by Andrew Garve
Suddenly the wrist I was clutching was wrenched from my grasp. I lunged at a bloody face and dived out of range of the boot and then as I came up from the floor I hit my head a terrific crack on the underside of the wash basin and everything went blank.
Chapter Twenty One
The delegates had been excused even the formality of a call at the airport customs and porters had now begun to load their luggage into the Russian-built DC-3 which was to take them as far as Prague. Jeff Clayton, relieved that Verney had been proved right and that no one had shown any interest in the contents of his bags, was chatting cheerfully to Cressey in the comfortable waiting-room. The rest of the delegates were gathered around Tranter and Perdita, who were drafting a last-minute message to Stalin of a kind which had become practically de rigueur for departing delegations.
Presently Mirnova put her head in. ‘You will be taking off in ten minutes,’ she announced. She looked around. ‘Oh, Mr Bolting, could you spare a moment? Mr Vassiliev has a little present for you.’
Bolting detached himself from the group and followed her out.
‘That guy sure looks sorry for himself,’ said Jeff.
Cressey nodded. ‘He ought to have gone home a week ago, when he wanted to. It’s been miserable for him since.’ There was a stir among the delegates as Perdita straightened up from the table with a slip of paper in her hand. ‘I think this will do,’ she said, and began to read: ‘On leaving the territory of the Soviet Union, we the undersigned wish to thank you, Comrade Stalin, for the hospitality and friendship which has been extended to us. We acclaim the efforts of the Soviet Union to strengthen peace, and we assure you that we will seize every opportunity to acquaint our fellow countrymen with the truth and to foil the plans of the imperialists, seeking to foment a new world war.” Is everyone satisfied with that?’ She eyed the delegates in turn, challenging anyone to criticise.
‘You could say “P.S. Sorry about the statue”; Jeff murmured.
Perdita gave him a contemptuous look. ‘Then that’s all right. We’d better see what Mr Bolting says.’
Bolting had just returned with a parcel under his arm. He read through the message and nodded. The delegates gathered round the table again to append their signatures. Cressey went across to Perdita and said diffidently, ‘Excuse me, Miss Manning.’
‘What is it?’ she asked him, with a touch of impatience.
‘I don’t want to sign it.’
There was a short, heated wrangle. Thomas finally suggested that as there wasn’t time to bring Cressey to a sense of his responsibilities, the simplest way out of the difficulty would be to say ‘this delegation’ instead of ‘we, the undersigned,’ and that was agreed to. Mrs Clarke sniffed indignantly, and told Cressey he ought to be ashamed of himself, but Cressey stolidly ignored her.
Schofield said, ‘What’s in the parcel, Bolting?’
Bolting bent to his ear. ‘Caviar,’ he whispered. ‘A one-pound tin for each of us. Will you tell the others? From VOKS.’
Schofield made the announcement.
‘A most acceptable parting gift,’ said Tranter. He caught Jeff’s eye. ‘I fear you’re not included in this, Mr Clayton.’
‘That’s okay – I’m self-supporting,’ said Jeff.
Presently Mirnova reappeared. ‘Will you all come along now, please – the plane is ready.’
She led the way out on to the tarmac. The cold, away from the shelter of the building, was breathtaking. Cressey said, ‘Catch me coming here again!’ as he hastened across with Jeff. A party of Russians, who were flying as far as Prague, brought up the rear. At the plane, there was a last pause for photographs; then Vassiliev and Mirnova and Kira shook hands all round, and a few moments later the aircraft taxied out to the runway and took off.
As it gained height and turned in a wide circle, Jeff looked down with mixed feelings at the Kremlin’s gleaming towers, the frozen line of the Moskva river and the galvanised-iron rooftops of faded maroon. He was wondering if by any chance Tanya was down there, in one of those buildings. He felt for a cigarette and lit it with a set, expressionless face.
When the aircraft ceased to bank, Perdita called across the gangway, ‘Glad to be leaving, Mr Clayton?’
‘You bet I am!’
