by Eric Ambler
His case, however, was dangerously simple.
It was generally known that at the time of the German retreat in 1944 Deltchev, who had been secretly in touch with both the Russians and the Western powers, had gone to great lengths to secure Anglo-American, rather than Soviet, occupation of the country. Against the wishes of a majority of the Committee of National Unity, he had at one point gone so far as to propose to the Western Powers that the national army should continue to resist the Russians in the north so as to give the Americans and British time to prepare an airborne invasion from Middle East bases.
It was now suggested by the Prosecution that this proposal had come in fact from the Western Powers themselves and that Deltchev’s support of it had been bought with the promise that he would have control of the reallocation of the German oil concessions. In other words, he had tried to sell his countrymen’s lives for money and power.
The other favoured charge was the one that had so amused my economist friend. It was that Deltchev had planned to assassinate Vukashin, the head of the People’s Party Government, and that he was, in fact, a member of the Officer Corps Brotherhood. If this could seem to be proved, he could quite legally and with full popular approval be sentenced to death. The case against Deltchev was designed to destroy both him and the Agrarian Socialist Party which had produced him for ever.
I left the court that day in a peculiar frame of mind. I felt as if I had been to the first night of what had seemed to me a very bad play only to find that everyone else had enjoyed it immensely. A Propaganda Ministry bureau had been set up in a room adjoining the court. On the way out Pashik stopped to get the official bulletin on the day’s proceedings. The room was crowded and I waited in the doorway. There were a number of tables, each signposted with the name of one of the official languages. As I stood there, I saw a bald young man whom I thought I knew coming away from the English table. I had noticed him earlier in the day and been unable to place him. Now as he pushed his way out we came face to face. He nodded.
‘You’re Foster, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. We’ve met before.’
‘Sibley, Incorporated Press.’
‘Oh yes.’ I remembered, too, that I had not liked him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Getting local colour for a new play?’
I explained. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Very nice too. Still, I expect you’ll make a play out of it sometime, won’t you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I should have thought that there were masses of material for you. It’d make quite a nice little paragraph, your being here. Do you mind if I use it?’
‘Yes, I do.’ I smiled as I said it, but not very cordially.
He laughed. ‘All right, I’ll spare you. But it’d be nice to send something even a little more interesting than these handouts.’ He waved the sheets in his hand. ‘I’m at our Paris office really. I’ve been lent for the trial. Why I can’t think. An office boy could file this junk for all of us.’ He turned his head as Pashik came up. ‘Hullo, Georghi, we were just talking about you.’
‘Good evening, Mr Sibley. We must be going, Mr Foster. I have to get to the office.’
‘That’s our Georghi. Always on the job!’ Sibley grinned. ‘Where are you staying, Foster?’
I told him.
‘We must have a drink together,’ he said.
In the car Pashik gave me the bulletin. I glanced through it. Most of it was composed of extracts from Dr Prochaska’s address. They were even more idiotic to read than to listen to. I put the bulletin down. The streets leading back to the centre of the city were narrow and crowded and Pashik was a driver who twitched at the wheel instead of steering with it. He squeezed his way none too skilfully between two carts.
‘Mr Foster,’ he said then, ‘there is a suggestion which I think I must make to you.’ He looked round at me soulfully. ‘You will not, I hope, be offended.’
‘Not at all. Look out.’
He twitched away from a cyclist just in time. The cyclist shouted. Pashik sounded the horn unnecessarily and put on speed.
‘It is a small thing,’ he said — the car swayed unpleasantly across some protruding tram lines — ‘but I would not, if I were in your place, be too friendly here with Mr Sibley.’
‘Oh? What’s the matter with him?’
‘It is nothing personal, you understand.’
‘But what?’
‘He drinks too much and becomes indiscreet.’
‘I don’t see that that has anything to do with me.’
‘His associates will be suspect.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Mr Pashik,’ I said then, ‘as a newspaperman don’t you think that you’re a bit too anxious about the censorship and the Propaganda Ministry and the police and all the rest of it?’
A woman missed death by an inch. He sounded the horn absently and shook his head. ‘I do not think so. It is difficult to explain.’
‘What’s so difficult about it?’
‘You are a stranger here, Mr Foster. You look on our life from the outside. You are interested in the trial of a man whose name you scarcely know because his situation seems to you to contain the elements of a spiritual conflict. Naturally so. You are a writer of fiction and you make the world in your own image. But be careful. Do not walk upon the stage yourself. You may find that the actors are not what they have seemed.’
‘Is Sibley one of the actors?’
‘I was speaking generally, Mr Foster.’
‘Then I’m sorry but I don’t understand what we’re talking about.’
He sighed. ‘I was afraid not. But perhaps it does not matter.’
I let that one go. A few moments later he pulled up outside my hotel. I got out of the car.
‘Shall we meet for dinner, Mr Foster?’
