Prelude to Terror

by Helen Macinnes

  “You sound angry. Did I wake you?”

  It was Lois Westerbrook, her voice clear and decided, unmistakable. “No.” But you damn well are cooling a good breakfast. He drank some coffee. At least he had that.

  “I’m in transit,” she told him. “I’ll arrive at the same time you did yesterday.”

  So she was in the Zürich airport, bound for Vienna. “I thought you were staying at home.”

  “I have something to tell you—impossible to discuss it by cable or telephone. What about seeing me this evening?”

  “Why not lunch?”

  “I need some sleep—didn’t get any on the plane.”

  “Where shall we meet? At the Franziskaner?” That should be elegant and expensive enough for the Duchess of Westerbrook.

  “No, not there. Some place nearer. Let’s say the Hofburgkeller on Augustinerstrasse. You know it?”

  He was astounded. “Hardly your style, is it?” It was a large and rambling place with several rooms, part restaurant, part wine-cellar, part beer-hall; crowded with students, artists, visitors to the Hofburg museums, people from the Spanish Riding School, and ordinary show-me-the-local-colour tourists. “It will be packed full,” he warned her. “Noisy.”

  “That’s why I chose it,” she said with a laugh. “I know a quiet spot, and we’ll go early. We’d better meet at five thirty, just inside the main entrance so you won’t have to search for me. As soon as I see you, I’ll lead off.”

  And I’ll follow, he thought. Like some faithful old hound-dog. He drank more coffee.

  “Have to go,” she said in sudden haste.

  “Run out of coins?”

  She laughed. “I’m in a small shop—planked down ten dollars to cover all costs. Try that, some time. Meet me at five thirty.” The call was over.

  The toast slices, stacked in a silver rack, were cold; the bacon and eggs eatable, but scarcely enjoyable. As consolations, the orange-juice was set in ice, and the Thermos coffee-pot had kept its heat.

  He finished breakfast, lit a cigarette, glanced through the Viennese newspaper, which the hotel provided with its compliments, and kept brooding over Lois Westerbrook. “That’s why I chose it,” she had said. Anonymity in crowds? And her “quiet spot” could mean a corner for two instead of the long tables where a dozen strangers were packed together. Of course, the Hofburgkeller’s situation might have been her main reason for choosing it: some place within easy walking distance of her hotel. She could slip out, slip back, without being noticed. Taxis and doormen drew attention to departures and arrivals. What hotel?—The Sacher was his first choice: only choice, in fact. She liked her comforts; and its easy access to Augustinerstrasse fitted in with her refusal of the Franziskaner. “Some place nearer.”

  As for the Hofburgkeller, he himself had no objections: he liked local colour and the mix of people; and the beer was good. But Lois Westerbrook? incredible. (Like ten dollars planked down in some boutique, to make sure of a quick call to Vienna.) Don’t forget it ensured privacy too, he reminded himself. Of one thing he was certain. She wouldn’t turn up at the Hofburgkeller in the elegant costume she had worn for the Schofeld appearance. Quite a girl was Westerbrook... What was so urgent that had brought her flying across the Atlantic?

  Again the telephone rang, interrupting his guessing-game. “Yes?” he asked patiently.

  “Herr Grant? Here is Mayerling—at the Mahlerstrasse Bookstore.” The man was speaking English with an Austrian accent.

  Identification was easy, however: Renwick. He had lingered over Mayerling with just enough emphasis to remind Grant of a rain-swept road and a disabled Fiat. “Ah yes. Herr Mayerling.”

  “Yesterday you have inquired about the book on Scottish portraits.”

  Another small emphasis, this time on Scottish. Schotten, in German. Schotten Allee, and the Two Crowns Hotel? Grant asked, “Have you found it?”

  “Yes. It is in good condition. But old. Would that suit?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Then we expect you to make a call here. Examine it for yourself. Fortunate that we are near your hotel, so we do not disturb your plans for this morning.”

  “One moment—let me find my engagement book.” Quickly, Grant reached his jacket in the wardrobe and extracted a small map of the city from a pocket. Mahlerstrasse—somewhere near the Majestic. Yes, there it was, just off Kärntnerstrasse, a couple of blocks away. “I could drop in, as you suggest.” This morning, he had been told.

