Captive Witness (12 page)

With the preliminary talk behind them, Nancy cleared a large table, spread out a map of the border area, and began marking the points gleaned from the small map found in the wheelchair. She circled the general border area and with Mr. Popov’s aid, located the exact spot where the children and Mrs. Popov were hidden.

“It’s so close to the border,” the man said, “that we thought of making a run for it in the dark, but that would be too much for the smaller children. We’d be sure to make some noise and be discovered in no time.”

His listeners fell silent as they considered alternatives. Finally, Nancy tapped her finger on the map and spoke musingly.

“I think I know how to make this whole thing work. Ned, you organize the gang to buy the things I’m going to write down on this list. Then give me some time to make a few phones calls from the booth in the lobby so they can’t be traced. We’ll meet here in this room at eight o’clock tonight. In the meantime, Mr. Popov, you go to bed and get some sleep.”

Nancy’s friends read her shopping list with amusement and numerous wisecracks. The list included the following items:

“Sounds wonderful, but where am I going to find a baseball hat in Vienna?” Dave asked.

“And the titian wig,” George said. “Are we going into our sister routine, Nancy?”

“I like the eleven inner tubes and the duck calls.” Ned laughed. “Can you fathom what’ll happen to me when I stroll into an Austrian department store and ask for eleven inner tubes, two duck calls, and six pairs of sunglasses? They’ll haul out a straitjacket!”

“I’ll take full responsibility if they do!” Nancy giggled.

“You will?” Ned smiled.

“Of course. Now hurry and try to be back here by eight P.M. for a briefing.”

As the group started to leave, Ned halted them. “Hold it a minute. Nancy, come here. Look, quick!”

Nancy ran to the window and peered through the draperies. Below, parked on the other side of the street, was a large, light-blue car.

The girl stared inquiringly at Ned. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“In the car,” Ned said. “In the passenger seat in front. Do you see him?”

Nancy glanced again. This time she felt a lump in her throat. Herr Gutterman, dressed in a suit that matched the color of the car, had curled his lips into an evil smile and was blowing kisses toward the window.

“Well,” Nancy said, “it’s Herr Gutterman, but what else is new except the pretty paint job on his sedan?”

“He obviously doesn’t care if we see him,” Ned said.

“No,” Nancy replied, “but that’s because he must have a lot of his people staked out around here ready to trail us wherever we go. You realize what that means.”

“As we go shopping, we’ll have to break up. Each of us will have to head for a different store,” Ned said.

“Try to lose them and don’t let them see what you’re buying. That’s important.”

The group split up as directed and Nancy retired to the lobby phone booth with a handful of coins. In quick succession, she called her father, the River Heights Footlighters Club, which was a little theater group, and finally, an old friend of Mr. Drew’s, a prominent and wealthy Austrian.

When Nancy emerged from the booth almost an hour later, she was amused by the sight of a somewhat nervous man with square features and thinning hair who pretended to read a newspaper. It took little imagination to see that he was one of Gutterman’s henchmen.

Unable to resist the temptation to create some mischief for her enemy’s benefit, Nancy ducked back into the phone booth where she hunted for odd telephone numbers. They included the Animal Rescue League, an insect exterminating company, the backstage number of the Opera House, a plumbing supply store, and finally some random names and numbers picked from the directory.

She wrote them down with great care, then crumpled the paper and stuffed it into the top of her bag, allowing it to protrude. Then she stepped out of the phone booth, and walking fast, brushed against a palm branch which caused the paper to rustle to the floor.

As she reached the elevator, she took out her makeup mirror and, pretending to arrange her hair, watched the man with the square face quickly snatch up the paper.

Nancy smiled. That would keep him occupied for most of the afternoon. He’ll drive himself crazy looking for the significance behind that jumble of totally meaningless numbers, she mused.

By eight o’clock, most of the group had reassembled in Dr. Bagley’s room and Mr. Popov was emerging from a nap, shower, and shave. The luxury of wearing clean clothes added a flush of happiness to his face.

The last of the team to arrive was Bess. She was gasping for breath and dragging a large box. “Never,” she said, exaggerating her breathing for comic effect, “never send a girl out to buy an 1880 ball gown in Vienna. Do you know how much it cost? Even to rent? Do you know how much it weighs? I’ll tell you. Five hundred pounds, minimum. Feel this thing.”

She heaved the large box up on the bed and Nancy, opening the package, held up a long, beautiful red gown.

“Perfect,” she said. “Beautiful. Well done, Private Marvin. We might promote you to corporal for this. ”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Bess said, laughing, “unless you assign a captain to go with me next time to carry the heavy stuff.”

Nancy ran a check on all the items she had requested. With only a few substitutions, her friends had produced everything.

“All right, Nancy,” Dr. Bagley said, “we’ve followed your instructions. Now we’re eager to hear what you have in mind. Obviously, water is involved. But how?”

“Let’s take it step by step,” Nancy said. “Professor Bagley will lead the first platoon north, here.” She pointed to the map. “This is the Czech border, the place the children are supposed to cross according to the phony documents the enemy has already seen.”

“So you think that’s where Gutterman’s gang will be,” Ned said.

“I’d like to believe that, but they may not be there. After all, they were trying awfully hard to get a look at Eric’s wheelchair also. They were probably the ones who tried to switch his wheelchair for another one. Who knows what they know by now.”

“My group is the decoy, right?” Dr. Bagley said.

“Yes. You will leave in the big rental car pretty early and head for the Czech border, the point I still have my finger on. Don’t hurry, though. I think it would be fun if you were to drive all over Vienna first. Do some sightseeing, visit the Vienna Woods, have lunch, and generally drive Gutterman’s men crazy. They will never be able to figure out what you’re doing. Sound reasonable?”

