“There is a young man in Budapest named Ferenc Mihalyi. He knows me. As a matter of fact, he helped me across the southern border once.”

“Is that so?” He turned to the doorway. “Erno!” His youngest son, as tall as his father but slim as a reed, stepped quickly into the room. “You know Ferenc Mihalyi in Budapest, do you not? Study this man here, the younger one. Fix his face in your mind. Then go to Budapest and ask Mihalyi if this man is Evan Tanner and what he knows of Evan Tanner.”

Erno fixed clear blue eyes on me. I had the feeling that I was having my picture taken, that after ten seconds he would open his mouth to dispense a perfect Polaroid photograph of me. I, in turn, studied him, while Milan Bulec fidgeted quietly at my side.

“You have a phrase or two that might help identify you to Mihalyi?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes,” I said. “You might tell him that the man who was not my uncle is presently burning in Hell.”

“He will understand what this means?”

“Yes, and he’ll be glad to know it.” The last time I had seen Ferenc, he had helped me smuggle a Slovak Nazi to safety, a task he had not at all relished. He would be pleased to know that my nonuncle had joined his ancestors.

“Repeat, please.”

I did.

“Erno, repeat what this man has said and fix it in your memory.”

Erno got the message right, word for word, and asked his father if that would be all. It would, Kodaly said, and he should now drive to Budapest and return as speedily as possible.

Erno left us. Milan asked me, in Slovenian, how long it would be before we could get away from these crazy people. I told him I had no idea. Could I speed the process? I told him I doubted it.

“Tanner? While Erno goes to Budapest, you and your companion are my guests. In a sense you are my prisoners as well. My sons and I are armed, you see. It would be unwise of you to attempt to leave this house.”

“I had no such intention.”

“Very good. Meanwhile, there is food, there is drink, there are beds if you are tired. Books if you wish to read. Do you play chess? Or your friend?”

I play but not very well. Milan said that he played, and Kodaly asked if he would care to have a game. I watched with savage delight while Milan beat him six games straight.

Erno Kodaly had a fast car that he evidently enjoyed driving at an excessive rate of speed. He was back in time for dinner, he had seen Ferenc, and all was well.

“This man is definitely Evan Tanner,” he reported to his father, “and Evan Tanner is definitely to be trusted and assisted.”

“I thought as much,” Kodaly said. He turned to me. “Of course you will not hold against me the fact that I am by nature a cautious man.”

“Certainly not.”

“Then let us have dinner, and in an hour’s time you will be in Czechoslovakia.”

“Papa, there’s more,” Erno approached me. “Ferenc introduced me to another man who said that he knew you, that you had met. His name is Lajos.” I remembered a tall man with a broad forehead and a neatly trimmed gray moustache, an official in the Ministry of Transportation and Communication. “Lajos told me to give you this,” he added, handing me a thick manila folder. “He said that you might know what it is and what to do with it.”

I took the folder, mystified. I opened it. It was crammed full of a variety of official-looking documents. I leafed through them. They were all in Chinese.

“These are Chinese,” I said cleverly.

“That is what Lajos suspected.”

“Well, score one for Lajos. What are they?”

“He does not know.”

“Where did he get them? And when?”

“He did not say. He thought perhaps you could read them. He thought perhaps they might be important.”

“They might be very important,” I said. “Or they might be old laundry tickets.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing.” I can speak enough Chinese to know when I’m being insulted by a waiter or a laundryman but not much more than that. And I’ve never taken the time to learn to read it. I’ve always had the feeling that no one can really read Chinese, not even the Chinese people themselves. I waded through this miasma of documents and wondered just how Lajos had acquired this particular albatross and why he had felt compelled to drape it around my particular neck.

I wanted to chuck the whole mess into the fireplace, but that wouldn’t do. It might be important. Things do tend to happen for a reason, and evidently one of my hitherto unsuspected roles in the game of life was to carry this little bundle of chicken tracks from Point A to Point B.

And I had wanted to travel light…

“Can you read it, Mr. Tanner?”

“No.”

“Is it important?”

“I don’t know.”

“What will you do with it all?”

“I don’t know that either.” I hefted the file. “There’s so damned much of it.” I got to my feet. “You’ll have to help me, Milan. Sandor, is there a room we can use for a few moments? And I will need a scissors and a few yards of oilcloth.”

An hour or so later we crossed the border into Czechoslovakia in the false bottom of a half-ton panel truck. I had never before known that panel trucks could have false bottoms. Suitcases, yes. But panel trucks?

This one – Kodaly’s own – did. It was a sort of panlike arrangement that fitted between the bottom of the trunk compartment (or whatever the hell they call that part of the trunk where you put things) and the axles and such below. It was not quite as deep as a coffin and considerably less comfortable. In it Milan Butec and I rode in silence. There was no point in talking – one couldn’t hear anything but the road noise, which was quite deafening. There wasn’t enough room to breathe deeply or enough air to make it worthwhile anyway. There was no room to move around, or to scratch oneself, or to do much of anything, really, but lie there and wait for the interminable ride to terminate. The truck started, the truck stopped, the truck started, the truck stopped, the truck started, the truck stopped, and finally Sandor Kodaly let us out of that horrible dark hole.

I got out at once and did all the things I had been unable to do – yawned, took deep breaths, jumped around, scratched myself, and otherwise assured myself that I was still able to move. I looked for Milan and saw that he was still lying there in the false bottom of the truck. For a horrible moment I thought he had quietly and uncomplainingly died, but then I realized that he was simply too stiff to move by himself. I helped him out, and he moved very slowly and stiffly, like Robby the Robot, until at last his blood began circulating again and his muscles remembered their proper functions.

I asked Sandor where we were.

“Near Medzilaborce.”

I tried to remember where Medzilaborce was.

“But that’s in the north,” I said. “That’s just a few miles from the Polish border.”

“Perhaps fifteen kilometers.”

“I thought you were only taking us across the border.”

The fine, sensitive features relaxed in a smile. “So I drive an extra hour here and an extra hour back. I kept you several hours at my house while I checked on you. That was an indignity, albeit a necessary one. But perhaps I can even the tally by helping you a little further along on your journey, you see? Now you do not have all of Czechoslovakia to cross. An hour’s walk, and you will be in Poland.”

I started to say something, something appropriately grateful, but all at once Milan shouldered me aside and stepped in front of Kodaly.

“You drove us an extra hour,” he said.

“It was my pleasure-”

“You left us an extra unnecessary hour in that bouncing, dreary, cramped metal coffin. We were already across the border, we were already in Czechoslovakia, but you left us in there for an hour of bouncing and no breathing and no moving and-”

“It was uncomfortable?” Kodaly seemed honestly puzzled. “I have never been in there, it never occurred to me. It was bad for you in there? And to think, once we crossed the border, you could have been riding in the truck with me. But it never even occurred to me…”