Trojan Gold (12 page)

“You see the difference between us,” Schmidt said reproachfully. “I rush to see you, you rush away from me.”

“All right, all right—I grovel, I apologize. Look here, Schmidt, the situation is more complicated than I thought. We are going to have to proceed with caution.”

“Oh yes, I know.” Schmidt nodded complacently. “I am very careful, Vicky, in what I say. And I have learned much. The woman in the photograph is the first Frau Hoffman—”

“I assumed it was.”

“Yes, you assume, but I know. I have seen a picture of her, it is the same woman.”

I put my hands to my head. “Schmidt. You didn't—you haven't seen Friedl?”

“If Friedl is the second Frau Hoffman, yes, I have seen her. By the way, that young man at the desk behaves very strangely, Vicky. When I ask for Herr Hoffman and explain I knew him once, many years ago, he turns a strange color and cannot talk sensibly. Do you suppose…What is the matter, Vicky? Have I done something wrong?”

“Yes, dammit! You shouldn't have…Oh well, maybe it doesn't matter. What did you say to her?”

Schmidt insisted he had given nothing away, and if his version of the conversation was correct, it was true—except that his mere presence was enough to alarm a conspirator. He had been deliberately vague about where and when he had known Hoffman, and he had (
aber natürlich
!) said nothing about the gold, or about a bloodstained envelope. How
he had talked Friedl into bringing out the family album I could not imagine; I was surprised that she hadn't disposed of it as she had disposed of Hoffman's other personal possessions.

“Poor girl, she is in a state of great distress,” Schmidt said sympathetically. “I advised her to go away for a holiday; her nerves are in terrible condition.”

“Schmidt, you are such a push-over,” I snapped. “She's a cheap little tramp who married Hoffman for his money and is now trying to steal his—his prize possession for herself.”

“That is a terrible thing to say! How do you know?”

I gave him a brief rundown of what Friedl had said—and what she had not said. “What's more,” I added, “I'm beginning to wonder whether she knows where—it—is. She tore that
Schrank
apart. Why would she destroy a valuable object unless she was looking for something?”

“It may be that she does not know for what she is looking,” Schmidt said shrewdly. “It would not be necessary to destroy a piece of furniture to make certain there was not hidden in it something so large as—as what we are seeking.”

“Good point. Maybe she hoped to find a clue—a map or a letter.”

Masticating, Schmidt shook his head mournfully. “I cannot believe so lovely a young woman would behave with such duplicity.”

“Believe it. I'll tell you something, though—I'm beginning to suspect she is not acting on her own. She is unbelievably stupid. When I was talking to her, I felt as if I were conversing with—with a ven
triloquist's dummy, that was it. Someone had told her what to do, but not how to go about it.”

“Aha,” said Schmidt. “
Cherchez I'homme
!”

“I think you've got it, Schmidt. A woman like that always has to have a man around. Oh, hell. I don't want to discuss it here. Let's go.”

Schmidt swept a measuring glance over the table, popped an overlooked morsel of cheese into his mouth, and nodded agreement. “The lunch, it is on me,” he announced, summoning the waitress with a lordly gesture.

“It sure is,” I agreed, surveying his bulging tummy.

Not until Schmidt had risen and was waddling toward the door did I get the full effect of his costume—bright red, fitting him like a second skin. It was so appalling I let out a yelp. “Schmidt!”

“
Was? Was ist los? Was ist's
?” Schmidt spun around like a top, bellowing in alarm.

A hush had fallen over the restaurant and every eye in the place was focused on us. I grabbed Schmidt by the seat of the pants (there was very little slack to grab) and the scruff of the neck and propelled him out the door.

We stood by his car arguing. Schmidt was hurt because I didn't like his outfit—”so fitting for the season of
Weihnachten
”—and he didn't want to go home. He was having fun.

We were still arguing when someone came running out of the hotel, calling my name. It was Freddy. “I am so glad I caught you up,” he exclaimed. “Frau Hoffman hoped you would return; she said to tell you a message. There was a bridal chest, very old, belonging to Herr Hoffman, that
was given to a friend of his. Perhaps he will be willing to sell to you.”

