Death Train

Four

Strasbourg, the capital of the French province of Alsace, is situated close to the border with Germany on an island formed by the two arms of the River Ill. It is a picturesque city of cobbled pedestrian streets and timber-framed houses, dominated by the Cathedral Tower, a Gothic building constructed of red Vosges sandstone and standing over 320 feet tall. The Cathedral, which can be seen even from the furthest peaks of Alsace, is regarded by the Alsatians as a proud symbol of their heritage.

As Sabrina stood outside the hotel on the Place de la Gate staring up at the Cathedral’s spire silhouetted against the dark, sombre skyline, she let her thoughts drift back over the hours since their departure from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. The flight to Paris had been punctuated by periodic bouts of turbulence and consequently neither of them had managed to get much sleep. Before disembarking, the passengers had been reminded to put their watches forward by six hours to be in line with Continental time, which had served to add disorientation to fatigue. A Piper Chieftain, belonging to UNACO, had been waiting at Orly Airport to fly them on to Strasbourg.

Although desperately tired both had pushed any thoughts of sleep from their minds, though after checking in at the hotel, the Vendome (chosen for its proximity to the station), they had each taken a long, refreshing shower before meeting up again for a late breakfast in the dining room.

Graham’s appearance brought her out of her reverie and they walked the short distance to the station, where she approached the information desk to ask for directions to the stationmaster’s office. She had never learnt to speak Alsatian, a dialect closely related to Old High German, so she spoke in faultless German instead. The clerk even asked where in Germany she came from. She answered Berlin; it was a city she had come to know well over the years.

The stationmaster’s office turned out to be ideally situated overlooking the busy concourse.

She knocked on the door.

‘Herein!’ a voice commanded from inside the office.

She opened the door. It was a spacious room with wall-to-wall carpeting, a teak desk and three imitation leather armchairs against the wall to the right of the door. The shelves on either side of the window behind the desk were stacked with files, directories and timetables.

‘Entschuldigen Sie, Herr Brummer?’ she said, addressing the silver-haired man standing by the window.

He turned to face them. ‘Ja. Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’

Graham held up his hand before she could reply. ‘Sprechen Sie englisch?’

Brummer nodded. ‘Of course. Can I help you?’

‘I’m Mike Graham. This is Sabrina Carver.’

‘Ah yes, I was told to expect you. I have the invoices you’ll want over here.’ He indicated the five bulky files on his desk. ‘All the transactions of goods loaded and off-loaded at Strasbourg in the last ten days.’

Graham eyed the mountains of files with dismay. ‘You must be running a pretty busy operation here.’

‘It is, Mr Graham. Because of its strategic position Strasbourg has become the rail centre of Europe. We also have an ever-growing harbour complex, with the result that over half the city’s workforce are dependent on the transportation industry for their livelihood. So as you can see, it is imperative for us to attain a constant turnover to maximize profitability.’

Sabrina opened the top file and leafed through the first few invoices. ‘Are they all in French?’

‘Yes. It is for the benefit of the inspectors who come up from Paris for the biannual audits.

None of them speaks Alsatian.’

‘Thank goodness for the Parisian inspectors. How are the invoices for the loaded and off-loaded goods filed? Separately or together?’

‘Separately, but on a daily basis for easy reference. All invoices also state the consignment’s ultimate destination. For insurance purposes, you understand.’

‘Thank you for your help,’ Sabrina said with a quick smile.

‘If there’s anything you need don’t hesitate to ask.’

‘Coffee,’ Graham said abruptly.

‘I’ll have some sent up straight away.’

‘And some privacy to work,’ Graham added.

‘If you need me I can be contacted on the phone. Extension seven.’

Sabrina waited until Brummer had left then selected a ballpoint pen from the holder on the desk and wrote on a scrap piece of paper. She handed it to Graham.

‘What’s this?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Tonnelets de bière et tonneaux de bière – the French for beer kegs and beer barrels. You don’t exactly speak the lingo, do you?’

The meticulous scrutiny of each invoice proved to be both tedious and time-consuming, especially for Graham, who had the disadvantage of not understanding anything he was reading. He finally resigned himself to memorizing the translated words, hoping to come across a matching entry on one of the invoices. It was wishful thinking.

