out of this mess. I want to send Mademoiselle Torres back to Geneva, then I want to trace my brother. I haven’t the slightest further interest in the whole affair. I’m certainly not interested in Countess Orlovska.”
Hiram replied as if he were talking to a recalcitrant child.
“Mr. Stodder, I think you’ll do it. Do I have to repeat ad nauseam what I told you about the pressure I can apply? No, I think not. Even if you can’t see your duty as an American—”
“I know all about my duty. I didn’t spend four years in the Army Air Force for the cultural advantages.”
“I think you can understand what refusal might mean to you, Mr. Stodder.” Hiram was very patient. “Need I remind you again that you are dependent on me? Without my help, you cannot save Mademoiselle Torres. You cannot even save your own life.”
“What are you planning?” I said. I didn’t feel very friendly.
“I propose that you get some sleep. I’ll have Walter wake you at midnight,”
“Midnight? Why midnight?”
“Because,” Hiram said. “You’re going to visit a few nightclubs. I think you’ll run into the countess.”
“How about Maria? What are you going to do about Schmidt?”
Hiram rang the bell for Walter.
“We shall visit Doctor Schmidt. But, Mr. Stodder, you don’t think for one moment that he has taken Mademoiselle Torres back to the Mexikoi ut? We shall have to locate him. I already have two men on the job. You spoke of Hermann leaving the Russian staff car in Matyasfold, with a man named Felix. We shall watch Matyasfold, too.”
“Why can’t we go to the warehouse now?”
Hiram looked at me incredulously. “Mr. Stodder, we are enemies in an armed camp. Would you behave like the American police raiding a gambling den? We must move slowly and cautiously. We must operate here behind the Iron Curtain with our wits.
“Let me reassure you again, Mr. Stodder. Doctor Schmidt won’t let any harm come to Mademoiselle Torres until he knows what has happened to the precious envelope. That’s up to you to discover. Go to bed now and get some sleep.”
I was dog-tired, but it was a long time before sleep came.
I was Hiram Carr’s prisoner, whatever he chose to call it. I might possibly escape him. There were no bars on the window, and it would have been an easy jump from the second floor into the drifted snow. But the alternatives to following Carr’s orders were even less attractive.
First there was the overwhelming possibility that I’d be picked up by the Hungarians or the Russians before I’d moved very far from the house. Without a passport I was lost. If I eluded the police, I’d still have to find food and shelter. The reward offered for my capture would make denunciation certain the minute I appeared in public.
Suppose I left Carr’s house after stealing a gun, then made my way safely across City Park to Schmidt’s place on the Mexikoi ut? How could I get past the old woman in the tenement without alerting the doctor?
I thought of trying to flee Hungary, of making my way to Yugoslavia or Rumania on foot; I knew it was insanity to think of crossing the fortified frontier into Austria. But I had no money other than the traveler’s checks which I had stupidly signed with the name of Marcel Blaye. I knew there was an anti-Russian underground in Hungary but why should I expect any help there, even if I could make contact?
Over and above such considerations, however, I wasn’t ready to abandon the mission for which I’d come to Hungary. I had found it increasingly difficult to live with my feeling of guilt in regard to my brother Bob; to leave Hungary after having started my search would make life impossible. And now there was the added fact of Maria. The thought of leaving her in the custody of Schmidt after all we’d been through together didn’t make sense. If she later proved to be something other than what she had pretended that would be different. For the moment, I had no choice but to stick with Hiram Carr.
It seemed to me my head had just hit the pillow when Walter shook me. After I’d shaved a two-day beard and showered, I found a dinner jacket laid out, complete to boiled shirt, studs, and a black Homburg.
Hiram was in his study, in front of the fireplace when I followed Walter downstairs.
“How do you feel?” he said.
“Not too good,” I said. “I don’t think your idea is too smart. What happens if the police ask for my papers?”
“I’ve taken care of that.” He handed me a passport, another Swiss one. It gave my name as Jean Stodder, address—Geneva, profession—watch and clock exporter.
“Why didn’t you try cheese this time?” I said. I had begun to resent Hiram Carr intensely. I also noticed he’d lifted the photograph from Blaye’s passport which Walter must have taken from my pocket while I was asleep.
“The watch and clock business will give you an angle,” Hiram said. “Maybe you can talk to the countess about Blaye.”
“Look,” I said. I was plenty mad. “I consider this whole scheme of yours insane. How do I meet this woman in the first place? What excuse do I use? What makes you think her escort’s going to welcome a pickup by me?”
Hiram was too smart to laugh out loud, but his blue eyes twinkled through the old-fashioned pince-nez.
“If I know anything about the Countess Anna Orlovska, she’ll spot you the minute you walk in.”
“Walk in where?”
“You’d better try the Arizona first, then the Moulin Rouge. She’ll be in one or the other.”
“Suppose I meet somebody who knows me? I told you I lived here for two years. What do I tell them?”
“Tell them politely they’ve got you mixed with someone else. But you won’t meet anybody you know. The kind of people who hang out in Budapest nightclubs these days were slinking around back alleys in Moscow when you were here last. All the diplomats have changed and the government officials. I don’t think you’ll see any of the same chorus girls after nine years, even in the Arizona.”
“How do I know what this female looks like? How do I identify her?”
“You can’t miss her. She’s tall and blond and she’s always surrounded by a dozen admirers.”
“Why is it,” I said, “that female spies are always tall and blond? If you’d dream up a short, fat, dumpy one, she’d be easier to charm.”
“But not half as much fun,” Hiram said.
“What do I do after I meet her?”
“Arrange to meet her again tomorrow.”
“I can’t walk the streets. Do I come back here tonight?”
“I should say not. You never heard of Hiram Carr and I don’t know Jean Stodder from—from John Stodder. Go to the Hotel Bristol. If you’ll take the trouble to look at your passport, you’ll find you arrived in Budapest by air two days ago and are stopping at the Bristol. The night man knows you well. I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow.”
Hiram gave me a Luger in a shoulder holster and a wad of Hungarian money. Then Walter drove me to within two blocks of the Arizona.
For years I had looked forward to returning to Budapest. I had always liked the Hungarians, their friendliness toward strangers, their carefree attitude. “Let the horse worry,” the Hungarians said, “his head is bigger.” The nightclubs of Budapest, its gypsy bands, its numberless little inns and restaurants and its famous coffeehouses, were unexcelled anywhere in the world. And there had been traditionally warm friendship for Americans.
But I hadn’t counted on coming back to Budapest with a price on my head. The first thing I noticed when Walter let me out of the car was a yellow poster, freshly tacked on a wooden fence:
It followed the radio announcement almost word for word, and there must have been a dozen such posters in
