Spyfall Page 17

  I couldn’t figure a safe way to get the gun away from Nikkita, so I asked her, “When you pass a mirror, is there a reflection?”

  The scar on her cheekbone reddened. The finger on the trigger whitened. At last, she had found the perfect opportunity to exact revenge for her brother’s death.

  “Careful now,” I advised everyone, but Molly grunted, unladylike, and grabbed me, tumbling us off the train, down a high, scrub-filled embankment.

  A bush branch smacked me across the eyes. We rolled, holding onto each other as long as we could. Then I lost my grip and breathe and slammed into the base of a tree. Molly summersault clumsily into a thicket. Our train crossed the viaduct and vanished behind an imposing edifice of red sandstone, slipping farther into the city without us.

  Her quick action had both jeopardized and saved our lives. We got up, dusted off, and climbed back up to the gleaming rails. My shoulder popped, but I kept quiet about it. Molly swore in three languages and dabbed at a bleeding scratch on her cheek, as we followed the tracks into the southwest side of what she pronounced as “None-see.”

  “Somehoo,” I mocked, limping. “I dinna think it matterrs mooch, lassie.”

  She threw a cinder at me.

  Twenty minutes later, under the hot afternoon sun, we caught sight of the express again, just as it was leaving the station. I hollered and waved my arms, but the train ignored me and picked up speed until it was completely out of sight. If I’d had a hat, I would have thrown it on the ground and stomped it flat. Instead, I fumed and looked around the station for some way to catch up with Walt and the others, before it was too late.

  Molly pointed to long-faced man sitting in a small convertible. “It’s a Citroen DS,” she said, “And it can get up to 120 kilometers on a straightaway.”

  She moved with determination toward the vehicle and I knew then that she intended to steal the car and chase the train.

  Not seeing any alternative, I rattled the lose diamonds in my pocket and took out a few. I offered them to the man, pointing at his car.

  “Nous acheton le voiture,” Molly insisted. “Vite, vite.”

  The man jumped out without opening the car door and handed her the keys.

  “I’ll drive,” she continued, sliding behind the steering wheel.

  I handed over the diamonds and hopped in, calling, “Go, Molly, go,” as we kicked up gravel and a cloud of gray dust.

  CHAPTER 23

  We bounced along the slight embankment beside the railway tracks.

  She wrenched the wheel to force the tires over the nearest rail. Straddling it, the little French car pounded on the crossties with bone-jarring repetition.

  Suddenly, I saw the back end of the train against the hard-blue sky. A wail from the engine filled the air ahead of us. The long line of railcars slowed to take a bending upgrade slope in the tracks.

  Molly gunned the motor and accelerated back onto the gravel roadway, the seat-cushions bucking violently under our butts.

  We halved the distance between us and the train. Halved it again, until we were only ten feet behind.

  I climbed across the seat into the back of the car, preparing to try and jump as we pulled alongside of the speeding train. The empty observation deck on the back of the last car beckoned to me. Like an idiot, I reached out a hand to try and grasp the railing or a rung of the side ladder.

  The racing car beneath me swerved at the last second to avoid hitting a telephone pole, and I almost fell sideways onto the jagged rocks.

  Molly’s long red hair whipped and tore at my face in the wind. We overtook the train again. She gunned the engine, and I seized the ladder rung and jumped.

  My fingers slipped on the cold steel. Pain tore down my arm like fire. I fell roughly on my right hip and banged my head on the metal deck. I got my knees under me and then my feet.

  Molly and the Citroen convertible were still thumping along beside the train. Less than fifty feet ahead, I saw a phone pole that was set closer than the others to the rail. There was no room for her to squeeze the car between it and the train.

  I stretched out a hand and snagged a few wisps of her fluttering hair. It caught her attention and she leaned in my direction. I clutched at her collar, while she let go of the steering wheel and latched onto my arm. We heaved together, up, over and back, falling onto the train’s vibrating platform as the little car crashed into the pole and spun out, flipping end-over-end down the dirt road behind us.

