“Thank you,” Nada said tartly. “Will you please turn your back, Comrade Colonel Starke?”
Starke, smiled, greasily. “I am a married man.”
“I know. Please turn your back.”
I said, “Comrade, you heard the lady.”
“It is nothing to do with you —”
“You heard, Colonel Starke. Remember who she is.” I held his angry gaze for a few moments, then his eyes went down and he shrugged, and stiffly moved so that his back was towards Nada. She began to dress, and I completed my own dressing. With a meaningful inflexion Starke said, “I think perhaps you should have remembered who she is, Commander Shaw. Also, that I have the ear of Comrade Drakotny.”
“Shout aloud,” I said, “right in it. I’m quite sure you will anyway.” I felt a strong reaction against this man, instinctively and perhaps unreasoningly. “Now what’s happened? Have you had Drakotny’s doctors put to death, or something?”
“Oh, no,” Starke said. “Not that. Independent examination showed that Comrade Drakotny is in excellent health and that no attempt whatsoever has been made to interfere with this. Heart, blood-pressure — everything — is perfect. Also, of course, his doctors are by no means in daily attendance. He does not expect to have any contact with them for perhaps many weeks. You will see what this means?”
“You tell me,” I said.
Starke smiled and lifted his hands, palms upwards. “Why, it means that this threat must come from somewhere else. Your theories were wrong, Commander Shaw. Comrade Drakotny now expects that you will either find the real assassins — or that you will offer proof that in fact all you have told him is not in basis merely some diabolical and devious Western plot to discredit the Czech people.”
“Does he really?” I said. I tried to treat this lightly, but I was conscious that real danger was building up fast — for me, and probably for Nada. From the look on her face, she seemed to have the same fear. She was looking at Starke with hatred, and she was beginning to shake again, which I didn’t like. It was clear that she was steaming up for another shot of heroin and I couldn’t forecast how Starke would take that. But I didn’t have to worry for long, because Starke said, “I have orders to take you straight to Comrade Drakotny, Commander Shaw. Please make yourself ready.”
Nada asked, “Me too?”
“No,” Starke said. “I am sorry. Comrade Drakotny does not wish to see you.”
Starke and I left within the minute. By the time we reached the door of the room, Nada was already making a dive for the hypo.
12
There was a car outside, with a driver and another man; nobody in an official position in Prague seemed to travel around without a spare gun-hand. Colonel Starke kept his mouth shut during that drive through the night, the night that was in fact the early morning of Christmas Day. Starke was not a very Christmas-orientated sort of person, and the snowy streets of Prague did nothing for him at all, although, with the moon high in the sky and spreading a silvery radiance over the sleeping city and its age-old buildings, a man of imagination could almost fancy himself floating back in time to the first of all Christmas Days. This feeling evaporated fast when we reached Wenceslas Square, partly, I think, because even Father Christmas had had his illumination doused, probably on the grounds of economy; but mostly because of the low ebb that a sight of the Security Police building in its idiotic hotel garb must bring to anyone’s spirit. I kept on telling myself that I was merely wanted for a consultation with Drakotny, that he needed me and so I was on safe ground; but each time I said this to myself a little voice inside me answered me back. Ha, ha, it said.
On arrival Colonel Starke checked us in at reception and then we went up in a lift. Not, I was thankful to note, one of those divided lifts for guards and prisoners. This was the VIP lift, red and gold décor, uniformed attendant, soft carpet and all. It was as silent as everything else in this Lubyanka-like place. This lift had a floor indicator and I noted that we stopped at the eleventh, three below the top. When we stepped out, we stepped into silent luxury. The carpets had been thick on the lower floors, the victims’ floors, but up here they were opulent. The paintwork glowed under soft lights and outside one of the doors were several uniformed men who came to attention as Colonel Starke approached. I assumed Drakotny was on the other side of that door, and I was right.
