telling everything will be to her profit.”
“She might very well,” Hanno agreed, remembering. “Oh, a thousand things could go wrong, from our viewpoint. Let’s see if we can’t take corrective action. For that purpose, and for more obvious reasons, we’ll decamp tonight.”
“The gate is watched, you tell me,” Svoboda said glumly. “How, I do not know. I have not noticed a parked car or men standing on that rural road.”
“Why should you? A battery-powered miniature TV camera in the brush opposite will serve. The road dead- ends at the lake, you may recall. Bound anywhere else, you head hi the opposite direction and pass the Willows Lodge. No doubt two or three persons checked in a little while ago and spend more time in their cabin than is usual for vacationers.”
“You can glorify modern technology as much as you want,” Wanderer growled. “Me, more and more I feel the walls closing in.”
“How shall we evade them?” Svoboda asked. Dread and despair had yielded to keenness.
Hanno grinned. “Every fox has two holes to his burrow. Let’s pack what we’ll need. I keep plenty of cash on hand, together with traveler’s checks, credit cards, assorted ID not made out to Tannahill. I’ll hand the servants a plausible story, which’ll contain a red herring. Tonight— A panel at the rear of the fence swings aside without touching off the alarm, if you know what to do. It gives on the woods, and the village is three miles beyond that. There’s a man there, lives alone, grumpy old bachelor type, who likes my magazine except he complains it’s too leftish. I always try to cultivate somebody, whenever I maintain a base for any span of time, somebody I can rely on to do me an occasional favor and not mention it to anyone else. He’ll drive us to where we can get a bus or train. We’ll probably be smart to switch conveyances en route, but we’ll still be in New York tomorrow.”
14
The hospital building might well be a hundred years old, brick dark with grime, windows not lately washed. The modernization inside was minimal. This was for the poor, the indigent, the victims of accident and violence. Its neighbors were as drab. The traffic that rumbled and screeched about them was mostly commercial and industrial. The air was foul with its fumes.
A taxi drew up at the curb. Hanno passed the driver a twenty-dollar bill. “Wait here,” he directed. “We’re fetching a friend. She’ll be pretty weak, needs to get home right away.”
“I’ll hafta circle the block if ya take too long,” the driver warned.
“Circle it fast, then, and park again whenever you see a chance. This is worth a nice tip.”
The driver looked dubious, understandable considering the institution. Svoboda ostentatiously jotted down his name and number. Hanno followed her out and closed the door. He carried a parcel, she an overnight bag. “Remember, now, this will only work if we behave as though we owned the accounts receivable office,” he muttered.
“ You remember I have been a sharpshooter and slipped through the Iron Curtain,” she answered haughtily.
“Uh, sorry, that was a stupid thing for me to say. I’m distracted. Ah, there he is.” Hanno inclined his head hi the direction of Wanderer. Shabbily clad, hat pulled low, the Indian slouched along the sidewalk tike one with nothing better to do.
Hanno and Svoboda entered a gloomy lobby. A uniformed guard cast them an incurious glance. Even these patients sometimes got visitors. Reconnoitering yesterday, they had ascertained that no police guard was on Rosa Do-nau. She had automatically been taken here and it was deemed unsafe to transfer her to a better hospital when the word came that money was available to pay for that. Therefore this place’s security ought to suffice.
Hanno sought a men’s room. It was unoccupied, but he entered a stall to be cautious. Opening his parcel, he unfolded a smock coat and donned it. He’d acquired it, plus a lot of other stuff, at a medical supply firm. It wasn’t quite identical with what the orderlies wore, but should get by if nobody had cause to look closely. Outfits faded or stained were more the rule than the exception. He dropped the wrapping in a trash can and rejoined Svoboda. They took an elevator upward.
They had learned yesterday that Rosa Donau was on the seventh floor. The receptionist had told them she could only have very brief visits, and remarked on how many people came, anxiously inquiring.
Two women had been on hand when Hanno and Svoboda walked into the ward. They had brought flowers, which they could probably HI afford. Hanno smiled at them, went to the bedside, bent over the victim. She lay white, hollow-cheeked, shallowly breathing. He would not have recognized her had he not seen the pictures his detectives took for him. Indeed, without the hunch than this was she, he might well never have known her by those snapshots. It had been a long, long time. He hoped that her Romaic Greek was no rustier than his. After all, he supposed, she’d mostly been in the Levant before coming to America. “Aliyat, my friend and I believe we can smuggle you out. Do you want that? Otherwise you’ll lose your liberty forever, you know. I have money. I can give you the freedom of the world. Do you want to escape?”
She lay mute for a moment that stretched, before she barely nodded.
“Well, do you think you can walk a short distance and make it look natural? A hundred meters, perhaps. We’ll help you, but if you fall, we’ll have to leave you and flee.”
A ghost of color tinged her skin. “Yes,” she whispered, unthinkingly in English.
“Tomorrow afternoon, then. Make sure you have no callers. Tell these people you feel worse and need a few days undisturbed. Ask them to spread the word. Husband your strength.”
He straightened, to meet the stares of the women from Unity. “I wasn’t aware she’s in this serious a condition,” he told them. “Otfterwise I’d have let her know beforehand my wife and I were coming.”
“You from out of town?” asked one.
“Yes. We hadn’t seen her for quite a while, but we read about the, uhr incident, and since we’re of her nationality and had business in New York anyway—Well, I am sorry. We’d better go, Olga. We’ll see you later, Rosa, when you’re more recovered. Take care.” He and Svoboda patted the limp hands. They left.
A walk around the seventh-floor halls, a quick peek into the ward as they went by, revealed no sign of a trap. If Aliyat didn’t actually wish to leave, with the hazards and pains that meant, she could help herself by spilling the truth and ratting on Hanno. He had gambled on her distrust of authority being too ingrained, after her many centuries, or at least on her having the shrewdness to foresee that confession would close out every other choice.
This entire operation was a gamble. If it failed, and he and Svoboda could not make a getaway— He mustn’t let worry dull his wits and sap his energy.
“Damn,” he said. “No wheelchair. Let’s try the next floor down.”
They got lucky there. Wheelchairs, gurneys, and the like commonly stood unattended in the corridors. He took what he wanted and pushed it briskly to the elevator. A nurse glanced at him, parted her lips, half shrugged and hurried onward. The staff was overworked, underpaid, and doubtless had considerable turnover on that account. Svoboda trailed him at a discreet distance, pretending to look for a room number.
Back on seven, they proceeded to Aliyat’s ward. Speed was now the key to everything. Svoboda entered first. If a nurse or doctor was present, they’d have to continue prowling around, biding their chance. She stepped back to the doorway and beckoned. His heart bumped. He went in past her.
The dingy room held a double row of beds, most occupied. Some patients watched the televisions above either row, some dozed, some were vegetables, a few looked at tiie newcomer, but dully. None questioned him. Hanno hadn’t expected they would. An environment like this was ghastly deadening. Aliyat too had fallen asleep. She blinked her eyes open when he touched her shoulder. Abruptly he did know her again, the ferret alertness that she had dissembled until too late for him, last time around.
He beamed. “All right, Ms. Donau, let’s go for those lab tests, shall we?” be said. She nodded and visibly braced herself. Oh, she knew this would hurt. He kept old sailor skills, such as carrying loads carefully, and while his body wasn’t that of any Hercules, its wiriness had never flagged. He bent his knees, took hold, swung her from bed to chair. Her arms crept about his neck. He felt a brief, roguish flirt of fingers in his hair. He also heard the sharply indrawn breath.