‘I expected to see your friend Mr Verney at the airport,’ she went on. There was a note of mockery in her tone.
‘So did I,’ said Jeff gruffly. ‘I guess he was held up.’
‘I’m afraid he’s a rather disappointed man. All that clever detective work, and no result!’
‘The odds were too great,’ said Jeff. ‘You know that. Anyway, don’t kid yourself that you’re out of the wood yet. He’s tough – he’ll be after you.’
‘Surely you don’t believe that ridiculous story of his?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Jeff, and turned to the window again. He didn’t want to talk to the woman – she was just being a bitch. He didn’t want to talk to any of them. He drew his shuba more closely round his ears and wished the plane would warm up.
They were flying very low, but there wasn’t much to look at. Conifers and bare birches and snow – that was about all. The route seemed to avoid most of the towns. There was little talking, for the noise of engines made conversation an effort. Soon everyone began to doze. After a while Jeff became somnolent and dozed too. There was no better way to pass the time.
They landed somewhere in Poland to refuel, but took off again as soon as the job was done. There would be another machine waiting for the delegation at Prague, and if this good progress were maintained they should be in London that night. People nibbled sandwiches and drank from flasks of coffee which the hotel had thoughtfully provided. The plane droned on.
At Prague airport, which they reached shortly after two o’ clock, there was a small reception committee, appropriate to the brevity of the stay. A minor banquet had been prepared in the airport building, but it fell rather flat. Cressey announced that he wasn’t feeling up to any more celebrations and sat in the lounge with Bolting, whose throat permitted him to take nothing more than a glass of warm milk. Jeff sat on a stool at the bar, drinking Pilsener and flirting with the barmaid. Excitement had begun to grip him. In a few hours now he’d be out of all this – over the Curtain – out of reach. It was hard to wait.
Just before three o’clock the banquet broke up, and they were all conducted out to the Czech plane which would fly them direct to Northolt. The Russians had gone about their business and there were no fresh passengers.
The delegates were drowsier than ever now and time passed unnoticed except by Jeff. It grew dark. Somewhere there was another refuelling stop, a rather bumpy one, and Mrs Clarke showed signs of nervousness until Schofield reassured her. No one got out. Perdita and Islwyn Thomas were settled comfortably in adjoining seats with a rug over their knees. Tranter was sitting alone by the door, apparently lost in thought. Jeff wondered what new instructions he’d received from Moscow now that his pose could no longer be sustained. Bolting was almost buried under a rug and nothing of him was visible but the top of his fur hat and the ringed hand that held the rug in place.
As the plane gathered speed for the last take-off, Cressey turned and smiled at Jeff. ‘Not long now, Mr Clayton!’
Jeff grinned, and held up two fingers, crossed. ‘It’s the last lap that always scares me, Joe.’ He didn’t look scared, though – he looked as though he might become separately airborne with excitement at any moment.
Repeatedly he gazed out of the window, wondering where they were and trying to make out what sort of weather they were flying through. There was cloud from time to time but the ceiling was high – there was no meteorological reason why they shouldn’t make it. He smoked a couple of cigarettes in quick succession. If only he could skip the next hour or two! The tension became unbearable. He tried reading, as some of the others had begun to do, but he couldn’t concentrate. He tried counting up to a thousand and then starting all over again. Anything to take his m
ind off the interminable minutes. The plane could so easily be recalled. As long as it was in the air, it belonged to Prague, to Moscow. Every time one of the crew came out into the saloon, his pulse gave an uncontrollable leap of apprehension.
Suddenly there were no more lights from the ground. The aircraft was over the sea – this was really the last lap. Shortly after nine o’clock the great incandescence of London began to glow in the sky ahead. A stir ran through the delegates. The radio operator stuck his nose out. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said with a friendly smile.