They managed to keep their lassitude at bay with regular coffee breaks every hour and when lunch arrived unexpectedly just after midday, courtesy of Brummer, they were grateful for the nourishment and the respite. Lunch consisted of garbure, a thick vegetable soup, followed by veal de la forestière and pot-au-chocolat for dessert. Although momentarily tempted by the seductively rich chocolate dessert Sabrina’s willpower held firm and she gave it to Graham.

With lunch over they reluctantly returned their attention to the files.

It was 3.20 when Sabrina finally closed the last of her three files. She stood up, stretched, then moved to the window and looked out over the busy concourse.

‘Are you nearly finished?’

He gripped the remaining invoices between his thumb and forefinger in an attempt to judge their numbers. ‘About fifty to go.’

‘Give them to me, it’ll be quicker. You get the gear from the locker downstairs.’

Their weapons would have been deposited in the locker the previous night by a UNACO operative. The key had been left at the hotel pending their arrival. It was a standard UNACO procedure.

‘Why the hurry?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve found something, haven’t you?’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Give me the file.’

‘We are supposed to be working together.’

She rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘I had my reasons. We had to go through all those invoices, regardless of what we found. If I’d told you about the entry earlier on it might have lulled you into a false sense of complacency. It was you, after all, who was going on at breakfast about the perils of lapses in concentration.’

‘Your faith in me’s touching,’ he said tersely.

‘It works both ways, Mike,’ she replied, holding his stare.

He bit back his anger and left the office. The concourse was packed and he struggled to control his temper as he was jostled and shoved by passengers rushing for the boarding gates the moment their trains were announced over the Tannoy. On reaching the lockers he found the area around them occupied by a crowd of students, their rucksacks and kitbags strewn across the unswept floor. He removed an envelope from his anorak pocket, slit it open with his finger, and dropped the key into his hand. He unlocked the relevant locker and removed the pale-blue Adidas holdall; but when he turned away he found his path blocked by an attractive teenager in scruffy jeans and a baggy floral T-shirt. The glazed expression in her eyes told him she was on drugs. She offered him the half-smoked burnie but he batted it angrily from her fingers before heading back towards the concourse. It was then he saw the approaching gendarme. For a moment he thought the gendarme had seen the incident and he instinctively gripped the holdall tighter. He would have a lot of explaining to do if he were asked to open it.

The gendarme stopped in front of the scattered luggage and prodded the nearest haversack with his foot, ordering the students to stack their belongings in a tidy pile against the wall. As the students came forward to claim their luggage the gendarme watched them closely, randomly checking passports and train tickets. Graham noticed the fear on the girl’s face as she crouched against the wall, her eyes flickering nervously around her. He crossed to where she was squatting and hauled her to her feet.

‘You speak English?’ he asked sharply.

She nodded.

‘Put these on,’ he said pressing his sunglasses into her hand.

She glanced at the gendarme. ‘You’re not going to–’

‘Put them on!’ he interposed irritably. ‘Now, where’s your luggage?’

‘The orange haversack.’

Graham hoisted the haversack over his shoulder and noticed the gendarme watching him.

‘My daughter’s. Is there some problem?’

He never knew whether the gendarme understood him or not but felt relief flood over him when he was dismissed with a curt wave of the hand.

‘Who are you?’ the teenager asked after he had led her into the main concourse.

‘That’s not important. How old are you?’

She bowed her head. ‘Eighteen.’

‘Student?’

‘Princeton.’

‘You’re young, pretty and obviously intelligent so why the hell are you trying to screw up your life? All it takes is one conviction to make you a criminal. You’ll have to carry that stigma around with you for the rest of your life. It’s not worth it.’

‘You’ve done drugs,’ she said softly.

He held out his hand. ‘You’re safe now. My sunglasses.’

She took them off and gave them back to him. ‘Thanks. I owe you.’

‘You owe yourself.’ He pushed the sunglasses into his shirt pocket then disappeared into the seething mass of afternoon commuters.

Sabrina looked up when he returned. ‘You took your time.’

He grimaced. ‘It’s a jungle out there.’ He pointed to the file in her lap. ‘Find anything?’

‘Just that one entry.’

He put the holdall on the table then moved behind her chair to look over her shoulder at the entry she was underlining with a fingernail.

‘It’s got a nine written in the margin,’ he said.

