The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 2: Cold Wars (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #2) (30 page)

We arrived in Budapest in the early morning and headed quickly through the cluttered city, aiming straight for the train station. Budapest was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and the intricate Old World architecture was giving way to block after block of uniform Soviet sprawl. Most of the cobblestone streets were empty, and Russian soldiers patrolled carefully. The city looked like it was at a boiling point, waiting for a spark to set it all on fire. But that wasn’t our business and we didn’t pay attention to it.

The train station was a massive blocky structure, full of statues, pillars and broad staircases. Brellnev stopped the truck and I made him stay put, while we went in to ask around. Weatherby’s German came in handy. We asked a janitor where the ticket booth was, and hurried over to see if we could find any news of Viscount Stein.

The conductor at the ticket booth was an austere fellow with a thick gray moustache. He looked like he could be a Prussian officer. He was reading a newspaper and gave Doc Dearborn, Weatherby, Evelyn and myself a nasty look for interrupting him. I slapped a fin on the counter. “We’re looking for someone,” I said. “A guy with a thin moustache, good looking, but kind of sinister. Wears purple, I’ll bet.”

The conductor considered it. “I seem to recall someone like that rented an entire first class compartment, for the train to Paris which will depart shortly.” He pocketed the money and went back to his paper. “And he had several men with him. They were Russian soldiers, all armed and in greatcoats. But I could not see their faces.”

Weatherby gasped at the headlines of the newspaper. “Mort,” he said, stepping back while he dropped his voice to a whisper. “The newspaper that man is holding – it details the defiling of a mass grave of Soviet soldiers, from the War. The bodies were stolen, and an army ammunition store was raided that very night! The authorities have blamed it on anti-Soviet rebels.”

“It’s too much of a coincidence.” I turned away, looking at the trains. Somewhere, Viscount Stein was settling down and looking forward to his journey. “He’s doing what any general would be doing – marshalling and arming his soldiers. We’ll go after him.” I looked back at the conductor. He glared at me over his newspaper. “Four tickets to Paris,” I said. “Any class. And hurry.”

He gave us the tickets and went back to his paper. We went to the train. We got in the same compartment, and I was glad to see that the early train to Paris was scarcely occupied. That meant less chance of innocent bystanders getting caught in the middle when the bullets started flying.

We sat together in the compartment, waiting for the train to leave the station before we got moving. I took the shotgun from my suitcase and tucked it under my coat. Doc Dearborn handed his daughter a revolver and took one for himself. Weatherby put his good hand in his pocket and waited silently. Nobody said much, and then the whistle blew and the engine started rumbling. The train began its journey.

Doc Dearborn checked his pocket watch. The train left the station and headed through the city, and out into the country. I looked out the window and watched the rolling green fields pass by, counting the occasional barn or farmer in his fields. I gripped the handle of the shotgun and looked to Dearborn. He gave me a faint nod.

“Okay.” I stood up, the shotgun hidden in the folds of my trench coat. “Let’s go pay Viscount Stein a visit.”

I walked out of my compartment and headed down the small aisle of the carriage. Weatherby, Dearborn and Evelyn were close behind. I had checked a map of the carriage. We were in the front and the first class carriage was towards the rear of the train, right before the baggage car and the caboose. That’s where we headed, nodding silently to the few other passengers on the train as we made our way through the cramped compartments.

I took the lead, my hand fastened around the shotgun. I kept it wrapped in the fold of my trench coat, so no one would notice. I counted the compartments, and then I reached the proper one. We crossed through the open air and stood outside, clustered on the small platform outside the door of the private carriage. The wind was roaring in my ears. It sounded angry.

I looked back at Doc Dearborn. “How do you want to play this, Doc?”

He smiled. “Loud, quick and bloody, Mr. Candle. Your way.”

“Good choice.” I raised the shotgun and fired, blasting open the lock. I stepped inside, sweeping the cannon around as my eyes adjusted to the low light. The compartment was a palace on rails. My boots tracked mud on a red velvet carpet. Big armchairs rested in the corners, along with a cabinet of fine wines. One of the high-backed armchairs was facing the other wall, so we couldn’t see who was in it.