Jeff felt a drop of moisture trickle down his spine. They were losing height now. He stubbed out his cigarette and groped for his seat belt. There were lights everywhere below – he could almost lean on them as the plane banked for its circuit. The runway swung beneath them. The passengers became suddenly quiet. The plane straightened out, dropped a little, and touched. It bumped once, then rumbled steadily along the concrete. There was a collective exhalation of breath. As it taxied up to the airport building, Jeff unfastened his belt and stood up. The engines roared, and died.
He stepped out into the gangway. ‘Okay, George,’ he said, ‘you can come out of that cocoon.’
I threw off the rug and the fur coat, the hat and the balaclava, and the horn-rimmed glasses that had given me a hell of a headache. ‘Hallo, folks!’ I said.
It was quite an entrance. For a second, everyone just stared. Then Mrs Clarke gave a loud scream. Perdita turned very white and clutched Thomas’s arm and Schofield said ‘Good God!’ As for Cressey I thought his bottom jaw was going to drop right off.
The pilot came through with his crew. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Jeff curtly. ‘We’ll be out in a moment.’
It was Tranter who recovered himself first. ‘What is all this? What the hell have you been up to, Verney? Where’s Bolting?’
‘As far as we know,’ said Jeff, ‘he’s lying in Verney’s room at the Astoria with a hole in his head. Unless they’ve found him, of course.’
‘You mean – he’s dead?’
‘I guess not. I had to hit him with a skating-boot, but he’ll probably recover. His skull isn’t as thin as Mullett’s was.’ Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘Bolting killed Mullett, you know.’
‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Perdita, but at last the word had lost its ring of conviction.
‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ I said. ‘He attacked me in my room. He was looking for those trousers – remember?’ Ruefully I fingered my swollen face. ‘You wouldn’t like to model me instead of Uncle Joe, would you, Miss Manning?’
She turned away, gathering up her things. I think even she was shocked out of her complacency at last. Islwyn Thomas silently helped her. Mrs Clarke, still on the edge of hysteria, was assisted from the plane by a grim-faced Schofield. Cressey descended in a daze.
Tranter’s front had completely collapsed. ‘It’s hardly credible,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘What a blackguard!’
‘Even by your standards, Mr Tranter?’ I said.
He picked up his belongings and left the plane without another word. To him, of course, Bolting was now just another traitor to the cause.
‘Come on,’ said Jeff, ‘we’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’ He gripped my arm. ‘Oh, boy, we’ve made it.’
Chapter Twenty Two
I pushed back my plate, took a sip of black coffee, and helped myself to a Lucky from Jeff’s pack. We were in the airport restaurant – more or less on parole while the immigration people continued their inquiries about me – and I’d just had my first solid food in twenty-four hours.
I lit up, and sat back with a relaxed sigh. ‘That’s better. Next time I impersonate anyone, I’m going to make sure beforehand that he’s capable of eating and smoking like a normal person.’
Jeff surveyed me dispassionately. ‘You still look a bit of a wreck, bud. How’s the head?’
‘It could be worse. By the way, Jeff – thanks!’
‘Forget it.’
‘He’d have killed me, you know. I could see it in his eyes.’
‘Me, too. That’s why I hit him with the skate.’
‘It must have been a pretty near thing.’
‘I’ll say it was. By the time I’d registered your shout and tried your door and rushed through Mullett’s room, you were out cold and Bolting was just raising the boot. I never want to see anything nearer.’
‘Thank God you were still upstairs, that’s all. What were you doing, hanging about there?’
He looked a bit sheepish. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just penning a line to Tanya. I thought that maybe she’d turn up again one day, and that if I left a note Kira could give it to her. Kind of optimistic, but I didn’t like the idea of just walking out.’
‘Well, it was lucky for me. In fact, things turned out pretty well altogether. We’d have been sunk if Bolting hadn’t been wearing his outdoor things.’
Jeff chuckled. ‘It sure was the perfect disguise. Of course, you’re just his build and the glasses helped enormously, but all those wrappings were a gift. You almost had me fooled.’
