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  The train slowed its pace and we pulled into a station where we disembarked clumsily. The plan was to use some of the diamonds to pay our fare, but we still had enough Marks to satisfy the conductor without drawing much suspicion. Ian handled the language barrier. We had succeeded in getting away, but we weren’t out of Germany yet.

  ***

  “What the hell happened?” Molly’s accent had slipped.

  She had her hair done up in one of those French twists. We were gathered and seated in what was once called a private drawing room with curtained windows facing the speeding countryside. It was like something out of the nineteenth century. Not exactly the Orient Express, but a worn-down fancy conveyance with cushioned seats, pull-down beds, and a private lavatory.

  Norm looked quiet better, but he still depended on Karloff’s cane to get around. He sat quietly for once beside Poole who still appeared exhausted, but pleased to have escaped confinement.

  We described our Berlin adventures and Nikkita Reed. Molly had heard of her, especially when I mentioned the sickle-shaped scar, but knew nothing of her prosthetic weapons cache.

  “That Hiller Flying Platform is a definite E-ticket ride,” Walt concluded. “I’ll have to speak with the military about getting something like that at my theme park.”

  The train howled, clicking off a mile a minute, skimming along the tracks.

  “After this, I need to retire from the espionage business,” Walt said,

  “Amen,” Ian said. “This is much more than any of us planned on.”

  “There was a plan?” I asked.

  “There were a couple of them,” Walt replied.

  “None of which either of you told me about,” I complained. “Level with me, Walt. What are you not telling us?”

  “About what, precisely? The hovercraft?”

  Ian broke in with, “We had Molly set up the rescue with your military service as a contingency before we left West Berlin.”

  “There,” I charged, “right there. You two didn’t tell me about that, or your true connection with our government.”

  Walt shrugged. “I’m a resource and I have resources.”

  “Then what’s your role in all of this, uh, caper? Hell, what’s my role? Start back at the beginning.”

  He barely suppressed a sigh. “It started a long time back with Victory Through Air Power.”

  “That’s too far back,” I said.

  “Just how old do you think I am?” he asked.

  “Not as old as I feel,” Norman said.

  “You know that I’m not young anymore,” Walt went on, “but I still have to help defend democracy.”

  “Yeah, I know. Liberty and justice for all. But why here? Why now?”

  Fleming searched his pockets for his missing cigarette holder and then gave up. “We’re on the front lines of a cold war that could heat up any minute, Wade. Sometimes the less said, the better for all. You’ve seen that.”

  Walt handed him the last of his crumpled pack of filter-tipped L&Ms. “I could never have flown that hover platform or climbed across to that annex, or escaped from the East without your strength and skills, Stan.”

  I wanted so much to respond to this compliment by simply punching his lights out. “From now on, I need to know everything, or I won’t be able to trust either of you.”

  Molly reached out and touched my sliced sleeve from where she sat. “What, pray tell, are ya complainin aboot? Ya should be happy that we rescued Poole and got oot of Berlin in one piece.”

  “Not to mention,” Ian added, “we’ve gained proof of the Soviet’s nuclear threat to Western Europe.”

  Walt shook his head, amused by something. “You flew that thing like Hotshot Charlie.”

  “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “We walked away, didn’t we?” Ian said.

  Outside, a clanging bell shifted down the Doppler as we soared past.

  “This spy stuff is way over my head,” I said to Ian.

  “In time,” he said, “you’ll find that it’s kinderspiele. Kid games.”

  Walt added, “Just let your conscience be your guide.”

  ‘Slug him,’ the Noir Man said. I clinched my fists.

  “You could blame it all on the IGY,” Norm said.

  Knowing full well that there’s no stopping Norman when he got into lecture mode, I still had to ask, “The IGY? Another secret spy organization?”

  “The International Geophysical Year. Teams of scientists are going out all over the world this year from the Arctic to the Equator in an all-out effort to find what makes our planet tick.”