“Uh-huh,” Ned said. “But what about the wig, the inner tubes, and the makeup?”

“Aha,” Nancy cried, “that’s still a secret. Now, the new wheelchair will be occupied not by Mr. Nagy, but by Mr. Eddleton.”

“Me?” Burt gulped. “Why me?”

Nancy grinned. “You’re about the same build, almost the same height. You don’t really look alike, but you have the same coloring. Now, why don’t you try out the chair for size and comfort?”

She led the boy to it, stuck sunglasses on him as well as the baseball cap. Burt smiled broadly.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Just like a revised edition of Eric Nagy!”

“Ah, please don’t praise me too much or it will go to my head.”

“So long as you don’t lose it,” George muttered under her breath.

“Now, George.” Nancy smiled. “For one day only, you will be Nancy Drew!”

“Not the famous detective?” Her friend gasped in pretended surprise.

“You will wear this titian wig after we shape it a little bit to look more like my hair.”

“Do I get to wear sunglasses, too?” George inquired.

“Of course, and this beautiful, floppy straw hat that will hide most of your face.”

“Fantastic,” George replied. “And, of course, I will also get to wear your gorgeous white dress. But suppose it doesn’t turn out to be a sunny day? Suppose we go mushing up to the Czechoslovakian border and it’s raining cats and dogs, and you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. Do we still keep wearing our sunglasses?”

“Mm-hmm. Besides, it won’t matter very much,” Nancy said, tapping George’s head affectionately, “because no one will see you that close up. ”

“Only when Nancy and I get cornered by a Doberman pinscher,” Ned said.

“And Mr. Nickerson,” Nancy continued. “How would you like to accompany George in your most attentive manner. You know, stick close and block the enemy’s view as much as possible?”

“Oh, so I get to wear sunglasses, too,” the boy responded.

“Now let’s get down to serious business,” Nancy said.

“What about us?” Bess asked, referring to herself and Dave. “Do we turn into wallflowers for the day?”

“Most definitely not. You go along with the gang to the Czech border. Just be your own sweet selves. No disguises necessary.”

“Oh, phooey,” Bess said, “and I wanted to dress up.”

“Why don’t you give her an inner tube and some sunglasses, Nancy?” Ned laughed, prompting Nancy to throw a wad of paper at him.

“I’d like to remind everyone that another person will be making the trip to the Czech border and unless our mission succeeds, he won’t be coming back. ”

“You’re speaking of Kurt Kessler,” Eric said softly.

A hush fell over the group and all joking stopped.

“We have to think of him and those kids at all times,” Nancy said. “There’s a heavy responsibility weighing on all of us.”

“You’ve explained the decoy operation adequately,” the professor said. “But what about the actual rescue of the children? No one has been left unaccounted for except you and Eric.”

“And we’re the ones who will have to get the children out,” Nancy declared.

“Nancy,” Ned said with alarm in his voice, “you can’t do this by yourselves.You’ll need help.”

Of course, it wasn’t only the awareness of impending danger that had prompted the remark. Ned was also cognizant of his handsome young rival who would be working closely with Nancy.

“On the contrary,” she said, “in order to rescue those kids we need the least number of people involved. The less noise we make, the less visible we are, the more successful we’ll be.”

Ned swung his head back, hurling a sigh in Eric’s direction.

“For the decoy operation,” Nancy said, “we can hold a big parade, send lots of people to attract attention. So long as Gutterman thinks that Dr. Bagley, Eric, you, and I are up there, he’ll be completely fooled.”

“I hope so,” Ned said. “But why Eric? Why not me?”

Nancy walked over to him, laying her hand gently on his arm. Then, quietly and sweetly, enunciating each word, she said, “Because Eric can speak Hungarian, German, Czech, Russian, Polish, and even some Romanian. That’s why.”

Hesitating a moment, Ned smiled at Eric. “Hey, good luck. I do and don’t envy you. ”

Eric merely smiled, allowing Dr. Bagley to resume questioning. “Well, we know who is going to try to bring the children out. I’d still like to know how.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Nancy said.

“Can you beat that?” Bess put in. “She forgot!”

“Gather round the map,” the young detective said. “This,” she went on, indicating a long body of water slightly pinched in the middle, “is a lake or See as the Austrians call it. It separates Hungary from Austria at this point, and the boundary line runs right through the middle. It is a popular resort area for the Austrians, though the Hungarian end of the lake is not so well developed and has miles of marshes and wetlands. This is the westernmost part of the famous steppe lakes that dot the Hungarian plain.”

Nancy went on to explain that an oddity of this body of water, called the Neusiedler See, was its extreme shallowness, much like the lakes of Florida, with a depth averaging only four feet and with few points deeper than six feet.

“How did you find all of this out?” Ned asked.

“From an Austrian friend of my father’s whom I called. He’s well acquainted with the area and helped me make certain necessary arrangements there. ”

Nancy did not reveal what they were, however. “Anyway,” she said, “we’ll be able to slip into the water on the Austrian side, walk and wade south across the border, and come up on the shore within a few hundred yards of where the children and the Popovs are hiding. That’s when we’ll use the duck calls to communicate with them.”

“That’s fine,” Professor Bagley said. “Ingenious, Nancy, really. But some of these children are only six years old. We don’t know how many of them can swim. How—oh, of course, the inner tubes.”

“That’s right,” Nancy said. “We’ll blow them up in the water using the compressed-air tank, just before we cross the border.”

“Why inner tubes?” Bess asked. “Why not the kind of life jackets they have on airplanes?”

“Because they’re bright yellow and it would be a job dying them black. Those jackets are made to be seen. Black inner tubes seemed to be the only answer for us. We’ll lash them together and go wading and paddling into Hungary.”