  “Mathew 7:14,” she gasped. “Strait is the gate and narrow the way.”

  I panted and said something about the quick and the dead, and we made our way through the rear door of the observation platform into the interior of the coach.

  ***

  We quickly found our gang, but no sign of Nikkita.

  “Haven’t seen her,” Walt said with mild concern.

  “That’s nonsense,” I answered, running my fingers through the white streak in my hair, hoping to become more presentable. “Where could she be?”

  “Probably waiting for Kaminski, for some reason,” Ian said.

  “I donna like it,” Molly stated, her own hair a glorious crimson tangle.

  Poole rested next to her, eyes closed.

  “There are too many of us now who know about Goldenharz,” Walt said in hushed tones. “Perhaps they’ve given up the chase.”

  I pointed to the tattered sleeve of my jacket. “Does this look like they’ve given up? They need those documents back. It’s our only solid proof of the missile base.”

  “We’ll be in Paris soon,” Ian said. “Poole doesn’t appear to be improving with time, so I’ve wired ahead for medical attention.”

  It still didn’t add up.

  ‘Someone is lying,’ the Noir Man said.

  I wondered sarcastically what else was new.

  “I’ve got one for you,” Norm said.

  “Not now, please,” I answered.

  “No,” he said, getting to his feet and edging past Walt and Ian. “Come with me a minute, will you? I’ll tell you at the back of the car.” I really didn’t feel up to it, but he waited for me to calm down and follow him away from the rest of our group. He kept his voice low and didn’t sing. Instead, he whispered, “I saw a woman like you described get off the train at the Nancy station. She was with a dumpy, old guy, and she didn’t look happy.”

  “Was the guy soviet military or something?”

  “Don’t think so. As the train left, they met another man who could have been our old friend, Fake Fleming. It was hard to get a good look at his face.”

  This new information refused to fit into my head. They were here and then they weren’t. Now you see ’m, now you don’t. I was beginning to feel more and more like a spectator at a circus or magic show. Suzi would have figured it all out in a flash, but she was six or seven time-zones away.

  When Norm and I came back to join our friends, they were attempting to compare details, updating our strategy and tactics.

  “Did ya call fur backup?” Molly asked Ian.

  “Did you?” Ian asked Walt.

  “I thought you had,” Walt said.

  “Me?” Molly asked.

  “No,” Walt said. “Him.”

  “Me?” Ian said.

  It was like watching a tennis match. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This whole espionage business is a big pain in my ass--if you’ll excuse my French.”

  The train had picked up speed and was hurtling along at more than fifty miles per hour past what looked like tobacco plantations. Its harsh melancholy whistle echoed back from the wall of a deep cut in a hillside.

  “Spy verses spy?” Norm asked.

  The phrase caught Ian’s attention. “Why do you say that?”

  Norm just chirped, “Mad Magazine.”

  “The kid’s as smart as a whip,” Walt said.

  “Bowling ball,” I corrected. “Smart as a bowling ball.”

  “Sharp,” Molly corrected. “Sharp as a bowling ball.”

  N
orm couldn’t resist. “Did somebody, I say, did somebody knock?”

  “Want to go around again?” I asked

  Everybody except Norm shook their head and grunted in the negative.

  ***

  Based on what he’d read in the guide book, Norman determined we were near the Route de Vin with villages full of cobbled streets, Renaissance fountains, and hanging flower baskets. “To our west,” he read aloud, “the lyrical landscape of castle-topped crags and the mist-enshrouded Vosges Mountains glides into view.”

  I noticed we were speeding past green signal lights on poles next to the tracks. “You see those green lamps?” I asked him. “I’m pretty sure they mean the track is clear and it’s okay to go ahead.”

  Norm seemed amazed by this. “So that’s why he’s called the Green Lantern.”

