Алистер Маклин - Death Train

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.

The Cessna arrived at Cointrin Airport, Geneva, at 7.30. Graham rented the fastest car Hertz could offer, a BMW 73Si, to take them the seventy miles to Lausanne. Sabrina, with a string of saloon car races under her belt, felt she would be best qualified to drive until Graham tactlessly reminded her of her near fatal crash at Le Mans. She bit back her anger, for it was neither the time nor the place to start an argument. She let him drive.