The Balkan Assignment Read online

  It took us nearly twenty minutes to walk the mile to the village, so thick was the snow. It was a choice between plowing through drifts or breaking our necks on icy ties. Ley wisely chose the drifts. By the time we reached the village, I was not only half-frozen, but my legs felt as if they had been carrying me for a week.

  Ley led me in a circle through the scrub pine until we approached the small wooden depot, deserted and dark now that the last train had passed for the night. We stopped behind a thin screen of pines while Ley carefully examined the depot and the small yard.

  I nudged him.

  "If you expect them to be waiting for me in Mostar, how do you plan to put me back aboard the train? It doesn't stop again before it reaches the coast . . . at Mostar."

  Ley grunted and motioned me to silence. A man was coming around the far wall of the depot and heading across the wooden platform that separated it from the tracks. Both of us watched him narrowly, Ley with his hand inside his coat, resting securely, I was sure, on his pistol. The man crossed the platform and stopped at the base of the signal tower, opened what looked like a small panel door and made some adjustments. A green light came on high up on the tower and he stepped back for a look. Apparently satisfied, he reclosed the panel and

  walked back around the building. A few moments later we heard the sound of an automobile start up and whine away out of the depot parking lot. Ley sighed and removed his hand from inside his coat.

  "Railroad worker," he said needlessly.

  "You still haven't answered my question," I reminded him. "How do you expect to get me back aboard the train?"

  "We will cross that bridge when we come to it. Before that, we have many things to do.

  Come."

  We pushed through the stand of pines and walked across the narrow field separating us from the depot. Naturally, the snow here had to be deeper than along the tracks. We crossed the depot yard, circled around to the far side of the building and found ourselves in a small parking lot.

  An old-fashioned, bare-bulb street lamp hung over the entrance to the parking lot. A narrow street led straight as an arrow two city blocks or so to the village proper. Ley examined the only occupant, a snow-covered automobile, then walked back to where I was waiting. He nodded at the road and gave me a gentle push in that direction.

  We made quick time up the road walking more easily on the hard-packed snow surface.

  The village, with proper development, could have made a magnificent ski resort. Some of the best slopes in Europe were only minutes away, slopes that would have been the envy of the proprietors of Vale, Sun Valley or Innsbruk. I could picture a ski-lift terminal set in the middle of town, two or three modern, all-glass, A-frame-type ski lodges, the local stores filled with skiing merchandise . . . and was damned glad that it hadn't yet been converted to a ski resort.

  Both sides of the street were lined with the gingerbread structures that you automatically associate with Switzerland, but in fact are common throughout the alpine areas of Europe. High-peaked roofs are the most logical solution to heavy snow accumulation and the street-side overhang is a proper answer to the problem of limited, flat building land. Ley led me rapidly up the deserted main street of the village directly to the only lighted structure in sight . . . the local hotel, which, from the size of the stack of skis leaning against the front wall, also doubled as the local ski hostel. It was probably the single major reason why the village was not more famed as a ski resort.

  In the dark, it was hard to tell exactly how long ago or by whom it had been built. I guessed the Turks. All old buildings have a distinctive smell compounded of ancient wood full of dry rot, effluence of closed human habitation and just plain age; you detect it as soon as you step inside. With this hotel you encountered its age odor while still in the street. Through the window I could see that the decor was an odd mixture of cheap Scandinavian-style furniture squatting boredly on an aged oriental rug.

  "Come on," Ley ordered, not one to be deterred by architectural monstrosities, and I followed him through the door. I was wrong about the source of the odor; it came solely from the curious Slavic custom of overheating all dwellings in winter until you feel as though you are forever trapped in a sauna. The abrupt transition from below-zero cold to the eighty-degree fahrenheit interior left me gasping for breath and wishing I was back outside. The heat literally poured into the street when the door was opened.