  The wound in his leg was healing nicely, probably due to Molly’s dedicated care. Poole, on the other hand, was fading fast, almost delirious. I’d figured she should have recovered much more by now, but somehow we were losing her. Perhaps her age? She drifted in and out of a deep slumber, mumbling, at times. There were pin pricks on the inside of her left arm where they had administered something into her veins.

  “I should have anticipated this,” Fleming said, as concerned as the rest of us. “They’ve been drugging her in a way I haven’t seen in years. To get her to talk, they’ve been pumping her full of something for days now.”

  “Sort of priming the pump?” Norm asked.

  “But she seemed fine when we found her,” I said. “Relatively speaking. Finer than this, anyway.”

  “Yes,” Walt mused. “Her condition is getting worse.”

  “Antidote,” Poole whispered through dry lips. She stared deeply into my eyes. “Need antidote.”

  A cold icicle dribbled down my spine.

  “She’s been infected with something,” Ian said, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Then they must have been giving her the antidote while she was held at the opera annex,” Walt added.

  “Infected with what?” I asked, dumbly.

  “Very shrewd,” Ian concluded. “Without the antidote, she’ll suffer and probably die.”

  “Some rescue,” Norm said.

  “Infected with what?” I asked again.

  “Lord knows,” Molly replied.

  “We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” Walt said.

  “Do you think it’s contagious?” Norm asked.

  No one answered.

  “Yeah, I know,” he went on, looking from one woman to the other. “Lord knows.”

  The train gave a long whistle and began to slacken speed. It was a few minutes after five o’clock, and we were coming into the city of Reims. I knew that in 1945, Nazi Germany had surrendered unconditionally here to Eisenhower. With a jolt and a screech of the couplings, the express slowed to a walking speed and finally, with a sigh of hydraulic brakes and a noisy whoosh, ground to a stop.

  I heard bells ringing out from the nearby Reims cathedral and remembered again that it was Sunday. I thought of Suzi and how we’d spent our previous Sabbath attending her church service. Why had she declined to come with me on this trip? Considering all that had happened in the last few days, I took heart in the fact that she hadn’t come after all. But I missed her and couldn’t wait to get back home again, away from counter-counter-espionage foolishness.

  A double whistle sounded. There was a lurch and a diminishing crescendo of electric hums from the engine up front and the train began to move. Our car jerked harshly into line and we were pulled forward. I saw Fleming rushing back aboard from making more phone calls. Molly joined me as I slid open the window to crane out into the increasing wind and we began to glide past the station platform.

  Within the small crowd of people looking back at us, I thought I saw Yuri’s head turn a few compass points in our direction.

  “Damn.” Had they caught up again? I tried to point him out to Molly, but we were screeching around a bend now, and I couldn’t be sure of what I’d seen.

  How had I ever been fooled into accepting him as Ian? His complexion was darker, his hair was whiter, and those calculating eyes...

  The real Ian Fleming came easily down the aisle, despite the increasing movement of the train, his hands never touching the edge of the seats. “I’ve called ahead for medical attention when we reach Paris,” he informed us. “They should be meeting us there in about an hour and a half.”

  The train was hitting her stride on a flat, open stretch of track. With a slight rocking from side to side, she was touching sixty miles an hour, roaming across trestles, flying through small villages, and hurtling past signals indicating open track ahead.

  Norm came over to where I sat and tried to get me to recite a lyric from Rhythm on the River, but I wasn’t in the mood. “Jeez, Norman,” I said, perhaps too harshly, “that song is as old as Arthur Godfrey.”

  The train shot forward like an immense cannonball, and Ian and Walt were arguing again.

  Fleming said, “I always thought you looked like that tall chap who appears with Lou Costello.”

  “Costello is a gangster,” Walt answered, fidgeting with an unlit cigarette and book of matches.

  I called over to them, “You guys are starting to sound like Allen and Rossi.”

  “Who?” Walt asked.

  “I think he means Martini and Rossi,” Ian said. “A brand of Italian vermouth.”

