Page 46 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)

B ell ate his dinner at a café near the small train station.

It was potato and leek stew that was unsurprisingly watery.

He washed it down with a pale Belgian beer that was remarkably good, if a little sweet for Bell’s American taste.

He chuckled at people’s priorities. Thin gruel all day, every day is fine so long as it’s accompanied by a decent beer.

He assumed the people in France weren’t scrimping on their wine, either.

He considered dumping his luggage in the trash at the station—the attaché of ball bearings weighed the better part of twenty pounds—but decided to keep his salesman’s cover until he was back in the Netherlands.

The train pulled into the station right on time and Bell found a seat in the first-class carriage.

He stowed his two cases on the overhead shelf and got as comfortable as he could.

The sun had set, though there was still light in the sky.

Bell tipped his hat brim low over his eyes and tried to shut down the constant swirl of ideas and insights that kept his brain firing at all hours of the day and night.

An hour after crossing the border back into Germany, Bell roused himself to use the facilities at the end of the passenger car.

He heard loud voices coming from the next car.

It sounded like quite a party. Instinct told him to go back to his seat and sit until the train pulled into his transfer station sometime after dawn, but he was bored and restless.

This trip had been a waste of his time, and his investigation into Karl Rath had cratered before it even started.

He felt he deserved a consolatory drink.

He passed through the windy vestibule between the two cars and entered the next one up the line.

The back half of the carriage was a dining/bar car with white-jacketed waiters and an upright piano against one wall.

The group was mostly men in gray/green high-collared army uniforms, with tall black boots and matching belts around their waists.

Each one was armed, and judging by the length of their holsters they carried the fabled P-08 Luger pistol.

There were a few women in dresses, likely the wives of the handful of civilian men toasting their army officers.

Bell was only a few paces into the car when he knew he’d made a mistake. Not that he had anything to hide, but mingling with high-ranking German soldiers while he was technically in the country as a spy wasn’t his smartest move.

Not knowing if anyone was paying him any attention, he acted like he realized he’d forgotten something, patted his pockets as if to verify it wasn’t there, and was about to turn on his heel and return to his seat.

Bell knew exactly one German, so the odds of being recognized were low, but not precisely zero.

Afterward, when he had a chance to reflect, it wasn’t all that coincidental.

This was the only train running in this part of Germany and it looped westward after leaving Belgium, which made it the logical mode of transportation back home from the castle German intelligence had made their sector HQ.

Deiter Kreisberg was at the far end of the car, effectively screened by the crowd.

He had noted Bell’s entrance, and for reasons his conscious mind didn’t understand at first, he couldn’t take his eyes off the newly arrived civilian.

In the blink of an eye he realized he knew the man, but couldn’t place from where.

It was just as the stranger was about to turn away that the synapsis in the major’s brain produced the spark of recognition.

He almost dismissed the thought as being too ridiculous, but his memory was one of his better assets.

It was the American calling himself Abbott, the man who had escaped the castle and killed scores of men, who had put such a black mark on Kreisberg’s reputation that he would likely never be promoted again.

As it stood, he was lucky not to be court-martialed for the debacle.

Bell had turned and was a step away from opening the car’s connecting door when a German shouted a terse order behind him.

“Stop that man!” Kreisberg bellowed in German while fumbling with the holster flap securing his Luger.

Most people would have frozen in that moment, at least for a second or two. It’s why police yell vocal orders when trying to apprehend a suspect. A quirk of human evolution makes people pause to better process where the threat is coming from before reacting to it.

Not so Isaac Bell. Even before he registered that he recognized Kreisberg’s voice from their meeting in the German castle, he was flinging open the vestibule door as his shoulders hunched to reduce his size as a target.

He was through the door before a quick-acting young lieutenant swiped at his arm, but failed to get a grip.

Bell tore open the door to his car just as the fair-haired soldier started after him in pursuit.

Bell reached his compartment and hooked an arm against the open door so that his momentum threw him into the compartment while slowing him down.

His hand locked around the handle of his attaché case just as the German reached him.

Bell swung the case like an Olympic hammer thrower.

The confines were tight and the target close, but Bell had enough power behind his swing to batter the side of the soldier’s head and drop him unconscious to the compartment floor.

Bell lost seconds looking for the man’s gun, only to find he was one of the few in the bar car not strapped with Germany’s signature 9 millimeter.

Bell looked back down the length of the car to see Deiter Kreisberg bull through the interconnecting vestibule with a savage look on his face.