I hesitated. The air outside the car smelt good. I shook my head. ‘I think I’ll get to bed early tonight,’ I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Hotel Boris had been built by a German company in 1914 and was one of those hotels in which footsteps echo and only the sound of a toilet flushing in the distance reminds you that you are not alone there. The foyer was a cavernous place with a tessellated floor and a hydraulic lift in a wrought-iron cage. The reception clerk was a slow-moving, mentally deficient youth with a charming smile. He spoke a little English.
‘There is a message for you, sir,’ he said. He glanced at the scrap of paper that he had taken out of the key rack. ‘Mr Stanoiev called to see you and will call again.’
‘Stanoiev? I don’t know anyone of that name. Are you sure it was for me?’
He looked stupid. ‘I don’t know, sir. He went away.’
‘I see.’
The lift was deserted. I walked up the wide shallow stairs to the sixth floor.
My room was at the end of a long corridor with upholstered benches set against the wall at intervals along it. As I started down the corridor, I noticed that at the far end there was a man sitting on one of the benches. He was reading a newspaper.
It made an odd picture; one never expects corridor furniture to be used except as shelves for trays and chambermaids’ dusters. As I approached he looked up casually, then went back to his newspaper. I glanced at him as I passed by.
He was a thin, dried-up man with pale, haggard eyes and grey hair cropped so that the bone of his skull was visible. He had a peculiarly blotchy complexion like that of someone just cured of a skin disease. The hands holding up the newspaper were long and yellow. There was a black soft hat beside him on the bench.
I went past him to my room. I put the key in the lock and turned it. Then someone spoke from just behind me.
‘Herr Foster?’
It made me jump. I turned round. The man who had been on the bench was standing there with his hat under his arm.
I nodded.
‘Petlarov,’ he said, and then added in German, ‘I can speak French or German, whichever you prefer.’
; ‘German will be all right. I’m glad to see you.’ I finished opening the door. ‘Will you come in?’
He bowed slightly. ‘Thank you.’ He walked in and then turned and faced me. ‘I must apologize,’ he said in a clipped, businesslike way, ‘for answering your note in this fashion. A native of this country would not find it strange, but as you are a foreigner I must make an explanation.’
‘Please sit down.’
‘Thank you.’ In the light of the room his clothes were shabby and he looked ill. His precise, formal manner, however, seemed to ignore both facts. He chose a hard chair as if he did not intend to stay long.
‘First,’ he said, ‘I think you should know that I am under surveillance; that is to say, I have to report to the police every day. Second, I am officially listed as an “untrustworthy person”. That means that if you were to be seen entering my house or talking to me in a public place, you would attract the attention of the police, and yourself become suspect. That is why I have used this unconventional means of seeing you. I discovered your room number by leaving a note for you in the name of Stanoiev and noticing which box it was put into. Then I came discreetly up here and waited for you to return. You need therefore have no fear that my name is in any way connected with yours or my presence here known about.’ He bowed curtly.
‘I am most grateful to you for coming.’
‘Thank you. May I ask how you obtained my address?’
‘From a man named Pashik.’
‘Ah, yes. I thought it must be him.’ He looked thoughtfully into space.
‘Do you know him well, Herr Petlarov?’
‘You mean what is my opinion of him?’
‘Yes.’
He considered for a moment. ‘Let us say that I do not subscribe to the common belief that he is merely a disagreeable person whose political views change with the person he talks to. But now that I am here, what do you want of me?’
I had held out my cigarettes. His hand had gone out to them as he was speaking, but now he hesitated. He looked up from the cigarettes, and his eyes met mine.
‘I have some more,’ I said.
He smiled in a deprecatory way. ‘If you had perhaps a bar of chocolate or a biscuit, Herr Foster, it would, I think, be better for my stomach than tobacco.’
‘Of course.’ I went to my suitcase. ‘I have no chocolate, but here are some biscuits.’
I had a box, bought in Paris for the train journey and then forgotten. I opened it. The biscuits were the kind with pink icing sugar on them.
‘Not very good for a bad stomach,’ I remarked.
He took one with a polite smile. ‘Oh yes. Excellent.’ He nibbled at it with very white false teeth.
‘Pashik gave me your piece on Deltchev to read,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes? It was considered unsuitable for publication.’
‘By Pashik?’
‘Yes, but I was not surprised or upset. I knew that it had been commissioned in the belief that because I had had a difference of opinion with Yordan I would therefore write about him in an unfavourable way. If Pashik had asked me, I would have told him what to expect. Fortunately he did not ask.’
‘Fortunately?’
‘If he had known he would not have commissioned the article, and I needed the money.’
‘Oh, I see. I have a bottle of whisky here. Would it be safe to ask the floor waiter for some glasses?’
‘I think not. Perhaps I may have another biscuit.’
