Passport To Peril

and Anna, the Countess Orlovska, swept across the floor and into his booth. Neither performers nor patrons seemed surprised; if they were they knew better than to show it in front of the chief of the MVD.

It was easy enough to see Anna Orlovska’s attraction for Marcel Blaye, Colonel Lavrentiev, or any other man. Her ash-blond hair, worn in a short pageboy bob, contrasted strikingly with her dark eyes and full red mouth. An off-the-shoulder white satin evening gown set off her dark skin.

If Anna Orlovska was concerned with the disappearance of Marcel Blaye or the murder of Major Strakhov she didn’t show it. She smiled broadly at Lavrentiev as he bent to kiss her hand. She spoke to a couple in the next box and swallowed in one gulp the glass of champagne the colonel offered her.

The show never did pick up again after the colonel stopped it, and Ilonka was back with me in the bar in a few minutes.

“Does the colonel end the show like that every night?” I said. “It must be tiresome for the customers if the countess always enters in the middle.”

“He does it every time she arrives,” Ilonka said, “which is nearly every flight in the week.”

She didn’t smile, and when the bartender went to the other end she said, “There’s something going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“It looks like there’s going to be trouble.”

“Trouble, how?”

“The place is full of policemen.”

“Cops get into nightclubs free all over the world,” I said.

Ilonka shook her head. “It isn’t that. There’s half a dozen backstage. And the headwaiter says two carloads of gendarmes just drove up outside.”

I figured she wouldn’t be telling me if she’d been the one to suspect me.

“What do you think they want?”

“They must be looking for someone,” Ilonka said.

The music started, and I took Ilonka to the dance floor.

I wondered how the police had learned I was at the Arizona. I was sure Walter and I hadn’t been trailed from Hiram Carr’s. I didn’t think I’d said anything to arouse Ilonka’s suspicions. Swiss travelers were certainly common enough in Budapest. I found myself scanning the faces of the dancers, but there wasn’t one I could recall ever having seen before.

When the orchestra started a waltz, Lavrentiev followed Anna onto the floor. My first impulse was to retreat to the bar as fast as possible. But I realized that haste would make me conspicuous and I was sure that neither the Russian nor his partner had ever set eyes on me. Dancing was better than sitting at the bar wondering how long it would take the cops to close in on me.

I tried to keep to the opposite side of the revolving floor, away from Lavrentiev and Anna. It took a lot of maneuvering what with the constant turning of the waltz and the movement of the turntable under my feet. The colonel was remarkably agile despite his size, and I tried to change my pace as he did, anticipating the changes in the music.

I was so occupied with watching Lavrentiev and Anna that I didn’t spot the sour-faced minister of finance and his fat wife until they had stepped onto the floor directly in our path. Ilonka said, “Look out,” and I saw them and managed to pivot past but the movement threw us off stride, and the revolving floor did the rest.

Before I knew what was happening we had crashed squarely into the chief of the MVD and his partner, the two people in all of Hungary I least wanted to see—together.

Chapter Ten

DANGEROUS ACCIDENT

We must have made a ridiculous sight, the pompous Lavrentiev in his full-dress uniform, Anna Orlovska in a Paris gown, Ilonka, and me, all four sprawled on the moving dance floor. But if any onlooker dared laugh, I didn’t hear him. I was certain the Russian would order me shot the moment he regained his feet.

Luckily, the bandleader pulled the switch, and the turntable came to a stop. I picked myself up and helped Ilonka to her feet. The kid was frightened speechless, and her make-up stood out like a neon sign against the white of her skin. I turned to the colonel and he was brushing off his medals. He made no move to help Orlovska so I put out my hand to aid her. The music had stopped dead. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the tense faces of the customers and the waiters.

The countess took my hand without glancing at me. She called me a clumsy lout in Polish and a lot of other words I’d heard in the seamier quarters of Warsaw. Her skin-tight satin gown had split in half a dozen places, and her pearl necklace had broken and spilled all over the place.

Lavrentiev, having finished brushing his epaulets, had taken a step off the floor toward his table when Orlovska grabbed his sleeve. He had apparently drunk enough to temporarily forget his precious dignity in favor of the full bottle the waiter had just brought. But Anna Orlovska was having none of it.

“Boris, are you out of your mind?” She screamed like a fishwife and she spoke German for the benefit of the customers.

“What shall I do, Anna?”

“I have been insulted. We have both been insulted. These peasants have insulted the Fatherland.”

I touched Ilonka’s elbow, trying to tell her to get off the floor and let me face Orlovska’s wrath but she was frozen to the spot.

“Boris, do something. Are you man or mouse?”

For all his power as chief of the secret police, Lavrentiev was firmly under Orlovska’s thumb. Like the late Marcel Blaye.

The Russian colonel turned his square face to me and said, “Pig.”

“Do something,” Orlovska screamed. “Have them arrested. Have them punished.”

Lavrentiev wasn’t too drunk to realize he was the center of a spectacle that would provide Budapest with hilarious gossip for days. He’d either have to act to save his face or find some way of coping with Orlovska. He acted. He bellowed at the embarrassed headwaiter to call his orderly.

I thought it high time to open my mouth.

“It is all my fault,” I said in German. I bowed to Orlovska. “I am guilty of the grossest carelessness. Believe me, I apologize from the bottom of my heart.” I turned to Lavrentiev. “And you, sir, kindly accept my most sincere apologies.”

“Look at my dress,” Orlovska screamed at Lavrentiev. “My Paris gown.”

“I shall be only too happy to see that Madame is provided with a new one.”

Orlovska said, “Peasant,” and then for the first time she looked me in the face. She looked at me twice before she did a classic double take. The second time there was recognition written all over her face.

There’s an ancient superstition that a man’s life passes in review when he’s drowning. It could be, because I reviewed my own life at that moment and I couldn’t dredge up any remembrance of ever having set eyes on Anna Orlovska. The Europeski Hotel in Warsaw in 1939? Paris, Berlin, Rome? Budapest in 1941?

Orlovska couldn’t have been on the Orient Express from Vienna. Hadn’t Strakhov said she’d come to Hegyshalom with him from Budapest? She hadn’t seen me on the train to Budapest, unless Strakhov had lied.

Maybe she thought me Marcel Blaye. But that was ridiculous. Maria had known I wasn’t Blaye and if Or- lovska had been his mistress she wouldn’t be fooled.

But there was recognition on her face. First disbelief, then open-mouthed amazement. Then she started to say something, swayed a little, and fainted dead away. Maybe she had hurt herself when she’d first hit the floor. Maybe that was it and my imagination was playing tricks on me.

If I hadn’t grabbed for her arm and caught it, she’d have hit the floor again because Lavrentiev, having called his orderly, was no longer interested. He was already back at his table, pouring a drink.

Hiram Carr had sent me to the Arizona to meet Anna Orlovska. I’d accomplished that part with dispatch. There I was, standing in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by gaping customers, waiters, and chorus girls,