Dine and Die on the Danube Express

by Peter King

  The rest of the night was a miserably uncomfortable one, but we left the next day on another aircraft, and it was that night that the headline news concerned the plane that had taken us to Perugia. It, too, had crashed, killing the entire crew. Perhaps it was not sufficient reason to be concerned about the coffin on board the Danube Express, but I could not dismiss the memory entirely.

  The star herself was crossing the platform the next morning as I arrived. Magda Malescu looked glamorous in a light gray, pin-striped pantsuit. I saw her close-up for the first time and marveled at her high, Slavic cheekbones, big wide-set eyes, and flawless complexion. What was less apparent was how she managed to project that aura of stardom. It hung on her like a cloak.

  It was more than the flashing eyes, the magnificent carriage, the opulent figure, and the dazzling smile—but the secret eluded me. It was far more than all of those, and, whatever it was—Magda Malescu had it in abundance.

  I managed to be next in line to board, as it seemed we were both in the same coach. She flashed me a smile, and I introduced myself.

  “I didn’t have the opportunity to meet you last night,” I added.

  “You are going to Budapest?” she asked. Her voice was a little less sultry and inviting than it was on the screen, but only a little.

  “I’m going on to Bucharest,” I told her. “I hope to spend more time in Budapest on the way back. Budapest has always been one of my favorite cities.”

  “Ah, you know it then?”

  “I have been there a few times. I find it to have all the charm that is expected of Vienna but that is sadly not there anymore. Budapest has not lost it yet.”

  She smiled in full agreement. I was speaking the truth although I knew that she was passionate about it as her home and birthplace.

  “We must talk further on the train,” she said, retrieving her passport and papers. I could understand that officials invariably found them in order.

  We puffed out of the Munich Hauptbahnhof on time.

  The entry into my compartment confirmed the most extravagant claims of the DS Bahn. The compartment walls and car doors were made of teak-and-mahogany paneling with inlaid marquetry. A deep armchair was covered in soft Spanish leather and embossed in silver patterning. The roller blinds were augmented by flowered-damask drapes held by silk cords and tassels of gold thread. En suite was the bathroom area with Italian marble tub and basin and gold knobs and fittings. Light fixtures were of Bohemian crystal, and the carpets appeared to be from Hyderabad.

  My table companions from the evening before were either on the platform or boarding other coaches, and I saw several of those I had met during the reception. All of them, like me, were sufficiently concerned about getting established in the compartment that was to be their home for the next days that they had no time for fraternizing.

  Once that was accomplished, however, several stood by the windows and watched the delightful rolling countryside of Bavaria stream by with its occasional slender church spire, its herds of fat brown cows, and its impossibly neat farms.

  The design of the coaches was such that a corridor ran along one side and the compartments along the other side. One could view the passing scene through the windows in the compartment or go into the corridor and view the other side.

  This truly was a train for the seasoned traveler, since reaching the destination was not the main reason for the journey—it was the journey itself.

  After unpacking, I walked along the corridor. The lack of tilt was immediately noticeable, and it was clear that the claims made for the efficiency of the stabilizing system were not exaggerated. The electromagnetic engines were as silent as they were alleged to be—at least, I assumed that the faint swooshing noise was a sound track to allay the fears of passengers unaccustomed to silent travel.

  I walked along the corridor. At the end, a glass door swung open at my approach, and I was able to go through into the next coach with none of the jerking and swaying that I recalled from early trains. Passage from one coach to the next had been a minor adventure in itself in those days, especially that glimpse beneath one’s feet of the speeding ground beneath.

  The next coach was the lounge. I had thoroughly digested the literature on the Danube Express and learned that this coach was originally called The Gentlemen’s Smoking Room. In this modern era, ladies as well as gentlemen not only smoke but receive equal rights in all other areas. Still, the lounge looked much as it always had in its gentlemanly days, with leather fauteuils and footstools, bookcases with the day’s newspapers, up-to-date magazines, and a section of travel literature describing the countries being traversed. It was all very much like a superior London club.

  Helmut Lydecker greeted me with a nod. He was glancing through a magazine but also looking out the window at the countryside, which unraveled like a screen travelogue.

  “First trip on this train?” I asked, wanting to break the ice.

  “No,” he said. “I have made it many times.”

  I thought he was going to dismiss me with that terse answer, but he continued, “It is a much more civilized way of going from capital to capital in this part of the world than flying.”

  “It’s certainly a very comfortable way,” I agreed. “You must travel a lot in your business.”

  “Yes, to the bigger cities, especially Munich, Prague, Vienna, Budapest …”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Your business is only in the bigger cities then?”

  “Yes.”

  He was a big man, with a strong face beginning to develop jowls. His manner was authoritative, as if he were used to directing people. He would be a tough leader, I thought, not easy to work for, but he would get the job done.

  “What kind of business?” I asked.

  “Sales.” He looked out of the window almost dismissively but I kept looking at him, waiting for a fuller reply.

  “I sell—” He paused. “I sell illusions.”

  Whatever reply I expected, that did not relate at all.