‘Of course, please help yourself. You know, Herr Petlarov, I came here to write a series of articles about the trial of Deltchev. But Pashik seems afraid that I shall offend the censor if I do them here.’
‘He is probably right,’ he said calmly. ‘He is usually right about these thing. Yes, I can see. If you offend he will be blamed.’
I must have looked disbelieving. He took another biscuit. ‘I will tell you a little story about the regime. A member of the People’s Party wrote a novel about the fight of a group of workmen with the capitalists who wished to close a factory. It was a naive story in which the capitalists were all monsters of evil and the workmen’s leader a People’s Party man. The Propaganda Minister, whose name is Brankovitch, would not, however, allow its publication. He said that the hero was not positive.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The author had not demonstrated that the hero member of the party was a good man.’
‘But surely that was inferred.’
‘Brankovitch would say that you were in intellectual error, Herr Foster. Inference is not positive. The public must be instructed that the man is good, as they must be instructed in all things.’
‘You must be exaggerating.’
‘In London or New York I would be exaggerating. Here, no. The sequel to this is that the writer was angry and made a little propaganda of his own. He has now been sent to forced labour. Pashik does not see that fate for himself. You see, Herr Foster, those who must be persuaded to obey are no longer important, for shortly we shall cease to exist. Our liquidation has begun.’ He smiled significantly.
‘What do you mean?’
He took another biscuit and held it up. ‘This is the third biscuit I have taken,’ he said. ‘There are twenty-one left in the box. I can eat nine more.’
‘You can have the box.’
He inclined his head. ‘Thank you. I had hoped that you would give it to me. I had based my calculations on your doing so. If I eat nine more I shall have eaten twelve. That will leave twelve for my wife. Luckily we have no children to share with us.’
I was silent.
‘I will explain. It is quite simple. Persons who are listed as untrustworthy are not allowed to work at anything but manual labour. I tried that, but I am not strong enough. So, as I cannot work, my wife and I may not have ration cards. We are, of course, very often hungry, and that can make a good argument for obedience.’
I got up and went to the wardrobe for the whisky. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him reaching for another biscuit. He glanced over his shoulder at me.
‘Please do not distress yourself, Herr Foster. A bad conscience can, I know, be as unpleasant in some ways as an empty stomach, and the person with the biscuits so often has a bad conscience. The trouble is that most of us with empty stomachs also have bad consciences. That combination will prove deadly.’
‘I have a metal cup,’ I said, ‘and also a toothglass. If you like whisky-’
‘I tasted it once,’ he said courteously. ‘I thought it better than schnapps and more interesting than our plum brandy. You need not fear, however, that I shall insist on taking it away with the biscuits.’
I gave him the toothglass. He took a small sip and looked at me. ‘I know that you will forgive my telling you that before I came to see you this evening I looked up your name in an English reference book I have.’
‘You’d like to know what a playwright is doing writing articles about a political trial?’
‘Oh no. I see the connection. I was putting myself in your place for a moment. You have been in this city for two or three days perhaps. You do not know the country or the people. You are present at a trial which is like a game played for counters of which you do not know the value. Yet you have to interpret it for Western eyes.’
‘Something of the kind has already been said to me once today.’
He nodded calmly. ‘As a guide you have Pashik, a man so preoccupied with a problem of his own — self-preservation possibly, but we cannot be sure — that he can lead you only to the counter of the Propaganda Ministry.’ He took another biscuit. ‘Have you seen the official bulletin of the trial today?’
‘This?’ I took it out of my pocket. ‘They gave out copies as we left the courtroom.’
‘They will do so every day. Tell me, Herr Foster, what will there be in your articles that a clever, malicious journalist sitting in London could not contrive for himself from a set of these reports?’
‘I’m sure you have your own answer read
y.’
‘Ah, I have offended you.’ He smiled. ‘But not seriously, I think, if you reflect. What I am suggesting to you, Herr Foster, is that you might find it useful to employ my services.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. How?’
‘As a guide. I make this suggestion without embarrassment. You were kind enough to invite me to tell you some things about Yordan and of course I will do so.’ He touched the biscuit box. ‘I should have been well paid for that. But I think that I could be of further use to you.’ His haggard eyes looked up at me with a cold little smile in them. He licked a crumb off his lower lip.
‘I’m sure you could,’ I said, and waited.
‘For instance,’ he went on, ‘I wonder if you have considered that some of the evidence against Yordan Deltchev might not be as stupid as the Prosecution makes it.’ He looked into the toothglass.
An unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind. ‘Your difference of opinion with him,’ I said, ‘was over his radio speech approving the election, wasn’t it?’
He was very quick. He said calmly, ‘If I were an enemy of his I would not need to beg a gift of biscuits, Herr Foster. I should be a witness at his trial. And if, as your caution may suggest, I am here as an emissary of the Propaganda Ministry to try to corrupt your judgment, then you cannot yet have identified the man whose task it will be to do so.’