for a car parked against the opposite curb. Whether it was private or official was impossible to tell through the curtain of falling rain, but it was occupied. A trail of exhaust rose from its tailpipe.