Passport To Peril

DANGEROUS ACCIDENT

We must have made a ridiculous sight, the pompous Lavrentiev in his full-dress uniform, Anna Orlovska in a Paris gown, Ilonka, and me, all four sprawled on the moving dance floor. But if any onlooker dared laugh, I didn’t hear him. I was certain the Russian would order me shot the moment he regained his feet.

Luckily, the bandleader pulled the switch, and the turntable came to a stop. I picked myself up and helped Ilonka to her feet. The kid was frightened speechless, and her make-up stood out like a neon sign against the white of her skin. I turned to the colonel and he was brushing off his medals. He made no move to help Orlovska so I put out my hand to aid her. The music had stopped dead. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the tense faces of the customers and the waiters.

The countess took my hand without glancing at me. She called me a clumsy lout in Polish and a lot of other words I’d heard in the seamier quarters of Warsaw. Her skin-tight satin gown had split in half a dozen places, and her pearl necklace had broken and spilled all over the place.

Lavrentiev, having finished brushing his epaulets, had taken a step off the floor toward his table when Orlovska grabbed his sleeve. He had apparently drunk enough to temporarily forget his precious dignity in favor of the full bottle the waiter had just brought. But Anna Orlovska was having none of it.

“Boris, are you out of your mind?” She screamed like a fishwife and she spoke German for the benefit of the customers.

“What shall I do, Anna?”

“I have been insulted. We have both been insulted. These peasants have insulted the Fatherland.”

I touched Ilonka’s elbow, trying to tell her to get off the floor and let me face Orlovska’s wrath but she was frozen to the spot.

“Boris, do something. Are you man or mouse?”

For all his power as chief of the secret police, Lavrentiev was firmly under Orlovska’s thumb. Like the late Marcel Blaye.

The Russian colonel turned his square face to me and said, “Pig.”

“Do something,” Orlovska screamed. “Have them arrested. Have them punished.”

Lavrentiev wasn’t too drunk to realize he was the center of a spectacle that would provide Budapest with hilarious gossip for days. He’d either have to act to save his face or find some way of coping with Orlovska. He acted. He bellowed at the embarrassed headwaiter to call his orderly.

I thought it high time to open my mouth.

“It is all my fault,” I said in German. I bowed to Orlovska. “I am guilty of the grossest carelessness. Believe me, I apologize from the bottom of my heart.” I turned to Lavrentiev. “And you, sir, kindly accept my most sincere apologies.”

“Look at my dress,” Orlovska screamed at Lavrentiev. “My Paris gown.”

“I shall be only too happy to see that Madame is provided with a new one.”

Orlovska said, “Peasant,” and then for the first time she looked me in the face. She looked at me twice before she did a classic double take. The second time there was recognition written all over her face.

There’s an ancient superstition that a man’s life passes in review when he’s drowning. It could be, because I reviewed my own life at that moment and I couldn’t dredge up any remembrance of ever having set eyes on Anna Orlovska. The Europeski Hotel in Warsaw in 1939? Paris, Berlin, Rome? Budapest in 1941?

Orlovska couldn’t have been on the Orient Express from Vienna. Hadn’t Strakhov said she’d come to Hegyshalom with him from Budapest? She hadn’t seen me on the train to Budapest, unless Strakhov had lied.

Maybe she thought me Marcel Blaye. But that was ridiculous. Maria had known I wasn’t Blaye and if Or-lovska had been his mistress she wouldn’t be fooled.

But there was recognition on her face. First disbelief, then open-mouthed amazement. Then she started to say something, swayed a little, and fainted dead away. Maybe she had hurt herself when she’d first hit the floor. Maybe that was it and my imagination was playing tricks on me.

If I hadn’t grabbed for her arm and caught it, she’d have hit the floor again because Lavrentiev, having called his orderly, was no longer interested. He was already back at his table, pouring a drink.

Hiram Carr had sent me to the Arizona to meet Anna Orlovska. I’d accomplished that part with dispatch. There I was, standing in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by gaping customers, waiters, and chorus girls, holding the limp body of the countess in my arms. Ilonka was standing beside me, trembling like a leaf. The befuddled Colonel Lavrentiev was tossing half a glass of whisky down his tree-trunk throat, the only unconcerned person in the joint.

I had to do something so I yelled, “Föpincér,” and the headwaiter wiped the glassy look from his bloodshot eyes and came running. My yell galvanized everyone into action. The whole place burst into loud conversation, the bandleader started an encore of “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” the headwaiter and one of his minions relieved me of Orlovska, and Colonel Lavrentiev’s orderly slapped his paw on my shoulder and propelled me toward the exit.