Unlike the soldier at Bell’s feet, the German officer had a pistol clutched in his right hand.

Bell caught a break as a passenger opened his compartment door to see what the fuss in the hallway was all about.

Kreisberg used his left hand on the man’s face to shove him back into his compartment.

It was a small distraction, a couple of seconds at best, but Bell made the most of it.

He’d unsnapped his case’s clasps and unhooked the inner cover.

Like he was at the lanes near the Knickerbocker Hotel, Bell released the contents of his case in an easy underhand roll.

The companionway was narrow, and so the thousands upon thousands of various-sized ball bearings made a virtual carpet across the entire floor that shifted with each tiny motion that transferred up from the tracks through the train’s wheels.

Bell turned to flee as more men poured into the car to aid their comrade running after who they assumed was a thief, deserter, or spy. Kreisberg fired off a snap shot that shattered the oil lamp sconce just above Bell’s shoulder.

The oil caught fire as it fell to the floor in an incandescent cataract that spread when it hit the floor.

The curtain of flames temporarily shielded Bell from his pursuers, but wouldn’t last long, as there was little easily combustible material to help the fire grow, nothing like curtains or a cloth suitcase.

Behind Bell, the chase turned into farce.

The Germans all wore stiff-soled jackboots that were especially susceptible to slipping on the countless skittering ball bearings.

Kreisberg was the first to go down. His feet came out from under him so suddenly that he didn’t have time to brace for the fall.

He landed flat on his back and his head hit the floor with the sound of a melon falling off a table.

The man right behind him went sideways when he lost his footing and smashed an elbow through one of the train’s windows.

When he tried to right himself, he stepped on more of the elusive little balls and went down yet again.

Unfortunately for him he reached out to steady himself and ripped open his hand on the jagged glass shards still attached to the windowsill.

He screamed and clutched the bloody member to his chest as he fell the rest of the way to the floor.

Behind them, more German officers had their feet kick out from under them.

They often took down the man next to them in a desperate bid to stay upright.

The ball bearings were as effective as a layer of grease spread across the car’s floor.

No sooner did one man get back to his feet, he either stepped on more ball bearings and went down again as the car swayed and lurched or was taken down by a comrade who was trying not to tumble himself.

Bell had already fled the car, raced through the next one, and stopped in the windblown vestibule.

The coupling linking the carriages together was nowhere near as complex or substantial as the ones back in the States.

It didn’t even have safety chains. As he pulled a pin from the decoupling handle, he guessed that with everything being poured into the war effort, old stock was once again rolling on German rail lines.

He looked up just as the coupling opened and the train’s last three cars started to fall away.

He could see shadows rushing down the hallway of the final car.

In seconds he witnessed the hatred on Deiter Kreisberg’s face as he reached the door.

Already thirty feet separated Bell from the slowing compartments.

Too far for the German to jump, but close enough for the Luger he still wielded.

Bell scrambled away as Kreisberg threw open the door. He took aim, but Bell had already vanished into the next carriage. The German still fired a full clip in angered frustration that accomplished nothing.

At the next station, Isaac Bell was the first passenger off the train.

He didn’t recognize the name of the city, but judging by the number of uniformed men milling about, he guessed there was a large army base nearby.

Seeing a string of military staff cars waiting outside led him to further deduce that this was Kreisberg and the other officers’ destination.

There were a few taxis waiting for officers who didn’t rank a government vehicle.

Bell approached the first in line, held up the Doxa pocket watch Marion had provided and said, “Netherlands, ja ? Holland? Dutch?”

The elderly driver got where Bell wanted to go, noted the make of the expensive Swiss watch, and jerked a thumb to the rear passenger compartment while he stepped from the vehicle to crank the engine.

Just as it fired, a commotion started to build in the halls of the glass-roofed station when the stationmaster tallied that the newly arrived train was missing three cars.

Whistles were blown, conductors began shouting, and drivers waiting to take their charges to whatever meeting had been planned looked about with uncertainty.

Bell’s driver looked to the station for a second, turned to look at Bell in a moment of indecision, and finally shrugged as if to say it wasn’t his problem.

Two hours later, Bell passed through the border post into the Netherlands on foot, raising no suspicion from either side as he crossed.

He was able to convert some of his remaining British pounds into guilders and pay for transportation in the back of a truck heading to Amsterdam.

From there it was a quick trip to Rotterdam and then a boat across the English Channel to London.

He’d figured it would take him about eighteen hours in all. He ended up doing it in twelve.