  Walt shook his head, came to sit beside me, and stared out the window. “Train rides are usually good for the soul,” he said. “It was on a train ride that I first dreamed up Mickey.”

  I thought about asking him his middle name, but instead said, “What’s your favorite movie?”

  He considered it more seriously than I’d intended. “Anything by--” He puffed out air. “--Doug Fairbanks, Sr., I guess. Why?”

  Romanesque churches and medieval market towns crept by, flashing a station sign that read, Marne-de-Vallie.

  “You’re still keeping something important from me, aren’t you?” I said. “Detectives don’t like that.”

  He puffed air again, as if clearing his conscious. “This area reminds me of what Anaheim used to look like.” He avoided my statement by staring out the window at the passing show. “Be nice to someday build another Disneyland here close to Paris.” His eyes seemed duller, his shoulders more slumped. “Maybe get NATO to fund it, partly.”

  Another sign streaked past in front of the fields and foothills. Paris -- 32 Km.

  “I’ve always wanted to see more of the world.” He sighed. “Get out and maybe chuck it all and not come back.” His grin came slowly, even now when he was intentionally being obscure with me.

  I clinched my jaw to keep from cursing and watched the hurrying landscape. Summits crowned with ruined castles coasted in the distance. I had to admit that it was the most beautiful countryside I’d ever seen, but I couldn’t wait to get to the end of the line in Paris, where physicians waited to attend to Agent Penny Poole’s weakening condition.

  I would have sold my soul right then for the taste of a taco and a cold Pepsi. Hell, I’d even’ve settled for a green bottle of 7-Up.

  ***

  Our golden journey finally ended in the rain a little after seven o’clock in the darkening evening. The efficient TEE transportation came to a stop at the Gare de l’Est, between lines of both rusting and gleaming locomotives. We walked down the platform and into the over-arching and echoing iron and stone station half the size of the Olympic stadium back home. The scene, which should have been filled with the joy of victory, was bland and depressing from the late hour and the dank weather outside.

  When the ambulance arrived with its up-and-down wailing siren, Walt and Molly guided Poole and Norm to its open back doors.

  I was relieved. And tired. And sore. And pretty much done with the whole affair.

  Then I saw the nun.

  CHAPTER 24

  Only she was not a nun. I’d know those harsh, smolder
ing eyes anywhere. She reached around Ian’s neck and pulled him backward, tipping him off balance, and now had a hand with a cloth over his face.

  It wasn’t until Yuri Kaminski stepped over to twist Fleming’s arm behind his back that I knew fully that our two pursuers hadn’t given up the chase. They seemed unstoppable with unlimited determination and resources, for they kept showing up along our route regardless of what we did or where we were.

  The handgun concealed beneath Nikkita’s nun’s habit accentuated their determination. This felt like their last chance to get the Goldenharz plans away from us, and, as I watched, Yuri pulled the documents from Ian’s breast pocket. There was only one thing to do. I dashed forward and called out in a deep, authoritative voice: “Help. Police. Stop that man and that--nun!”

  Several evening travelers halted and stared around. A few people ducked. One or two started running away.

  Molly pushed me aside and charged forward, gun at the ready, giving out with, “My hands to fight and my fingers to do battle.” A Biblical battle cry.

  Nikkita thrust Ian’s body into Molly’s path, causing the trim British agent to swerve to avoid striking Fleming. It was just enough to allow the Soviet agent time to aim, fire and hit the young girl in the arm, causing her gun to skid along the pavement and drop over the side of the station platform.

  I didn’t have a weapon or a play, but I moved in anyway. The two Russian operatives were already nearing the entrance of the gare, making their way into the street with the incriminating evidence.

  A knife flew from behind me and high over my head. I ducked reflexively and looked back. Molly had tossed it, not to try and hit them, but to give me something to use in my pursuit. I snatched it up and continued on, seeing that Norm had come to her side. I gave them both an “Okay” with my thumb and forefinger, not caring if it was considered obscene gesture in this country.