I managed to turn my head before we reached the door and I saw that Ilonka was right behind us. I pulled a wad of bills from my pocket and threw them to her. “Pay the bar bill,” I said, “and keep what’s left for yourself.”

She grabbed my arm, but Lavrentiev’s orderly told her to beat it.

“I’m sorry,” Ilonka said. “I guess you just aren’t a very good dancer.”

It was a hell of a time to tell me that, but she dropped something in my pocket, then turned on her heel and went off to the bar without looking back.

We stopped at the checkroom for my hat and coat. There was a short flight of glass steps leading to the main entrance. There were lights under the glass, and when you walked on the steps a music box was set in action. It had played the first few bars of the “Rakoczi March” when I first visited Budapest; now it sounded suspiciously like the beginning of the “Internationale.”

When we went down the stairs, the orderly still clutching my shoulder, I could see on the sidewalk the gendarmes that Ilonka had mentioned. They were lined up facing the entrance, parallel to the street, as if waiting for inspection. Two big military cars were across the street. I suppose I ought to have been flattered at such an armed turnout in my honor.

I automatically started out the door to be handed over to the gendarmes, but Lavrentiev’s orderly steered me into the doorkeeper’s room, hard by the exit. He sat me down in a chair.

“Let’s see your passport,” he said.

I handed him the Jean Stodder-Geneva document. He read the statistics out loud.

“You’ve got plenty of nerve,” he said, laughing. He threw the passport into my lap.

I could have told him I was frightened stiff. Why didn’t he hand me over to the gendarmes? The Russians must have known who I was the moment I first stepped into the Arizona.

“Do you get drunk in Switzerland and knock down colonels on the dance floor?”

I could have told him I wasn’t drunk, that I hadn’t intended to crash into the colonel and Anna Orlovska. But there wasn’t much use of saying anything. He was having his kind of fun before he sent me off to 60 Stalin ut.

“You’re lucky Colonel Lavrentiev didn’t pull a gun on you,” the orderly said. “He’s got a quick temper. He’s a dignified man.”

I didn’t say anything. I wondered why he hadn’t searched me for the gun. I was sure he could see the bulge in my coat. He must have thought I wouldn’t dare try anything, not with half a hundred gendarmes with carbines a few feet away. Of course, they’d take the gun the minute he handed me over.

I think I could have snapped the gun from the shoulder holster quickly enough to beat him to the draw. But it wouldn’t have done me a bit of good. The minute I fired, those gendarmes would have filled that little room and me full of lead. I think I’ve got as much guts as the next man, but that sort of death has never had any attraction. Anyway, I’m a follower of Grigori and his monkey.

“Well, come on, Herr Stodder,” the orderly said. “It’s time you were getting to bed.”

This time I laughed. I knew enough about 60 Stalin ut to make his remark very funny. A lot of things would happen to me but not bed.

The orderly stuck his head out the door and called, “Jozsef, Jozsef.” But instead of one of the gendarmes, the grubby doorman appeared.

“A taxi, Jozsef, for Herr Stodder.” I didn’t know who the orderly thought he was kidding, me or Jozsef, but I didn’t miss the wink he gave the doorman.

“I thought you’d rather leave in a taxi, Herr Stodder,” the orderly said.

“Very considerate of you,” I said. “I appreciate the courtesy.”

Well, the doorman returned and the orderly showed me out the door and there was a taxi drawn up at the curb. The ranks of the gendarmes had parted to let me through. I got into the cab and moved over, but the orderly slammed the door after me, touched his cap, and said, “Hotel Bristol,” to the driver.

It was my turn to faint and I damned near did. But I knew I had to get that driver to move his antique cab before Anna Orlovska had time to tell her story. He had hopped out and was spinning the crank, it was that old a car.

“Hurry up,” I said. “I’ve got to get to the Bristol in a hurry.” I spoke Hungarian and I didn’t care who heard me.

I ought to have realized what had been going on. I should have known it from the minute Colonel Lavrentiev turned his back on me on the dance floor. I was being kicked out of the Arizona as a foreign drunk who had had the ill manners to upset the chief of the MVD and his partner, I was a harmless drunk as far as they were concerned. They were looking for someone in the Arizona all right. They knew I was there. But they hadn’t put two and two together. What man in my position, the presumed murderer of Major Ivan Strakhov, would have the stupidity to come to the Arizona in the first place, then crash into the head of the secret police in the second?

