by John Lawton
“I’m a ratepayer.”
“More bollocks.”
“I’m a voter. I even vote for you.”
“The least you could do.”
“And I would appear to be Her Majesty’s new ambassador to Prague.”
Rod spilled his coffee, most down his dressing gown, some spotting a government paper on rising drug use among the under-twenty-ones.
“You changed your mind?”
“Let’s just say I got my arm and several other more vital organs twisted overnight.”
“Ah. Anna wants it, eh?”
“In spades. Don’t ask me why.”
“I must buy her flowers.”
“Don’t even think of it.”
“Then we have to move quickly. You’d better come up to town with me in the morning. There’ll be no time for any formalities—”
“You mean I don’t get to meet the queen? No ermine, no coronet?”
“Not just yet you don’t. We need to get you on a plane to Prague by Wednesday or Thursday. I can’t tell you how tricky things are going to be in Czechoslovakia. You’ll have to be briefed. Intelligence and all that.”
“You mean spook stuff?”
“Of course. They’ll want you in the picture. We’ll get a bloke from the FO or Six to talk to you in the afternoon. They’ll give you the latest status report and tell you what we have in the field.”
“Field?”
“We have people in Czechoslovakia. We’re not sure how safe they are, but this is the wrong time to pull them out and most certainly the wrong time to send anyone else in. Think of it as a war zone—no names, no pack drill and so on.”
“No wives?”
“Eh?”
“Anna wants it. I told you. She has every intention of coming out to Prague.”
“Oh bloody hell. Not a good idea. Gwyneth Brynmawr will be on her way back within forty-eight hours. It’s no place for a woman.”
“Really? I thought they tore up their petticoats to make bandages and reloaded the Winchesters.”
“Do take this seriously, Freddie. I say again—no place for a woman.”
“Fine. You be the one to tell her that.”
§154
Anna was musing. Togs off. Nightie on. Musing.
“Is Troy the right title? Shouldn’t we have something with a place name in it? You know, like ‘Oxford and Asquith’ or ‘Baldwin of Bewdley’?
Or ‘the MacGregor of MacGregor’ … but, for all the years I was married to a Scotsman I never knew what that meant.”
The prospect of impending ennoblement had brought out the snob in Anna. He knew how to kill that.
“Well … I had thought about using my mother’s maiden name.”
“And what was that?”
“Chekhov-Tsvetayeva.”
“Next.”
Try again.
“But if you’re really keen on a geographical connection, I believe the title of Lord Scunthorpe is vacant.”
Troy thought the name of a grim, northern steel town somewhere in Lincolnshire or Yorkshire, or anywhere north of the Trent, might be the last word, but all she said was, “I’ve never been to Scunthorpe. Somehow the urge passed me by.”
“Nor have I. How about something completely different? In keeping with the innovations of the new classless age Wilson keeps banging on about.”
“Freddie, you no more believe that load of old bollocks than Rod does.”
“How about Lord and Lady Gloucester-Old-Spot? After the pig. Very chic, very now. Very down-to-earth.”
“You’ll be telling me next that it’s ‘funky,’ whatever ‘funky’ means. However … fuck off.”
“Fine. Lady Troy it is then. Speaking of which, Her Majesty’s Government—”
“You mean Rod.”
“—would prefer it if Lady Troy were not to accompany her husband to Prague.”
“I refer the honourable member to my previous answer. Fuck off. There’s no way I’ll agree to be left out of this.”
“Good. Start packing in the morning.”
“What was that line of Sir Richard Burton’s … when he was ambassador to God-knows-where? You know, the one everyone quotes.”
“Pay, pack and follow.”
“Ah … then you pay, I’ll pack and no one follows.”
§155
After lunch on the Monday, Rod introduced Troy to the minister of state at the Foreign Office with particular responsibility for Intelligence (Central Europe)—one Eliot Spicer, a rising star of the Labour Party and a junior minister after less than five years an MP.