‘There were some bad moments, all the same. I thought I was going to have to sign that message to Stalin and I hadn’t the remotest idea how Bolting wrote his name. That shook me. And when the plane began to warm up, I thought someone might think it odd that I didn’t unwrap at all. The trickiest moment of the whole lot, though, was when Mirnova called me away to see Vassiliev.’
‘That had me worried, too. Why didn’t he bring the parcel in and make a little speech?’
‘The parcel was only an excuse. I wasn’t taken to Vassiliev. I was taken to the Customs.’
‘The Customs!’
‘Yes. There were a couple of tough-looking birds there whom I hadn’t seen before. One of them said “Keys!” and there was no fraternal nonsense about his tone either. I felt in one pocket after another, and I couldn’t find them, and I thought to myself, “You’ve had it, chum,” and then suddenly they jingled. It’s a good job you were thorough. Well, they opened the bags, and the packet of stamps was lying right on top of one of them. They removed it without a word, locked the bags up again, and returned the keys. I was taken to Vassiliev, who handed me the parcel of caviar, and then Mirnova brought me straight back. I didn’t open my mouth the whole time, and no one seemed to expect me to.’
‘Darned queer!’
‘I thought so at the time, but I don’t now. Put yourself in Bolting’s place… ’
‘Not bloody likely!’ said Jeff.
I laughed, even though it hurt. ‘The thing is, he knew that the Russians knew everything he’d done. He knew that they’d decided to let him go, and why. But he must have had a pretty good idea, too, that they wouldn’t let him get away with his loot. I imagine he’d realised all the time that they’d collect at the Customs, and that was why he’d put the stamps handy for them. Anyway, it all went off very smoothly.’
‘Well, I guess they’re entitled to the stamps. I don’t know what we’d have done with them.’
‘I’d have bought myself a new typewriter,’ I said ruefully. ‘Still what the hell!’ I lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. ‘You know, Jeff, I’ve been pretty dumb. I ought to have realised that Bolting was our man. The evidence was there.’
‘I suppose it was, in a way,’ said Jeff thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we ought to have paid more attention to that job he had as an accountant. It showed his bent in the early years – you might even say it showed he was the sort of guy who might trade stamps as a sideline. Still, he wasn’t the only one that could be fitted in.’
‘I didn’t mean that sort of evidence. There was something concrete. You remember he told me that when he was in Moscow in 1942 he had a room on the third floor on the side overlooking the lane?’
‘That’s what you said.’
‘Well, that was the give-away. When we were at that VOKS party, he told us a story – perhaps you weren’t there at the time – ab
out how he’d sat on his balcony during the war and watched the passengers in a trolley bus being sprayed with water. Well, he couldn’t have seen any trolley buses from the room he said he had. He’d forgotten that first story. Funny! – you said that what we needed was a thundering lie, and when we got it I didn’t even notice.’
Jeff shrugged. ‘He’d probably have talked himself out of it. The only sure way was to catch him red-handed.’
‘You must have done that literally! I wonder what’s happened to him.’
‘Maybe he threw himself off the balcony when he came round. Best thing he could do, I should think.’
I pondered. ‘Somehow I can’t see Bolting as a suicide. He’s got too much self-confidence. I don’t think he’d chuck his hand in as long as he had any chips left.’
‘Maybe not, but he hasn’t any chips. He can’t be any more use to the Russians – once this story breaks he’ll be just a liability, and you can bet your life they don’t love him. In fact, they must be pretty sore all round… ‘
He broke off, and I guessed what he was thinking. We’d been so careful, all through, not to make things worse for Tanya, and then at the end events had taken control and we’d had to act without giving her a thought. When the full story broke, the Russians would lose a lot of face and they’d probably take their revenge where they could. It was a sobering thought. At that moment, neither of us had any sense of triumph.
’There’s not much we can do about it now,’ I said sadly.
‘I’m not so sure. Maybe I’m just crazy but I’ve got a sort of idea… ’ He was silent for a while. ‘Look, George, where are we going to get by spilling this story? The delegation’s bust, anyway – Mullett’s dead, Bolting’s written off, and Tranter will have to crawl under a stone.’