I managed to drop my gun from its holster onto the sofa by bending over and hitting the bottom of the holster with my wrist. I found I could pick up the gun by using both my bandaged hands. I placed it carefully on the rug. I’d shove one of the double doors open with an elbow, then kick the gun with the opposite foot.
There was a large vase on the piano. I picked it up in my arms. I tiptoed to the door into the hallway. The Russians’ voices seemed louder, as if the speakers were about to discard talk for action.
I measured the distance with my eye between the door into the hallway and the double doors into the dining room.
I raised my arms and tossed the heavy vase down the hallway, toward the other door to the dining room. I was a foot from the double doors when the vase landed with a crash that shook the house.
One of the double doors rolled back easily under the pressure from my elbow.
At the same time, I kicked the gun. It slid across the bare, polished floor. It stopped almost at Hiram Carr’s feet.
In a split second, I had ducked under the piano. I expected one of the Russians to investigate the crash in the hallway, the other to fire where my head had been. The double diversion would give Hiram his chance to pick up the gun and use it.
But there was no shot, and I realized the door to the hallway hadn’t opened.
That meant that my trick wasn’t good enough, that the Russians hadn’t left Hiram uncovered long enough for him to seize the gun at his feet.
Then someone moved. I heard his shoes scrape the bare floor and I saw his shadow move ahead of him through the doorway. The shadow moved to where I was crouching.
Then he spoke.
“Get up,” Hiram Carr said. “Get up, John, and join us in the other room.”
For a moment I was faint with relief. Then relief gave way to anger. No man likes to know he’s made a fool of himself.
“Goddamit,” I said, “how the hell was I supposed to know? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t someone come out and tell me?”
I was so let down and ashamed of myself and angry with Carr that I could only stare at him.
“I’m sorry,” Hiram said. “It’s my fault. I should have let you know. But I wanted you to stay out there in case we have any more visitors. That was a smart plan of yours just the same.”
I was damned if I was going to be patronized by that birdlike little man with the pince-nez and the ridiculous coonskin cap on his grotesque head. But I noticed the two Russians seated against the wall and I shut my mouth. I could tell Hiram Carr what I thought of him sometime in the future—now that we had a future again.
It wasn’t until I sat down on the sofa next to Walter that I noticed that Carr had a gun in his hand. The Russians were his prisoners all right; I guessed one of them had to be Major Felix Borodin. The other was a captain.
“Where is Maria Torres?” I said.
Carr shook his head. “She isn’t here,” he said. “There’s no reason to believe she’s ever been in this house.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I’m trying to get Major Borodin to tell us. He swears he doesn’t know.”
I was surprised to find that Hiram spoke fluent Russian. I suppose I was still thinking of him as the hick he’d pretended to be when Maria and I had met him in the dining car. Of course he wouldn’t have received his assignment unless he’d known Russian.
When my temper had cooled, Hiram asked me to watch the street from inside the front door. He said something in Russian to Borodin, who nodded. Then Hiram told Walter that Borodin would go with him to get the car.
“He’s going to ride back to Budapest with us,” Hiram said. “He’ll have to get us past the roadblocks.”
“You told him you’d kill him if he didn’t?”
“No,” Hiram said, “but I’ve a stronger persuader than that. I told him I’d tell Lavrentiev about his connection with Doctor Schmidt.”
“What about this other guy, the captain?”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Hiram said. “He’s apparently one of Borodin’s pupils in that security class. He says he came here with the major to get some books.”
“What do we do with him?” I wasn’t feeling very sore at Hiram any longer because the “we” slipped out naturally.
“Tie him and leave him,” Hiram said. “Borodin can release him or whatever he plans to do when he gets back from Budapest.”
“What do you mean ‘or whatever he plans to do’?” I asked.
Hiram shrugged his shoulders. “It’s none of our business,” he said, “what Felix Borodin does with the captain. But he heard our conversation and he knows a lot of things about his instructor in security that Borodin would rather nobody knew.”
When Walter returned with the car, he and Teensy hogtied the captain and stuck a gag in his mouth.
We were about to close the front door behind us when the telephone rang. Hiram hesitated a moment, then went back in the hallway and picked up the receiver. He listened, then beckoned to me. He held the receiver to my ear.
“Hello, hello, Felix?”
I’d have recognized that clipped, hard, and precise voice anywhere. I tried to disguise mine.
“Ja?” I said.
“You are late. Our engagement was for nine o’clock. I am very busy. Are you taking the next train?”
The doctor had been busy, all right. Busy enough to get away from Orlovska’s before Lavrentiev’s men arrived.
“Sehr gut,” I said. “Ich kommt schnell.”
“At the usual place, then, in thirty minutes.”
“But where?” I asked Hiram when he’d replaced the receiver.
“Borodin will tell us, one way or another.”
Hiram drove, and Teensy sat in front, with Borodin between them.
We hit the first roadblock on the outskirts of the city, near the race track. They waved us on when they saw the major’s uniform. We had to produce identification to pass the police lines in front of the Keleti station, in spite of Borodin’s presence. Hiram had satisfactory documents for all of us.
The gendarmery captain saluted. “Sorry,” he said, “but it’s orders from the MVD. Those foreigners who murdered the Russian Major Strakhov on the train.”
“Any luck?” Hiram said.
“We’ll catch them,” the gendarmery captain said. “It takes time, that’s all.”
We drove toward the Danube, stopping in front of the Belvarosi coffeehouse, and Hiram went inside, coonskin cap and all. I suppose it was part of his front as the American agricultural attache, the sort of costume Hungarians saw in Western movies and took to be typically American. I think Hiram figured nobody would believe flamboyant dress could hide an undercover operative.
When Hiram returned to the car, he told Borodin he could leave. The Russian went off without a word, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
I thought Hiram had lost his mind to let Borodin go but I put it another way. I said, “Bet you a dollar he goes to Schmidt as fast as he can.”
“No takers,” Hiram said. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