  “I have the book put aside for you in my office. It awaits your pleasure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “At your service, Herr Grant.”

  Grant replaced the receiver, smiling over Renwick’s imitation of Viennese politeness. A bit of a joker, he thought as he knotted his tie and pulled on his jacket. Perhaps a sense of humour was needed for Renwick’s kind of work—kept him in balance, eased the tensions, put dangers into proper proportion; helpful, too, when dealing with amateurs like Grant, who felt they were being edged into deepening waters where the currents were uncertain, strong, and dangerous.

  * * *

  Mahlerstrasse was reached quite easily, after a ten-minute stop at the big bookstore on Kärntnerstrasse, where Grant searched for a guide to the city and bought one small enough to slip into his pocket. He might even find it useful, with its information on bus and trolley-car routes and its thorough index of street names and locations. Having established credentials as a bookshop browser for anyone who might be interested in his movements, he strolled up Kärntnerstrasse and took the first street to his right. And there it was, a window filled with non-fiction books of every kind, both new and secondhand: art, essays and poetry, history, biography, architecture, cookery and flower-arranging, landscape gardening. Quite a feast, and some of it digestible. Here one really could spend a wet afternoon very pleasantly. Over the doorway and window stretched the word, in faded Gothic script, Buchhandlung. No proprietor’s name, only the word Bookdealing—if you translated literally. Bookstore to us less pedantic Americans, thought Grant as he stepped over the threshold into a room that was smothered in hardcovers and paperbacks.

  They surrounded him, mounting the walls in narrow tiers until they brushed the high ceiling: they covered the tables that formed the cross-aisles in mounds and pyramids. The place was no larger than half a tennis court; its light was dim, blocked—like the view from the street—by the display of titles in the window. The smell was a mixture of dust, crumbling leather, and cigar-smoke, with a surprise touch of pine-needles from a well-polished little desk cowering in a corner beside the entrance.

  There were two customers, each in his own aisle and engrossed in the volume he was reading even if he was ruining his eyesight; one clerk, precarious on a ladder, searching for a book on a top shelf; a man in a sedate dark suit who was now moving towards the back of the room. No one else. No Avril. No Renwick.

  Grant followed the dark suit. The man was perhaps the owner, certainly a senior clerk, with impressive white hair and a scholarly stoop. “I wonder if I could look at that book on Scottish portrait painters?” Grant asked, as the man turned to peer at him over heavy reading-glasses.

  The man pushed his glasses up over his brow, studied Grant intently.

  “I was inquiring about it yesterday. I believe you found a second-hand copy.” God, I’ve come to the wrong bookstore. Grant thought: how do I get out of this?

  The man looked around the room—the customers were hidden among the books, the clerk was still searching—and inclined his head towards a narrow door in the rear wall. “You can consult it there. More comfortable.” He wandered away, glasses once more in place as he picked out a heavy volume from the nearest shelf.

  Quickly Grant opened the door, quietly closed it, and found himself in a passageway leading to a back entrance. Midway along this narrow hall was another door. It was open, inviting him to enter. Inside, no one. Only more books, a strong smell of cigars, and two desks, one covered with papers and ledgers, the o
ther quite bare except for a telephone standing mid-centre, all by its lonely self. It was then he really understood Renwick’s quaint phrasing—not just Austrian grappling with English, but a suggestion: we expect you to make a call here.

  He bolted the door before he moved over to the telephone, dialled Renwick’s number and extension.

  Renwick answered at once. “Hi there,” he replied to Grant’s greeting. “Sorry about all this, but hotel operators have long ears. Anyway, this is easier than having you find a public ’phone and standing for ten minutes of talk. Now let me run it through; after that, you can make your objections. Okay? All right, here goes. Memorise. Don’t take notes.

