The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter - Страница 32

Emilo Bartoluzzi was not a man to work himself if he could persuade others to do it for him. Having no forged papers suitable for a west-east crossing of the East German frontier with Illya, he had therefore decided to denounce the character he was impersonating and allow the authorities to convey the Russian there for him.

Once he was some way into the country, a rapid change of ownership would have to be effected—because Bartoluzzi had to get hold of the impostor for himself... fast.

There were three reasons for this. The first was to prevent others' hearing the man's story. It would not be long before he was able to gain at least some credence for his protestations that he wasn't really Cernic. Secondly, he had to have the fellow to himself so that he could employ the gentle arts of persuasion and find out who he was and for whom he was working. The tough little Corsican had not worked all this time just to see his carefully planned empire collapse at the first push of the first person to penetrate it.

And thirdly, the man bad to be silenced—for good. He knew far too much about the network to stay alive even in a Czech prison.

Stop him opening his mouth; find out who he was; shut his mouth. Those then were the objectives. And since none of them could conveniently be carried out in the middle of Austria, Switzerland or Western Germany, he had arranged for the military to kindly ferry the victim to a place of his own choosing; his own place.

First, though, the impostor had to be won back from them....

Bartoluzzi followed the army truck carrying Illya at a discreet distance. As soon as he could, he changed vehicles, just in case any of the soldiers recognized the van in which the Russian had been traveling. He ran the vehicle into a junkyard on the outskirts of Munich, paused to have a word with the night watchman, and left in an ex-American army jeep, hand-painted a bright orange and equipped with a civilian registration.

The hood of the jeep flapped dismally, the garish paint was flaking off all over it, and the tires seemed to be almost bald. But there was a highly tuned engine under the battered hood and it ran like the hammers of hell!

Even so, not until they were nearly at Nurnberg did he catch up with the truck again. It had been joined by four motorcycle outriders.

Bartoluzzi accelerated and drove past the convoy. He knew where they were going, and he could afford to press on ahead. Between Bayreuth and Hof, he turned sharp right off the highway and bounced along a narrow lane. Eventually he came to a graveyard of wrecked autos—a large field piled high with the telescoped and concertinaed remains of cars that had come to grief on the Autobahn whose embankment formed one boundary of the property. There were several gaps in the ragged hedge shielding the place from the lane. Bartoluzzi chose the smallest and least used and steered the jeep in among the mounds of scrap.

Toward the back of the yard, just under the embankment, he ran in close to a towering pile of metal and stopped the jeep canted over on an outsize hummock of grass.

From a distance, slanting drunkenly toward the mound of wreckage, it would be indistinguishable from the derelicts surrounding it.

He switched off the engine and jumped to the ground. The rain had ceased, and the clouds had momentarily withdrawn. In the light of the waning moon, he threaded his way through the scrap to an old Dodge three-tonner that was parked among the nettles near the hedge. It looked barely capable of remaining erect on its wheels, but the motor turned sweetly and, in a secret space behind the gaping glove compartment, were papers. These included bills of sale, insurance certificates, an agreement to buy the vehicle for scrap from an East German yard (which had been easy enough, since the yard was his own), and permission to take the truck into the People's Republic for that purpose.

Easing the old Dodge out into the lane, he drove as quickly as he could to the frontier. Kuryakin had been handed over to the East German police not long before; the motorcycles and the army truck were just turning to start their journey back when Bartoluzzi arrived. He presented his credentials, said he was driving the truck through as scrap, and shook hands with the corporal who stamped his permit. Then, taking the road for Dresden, he set off after the prisoner and escort as fast as he could.

Day was breaking and they were less than twenty miles from the rebuilt city when he caught up. Kuryakin was sitting with six militiamen on a bench running down the back of a mesh-covered Wartburg riot truck. It is doubtful if any of them noticed the ancient Dodge as it rattled abreast of them. In any case the nerve gas from the expertly lobbed grenade worked so fast that they would have had no time to make any comments on it.

All seven of them were out for the count before the Dodge pulled in again to the right-hand side of the road after passing the truck.

Three miles farther on, the road snaked through rising ground in the center of a belt of forest. As the Wartburg slowed for a sharp bend, four shots from a repeater rifle cracked apart the dawn calm and sent birds flapping up from the tree tops in widening circles of alarm.

Behind the starred windshield, the driver and the sergeant beside him leaned together in a crazy embrace and then slid to the floor of the cab.

After the corner, the road dropped away to the right. But the truck went straight on. It bumped over the shoulder, scraped one side on the trunk of a tree, lurched into a hollow and then, gathering speed now, slammed into a fallen trunk and fell over, quite slowly, on one side.

Bartoluzzi was running noiselessly toward it over the carpet of pine needles almost before the echoes of the crash had died away among the sighing of the branches.

He crawled into the space beneath the battered mesh covering and tried to haul Kuryakin into the open air. There was a bruise on the unconscious Russian's temple, but otherwise he seemed to be undamaged. He was handcuffed to the militiaman on each side of him, however, and the wiry little Corsican was unable to drag all three of them out together. He felt in the pockets of the soldiers and then examined those of the dead sergeant in the cab. There were no keys to be found.

With a grimace of exasperation, he loped off through the trees to the place where he had hidden the Dodge. Five minutes later he was back by the crashed truck with a surgeon's saw in his hand.

Once his gruesome task was completed, he pulled Kuryakin clear and carried him—alone now but with an empty handcuff dangling from each wrist—back to his own vehicle. Dumping him in the back, he covered him with a pile of old sacks. The gas from the grenade would keep him quiet for at least another hour.

There was one more thing to do. Bartoluzzi did not know how much, if anything, the Russian had said to his guards. But he could not afford to take chances. It was possible that he had spilled the whole story in an attempt to establish his real identity. And even if they hadn't believed him, a fragment of the truth might stick.

The Corsican slid a clip of ammunition into an automatic pistol and went back to the scene of the crash.

Six more shots sent the birds wheeling.

Shortly afterward he was on a side road heading south into the forest with the briefcase full of money, which he had recovered from the Wartburg's cab, on the seat beside him.

Chapter 16

A Murder Is Planned

ILLYA KURYAKIN blinked his way awake. It took some time for his mind to clear, and the blurred images revolving slowly in front of his eyes meant nothing to him at first.

Then, portion by portion, the jigsaw assembled itself—the long wait in the Prague attic... the succession of decrepit vehicles in which he had been ferried half across Europe… the tramp through the snow and the crossing of frontiers... Bartoluzzi's face when the tell-tale streaks of dye told him that Illya wasn't Kurim Cernic... the journey with the soldiers and the sudden realization that the face of the truck driver whose ancient vehicle was passing them was the face of the Corsican...