He got to his feet as I went in. “It is kind of you to come,” he said. He walked up and shook my hand; he had a strong, firm grip, quite friendly, but I didn’t like the look in his eye. “Sit down, please. Here.” He indicated a chair set before a big, leather-topped desk. It was a hard, wooden chair of the upright kitchen variety and I didn’t care much for the implications of such pointed austerity in very contrasting surroundings. Drakotny moved round to the other side of the desk and sat in a comfortably-upholstered swivel chair. Colonel Starke and another man stood with their backs to the door, and there was what I suppose you could truthfully call a pregnant hush. To me, it all added up, not to a nice talk with Comrade Drakotny but, despite the handshake, to my second interrogation. I was right. I seemed to be developing a habit of being right. A full personal grilling by the acting Prime Minister would be highly unusual, but, as I had recalled once before, this thing was pretty personal to Drakotny. I didn’t realize then just how personally he was regarding it.
Drakotny gestured to the man with Colonel Starke and a couple of seconds later the lighting in the room changed. There had been soft concealed lighting around the walls, but this went off. One light took its place, just one. A spotlight that shone from above and behind Drakotny, leaving him as a faint, blurred outline beneath the beam. It was a very bright light, and it was shining straight into my face. It hurt my eyeballs, and I turned aside from it. I saw red and blue circles, twisting and expanding and contracting.
Drakotny said, “Face the light.”
I wanted to say something very rude, but I held it back.
There was nothing I could do except make things worse for myself. I faced the light, blinking and squinting.
“The promised assassination,” Drakotny said. His voice was quiet, but strong, and it seemed to come from a great distance. The distance was the effect of the beam of light, of his remoteness in the shadow beneath the beam. I couldn’t see him at all as the light got to work on my eyes and robbed me of a sight of anything except itself and its grotesque coloured imagery, its rainbow whorls. “Tell me everything about it.”
“I’ve done that already.”
“No.”
“But, yes! I’ve been honest with you, Comrade Drakotny. I thought you trusted me.”
“I trusted you until you were proved wrong.”
“About your doctors?”
“Just so. They are wholly innocent.”
“How do you know that, how can you be sure?”
“I know, be assured of that.” He did, too; I didn’t know why he was so sure, but there was total conviction in his voice. “Yet you wished to involve them, to cast the blame. Why?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t that way, Comrade, and you must know it. I really believed your doctors had it in for you.”
“Because of Heilersetz?”
“No. Because of Krajcin. Pavol Krajcin.”
“Tell me again what he said to you.”
I did so. It didn’t take long, since in fact Krajcin had said practically nothing, and all at once, in the course of that second repetition, I was struck by the sheer inadequacy of my own case. It had been so largely supposition, conjecture, circumstantial but insubstantial; maybe it had all been in the mind right the way along. Maybe it had been too easy. Certainly it was too facile for Drakotny.
He said as much. I kept silent; it would be dangerous, now, to try to flog a dead horse. My apprehension grew; I felt a curious movement in my guts. Scared for myself, I began to worry also about Nada, and the Frumms, and poor Bassett. This whole thing had suddenly gone sour. I was facing a different Drakotny from the man I’d seen yesterday �
� on Christmas Eve. I wished these people would observe the old, familiar, time-honoured religious festivals as we in the West did. The Foreign Office’s intelligence section would never, never interrogate on Christmas Day. It simply wouldn’t be the done thing. All pressures eased until the day after Boxing Day, and the day after that if Christmas fell on a Saturday or Sunday. The British working interrogator was a strictly union gentleman.
I thought of Lattenbury and knew that whatever happened I had to keep his august name out of it.
The grilling, the real grilling, began. It started with a simple but all-embracing request from Comrade Drakotny, politely put: “Please tell me everything from the beginning, Commander Shaw. From your first intimation of a threat to my life, on to your entry into Czechoslovakia, and all that has occurred since. Including, of course, a full account of your visit to General Heilersetz.”
I said, “You’re really taking this thing seriously now, aren’t you?”
“Naturally —”
“Why didn’t you, when I first saw you?”
