The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [89]
There was a wooden fence running alongside it, and Miller and I waited while Fischer found the damaged section which he had chosen on an earlier reconnaissance as the best way through. It was about thirty yards to the right. We clambered over some broken boards to the side of the embankment and walked along the drainage ditch. Five minutes later it was possible to see the big wall again. We walked on another hundred feet, and there the embankment ended. If we were to go any farther we had to climb up and walk along the track over the bridge.
Fischer stopped and turned. “What is the time?”
“Ten-fifteen,” said Miller. “Where is the guard post exactly?”
“On the other side of the bridge, a hundred meters from here.” He turned to me. “Now listen. A train will be coming soon. When it starts to cross the bridge we go to the top of the embankment. As soon as the last wagon has passed us, we start to follow along the tracks at walking speed. When we have gone about twenty meters we will hear a loud explosion ahead. Then we start to run, but not too fast. Have you ever smelled tear gas?”
“Yes.”
“You will smell it again, but do not worry. It is our tear gas, not theirs. And there will be smoke, too, also ours. The train will have just gone through. The guard post will not know what is happening. They may think the train has blown up. It does not matter. The tear gas and the smoke will make it hard for them to think, or see. If any of them tries too hard he will get a bullet or a plastic grenade to discourage him. In the confusion we run through. And then, as I told you, the Volkswagen will be waiting for us.”
“What about our confusion?” I said. “How do we see where to go with tear gas and smoke?”
Miller nodded. “I asked the same question, my friend. We should have had respirators. But Karl’s argument was good. With so much to conceal, how could we carry respirators, too?”
“I made the experiment,” Fischer said defensively. “I tried to take a respirator in. They stopped me because of the bulge in my pocket. They thought I was trying to smuggle a camera into the Seraglio. They are strict about that, as you know. It was embarrassing.”
“How did you explain it?” Miller asked.
“I said I was a doctor.”
“They believed you?”
“If you say you are a doctor, people will believe anything. We need not worry where to go. We simply follow the rail tracks and leave everything to Karl. We have done our work for this evening. Now we only wait for our train.”
We waited twenty-five minutes.
It was a mixed train, Fischer said, carrying newspapers, mail-bags, local freight, and a few passengers to the small towns between Istanbul and Pehlivanköy. It chuffed towards the bridge as noisily and importantly as the Orient Express. There was a slight offshore breeze blowing. The thick black smoke from the engine rolled along our side of the embankment and engulfed us.
“Los! Vorwärts!” Fischer shouted, and, coughing and spluttering, Miller and I scrambled after him up the embankment.
For half a minute we stayed there with the train wheels clacking over a joint in the rails about three feet from our noses. Then, the last axle box went by.
“Los!” said Fischer again, and we were stumbling along the side of the tracks between the jutting ends of the ties and the parapet of the bridge.
We must have been about seventy yards from the guard post when the concussion grenade went off, and even at that distance the detonation made my ears sing. In front of me Fischer began to trot. Almost immediately he tripped over something and fell. I heard him gasp with pain as his left arm hit a tie; but he was on his feet and moving again before I got to him.
There was shouting ahead now, and I could hear the plunking, sizzling noise of tear-gas and smoke grenades detonating. The train smoke was still billowing around, but a moment later I got the first whiff of chemical smoke. Three yards more and I saw the white bandage on Fischer’s right hand go to his forehead. Then, I was in the tear gas,