Anna Orlovska was the only one who’d recognized me and she’d passed out before she’d had a chance to say a word. My only hope was to get that taxi out of there before she came to and blabbed to the police. Hiram Carr had sent me to meet her but he hadn’t foreseen what would happen. I’d failed and now I had the right to save my own life.

“What’s the matter?” I yelled to the driver. “Let’s get out of here.”

He was spinning the crank for all he was worth and blasting the night air with Hungarian oaths, the choicest on earth. I hopped out and got in the front seat but the ignition key was turned on. I moved the spark back and forth but still nothing happened.

There wasn’t another cab in sight. The only vehicles were the two Hungarian police cars.

I went up to the captain of the gendarmes. Since I was supposed to be a drunk, I was careful to lurch appropriately. I made the Hungarian language lurch, too.

“Excellency Captain,” I said. “Knowing the great and unbounded hospitality of the Hungarian people, may I ask one favor for an enchanted traveler?”

An American cop might have said, “G’wan, beat it,” but the Hungarian smiled indulgently. A foreigner who takes the trouble to learn a small country’s language can have almost anything he wants from the flattered natives.

“Might one of your mighty cars give this miserable cab a push?”

I watched the door of the nightclub out of the corner of my eye. I expected to see Lavrentiev or his orderly or one of the detectives emerge any minute. Orlovska couldn’t stay in a faint forever. She’d put the finger on me the moment she came to. I thought of walking, but it was snowing again. I also had no intention of going to the Bristol. As soon as the taxi was out of sight of the Arizona, I would tell the driver to take me to Hiram Carr’s. I’d done what he asked. It wasn’t my fault I’d failed. The next move was up to him. I’d been wasting my time in a nightclub when I ought to have been looking for Maria Torres.

The captain of the gendarmes ordered one of his cars to push the cab. The taxi driver was so disgusted he threw his crank into a snowbank before he got behind the wheel. I huddled in the back seat, by this time shivering from a combination of frayed nerves and the cold.

The military car hit the back of the taxi hard enough to break our necks, then churned snow until I couldn’t see through the windows. We slid and slithered, moved ahead and slipped back in convulsive jerks, the cab driver cursing at the top of his lungs, the gendarmes urging on the pushing car with alternate cheers and groans. I don’t suppose any hunted man in the annals of crime ever attempted a getaway in such circumstances.

Within a few minutes we’d collected a good-sized crowd, passers-by, customers in evening dress leaving the Arizona and the Moulin Rouge across the street, just plain derelicts who were glad to forget for the moment their lack of shelter, mixed with the gendarmes and the policemen off the beat. Everyone shouted advice, the cab driver cursed and thanked each one in turn, and the driver of the gendarme car spun his wheels until his tires were smoking. But all the effort was a waste of time. Nothing but a snowplow or a derrick could have budged that taxi.

I stepped out of the cab and sank into the snow up to my waist. The crowd got a big laugh out of that, too, but they hauled me out and onto the sidewalk.

“Tough luck,” one of the gendarmes said, helping me to brush the snow off my clothes.

“What are you guys doing here?” a man in a derby asked the gendarme. “Since when does the gendarmery pull taxis out of the snow?”

The gendarme laughed. “The Russians have some guy bottled up in the Arizona. They wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get away.” He leaned toward us. “Confidentially, it’s the foreigner who murdered the Russian on the train.” He pointed to the postered wall adjoining the Arizona. “You must have seen the notices. I could sure use that reward. They say he’s a tough guy but I’d like to see him get past me.”

“I think I’ll stick around and watch,” the man in the derby said.

“I wouldn’t,” the gendarme said. “There’s apt to be a lot of shooting. Didn’t you see where it says he’s heavily armed?” He pulled his coat collar tighter around his throat. “Anybody’s a damn fool to be out this time of night in this weather if he can stay home.”

I said good night as casually as I could and started to work my way through the crowd. They’d heard about the murderer inside the Arizona. They were no longer interested in the minor drama of a foreign drunk in evening clothes and a snowbound taxicab.

I got through the crowd and started down the Nagymezo utca. My impulse was to run but I was afraid the gendarmes might be watching and I didn’t dare look back. I must have exaggerated the lurching gait of a drunk; I’d never been more sober in my life. It was hard to force myself to go slowly, but I knew I’d give in to blind terror if I didn’t.

I measured my progress toward the end of Nagy-mezo utca by the yellow posters on the walls: 25,000 Forints Reward for Information Leading to the Arrest —I wondered how long it would take them to dig up a photograph of me. It would be strange to see your own face staring at you from a thousand walls and fences.

I had almost reached the corner when I heard the shouts behind me.

Then I did run.