“You will answer questions, not ask them,” Drakotny said. I wondered what had caused this shift of mind, and wished to God I knew, so that I could slant my answers the right way. But Drakotny clearly wasn’t going to help. I started my spiel, taking it slowly and carefully, with that terrible blinding light full in my eyes throughout and with Starke and his mate now closed in behind me all ready to assist in stirring my memory if it should grow sluggish. Once or twice, it did; and each time Drakotny interrupted.
“Your 6D2 gave you instructions to protect my life, yet gave you no reason why they should desire this?”
“None,” I said.
“I do not believe this.”
I said, “I’m sorry about that.”
There was a brief pause, then from behind me Colonel Starke’s hand knocked my head sharply to the left. It hurt. “Think again,” Drakotny said.
“No reason given.”
The other man loomed up on my right and there was a flick of light and something, a small chain I think, took me in a hard lash around the mouth. It was agonizing and I felt blood run from my lips, which had split. Talking was harder after that; but I still managed to say, “I wasn’t given any reason.”
Drakotny let that point go; I could almost hear him telling himself he had all night yet, or most of it anyway. But he knew exactly where else to probe, and he probed in another sensitive direction. He said that obviously some other department must be involved as well as an unofficial body like 6D2, and what, exactly, had been my instructions from the Foreign Office?
“Not a word,” I lied. “I’ve had no contact with them at all. But I’m getting to the point when I would like to have a contact with them. I want to see someone from the British Embassy. I don’t suppose for a moment you’ll comply, but I’d like you to take due note of that request.”
Drakotny laughed and Colonel Starke’s friend used the chain again. That was that; but I didn’t mention Lattenbury. I only hoped he would be grateful. With luck, I might get an M.B.E. like the Beatles.
*
It went on and on. Neither Drakotny nor the other two seemed to get tired or lose heart, but I had a job to keep my eyes open. They hurt abominably now, and each time my lids went down Starke or his friend hit me. Another nice little trick they evolved was the insertion of a lighted cigarette-end into my nostrils, which was fiendish. I expect they knew just how fiendish it was, and had taken precautions against any sudden upheaval on my part: before they did it, I was tied down and I stayed tied down as the hours passed. I was still telling my story, still threading a tortuous path between truth, half-truth, and no truth at all, between total concealment and enough expedient revelation to get by. And to get not only myself by but those others as well, the ones who were dependent on me — and that still involved keeping Heilersetz’s name clear of any mud. It was desperately difficult, of course, but I’d had plenty of past experience of resisting grills and pressures and I managed, even through the clinging mists of physical weariness, to keep my objective in sight. It was pretty obvious that Drakotny had all manner of suspicions in his head regarding old Heilersetz, but I wasn’t going to confirm any of them, and I got the idea his intelligence boys hadn’t provided him with any help from the Frumms either. If they had, I felt it would have come through, and Drakotny’s efforts to convince me that they had talked didn’t cany enough conviction. I also felt pretty sure the cops hadn’t yet dug down to that briefcase — I didn’t know what it contained, but the papers must be fairly incriminating. As for Bassett, he didn’t know anything anyway and I wasn’t too worried really. The police would surely hand him over to the British Embassy when they realized that the sum total of his experience was girls and brussels sprouts. After a while Drakotny shifted the line of interrogation from Heilersetz to Nada Strecka, who, of course, was my principal point of involvement.
How had I originally contacted her?
Through whom?
What, in detail, had she told me about this threat?
Did I believe her? Was she merely suffering from some form of fixation, of over-concern for Drakotny? Was it — did I think — a simple case of unrequited love leading to delusions?
No, I said, I didn’t.
Why didn’t I? What was behind that? The British Foreign Office, perhaps?
No, no, no!
God … it grew more intense when the girl’s name came up. Much more intense. Drakotny’s doctors crashed back into the arena as well. I had cast the blame on them, or tried to, Drakotny said, in order to deflect attention from myself. I had come into Czechoslovakia to carry out that assassination, on instructions from Western Imperialism.
