Judgment on Deltchev

by Eric Ambler

  Those of the unfortunate Agrarian Socialists who had the wit to see that, whatever they might now say in private about Deltchev, they could not hope to win without him as a figurehead were in the majority; but they were terribly hampered by a considerable and vindictive minority whose only concern now seemed to be to oppose and revile him in public. The People’s Party, while taking full advantage of this mistake, took care not to make it themselves. By referring to Deltchev patronizingly but respectfully as a kind of elder statesman (he was in fact only sixty then) they managed to convey the impression that he was in a state of derelict senility, which could excuse his continued association with the Agrarian Socialists. Also, by securing the postponement of the elections until the early summer, they gave themselves time to prepare a coup d’etat that anticipated publication of the election results by a few hours. In the event, it was almost unnecessary. Thanks to Deltchev, they very nearly came into power by constitutional means.

  His response to these events was at first curiously passive. True, he protested against the coup d’etat, but rather formally, as if expressing an appropriate but not heartfelt sentiment; and in the chamber his attacks upon the new government had about them the studied moderation of a fencing master with a new pupil. For a long time he seemed unaware or unwilling to be aware of the government’s quick, wary moves to make themselves secure. Soon the anti-Deltchev faction within his own party began to find people ready at last to listen to their tale of a great fortune deposited abroad in Deltchev’s name the day after his election statement. Even among the general public he seemed to be losing popularity. It was understandable that the government’s supporters should have come to think of Deltchev almost as one of themselves.

  Then came the incident of ‘Deltchev’s football match’.

  The occasion was the official opening of a sports stadium. It had been completed in 1940 and immediately requisitioned for use by the German Army as a transit camp. Later the Red Army had used it as a garrison headquarters. Its return was a gesture of Soviet goodwill, which the new government had dutifully decided to celebrate with as much publicity as possible. It was probably the presence of Western diplomatic representatives at the ceremony that determined that Deltchev as leader of the ‘opposition’ should be asked to speak.

  He began, deceptively, with a tribute to the Red Army and expressions of his party’s recognition of the generous motives that had prompted the early return of the stadium. He hoped that in the near future it would be the scene of a memorable football match with the local Red Army team.

  Then, during the mild applause that greeted this suggestion, he moved nearer to the microphones. But this time he took no manuscript from his pocket. He knew exactly what he wanted to say.

  ‘But meanwhile, my countrymen, there is another, more deadly battle for us to fight — the battle for freedom within the state.’

  He paused. There was a silence, in which the long banners could be heard flapping in the wind. He went on.

  ‘Two days ago I was invited by the leader of the People’s Party, Petra Vukashin, to take the office of Minister of Justice in the government that now has power. My answer was promised for tonight. I take this opportunity of giving him the answer now. I answer that if he thinks that by so betraying my brothers in the Agrarian Socialist Party I should change in any way their determination to fight until this new tyranny is utterly destroyed — if he thinks that, then he is stupid. If our opposition to his party’s criminal plans is such that he must try to buy us off with a share of the loot, then he is also frightened. My countrymen, there is no time to lose. These stupid, frightened men are dangerous, not for what they are now, but for what they mean to become — your masters. They are not…’

  At this point the booming public-address system in the stadium was cut off. In the deathly pause that followed, Deltchev’s voice, high and thin in the wind, could only be heard by those near him as he completed the sentence.