  “Before it blows up, eh?” I countered. “That’s no excuse for us running around the continent like the Rover Boys, doing and saying whatever we like.”

  “I agree in principle, but think of the alternative,” Ian said.

  “Aye,” Molly commented, “Think what’ll likely happen in the future, if we doone act now.”

  I watched a fly crawl across the window. “Well, at least, we should advise the authorities.”

  “We have, Stan. And we shall again, soon enough,” Walt tried to assure me. “Timing is everything in these situations.”

  “In the end, we’re going to need all the help we can get, and that’s always the best time to explain everything to the authorities,” Ian said. “Or, at least explain some part of it all.”

  Norman reached into his many-pocketed vest and came up with something in his hand. “Want your key back?”

  Walt glanced at Ian, who shot a look in Molly’s direction.

  I accepted the key, wrapped in a scrap of paper, with a slight flourish.

  “So what’s in the safety deposit box?” Norm asked innocently.

  It was my turn to be mysterious. “I’ll tell you--someday.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The train continued along the steel tracks of the Deutsche Bundesbahn, huffing and wheezing toward Frankfurt, while the members of our little Team Bay City kept still, quiet, and to ourselves. We had left our bags back at the hotel and the few possessions we’d carried to the church graveyard were now also far behind. The train stopped at three stations along the way. Each time, we waited on the alert, while the whistle sounded a mournful whooo-whu-whu-whu call.

  Passengers got off and climbed on to hang out the windows and jabber at the thin crowd below. Then the conductor would pick up the iron pedestal beside the carriage and climb with it onto the train, raising a hand to the engineer and fireman to start.

  Finally we reached Frankfurt, around eleven a.m. The Hauptbahnhof train station was a dead-end terminus with a nineteenth-century glass-and-iron construction from the Industrial Revolution full of green copper figures representing steam power and electricity. From here, we would have to travel by bus across the border into France.

  While Molly continued to tend to Norman and Poole, Walt, Ian, and I came out onto the station platform. Military guards of several nations mingled around us. Most of them were from West Germany.

  I saw a few American uniforms, identifying our boys on leave from a nearby base. We were relatively safe here, almost out of the country, but we remained cautious.

  Ian went off to make a phone call. I purchased large German pretzels and half-dozen pickle-and-mayo sandwiches wrapped in wax paper from an elderly street merchant in a Tyrolean hat.

  Walt conferred with several low-level members of the US Army who had come to retrieve the hover platform. “At least we proved that the prototype had more vector-thrust than originally planned,” I overheard him tell them.

  “The military is not happy with the way you abused its valuable equipment,” a young sergeant advised. “You’ll have a hellova time explaining it all when you get back.”

  At the end of the station platform, a car drew up and two people I didn’t like got out, working their way through the crowd--Nikkita and Yuri.

  I urgently tugged at Walt’s sleeve and turned us away from our pursuers, who must have driven at top speed to
have intercepted us here.

  Walt handed me all but one of the pretzels and shouldered his way past a middle-aged man and wife with three children in tow.

  I eased back in the direction of our train, hoping to be as inconspicuous and uninteresting as a trash receptacle.

  Yuri drew nearer, searching. Walt hunched down onto a bench outside a ticket office and stuffed the last of his salted snack into his mouth, as Kaminski stepped right past him.

  Ian took that unfortunate moment to come back toward the train. Nikkita spotted him before I could give warning. The woman gestured in Fleming’s direction. I moved behind a pillar, trying to stay out of view.

  Yuri joined his comrade next to Ian. Quiet words were passed in German and Ian’s face paled a bit. I tried to dream up something to do to stop them, as they began to move off together toward the waiting car.

  Walt got up and followed, stopping to speak with his army contacts. The soldiers listened, looked, and then eased over to confront the pair of commies and the writer.