Was this not right?
No, I told Drakotny repeatedly, it bloody well was not.
His voice drummed into my ears: “Then why Vorsak?”
“What do you mean, why Vorsak?” I was beginning to feel stunned, battered to a mental jelly, which was what they wanted. “Isn’t — wasn’t — he on your side, Drakotny?”
“As opposed to who else’s side?”
“God damn you,” I said. “You’re bound to win, aren’t you? I don’t suppose it’s any use my telling you we’re all on the same side in this?”
“There is my side, and your side, and Heilersetz’s side.”
“And they coincide,” I said, making a dismal attempt at a pun that in any case didn’t come off in Czech. But after that Drakotny’s voice paused and gave me a few moments peace and quiet. Then he said, surprisingly, “I asked you about Vorsak. Now I will tell you something about Vorsak. That man was on Vorsak’s side and no-one else’s. An opportunist. For his own reasons … he had a need to get his hands on Miss Strecka. His was a dangerous game that was bound to lead to his death, and did. I have no time for Vorsak.”
“Neither had I,” I said, “so let’s leave him, shall we? Leave him alone with his glory.”
“What is this?” Drakotny’s voice was sharp and suspicious.
I said, “Oh … Sir John Moore. They buried him darkly at dead of night. All that jazz.”
“Buried him — where? In Heilersetz’s tunnel?”
“Oh, Christ, no,” I said wearily. “At Corunna. It’s history.”
Fortunately, Colonel Starke knew a thing or two and he intervened to save his boss embarrassment. I’d always heard that Josef Drakotny was a man of the people. I don’t know if it was the effect of his little display of ignorance, or whether it was the clock, but, very abruptly after that, he broke off the interrogation. The lights went up; Drakotny, in the cruel electric light, looked as tired and strained as I felt; and the other two, now that the tension was released, started yawning their heads off. Drakotny gestured at Starke, who walked across the room behind the desk and pulled some heavy curtains aside from a window. It was a wide window with a small balcony outside. Drakotny told me to get up. I said I would when someone untied me. He apologized, and Starke’s companion came over and let go the ropes and I stoo
d up, stiff and sore and ragged at the edges temperwise.
“Come,” Drakotny said in a genial voice, and beckoned me towards the window. He seemed to have put the night behind him, which astonished me, to put it mildly, since he hadn’t learnt anything from me — or so I thought. It seemed I was wrong, this time. He said, when we reached the window, “Look, Commander. Look down on Wenceslas Square. Look down on Prague, on Christmas Day.” I did; the hour was early but the sun was up, a red blob in the eastern sky, and the snow was lying thick. The trees were sheer filigree, the square was silent. A few people moved about, black insects struggling through the cotton-wool. The effigy of St Niklaus, Father of All Christmasses, stood beningly by. And as I watched, the bells rang out as I had heard them the day before. At first softly, gently, then with strength and vigour until the whole of Prague seemed to be one vast churchyard.
Drakotny was looking at me. “Well?” he asked.
“Well, what?”
“What do you see?”
I looked at the acting Prime Minister curiously, then looked down again into Wenceslas Square. “I see snow, and sun on it, and a handful of people. No traffic yet. What’s the idea, Drakotny? Do you want me to see something else?”
He said, “What I see is this: peace and goodwill and happiness, and an end to mistrust.”
“Well, goodoh! It’s a pity you didn’t look out of the window last night.”
“Then, trust had not come.”
“Huh?” I turned again, and looked into that strong, chunky face, the face of power, the face of the working man triumphant. “Does that mean something or other? If it does, I’m afraid it escapes me, Comrade Drakotny.”
Smiling, he put a hand on my shoulder. “It should not. I am trying to say, I trust you — or almost. It has been a long night, a long interrogation, but I believe your story. I do not think you came to Prague with harm towards me in your heart. But I had to satisfy myself of this — because of your associations, you understand?”
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