Passport To Peril

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

I made the corner all right without a shot being fired but I ran smack into the arms of a policeman.

“What’s your hurry?” he said. He clamped an enormous fist around my wrist. I couldn’t have reached my gun, and he carried a .45 in a holster outside his fur-collared greatcoat.

There was no longer any shouting behind me. Maybe he hadn’t heard it. Maybe he was just pounding his beat.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Pardon me.” I tried to edge past him but he blocked the way.

“What’s your business?” he said. “Explain yourself.”

I knew as well as he that gentlemen in evening clothes don’t run out of the Nagymezo utca at three o’clock in the morning. And he knew I wasn’t a native because I spoke Hungarian with an accent.

“I’m cold,” I said lamely. “My taxi got stuck in the snow. Ask the gendarmes if you don’t believe me. I’m walking back to the Hotel Bristol. I decided to run to get warm.”

He was short and squat, and his slant eyes showed his Tartar ancestry. His eyes also showed he didn’t believe a word I’d said.

“Where are you coming from?” he said, although he must have known there was nothing in the Nagymezo utca except the Arizona and the Moulin Rouge.

“The Arizona,” I said. “I stopped in for a drink.”

“Maybe you’re all right,” he said, “but I think we’d better go back to the Arizona and be sure.”

“I’m a guest of your country,” I said. “What’s wrong with running to keep warm? I’m not used to your cold weather, that’s all. You’ve no right to treat me as a suspicious character. I don’t think your superiors would understand such behavior on your part.”

Then he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps I was a Russian. Hungarian public servants who crossed the Russians usually regretted it. After all why risk trouble? Even if I had done something wrong, he could always deny having seen me.

He shifted uncertainly from foot to foot and then the argument became strictly academic because a third person rounded the corner from the Nagymezo utca and joined our little group.

It was Anna Orlovska, wrapped from head to foot in sables. The cop, who knew quality when he saw it, clicked his heels and saluted. Hungarian Communists click their heels and salute the aristocrats, even when they’re nabbing them for the hangman.

“Thank you, Officer,” Orlovska said sweetly. She called the cop Rendör bacsi, which means Uncle Policeman. Hungarian children call policemen Uncle.

“Your Highness,” the policeman said. He wasn’t going to make another mistake. If the lady was the wife or the mistress of a commissar, so much the better. “Your Highness, may I be of service?”

I expected half a dozen gendarmes to follow Orlovska around the corner at any moment.

“You have been of service, Uncle Policeman,” Orlovska said sweetly. “You have done me a great service in detaining this gentleman.”

All the countess had to do was to point to the yellow poster on the wall behind us. Twenty years of walking a beat at night, arbitrating Mrs. Kovacs’s disputes with her drunken husband, chasing sneak thieves and threatening suspicious gypsies was about to end. The arrest of a public enemy of such magnitude, the murderer of a Russian major, the stealer of the soon-to-be-famous Manila envelope, would mean a promotion to the rank of sergeant, a raise in pay, a medal, perhaps even nomination as Hero of the People’s Democracy.

Perhaps Uncle Policeman had a premonition of the fame which was about to be thrust upon him. At any rate, he moved his revolver from the holster.

“You won’t need your gun,” the countess said. Then some of her friends were around the corner. I couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t called them. I had to admit she’d had a lot of courage to turn that corner alone, whatever her obscure purpose. She couldn’t have known the policeman was there. Or was it part of the general deployment aimed at my capture? Maybe they’d deliberately let me out of the Nagymezo utca. They didn’t want to risk a gun battle in the Arizona?

“You see, Uncle Policeman,” Orlovska said, “this gentleman ran away from me in the Arizona. We’re old friends. If you hadn’t stopped him, I wouldn’t have known where to find him.”

The revolver went back into the holster; the cop clicked his heels again and saluted. Orlovska gave him a broad smile, slipped her arm through mine, and said, “And now, Uncle Policeman, if you’ll be so kind, please tell my chauffeur to bring the car. He’s just around the corner.”