They met in Rod’s office, the protocol being that Rod was by far the senior and did not go to junior minister’s offices but summoned junior ministers to his. And protocol seemed to matter more than Intelligence. Nothing Spicer said to him sounded in any way like an Intelligence briefing.
“Of course, we have agents in the field.”
“I know. Rod told me.”
“And it’s terribly important that we know what the Russians are up to. But I think it wiser if their immediate control in Prague briefs you.”
Troy thought this a bit of ducking and diving, although more likely to be sheer ignorance. Spicer had come in carrying one of the ubiquitous civil service buff folders, and seemed obliged to consult it from time to time, as though he didn’t really know his subject.
“Who would that be?”
A flip of the folder for a fact that should have been on the tip of his tongue.
“Er … First Secretary … half a mo’. Chap’s name should be in here somewhere.”
Half a dozen sheets of paper slipped to the floor. Spicer gathered them up, turned a couple this way and that.
“I … er seem …”
“To have lost it?”
“Er …”
“But whoever this chap is, he’s MI6?”
“Er …”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Quite … he’s responsible for all liaison with field agents, and more importantly he handles the ambassador’s liaison with the government in Bonn.”
“Why is that?”
Rod stuck his two pennorth in.
“West Germany doesn’t officially recognise the government of Czechoslovakia. Our man in Prague—that’s you, Freddie—acts on their behalf.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Spicer added. “If there are problems they’ll be very much Czech problems. And, of course, your biggest problem is going to be refugees.”
Of course, it would be. “Of course” was a phrase to render the obvious more obvious if that were at all possible.
“Of course … all this has caught us on the hop, to say the least. They’re already banging on the embassy door, as it were. But we can’t take the average Czech refugee. Simply don’t have the facility, but if a prominente, a politico, comes hammering … well, then we have to act. We have to consider political asylum … and the er … validity of the application.”
This startled Troy.
“Are you saying there are circumstances in which we would hand a known dissident back to the Russians?”
“I rather think I am. Can’t house them all, can we? We’d have to put up tents on the embassy lawn.”
Spicer smiled complacently at his own tasteless joke. Troy made a mental note to buy tents.
“There’s only so much we can do,” Spicer continued, “Often as not it will be a matter of finding the right way of saying no.”
“So … I’m just there to fill a void, am I? A powerless puppet dressed in red, white and blue?”
A deep intake of breath on Spicer’s part. A look of increasing exasperation.
“I can’t tell you how important it is that we fly the flag.”
“Why?” said Troy.
This flustered Spicer.
“Well. Isn’t it obvious? Democrats … our side, as it were … ousted by the Warsaw Pact … Russians with snow on their boots, that sort of thing. We must demonstrate our position, ou
r support … publicly.”
“Publicly?”
“Of course.”
“Because in private you’re getting ready to dump them.”
“Freddie!”
Troy ignored his brother.
“Don’t tell me,” he said to Spicer. “It’s a small, faraway country of which we know nothing.”
“I say, that’s a bit bloody steep. You’re comparing the PM to Chamberlain.”
Politics is a world of rapid change, but Rod performed the quickest volte-face Troy had ever seen with, “He’s right though, isn’t he? Harold will fly the flag and then leave the Czechs in Soviet hell.”
Spicer said nothing. Did he sigh? Troy could not be certain. At last he said, “Rod, far be it from me to question your loyalty, but cabinet is a collective—”
Troy cut him short.
“Mr. Spicer. If you want me to do this, then shut up now and stop spoon-feeding me the party line like yesterday’s cold rice pudding. Or you know where you can shove your peerage and your ambassador’s job.”
Troy knew he should quit now, and go back to his farm, his fat pig, his fat man and his buxom wife. But he didn’t.
“We will, as you put it, fly the flag. Tell me. What is the amabassador’s car in Prague?”
Spicer looked puzzled, flicked through his folder for a few seconds.
