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Max glanced up from reading the papers on his desk as his assistant stood patiently before him. “Hans, I was wondering, earlier, why, if Colonel Radler was going to defect, he didn’t just go to the British Embassy in either Prague or Budapest but this itinerary explains it. It’s a full schedule and they’ve left him with no time spare other than to sleep. Now, in Romania, the itinerary finishes at four in the afternoon on the twelfth. See, here,” he said, turning the page back and forth. “On the thirteenth, he’s supposed to take the early morning train to Cluj-Napoca then the mid-afternoon one to return to Budapest,” he thumbed to the next page. “He has to stay overnight. I presume a hotel close to the station because his train the next morning is just before six.”
“The Hotel Dorka, Herr Drexler. It’s on the sheet at the back and it’s only three hundred metres from the railway station.”
Max flipped to it then back to the notes he’d made. “Thank you, Hans. So, he takes the early morning train which will eventually result in him returning to Berlin for eleven o’clock, maybe midnight if there are some delays.” He stared at the sheet in front of him. “It’s the thirteenth, Hans. It has to be! He’s unsupervised, unaccompanied; everyone said their goodbyes the day before. If he’s going to do it, this is when he’ll make a run for the British in Bucharest. They’ll have almost fourteen hours to get him out of the country before the Romanian border people can verify he’s not on the train. The British will have him flown out, probably with one of their diplomatic couriers, long before we have time to react. This is what he’s counting on because he thinks we’re running around here chasing or interrogating the list of suspects he and I agreed on.”
The phone rang and Hans picked it up. A few words then he passed it to Max. “It’s the Hungarian police in Szolnok, for you, Sir.”
The Hungarian officer told him they hadn’t found Radler on the train. They’d been the whole length of it and couldn’t find him. Yes, they’d checked the toilets. But when the train pulled out of the station they’d seen a man of the same description sitting in the last carriage, the one they’d first checked. They thought, if it was him, he may have gotten off to get a coffee from one of the platform kiosks then got back on whilst they were going through the passengers in the front compartment. Drexler thanked them for their efforts.
“The incompetent idiots, two of them went there and both got on the train instead of one remaining on the platform. I would have thought it was common practice to use a brain but it seems not. Never mind. We need to track him through the border checkpoints and have the Romanian Securitate put some people on the train at the first station after the border.” He opened the map in front of him and pointed. “Here, in Oradea, they can then keep an eye on him all the way to Bucharest.”
Meanwhile, in Austria, Astrid and Felix had called at the Klingenbach crossing that Gally and Deacon had not long left. Whilst Felix stood outside making himself look obvious, his colleague went inside with the cover story that they were expecting British diplomatic staff to cross back over the border but had forgotten exactly which one of the two crossing points in the vicinity they would use and, to be honest, they didn’t like to phone Vienna to clarify because their position at the Embassy was under review and, well, it would just be another nail in the coffin. The officer understood and commented that it must be catching as an American had also been there 10 minutes before with much the same story.
The guard on the roof of the Hungarian checkpoint, 200 metres away, cranked the field phone again.
After leaving, the British couple took a two and a half-hour drive to the former crossing between Neumarkt an der Raab and the Hungarian town of Alsoszolnok where they parked up in sight of the two Hungarians guarding the roadblock then generally acted suspiciously; using binos, locking the car and walking into the woods in opposite directions, staying for about half an hour and appearing to talk into a handheld radio.
At the other crossings still open, British military personnel on the support staff of the embassy’s Defence Attaché made themselves visible enough to attract the wanted attention from binocular wearing guards on the other side.
As the day wore on, having decided the odd activity meant the West were expecting a forced exit from the east, the Hungarians began strengthening each point by erecting temporary obstructions designed to funnel traffic repeatedly left then right on the approach to their checkpoints effectively defeating any would be ‘gate crashers’.