“There is a bed here.”
I grinned, and squeezed her hand. “Your Fräulein Frossen would die of shock,” I said, “though I’ve no doubt she’s a first-class chaperon. I’ll be better on my own, and so will you, Nada.”
*
She had a razor in her bathroom and before I left I had a shave and a wash and felt a lot fresher. I also had a quick meal, and took some food, bread and cheese, chocolate and fruit, with me in my pockets, just in case it should become wiser not to show my face too often in the public restaurants in the next day or so. When I left the house I saw no tail, but I wasn’t fooled, and after I’d been walking for ten minutes I knew there was a man behind me so I took avoiding action and disposed of him in double-quick time. After that I headed back into the red-light district of the night before; it was just about all I could do, and I had a pretty fair idea there would be plenty of those broken-down dwellings where I could get in and find some sort of shelter. It wouldn’t be pleasant and I might carry the stink for days, but at least I would be out of the weather and, more important, off the streets and out of sight during the hours that honest men are all tucked up in bed. Also, I hardly expected to be alone; that derelict area must surely house most of the city’s destitute. I was right; it did. I couldn’t be choosey and I went into the first likely-looking place I came to. I heard the snores, the sounds resulting from the nightmarish dreams that visited the denizens of that horrible building, and I smelt the variegated smells. God … it was terrible! Really terrible. There was no light except what came through the holes in the roof from the moon, but this was enough to show me the huddled forms of men and women and also a bundle of newspapers, which I spread out on the dusty rubble before I sank to rest — if it could be called rest. In point of fact I was so weary from walking that I did sleep, but in the morning I was sore all over and as stiff as a board, and there was a filthy taste in my mouth. I suppose I’d had four hours sleep when I staggered upright and beat it out of the place. I didn’t want to have to talk to any of the down-and-outs. For their part they were in no hurry to move, having no work to go to, but I wasn’t going to chance it.
Out in the open, I dusted myself down as best I could. The newspapers had kept me reasonably clean. I flapped my clothing around to get rid of the smell, and I sucked in the clean, cold air of the morning. I hung around the district until after nine a.m. Nada Strecka, when I’d asked, had told me the police didn’t patrol the red-light district with any conscientiousness normally — they just went through it like a strong dose of salts from time to time, and made arrests, and then, after this almighty periodic purge, the district would sink back to rest and sin till the next time. Normal policing tended to be lethal — for the police. I didn’t, in fact, see one single policeman in the whole of my early-morning walk — not until I had emerged into more respectable areas and I saw the cops controlling the rush of traffic as the people of Prague poured along to work. They didn’t take any notice of me, huddled into my overcoat as ever in that freezing winter cold. At around 1000 hours I couldn’t resist a cup of coffee. I bought a packet of cigarettes from a nearby kiosk and went into the first café I found. I had two cups of coffee, welcoming the fact of sitting down and easing the strain on my legs and feet. After this I went along to the Post Office and used a public telephone, after flicking through the directory chained to a stand.
I called this Dr Palovitch’s number, intending to say I had been recommended by a grateful patient and could he see me in his surgery. I spoke to some sharp-voiced, irritable woman and I think she thought I was crazy. Dr Palovitch had died four months previously, and didn’t the whole of Prague know that?
“No,” I said. “Should they?”
“Comrade Drakotny’s own doctor, and you do not know?”
I apologized, profusely. “Comrade Drakotny has three doctors. How am I to know —”
“Professors Fierlinger and Lina are Government appointed. Dr Palovitch was the personal choice of Comrade Drakotny — a personal friend. Everybody knows —”
“Sorry,” I butted in again, hastily. The woman’s voice rattled in my ear like a nail in a tin can. “Terribly sorry. I —”
“You wish, then, to see Dr —”
“I —”
“Your name?”