But we could see who was in the other chairs, and standing on the floor and watching us with hollow sockets. They were skeletons, around ten of them, all wearing faded and moldy Russian greatcoats and armed with Soviet weapons. They swung the guns – rifles and sub-guns – over to face us as we walked in.

“Kiss the floor!” I cried, as I threw myself down. The air above me went hot with lead and my ears rang with gunfire. I raised the shotgun and started shooting. My first shot struck one of the Russkie skeletons in the chest, breaking his ribs and flattening him against the wall. Dearborn followed me in, fanning his revolver and shattering a skeleton’s skull. I worked the pump and fired again, blasting a skeleton in half.

Then a dead soldier came at me, his bayonet poised to plunge into my chest. I rolled over, the thin blade skewering the carpet next to me. I racked the shotgun and fired. The skeleton’s head became gray dust. I stood, and another skeleton swung a sub-gun to face me. There wasn’t time to fire, so I just smashed the butt into his skull until it cracked like an egg, and down he went.

Dearborn and Evelyn cracked away with their revolvers, firing at the remaining skeletons. They were good shots, and brought them down quickly. Weatherby stayed close behind, his dark eyes flashing around the carriage, looking for any sign of Viscount Wagner Stein. Things were going well. But they didn’t go that way for long.

A remaining skeleton made a bayonet charge for the Dearborns. Doc Dearborn fired and missed. The skeleton brushed past him, bayonet aimed right for the chest of his daughter. I heard Weatherby scream. I had rarely heard him that frightened.

“Evelyn!” Weatherby cried, rushing to her as the tip of the blade struck her shoulder. “No! No! By all the Gods and Devils, no!” He got in front of her and tackled the skeleton, using his good hand to push away its rifle. They both went sprawling to the ground. A kid with a broken arm wrestling with the unholy strength of a dead Russian soldier – it’d be funny, if it wasn’t so damned unfair.

The skeleton’s hand went around Weatherby’s throat and started to squeeze. The kid’s good arm slammed into the carpet. I started going towards him, but another skeleton got in my way. By the time I bashed it out of the way, it would be too late. Doc Dearborn was still on the ground. But he was an old man, and couldn’t rise fast enough. I think he forgot his age a lot of the time. He remembered it now.

Evelyn raised her pistol. She was still standing, blood trickling in a thin line down her coat, but she didn’t seem to notice. She fired, and put a bullet right into the empty eye socket of the skeleton strangling Weatherby. It went down, the strange life leaving its bony limbs.

There was silence in the compartment. Evelyn helped Weatherby up. “Thank you,” she said. “That was very brave of you, if a little foolish. But thank you.” She smiled. Weatherby fingered the marks on his neck and winced, but he smiled right back.

Now the compartment was empty. I racked the shotgun and walked to the armchair at the back. I turned it around, the gun raised. As soon as I saw Wagner Stein, he was gonna get a bellyful of lead. But he wasn’t there. A round mirror in a wrought-iron frame rested there instead, propped up on silk cushions. There was a face in the mirror and it wasn’t mine.

The face grinned at me through thin lips under a neat pointed moustache. “Good morning,” said Viscount Wagner Stein. “I’m afraid you are looking for me in the wrong carriage. I am currently in the baggage compartment, along with several of my new allies. But don’t be ashamed. My ruse was a clever one. And you – like all the people of this age – are so dreadfully stupid.”

Weatherby raised his good hand like he was going to punch the mirror. “We’ll find you!” he cried. “And then your reign of terror will end!”

“It hasn’t even begun, little boy!” Wagner’s cold eyes darted to Evelyn. “Oh. It seems you have a female companion. A pity I will be not able to indulge myself with her before all of you meet your doom.”