I followed Orlovska into the car. By this time I wasn’t sure whether such things were really happening to me or whether I’d lost my mind. Until I found the answer I was determined to keep my mouth shut. The longer I stayed away from the police or the MVD, the greater chance I’d have to make a getaway.

I expected Orlovska to tell the chauffeur, “Sixty Stalin ut,” but she told him to drive home. In a few minutes we crossed the Danube, climbed the Rose Hill through devastated Buda, and headed for the higher hills to the west. There was a roadblock at the beginning of open country, but the gendarmery captain waved the driver on although half a dozen cars had been halted and lined up at the side of the road.

Neither Orlovska nor the chauffeur had any comment. There wasn’t a word spoken until we turned off the highway onto a gravel road and the car had stopped under a porte-cochere. Then, when Orlovska and I had gotten out, the countess told the driver to return to Budapest.

“See that Colonel Lavrentiev gets to his apartment,” Orlovska said. “Tell his orderly to fill him with aspirin.”

She opened the door with a key, then switched on the lights. We were in a long hallway, apparently running the depth of the house, with a stairway in the far right corner. There was a dining room through an archway to the left; to the right was a small sitting room with a larger living room beyond. After I’d hung up my hat and coat, Orlovska went into the sitting room. There was a long sofa facing a huge open fireplace with a freshly kindled blaze.

Orlovska spoke directly to me for the first time. She spoke excellent English.

“Make yourself at home. I’ll be down in a few minutes. You’ll find whisky and ice on the end table. I think there are some American cigarettes there, too.”

She left the room then, and I heard her climb the stairs.

I needed a whisky badly at that point but the first thing I did was to reach for my gun and knock off the safety catch before I replaced it in the shoulder holster.

Then I tiptoed to the hallway. There wasn’t a sound from upstairs. I went to the front door and turned the knob. It wasn’t locked.

I walked softly over to the clothes rack, put on my hat and coat. I went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out on the porch. There wasn’t a sound.

I started to pull the door shut behind me.

Where would I go once the door was closed? I was a good ten miles from the center of Budapest. I couldn’t risk thumbing a ride even assuming there was any traffic at that time of the morning. Even if some motorists hadn’t heard the broadcasts or seen the yellow posters, I couldn’t attempt to pass the roadblock. I’d have to walk but I couldn’t go cross-country because of the snow and the highway was out.

And where would I go? Hiram Carr’s? But he had said, “Whether you like it or not, you’re going to see this thing through with us.” He’d said, “You’d better make up your mind right now that there’s nothing you can do to save Mademoiselle Torres without our help.” Hiram Carr had sent me to the Arizona to meet Anna Orlovska. I’d met her and I had a chance to get the information Carr wanted. Maybe I’d have to use threats. There was a loaded gun inside my jacket.

Without the help of Hiram Carr, there wasn’t much I could do about finding Maria. And I knew that getting her out of the hands of Herr Doktor Wolfgang Schmidt had become more important to me than my original mission to Hungary to trace my brother Bob.

I went back inside and closed the door. I had just hung up my hat and coat again when I heard a door slam upstairs. I was pouring a drink when Orlovska entered the sitting room. She’d changed the white satin evening gown for a black lace negligee and she was something to look at.

I handed her my drink and mixed another.

“I must apologize again, Madame, for having been so inexcusably clumsy on the dance floor.” The speech sounded like something out of a Victorian novel. I spoke English. There wasn’t any reason why a Swiss shouldn’t speak English.

Orlovska curled up on one end of the sofa. I sat facing her at the other. I waited for her to start the conversation.

She said, “I always thought I was too tough to faint.”

“We must have caught you off balance,” I said. “Did you hit your head?”

Orlovska laughed.

“Off balance is right. And maybe I should have my head examined.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Stop it,” she said. “The Russians tap my telephone and they open my mail but they haven’t wired this place, not yet. We can talk frankly.”