  Then the cheering began. It came across the packed stadium as a rolling, sighing wave of sound that surged up and broke with a roar that shook the air like an explosion. It lasted nearly a minute and subsided only when another sound came to replace it: the steady, massive chanting of Deltchev’s name. Suddenly on the far side of the stadium there was a wide swirling movement in the crowd as a fight developed, and from closer at hand there was angry shouting. Deltchev, who during the cheering had stood motionless in front of the dead microphones, now waved his hand and turned away. There was another tremendous cheer and more shouting. At that moment the officer in command of a Russian military band, which had been waiting to lead into the arena the squads who were giving the gymnastics display, decided not to wait for an order to do so. It was a sensible decision and probably averted serious trouble. As the band began to play and march in, the cheering became ragged and in places gave way to laughter and clapping. In less than a minute the incident of ‘Deltchev’s football match’ was over; over, that is, except for the breathless excitement of discussing it and of reporting it to those who had merely heard it on the radio. But nothing about it was forgotten and much that had not happened was remembered. ‘Papa’ Deltchev had come back to them. He had spoken his mind and they had shown that they were with him in his fight against the ‘masters’.

  Four nights later an attempt was made to assassinate him.

  His house was of the old kind with a walled courtyard. As he got out of his car to enter the house, a grenade was thrown. It hit the wall by the entrance and bounced back into the road before exploding, so that Deltchev, who had gained the doorway, was partly shielded from the blast. There were few people about at the time and the man who had thrown the grenade escaped.

  The driver of the car was badly cut about the head and neck, but Deltchev, although he had been flung against the half-open door and much shaken, was not seriously hurt. In the ensuing confusion, however, his protests that the pain in his shoulder was caused only by a bruise were ignored and he was taken to a hospital with the driver. Within an hour rumours that he was dead or dying were circulating in the cafes, and a large crowd gathered outside the hospital. By this time Deltchev had returned to his home, where the police were collecting fragments of the grenade in the presence of an even larger crowd. There was a great deal of hostility toward the police.

  It is said that when the Chief of Police reported to Vukashin later that night that the attempt on Deltchev was being described openly as the government’s reply to the stadium speech, the Minister exclaimed, ‘Did they think we would reply in the chamber?’ The story may be untrue, but, in the light of what followed, it is not incredible. Certainly from that moment on there was an ominous change in the Propaganda Ministry’s public attitude toward Deltchev, and it is likely that the decision to try him was made at this time. The Ministry’s official statement on the affair had a sort of angry jocularity about it that did nothing to change the general belief that the government had known of the attempt in advance. It asserted that the grenade was of American manufacture, and went on to suggest that the obvious place to seek the criminal was in the ranks of Deltchev’s own party, where there were many criminals with Anglo-American imperialist connections.

  The editor of a newspaper that described this statement as ‘unsatisfactory, but significantly so’, was immediately imprisoned. A series of savage attacks on the Agrarian Socialist Party now began. Their violent tone and the barely concealed threats that accompanied every allusion to Deltchev conveyed unmistakable warnings. The opposition had become intolerable and was going to be liquidated; but first Deltchev must be disposed of. He had a choice. He could escape abroad and be condemned or stay at home and be condemned. In any event he would be condemned.

  Deltchev chose to stay. A month later he was arrested.

  That was all. For a while I looked out of my hotel window across the flat roofs and Byzantine spires of the city, as still in the moonlight as the landscape of a dead world; and at last I became sleepy.

  As I collect
ed up the mass of news cuttings, notes, and manuscript that composed Pashik’s file and began to put them back in the envelope, I noticed a paper that I had not seen before. It had been clipped to the back of a wad of sheets with cuttings pasted on them and therefore easily overlooked.

  It was a page from a memo pad I had seen on Pashik’s desk. On it was typed, ‘Case of K. Fischer, Vienna ’46 — Aleko’s hand?’

  For me, then, it was not the most interesting thing about the file. I went to sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Pashik had promised to drive me to the trial, and we met for breakfast. He nodded at the envelope I was carrying with the approving smile of a friendly schoolmaster.

  ‘Ah, Mr Foster, you have been reading.’

  ‘Yes. There’s a lot of material there. Did you collect it?’

  He fingered his chin self-consciously for a moment; he had shaved. ‘Why do you ask, Mr Foster?’

  ‘Because a lot of the unpublished stuff was obviously done by someone who knew Deltchev very well and liked him. You?’

