“Major Felix Borodin,” Hiram said, “although from what Papa Szabo said, the major won’t be there to receive us. You see, he conducts a class in security at the air base during the next hour.”
Hiram stopped the car and let Walter out. “Eight-five sharp,” he said.
Teensy got out next. Hiram said, “Eight-five sharp,” to her, too. She walked off into the shadows without a word.
I got out a block farther on. “Eight-five sharp,” went for me as well. It was a clear, cold, starry night where a heavy snowstorm would have offered some concealment.
I had no trouble finding the street. I passed a couple of Russian soldiers off duty. I held my breath, but they never even glanced at me. It was hard walking on the uncleared sidewalks, and my feet still gave me excruciating pain, but I looked at my watch when I sighted the fifth house from the highway on the south side and I had two minutes’ grace. The gun was still inside my jacket in the shoulder holster, but I could have handled it just as easily with boxing-gloves as with the bandages on my hands.
There wasn’t a light in the house when I passed. There was no light in the next house, and, except for wading knee-deep in snow, I had no trouble in making my way across the lawn and into the shadows from the second house.
Major Felix Borodin’s residence was no cracker-box affair. Such might be appropriate for Budapest commuters, but Russian officers required something more substantial. Borodin’s, identical with the neighboring twenty-three, had two full stories and what appeared to be a spacious attic under a mansard roof. There was a cellar to be searched, too.
Eight-five became eight-ten, then eight-fifteen. The only sound came shortly after the appointed time when my ears caught the scraping noise of a window being opened an inch or two, so that I might be heard if I whistled. My three friends were apparently careful to draw the shades; at least, no light appeared.
When my watch told me it was nearly eight-twenty, I began to feel uneasy. It shouldn’t have taken three veteran housebreakers fifteen minutes to find—my mind almost accepted the word body—to find Maria. The house wasn’t that big. It couldn’t be that they’d walked into a trap. One of the three would have cried out.
It took all my willpower to keep from moving. It was bitterly cold, my muscles were cramped and sore from the beating Schmidt had given me, but I didn’t dare leave the shadows. It occurred to me that Hiram hadn’t said what was to happen when they were ready to leave. Were we expected to meet at the car? We couldn’t risk walking back together. How would I know when they left? If we didn’t return to the car, how did we get back to Budapest? I cursed myself for not asking.
I think it was almost eight-thirty when I heard the plane take off. I know it was only a minute or two later that the two men appeared, coming from the direction of the air base.
I whistled “Dixie” as loud as I could. I’m sure they heard me inside.
When the two men turned in at Borodin’s gate, I whistled “Reveille,” but the plane was only a few hundred feet overhead, and the roar from its engines would have drowned a siren. By the time the noise from the air had subsided, the men were inside the house.
If I could have used my hands, I’d have fired a shot in the window. If there’d been a stone, I’d have thrown it to smash the glass.
I expected to hear shots, the sounds of a struggle, shouting. There was only silence except for the drone of the airplane engines in the distance. I expected more men from the air base, but none came. Perhaps they’d already entered, through the back door and the door on the other side, the way Teensy and Walter had gone in.
I waited five minutes, the longest five minutes I’d ever known. I couldn’t make my nerves obey me longer.
I went to the window that had been opened. The drifted snow came almost to my waist. I put my ear to the opening and I could hear voices somewhere in the house but not in that room.
I managed to raise the window three feet or so, using my elbow as a lever, but I couldn’t think how to remove the shade. I pulled on it with my elbow, thinking to rip it from the roller, but it snapped back and climbed the window with what seemed to me a monstrous screeching. I flattened myself against the wall next to the window, but nobody appeared.
The room was dark, but there was light in the hallway beyond.
I put one foot on the narrow ledge over the cellar window, intending to pull myself onto the windowsill with my elbows and into the room. But I stopped. What business did I have going into that house? I ought to be following Hiram’s advice. I ought to run like hell. I couldn’t handle the gun I was carrying. Once inside the house I’d be useless in a fight.
The proper course would be to seek help. But where? Who could I go to? The American legation couldn’t and wouldn’t interfere. When an intelligence agent is caught red-handed, his government disowns him. I didn’t know any of the men who worked for Hiram. I couldn’t go back to Papa Szabo even if I could have found Hiram’s sedan, repaired the carburetor, made the engine start without keys, and then driven without the use of my hands. If anything was to be done to save Hiram, Teensy, and Walter I had to do it then.
All those considerations went through my mind in a few seconds that I paused in front of the open window. But I had to swing myself into that room in any case. I couldn’t have fled without first knowing what had happened to Maria.
I stood just inside the window. I thought of closing it behind me but I decided it was smart to leave one possible avenue of escape.
The voices I had heard from outside were speaking Russian. Probably discussing what to do with Hiram, Teensy, and Walter. My knowledge of Russian is strictly limited, but I remembered some of the words from the G.I. handbook and I recognized “spy” and “enemy” and “shooting.”
There was enough light from the hallway for me to cross the room without bumping into the furniture. When I reached the doorway, I realized the voices were coming from somewhere down the corridor, toward the rear of the house, on the same floor. I listened for that warm, low voice that I’d heard for the first time in compartment seven on the Orient Express. I tried to identify the voices of my three friends. But the speakers were Russians, without an accent.
They were the two men who had entered the house. They were doing all the talking.
I remembered Hiram’s voice, the way he’d said, “Run like hell.” There was no place for me to run to. I’d be picked up in five minutes if I tried to get back to Budapest where I had no friends. I even lacked an identity. Hiram had lifted my passport in the name of Jean Stodder, Swiss. He’d told me I was John Stodder, American, again, but the papers were in his pocket.
I put one foot into the hallway, and the floor creaked under me. I thought it loud as a pistol shot, but the voices droned on without a break. I crossed the hallway into the front room on the far side of the house.
There was only the dim light from the hallway. As soon as my eyes became adjusted, I found I was in what Europeans like to call the music room. There was a piano in one of the corners toward the back of the house and an old-fashioned overstuffed sofa in the other. Between the two pieces of furniture there were double doors, undoubtedly leading to the dining room. Light was streaming under them and through a slit in the center where they didn’t quite meet. The voices were in that room and so were Hiram, Teensy, and Walter. I moved right up to the doors and I could see the three Americans sitting together on a sofa at right angles to me. I didn’t see Maria. The Russians were out of my line of vision. They were still doing all the talking.
Had I been able to handle my gun, I could have surprised the Russians without difficulty. There was only one other possibility, to get my gun into the hands of my friends, tricking the Russians into dropping their guard for the moment.
I decided I’d have to draw them into the hallway, at the same time opening the double doors and kicking my gun along the floor to the sofa where one of the three Americans could quickly pick it up. I realized it was a slim chance.
