Butcher of Belgrade Page 2

  I frowned as I quickly scanned the clipping, which was from an Italian language newspaper. The story was very brief. It reported the stabbing death of a traveler named Carlo Spinetti. The murder had been committed on a railroad platform in Trieste. Police were looking for two men who perpetrated the crime while stealing Carlo Spinetti's suitcase.

  "What's the connection between this and the rest of what you've told me?" I asked Hawk.

  "The killers weren't interested in the contents of their victim's suitcase. They wanted a travel sticker that was on the bag. A sticker that concealed a microdot with valuable intelligence on it." Hawk took the clipping back, shaking his head. "Carlo Spinetti wasn't even aware he was carrying it."

  "Without his knowledge, he was being used to transport stolen data?"

  "That's right. And Topcon was responsible. They're using the railroad to smuggle information, to carry stolen secrets out of the free world and behind the Iron Curtain. They use the Orient Express run from Paris to Sofia, by way of Milan, Trieste, and Belgrade. We've been watching the airways closely, so they developed another pipeline."

  I was fitting the various bits of information together. "And you think the electronic device Topcon stole is going to be carried along that pipeline."

  "Most of what I've told you comes to us from a Bulgarian defector named Jan Skopje. He's informed us that Topcon has the gadget and plans to take it to Sofia aboard the Orient Express. One of Russia's people, a top KGB man, is scheduled to meet a Topcon agent aboard the train to make a deal before they arrive in Sofia. You, Nick, are to meet Skopje in Paris, pick up any other details you can, and intercept the merchandise before it changes hands."

  I took another look at the photographs of the device. "Okay."

  "I brought you to Washington with the intention of assigning you to locate the monitor. At that time, I didn't know who had it. Then the Skopje business started breaking, so I had to delay a decision."

  "I understand. And now time is breathing down our necks. I have to get to the device before the Russians do."

  "While you're doing that, if you should just happen to blow the lid off Topcon, I wouldn't be exactly unhappy."

  "I'll see what I can arrange." I stood up. "Any further instructions?"

  "You're going up against the KGB and Topcon. And Lord knows who else might horn in hoping to get hold of that monitor. So watch your step, Nick. I'd hate to lose both the monitor and you."

  I promised that I'd try to save him that embarrassment.

  Two

  It was late afternoon of the next day when I arrived at Orly Airport near Paris. The weather was cool but clear, and the taxi ride to the Prince de Galles Hotel at 33, Avenue George V was very pleasant. Paris looked the same, except for the ever-burgeoning traffic on the streets. There were a few buds on the trees that lined the boulevards. I remembered some of my favorite streets with nostalgia: the Rue Reaumur with its ironwork balconies, the Montparnasse area, and the lovely Rue du Faubourg Poissonniere that led down to the Folies. But I had no time for any of that now. I had to find Jan Skopje.

  By dark I was checked in at the Prince de Galles. I called Skopje at the number he had given us and reached him. His voice was deep with a thick accent and tense.

  "Come to the Three Graces Square near the Folies," he told me. "At seven. The sooner the better, as you Americans say." There was a small nervous laugh. "I will be at Duke's Bar, just down the block from my hotel."

  "I'll be there," I said.

  Before I left the hotel, I checked the Luger I called Wilhelmina. I considered such precautions to be among the reasons I was still alive while a couple of Killmasters who had preceded me were listed as Cold War casualties in a special file Hawk kept in a locked drawer of his desk.

  Testing the stiletto I called Hugo, I flexed my left arm. The deadly little knife slid neatly from the arm scabbard and down into my hand. I nodded to myself, satisfied that I was as prepared as I could be for what lay ahead, and then I went down the stairs and out into the spring sunlight.

  I had an early dinner at the Chez des Anges Restaurant on the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg coq au vin, oeufs en meurette, and a balloon glass of excellent Burgundy wine. Then I took a taxi to the Place de la Republique.

  Because I knew the area and because I felt like being particularly cautious that evening, I walked the rest of the way. There were a lot of strollers already on the streets, and I was glad to mingle with them and lose myself. I saw a large knot of young people enjoying the spring night around the Belleville Metro station. Then I walked under the crumbling archway that had once closed off the Cite de Trevise and found myself in the small square that Skopje had mentioned. It had the look of old Paris — a tiny park with a fountain.

