“Which goes to show,” I said, “that you have enough guts to give it up if you tried really hard. I’d say you’re not all that hooked — yet.”
“Oh?”
“If you had been, you’d have been screaming for it.”
She said, “Yes, well. Don’t let’s argue the point too far. Now will you tell me who you are, and where you’re taking me, and why? Because I really would like to know before I start yelling out of the window for help.”
I smiled and said, “Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that, Miss Moore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think you want to attract any police attention.”
“Because of the drugs?”
“No. Because your real name is Nada Strecka.” I reconnoitred behind me once again; the Cortina, the Mini, and the petrol-tanker, all of which had joined the M4 with me, were far, far distant now. Fairly close were another Jag and a Rover 3.5 and a very game little Mini Countryman. Time and distance alone would indicate any interest they had in us. I looked at Miss Strecka; her face was expressionless, but a small nerve was jumping at the corner of her mouth and I knew I had surprised her. I went on, “You won’t want to be arrested as a Communist agent, will you?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? Then hear this, Miss Strecka,” I said, and gave her a concise resumé of her past as known to 6D2. I was pretty sure that gave her plenty to think about and when I had finished I said, “I didn’t read all that in the Bible, or in Pravda either. You’ll agree my sources show a good deal of painstaking conscientiousness. I think you’d be unwise to try to hop the twig along the route. Apart from anything else, we’ll mostly be going too fast … and to make doubly sure, my friend in the back has a gun which he’s fully authorized to use.”
She took it all calmly enough. She shrugged, as though accepting the situation. “What d’you want of me?” she asked.
I said, “It’ll keep. Just enjoy the drive.” She needed softening up and five hours or so of deep thought and unsatisfied query would help a lot. It might undo a little of the self-possession that had come after her recent shot of dope. So, of course, would a withholding of the top-up drug supply, though that would be an act of cruelty and, as such, a last resort.
“Where are we going, then?”
“West,” I said. She had probably gathered that much for herself, in any case; I didn’t elaborate and, realizing I wasn’t going to, I think, she didn’t press. She just sat there, leaning sideways against the door, and looking at me with a rather enigmatic smile — as though I were some small boy playing a game, was the impression I had. A little later she asked, once again, who I was and who I worked for, but I didn’t tell her that either, just to aid that softening-up process. Soon after this I turned off the motorway. This was at the exit for the A4 just beyond Slough and my idea was to test out the cars behind me. The other Jag, caring nothing for the speed limit, had already whizzed past me and was out of sight. The Mini Countryman stayed on the motorway as I moved off, but the Rover 3.5 came out with me; so did a big Volvo and a couple of lorries. I told Harry to keep a special eye on the Rover and see if he could find a fat man in it, and then I sent the Jag belting down the A4 westwards. The Rover stayed with us, but Harry reported no fat man visible. So far as could be seen there was just the driver, a thin-faced, bald man with glasses. The Rover followed us through Maidenhead, which I thought was a trifle odd, for, whereas I had had a reason for leaving the motorway, the Rover had not — at least, not in any apparent sense, unless he was in fact the tail. I lost speed on a straight bit before the turning off for Wargrave and the Rover slowed too, just for a while, then passed me. But he kept pretty close ahead and I had the idea he was watching his mirrors to see if I deviated anywhere. I rather enjoyed it, because I could well imagine the tooth-gnashing that was going on ahead. However, before Reading, the Rover turned the tables on me by slowing himself, right down to a crawl where overtaking was a must if one didn’t want to draw attention. As I went past, I saw the bald man lighting a cigarette. I crammed on speed, and was delighted to find that the Rover hadn’t been quite quick enough off the mark and had been overtaken by two cars and a furniture van, which would cramp his style quite a lot. But not a bit of it; at the first opportunity he came blasting up the line and tucked himself in neatly behind me just in time to miss a head-on collision with an important-looking Bentley whose driver was so far moved as to shake a fist as he sighed past.
I said, “Harry, I cant be sure, but Im not taking any chances. We shake at the next opportunity.”
“How about forcing him into the open, sir, swing across the road when it’s clear?”
“If ever it is! No, that wouldn’t accord with orders, Harry. We don’t want any hornets’ nests on this job. Our first concern is Miss Strecka per se, and to hell with anybody else.” I drove on, looking for an opening. I thought Reading might do the trick, but it didn’t; the Rover kept too close. But after Reading I consigned the speed limit to the devil and did a whole lot of very dangerous, and I may say skilful, overtaking; and then I swung the Jag hard right, heading north along a very secondary road signposted to a place called Beenham. After Beenham I came into a maze of little country roads with finger signs to Bucklebury, Hermitage, Yattendon, Cold Ash … and I came into this maze happily Roverless. Still Roverless, I fetched up in Hamstead Norris.
Harry wiped sweat from his face. Miss Strecka was as cool as a cucumber, and smiling as if she’d thoroughly enjoyed the game. “Nice driving,” she said.
“Not scared?”
“Once or twice, but I guess I know a safe driver when I see one. I mean, one whose risks are calculated, and calculated right.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Harry asked, “Now where to, sir? Back to the A4?”
