Snare of the Hunter

by Helen Macinnes

  The Mercedes made a right turn, shot into an opening in the traffic, and headed west.

  “But how did he know?” Franz asked aloud. How did the American know they had travelled west? And why should a wanted man chase after two cops? Franz stood there, hands on hips, brows drawn into a frown, and watched the Mercedes vanish from sight. None of your business, he told himself: they’re a crazy mixed-up bunch, these foreigners: no sense, no meaning to the way they behave. You’re well out of it, Franz, my boy. There will be no policemen prowling round the garage—or the house. Not now. No questions, no search. No gossip among the neighbours; no feeling of being watched. But now you’ve got to do one thing for sure: get those guns and the dynamite out of the cellar. Let your friends find another hiding place for all their stuff. Tell them that, tonight—you’ll see them at the dance—tell those damned hotheads to leave your house alone. This time they will listen. Franz, you’ve got one real solid excuse at last to move them out: police.

  A Volkswagen was arriving at the gas pumps. “Three gallons? Right away.” Franz Hartmann’s grin was cheerful, his face as cloudless as the sky overhead. Yes, he thought happily, you’ve got one perfect excuse. There will be no arm twisting, no more persuasion, no more being called a sneaking coward. My God, when friends go political, they can make your whole life one sweating shivering misery.

  “Hey, Willi,” he called across the street, “tell your sister to be ready at eight o’clock. We’re going to the dance tonight.” Perhaps, he thought with a wide grin, I ought to be thanking the American. He began whistling a dot-and-carry-one polka.

  * * *

  David left Merano and its last busy street, and his anger cooled along with the traffic problems. His mind grew clear, like the straight highway ahead of him: no more tortuous turns and backtrackings to make sure a white Fiat hadn’t been following him.

  No use blaming Franz Hartmann for talking too much: the guy had simply not known what was at stake. If there was any blame to be dealt out, it was Mark Bohn who should have it all. Bohn saw the Mercedes; he reported it; the report was relayed to Ludvik and Company, possibly within an hour after it had been received. (They have the gadgets, David remembered: they have two-way radios and scramblers and God knows what else in helpful devices.) In that case, Irina and I were lucky not to have been seen coming into town. Except, of course, that I had not taken the usual route to Merano by way of Bolzano: I didn’t come in from the south; I chose the road, less travelled, more difficult, that came down to Merano from the north. All that insufferable damnable trouble for nothing. Because all the care we’ve taken, all of Krieger’s plans, made one big zero when Franz opened his fat mouth. Or hesitated in replying. It all came to the same thing. Milan and Jan had only to watch that guileless face trying to be crafty, and they would head straight into the garage. And there—somehow or other—they had found out that Irina had left. The one thing we were trying to hide, the one thing; and they found it out.

  Krieger, he thought instantly, what’s the point of Krieger hanging around Merano? He’s risking his neck. Those two Czech imports in the Red Lion, even if they are bashed up a bit, have some definite business with Krieger: they, or Ludvik, will not leave it unfinished. Why? Krieger didn’t have time to tell me, but there is some reason behind it all. Perhaps—it just could be—they’ve learned he saw Milan and Jan leaving the murder scene. But how? Oh, stow it: you’ve got enough to worry about without shooting off half-cocked guesses. But you’d better waste three more good minutes by stopping at the nearest telephone and passing the word to Krieger. Where is he anyway? You don’t even know that. But sometime, he’ll get back to his hotel. And just hope that your message isn’t too late.

  He drew up at the next village, where a neon-lit café looked as if it might have a men’s room as well as a telephone. His message was ready in his mind, all translated into clear German, and as innocent as he could make it. “Results disappointing. No reason now to prolong your stay.” The hotel porter sounded intelligent and brisk. He repeated the two sentences accurately. Certainly he would see that Herr Krieger had the message as soon as he returned to the Bristol.

  David got back to the car. At least this brief stop had its other uses. The white Fiat he had noticed some distance behind him had only contained a close-packed family, now spilling out from it to get beer for the parents and ice cream for the kids. And there was no other Fiat in the parking space, waiting to follow him out. Of course they would know the road he would be travelling. Mark Bohn had reported that too.

