Алистер Маклин - Death Train

She would phone her report to Philpott as soon as she got back to the hotel.

The Rome-bound train had been unavoidably delayed in Montreux after a small avalanche had blocked the track five miles further up the line. It was due fifty minutes late in Martigny, its next scheduled stop, twenty-five miles south of Montreux.

Graham had already budgeted on being in Martigny ten minutes prior to the train’s scheduled arrival so when he reached the station he found he actually had an hour to kill. He decided to while it away in the station cafeteria and was already on his third cup of coffee when the train’s approach was announced over the Tannoy.

He picked up his two black holdalls and went out on to the platform to watch the train pull into the station. The locked wheels shrieked as they slid along the rails and the train finally shuddered to a halt in a cloud of hissing steam. He made a mental note of the number of coaches and freight cars. Six coaches and eight freight cars.

He crossed to the guard and tapped him on the arm. ‘How long is the train due to stay here?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ the guard replied, then hurried away to help someone with his luggage.

A movement caught his eye and he looked back at the man standing on the steps of the rear coach.

The man was in his early forties with jet-black hair combed back from a cruel menacing face and the kind of muscular physique usually associated with a bodybuilder. He alighted from the coach, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings, and walked the length of the freight cars, stopping beside the last one. He unlocked the bulky padlock and eased the door open. The man who climbed out of the freight car was at least six feet five inches high, a couple of inches taller than the other man, with a horrendously scarred face and a dyed blond pigtail dangling grotesquely from the back of an otherwise shaven head. The black-haired man slid the door shut but refrained from padlocking it.

Graham waited until the two men were seated in the cafeteria before moving down the platform to the freight car. He glanced around, satisfied that nobody was taking any notice of his suspicious behaviour, then opened the door fractionally and peered inside. A nylon Firebird sleeping bag was laid out on the floor directly in front of the door, obviously being used as a makeshift pillow. There was an overwhelming stench of stale urine and sweat from inside the freight car but Graham swallowed back the rising bile in his throat and eased the door open further to see what else it might contain. A sealed wooden crate, twelve feet by six, with WERNER FRACHT, ERHARDSTRASSE, MÜNCHEN stencilled in black paint across its facing side. He placed the holdall inside the freight car and activated the Geiger-Müller counter inside it. The counter emitted a monotonous crackle. The freight car was contaminated.

He heard the approaching footsteps on the gravel behind him.

‘ Cosa desidera? ’ The flush-faced man was in his mid-fifties with a thick grey moustache and a pair of pebble glasses perched precariously on his bulbous nose. He was dressed in a pale-blue tunic and trousers with a red trim around the sleeves and lapels.

‘What did you say?’ Graham asked casually as he zipped up the holdall.

‘I asked what do you want? This is private property.’

‘Really, and here I thought trains were for the public.’

The man struggled to marshal his thoughts and translate them into English. ‘They are, but this wagon is private property.’

‘You’re making sense now.’ Graham pointed to the crate. ‘Whose is this?’

‘I ask the questions! What are you doing here?’

‘Looking.’

‘Looking? Are you a passenger?’

Graham nodded. ‘And what are you?’

‘I’m the conductor. Show me your ticket.’

‘Sure, when I’m on the train.’

Graham picked up his holdalls and walked away to the cafeteria, where he changed a couple of Swiss francs into loose change then made a call on one of the public telephones, positioning himself in such a way so he could study the two men as he described them to Philpott. He replaced the receiver, having been given his new instructions. Stay with the train at all costs.

The two men left the cafeteria when the train’s departure was announced over the Tannoy.

The black-haired man closed his accomplice in the freight car again, padlocked the door, then glanced round as the conductor hurried towards him.

‘Excuse me, sir, you said I was to tell you if anyone came snooping around the wagon while you were in the cafeteria,’ the conductor said excitedly in Italian.

‘So?’ came the nonchalant reply.

‘There was somebody, sir. An American.’

‘Excellent. What was he doing?’

The conductor removed his peak cap and scratched his wiry hair thoughtfully. ‘He had something hidden in his holdall. I couldn’t see what it was but it made a funny crackling noise.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘On the train, sir. Do you want me to watch him for you?’

‘If I did I’d tell you.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the conductor replied obsequiously.

‘Point this American out to my friend on the train. Tell him you’ve already spoken to me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The man peeled off two bank notes from the roll in his pocket and stuffed them into the conductor’s tunic pocket.

‘Thank you, sir,’ the conductor said, then scurried away.

The man stood thoughtfully on the platform as the train slowly pulled out of the station.

The bait, in the form of the unlocked freight car, had been taken. The plans would have to be altered accordingly and that meant first attending to some unfinished business at Lausanne station.

The prospect of a candlelit dinner with a visiting British nurse had had Dieter Teufel glancing at his wristwatch all day. With less than twenty minutes of his shift remaining he had already decided on the clothes he would be wearing for the special occasion. A Roser Marce blue linen suit and a cream Christian Dior shirt. Not that he could ever have afforded to buy those kind of designer clothes on his meagre wage but with the money he had received to throw the American and his beautiful assistant, or rather partner, off the scent he had been able to splash out for once in his life. All he had done was follow instructions. He had no idea what any of it was about but who was he to complain when he was being paid so well? And, according to the black-haired man, there would be more to come

He watched the approaching passenger train from Interlaken. It contained his least favourite type of commuters, the Yuppies with their expensive skiing gear and false tales of bravado which were shouted, rather than spoken, to relatives on the platform. He pushed past a group of waiting relatives (why people insisted on waving when the train was still so far away had always been a mystery to him) and glanced round sharply at a teenage girl who elbowed him accidentally, but painfully, in the back. She smiled ruefully, then continued to wave frantically at the approaching train.

The engine was less than five yards away when he felt a hand shove him hard in the small of the back. He stumbled then fell on to the track, his scream silenced abruptly as he disappeared beneath the screeching wheels.

Karen Schendel walked into the Hilton foyer punctually at eight o’clock. Whitlock, who had been watching the entrance from the comfort of an armchair for the past ten minutes, got to his feet and shook her extended hand.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said with a smile. ‘I thought you might have written me off as a crackpot after my performance this morning.’

‘Hardly, but I do admit to being both baffled and intrigued. I must say you’re looking lovely tonight.’