Schmidt began bobbing up and down and gesturing at me. His face was almost as crimson as his suit, he was so excited. The word “chest” suggested an accompanying adjective—“treasure”—and he was reacting like a child reading Edgar Allan Poe.

“Where does the friend live?” I asked, hoping it was someplace like Paris or Lhasa, and that I could talk Schmidt into catching the first plane.

“Not far from here. I can tell you….”

He rattled off directions, adding helpfully, “It is only several miles from the town.”

“I know it, I know it,” Schmidt cried. “Thank you, my friend—
vielen Dank
.”

Freddy went running back to the hotel and Schmidt unlocked the Mercedes. “You are following me,” he insisted, forgetting his grammar in his excitement. “I the way am knowing.”

“Wait a minute, Schmidt—”

It was too late. He almost ran over my foot.

I got in my car and took off after the old lunatic, cursing aloud. If I had been on my own, I would have deliberated long and hard about pursuing that oh-so-convenient lead. I probably would have ended up pursuing it, if only for the sake of the chest, which I remembered well. It was a beauty. But I seriously doubted that it contained the gold of Troy.

The first few miles weren't bad going. Then Schmidt, who drove with an assurance that suggested he really did know where he was going, turned abruptly into a side road that plunged steeply up the mountainside. After a while I shifted
into four-wheel drive. I'd have signaled him to stop if there had been anyplace to turn around, which there wasn't. Snowplows had carved out a single narrow lane; banks of glistening white rose high on both sides. I prayed he wouldn't meet a car coming down. Occasionally a sidetrack would wind off through clustered pines or up rocky banks toward an isolated dwelling. Otherwise there was no sign of human life.

I wasn't happy about the situation, but I didn't start to get really worried until after we had gone fifteen kilometers. The road had twisted and curved so often I had lost my sense of direction, but as it turned out, we weren't more than a mile from the town. I found out in the most direct possible fashion; rounding a sudden curve, I saw the damned place down below—straight down. The plows hadn't had any problem disposing of the snow in this spot; they had just pushed it off the edge of the cliff.

I leaned on the horn. Schmidt responded with a cheerful beepity-beep, and the Mercedes disappeared around another steep curve, its rear end wriggling like a belly dancer's navel. We went around a few more bends, with Bad Steinbach flashing in and out of sight down below; finally, to my relief, the road leveled out. It was then that the thing I had feared finally happened. Suddenly the Mercedes swerved, bounced off a snowbank, and headed straight for the opposite side. There was no snowbank on the side. The drop wasn't sheer—not after the first twenty or thirty feet.

I started pumping my brakes. Luckily the process had become automatic, because every ounce of my
concentration was focused on the wildly weaving vehicle ahead. Schmidt was fighting the skid, but he was losing. There was something wrong with the Mercedes, it wasn't a simple skid…. At the last possible second, he managed to sideswipe a tree. If he hadn't done so, he'd have gone over the edge.

I was out of my car before the echoes of the crash had died, running frantically toward the wreck. The Mercedes was skewed sideways; the front wheels were off the ground, still spinning.

Schmidt was slumped over the wheel, his poor pathetic bald head shining in the sunlight. Of course he wasn't wearing his seat belt; he never did, the damned fool…. I wrenched the door open and reached for him.

The bullet spanged off the rear fender with a sound like a cymbal. The echoes rattled so furiously that I thought it was a semiautomatic. Before they died, another shot sent them flying again. Missed me by a mile…but there were a lot of potential targets. My tires, me, Schmidt, the gas tank…As I tugged frantically at Schmidt's dead weight, I could have sworn I heard a gentle trickle of liquid. I didn't need my imagination to tell me the tank was already ruptured; I could smell the gas.

Terror lent strength to my not inconsiderable muscles; I gave a mighty heave, and Schmidt came out like a cork from a bottle. Somehow I kept my feet, towing him as I backed away. I might be doing him a deadly injury by moving him, but we'd both be fried like Wiener schnitzels if that gas tank went up.

God, he was heavy! I couldn't move fast enough. I felt as if I were towing a cast-iron statue, as if my
feet were mired in glue. The air at the back of the Mercedes quivered, distorted by fumes, by heat…. How long before it blew?

