Ring of Fire II(191)

The slide continued, the vehicle now clearly out of control. Janos clenched his teeth, his grip on the armrest as tight as he'd ever gripped a sword hilt or a lance on a battlefield. Under his breath, he began muttering the same prayer that he always muttered when a cavalry charge he was leading neared the enemy and his own death might be upon him, commending his soul to the Virgin's care. "Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum . . ."



Fortunately, the muttered words were covered up by Ferdinand's squeal of glee. Fortunately also, while Ferdinand might be portly, he was young and had good reflexes. He turned the round steering mechanism abruptly—in the direction of the slide, oddly—and within seconds the vehicle had resumed its steady and straightforward course. They were still going at an insane speed, but at least the king now had the automobile back under control. And apparently they'd broken neither a wheel nor an axle.



Ferdinand squealed his glee again. "Ha!" He glanced at Janos, grinning. "I learned that trick from Sanderlin. It's not like a horse-drawn carriage, you know. The worst thing you can do in a skid is apply the brakes. That means restraining the mechanical horses under the hood." His right hand released the control mechanism and his forefinger pointed to the smooth dark-blue metal expanse in front of the window. "That's the hood, by the way. It's hard to believe, but there are more than two hundred mechanical horses in there."



To Drugeth's relief, the king had slowed the vehicle considerably. Ferdinand glanced at him again, still grinning. "Congratulations, Janos. You're the first person who's ridden with me on the track who hasn't said a word. Screamed a word, usually—and in the case of my wife and sister, cursed me directly."



Drugeth tried to return the grin. The result, he suspected, was simply a rictus. "Perhaps they were not cavalry officers." He managed to relinquish his grip on the armrest and slap his chest. "And Hungarian, too! We are a bold breed."



Ferdinand chuckled—and, praise the saints, continued to let the automobile's speed decline. "The first, no. You are the only cavalry officer to ride with me. The second explanation, I'm afraid, doesn't withstand scrutiny. Your uncle Pal Nadasdy has ridden with me, and I can assure you the hisses and screeches of terror he produced were no less profound than any German's."



They were nearing the stablelike building that the king had ordered constructed at the center point of one of the two long stretches on the oval track. What Ferdinand called by the English term "the straightaways," another expression that was unfamiliar to Janos but whose inner logic was clear enough. Three men were emerging from the very large and open double doors, holding some sort of tools and wearing peculiar one-piece garments.



The distinctive clothing went by the English name of "jumpsuits" and would have been enough in themselves to identify the men. But Janos had excellent eyesight, and recognized them even at a distance. The one in the center was Ronald Sanderlin, Jr., the up-timer who'd sold the automobile to the Austrian king and had agreed to move to Vienna to maintain it for him. He'd brought his wife and two children with him, although Janos didn't know their names. Drugeth estimated his age at being somewhere in the mid-thirties, although such estimates were always tricky with Americans. You simply couldn't use the easy gauge of the condition of their teeth.



The older man standing to Sanderlin's left was his uncle Robert, who went by the nickname of "Bob." He was unmarried, and seemed to be extremely taciturn. At least, on admittedly short acquaintance, Janos had never heard the man say a word in either German or English.



The third man was the most interesting of the three, from Drugeth's viewpoint. His name was Andrew Jackson "Sonny" Fortney, Jr. He was also married and had also brought his wife and two children. He was supposed to be a close friend of Ron Sanderlin's—plausible enough, at first glance, since they were approximately the same age—and Sanderlin had insisted that he come along to Vienna as part of the "deal," as he called it. There was even, from the Austrian standpoint, he'd argued, the additional benefit that Fortney had experience working with train steam engines, which was not true of either Sanderlin himself or his uncle.



Sanderlin had been quite stubborn on the matter. Istvan Janoszi, Drugeth's agent, had finally agreed to include the third man in the bargain. But he'd sent a private message to Janos warning him that Fortney might well be a spy for the United States of Europe. The man was known to have been visited on occasion by the USE's fiendishly capable spymaster, Francisco Nasi, for one thing. And, for another, despite Sanderlin's fervent insistence that Sonny Fortney was his "good buddy," Istvan had not been able to uncover any evidence that the two men had spent any time together prior to the summer of this year—which was to say, right about the time the Austrian proposal to the Sanderlins would have come to the attention of the USE's political authorities.