“I called there-he seems always to be unavailable.”
“Really? Well, you know, that doesn’t surprise me. An amiable man, Herr Kolovitzky, makes friends everywhere he goes. So, I would suppose he’s in and out, being entertained, sitting in the pastry shops. Have you left a message?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the problem? He’ll call you back, the minute he gets a chance. Then too, Herr Stevenson, the telephone lines between here and Paris-it can be difficult.”
“Likely that’s it.”
“I must say good-bye, Herr Stevenson, but I look forward to hearing from you.”
“Be certain that you will.”
“Good-bye, Herr Stevenson.”
“Good-bye, Herr Kreml.”
They drove to Bratislava the next morning, where Morath meant to take the train to Vienna, but it was not to be. Chaos at Central Station, crowds of stranded travelers, all the benches taken, people out on Jaskovy Avenue, sitting on their suitcases. “It’s the Zilina line,” the man at the ticket window explained. All passenger trains had been canceled to make way for flatbed cars carrying Wehrmacht tanks and artillery, moving east in a steady stream. Morath and Balki stood on the platform and stared, in the midst of a silent crowd. Two locomotives pulled forty flatbeds, the long snouts of the guns thrust out from beneath canvas tarpaulins. Twenty minutes later, a trainload of horses in cattle cars, then a troop train, soldiers waving as they went by, a message chalked beneath the coach windows-
The town of Zilina lay ten miles from the Polish frontier. It would have a hospital, a hotel for the general staff, a telephone system. Morath’s heart sank as he watched the trains-this was hope slipping away. It could be intimidation, he thought, a feint, but he knew better. Here was the first stage of an invasion-these were the divisions that would attack from Slovakia, breaking through the Carpathian passes into southern Poland.
Morath and Balki walked around Bratislava, drank beer at a cafe, and waited. The city reminded Morath of Vienna in ‘38-Jewish shop windows smashed,
Back in the station restaurant, Morath sat with his valise between his feet, ten thousand dollars in Austrian schilling packed inside. He asked a waiter if the Danube bridge was open-in case he decided to drive across, but the man looked gloomy and shook his head. “No, you cannot use it,” he said, “they’ve been crossing for days.”
“Any way into Austria?”
“Maybe at five they let a train through, but you have to be on the platform, and it will be-very crowded. You understand?”
Morath said he did.
When the waiter left, Balki said, “Will you be able to get back out?”
“Probably.”
Balki nodded. “Morath?”
“Yes?”
“You’re not going to get yourself killed, are you?”
“I don’t think so,” Morath said.
The train wasn’t due for another two hours, so he used a telephone in the station to place a call to Paris. He had to wait twenty minutes, then the call went through to the Agence Courtmain. The receptionist, after several tries, found Mary Day at a meeting in Courtmain’s office.
“Nicholas!” she said, “Where are you?” She wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing. “Some family business,” he’d told her, but she knew it was more than that.
“I’m in Bratislava,” he said.
“Bratislava. How’s the weather?”
“Sunny. I wanted to tell you that I miss you.”
After a moment she said, “Me too, Nicholas. When are you coming back?”
“Soon, a few days, if all goes well.”
“It will, won’t it? Go well?”
“I think so, you don’t have to worry. I thought I’d call, to say I love you.”
“I know,” she said.
“I guess I have to go, there are people waiting to use the phone.”
“All right. Good-bye.”
“A few days.”
“The weekend.”
“Oh yes, by then.”
“Well, I’ll see you then.”
“Good-bye, Mary.”
The waiter had been right about the passenger train. It pulled in slowly, after six-thirty, people jammed in everywhere. Morath forced his way on, using his strength, smiling and apologizing, making a small space for himself on the platform of the last car, hanging on to a metal stanchion all the way to Vienna.
He called Szubl at his hotel, and they met in a coffeehouse, the patrons smoking and reading the papers and conversing in polite tones. A city where everyone was sad and everyone smiled and nothing could be done-it had always seemed that way to Morath and it was worse than ever that summer night in 1939.
Szubl handed him an envelope, and Morath used the edge of the table for cover and looked at the passport photo. An angry little man glared up at him, mustache, glasses,
“Can you fix it?” Szubl said.
“Yes. More or less. I took a photo from some document his wife had with her, I can paste it in. But, with any luck at all, I won’t need it.”
“Did they look at your bag, at the border?”
“Yes. I told them what the money was for, then they went through everything else. But it was just the usual customs inspectors, not SS or anything.”
“I took out the stays out of a corset. You still want them?”
“Yes.”
Szubl handed him an envelope, hotel stationery. Morath put it in his pocket. “When are getting out of here?”
“Tomorrow. By noon.”
“Make sure of that, Wolfi.”
“I will. What about the passport?”
“Tell her your friend lost it. More money for Herr X, and he can just go and get another.”
Szubl nodded, then stood up. “I’ll see you back in Paris, then.”
They shook hands, and Morath watched him leave, heavy and slow, even without the sample case, a folded newspaper under one arm.
“Would you go once around the Mauerplatz?”
“If you like.” The taxi driver was an old man with a cavalry mustache, his war medals pinned to the sun visor.
“A sentimental journey,” Morath explained.
“Ah, of course.”
A small, cobbled square, people strolling on a warm evening, old linden trees casting leafy shadows in the light of the streetlamps. Morath rolled the window down and the driver took a slow tour around the square.
“A lady and I stayed here, a few years ago.”
“At the Schoenhof?”
“Yes. Still the same old place?”
