signature.
‘Jean,’ Stahl said, ‘I must speak with you in private.’
They went out into the hallway, where Stahl told Avila what was going on. Not all of it, there wasn’t time, but enough. German secret police, he said, were after him because of a suspected connection with a woman who had been spying on the Nazi leadership. ‘This could be a coincidence, Jean, just a simple robbery, but I don’t believe in coincidence. This theft is my fault, and I will be the one to go to the inn, pay the ransom, and get the cameras back.’
Avila, too well aware of conspiracy and its strategies, wasn’t slow to see the implications of the note: Stahl lured to some isolated place and abducted. ‘You are the target, Fredric, and so you can’t be the one to go — I will take care of this. However, we can do nothing without telling Polanyi, it happened in his house, he’ll never forgive us if we don’t tell him.’
‘But he will involve the police, and we’ll lose the cameras.’
‘Then we’ll have to insist. It’s our equipment, and we’re responsible for retrieving it. That means me and one other person, because you can’t go anywhere near that inn.’
‘Jean, we have to see Polanyi, right away. Then, later on, you and I can argue. But I warn you, I can’t just sit here, I cannot. Will not. Because if something happened to you I couldn’t live with it. As for the money, I’ve got about six hundred dollars with me, and we’ll have to find the rest.’
‘I have it,’ Avila said. ‘I brought dollars with me, because they work when nothing else will. Christ, what an evil thing to do.’
They went off in search of Csaba, who led them upstairs to Polanyi’s suite of rooms. The count, in a green satin dressing gown with lime silk lapels, was having his breakfast. An egg cup, of near translucent porcelain, held a boiled egg with its top neatly sliced off. Tiny spoon in hand, he said good morning as Csaba showed them into his room. When Avila told him what had happened, and added Stahl’s explanation, Polanyi barely responded — raised eyebrows, little more. As a diplomat, he was conditioned to hearing bad news and had long ago learned not to react to it. ‘Very brazen of them,’ he said, ‘to sneak in here at night. What do the Nazis want with a thousand dollars?’
‘Perhaps,’ Stahl said, ‘to make it look like the work of a local thief. Who would get nothing like a thousand dollars from some pawnbroker.’
Polanyi almost smiled. ‘A local thief? Clearly they’ve never met the local thief. Tell me, what exactly did they take?’
‘Five Mitchell Standard film cameras, packed in five large suitcases. The tripods travel separately.’
‘Well, if they’re at Szony, you’ll soon have them back.’
‘Will you notify the police?’
‘In Budapest, I would. There are detectives there who could take care of this in a hurry. But, out here in the countryside, we have the gendarmerie, and they aren’t… what we need. But, gentlemen, don’t despair! I have a couple of friends in the neighbourhood, old cavalry friends from the war. And they know how to deal with people who do such things.’
‘Count Polanyi,’ Stahl said, ‘this happened because of me, and I am honour-bound to take part in the recovery.’
Now Polanyi did smile, a bittersweet smile. He put his spoon down by the egg cup and said, ‘Honour-bound, are you? It’s been some time since I’ve heard that expression, people don’t often use it these days. So then, you wish to come along with us? Is that what you want?’
‘“Us” you say. Does that mean you’re going?’
‘It is my house, sir. And my honour that has been affronted. So of course I will go.’
Stahl had been rebuked and he showed it.
And then, after a moment’s thought, Polanyi relented. ‘Oh all right,’ he said. ‘I do understand.’ With a sigh he put his hands on his knees, rose to his feet, walked across the room to an elaborate antique dresser and opened the top drawer. From which he took a well-worn leather holster that held an automatic pistol with an extra clip bound to the barrel with a rubber band. Handing it to Stahl he said, ‘Have you ever used one of these?’
‘Only in the movies, with blank cartridges.’
Polanyi nodded and said, ‘Naturally. Well, you won’t need it, but bring it along.’ Then, after a glance at his cooling egg, he looked at his watch and said, ‘Now, gentlemen, I must get dressed. It is the first day of the new year, and I will be going to mass.’
