Алистер Маклин - Death Train

Graham waited for Philpott to continue. There was a lengthy pause instead. ‘Go on, sir.’

‘I don’t need to, I’ve answered the question.’

Sabrina emerged from the bathroom before Graham could get Philpott to justify his answer.

She was wearing a baggy white jersey and figure-hugging jeans tucked into a pair of brown leather ankle boots. Her hair was tied at the back of her head with a white ribbon.

‘Why the sudden silence?’ she asked, then smiled. ‘Should I have been in the bathroom for another five minutes?’

‘Mike was asking about your father.’

‘What about him?’

Graham glowered at Philpott as he struggled to think of something to say. He was tempted to be blunt but knew it would serve no purpose. ‘I was asking the boss if he’d ever met your father.’

She frowned. ‘Have you, sir?’

‘Once, in Montreal. I had been speaking at a police convention that afternoon and in the evening I was invited to a cocktail party at the home of the American Ambassador, then your father. It was the usual drab embassy party apart from one incident when a little girl in her pyjamas came running into the room determined to show everyone the gold stars the teacher had stuck in her book that day at school.’

‘I did that?’ She screwed her face up in horror. ‘How embarrassing.’

‘What amazed me was the way you alternated between English and French when talking to your parents. I know your mother is French but you sounded as fluent as her and you couldn’t have been much older than seven or eight. It’s one of those things I’ve always remembered.’

‘It’s just the way I was brought up. I spoke English to my father and French to my mother. You could say I had the best of both worlds. It was so strictly enforced that when I first went to sleep over at a friend’s house – I must have been about nine at the time – I automatically spoke to her parents as I did to my own back home. I thought all mothers spoke French!’ She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her unpainted fingernails. ‘Have you heard from C.W., sir?’

‘Yes, I heard from him before I left Zurich this morning. With everything that’s happened since it totally slipped my mind.’

He detailed the events from the time Whitlock had been roused from his bed by Karen’s telephone call through to Leitzig’s shooting some nine hours later.

‘Is Leitzig still alive?’ Graham asked.

‘C.W. phoned the hospital minutes before he phoned me and he was told Leitzig’s on the critical list.’

‘And C.W.? How bad was his eye injury?’ Sabrina asked.

‘He needed five stitches. Mike also picked up an injury.’

‘What happened?’ she asked anxiously.

Graham merely shrugged.

‘He sprained his shoulder badly trying to land on the wagon roof. The doctor’s given him painkillers. He’ll be fine until we get back to New York where he can get it attended to properly.’

The telephone rang.

Philpott crossed to the bedside table to answer it. He listened intently, occasionally nodding, then replaced the receiver without a word.

‘The wagon was coupled to the back of a train bound for Trieste. It’s due into Trieste at 4.40. That leaves you with a little over fifty minutes. There’s still a chance you can get there before it arrives. I’ll call the pilot.’

They pulled on their jackets and pocketed the new Berettas Kolchinsky had left on the bed for them, each taking a spare clip as an additional back-up.

‘The pilot’s waiting in the foyer,’ Philpott said after replacing the receiver.

They hurried from the room without another word.

The helicopter covered the 190 miles to Trieste in forty minutes, touching down on a strip of wasteland directly behind the station.

Graham and Sabrina disembarked even before the pilot had shut down the engine and made their way to the terminus building. The spacious concourse was teeming with commuters and tourists. After looking around briefly she grabbed his arm and led him to the side of a newsstand a few feet away.

‘I’ll find out about the train from the information centre over there. It’s pointless both of us going, we could easily become parted in this melee. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

With that she was gone.

When she returned five minutes later her face was grim.

‘Don’t tell me, it arrived early,’ Graham said.

She nodded. ‘Twenty-five minutes ago.’

‘More than enough time to transfer it elsewhere. Which platform?’

‘Seven.’

‘We’ll have to double back towards the helicopter and see if we can get on to Platform Seven from there. You’d think Philpott could have organized a clearance for us like he did at Strasbourg.’

‘This is where I play my ace.’ She withdrew two plastic ID cards and handed one to Graham.

‘I took them off the CID guys in Switzerland. All you have to do is hold it up briefly and say polizia . I’ll deal with any dialogue.’

‘There are times when I could swear you’re more than just a pretty face.’

‘Praise indeed.’

The gate leading on to Platform Seven was unguarded and they were able to slip through unobserved.

She pointed at the engine. ‘It’s a Rapido, no wonder it got here ahead of schedule.’

‘What’s a Rapido?’

‘There are different classes of trains in Italy. A Rapido’s an express, it only stops at the major cities. Very fast, very reliable.’

‘So what would you class the boneshaker we were on?’

‘That would be at the other end of the scale. A Locale perhaps. It stops at every station.’

‘ Cosa desidera? ’ a voice called out behind them.

‘Get your pass ready,’ she said to Graham.

She turned to face the approaching porter and held up the disc, careful to obscure the accompanying photograph with her fingers. She launched into a barrage of Italian and within seconds had the porter answering her questions. She thanked him once she had the information she needed and waited until he was out of earshot before speaking to Graham.

‘The crate was transferred into the back of a white van almost as soon as the train arrived at the station.’

‘Did he say where it was going?’

‘He said he overheard one of them talking about a ship but that it wasn’t mentioned by name.’

‘If the plutonium’s bound for Libya then Trieste’s as good a port as any to load it on to a ship.’

‘Straight down the Adriatic and across the Mediterranean.’

‘Precisely. I still want to look at the freight car, though. I don’t altogether trust these European porters, not after what happened at Lausanne.’

They weren’t expecting any kind of opposition but still transferred their Berettas from their shoulder holsters to their coat pockets as they neared the freight car. Sabrina pressed herself against the side of the car and waited for Graham’s signal before sliding the door open. It was empty.

‘We’re only wasting time here,’ he said, closing the door again.

Darkness was beginning to fall as they made their way back to the helicopter. Within a couple of minutes the pilot had it airborne, heading towards the docks.

‘Look!’ she exclaimed as the helicopter banked low over the harbour complex.

Graham followed the direction of her pointing finger. A demarcated section of the complex, from Wharves Nine to Seventeen, dazzlingly irradiated under numerous floodlights, was painted in the distinctive colours of the Werner Company. The W-logo was portrayed on every warehouse wall, on the stem of every quayside crane, and even the bold numbering denoting each wharf had been painted in yellow with a black border. What struck them both was the cleanliness of the wharves compared to the surrounding ones. Whereas they were littered with discarded packing crates and overflowing steel drums and many of the warehouse walls were daubed with multicoloured graffiti, the fenced-off Werner wharves were free of any rubbish and the warehouses looked as though they had been painted only hours earlier. Whatever else was wrong with him they had to admit Werner was a very professional operator.