  More words in German were passed around. Stern, accusing words. The young sergeant drew his sidearm and now it was Yuri’s turn to pale. The soldiers called for reinforcements and a small crowd had begun to form. The fresh-faced sergeant reached into Yuri’s coat pocket and pulled out a pistol and a worn leather wallet.

  From out of the crowd, the middle-aged father of the three children rushed over. More German-speak and then Ian stepped away from his captors, obviously relieved.

  It was like watching a silent movie. Yuri seemed stunned. Nikkita simmered with controlled aggression and wrath.

  The young soldier handed the wallet to the father, who checked its contents and pointed accusingly at the two Red agents.

  The army man said something like, “Consider yourself under arrest, Mein Herr,” and they all moved in the direction of the station’s entrance.

  I almost dropped the sandwiches as Walt met Ian and brought him back in my direction. I stammered, “Did--did you just pick that guy’s pocket and plant his wallet on Kaminski?”

  Walt smiled with unrestrained pride. “Guilty as charged.”

  I stared again at the soldier and figured out who he was. Our pursuers where lead quietly past us. Nikkita’s eyes bore into mine. Her face was as red as an exit sign.

  I felt elated. “This is our hidden gambit,” I said to her. Then my accumulated frustration ran over and I couldn’t stop myself from wise cracking, “Add the letter ‘A’ to my first name and it spells Satan.”

  Walt laughed as the Reds were hustled away. “Their diplomatic authority will have them free very soon, so we need to keep moving. By the way, did you recognize the young army sergeant?”

  My eyes tracked over to the departing soldier, who turned and gave us a half salute. “Yep. He looks pretty good in uniform.”

  We walked to the train to collect our teammates.

  “Who is he?” Ian inquired, accepting a sandwich. “One of your legion of undercover men?”

  “Pretzel?” I offered Ian. “Elvis...Pretzel?”

  A boarding announcement clamored out in three languages, covering Fleming’s response.

  Minutes later, we all caught the bus that would take us across the Rhine River to the border.

  ***

  By 1 p.m., we were standing at a typical wayside checkpoint, under a white canopy marked with a turquoise Touring sign, listening to distant church bells.

  A police official in a dark green uniform with dull-black pistol holster at his belt barely glanced at my passport. He snapped it shut and handed it to the bus driver, who handed it to me.

  The man saluted and I gave him a thumbs-up. It was the only gesture I could think of that wouldn’t offend.

  Then we were back on the bus and across the border, where we had to do the whole thing all over again in reverse. This time, we stood outside a façade of dour buildings and a dusty expanse of wooden counters, but no apparent armed guards. Just a few chickens pecking about and a few drab officials standing idly, unshaven, not even trying to look important. “Passports. Douane.”

  Again, the bus bumped along the countryside. Hills rose and fell away. I glanced over at Walt. Between the hovercraft and the wallet-handoff gig, he had grown more impressive to me.

  Scattered cottages, tilled fields, and pastures were blurred in a crawling panorama until we reached the outskirts of Strasbourg and wound our way around to what they called the Gare Centrale on the northwest corner of the city. Somewhere along the way, we had crossed a time zone and it was noon again, with more church bells marking the event.

  This area of France had changed hands back and forth with Germany so many times in the last several hundred years that there were two names for everything here. French choucroute was the same as German sauerkraut, which of course was really steamed, sliced, and cooked cabbage. We abandoned our slow motorbus and transferred to a new French diesel-electric TransEurope Express train that gave a slap-happy whistle as we boarded and sped westward again.

  There were no private carriages or drawing rooms on the TEE, just clean, efficient passenger-cars full of coach seats that faced forward or back, depending on how they were levered. The six members of our team broke up into smaller groups to avoid seeming conspicuous. Norm and Molly found a discarded French-and-English guide book and were poring over it together, chatting like high-school kids on a senior-class trip.

  Ian came forward to sit next to me among several rows of empty seats. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to talk over something with you quietly.”