  “Illusions,” I repeated. “They must be difficult to sell.”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. People are gullible. They love to be deceived—they love fantasy and escape from reality.”

  “And how do you deceive them?”

  He smiled, a thin smile that was not quite a sneer.

  “Very easily—very easily indeed.”

  Well, at a certain point, you don’t press any more. It was obvious that Lydecker had told me as much as he intended to tell me. He was not the kind of man to be coerced into explaining how and why he “sold illusions.”

  To emphasize his disinclination, he changed the subject by nodding to the scene outside the window. “I was born out there,” he said.

  “You are German?”

  “Yes. I was born near Donauworth.”

  “North of Augsburg?”

  “Yes.” He sounded surprised. “You know it?”

  “I visited Augsburg once, a very attractive town.”

  He grunted. “The village I was born in was not attractive.”

  “Most villages in the south of Germany have a rural charm. They look that way to a visitor anyway. Perhaps if you were born in one, you see it through different eyes.”

  “I have no pleasant memories of it. I left the village as soon as I could.” He turned from his view of the passing countryside. “And you?”

  “I’m in the food business. I’m a food-finder—I look for rare spices, unusual foods, substitutes for foods that become rare, and I advise on foods for banquets with certain themes.”

  “You can make a living by that?”

  Germans have a direct way of asking questions that often sound rude or uncivil when translated into another language. It has always been my belief that this is merely a restriction imposed by the syntax of the German language and does not necessarily imply rudeness on the part of the user. I gave Lydecker the benefit of the doubt.

  “Yes, I can. Most important though is that I enjoy it. I love foo
d and the history of food.”

  “This train has a reputation for its cuisine,” he said.

  “So I believe, and I’m looking forward to it.”

  I expressed the hope of talking to him again and moved on. Maybe next time, I could dig a little deeper and find out just how Lydecker “sold illusions.”

  Erich Brenner was making his official rounds, earnest in his desire to ensure that everyone was comfortable and satisfied. I was telling him that I was as another man came along the corridor. “I must introduce you,” Brenner said.

  The other stopped at Brenner’s raised hand. “This is Karl Kramer, our security chief on the DS Bahn.”

  Kramer was unmistakably German, with almost impossibly blond hair and Aryan features. His eyes were bright blue but cool and assessing. His build and bearing were stiff and military in manner. He must make evildoers shiver in their boots, I thought.

  His handshake was cold and hard. His eyes bored into me as if he were reading my mind. “Ah, yes,” he said in perfect English. “I have seen your name on the passenger list. You go to Bucharest, is that not so?”

  I agreed that it was so.

  “It will be a good journey,” he said as if he were ordaining it to be that way. From the look of him, I had no doubt that it would take a person of exceptional powers to affect the journey any other way.

  We went our opposite directions. I stopped to view the scenery. We were approaching Burgenland, a little border region between East and West. It had once been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is the beginning of the puszta, the large flat steppe that reaches almost to Budapest. It is an area that has been bitterly contested over the centuries, in fact, ever since tribal days. Many battles have been fought there through the long years when it was part of the country known as Pannonia, through the times of the Ottoman Empire, and clear up to this century.

  This is an agricultural region and is locally referred to as Vienna’s vegetable garden. Fruit accounts for much of the produce, and it is a renowned grape region, with an ideal climate for wine making. The gently rolling countryside enabled one to see considerable distances, and, in many directions, vineyards covered the landscape.

  I became aware of someone approaching. It was the Romanian girl, Irena Koslova. “So at last,” I said to her, “you are doing something you have always wanted to do.”

  She gave me a look of surprise. “Last night,” I reminded her, “you said this was something you had always wanted to do.”

  “Yes, I did.” She had a delightful smile. In fact, she was very pretty, with those facial characteristics that are so typical of many Eastern European women—extremely feminine yet self-reliant and capable. She had a small but proud nose, soft gray eyes, a flawless complexion.

  “You live in Bucharest?” I asked.

  “Near it—but I was born in the city.”

  We rolled majestically through a station, and the locals were on hand to gawk and wave, MUHLDORF, the sign said, and flowers adorned the station buildings, while the flags of Germany and Austria fluttered in the breeze of our passing. Our steam whistle—or at least a very authentic recording of it—beep-beeped in salutation.

  “So you’re going home?” I asked her as the houses of the small town receded into the distance. On a road leading into Muhldorf, a truck piled with jugs of wine swayed under its load. Then we were out into the steppe again.

  “I’m not sure I call it home,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  I waited for elucidation of that cryptic remark but none was forthcoming. As I prepared another comment inviting explanation, she smiled. “I hope we can talk later,” she said, and passed me.

  “I hope so, too,” I told her.

  In the next coach, the corridor went past a sign that announced, COMMUNICATION CENTER. This was an area the size of three or four compartments and I tried the door. It was locked. A sign I hadn’t noticed before proclaimed no admittance in three languages.