I waited for her to go on. She lit a cigarette.

“You must have known how closely they watch me,” Orlovska said, “or you wouldn’t have dreamed up that bumping act.” She stared at the fire. “So,” she said slowly, “you’re really back from the grave?”

I’d thought perhaps I was crazy when I’d hopped in her car. Now I knew it.

“The grave?”

The flickering light from the fire made her face look hard. Now that I was close to her I could see she wasn’t as young as I’d thought. Or else she’d lived in a hurry.

“I told you we can talk. There’s nobody listening.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I haven’t the slightest notion of what you’re talking about.” What did she mean “back from the grave”? Did she know about the session at Dr. Schmidt’s warehouse? Or the encounter in the Keleti station yards?

“I know why you’ve come to Budapest,” she said, “although I can’t imagine how you got into the country.” Then she didn’t know about Marcel Blaye’s passport? “But I don’t blame you for coming. I’d do the same thing in your place.”

I poured myself another drink.

“Are you going to kill me?” Orlovska said.

“No,” I said. “I assure you I haven’t the slightest intention of killing you.”

“Then what do you want?”

I wanted to know who had Marcel Blaye’s Manila envelope and where, but it wasn’t the moment. First I’d have to discover where and when I’d met Orlovska.

“Listen,” she said when I didn’t answer, “I won’t try to kid you. The Russians don’t know anything about my past. Lavrentiev thinks I spent the war in Poland.”

Then we’d met during the war. But where? Orlovska wasn’t the kind I’d have forgotten. I tried to picture her with black hair or red hair but it wasn’t any good.

“I don’t want Lavrentiev to know what happened,” she said. She moved closer and put her hand on my arm. “Please,” she said. “I ditched Lavrentiev so I could follow you when you left the Arizona. When I told Lavrentiev to put you out, I hadn’t seen your face. Oh, he’s drunk enough so he won’t remember in the morning. But the gendarmes know I went after you because I asked them to shout to attract your attention. The cop who stopped you knows we’re together. So does my chauffeur. I’ve taken a great risk to bring you out here. I didn’t do it to play games.”

“Why did you do it?” I said.

“I want to know your price.”

“My price?”

“Don’t be a fool.” She stamped her foot. “The price of your silence.”

What was I supposed to know about her that she was willing to pay to suppress? Why was she so afraid of what I might tell Lavrentiev?

“How did you know I was in Budapest?” she said. She poured herself another whisky and drank it straight. Maybe if she drank enough whisky I’d get the truth.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. But it was all part of the war, wasn’t it? Everybody was twisted, weren’t they? Weren’t they?”

“Yes,” I said. “The whole world was pretty well upside down.”

“Have you ever tried to understand the position of a woman like me? It wasn’t easy to leave Warsaw and the life I’d always had. Oh, I know I can’t expect you to believe anything good of me. But they promised me I could go back home, they said I could have my property back if I’d tell them where you were.”

I handed her another drink.

“You can understand that, can’t you? Can’t you?”

“I don’t understand at all,” I said.

“You’ve got to understand. They’d have killed me if I hadn’t told them where you were. You weren’t in Budapest. You don’t know. They went crazy when the steel works was bombed out.”

“The what?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“I said the Germans went mad when the Americans destroyed the Csepel Island factories. You couldn’t talk to them. They knew you’d been shot down. They knew you were heading for Yugoslavia. I tell you it was my life or yours.”

I grabbed her by the wrist.

“Who do you think I am?” I said. “Tell me. Who do you think I am?”

She screamed, “Stop it, you’re hurting me.”

“Answer me,” I said. “What’s my name?”

“Your name is Stodder,” she said. “Your name is Bob Stodder.”

I let go her wrist. She buried her face in her hands.

I turned my back on her and walked to the fireplace.

The next thing I knew, a voice from the doorway said, “Stay where you are, both of you. Put your hands over your heads and don’t turn around.”

I didn’t have to turn around to recognize the voice of Herr Doktor Schmidt.