  ‘Ah, the memoir.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘That was commissioned by one of my papers from Petlarov.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He was Deltchev’s secretary and friend — until the elections. Then they quarrelled. He was paid for the memoir, but it was not used. It was not the moment.’

  ‘Where is Petlarov now? Is he here?’

  ‘He may be.’

  ‘I should like to talk to him.’

  ‘He will know nothing about the trial, Mr Foster.’

  ‘I’d still like to talk to him.’

  ‘He may not wish to see you.’

  ‘Then he will say so. You said you wanted to be helpful, Pashik. Here’s your opportunity.’

  He wriggled unhappily. ‘Please, Mr Foster. I see I must explain to you.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You do not understand. After the arrest of Deltchev, Petlarov was naturally arrested too. He is released now, but he is still suspect. It would be most indiscreet to have relations with him. I cannot take the risk.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Just get a message to him from me. I suppose he can speak German?’

  ‘I do not know. Perhaps not.’

  ‘Send a message as if from me asking him to telephone me at my hotel this evening.’

  He sighed. ‘Very well, Mr Foster. But I think it will be useless.’

  I held up the envelope with the file in it. ‘We don’t want to take this with us, do we? We could leave it at your office on the way and write a note to Petlarov at the same time. Your office boy can deliver it.’

  He pursed his lips together at this. ‘I see you still do not trust me, Mr Foster,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He saw the danger of explaining just in time. ‘It is not important,’ he said with dignity.

  He took the envelope from me. Then I remembered. ‘Oh, by the way,’ I said, ‘what does this refer to?’ I showed him the paper with the Aleko note on it.

  He looked at it blankly for a moment. ‘Oh, that, Mr Foster,’ he said, and taking it from me put it in his pocket, ‘that is nothing. Something from another file.’

  When once you know how a person lies, it is difficult for him to deceive you again. With Pashik it was a special tone of voice he used for direct lies that gave him away — a cold, too matter-of-fact tone. He had used it before in telling me the untrue story of the American journalist who had tried to go to Greece for the weekend. I supposed the fact that he had lied about this piece of paper to be equally unimportant.

  The large courtroom at the Ministry of Justice had been thought too small for a political trial of such moment. It was being staged, therefore, in the main lecture hall of the Army School of Aeronautics, a modern building on the outskirts of the city.

  The walls, ordinarily decorated with engineering charts and war trophies, had been hung with flags — those of the Republic and of the Soviet Union, and, at greater intervals, those of the other sympathetic nations of Eastern Europe. Just above on either side of the judges’ dais two draped Soviet flags bulged over (but, tactlessly, did not quite conceal) one of the trophies, the tail plane of a Russian aircraft, presented by a German flak unit during the war. Pinned to some of the flags were notices printed in four languages saying that smoking was prohibited. In the balcony a row of soundproof booths had been erected for the interpreters relaying translations of the proceedings to the earphones of the foreign diplomatic and press representatives below. In the balcony, too, on heavy stands or clamped to the balcony rail, were big floodlights pointing down into the court to illuminate it for the Propaganda Ministry’s film cameras. Beside the judges’ dais, on both sides of the prisoner’s rostrum, at the corners of the hall, in the balcony, by the doors, and below every flag on the walls, guards were posted. They were all officers or NCOs and armed with machine pistols, which they did not sling, but held ready in their hands. It had been explained by the Propaganda Ministry that when the evidence against the criminal Deltchev was publicly known, attempts might be made by the people he had deceived to kill him before justice could be done.

