Free Dead Man's Tale by Ellery Queen Page B

activities in the black market during the occupation.
    But why the secrecy? Why had Milo Hacha to sneak like a fugitive across the border? And why, most importantly from Gerhard Mueller’s point of view, since it had almost cost him his life, hadn’t his friend Siroky been at the Czech border station to pass him through again on his way back? But Siroky, who had regularly taken ten per cent of Mueller’s profits during the black-market days, was gone, and Mueller had never seen any of the other border guards before.
    He had asked for Siroky. In reply, they had demanded his papers. Since he had no papers, he made a dash for it. They had chased him back away from the border. They shouted for him to stop and he ignored them, so they shot at him. He ran until he fell.
    Then he had hidden in a hayfield, listening to the big crows overhead, to the distant train whistle, to his own heart banging against his ribs and finally to the jack boots of the border guards tramping through the hay.
    All night Gerhard Mueller had remained in that hayfield. His body was trembling and he could not stop sweating. He had expected to die at any moment. It was the longest night of his life.
    When it grew light enough to see his hand as a white blur he had made his way stealthily across the field, heading east. Here the Vltava River was little more than a stream, and he was able to wade across. A dog barking somewhere had made him flounder from the swift, knee-deep water, water as cold as acid, and begin to run.
    He had gone east two kilometres, before the sun came up. In the distance he saw the pine-covered hills of the Bohemian forest. Soon he had heard some belled cows and seen a little yellow cottage nestling at the foot of the first slope; it had half-timbering on the walls and a steep gable roof. At the front door a heavy-chested horse waited patiently in the traces of a wagon.
    Mueller remembered staring at the wagon, afraid and yet tempted. Then the distant dog had barked again, and it had sent him sprinting towards the wagon.
    At that moment a gaunt, hard-faced man in farm clothing had stepped out of the house. Mueller, ready to take to his heels, had stammered a greeting in Czech and said he was heading for Ceske Krumlov, a small rural village near the border.
    â€œI am going to Ceske Krumlov,” the farmer said in a rusty voice, and Gerhard Mueller had clambered into the wagon with a silent prayer of thankfulness.
    The road southward was narrow and unpaved. The wagon jolted and clanked. The farmer never spoke another word. Mueller recalled dozing, and in his doze dreaming that he was back in Vienna, window-shopping along The Graben for a thousand-schilling present for his buxom mistress. It was from this pleasant reverie that the farmer’s nudge roused him, and he had opened his eyes to find himself at the shabby little free market of the village.
    The farmer had not even answered his wave.
    He had walked quickly south. When he saw the border station he tasted fear again and left the road. It was still early morning. No more than ten hours had passed since he had left Milo Hacha. He was hungry and tired. He had climbed a little hill and looked down on Austria.
    Ten or twelve metres below, a border guard in an olive-coloured uniform stood staring in the same direction. Then Gerhard Mueller had picked up a rock, made his way down the slope like an animal, crept up behind the guard and swung. The man had dropped without a sound.
    And he … he had to run for his life.
    Now, driving the big bus through Gmunden on the road to Linz, where there would be a stop for dinner, for the first time Mueller could dwell logically on what had happened.
    What had happened was that they had tried to kill him. For crossing the border illegally? Of all the satellite countries, Czechoslovakia was the most prosperous—the West Germany of the Soviet camp—with little to fear from contamination by the West.
    Then why had they tried to