“I rather think not. Except just to cross it, going south. I’m going right down, Harry, and we’ll do the rest of the trip on the A30. It’s a lousy road, and it’s slow even at this time of the year, but I think it’s our best bet. No tail would be expecting us to use the A30 before we had to, and if they did, well, it’s a difficult road to tail on — unless you’re dead lucky and hit it right behind the victim. Okay, Harry?”
“Just as you say, sir.”
I nodded. “South it is. Hold on!” We left Hamstead Norris at speed, scattering chickens. Down through Newbury to pick up the A30 at Sutton Scotney. The good old A30, up hill and down dale, all bends and almost damn-all straight. But no Rover. And no other tail. We made reasonable time right through to Exeter, where we scorned the signs that told us to use the by-pass for Okehampton and went easily through the town centre, saving around four unnecessary miles. After that, Harry took over, being now in his own beloved West Country. It was dark now, of course, had been for most of the way from Sutton Scotney; the high ground of Dartmooor was ghostly under a powdering of snow to our left as the headlights beamed towards it on the bends, and there was a cold, wintry wind outside the car’s cosiness. I heard its whine, and shivered involuntarily; I thought of that maximum security prison in the heart of the moor and thanked God I hadn’t started life as a juvenile delinquent. We went on, in Harry’s hands, through Okehampton and then south, turning north beyond Callington for Pensilva, and thence threading through the lanes, the lanes that would be enclosed like tunnels in high summer but whose hedges were now bare and lifeless and somehow daunting as they came up, skeleton-like, in the headlamps. I don’t know how Harry knew the way, but he took us unerringly to the cottage Max had “acquired”, hard though it was to see any habitation at all until we were right on top of it, at the end of a narrow, twisting, climbing track with the most revolting surface I’d ever seen. Then, at the end of the headlights’ beams, we saw it: a desolate cottage, tiny, in an unkempt garden, at the end of a rutted gravel drive-in. Thick, overgrown hedges closed it in from the track. There was maybe half an inch of snow. I shivered again and asked, “Where’s the nearest neighb
our, Harry?”
“A longish way, sir, maybe eight or nine miles.”
I drove on in, stopped near a garage, and opened my door. “All out,” I said tersely. “It just has to be put up with, that’s all!”
We got out. The wind tore and bit; we were on high ground, as high, I discovered later, as the moor itself. It was weird, was that place. I could smell the sea in the wind, and I thought of the wreckers along the Cornish coast, luring ships to their destruction in the old days with their false lights. I even thought of spooks. I shepherded Nada Strecka to the front door, using a pocket torch. Ahead of us, Harry Foster fiddled the key into the lock of the door. We went in, and Harry found the oil lamp on the table, thanks to my torch. There was no electricity; Harry scratched a match and lit the lamp. It smoked until he trimmed it, and there was a smell of olden times; the freezing cold was reminiscent of olden times too, but fortunately there was an oil heater, one of the reflector sort that acts fast and gives out plenty of warmth. Harry lit it, then, while the living-room warmed up, we went exploring. There was Calor gas in a freezing kitchen; there was an outside loo, and a larder like an ice-box, and upstairs there was a bathroom and two bedrooms and between the bedrooms a roomy cupboard with no window but an air vent, a mattress and plenty of blankets on the floor, and a padlock hasp on the outside of the door. Harry produced the padlock, grinning.
“My God,” I said, “Max thinks of everything, doesn’t he! Does the place run to food?”
“I gather so, sir.”
“Then get cooking,” I told him, “and shove the car in the garage, will you?” He went downstairs, and I heard him clattering about in the kitchen after he’d garaged the Jag. It wasn’t bedtime for Miss Strecka yet, so after I’d had a thorough check round we went downstairs too, and sat on either side of the oil stove. That was when I saw that the girl was having the shakes again, and I asked, “Time for another shot?”
“Just about,” she said.
“Go right ahead, then.” We had brought the grips in, also my tape recorder. This, I now switched on. “While you’re fixing yourself, you can start talking.” There were nice sounds of cooking preliminaries already coming from the kitchen.
“I think I’m entitled to know who I’m talking to,” she said as she opened up that toilet set, “that is, if I can think of anything to say.”
“All in good time,” I said. “Just start talking.”
She slid the hypo needle in. She looked at me blankly; it was nice acting. “What about?” she asked.
“Drakotny,” I said. “I gather that’s a subject dear to your own heart.”
She had reacted to that by a kind of flinch, but she soon recovered. “Aren’t you a little out of date?” she asked coolly.
“Somehow, I’d doubt it,” I said, and was going to say something else when I heard the faintest sound from outside and then, looking towards the front door, saw the latch begin to rise. I knew Harry was still in the kitchen so I had my gun out in a flash and was jumping for the door when it was shoved inwards and I saw the snout of a sub-machine-gun and, behind it, the fat man.
3
The fat man smiled, but his eyes were hard and cold as ice in the glow from the oil lamp. Kicking the door shut behind him as he advanced into the room, he said, “Just drop the gun, eh, Shaw?”