  The lobby was separated from the rest of the ground floor, which was mostly bar or restaurant, by a flimsy partition across the width of the room. The clerk was half asleep behind the desk and he roused only enough to give Ley a slow, knowing nod.

  So, my big German friend had been here before. Curiouser and curiouser as Alice said.

  And about now, I was beginning to feel like Alice.

  Ley stopped in the middle of the room. "Go into the bar and wait for me. I will return in a moment."

  With that, he was gone up the rickety flight of stairs to whatever lay above. Standing there by myself, I considered turning right around and going back out into the night. The only problem with that was that I had nowhere to go. There would be another train going east to Belgrade about noon, which gave me only ten or eleven hours to hide from Ley and his friend or friends in a village small enough to be hidden under a postage stamp.

  And it was too damned cold to head for the forest, even if they wouldn't be waiting for me at the depot when the next train came through. And the next village in either direction was twenty miles or more away; one back down the valley, the other on the far side of the crest. There was no real danger that I would run out on him, and Ley knew it.

  So, I followed his advice and went into the bar.

  A huge and roaring blaze eating up the fireplace was supplemented by a fancy hooded stove in the middle of the room around which a group of drunken students and ski bums were working on their final steins of beer under the watchful eye of the barkeep. He gave me the same kind of disgusted glance previously reserved for the students as I paused on the top step leading down into the bar. I set the fuel pump carton down on a table near the door and hooked a finger at him. He came, reluctantly.

  "Dobro vetchay," I said in passable Serbo-Croatian. Surprise and faint pleasure replaced the scowl.

  "It is rare that we have Americans in Tobruz who trouble to speak any Yugoslav," he grinned around the three chins that ended his face in pendulous bag.

  "I didn't think it showed that much."

  He looked surprised for a moment. "Ah, my knowing that you are an American? It is your clothes and haircut. Only American men are wearing their hair short these days."

  "Short," I muttered, fingering the locks that were threatening to engulf my collar. But when I glanced over at the students near the stove I saw what he meant.

  "How about something stiff . . . it's pretty nippy out there."

  "Rakia . . . hot. Just the thing," and he scurried off.

  I pulled off my parka and loosened my shirt. The heat inside was so intense that within three or four minutes I was sodden. The bartender brought back the rakia in a heavy mug and then went over and pushed his way through the students to the stove, banked the dampers and kicked the logs in the fireplace apart.

  Ten minutes went by during which the students gradually exceeded their blood-alcohol capacity and in the process quieted down. I heard the telephone on the front desk burr softly and the sleepy voice of the clerk talking. A few moments later he came into the bar and over to my table.

  Droog Boyd, molim . . . Herr Ley . ." he struggled with his rusty English, "wished you to come . . . number four."

  I looked up at him, seeing an ancient, sleepy face peering anxiously at mine.

  I nodded and picked up the carton and my parka, dropped a coin on the table and followed him back into

  the lobby and to the stairs There he stopped and motioned me upwards.

  "Hvala lepo," I muttered and started up.

  At the top of the stairs, a low-wattage b
ulb burned, casting barely enough light in the narrow hall to read the room numbers. I found number four readily enough, and when I knocked Ley opened the door immediately . . . and stepped aside.

  The body lying on the floor at the foot of the bed had been strangled. The agonized expression would have been enough to tell me that even if the cord knotted around the neck hadn't been visible.

  Surprisingly, I didn't drop the carton. Ley took it from me while I slumped against the wall and gagged. The hotel was not as old as I thought, because the room contained a small bathroom. After I had used it, my stomach, now empty, felt a hell of a lot steadier.

  Ley had removed the cord and covered the body with a blanket from the bed. I came back into the room and sank down in an overstuffed chair near the partly open window.

  The fresh air was welcome.

  "Who was he?"

  "My superior, Major Bowen. He came in from Amsterdam this afternoon."

  I noticed that Ley had removed his top coat and opened his jacket. He looked hard at me, hesitated then tossed a medium-sized automatic pistol across the bed.

