Hard Case Crime: Passport To Peril Read Online Free Page A

until Maria tripped, let go my hand, and fell heavily. I picked her up and 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 car’s engine seemed to freeze us where we stood, locked in each other’s arms.
    Then I knew another sound. Somewhere close behind us there was a running brook. Our only chance to get a head start on the Russian patrol was to follow that brook into the woods. If we left the road through the snow they’d follow our tracks in a minute.
    Luckily the icy water wasn’t much above our ankles, and we were already numbed with the cold. We made good progress into the woods, following the center of the stream by the sound of the water alone. I looked back once, and the road was bright with the light of the oncoming car. The siren had died away. The roar of the car’s engine and the rushing of the water beneath us were the only sounds.
    When we were well into the woods, the going became harder without even the little light from the stars. I stumbled and fell half a dozen times before I sensed that Maria was no longer close behind me. I didn’t dare call her. I turned back, putting my arms out straight in front of me the way a blind man does but I didn’t find her. I tried using my lighter, but it was dripping wet.
    I lost my head. I found myself trying to run through the stream, stumbling and crashing on my face when the stones on the bottom rolled under my feet, calling Maria’s name at the top of my lungs.
    Somehow I found her, down on her knees in the water. I picked her up in my arms and I knew she had fainted from exhaustion and the cold. I turned and went blindly forward again but slower so that I wouldn’t fall with her.
    I’ll never know how far I walked before I knew there was a light ahead. My eyes must have seen it long before my brain accepted it.
    Of course, when the Russians hadn’t found us on the road, they’d doubled to the other side of the woods.
    I put Maria down in the snow at the side of the brook, unslung the carbine from my shoulder, and started to knock off the safety. But I had no choice. I threw the gun upstream as far as my strength would let me. I picked up the girl again and started for the light. No matter what happened to me I had to get help for her.
    When the light grew brighter and brighter, I tried to run through the snow. Then I heard a shout. I heard the crack of a rifle bullet. I felt my knees give way under me. And then nothing more.

Chapter Three

DOUBTFUL SAFETY
    When I opened my eyes someone was bending over me. My first thought was to ask the Russians to take care of Maria, to tell them she was innocent and that I had forced her to leave the train with me.
    I tried to lift myself on one elbow, fighting to clear my brain enough to recall the Russian words. But a hand pushed me back on the snow, and a voice said, “Warten Sie einen Augenblick, mein Herr—wait a minute.”
    For a moment I thought I must be delirious. I had expected to hear Russian. I wasn’t prepared for German.
    If these men proved to be Austrian police, we might have an easier time with them. There wasn’t any love lost between the Austrians and the Red Army. Perhaps they weren’t policemen at all. They might be farmers or hunters who could be persuaded to let us go in return for the dollars in my pocket.
    The voice above me called out, “Er ist nicht verwundet,” and another voice close by answered, “And neither is the girl. You’re not the marksman you used to be, Otto.”
    “Hold your tongue,” said Otto. “It’s just as well I didn’t hit them. This man is carrying a Swiss passport. And a wad of traveler’s checks, too.”
    Why hadn’t I destroyed Marcel Blaye’s passport? I could have thrown it away after leaving the train without exciting Maria’s suspicion.
    Otto raised his voice, apparently