‘Don’t forget the vagrant was heavily sedated when he spoke to the authorities. Even if he did count six kegs, who’s to say there weren’t more stacked away in another part of the freight car?’

‘Where were they shipped from?’ he asked.

‘Munich. They were unloaded here five days ago. Local address.’

‘Ties in roughly with the time the vagrant jumped the train. It could also be a wild-goose chase.’

‘Could be, but it’s the only lead we’ve got.’

He unzipped the holdall, took out a couple of Boyt shoulder holsters and dropped them on to the table before delving into the holdall again for two handguns carefully wrapped in strips of green cloth. Both were Beretta 92s, the official handgun of the United States Army. The Beretta 92 had always been Sabrina’s favourite handgun but Graham still secretly hankered for the Colt .45 he had first started to use in Vietnam. He had only changed to the Beretta after joining UNACO. All UNACO operatives were allowed to choose their own handguns and, although he had initially used a Colt .45, there had been one main reason for his converting to the Beretta: its magazine capacity – fifteen rounds as opposed to the Colt’s seven. Eight extra bullets in a tight spot could mean the difference between life and death. And not only for him.

After strapping on her shoulder holster and snapping a magazine into the Beretta, Sabrina checked the holdall to make sure the radiation detection counter had also been included. It was a portable Geiger-Müller detector, one of the most popular and reliable devices on the market. It was also one of the most economical, which was why Kolchinsky would have purchased it in the first place. She smiled to herself. Kolchinsky was used to the gentle ribbing he got from the operatives about his cost-cutting exercises but when it came to the crunch he would never put any of their lives at risk for the sake of the budget. He demanded, and got, only the best, invariably at a knockdown price after cleverly playing the manufacturers off against each other.

‘Ready?’

She nodded. ‘Have you got a plan in mind?’

‘Not yet. Let’s see the place first.’

The address on the invoice turned put to be a three-storey house on the Quai des Pécheurs, its reflection perfectly mirrored in the tranquil waters of the River Ill. Its white walls contrasted vividly with the black shutters latched into place over the numerous windows, and the heavy curtains drawn across the three dormer windows jutting out from the unpainted corrugated-iron roof only added to its forbidding atmosphere.

‘They’re certainly hiding something,’ Graham said as he climbed out of the rented Renault GTX.

‘I think, under the circumstances, we should call in our contact,’ Sabrina said at length.

He looked over the car roof at her, his eyebrows furrowed questioningly. ‘What circumstances?’

‘We can hardly go in demanding a guided tour without any kind of official search warrant.’

‘You know the rules, Sabrina: we only use contacts if it’s absolutely necessary. We can handle this ourselves.’

‘How? You’re not going to go storming in there like a bull in a china shop again? You know how pissed off Kolchinsky was when he got the bill the last time you did that.’

‘No, I’ve got a more subtle approach in mind. The damsel in distress.’

‘I might have guessed. Okay, let’s hear it.’

A minute later Sabrina swung the Renault into a narrow alleyway beside the house and emerged into a cobbled courtyard closed in on all sides by faded white walls, the paint peeling off in unsightly flakes to reveal greyish plaster underneath. She climbed out and rapped the knocker on the black wooden door. A judas hole slid back and a youthful face peered out at her. She explained her predicament to him in French, occasionally gesturing at the Renault behind her. As she spoke he leaned closer to the grille to get a better view of her. Skintight jeans tucked into a pair of brown leather boots and a terrific figure. He could hardly believe his luck and unlocked the door to admit her. Once inside in the long, dimly-lit corridor she withdrew a photostat copy of the invoice from her pocket and handed it to him. His salacious grin faltered then disappeared and he glared at her, furious with himself for being tricked so easily.

His eyes flickered past her and he smiled faintly before turning back to her and loudly questioning the validity of the original invoice. His clumsy attempt to distract her attention was all the warning she needed. She waited until the last possible moment before pivoting round to challenge the approaching figure. As the figure closed his fingers around her lapels she clenched her fists together and forced her arms up between his arms until her hands met in front of her face, forcing him to loosen his grip. She then brought her clenched fists down viciously on to the bridge of his nose. He screamed in agony and fell to his knees, cradling his broken nose between his bloodied hands.