“I believe it’s a Humber Imperial. Most of our embassies have Humbers now. Rolls-Royces were beginning to look a bit too old-school, wrong image … the empire and all that. Despite the name, the Imperial’s the right image for the New Britain. After all, we could hardly put an ambassador in a mini, trendy though they are.”
Troy winced inwardly at both “New Britain” and “trendy.”
“When I was in Berlin in ’48, General Robertson was in charge of the British sector. He had a vintage Rolls, with a little flagpole on the bonnet, flying a little union jack. Have it shipped to Prague, would you? Just now it’s the right image.”
§156
Troy was still with Rod when Spicer’s PPS phoned to say that the Rolls was still in West Berlin and had been mothballed since the wall went up in 1961, but in the absence of any instruction to the contrary had been garaged, and serviced on a regular basis. And yes, it would be waiting for him in Prague.
“Wanted to see how far you could push him, is that it?” said Rod.
“Something like that. Ignorant little prick. Y’know, I don’t know how you stick these people.”
“I compromise. Something you don’t know how to do.”
“Do you want me to compromise in Prague?”
“You’ll be a diplomat. Diplomacy is all compromise. You’ll have to learn how to do it. And I have every confidence you will.”
“But whenever Wilson wants to speak to the Russian command in Czechoslovakia, I shall be called upon to speak the Wilson line to whichever Russian is running the country … knowing we’ll give in to pretty well anything. That’s not a compromise. That’s a capitulation.”
“You can do some good here, Freddie. Try to see it that way.”
§157
Fly the flag.
Much as Troy agreed with Dr. Johnson on the definition of a patriot, he was going to fly the flag and three days later managed to do so twice within a matter of hours.
A few telephone calls on the Tuesday and he had secured the use of a Lockheed Jetstar, painted red, white and blue, with a large union jack adorning the tail fin.
“God almighty Freddie! The treasury will have a fit!”
“Have this one on me, Rod.”
“A private jet? What are you thinking of?”
“Actually I was thinking of Goldfinger and Pussy Galore. And perhaps I was also thinking of Anna, whom you have corrupted completely by making me take this fucking job. How am I gonna keep her down on the farm? Et cetera … so she might as well have her ladyship, her private jet and her Rolls-Royce. If she ever floats down to Earth I’ll be sure to let you know.”
When the plane touched down at Ruzyne on the Thursday, a second union jack was waiting for him, not, as his memory told him, flying from the bonnet but from a tiny flagpole on the roof of a 1935 Rolls-Royce Phantom II. A uniformed chauffeur was at the wheel, and a tall, dark-haired young woman in a Biba-but-businesslike twin set was standing by the open rear door. Both plane and car had been directed to a far corner of the airport—cordoned off from the main buildings by half a dozen jeeps. At the perimeter as many tanks sat idly by, aiming, he hoped, at nothing, and beyond them a couple of huge Antonov troop transports.
“Ambassador, I’m Janis Bell—SIS station head.”
A northern accent. Not unlike Wilson’s own. Not the received pronunciation he’d been expecting.
She shook his hand like a bloke.
“Nice touch,” she said, looking up at the plane.
“Alas,” said Troy gazing round at the arabia deserta of the airport. “No one appears to be looking.”
“Oh, but they are. They most certainly are. I think you’ve made your point.”
Watchers one cannot see? thought Troy. Well, he’d just have to get used to that.
Troy introduced Anna, who, as she settled into the back seat, whispered, “She’s quite a looker. Do remember to keep it in your pants, Troy.”
Troy ignored this.
Janis Bell asked for their passports and took the seat next to the chauffeur.
“You can talk freely, Ambassador. We know the car isn’t bugged. Can’t be wholly certain about any room in the embassy, though.”
He’d have to get used to that too, although quite how eluded him for the time being.
It took only seconds and the merest scrutiny for the men at the barrier to let them through.