  Before he turned on the ignition, David reached for his map. Might as well see where he was going. He folded it back to the section he needed: the bold red line ran across it, west from Merano, and then split into two just where Highway 40 branched off to the north. And this is what Bohn saw, he thought, a road leading right over the frontier into Switzerland. Immediately, his eye was caught by Tarasp. His spine stiffened. Tarasp was marked. Definitely. A pencil smudge around a small hole punctured by a sharp point.

  He forced himself to study the route directly ahead of him, and found Santa Maria clearly marked on its perch above the highway. Yes, that was St Mary’s, all right. Jo could already be there. And that damned Fiat? It had no interest in him, that was certain. His worry increased. He dropped the map as he started the motor. He swung out on to the highway. Once he had passed the string of villages that edged it for the next fifteen or twenty miles, he could let the speedometer climb. Patience, he warned himself: piano piano va lontano: you’ll make better time if you don’t have to argue with an Italian cop. They were around; he had already seen two of them on the prowl, and one automobile stopped. So he resisted his impulses, and kept to a normal speed, cursing every mile of the way.

  18

  “Krieger was right,” Jo said, pointing to the chapel of Santa Maria, miniature in size but indomitable in its stance, poised high over the road on a huge promontory of rock. “We just couldn’t miss that, could we?”

  Irina, for once, didn’t flinch at the name of Krieger. David, she thought thankfully, would see Santa Maria clearly too; he would be able to find them, after all. No delays, no difficult search. Her doubts began to leave her. Ever since Jo had driven into this long valley, a strong wind whistling past the car even on this bright blue-skied day, the little pilgrimage church with its tiny steeple had been visible, standing firm against a background of brutal hills rising into savage mountains. It was still some distance away, but its details were now sharpening, changing in emphasis. The frontal precipice, looming larger and larger, seemed to fall straight towards the highway. “Like the prow of a tall, tall ship, just about to cut through the road,” Irina said.

  “That will take a few years,” Jo said reassuringly. Fortunately, she thought, the highway skirted that bulge of cliff with considerable respect, drawing away from the outthrust of sheer rock as far as it could without being pushed into the small river that rushed down the valley. Even so, there was a lot of spillage from the face of the precipice: splintered stones and pulverised fragments of rock fell in loosely packed screes, to pile at its base in dumps of jagged flints. The warning signs were already giving advance notice along the road: Caduta Massi. “Rockfalls,” Jo translated for Irina. “Don’t worry. We won’t have to climb up there.”

  “How do the pilgrims manage it?”

  “They don’t tackle it face-on, that’s certain. There’s a picnic area, Krieger says, at this side of Santa Maria. We should almost be at it now.” But where? The woods, flanking the highway, hid everything. In front of her, the stream of cars that had passed her (drive slowly, Krieger had advised) was already rounding the curve of the precipice. Behind her, a huge trailer-truck was pulling out impatiently. “Not now, buster,” she told it angrily. “You damn well keep behind me and give me some cover. Oh, blast these Turkish drivers! They’re always trying to edge you off the road. They haul these loads all the way from the Balkans to Hamburg and Amsterdam, and it does something to their egos. If anyone
is driving something as fancy as a Cadillac or a Jaguar, he gets sideswiped into a ditch. Keep back, damn you, will you?” She almost missed the entrance to the clearing that lay just off the road, and had to make an abrupt right turn on to the patch of rough meadow nestling under Santa Maria’s bastion. Behind her there was a Turkish yell and a blare on a horn. “And to you, my sweet,” Jo finished, her eyes now searching out the most hidden place where she could park.

  Not far inside the meadow, two lightweight buses of local vintage had been drawn up parallel to the highway. Beyond them, picnic tables and children and benches. Well beyond those, a cluster, badly grouped, of three slightly aged Volkswagens. The buses, Jo decided as she noted the gap between them, allowing just enough space. The Ford fitted neatly into the vacant slot. Now, she thought thankfully, it can’t be seen from the highway.