  There were three hotels on the square, all small, and Duke's Bar was situated in one of them. I went in and looked around. The place was deserted — obviously the way Skopje had wanted it. I found him sitting at a table near a rear door that led to a back room. I walked over to him.

  "Flowers are blooming at the Tuileries," I said.

  He studied my face. He was a tall, lanky man with a sallow face and dark rings under his eyes. "It will be an early spring," he said carefully.

  I sat down across the table from him. We were alone in the place, except for the waiter at the bar. "I'm Nick Carter," I said. "And you're Jan Skopje."

  "Yes. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Carter." His manner was even more nervous than his voice had been on the phone. "We must make this meeting brief. I believe they have found out where I am living. I don't know what they have in mind, but I don't want them to see me with you."

  "Bulgarian agents?" I asked.

  "I am not sure. They might be Topcon men. They…"

  A waiter came and took our order. Skopje waited until he had brought the drinks and left again before he resumed the discussion.

  "There is a man watching my hotel," he said quietly. He looked over his shoulder toward the swinging doors of the back room where the waiter had just disappeared. Then he turned back to me. "The stolen device will be taken aboard the Orient Express two days from now at Lausanne, Switzerland. The train stops there in early morning."

  "Why Lausanne?" I asked.

  "Topcon headquarters is in Switzerland. I don't know where." He watched the front entrance of the place closely. The waiter came back into the room and went to the bar.

  "Who will be carrying the stolen device?" I asked.

  "This is a particularly big operation for Topcon. Therefore, the head of the organization will convey the stolen property."

  "And who is that?"

  Skopje opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His eyes opened wide, and his mouth dropped open even farther. I heard a faint noise behind the swinging doors at Skopje's back and saw one of them moving. Skopje's jaw was working soundlessly as he grabbed in vain at a place in the middle of his back. Then he slumped forward on the table.

  I reached for Wilhelmina as I rose from my chair. Then I saw the small dart sticking out of Skopje's back. "Skopje?" I said, lifting his head. But he was already dead.

  Just then the waiter turned toward us and saw what had happened. I ignored his shouts and slammed through the swinging doors to a small kitchen and storage area. A door leading to the alley was open.

  Moving through the dark doorway, I entered the alley cautiously, Luger in hand. There were heavy shadows, and at first I saw nothing. Then I caught a glimpse of a dark figure emerging in the lighter street beyond.

  I ran down the alley, and as I reached the sidewalk, stopped and looked to my right. The man was running down the block, people staring after him.

  I holstered the big Luger and started after him. He rounded a corner, and I followed. I was gaining on him. He rounded another corner, and we were on the Rue Bergère. Dazzling neon lights splashed against the darkness. The man was still running up ahead. I kept after him. Tourists and native Parisians stopped and stared. The man disappeared down a narrow side str
eet, and I lost him again.

  I ran to the entrance of the street and looked down it into the blackness. He was nowhere in sight. I saw only doorways and a couple of alleys and another intersecting side street. I pulled Wilhelmina out again and proceeded more cautiously. He could be anywhere, and I had the disadvantage of having to flush him out.

  I checked each doorway as I passed. They were all empty. It was just possible that he had made it all the way to the intersecting street before I had reached the corner. I passed an alleyway and saw nothing in it. I moved slowly to the next one, sure now that I had lost him.

  As I stepped into the entrance of the alley, there was a movement beside me. Something came down hard on my right wrist, and I lost Wilhelmina. Big hands were grabbing me and hurling me off my feet, and I thudded to the cobblestones, bruising my back and shoulder.

  When I looked up, I saw that there were two figures standing over me. One was the thin, mustachioed man whom I had been chasing along the Paris streets and beside him was his big, bald hulking comrade, the man who had clobbered me with a piece of board and knocked me to the ground. The thin one held a length of iron pipe, a foot and a half long, in his hand. I wondered if they had lured me here to kill me.

  "Who are you?" I asked, hoping to stall them. "Why did you kill Skopje?"