The youth snaked his hand behind the door but as his fingers curled around the hilt of the sheathed poniard Graham appeared behind him and pressed the Beretta into his back. He stiffened in terror then let his hand drop to his side. Graham pushed him away from the entrance and reached behind the door to unsheath the poniard. He extended it towards the youth, hilt first, daring him to take it. Sabrina intervened by taking the poniard from Graham’s hand and slipping it down the side of her boot.

‘Did you pick up any readings on the outer building?’ she asked, removing the Geiger-Müller counter from the holdall he had brought with him.

He shook his head. ‘It’s clean.’

She switched it on and traced its sensitive receiver over the door and surrounding floor area.

The needle never moved. When she approached the youth he took a hesitant step back but froze to the spot on seeing Graham’s threatening look. She tried to get a reading first off the youth then off his whimpering colleague. Both readings were negative.

‘You speak English, boy?’ Graham demanded.

The youth pressed his back against the wall, his eyes wide with fear.

‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ Sabrina translated.

The youth shook his head. She asked him about the beer kegs and he pointed to a flight of wooden stairs at the end of the hall.

‘What about him?’ Graham asked, indicating the injured man.

‘He won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.’

The wooden stairs led down into a narrow corridor illuminated by a single naked bulb dangling at the end of a piece of frayed flex. The only door was situated at the end of the corridor, secured by a bulky padlock. She made her way to the door but again the counter failed to give a reading. She told the youth to unlock the door but he shook his head. Graham, having understood the conversation by Sabrina’s gesticulation towards the padlock, shoved the youth roughly in the back towards the door. When the youth swung round he found himself staring down the barrel of Graham’s Beretta. He fumbled to unclip the keys from his belt and his fingers were trembling as he tried to unlock the door. It took him three attempts to insert the key into the padlock. He dropped the padlock on to the floor then pushed the heavy door open and reached inside to switch on the light. Sabrina followed him into the room, still unable to get any sort of reading on the Geiger-Müller counter. Hundreds of crates of beer were stacked against three of the whitewashed walls but the fourth, and longest, wall was hidden behind rows of wooden racks lined with bottles of both local and imported wines. The youth led them through a brick archway into a second room overflowing with cardboard boxes, many of them open to reveal their contents. Whisky. He pointed to the nine beer kegs standing in the centre of the room.

Sabrina traced the counter over the kegs. The needle never moved. She switched it off and squatted beside the kegs to read the labels. ‘Four kegs of Heller, five of Dunkler. Both are beers native to Munich. It’s bootleg.’

‘A goddam shebeen,’ Graham snapped angrily.

‘So it was a wild-goose chase after all.’

‘Yeah. I only hope C.W. comes up with something more constructive.’

Whitlock had come up with something a lot more constructive and was on his way to verify its authenticity.

His flight had left New York three hours after the Paris flight and by then the worst of the turbulence over the Atlantic had dissipated so he had been able to sleep for most of the journey. Once at Frankfurt’s Rhine-Main airport he had collected the keys of a Golf Corbio from the Hertz desk and driven the twenty-four miles on the A66 to Mainz where he checked in at the Europa Hotel on Kaiserstrasse. Like Graham and Sabrina he too had been left a holdall, containing a Geiger-Müller counter and his favourite handgun, a Browning Mk2, in a locker at the main railway station where he had spent three hours studiously checking the invoices for all the freight loaded at the goodsyard over the past ten days.

One invoice had fitted all the requirements perfectly. Six metal beer kegs loaded on to a Swiss-bound goods train which had stopped at Strasbourg on the same day the vagrant had claimed to be there. Although it was hardly conclusive proof they were the same kegs as those discovered by the vagrant, all the signs pointed to it being more than just a coincidence. There was only one sure way of finding out and that was to visit the local address given on the invoice to test for radiation levels.