  The only trouble was, she couldn’t see the highway either, and keep watch for that white car which had been lagging behind them for the last half hour. “Quick!” she urged Irina. She slipped out of the driver’s seat, pulling the blue coat around her shoulders, smoothing the curls of the auburn wig against her cheeks. She lifted the bag of food. “Might as well have that picnic now,” she said cheerfully, and edged her way out between the buses towards the nearest table, where the drivers were sitting at one end. The other two tables were completely occupied, small girls in neat rows waiting patiently under the watchful eyes of three nuns. Jo sat down, avoiding the bus drivers’ appreciative stare, and waited for Irina.

  Irina had smiled at the conflict between Turk and infidel, had laughed as the Ford bumped over the meadow and set the luggage bouncing on the back seat. But now, with Jo’s trench coat tightly belted around her waist, her fake dark hair obediently in place, her bag slung over her shoulder, she was showing signs of a second mutiny. Her lips were set, her eyebrows down. But she had the good sense to keep her voice low. “David will never see the car,” she began. “He won’t even notice us with all this—” She gestured to the twenty pairs of young eyes, round and wide, studying the newcomers with interest.

  “And I hope no one else will, either,” Jo said quietly. “Sit down, Irina. Keep your back to the road. I’ll watch out for David.”

  “Will you be able to see—”

  “Just barely. But enough—if you’ll only sit down and stop blocking my view.”

  Irina hesitated, then did as she was told. “What else are you looking for?”

  “A white car.”

  “We were followed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must know something.” Or else Jo would not have been taking all these precautions. “Please—”

  “Come on, let’s laugh it up a little. We’re on a picnic, aren’t we?” Jo bowed and smiled to the two men at the other end of the table, who might not be able to hear the softly spoken words, or even understand them if they had been audible, but were openly fascinated. “Relax,” she told Irina. “The natives are friendly. They just can’t place us, that’s all. We are out of another world.” And at this moment, she thought, I wish I belonged to theirs—a simpler, less complicated universe. “Have a peach? There’s chocolate, too—slabs of it. Or do you want a ham sandwich? Cheese? Good Lord, Dave must have been buying for a real party. But men are like that: put them in front of a food counter and they grab everything in sight. My mother, who’s a very sharp housekeeper, won’t let my father go near a supermarket.” She brought out the bottle of Chianti and planked it down on the table. “Now we really do look festive.” But she kept watching the highway.

  “Please—” Irina said again, “don’t treat me like one of those children.” She glanced at the two tables of quiet little faces, and smiled for them. Who were they, all in the same plain dresses, with crisply braided hair and large friendly eyes? The nuns admonished gently: the eyes stopped staring. “What is worrying you, Jo?” It can’t be much; not in this innocent setting.

  “I was driving slowly. We were passed by every car on the road, weren’t we?”

  “Except that truck,” Irina teased.

  “Until then, every car passed us. All but one. It kept falling back whenever it caught sight of us.”

  Now Irina was serious. “A white car?”

  “Yes.” Jo had first seen it just after they had made that brief stop, well outside of Merano, to settle the wig problem.

  “There are so many white—”

  “I know. But—” Jo hesitated, then said, “A white Fiat was in Graz yesterday evening. It turned up in Lienz last night. It left before dawn.”

  “Who was in it?”

  “Milan and Jan. Ludvik joined them in Lienz. They headed for Merano.” Jo watched Irina carefully: no panic; she was taking this calmly. Encouraged, Jo went on, “So you see why I’m puzzled by a white car that should have passed us like all the rest, but didn’t.”

  Irina roused herself from her own thoughts. “Clever of you to drive slowly,” she said, trying to appear unconcerned. So they were in Merano, she kept thinking. For hours.

  “Not my idea. It was Krieger’s.” And I thought he was out of his skull for suggesting it. He knows how I hate dawdling along a highway like an old farm woman taking her eggs to market. Jo almost laughed, partly at herself, partly with relief: Irina was handling this piece of news well. Let’s be normal she decided. Either that car was following us, or it wasn’t. And what if it was? We sit tight and wait for Dave. She said, “I could have been overworrying. I do that a lot: bad habit. And it doesn’t seem as if we are being followed, after all. That white car ought to have passed by now. Perhaps it turned off on a little side road to have a picnic of its own.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Why else should they delay like this?”