“Molotov,” I said, “and the answer’s no.” I slammed the telephone down and beat it out of the Post Office. I was feeling optimistic and happy now. I thought: well, well! Two more professors! Professors didn’t all have to be jolly old pals, of course, and Moral Philosophy didn’t have to bed down, as it were, with Medicine. For all I knew, they were poles apart. And yet … yet! Krajcin, scared as he had been last night, had been trying to say something, however circumlocutory, and that something had, I was now convinced, a connection with medicine. And it seemed that the Russian Dr Palovitch was way off the scene. It could be coincidence, but the fact remained that Palovitch had been the odd man out nationalitywise — the other two sounded like Czechs to me — and he could also have been the odd man out politically, collaborationwise, murderwise. Oh, yes! And maybe he hadn’t died a natural death.
It seemed to me, that morning, that ideas were clarifying, theories were crystallizing, but that there were a hell of a lot of obstacles to be overcome nevertheless. Firstly, Krajcin himself. The man was a bag of nerves and anyway I couldn’t approach him without a lot of circumspection. I didn’t want to use Nada Strecka’s house again for a meeting; that was much too risky. I’d been dead lucky this far; it mightn’t last. In the next couple of minutes it almost came to a dead stop there and then. I was walking away from the Post Office when I saw a crocodile led by the ebullient and efficient Miss Borjorac, headmistressing her way along the sidewalk. A little behind her, detached like a prefect from the main tourist body, was Bassett, saying in a loud voice that by gum, he could do with a drop o’ summat stronger than Czech beer, which he was likening, dangerously I would have thought, to cans of gnat’s piss.
Very smartly, I turned about. I went fast in the other direction, unrecognized. All was well. When I glanced back, Miss Borjorac and her party were no longer around. I assumed they had gone into the Post Office. They could be posting picture-postcards home, views of the Castle and the Charles Bridge and all that, and boats on the Vltava in summer. Yes, they had all gone … but I saw a vaguely familiar figure left behind outside, just the same. He wasn’t quite outside, he was a little way from the entrance, and he was engrossed in a newspaper. Now, by training I’m always inclined to be suspicious of anybody who is engrossed in a newspaper in the street. It isn’t the best place in the world to read a flapping newspaper, but it does make quite good makeshift cover for a tail when there isn’t a doorway or something available. Well, it wouldn’t be very surprising if the tourists had a tail to back up Miss Borjorac, nor indeed would it be surprising if the authorities felt it necessary to watch Miss Borjorac herself. Intrigued, I lingered. The man was having difficulty with his newspaper; the wind was tugging at it and it was tending to plaster itself over his face or, alternating with this action, to fly from his grip and whirl away into the bitter sky. Eventually it did just that, the man took a few steps towards it, angrily, and I saw how fat he was. He wasn’t tailing Borjorac, he was watching out for me. It was Vaclav Vorsak.
In that instant of recognition our eyes met and I saw from his face that he, too, had got his identification correct.
I turned and ran. It was risky, but it was the only thing I could do.
7
I ran into a cul-de-sac just when I thought I’d lost Vorsak, and that was that. Vorsak appeared at the free end, panting like a steam-engine and brandishing an automatic. I cursed my own stupidity, my lack of observation. The damn place, as I now saw, even had a traffic sign saying what it was. Vorsak, his suet-pudding face red with the effort of running, advanced towards me like an implacable tank. There was no way out, except past his gun. I knew very well he would use it if he had to and after that he would get a medal from t
he Government. It just wasn’t my day after all.
I smiled at Vorsak and said, “Well, here we are, on a cold and frosty morning …”
He sneered. “So banal!”
“It’s how I feel. You don’t exactly fill a man’s mind with original thoughts. How did you get out of Britain, Vorsak?”
“Easily. But never mind the details.” He was still coming towards me, very slowly, very deliberately, with a finger curled around the trigger of the automatic. Just a tiny squeeze, and honour and glory were his, and that medal. Brave Vorsak, single-handed captor of the wicked, effete, Western agent. I could see it all in his piggy eyes, and it definitely was not worth the risk. Even if he managed to miss, the din would bring the population out and it would be no time at all before the Security boys moved in on the area in force and fireworks.
I lifted my hands in the air and said, “All right. For now, Vorsak, you win. You win! What are you going to do with me?”