  “First, the Klar Auction Rooms. They’re in the old quarter of the Inner City—near St Stephen’s Cathedral. On Schulerstrasse, 15A. The auction is definitely tomorrow at eleven o’clock. You’ll have a chance to preview the pictures and objets d’art that are being offered for sale. They’ll be on display in the exhibition room just beyond a cloakroom at the main entrance, where you leave umbrellas and coats and briefcases—compulsory. One interesting point. We managed to get an advance listing of the items being auctioned, and the Ruysdael is not mentioned. They are keeping it as a last-minute offering—but they’ll have to show it in the viewing room. So you’ll get a chance to examine it.

  “The auction itself may be conducted by Kurt Klar—age forty-nine, fat and bald, glasses. His father, Werner Klar, supervises from the background. Kurt’s wife, Gudrun, much younger than he, a blonde, well-stacked, is usually bookkeeping in the accounting office near the storage and shipping departments. These lie at the rear of the building—it stretches far back, to Cathedral Lane, where there’s the delivery entrance.

  “After the auction you’ll be taken to the Klars’ private office—it’s adjacent to Gudrun’s counting-house. Herr Doktor Mittendorf will sign the cheque—he’s treasurer at Allied Electronics—always takes charge of Basset’s expenditures in Vienna. You can expect Gene Marck to be standing by, introducing you to the others, everything duly authenticated.

  “Got all that? I’m giving you the general layout, so you’ll know where you are. As for the rest of the staff, don’t worry about them. They’re okay. It’s the top boys who have to be the question-marks—the ones who’ll gather in the private office for the final transactions. Note who takes the cheque from Mittendorf, ostensibly to forward it to the previous owner. Above all, note the name on that cheque. Then relax: the Ruysdael will be all yours.

  “You could ask for it to be carefully wrapped between cardboard sheets by the packing department. Of course you’ll accompany it, won’t leave it out of your sight. The foreman there is a reliable character. He’ll wait near you while the packing is completed, and he will have the delivery entrance open too. You’ll slip out into Cathedral Lane, where I don’t think they’ll be expecting you—so no tail, I hope. But we’ll be there—the same car as yesterday afternoon. It should be a smooth getaway. All understood?”

  “I think so.” Front entrance, cloakroom, exhibition room, auction hall, two adjacent offices, and then the packing department and rear exit. “Except for the smooth getaway. Why?”

  “Necessary. Believe me. Frank can explain. He is ready to pick you up as soon as you leave the bookstore. Nice to disappoint the man outside, who has been waiting patiently across the street. Guess he’s shy about coming in, doesn’t want to be noticed by you. Frank’s driving a rented Fiat, by the way—dark blue this time. He wants to talk with you about the Two Crowns Hotel. He knows it well. Anything else?”

  “You forgot to remind me about one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Renwick, his voice sharpening.

  “Not to take a coat, umbrella or briefcase to Klar’s Auction Rooms.”

  Renwick laughed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t rain. Good luck.”

  * * *

  Renwick put down the ’phone thoughtfully, didn’t speak for a few moments. Then he said to Avril Hoffman, who had been sitting quietly all through his briefing of Grant, “I begin to think he’ll do. Actually, he may do very well.”

  Avril refrained from saying, “Didn’t I tell you so?” Instead, she studied her hands. “One thing disturbs me.”

  “Out with it.”

  “He doesn’t know what he is really getting into.”

  “He was already in it—before we even made contact with him. In fact, Avril, our intervention may damn well save his life.”

  “I know.” She was remembering the strange series of three apparently innocent deaths. And all because, six weeks ago, a man named Gyorgy Korda had walked into Prescott Taylor’s office and asked for asylum. The defector’s credentials were high. Trained by the KGB, he worked in Budapest for the Operations Executive Section of the Hungarian secret police. And the information he had brought with him was startling: lists of valuable items smuggled out of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, of owners arrested, of quiet sales in Vienna, to buyers who had been carefully selected. Avid collectors of great wealth in far-off places, who would employ agents and letters of credit; no cheques easily traced. If the Vienna venture was a success, there were plans for extending the operation to Berlin and Paris, where hidden treasures from Poland and East Germany would appear for sale. Yes, six weeks ago was when the alarm must have been sounded: Gyorgy Korda had defected and knew too much; he would talk, and he couldn’t be silenced. But others could be—those who were the agents, the direct lead to their employers who would surely know the name of a bank account in Geneva. When you paid out a vast sum, you were hardly likely to forget. “Bob—do you really believe that the deaths were calculated?”