  The courtroom was crowded. My place and Pashik’s were in the foreign-press section, below the edge of the balcony and to one side. In the centre was the diplomatic section. On the ledge in front of each seat in these two sections were a pair of earphones and four plug sockets marked with letters distinguishing the Russian, French, English and German interpretation channels. Also on the ledge was a duplicated copy of the indictment in French. There seemed to be no seats for members of the public without tickets, but several rows behind us were prominently labelled with notice cards bearing initials, which Pashik said were those of prominent trade union organizations. The occupants of these seats were obviously in their best clothes and on their best behaviour. They all wore badges, and in one row there was a group of peasants in national costume. They looked as if they were attending a prize-giving. The front rows, however, had a different look about them. These seats were reserved for the important party members and functionaries. Their occupants wore dark neat clothes and either sat with self-conscious, preoccupied frowns or conversed in busy undertones with their neighbours. Aware of being in the public eye, they were concerned to show that they had business there and were not merely favoured spectators. It was warm, and most of the women and many of the men had highly coloured paper fans.

  At about ten o’clock the floodlights in the balcony were turned on and the fluttering sound of film cameras began. A buzz of anticipation went round the courtroom; then, as the three black-robed judges came slowly in, all stood up. The judges went to their places on the dais but did not sit down until the national anthem had been played through a loudspeaker. It was all curiously reminiscent of a royal visit to the opera. Even the low murmur of conversation which began as we sat down again was familiar. All that was different was that instead of the lowering of lights and the rise of a curtain somebody stood up and called out the name of Yordan Deltchev, and all eyes turned toward a pair of glazed doors beside the dais. Then there was silence except for the sound of the cameras and the distant throbbing of the generator which supplied the power for the floodlights.

  After a moment or two the glazed doors were flung open and three men entered the court. Inside the door they paused for a moment blinking in the lights that poured down on them. Two of them were uniformed guards, tall, smart young fellows. Between them was an elderly man with a thin, grey face, deep-set eyes, and white hair. He was short and had been stocky, but now his shoulders were rounded and he was inclined to stoop. He stood with his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets, looking about him uncertainly. One of the guards touched his arm and he walked over to the rostrum and stepped onto it. A chair had been placed for him, but for a moment he stood there looking round at the flags on the walls. He smiled faintly. He still had his hands in his pockets. Then, with a curt nod to each of the judges, he sat down and closed his eyes. This was Yordan Deltchev.

&nbs
p; There were twenty-three counts listed in the published indictment against him. They charged (principally in count number eight, though the same charge was paraphrased in two other counts) that he had ‘prepared terrorist plots against the state and conspired with reactionary organizations, including the criminal Officer Corps Brotherhood, to secure, for financial and other personal advantages, the occupation of the motherland by troops of a foreign power’. There were other charges concerned with terrorist activity, the smuggling of arms, and plots to assassinate members of the People’s Party Government ‘in particular P. I. Vukashin’. Sprinkled throughout were dark references to ‘various confederates’, ‘notorious foreign agents’, ‘hired saboteurs and murderers’, ‘reactionary gangsters’ and so on, while the name of the Officer Corps Brotherhood recurred with the persistence of a typewriter bell. It was soon evident that the indictment was a propaganda document intended for foreign consumption. It said, in effect, or hoped to say, ‘He is the kind of man against whom such charges may seriously be brought,’ and, ‘He is accused of so much that of some he must be guilty.’

  The public prosecutor conducted his case in person. His name was Dr Prochaska and he was one of the few members of the legal profession who had joined the People’s Party before it had come to power. He was an authority on questions of land tenure, and most of his practice had been concerned with cases involving them. He had had little experience of court advocacy of any kind and none at all in criminal proceedings. A stout, pugnacious-looking man with quick, jerky movements and a habit of licking his lips every few seconds, he seemed more concerned to defend himself against accusations of weakness than to present his case effectively. He made scarcely any reference to the official indictment and dealt with only two of the charges in it. If he could prove, or seem to prove, those, then Deltchev would stand convicted on the whole indictment. That, at least, was the impression I had of it. From the commencement of his long opening address he adopted a tone of ranting denunciation that carried little conviction and confused even the more reasoned passages. In spite of the earphones on my head, and the voice of the interpreter quietly translating the speech, I was constantly distracted by the sight and half-heard sounds of its originator.