“Be patient, and you will see.” He was quite close to me now. He moved aside a little and told me to move past him and go towards the road running along the top of the cul-de-sac. “I shall shoot if you give me the slightest cause,” he said, and, once again, I recognized truth. But then he did a funny thing. He slid his automatic into the deep pocket of his greatcoat — he still held the gun in his hand, of course, but it was funny nevertheless. It isn’t the best thing in the world to do with an automatic if you mean to use it. Generally speaking, a pocketed automatic, if fired from its concealed position, jams after the first shot, because the slide tends to catch itself on the lining, with the result that the spent cartridge will only half eject. Even a revolver’s hammer can get hung up. And I didn’t for one moment suppose Vorsak was unaware of the facts of gunfire. So — it was funny.
I asked, “Why all the concealment, Vorsak, why the cloak-and-dagger?”
“We have to walk through the busy streets, Shaw.”
“Well? So?”
He said impatiently, “I am an agent, Shaw, not a policeman. I don’t want to draw attention to myself.”
“Oh, I can understand that, all right, as a principle. I was wondering about the gun, all the same.”
“In the pocket?” Vorsak laughed; he knew what I meant, of course. “I shall be close … so close that one bullet will be quite enough. If I were you, I wouldn’t take the risk. I mean this very seriously.”
“Then I’ll take it very seriously,” I said. I did, too, but I didn’t mean to be taken into custody if I could avoid it. From now on, my life and my job were going to be so tough it wasn’t true, but I would have more chance of success on the run than locked up in a Prague prison under interrogation. I might just be able to work something once we were back in the crowds, so long as there were no police around, anyway. We came out of the cul-de-sac and threaded our united path through the side streets back towards the main and busy streets, the shopping streets of Prague, but we didn’t quite get that far unfortunately. It seemed that Vorsak had a car parked en route. Sitting in the back of this car was another man. I didn’t know who or what he was, but he looked a real thug, with an ape’s low forehead and a thin slit of a mouth. It went without saying that he was armed and that his job would be to guard me while Vorsak drove. It was, I supposed, fairly typical arrest procedure and we probably wouldn’t have far to drive. Looking at the thug, I was very thankful for this thought. Then something else happened. Miss Borjorac reappeared, shepherding the tourists, once again with the support of prefect Bassett. I don’t know what there was for them to gawp at around those parts, but there they all were, as large as life, trailing along, trying their best to look keen and interested. At once Vorsak became flustered and pushed me angrily into the car as fast as I could make it.
But Bassett saw me and recognized me in the instant before I was plumped into the back seat. I glanced back as we drove off, fast. Bassett’s mouth was hanging wide open and he was scratching his head in perplexity. He didn’t as yet appear to have reported to Comrade Borjorac, but I could just imagine the by gums that would emerge from the greengrocer later on. It would be a tremendous excitement for him.
*
Prison, or secret agent headquarters, whichever it was to be, was evidently some way off. Right outside Prague, as soon became clear. As we flashed along the highways, I thought about Bassett. Would he, or would he not, report what he had seen? I just couldn’t make the estimate. He would have one hell of a job to resist the temptation to open his trap and shout aloud, but on the other hand I believed he had a fairly strong sense of self-preservation, one indeed that had very nearly overcome the urgent demands of sex on the night of my disappearance. He might see certain dangers to himself in having been connected with me quite so basically on that expedition to the land of whores. That trap of his might stay firmly shut. Or then again he might have a rush of patriotism to the head and decide it was up to him to rush off to the British Embassy and get a fellow sinner out of trouble. That, indeed, was a pretty strong possibility but I rather hoped it wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t say whether or not Lattenbury would have given the Ambassador the tip-off about me and my mission, but even if he had, there wouldn’t be anything the Embassy staff could do to help. They had to stay right out of it. They would merely be embarrassed. But then I didn’t imagine a diplomat would have very much difficulty in dreaming up a yarn to put Bassett off the scent.
Meanwhile Vorsak drove on fast and neither he nor the other man said a word. I asked a question or two, including one about who had killed Miss Vokes, and then gave it up as hopeless; it was all too one-sided.