Schmidt lay like a stuffed toy, his hands trailing limply. I could have sworn there was a smile on his face, damn him—bless him—oh, Schmidt, I thought, don't die. Don't just lie there and make me drag you.

I was still moving, but it didn't feel as if I were. My feet went up and down, as if on a treadmill, and the scenery didn't change, the wrecked car didn't get any farther away. It occurred to me that I ought to get myself and Schmidt behind that convenient snowbank. I could have managed the first part of the program, but not the second; dragging Schmidt was hard enough, lifting him was out of the question. Was that a flicker of flame I saw, in the shaken air?…

He only brushed me in passing, but my knees were like wet noodles, and when he hoisted Schmidt up over his shoulder, I sat down with a solid thud.

“For God's sake, this is no time to take a rest,” he said breathlessly. A hand clamped over my arm and yanked me to my feet.

The hand was in the small of my back when we reached the snowbank, but I didn't need its pressure to send me up and over. I had a flashing glimpse of Schmidt sailing through the air like Santa Claus falling from his sleigh; then I landed face down in the snow and tried to burrow under it as the world went up in flame and thunder.

 

The echoes of the explosion went on for a thousand years. After they had died, I decided it was safe to raise my head. The first thing I saw was Schmidt's face, less than a foot away. Cold had reddened it to a shade only slightly less brilliant than the crimson of his suit, and rivulets of frozen blood traced fantastic patterns across his forehead. But his eyes were wide open and when he saw me, his chapped lips cracked in a smile.

I grabbed him by his ears and rained passionate kisses on his dimpled cheeks and bright red nose and grinning mouth. “Schmidt, you devil—you crazy old goat—are you all right, you damned fool? Oh, Schmidt, how could you be so incredibly stupid, you idiot?”

Schmidt giggled. A voice behind me remarked in saccharine tones, “This is the very ecstasy of love.”

I rolled over. John was sitting with his back up against the packed snow of the bank, a cigarette in one hand. He was wearing a rather effeminate pale blue down jacket and darker pants. A ski mask, patterned in lozenges of navy and green, gave him the look of a tattooed Maori warrior.

“Thank you,” I said formally, “for saving our lives.”

“A pleasure, I'm sure. And now, if you will forgive me—”

He started to rise. I threw myself at him and grabbed his ankle. “John, there's a man out there with a rifle—”

“Not any longer. However, if I don't waste any more time chatting with you, I may be able to discover which of your numerous enemies has been
missing from his or her appointed place. Do excuse me.”

“Wait, wait.” Schmidt was snorting and flailing around in the snow like a red octopus. “I have questions—many questions—”

“I'm sure you do.” Even white teeth flashed in the mouth hole of the mask.

I said resignedly, “Schmidt, meet Schmidt.”

“Schmidt?” My boss's bellow of laughter made the echoes ring. “Ha, yes. Schmidt—Smythe—very good. I am so glad—”

“Yes, well, my rapture is also extreme,” John said politely. He twitched his foot out of my numbing grasp and rose lithely to his feet. “Vicky, you'd better get Kris Kringle to a fire and a doctor.
Auf Wiedersehen
.”

He scrambled over the bank and disappeared from sight. I got to my feet, ignoring Schmidt's breathless appeals for assistance, information, and so on, and was in time to see the pale blue outfit disappear in the trees. A moment later an automobile engine started up, revved a few times, and faded. He had been following me the whole time. That diabolical road had required so much of my attention I hadn't watched for following vehicles.

Schmidt's Mercedes was blazing merrily away. I hoped it wouldn't start a forest fire. My own car was closer to the blaze than I liked.

“Wait here,” I told Schmidt. “I'll turn around and come back and collect you.”

 

By the time I had reported the accident and taken Schmidt to be overhauled by a doctor, night had fallen on the charming mountain village of Bad Steinbach. I was prepared to spend the night—though not by choice—in the Gasthaus Hexenhut if Schmidt's injuries demanded it, but he had come out relatively unscathed—only a bump and a cut on his forehead, which had hit the steering wheel. All those layers of fat had protected his body; he didn't even have a cracked rib. However, he was out of sorts because the doctor had slapped a large-sized Band-Aid on his wound instead of swathing him in bandages like a hero in the movies, so I agreed to stop in Garmisch to replenish his strength, i.e., eat.