Robert B. Parker - Passport to Peril

We ran through the snow at the side of the road until we were out of breath; I was sure the shots would bring a Russian patrol. Wed leave tracks in the snow but wed have made more noise in the hard-packed center of the road. The end of the snowstorm had brought that still, bitter cold when a running step echoes like hammer on anvil.

We heard the guards carbine blast the padlock off the gate. We started to run again, and the siren went off; there must have been a switch in the sentry box. We heard the sound of a car coming toward us and saw the long beams of the headlights slashing into the shadows of the trees at the bend in the road ahead. The rising scream of the siren and the moving light and the throb of the cars engine seemed to freeze us where we stood...

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by Robert B. Parker

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK (HCC-057)

First Hard Case Crime edition: July 2009

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street

London

SE1 0UP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

Copyright 1951 by Robert B. Parker

Cover painting copyright 2009 by Greg Manchess

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-351-9

E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-399-1

Cover design by Cooley Design Lab

Design direction by Max Phillips

www.maxphillips.net

Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

The name Hard Case Crime and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

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For my children

It wasnt until the Orient Express was nearing the Hungarian frontier, about two hours out of Vienna, that I found I was traveling on the passport of a murdered man.

Id been alone in my compartment for most of the time, reading the Budapest papers and planning my mission to Hungary, my first visit since the end of the war. It was good to be in the luxurious international train. Snow had fallen heavily since wed pulled out of the Westbahnhof in Vienna, and there was a biting north wind.

The girl entered the compartment just after the Orient had flashed through the bombed-out ruins of Bruck-an-der-Leithe. I had wiped the mist off the window and was watching the station lights flicker through the falling snow. At first I thought the door had been opened by the Wagons-Lits porter or the dining-car steward to tell me dinner was ready. Then I heard a womans voice say in French, Thank god youre here. I thought youd been

Ill always remember that warm, low voice. It stopped abruptly when I turned to show my face. The girl was tall and slender, somewhere in her middle twenties.

Im terribly sorry. Ive made a mistake. She turned her head to check the number on the compartment door. No, this is number seven, isnt it? She glanced at the baggage rack above my head. When she looked at me there was complete disbelief in the dark face. I thought you were someone else. She paused. You even look a great deal like him.

Perhaps youre in the wrong car, I said. Are you sure you want car twenty-two?

Yes, car twenty-two. She pointed to the rack. Thats my baggage. I put it there before we left the station. She took her ticket from her pocket and studied it. Compartment seven, car twenty-two. Theres no mistake.

I checked my ticket again, and it was correct. There are two seats in a second-class compartment when the sleeping-car is used for daytime travel.

There was bewilderment in the girls wide-set black eyes. I found her extremely attractive. Her raven-black hair was parted and drawn behind her ears, and her cheeks were a little hollowed so that her cheekbones and the firm line of her jaw showed clearly. She was wearing a gray tweed suit with a frilly blouse and she carried a blue velvet beret in her hand.

She hesitated, and for a moment I thought she would leave the compartment, but she finally sat beside me, and I offered her the Hungarian newspapers. No, thank you. Im afraid I dont read Hungarian. The puzzled light was still in her eyes. She turned to me. Would you mind telling me how you got this seat?

Not at all. Its very simple. The Wagons-Lits office in Vienna swore the Orient was sold out. But Ive usually found that at least one person fails to show up at the station. I took a chance and got aboard. This was the only vacant seat, and I bought it from the porter after the train started.

The girl was quiet a moment, as if she were trying to imagine what had caused the other man to miss the train, the man whose seat Id taken. Is there another train tonight from Vienna to Budapest?

I dont think so, I said. Theres a local tomorrow morning. But theres the Russian plane tonight. It gets to Budapest before we do. I didnt want to frighten her but I couldnt help adding, It isnt very safe. I wouldnt want to take it in this weather. The pilot hedgehops all the way to follow the tracks. I was about to tell her of the trip Id made in a Russian plane from Budapest to Bucharest with the pilot using an oil companys road map to guide him, but something in her expression told me she wasnt in the mood for levity.

The girl said, Have you ever been to Budapest? even though shed seen me reading the Hungarian newspapers. Maybe she thought Id picked up the language at Berlitz.

Yes, I said, I was living in Budapest when the war started. I know it very well. Its the most beautiful city in the worldor it was before the Germans and the Russians blew it apart.

She accepted a cigarette from my case, and I lit it. I asked her if she knew Budapest. She shook her head, and I noticed the blue highlights in the midnight-black of her hair. Not at all, she said. Ive never been in this part of Europe before. I wondered about her nationality. Her French was grammatically perfect, but the accent was off somewhere.