  “One, no. But three? All close together?”

  “There’s one cheque-signer, and he’s still alive—Herr Pompous Closed-Lips Mittendorf. Oh, I know he doesn’t need to go through all the rigmarole of letters of credit. He can pay out money direct from Basset’s Allied Electronics. Still—it’s odd. Isn’t it? Why hasn’t he been silenced? Or is he one of theirs? Ultra-correct, super-respectable Herr Doktor Mittendorf?”

  “Either that, or he can be blackmailed into total silence. Doctor of what, anyway?”

  “Mathematics, I suppose,” Avril suggested with a smile. “A graduate in juggling of accounts?”

  “That could blackmail him nicely. Seal up Old Closed-Lips permanently.” At least, thought Renwick, I’ve stopped her worrying about Colin Grant.

  But he hadn’t. She was saying, “Colin, of course, won’t be writing the cheque for the Ruysdael. Still, he’s there when the cheque is signed, and we’ve asked him to find out the name on it. Comes to almost the same thing, doesn’t it?” She rose, moved restlessly around the small and simple office. “I’m really unhappy about this, Bob. Truly. Surely there is some other way.”

  “Which could take weeks—months—of investigation. We need the information now. Ferenc Ady won’t be the last victim unless we smash this conspiracy.”

  “Will we? Geneva isn’t the only place where they bank. Didn’t Korda say that London is probably the depository for the Berlin and Paris auctions?”

  “If the Geneva operation becomes a total loss, they’ll write it off. An experiment that failed. And became a danger, too: we are learning the pattern—we’ll know what to look for in London, or Paris or Berlin. Will they risk another failure? Exposure? Publicised in a NATO report? I think not.”

  She seemed persuaded, but something was still troubling her.

  He said, “If it’s Grant you are bothered about, then forget it. We’ll have him protected all the way.”

  “We haven’t much to protect him with.” You and me, and two agents who may be good at surveillance but don’t even carry a revolver.

  “Don’t forget Frank. I’ve asked him for help.”

  She brightened visibly. “Then we’re not alone.” Frank Krimmer must control a network of Israeli agents: the information he could supply was phenomenal. There were hints, too, that some of his men could terrorise even the terrorists. “How di
d you manage to convince him?” Intelligence agencies did not usually share their secrets, even with friends.

  “No convincing needed. He has as big an interest as we have in this investigation. Certainly more personal: he knew three of the refugees who’ve gone missing.”

  “Frank is with Colin now?”

  “They should be driving up to the Schotten Ring district by this time.” Smiling, he added, “What’s with all this Colin business? A bit soon for Miss Hoffman of London, isn’t it?” Damn it all, she took three weeks before she dropped Mr. Renwick for Bob.

  She covered her embarrassment with a small laugh. “I had better get down to Prescott’s office. He needs help with some translation. Korda has started talking again, and Prescott has the tapes. Perhaps there is something in them for us.”

  “I hope Prescott managed to fill out that strange gap in Korda’s information.” The man had been trying to impress Taylor and Renwick, had let slip one single name and then clammed up abruptly. All they had been able to learn was that the name, a pseudonym of course, was of the highest importance in this current operation of sell-and-buy. But you couldn’t blame Korda: he didn’t feel secure, detained here in Vienna.

  “Korda’s trump card, perhaps,” Avril said.

  “I can hear him right now: Get me to America, give me a new identity. Then I will feel safe enough to tell you about Jack.” And who the hell was this Jack? Korda knew and wouldn’t expand on it. Not yet. “Yes,” Renwick said, “he will stall until he’s certain of a passport to the United States. Tell Prescott to dangle one in front of his eyes. We need the info here—not next month in Washington.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Avril said, and left. Bob, she was thinking, might have placed too much emphasis on the defector’s sudden silence. Perhaps Korda only knew a name that was of the highest importance, and that was all.