At a guess, we were around fifty miles out of Prague, having headed north-west by the red blob of the sun behind an overcast that threatened still more snow, when Vorsak pulled off the road on to a rutted track that ran into wide open country. We went along slowly, for about five miles I think, climbing a little all the way till we reached a crest. From this crest I looked down into a snow-covered valley slashed with the black line of a river. On the nearer bank of this river stood a castle. It had a vaguely Germanic look — high walls, and plenty of turrets, and since it had a slate roof I adjudged it to be a fairly modern reproduction — or it could have been renovated and re-roofed.
Anyway, it looked just right for interrogations and the Security Police.
We went towards it, down the now descending track. It was all very quiet and far from anywhere. There would be fields under the snow; I saw some cowsheds and I even heard some mooing, and as we came nearer a girl who looked as though she might be a milkmaid, with a healthy colour and glowing black eyes and straining breasts, came tripping across the snow from the direction of the sheds, making for a cottage lying in the shadow of the castle walls. Or perhaps I should say the schloss walls. It had a distinctly “schloss” look and though the translation is direct enough, of course, “castle” doesn’t convey quite the same image.
There was no moat or drawbridge, however, no keep, no portcullis, no courtyard as such. Just a drive and a gravel sweep in front of the main entrance. It was a reproduction, all right. A good one, too, probably around a hundred years old. As I got out of the car on Vorsak’s order the great dark grey stone walls reared over me like a prison — which it was, so far as I was concerned — and the bitter cold struck through into my bones. The brittle snow broke under my feet; it was ankle deep.
Vorsak said, “Inside, please.”
I took a long look around the valley, and up towards the low crest over which we had come. Vorsak saw my look, and smiled. “Forget it,” he said, pleasantly enough. “Even if you did manage to get away … well, it’s just like Dartmoor — isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Just like Dartmoor, Vorsak. Except for one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. I may be a little out in my geography, and in my estimate of how far we’ve come, but I’d say we’re not so far off the frontier with Germany. Care to tell me if I’m right?”
“I don’t mind in the least. Yes,
you’re right.” Vorsak’s gun was unpocketed now, all bright and lethal in the thin sun. “East Germany, I might point out.”
“I’m aware of that, Vorsak.”
“So?” He seemed puzzled. “Why bother to make the comment about there being a difference, as compared with Dartmoor?”
“Oh, never mind,” I said irritably. “Just a thought. I suppose it’s really all much of a muchness after all.”
Vorsak frowned and said, “Well, now just do as you’re told and get inside.”
I started to, then I stopped. I said, “Just one more question, while you’re in the mood. Did you kill Marilyn Vokes, back in Vienna? You, yourself?”
He laughed. “I may have done, and I may not have done.”
I looked at the greasy, fat face with loathing, strongly tempted to make it even more of a nasty mess. “If you did, Vorsak, why? I mean, I realize you thought it was me in that room, but why did you want to kill me before I reached Prague?”
Vorsak laughed again. “There is such a thing as diplomacy,” he said. “It’s always better, if possible, to avoid any diplomatic embarrassments with Western agents inside one’s own country.”
“You’d have lost some possible information, wouldn’t you?”
Stupid! Vorsak was delighted with that. Gleefully he asked, “Does this mean you are going to talk, Commander?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said crossly, and went inside as previously bidden. Inside, the castle was baronial. I entered a square, lofty hall with a stone floor. It was damned cold and the armour around the walls made it seem even colder. Breastplates and shields, swords, lances, whole suits. A big, but useless, fire of logs flickered at one side of this hall, sending showers of sparks up behind a huge chimney-breast. Vorsak looked monstrously out of place. Of course, in my eyes he was under a disadvantage of imagery because I’d first met him in a pub and he looked much more suited to a bar than a schloss and I didn’t imagine that this was Schloss Vorsak or anything like it. Vorsak’s proper background was a flashy flat in a skyscraper block when he wasn’t coining money in a crummy, dusty office in one of the world’s East Ends, the sort of office where the boss spends half his time making the kind of cash you would never suspect came from such impoverished surroundings, and divides the rest between feeling a big-breasted girl secretary and fiddling the income tax.
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