It was already nightfall when Whitlock crossed the Heuss Bridge over the Rhine and turned the Golf Corbio into Rampenstrasse, his eyes screwed up behind his tinted glasses as he tried to distinguish the numbers, many of them faded and indistinct, on the rows of warehouses lining the river bank. He found the warehouse which corresponded to the number on the invoice lying beside him on the passenger seat and slowed the Golf to a halt in front of it. He grabbed the holdall from the back seat and climbed out. The only other cars were the five parked outside a brightly lit Italian restaurant on the other side of the street. Not only was it gaudy in appearance but the smell wafting from the kitchen was distinctly malodorous. He walked over to the warehouse. The unpainted doors were padlocked and above them he could vaguely make out the name Strauss, the paintwork having been abraded over the years by the weather. He glanced around, then took a nailfile from his pocket and set to work on the padlock. Moments later it opened and he unfastened the chain securing the two doors together and eased one of them open wide enough for him to slip inside. After trying several switches he succeeded in lighting a bulb in the far corner of the warehouse. Rusted hooks hung from antiquated iron girders above him, the windows had long since been vandalized and the faded walls were daubed with obscene graffiti. Even the concrete floor had cracked with age and clusters of weeds had grown up through the uneven apertures. The whole place reeked of desolation and neglect. He unzipped the holdall, removed the Geiger-Müller counter, and switched it on. The needle immediately showed a reading, which then strengthened and weakened as he moved about the warehouse. He switched it off, satisfied that the kegs had, at some stage, been stored there.

‘Was wünschen Sie?’

Whitlock swung round. The man standing at the entrance was in his late twenties with greasy blond hair and a stained apron tied loosely around his fat stomach. Whitlock thought of the Italian restaurant and moved closer to get a better look. The impression was overwhelmingly one of weakness. He believed strongly in physiognomy and his instincts were rarely wrong.

‘Do you speak English?’ Whitlock asked.

‘I speak a little. We must, we have plenty of English people come here.’

Whitlock assumed ‘here’ meant Germany and not the restaurant. Surely no tourist would venture there. Then again–

‘I take it you work in the restaurant across the road?’

The man nodded.

‘How long?’

‘Nearly two years.’

Whitlock reached into his pocket and withdrew a roll of banknotes which he turned slowly in his hands. The weak were always the easiest to bribe. He hated bribery because it was the hardest of all expenses to try and explain to Kolchinsky.

‘I’m after information and I’m willing to pay well for it.’

‘Who are you? British Police?’

‘Pay me and I’ll tell you. Otherwise let me ask the questions.’

‘What do you want to know?’ the man asked, wiping his palms on his apron, his eyes never wavering from the banknotes in Whitlock’s hand.

‘Have you seen anyone around this warehouse in the last six months?’

The man ran his tongue over his dry lips and nodded. ‘Sometimes they come and eat in my restaurant. Three of them. One only come in the restaurant once but I’m sure he’s the boss. The other two were–’ he looked up at the roof as he struggled for the word ‘–how you say, scared of him? My wife say he’s handsome.’ He shrugged as though her opinion was irrelevant.

‘What did he look like?’

‘A big man with black hair. And he have different coloured eyes. One brown, one green. I see when he come to pay the bill. He speak good German but he not born here.’

‘Did you recognize his accent?’

‘No.’

‘And the other two?’

‘One is small with short red hair. The other an Ami– an American. Blond, like me. He have a moustache.’

‘Did you ever hear their names mentioned?’

The man shook his head. ‘They always sit in the corner. They like to be alone.’

‘Any activity around the warehouse?’

‘I see a van come here sometimes. That’s all.’

‘Was there anything written on it?’

‘I didn’t see.’

Whitlock peeled off several notes from the roll and the man snatched them from his fingers and stuffed them into his pocket.

‘What is that?’ the man asked, watching Whitlock replace the Geiger-Müller counter in the holdall.

Whitlock zipped the holdall and stood up. ‘Pay me and I’ll tell you.’

‘You smart.’

‘Yeah?’

Whitlock waited for the man to leave the warehouse before following him out and padlocking the chain.

‘You come eat in my restaurant. I make you a good lasagne.’

‘We have a saying in English. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” We’re in Germany.’

‘You not like lasagne?’

Whitlock glanced at the restaurant. ‘As you said, I’m smart.’

He returned to the Golf and picked up the invoice from the passenger seat. The cargo’s ultimate destination had been printed neatly in black pen in the bottom left-hand corner of the page.

Lausanne.

Whitlock telephoned them the moment he returned to the hotel but when Sabrina contacted Strasbourg station she was told the only afternoon train had already departed. Both she and Graham agreed there was little else they could do that night and when he telephoned through to report to UNACO headquarters he was told a company Cessna would be waiting at six o’clock the following morning to fly them on to Geneva, the nearest airport to Lausanne. They both settled for an early night.