“You fiendish bastard!” Weatherby was seeing red, but I saw something else – a small metal rectangle held in Stein’s hands. I realized what it was as I looked under the armchair. I put my hand on Weatherby’s shoulder.

Viscount Stein sighed. “Such a pity that my line ends with you,” he said. He held up the detonator. “You see, I have stuffed the train car with explosives. They are detonated with something called a radio, and should produce quite the tremendous explosion. The magic of this age is just as strong as my own, I think. And infinitely easier to use.”

There were dynamite sticks under the armchair, rigged up to a radio detonator. Stein pressed the button on the detonator, and I was already moving to the window. It was small, and I leapt for it, dragging Weatherby along with me. Doc Dearborn and Evelyn followed, and Weatherby was screaming something that I couldn’t hear, and then I went through the glass.

I’ve done a lot of things, but I hadn’t jumped from a moving train before. The ground seemed to reach up and hit me like a boxer’s fist, cracking me on the side and rolling me over and over until the world spun in my eyes. I prayed that my bones stayed where they were supposed to, and finally came to a stop.

I heard Doc Dearborn and Evelyn plopping down next to me, felt the cool grass under my fingers, and then the explosion went off. It tore apart the first class car, splintering wood and twisting metal in a great orange flame. I got my head down as pieces of the car sprinkled down on us, and smoke rose big and angry into the blue sky.

Finally, I stood up. I looked down at Weatherby. He was cradling his busted arm, and managed to sit up. Evelyn hurried to him and offered him a hand. “He’s gone.” The boy was despondent. “We had our chance and we missed it. Now’s he’s riding off to America, a whole new world for him to exploit.” He sank down to his knees, the strength seemingly sucked out of him. For a while, I thought he was going to cry.

But Evelyn put her hand on his shoulder. “No, Weatherby. He won a victory. But we’ll find him. He wanted to kill us, because we’re the only ones that know about him and can stop him. And because we’re still alive, he failed. So we’ll lay low, and wait for him to make a mistake, or start some scheme – and that’s when we’ll go in and finish him.”

“You t-think we can?” Weatherby asked. His eyes were wide and afraid.

Evelyn just smiled. “There’s nobody else who could.”

We walked to the nearest village, got all our bumps and bruises seen to, and then parted ways. The Dearborns were heading back into the Balkans, looking for any more information on Viscount Stein. Weatherby and I returned to the States. As much as I’d like to hunt down Viscount Stein and make him pay for trying to blow me and my friends to kingdom come, we had bills pay, and it was time to get back on the road.

But the second week after we arrived in New York, Weatherby spotted one of those damned free hipster newspapers lying in a gutter, and Viscount Wagner Stein’s face was plastered all over it. We dug it out, sat down in a diner and looked it over. There he was, sitting between top writers and artists in some juice bar poetry recital. Viscount Stein was wearing a broad-shouldered purple suit and tie, a matching fedora with a peacock feather in the brim, and his gold pentagram still gleamed on his chest. The article was a typical Beatnik screed, and even though I’d rather bite my tongue in half than hear those fruitcakes, I read every word in the article twice.

Here’s what it said:

Just What the Doctor Ordered:

A New Personality Hits the Village

Hey, all you cool kids and cats, a new face has been making the rounds in the Village, and his voice is being whispered by all the right people. His name is
Doctor Twist
and if you dig him, he can provide speedy transport to the moon and beyond. The Good Doctor’s got Uppers, Downers, Bombers, Bennies and good old fashioned Tea for sale, but if you’re feeling a little adventurous, just ask for some of his real gone ‘Special’ concoction, playfully called Panacea.

Nobody knows what’s in those potions but notorious Beat maven Neal Cassady declared that Twist’s Panacea was
“just… THERE, you know. Just absolutely, totally, undeniably THERE.”

Infamous poet Allen Ginsberg shrieked that taking Panacea made him
“walk with demons on the rooftops of the world, screaming out to Gods and presidents, thrusting madly while my mind burned, withered and died in an inferno that turned dreams into pale ash!”