“If that seemed too easy,” Janis Bell said, reading Troy’s mind and turning in her seat, “it’s just that they’ll not want to rock the boat quite so soon. There’ll be a period of good will if only to mask what they’re really up to. Ordinarily a new ambassador would present his credentials to the president, but, almost needless to say, you won’t be doing that just yet. President Svoboda has had his hands full this last week—he flew to Moscow on Friday to try and get Dubček released. I’ve even heard that Dubček was led away in handcuffs, but he was returned to Prague on Tuesday. I’d hardly term it ‘released.’ He’s just a prisoner here rather than in Moscow.”
“Meanwhile,” Troy said, “the Pope showed him the instruments of torture.”
“Exactly,” said Janis.
“What?” said Anna.
“Galileo … recanting.”
“Oh.”
“Not,” Janis added, “that anyone has recanted anything yet. And from what I gather there was torture of a kind. The usual Russian thing … sleep deprivation … no washing … they looked dreadful, all of them. As though they lived in their suits rather than just wore them.”
§158
As they reached central Prague, the streets were lined with tanks, parked as neatly as commuter cars, nose to tail, thirty or forty in a line. Some looked closed, lids down, locked up like the garden shed, and those that weren’t were surrounded by protesting Czechs.
Troy wound down the window as the car slowed to a crawl.
He couldn’t understand a word of Czech, but the meaning was clear.
“Vraťte se do Ruska!”
Go back to Russia!
And the reply even clearer.
“Пошёл на хуй!”
Fuck off!
One or two heads turned at the sight of a Rolls-Royce, but more, far more, were focussed on the tanks and the half dozen unfortunate Russian Ivans set to guard them.
Janis Bell said, “As I’m sure you can see, the heat’s gone out if it. The Russians have had a week to work out where they are.”
“What?”
“Oh, some of them had no idea what country they’d invaded. Whole battalions who thought they were in East Germany or Austria.”
The car stopped, a crowd of protestors sur
ging across the street.
Troy tapped on the glass to attract the driver’s attention.
“I think I’ll walk from here.”
Janis Bell turned in her seat.
“What? Sorry … I mean why? Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
The car turned into a side street and stopped.
Anna said, “I wouldn’t bother, Miss Bell. He’s stubborn as a mule.”
“You might get lost.”
“No, I won’t,” said Troy. “And it’s the last chance I’ll get to see for myself. By lunchtime tomorrow your people or their people or both will be watching. So if you don’t mind I’ll take this opportunity to walk about as an anonymous citizen.”
He got out of the car. The chauffeur was already at the boot.
For some reason there were bullet holes in it.
Troy did not ask.
The chauffeur opened the boot, pulled the outer lid down and took out a flat leather cap and a beaten-up leather jacket.
“I keep these in case I want to go into a bar and not look like an Englishman, a chauffeur or an embassy official. You might find them handy, sir. I don’t know what it is about Czechs and leather caps … but they all seem to have them. And Miss Bell’s right, you might get lost. So here’s a street map for you. The embassy’s on the other side of the river. Take any bridge facing roughly west and you’ll get there eventually.”
Troy slipped on the jacket, pulled the cap down on his forehead.
“Perfect, sir. You look just like a Czech.”
And Troy thought, “Thank God I don’t look like a Russian.”
“Thank you, Mr. er …”
“Just Broadbent, sir. Tony Broadbent. No ‘Mr.’ necessary.”
§159
Troy had lived through war. Never through invasion. He’d seen London bombed by the Luftwaffe, and on two occasions had been far too close for comfort. In the Blitz, he’d been in an East End synagogue that had received a direct hit. It had taken an age to dig him out and when he emerged it looked to him as though there was nothing left of London. In the Little Blitz of ’44 he’d been on the Underground when a bomb fell through the air shaft. He’d no idea why he had survived. It was against all logic. He should have suffocated. Everyone else had.