  "Do you know how to use that?"

  I nodded. It was a Walther P-38 automatic, a standard European police side arm.

  "Good, then stay awake because Bowen's murderer is still in the hotel."

  "How do you know?"

  "The desk clerk has seen no one come up the stairs or go down. To go either way they would have to pass him."

  "Nuts," I snorted. "He's asleep most of the time."

  "He has been a hotel desk clerk for forty years," Ley said staunchly. "It is impossible to sneak past him. They had to have been on this floor to get into the room, which means they are already guests."

  I pointed to the open window. Ley shook his head.

  "No. The snow outside is completely undisturbed. I opened the window after I came into the room and it was locked. Bowen was too careful to have been taken that way. He would have locked the window as soon as he came into the room, and if he did not judge the lock adequate, would have taken precautions. No, someone knocked on the door, misrepresented himself, perhaps as a hotel employee, got Bowen to open the door, and then two or more men forced their way into the room, drugged him and then while he was semiconscious, strangled him."

  "Whoa, wait a minute, how do you know all that?"

  Ley moved a hard-backed chair to face the door and sat down. He removed his pistol from his shoulder holster, cocked and laid it in his lap.

  He said patiently, "I will explain. First, one man alone could not have strangled Major Bowen. At least. two and possibly more would have been needed. Secondly, he would not have opened the door, unless he knew who was on the other side."

  I remembered the hotel room in Belgrade and the "precautions" Ley had taken when the bellboy delivered the gin. Too bad that Bowen had not been quite as careful.

  "Third," Ley continued, "the method of execution is a rather infamous SS terror trick.

  First the victim is drugged —not unconscious but into immobility with chloroform. Then he is allowed to revive until his mind is awake, but his body is still very weak. The cord is looped around the neck and tightened slowly and the victim strangles, not able to struggle. It is a terrible way to die. It was used against partisans and chetniks both during the war and the bodies left in public places to serve as warnings.

  I felt sick again but managed to control my stomach. "So," I said shakily, "Bowen serves as a warning to you?"

  "Yes. Obviously, their intelligence network is broader and deeper than we suspected. In sending the message to Bowen after Mistako was killed this morning . . . yesterday morning . . . I used the message center at the police headquarters. They have either broken our codes or have infiltrated the Yugoslav police.

  "The important question is; how much does your friend Maher know about all this. Is he directing this operation, or is it being directed by someone else? I suspect the latter," he answered his own question. "Communications between the mainland and the islands are very bad. He would need a powerful radio transmitter otherwise. Do you have any transmitters, besides the one in your aircraft?"

  I shook my head. "And that one is a crystal set, tuned only to the aircraft and marine bands."

  "Could he have brought one aboard without your knowledge?"

  "Hardly, I checked and stowed away every piece of that cargo myself. I always do before each flight. PBYs weren't built for hauling cargo. If anything heavy starts to shift, it can go right through the side."

  Ley was quiet for a moment, thinking. I occupied myself by checking over the Walther and making sure that the magazine was full.

  "All right," he said finally. "We go through it all again. I am sure that I was not followed from Belgrade . . ." "Yeah, why so sure?" I asked.

  Ley took a blondish wig from his coat pocket and pulled it on over his thinning dark hair.

  He added a pair of heavy, black-framed glasses, opened his coat and folded back the lining to show a muted plaid design. At a quick glance, he was not Ley. At a second glance, and with that coat, he was not Ley. In a crowd that is about all the time anyone would have had to examine him.

  "Rather James Bondish I am sure, but sometimes effective and necessary."