I heard Harry Foster coming through from the kitchen and saw the sub-machine-gun move a fraction to cover him. Shrugging, I put my automatic on the table alongside the tape recorder. Outside, the wind howled on a sudden high gust, seeming to shake the cottage like a drum. The fat man moved forward slowly, and grabbed the automatic, sliding it into a pocket as he held his heavy weapon dead steady. I asked, “How in Heaven’s name did you ever find us?”
He laughed, giggled rather. “Didn’t see a tail, did you?”
“Not unless you count a Rover, way back.”
“There wasn’t any Rover,” he said, looking surprised. So I’d been wasting my time on an innocent driver after all. “You want to be more careful, Shaw. You’ve slipped! Never, never leave a car unattended at Heathrow — or anywhere else, come to that. You never know what can happen to it, do you?”
“Come on!” I snapped. “Let’s have it.” The fact we were still alive indicated that the fat man hadn’t planted an explosive device, and I hadn’t been thinking in terms of being killed anyway, or he would have put a lethal dose in that attaché-case the day before.
“I put a little gadget on your rear bumper, underneath,” the fat man said, “with a rubber suction cap. It sends out an electronic bleep. We followed you by a radio pick-up, around a couple of miles behind. We simply couldn’t miss.”
I was livid with myself, and I saw from the look on Harry’s bluff face that he was also giving himself a mental kick for not having checked, though in all conscience the underbody of a Jag is a big thing to toothcomb when you’re in a hurry. I looked back at the fat man, and saw him running his piggy little eyes over Nada Strecka. He said softly, “You are a wreck, my dear, though still beautiful underneath.”
I looked at her face. It was dead white; she had had as big a shock as I, if not bigger. In a jerky voice she asked, “What do you want?”
“You, Nada. Who else?”
The tip of her tongue came out, and licked at dry lips. I asked, “Who is this man, Miss Strecka?”
She didn’t answer; she went on looking at the fat man in a kind of terrified fascination that was almost trancelike. He giggled and said, “Go on, Nada. Tell him. It’ll save my breath for me, to some extent.”
I said, “Tell me, Miss Strecka.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and swayed, reaching out to the table for support. I moved towards her, but the fat man stopped me. “Keep away!” he said in a harsh voice, all softness gone. “Keep your distance, or I’ll blow your stomach out!” He looked at the girl in disgust; she had resumed that almost hypnotic stare at him now. He said, “Well, you’ve seen for yourself what the Western culture is like. Drink, fornication, drugs — poverty for the many. We told you the truth after all, didn’t we, Nada Strecka?”
I asked, “Are you an agent? Do I take it you’re not a British subject?” To say I was astonished would be to put it very mildly; this man had appeared British, and a Londoner at that, to the core.
“She will tell you,” he said, nodding towards the girl.
Nada clasped her hands across her breasts and went on staring at the fat man. But she started talking at last. In a dead flat tone she said, “Yes, he is an agent. His name is Vaclav Vorsak, a Czech, and he was at the school in Moscow with me. His passport says he is Thomas Humphreys, British subject, and his occupation is supposed to be that of a commission agent. Why are you here, Vorsak?”
Vorsak smiled and said, with a return to the soft voice, “Because of Drakotny — as if you didn’t know, dear Nada!”
“Whose side are you on now?”
“Why, the same as ever —”
“Racilek?”
“Certainly. I am still a good Czech, Nada. My country is my concern, as it always was. But you — you were always Drakotny’s girl. I spit on Drakotny!” And he did too, slap on the floor at his feet. I kept quiet; so did Harry. We were learning something, though I had no idea just what it was, I admit; except that these two were obviously old antagonists. I wondered if love and jealousy had come into it; anybody could be forgiven for falling for Nada Strecka, anyway the Nada Strecka this man would have known some while before; but I couldn’t see her ever having given him any encouragement in that direction. He was pretty unprepossessing physically and they seemed to be at variance in both outlook and politics.
She flinched a little as he spat and then, once again, asked, “But why are you here?”
“To make sure that you do not return to Czechoslovakia, Nada.” They were speaking English to one another all the while; they were both so perfect that it was entirely natural to them, and they wanted me to hear anyway, not realizing that I had enough of their own langu
age to get by easily. “We — my friends and I — we know of your concern for Drakotny. We know that you and he have mutual friends. We know that Drakotny has certain plans while Racilek is in Moscow. We know that he intends to advance the anti-liberal front, that he will fall more and more in line with the Kremlin’s wishes, and destroy all he can of Racilek’s work and endeavour towards a measure of freedom for the Czech people. They are so bitterly opposed, those two, are they not, Nada Strecka, in their ideologies as regards the interpretation of CommunismI We know that you are part of Drakotny’s plans —”
“No!” The word came from her passionately, violently.
Vorsak shrugged. “Time will tell who is right. I myself have no doubts. If, as we believe, you are part of Drakotny’s schemes, then the fact that you don’t return to Prague should have a visibly upsetting effect. You understand, Nada?”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Vorsak said, “I am going to take you away, Nada, you and these men, and keep you where you can do no harm, until Racilek returns to Prague from Moscow. I shall not harm you. But I shall see that you drop all Western ways. There will be no more drugs, Nada —”
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