  “To send a message back to Merano. To ask for further instructions.”

  “Oh, come on, Irina. Your imagination is even wilder than mine.” She lifted a peach. “Have one? Speciality of Merano.” Let’s be normal, she told herself once again.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then what do we do with these peaches? Give them to the children? I couldn’t swallow a mouthful with all those eyes watching it disappear down my throat.” Irina nodded her agreement “Okay. You keep looking at the road.” Jo rose, gathering up all the picnic, leaving only the Chianti bottle on the table. “And if we have been followed here—well, at least we can’t pin the blame on Mark Bohn this time.” She noticed Irina’s face, tense, incredulous. “Yes,” Jo said, “he was the informer.” Her lips tightened. She picked up the bag of food and walked over to the nuns.

  Irina drew a steady breath. Yes, David and she had been too kind about Bohn: David out of friendship, and she, because of—because of what? Stupidity? Embarrassment over such an idiotic mistake with the map? No one would pay it any attention, she had thought. But Bohn did. She knew that now. The moment of shock ended, leaving, her strangely calm as she kept watch on the small section of highway that was visible from where she sat.

  She listened to Jo’s flow of Italian, to the nuns’ chorus of replies, to the children’s burst of chatter; she noted the cars that flashed past—one blue, one brown, another blue, one grey; and she kept asking herself the same question over and over again. Why was she still being followed? Mark Bohn had made his report to Vienna hours ago. It must have been relayed from Vienna to Prague and then to Merano. By this time Ludvik must have learned that her destination was Switzerland. So why were they still following her? Perhaps, of course, Jo had been mistaken. That was what Jo was now trying to make her believe. Perhaps that white car had already turned off the road, perhaps it was only—

  And then she saw it. Travelling at high speed. She sat very still, staring at the patch of highway now empty once more.

  “Just as I thought,” said Jo as she returned, “it’s a group of orphans, a special outing, a Saturday treat. Poor darlings—” She broke off. Irina’s eyes seemed hypnotised by the road. “You saw it?” she asked unbelievingly.

  “Yes.” I
rina recovered herself. “Yes. I saw it.”

  “A white Fiat?”

  “I can’t tell one car from another. But it was white. There were two men in front.”

  “Wouldn’t you know?” Jo said in dismay. She glanced back at the orphans. Well, at least they were happy. And stupid me, she thought: one small good deed, and as a reward I fall flat on my funny face. I ought to have remembered there were people in the world who couldn’t tell a Rolls from a pancake. Jo gathered her wits. “Well, did the car stop—slow down?”

  “No. It was travelling fast.”

  “Did they look at us—or just glance?”

  “Glanced briefly.”

  “Oh, what does it matter?” Jo asked, trying to control her rising anxiety. “Neither a look nor a glance would help them. All they saw was a dark-haired girl sitting near two bus drivers, and a redhead with a batch of children and three nuns. They couldn’t have seen a tan Ford, not from the highway. So we’ll relax, and wait for Dave, and let Milan and Jan go chasing all the way to the Swiss border.” But they won’t have to travel very far before they know they’ve lost us. They’ll come back, keep checking every turn-off area. How many are there, I wonder, on this road to the north?

  “When will David reach here?”

  “Half an hour. Perhaps less.” Perhaps more, but let’s not bring that up. “And meanwhile we can count ourselves lucky. This is as safe a place to wait as any.” She looked along their table, caught the drivers’ attention. (It had never slipped far.) She smiled, holding out the bottle of Chianti. “Please,” she said, and broke into a stream of Italian. They accepted the wine with a graceful speech. Yes, they agreed, this was a pleasant spot to spend an afternoon. Were there any other picnic areas north of here? No, they told her, this was the only one for many many kilometres. Yes, the road ran fairly straight; good visibility most of the way until you reached the high passes. And with that last piece of information Jo left them to enjoy the wine.