  I nodded and he continued. "I left your room and the hotel and went out the back way. In the alley I changed my appearance and went directly back to the police headquarters where I reported a traffic violation and when no one was paying any attention to me went to Mistako's office. I changed back before I entered the office, was briefed on the latest developments, apologized, sympathized and told them I was returning to Berlin that evening. I then had dinner and went directly to the station where I boarded the evening train for Berlin. I was followed, but as soon as I got on the train, my shadow seemed to lose all interest and left me. I then got out on the other side of the train, after changing my appearance again, walked around and boarded your train. I checked very carefully to see that I was not followed and then thoroughly combed the train to make sure that you were not being followed. You were not . . . or so I thought."

  "Bowen is dead," I pointed out.

  "Obviously. But the concern now is how could they have known . . . or, rather, did they know. We have two possibilities here immediately before us. Major Bowen was also engaged in narcotics work . . . and that is very dangerous and the people involved are as bad as the Nazis. They will kill for revenge and just as cruelly. It could be that his death was part of some vendetta that I know nothing of."

  "That's not very likely is it? Yugoslavia isn't big in the drug trade, and it doesn't seem likely that if they wanted a revenge killing they would track him all the way to an isolated village in the Dinaric Alps and kill him. The idea behind that killing . . . as you said . . . is revenge and warning."

  Ley nodded and shifted in the hard chair. "You are probably right. So we can only infer that Bowen's death is to serve a warning to someone here?"

  "But no one knows we are here .. ."

  "How do you know that?" Ley asked mildly. "Well damn it, you said we weren't . . ."

  "I could have been wrong, you know."

  "Look," I said desperately, "it's after two o'clock in the morning and I haven't had any sleep yet. I'm hungry. I find I'm involved in a plot that's right out of a spy thriller —my only companion is a member of Interpol and his superior is deader than a doornail, and here we sit trying to figure out how the hell someone killed him and whether or not they will try to kill us, all when they are not even supposed to know that we are here in a dumb little village in the middle of Yugoslavia—and all the while you get cuter and cuter. How the hell do I know if you're wrong or not! Stop confusing the issue any more than it already is!"

  Ley smiled tolerantly at my outburst. "I am sorry if it sounds confusing, but that is exactly the way it appears to me. Obviously, I am not infallible. I thought we had not been followed. It rather seems that we have been. So, what do we know? That there are at least three unknown assailants wh
o are looking or waiting for us?"

  "Yeah, great, that's all we know . . . why three?"

  "Because it would have taken at least two men to kill Major Bowen and one to follow us.

  That is the minimum number."

  He raised his hand to forestall my next question. "Major Bowen was killed before we got off the train. His body was quite cool when I discovered him; it takes at least an hour for the human body to cool after death, especially in a warm room like this. And that is probably the reason that

  I did not find the killers waiting for me. They did not know I . . . we were coming."

  "Now they do?"

  "It is quite possible. If our organization or the Yugoslav police has been penetrated as far as I think they have, then part of the Nazi organization knew that Bowen was coming here. Since even by code I did not refer to you in any way, they would know only that he was coming to Tobruz to meet someone. They would know only that Bowen's contact was connected with the investigation."

  "So, you are saying that they don't know that I'm in Tobruz?"

  "That depends on who you mean by they. Surely the man or men who followed you or me know. As by now, do the killers of Major Bowen."

  "So, then the Neo-Nazis know that I'm at least traveling with . . ."

  "Not necessarily. I have already talked with the desk clerk. He tells me there are only two telephones in all of Tobruz . . . the one downstairs and the one in the local police station. We must gamble that they have not used the police phone."

  "What about the hotel's phone?"

  "The desk clerk says that no messages have gone through him at all since six o'clock this evening when two men with accents and ski equipment made a call to Belgrade."

  "Our two friends?"

  "Most likely. He gave me a description of them . . . they are posing as skiers. So my guess at the moment is that they have gone to meet the man who is following us. That is the reason they left the body . . . not as a warning, at least yet, but because they had to leave."

  "Okay, so then the only three people connected with the Neo-Nazis who know that I am involved with you are right here somewhere in Tobruz. What do we do about it?"