  I recalled reading in the brochure on the Danube Express that it received information from a large number of sources, including satellites. Data on weather conditions, the track, the status of all the stations on the line ahead as well as readings on all of the electronic controls on the engine and the train came into the center. One could talk to anywhere in the world or receive messages, I remembered, but I supposed that such a vital center had to be secure.

  We were traversing marshland, and, beyond, I could see the shimmer of a lake. I decided to retrace my steps and see what was at the other end of the train.

  The Walburgs were on a similar reconnaissance, and we met in the corridor, exchanging greetings.

  “We took the Glacier Express when we were in Switzerland in the spring,” said Mrs. Walburg. “Have you ever been on it?”

  I confessed that I had not.

  “Some people take it and never see a thing,” Mrs. Walburg stated.

  “Why is that?” I felt obliged to ask.

  “Fog,” he said. “Can you imagine? A quarter of a million people take that train every year, and some of them see nothing because of the fog.”

  “We saw everything,” his wife declared. “Rivers and lakes, waterfalls, castles, churches, forests—”

  Her husband took up the account, “—gorges, high bridges, tunnels—”

  “Ninety-one tunnels,” Mrs. Walburg said. “I didn’t like some of them. Too small.”

  “And the Matterhorn,” her husband added. “We saw the Matterhorn. And just think, some poor people who took that train saw nothing because of the fog.”

  “I’m surprised,” I told them. “The Swiss are very clever engineers. I would have thought they could figure a way around that problem.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Mr. Walburg said.

  “We’d better get on,” his wife said. “This counts as part of our walking for the day. We have to walk a mile every day,” she told me, “three times up and down this train is nearly a mile.”

  Helmut Lydecker had gone when I walked through the lounge. A few passengers were absorbed in the scenery. We rolled along as smoothly as a billiard ball across a table. Not a tremor could be felt, and we climbed an incline with only a small decrease in speed. The engine appeared to have ample power in reserve.

  Erich Brenner and the security chief, Karl Kramer, were coming toward me. They had evidently concluded their inspection tour.

  “Everything under control?” I asked.

  “Everything,” Kramer said with a crisp nod.

  There was a minor commotion behind me. Brenner and Kramer looked past me, and I turned. We all saw a man in the smart black uniform with red trim of the DS Bahn. The extraordinary thing about him was that he was running, running toward us.

  Erich Brenner took a step forward. Karl Kramer was frowning darkly, and it looked as if the unfortunate employee was to be strongly disciplined. Running was not an activity practiced by the highly trained staff of this august railroad.

  He hurried to us. He was in his fifties and had probably been in the service of the railroad for many years, for I knew that most of the staff were longtime employees. His eyes were wide and alarmed. He was out of breath, part of which appeared to be due to his running but compounded more by excitement and stress.

  “What is it, man?” snapped Kramer.

  “She—she is dead!” the man gasped. He spluttered for more words, on the verge of hyperventilating.

  “Who?” barked Erich Brenner. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Fraulein Magda Malescu! She is dead! Murdered!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE MOMENT OF STUNNED silence that followed was the result of the thought that must be passing through the minds of Erich Brenner and Karl Kramer as it was through mine. The man with this astonishing news was coming from the rear of the train. Magda Malescu’s compartment was in the forward part of the train. So how could he know?

  Kramer recovered first. “How do you know this?” he snapped.

  “I was passing the commu
nication center when Thomas came out,” stammered the man. “He told me this and said I was to tell you this personally—er, confidentially, he said. He did not wish to take a chance on a phone call.”

  He glanced at me as he said “confidentially,” clearly aware that I ought not to be hearing this but just as clearly so shocked that rules had gone out of the window.

  Kramer already had his phone out of his pocket. “I demanded a scrambled channel,” he reminded Brenner icily, “but it was rejected.”

  Brenner’s cool demeanor, shattered by the news concerning Malescu, was nonetheless resistant to Kramer’s criticism. “We have customer relations to consider,” he said, “and we cannot afford complaints that the Danube Express harbors spies and anarchists. First, there would be scrambled phones, next, we would have guards with automatic rifles, then they would insist on—no, no, this will not do!”

  Kramer was already on the line. “Thomas? The news you gave to Ulbricht—no, no, don’t tell me now, this line is not secure. I will be in your coach in a moment. Do not come out. Allow no one in. Speak to no one.”

  He banged the flap of the phone cover in place. “I will talk to him personally,” he said, speaking to Brenner. “You should go to Malescu’s compartment. Wait there for me.” He strode off.

  Brenner looked at me, uncertain. He didn’t want me along, but neither did he want to send me away now that I had heard the news they were trying to conceal. He selected the lesser of two evils, setting off toward the front of the train, beckoning me to follow. He could keep an eye on me that way. I was as stunned and puzzled as either of them.

  No one was in the corridor of the coach containing Malescu’s and my compartments. We stopped at her door. I looked at it, but it gave away nothing. I looked at the window across the corridor from her door. I could see no cryptic message written with a finger on a steamy surface.

  We did not have long to wait. Kramer appeared, approaching us rapidly with a long stride. He looked at Brenner, then rapped on the door.