Polanyi’s friends arrived before three, Csaba came for Stahl and he went downstairs to meet them. They were both in their late forties, Ferenc and Anton, with dark eyes and black moustaches. Tall and lean and weathered, they looked to Stahl as though they’d spent their lives on horseback. Stahl was wearing the holstered automatic on his belt and, after they’d all been introduced, Ferenc said, ‘What’ve you got there?’ Stahl drew the pistol and handed it to him grip first. Ferenc had a professional look at it, worked the slide, then said, ‘Very good, the Frommer 7.65, our military sidearm for a long time. Do you plan to shoot somebody?’
‘I don’t plan on it but, if I have to, I will.’
‘Well, if it turns out that way, and sometimes it does, just aim for the centre of the body and you may hit something. Of course, with a weapon like this, closer is always better.’ Ferenc handed the pistol back to Stahl and said, ‘We should be leaving in about ten minutes.’
Stahl returned to his room, where Renate awaited him. Earlier, when he’d told her what he was going to do, she’d simply said, ‘I see,’ in the flat voice of the practised fatalist but, after he’d buttoned up his warm jacket, she put her arms around him, pulled him close, and held him tight. Then she stepped back and said, ‘Now you can go, but for God’s sake be careful.’
A low, cloudy sky that afternoon, with winter light and a liquid tang in the air that meant it would snow. Polanyi appeared in the entry hall, dressed for hunting, a shotgun held by the barrels resting on his shoulder. Ferenc and Anton, rifles slung on their backs, holstered pistols on their hips, joined them. ‘So, off we go,’ Polanyi said.
‘How do we get there?’ Stahl said. All afternoon he’d been apprehensive about horseback riding. He could do it, he’d done it, but he wasn’t good at it.
‘By launch,’ Polanyi said. ‘Szony is just down the river from here, maybe twenty minutes — the current is with us.’
‘I thought the note said five-fifteen,’ Stahl said.
The courteous Polanyi, trying to hide his amusement, said, ‘Indeed it did, but it might be a good idea to have a look at the place in daylight.’ He patted Stahl on the shoulder with a heavy hand. We’ll be fine.
They walked down the hill to a wooden dock, its pilings forced askew by the downstream tide. The launch was small and compact, with flaking grey paint on its hull — one more working boat on a commercial river — but when Polanyi started it up the engine roared with power before he cut back the throttle. Nobody said much — a compulsion to chatter when facing action was considered to be bad form. As Polanyi steered for the centre of the river, Stahl, standing on the deck behind the open wheelhouse, could feel the heavy strength of the current. Polanyi, raising his voice over the chug of the engine, said, ‘In one way we’re lucky — usually the Danube would be frozen up by now, but not this year.’
Twenty minutes later they passed the port of Szony, on the same side of the river as Komarom, and larger than Stahl had imagined, where two Danube freighters were being serviced at a refuelling dock. Then, once the port had fallen astern, Ferenc, standing watch at the bow, said, ‘There it is.’ Partly hidden by the tangle of poplar and willow that traced the shoreline, was a one-storey building of wooden slats with a faded sign above its door and its windows boarded up. Looking past the inn, Stahl caught a glimpse of the road that ran along the river on the Hungarian side.
Once the launch, following a slight curve, had passed the inn and it was no longer visible, Polanyi slowed the engine. Turning to Stahl he said, ‘I think I know what they were planning. Once they’d got hold of you, all they had to do was throw you in the boot of a car, drive west to Komarom, then take the bridge across to Slovakian territory. Slovakia is Germany’s great friend — they hate the Czechs — and from there it’s not that far to the Reich, and a cellar on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Gestapo headquarters.’ Stepping partway out of the wheelhouse, he called out, ‘Hey Ferenc, is the road passable?’
‘It’s snow-covered, but I’ve already seen a small truck go by. Not driving fast, but making way well enough.’
Polanyi cut the engine back and steered the boat towards the shoreline. At the stern, Anton tossed an anchor
