Free Ride a Pale Horse by Helen MacInnes

and reaching the Austrian frontier. Which I did with no trouble at all.”
    “That was the first hazard you faced. The second was in Vienna, wasn’t it?”
    “And the third? Any prediction on that one?” She was half-serious, half-mocking.
    It all depended on whether she had indeed come under suspicion. But he wasn’t going to add to the sudden fears that she was trying to hide. “I’m no oracle,” he said with an encouraging smile. “How could I make even a guess until I hear the full story? Do you remember the details, what was said and how it was said?”
    “I remember,” she said tensely. “Couldn’t forget them. Thanks to a sleepless night,” she added, lightening her voice.
    “Can you give them to me in sequence? From the moment Vasek met you?”
    “From the moment I was waiting in my hotel room for my envelopes to be returned by the censors, and the telephone rang.”
    “By ’phone—he made the first contact by your room telephone?” My God, thought Bristow, she could be in danger. “Okay, okay,” he added, easing his voice, trying to allay any alarm his startled question might have aroused, “I’ll be patient. Just don’t forget a thing, Karen. Thank heaven we have a trained ear and eye to give us the particulars.”
    “Can that actually be praise for journalists?”
    “Actually, yes.” Ahead of them, on a stretch of land that had flattened out and been robbed of its trees, he could see two square shapes of whitened concrete huddled together. The gas station was the nearer building, drawn off the highway, its red pumps standing at attention under a string of stiff bright-coloured pennants. Beyond it were the blue and yellow neon lights of the café.
    Bristow lessened his speed as they passed the side road on his left that slanted into the highway. What he could see of it, for trees still lined its narrow curve, gave no glimpse of Fairbairn’s green Buick heading for their rendezvous. Not to worry, he told himself. Fairbairn won’t be late; we are early.
    They reached the gas station and parked on its free side in a small one-time field, now bare of grass, partly filled with two old trucks and three cars in need of repairs. “We still have seven minutes to wait,” Bristow said. “Sorry about the view.” They were facing a blank wall.
    “Better than gas pumps and stiff little flags. Is that where you’ll meet your friend?”
    “Just around the corner. He’ll probably be buying some gas.”
    “And then,” she guessed, “you’ll wander into the washroom, and he will follow, and you’ll give him this.” She presented the envelope.
    “Perfect,” he said as he noted the elaborate crisscross of tape on its flap. No one could risk opening it without pulling away some of the envelope, too.
    “A nice tangled mess,” she agreed. “But how will you keep the envelope out of sight?”
    He had foreseen that small problem and had already opened his book bag. He was now lifting a dictating machine and some cassettes out of its depths. “Much too heavy,” he told her with a grin. “We can’t have them bruising and crumpling those nice flat sheets inside the envelope. How did you manage to keep them without a fold or wrinkle?” Karen just kept staring at the machine.
    “Well, you know now... Do you mind?”
    She shook her head, tried to look nonchalant. She could see the good sense of having her story on tape. “Recorded for posterity—I’m flattered. Do you always come prepared?”
    Not prepared to meet anyone like you, he thought. Beauty and brains—it was a devastating mixture. “I use these gadgets for accuracy.” His voice was stilted, embarrassed, and he knew it. “My memory isn’t as good as yours.”
    “I wouldn’t like to bet on that.”
    “What about this?” He was looking at the book bag critically. “Too noticeable?”
    “Eccentric—for a gas station.”
    He replaced the machine and its cassettes in the bag. “In your care,” he told her.
    “Why don’t I