Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

; " 'Each platform'?" Svetlana parroted.

"You're familiar with the station?" Castillo asked.

Both nodded. Vienna's Westbahnhof--Western Station--was a major Austrian railway terminal.

"There're two tracks between the platforms. There will be a truck on each one. Nothing suspicious about them; they're there every day to load newspapers on the trains for the boonies--the countryside.

"When the train pulls in, you will already be at the end of the car with your luggage. If everything looks kosher--looks all right--two men will come to the car from the truck on the platform you'd normally use. They will load you into the truck.

"However, if it appears that people are looking for you on the platform, the men in the truck will create a diversion, and you will leave the train by the other door, which means you'll have to jump onto the tracks, get onto the other platform, and then get into the truck on the other side."

"And what if there is a train on the other track?" Svetlana asked.

"Then a man will help you pass through it," Castillo said.

"Where will they take us?" Berezovsky asked.

"I honestly don't know," Castillo said. "Somewhere safe. A man named Sandor Tor will be with you. I don't think we should risk being seen together."

"Is this man good at what he does?" Berezovsky asked.

"He was a Budapest police inspector and, before that, he did a hitch in the French Foreign Legion."

"I wish you were coming with us," Svetlana said.

So do I, sweetheart!

But are you saying that just to save your ass?

Or did those sky-blue eyes just tell me you meant it, that you're back to putting the make on me?

Careful, Don Juan!

"I think you should leave one at a time," Castillo said. "You first, Svetlana."

[FIVE]

The corridor side--as opposed to the compartment side--of the sleeping car was next to the platform as the "Bartok Bela" backed into the Westbahnhof.

Castillo waited until he saw that both trucks with Tages Zeitung logotypes on their sides were on the platforms and then stepped into the corridor. The trucks were much smaller than he expected; it was going to be a tight fit with four people and their luggage.

As Davidson waited in the compartment, Castillo looked up and down the platform but couldn't see anyone he wanted to see.

It would have been helpful, 007, if you had asked the nice people which car they were in!

Then he saw something he didn't want to see.

A departing passenger, a well-dressed stout gentleman of about forty, was suddenly hit in the stomach by an eight-inch-thick bound stack of the newest edition of the Tages Zeitung. The mass of newsprint knocked him onto his rather ample gluteus maximus and caused him to say very unkind things in a very loud voice to and about the cretins in the newspaper truck.

Castillo moved quickly back into the compartment. Davidson pointed.

Berezovsky was hoisting his wife onto the adjacent platform by her hips as Sandor Tor did the same for the girl. Svetlana was throwing their luggage onto the platform. A man in a gray smock took the luggage and threw it into the Tages Zeitung truck there.

Almost simultaneously, Berezovsky and Tor hoisted themselves onto the platform. Tor directed Berezovsky to the truck, then extended his hand to assist Svetlana onto the platform.

She was well ahead of him. She had hoisted her skirt to her waist, which revealed that she was wearing both red lacey underpants and, on her inner thigh, some sort of small semiautomatic pistol in a holster.

She then leapt to the platform with the agility of a gazelle, and, adjusting her skirt in the process, ran quickly to the truck and got in.