  "Ça ne vous regarde pas," the big man said, telling me it was none of my business.

  "Dépechez-vous," the other one added, urging the big man to get on with it.

  He did. He kicked out at my face with a hobnailed shoe. I grabbed at the foot and stopped it from crushing my head in. I twisted hard, rolling so I could keep the pressure on. In a moment there was a crack of bone as his ankle broke. He yelled and hit the pavement.

  The wiry one swung the pipe at me, and as I rolled away, it cracked loudly on the paving stones near me. The pipe descended again, but this time I grabbed it and pulled hard. He fell to the ground on top of me, losing the pipe. He then struggled to free himself, but while he was flailing about, I chopped at his neck and heard the snap of bone. He was dead when he hit the pavement.

  When I got to my feet, the big man was trying to get back into the act. Just as he struggled to one knee, I kicked him solidly in the head, and he crashed to the pavement. Dead.

  I looked for and found Wilhelmina, then went through their pockets. There was no I.D. Because they had spoken French, I figured it was more likely that these were Topcon men from Switzerland rather than Bulgarian agents. Jan Skopje had confided to AXE that he had worked for KGB and Topcon and had helped plan the theft of the monitor device. When Skopje had defected, either Topcon or KGB had to shut him up. It had evidently been Topcon's job.

  I had just about given up on finding anything of value on the bodies when I discovered a small slip of crumpled paper in a pocket of the slim man. It was in French: Klaus Pfaff. A Gasthaus Liucerne, L. Minuit le deuze.

  I noticed a tag on the inside of his jacket; it bore the initials H.D. As I slipped the paper into my pocket, I examined the slim man's physical appearance carefully. Then I hurried into the shadows of the Parisian night.

  Three

  Early the next morning I checked out some small hotels in the Cite de Trevise, and on the third stop I ran into a little luck. Two men had registered the day before yesterday. One had been slim and the other had been a big man. The slim man had signed in as Henri Depeu, a name that matched the initials in the man's jacket The big one had been called Navarro.

  I could make some guesses by putting my scraps of information together. Depeu was to report to a man called Klaus Pfaff after he had disposed of Skopje and me. The L after gasthaus on the note probably meant Lausanne. At least that was what I had to presume. Depeu was to meet Pfaff at the time designated, midnight, and tell him how things had gone here in Paris. Presumably, Pfaff would then report to the head of Topcon. Unless Pfaff himself were the big man.

  My course of action was clear to me. I would go to Lausanne because that was where the stolen monitor would go aboard the Orient Express. And I would meet Pfaff in Depeu's place. If Pfaff himself was not the Topcon chief who would carry the device on the train, he probably would know the identity of the leader. Maybe I could persuade him to reveal that secret identity.

  I could have caught the Orient Express in Paris at the Gare de Lyon, but since I expected to spend quite some time aboard later and since time was of the essence, I hired -a car to drive to Lausanne. I rented a Mercedes-Benz 280SL, a sporty yellow one that still had the new smell inside. By late morning I was out of Paris and on the road to Troyes and Dijon. The weather had warmed up, and the driving was pleasant. The countryside was rolling and green, but it became more hilly as I got closer to Switzerland.

  In mid-afternoon I crossed into Switzerland, and the road became narrow and winding for a while. Snowy peaks were appearing in the distance, but they stayed in the background for the rest of the drive. Just outside Lausanne, in the grassy hills of the surrounding countryside, I spotted a car that had broken down on the shoulder of the road. A girl was looking under its hood. I pulled over and stopped, offering to help.

  "Anything I can do?" I asked as I walked over to the bright blue Lotus Plus 2.

  She looked up and studied me carefully. She was a beautiful, long-limbed blonde in a leather miniskirt and boots. Her hair was not quite shoulder length and had a windblown look about it. After she had focused on me for a moment, her face lit up.

  "Nick!" she said. "Nick Carter!"

  Now it was my turn to take a second look. "I'm afraid you have the advantage," I said uncertainly. "I don't believe…"

  "Bonn, last year about this time," she said in her German accent. "The Groning case. Nick, you don't remember!"

