Free The Istanbul Decision by Nick Carter Page A

terrorist. He's Russian. KGB. The men around him are all handpicked, I'm sure. Efficient killers, each one of them. Handling this sort takes a certain talent, shall we say, a talent you can't buy, Mr. Southby, at any price. I don't think Kobelev is interested in your train as such. It merely provides a means to greater ends, namely to recover his daughter — who is in our custody — and to give him the opportunity to wreak vengeance on me. He will take your train to Istanbul, where he has no doubt made additional arrangements for his transportation into Russia, then leave it. On the other hand, if it suits his purpose to blow up your ten-mill ion-dollar toy, he will do so without a moment s hesitation. If Kobelev manages to recover his daughter and eliminate me, he will have gone a long way toward capturing what he really wants."
    Southby's stern expression softened. Like many a man who has spent hours in a bar wallowing in his trouble, his moods changed rapidly from anger to maudlin self-pity. "I'm sorry, Mr. Carter, truly I am, but the Orient Express is my life. When I first bought her she was a broken-down rusted mess, headed for the scrapyards. I reclaimed her from oblivion. I painstakingly restored every inch of her, put new leather on her seats, new drapes; I hired the finest wood-crafters in Europe to repair her interior. There are no new cars on that train. She's exactly as she was in 1929 in her heyday. I put a fortune into her and built a fortune with her. She's my baby."
    "All this is very touching," said Carter dryly, "but beside the point. What I need from you, Southby, is a way to board her without being immediately recognized."
    Southby quickly drained his drink and put his glass on the bar with a heavy sigh. "Welter and I have discussed that," he said. "Vienna is a dinner stop. We thought there might be some way to poison the food."
    "Highly unlikely," said Carter, "unless you want to poison everyone on the train and they all start eating at exactly the same moment. But what do you mean by dinner stop? I thought there were dining cars."
    "There are. You see, the Orient Express isn't a passenger train as such anymore, in the sense that people get on and off at different stops. It's a package tour. You buy a ticket in Paris and ride all the way through to Istanbul. Of course, there are extras along the way. Tonight was supposed to have been dinner here at the hotel for all the passengers, then an evening at the opera. Naturally, in view of recent developments, all this was canceled. But we've contacted Wagon Lits, who does our catering, and they've consented to send down one of their chefs from the Paris office. We have to keep up appearances. We've arranged to have him board here and cook a gourmet meal right on the train."
    "And Kobelev is going along with this?"
    "Oh, he's been very accommodating. Said he'd be perfectly willing to let us wine and dine him in the best style Europe has to offer if that's what we want."
    "I can imagine. This chef, when does he arrive?"
    "He's here now, at our branch office. He's due to board at four."
    "Call him. Tell him he can go back to Paris. I'll be taking his place tonight."
    "If you insist." Welter put a commiserating arm around Southby's shoulder.
    "Don't worry about a thing," said Carter.
    Southby groaned.
* * *
    Carter found the chef, a rotund, genial little man, sitting in a straight-backed chair in the front office of Special Tours, Inc., a black overcoat draped over his shoulders and a battered suitcase at his feet. He told Carter he'd been ordered home, a circumstance to which he seemed resigned, as though his world consisted of contradictory orders to do one thing, then to turn around and do the opposite with no explanation whatever.
    From him Carter learned things the tour staff had known from the beginning but which had never penetrated the upper echelons of management. The train engineer, for example, belonged to several Communist Party organizations in Paris;