  I waited, watching out the window as a fairytale land of vineyards faded into the watercolor distance and half-timbered villages looked freshly-minted from Snow White or Cinderella. I reminded myself that all of it could be gone in a nuclear flash.

  “Has Walt recruited you?” Fleming asked in hushed tones. “Or are you a lone hand? You seem very capable.”

  I waited some more. He and Walt had seemed so confident, cool, and sure that they were doing the right thing. It was a marvel, given the circumstances.

  ‘So many people have a hidden side,’ the Noir Man told me.

  “How would you like to operate unofficially for the British Secret Service? On American soil, of course.”

  I raised my eyebrows for something to do. “Are you trying to recruit me to spy on my own country?”

  “Well, let us call it a liaison. Her Majesty needs information from a variety of sources, particularly in Hollywood. And some of our existing sources are becoming suspect.”

  I assumed he was talking about a person I knew, but instead he groused quietly about someone named Philby. I interrupted by asking, “Would the liaison include reporting on Walt’s activities?”

  “Whatever. Anything you found...interesting.” He kept his voice low, like we were in church or a hospital room with a dying patient. “As you’ve seen, these are desperate times for all nations. Compensation would be placed into a numbered Swiss account, depending on the quality of information provided.”

  “Let me think about it,” I said, looking back to where the others of our group sat, resting. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. No. In fact, as my old Pappy used to say, ‘Hell, no.’” I cleared my throat. “It’s not my line of work. Plus, I have a mean streak of honor in me. Comes from eating Wheaties.”

  Ian took it without blinking. “Very well,” he said, getting up. “No harm done then. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  This entire affair had been as intricate and involved as an Arapaho Indian rug. Half the time, I didn’t know up from down, as if I were in freefall. Boy, would I be glad to get back home.

  The fast train sped along into a bowl of open land, flat and stony, where a river diverged into a network of rambling channels winding across hard barren ground broken by a few stunted trees. It had been a full twenty-four hours, and now everything conspired to make me sleep.

  The hasty metal gallop of the wheels, the hypnotic swoop of the telegraph wires, the drow
sy metallic clatter of the couplings, the occasional moan of the whistle clearing the way.

  As we neared the city of Nancy, Walt and Fleming stayed with our two invalids, and Molly motioned for me to come out into the corridor with her, wanting to know more about the nukes and Goldenharz.

  I gave her the little I knew, plus some of my misgivings about the whole affair. I wanted to test her reaction.

  She patted my elbow. “Be strong and courageous. Deuteronomy 31:6.”

  “Sort of hard to do when nukes are involved.”

  “’Tis unbelievable,” she said. “Arr ya certain we can entirely trust yer friend, Walter?”

  I looked deeply into her eyes. “You’re not really Irish, are you?”

  The lids fluttered involuntarily. “How--did you--”

  “Your accent slips when you recite Bible verses. Why do you do that?”

  She led me into the companion-way between the two carriages. The rhythmic rattle of the rails and couplings surrounded us in a light breeze.

  “I was imprisoned for six months in Helsinki with nothing but the good book to occupy my mind.” She glanced up to see if I bought it. “Are ya goin ta tell on me, Stanley?”

  I resigned myself to going along with her nonsense. “Nah, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets. It’s all part of being a private--”

  She nodded. “Aye.”

  The door of the other car slid open with a rush and Nikkita stepped out gracefully, waving a handgun. “You capitalists think that your great number of goods equals the greater good.”

  I wished I’d said that. In my line of business, I tend not to use the term “flatfoot,” but that’s how I felt then. I held onto the brass guardrail on the side of the coach near my head as the train swayed slightly and the commie woman addressed Molly about being some sort of cat burglar or jewel thief. Another persona? I watched the gun and decided that I needed a secret identity, since everybody else seemed to have one.

  The train began to screech and slow as we came into the town of Nancy and neared a stone viaduct. The couplings beneath our feet groaned and nuzzled each other above the blurring tracks.