  Then I remembered, too. "Ursula?"

  She smiled a wide, sexy smile.

  "Ursula Bergman," I added.

  "Yes," she answered, the smile radiating from her lovely face. "How nice of you to come along, just to aid an old friend in distress."

  "You had brown hair in Bonn," I said. "Short, brown hair. And brown eyes."

  "This is my real hair," she said, touching the flaxen-colored strands. "And the eyes were contact lenses."

  Ursula laughed a melodic laugh. We had worked together for about a week in Bonn and Hamburg last year to gather information on a left-wing German named Karl Groning who was suspected of passing West German military information to certain persons in East Berlin. Ursula had been on special assignment in that case. Her regular work was with a division of West German intelligence that concerned itself solely with the tracking down and apprehension of ex-Nazis who had committed war crimes. That was all AXE had told me about her, and I had had little opportunity to learn more.

  "I didn't keep up with the Groning case after I was called back to Washington," I said. "Did the courts in Bonn find him guilty as charged?"

  She nodded smugly. "He is presently whiling away his time in a German prison."

  "Good. You like to hear some happy endings to these cases occasionally. What are you doing in Switzerland, Ursula, or shouldn't I ask?"

  She shrugged her lovely shoulders. "The same old thing."

  "I see."

  "And what are you doing in Switzerland?"

  I grinned. "The same old thing."

  We both laughed. It was pleasant seeing each other again. "What's wrong with the Lotus?"

  "I'm afraid the fan belt is kaput, Nick. Do you think I can beg a ride into town?"

  "It would be my pleasure," I answered.

  We got into the Mercedes, and I backed out onto the road and headed for town. After I had gotten into high gear, I looked over at her as she continued talking about Karl Groning, and I saw how her breasts pushed against the jersey blouse and how the miniskirt hiked up high on her long full thighs. Ursula had blossomed since I knew her in Bonn, and the result was impressive.

  "Are you stopping in Lausanne?" Ursula asked as I shifted onto a winding downgrade. The panorama of Lausanne was appearing before us, th
e town nestled in the hills with patches of snow from the recent winter's snowfalls above it.

  "Just tonight," I said. "Maybe we could get together for a drink in some discreet little rathskeller."

  "Oh, I would enjoy that very much. But I'm busy this evening, and I must leave tomorrow morning."

  "Do you think your car will be ready by then?"

  "I go by train in the morning," she said.

  There was only one train leaving Lausanne the next morning, and that was the Orient Express, my train. "How interesting," I commented. "I leave by train tomorrow morning, too."

  She looked over at me with her clear blue eyes. We were both assessing the significance of this coincidence. If we had not worked together, if we were not familiar with each other's employers, both of us would have been suspicious. But I had seen Ursula Bergman at work, and I trusted my judgment that she was no double agent.

  She had already made her decision. Her eyes flashed genuine friendliness. "Why, that's very nice, Nick. We'll be able to have a drink together on board."

  "I'll look forward to it." I smiled.

  When we got into town, I dropped Ursula off at the Hotel de la Paix on the Avenue B. Constant, in the heart of town, and then I drove to an innocuous little pension in the Place St. François.

  When I got to my room, I opened up my luggage and started to get ready for my meeting. I was going to make myself up to look like Henri Depeu, and I had to do it from memory.

  I got out the case that the Special Effects and Editing boys had given me. It was a disguise kit, an imaginative one at that. Hawk himself had put a lot of it together — he had been a disguise expert in his day. The kit included strips of plastic "skin" and various colored contact lenses, wigs and toupees, and a lot of different shades of make-up. There were even plastic scars that could be affixed to any portion of the face or body.

  I set the kit up in front of the dressing-table mirror. I applied the plastic "skin" first, building up layers to thicken the bridge of my nose and lengthen the tip. Then I built up my cheekbones to make my cheeks look sunken below the build-up. After I lengthened my earlobes and chin, my face began to resemble Depeu's. Then I put on make-up that matched his coloring, inserted brown contact lenses, and chose a light brown wig. I looked at myself in the mirror. I wouldn't really pass for Depeu if anyone looked too closely, but I might fool Pfaff momentarily.