Dark Star

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: “Andre Aronovich? Andre 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 Vainshtok’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.