The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 35

"You're beginning to make me feel uneasy."

"What they're going to do—they plan to put your friend in the cab of an old truck. He'll be lightly drugged so that he doesn't know what's happening, but he won't be bound or anything. And then they'll push the truck out onto the viaduct and…"

"Down will come vehicle, Illya and all?"

"That's it. The bridge is so shaky that a bicycle might start it crumbling away. A heavy truck will just make it fall down. It won't bear that much weight."

"Okay," Solo said crisply. "Now just how are they going to do this? You say they are going to push the truck out onto the viaduct?"

"Not literally. The barbed wire barriers can easily be displaced. And the track approaching the bridge is on a downhill slope which continues at a slight incline across the viaduct itself. They are going to tie a rope to the back of the truck, give it a push down the slope, and then winch it out gradually as it rolls across the bridge. When it falls, they'll cut the rope and then hurry down to the bottom of the valley to remove the other end from the wreckage. The truck is the one that was used this morning to hijack your friend from the military. This way, the authorities will think he killed himself making his getaway..."

"It's up to us to stop them, then, isn't it? The important things to know are, when is this murder due to take place, how far am I from the viaduct, and exactly how do I get there?"

"Where are you now?"

"I'm on the Autobahn about fifteen kilometers southwest of Chemnitz—or Karl Marx-stadt, as they call it now. I crossed the border about an hour ago. It's funny how quickly those crazy little vineyards in Franconia, with the stone walls that zigzag from one terrace to another, get swallowed up in all this Gothic forest as soon as one's over that frontier!"

"I'm sure it is. You should be able to get to the valley—you do want to go straight there, I suppose?—in a little less than an hour. That'll be running it a bit fine, but they do have preparations to make, after all. As far as directions go, it's about twenty minutes' drive from Tharandt, to the south and west of Dresden. But detailed directions would be difficult. Would it help if I gave you a six-figure map coordinate?"

"That would be perfect," Solo said. "But before you do, there's one thing that's puzzling me. You keep on saying 'they'—yet I thought Bartoluzzi was a lone wolf. Where does the hired help come from?"

"It's anything but that! It's the girl I told you about from Prague. My successor. But she seems to be mistress in more senses than one; she's the one that's giving the orders, making the decisions, working everything out. And she keeps on talking about 'my principals' and asking questions as though she were worried about the credit rating of Bart's network. You'd almost think she was trying to buy her way into it!"

"Maybe she is. Does she say who these principals are?"

"Not directly. But she has several times used the name Thrush—Thrush would not permit this, Thrush would expect that," the girl said in a puzzled tone. "Isn't that a funny thing to say!"

Chapter 17

Drama At The Bridge

BY THE TIME Solo reached the lower end of the valley a wind had risen and rain was sweeping down toward him between the trees.

Ten minutes later, he stopped the Citroen at the roadside and took out his field glasses. The viaduct was in full view, spanning a steep, wooded cleft between two belts of forest

—seven tall, narrow arches with a revetment at each end and six slender pillars in between. Even from this distance (it was still six or seven miles away) the agent could see clearly that the small blocks of yellow sandstone composing it had been fatally damaged by erosion.

There were two small observation platforms built out over the third and fifth arches—probably to act as refuges for linesmen when trains passed—but otherwise the single-track road was guarded only by a solitary iron rail above the shallow parapet.

It was no wonder, Solo thought, eyeing the flimsy structure through the binoculars, that they had been forced to bar the approaches!

He drove on—and found to his disgust that he must have made an error in reading the large-scale map of the area. For instead of climbing up to the rim of the valley as he had expected, the road plunged suddenly down and began following its floor. There was a network of lanes and byroads crisscrossing the forest just here, and he had obviously confused two of them in his haste. And so now—although he would arrive at the precise coordinate on the map that the girl had specified—he would be below the viaduct instead of above it.

Agitatedly he traced his path back on the map until he had found the point where he had left the correct route. To regain it, he would have to go back four or five miles… but could be afford the time?

Again he focused the glasses on the bridge. At the higher end he could see signs of activity—the cab of an old-fashioned truck above a clump of bushes, the roof of a car, figures moving.

No, the macabre stage for murder was already set. There was not a moment to lose; he would have to go on…

The valley road he was following seemed to be fairly well screened by trees. There was nobody actually on the viaduct or its approaches yet. It was just possible that he could run the car up to the arches without being spotted. In any case he would have to try. As quietly as he could, he urged the DS onward.

Overhanging trees and the steepness of the banks prevented him from seeing the ground beyond the lip of the valley—and presumably prevented those up there from seeing him—until he was almost below the bridge. But the slope on which the great piles were built was much gentler, and the trees had all been cut down. For a short distance on each side of the viaduct the road and all traffic on it would be visible to anyone above, if they happened to be watching.

Solo hoped they weren't watching as he coasted the Citroen to a halt under the third archway. It was over the fourth—through which ran the stream that had carved out the valley—that the section of old permanent way was most dangerous, according to Annike. Solo got carefully out of the car and gazed upward.

The viaduct seemed to be immensely high—a multiple facade soaring toward the sky on slender feet that tapered gently toward the top. Solo estimated its height at around a hundred and fifty-feet… and now that he was actually beneath it, he could see how precariously the pillars supported the old track far above. The stonework was cracked and fissured in dozens of places, and there were great gaps at the apex of the central arch where chunks of masonry had fallen away from the part immediately below the road.

He peered around the edge of the pillar and looked up the bank. He could just see the top of the truck's cab, but the steepness of the slope hid the rest of the vehicle and the people working on it. At any minute now, though, the cab might start moving over the bridge... and that would mean Illya Kuryakin would be moving too, moving to a certain death when the roadway collapsed.

Solo scanned the exposed slope bordering the revetment of the viaduct. The arch was wide enough at the bottom to conceal the DS parked behind it. But if he waded in to the rescue up that bank, he would rise into view as soon as he had scrambled up the first few yards, and for Bartoluzzi and his helper, he would be as easy a target as a duck in a shooting gallery.

Somewhere up there, Annike would be waiting to help him. He had told her to hide along the approach road and contact him when he appeared. But time was running out; he had no time to find her now. He had to get up there and stop that truck from reaching the unsafe part of the bridge.