Prague Spring

by Simon Mawer

“And at the moment,” Sam continued, “the woman I love, the woman whom I am going to marry, is lying critically ill in hospital. So believe it or not, Mr. Egorkin, you are not even high on my own list of priorities.”

  * * *

  The fire of anger had burned itself out by the time he appeared in the embassy. “I needed you,” Eric said when he saw him, “and you were nowhere to be found.”

  Faced with his boss he felt no more than a kind of exhaustion. “She’s in a coma, Eric.”

  “Coma? Who?”

  “Lenka. The woman whose name you forgot. The woman I couldn’t have with me because they weren’t letting their own people take refuge in foreign embassies.”

  Whittaker looked shocked. It was rare to see him disconcerted. He just had single interrogatives to deal with, like someone struggling with a new language. How? Why? When? He seemed sorry, he was sorry. And shocked and appalled and distraught and all those other emotions one lays claim to at moments of consternation, whereas Sam felt only the cold hand of anger descend once more.

  “If you want to go home, old fellow…”

  But Sam shook his head. “Brooding on my own is the last thing I need, Eric. Tell me what I can do.”

  Whittaker considered. “You are our Russian specialist. You can talk to them better than anyone else we have. Perhaps you can get on the phone to the Soviet embassy, to whoever you have some sort of understanding with, and explain to them that we are proposing to evacuate a substantial number of our citizens by road and we need their understanding and cooperation. Because with their little toy soldiers all over the place, trigger-happy and frightened out of their wits, this whole circus parade could go horribly wrong.”

  Sam smiled. It was not a smile of amusement or even complicity. It was a smile of something close to despair. “I can do that, Eric,” he said. “I know just the man to talk to. But he’ll not be able to guarantee that poor frightened Ivan won’t pull the trigger of his Kalashnikov. After all, I doubt anyone was given the order to fire the bullet that hit Lenka. And yet there she is, unconscious in a hospital bed.”

  Whittaker winced. Sam watched him for a moment, then nodded and went to his office.

  * * *

  Zdeněk has come from the hospital, come from seeing Lenka. Ellie and James try and talk with him, although it’s not easy to communicate across the barriers of language and anger. But medical words are more or less the same in English as in Czech. That’s the way with such vocabulary—an international language of disaster. Kóma, he says. Trauma. Ventilátor.

  “I think,” he says, “she die.”

  Ellie weeps. It’s a shock to imagine her broken like that. James feels sad enough but, hey, it’s not the end of the world, not yet. Lenka’s world maybe, yet she’s still alive, isn’t she? There’s always hope. But Ellie weeps and somehow he envies her weeping, the fact that she can have access to a great well of feeling that seems denied to him.

  Outside, the city drags wearily towards evening. Guns are fired in the gathering darkness, lines of tracer arcing through the sky like a blizzard of shooting stars. Perhaps this is to signify the beginning of a curfew imposed by the occupying forces and announced by posters plastered all over the city. Perhaps it is just the city weeping for its lost freedom and not to be comforted.

  Jitka returns late, her face drawn in anguish. When asked how Lenka is she merely confirms what her husband has already conveyed, that Lenka lies on the borderline between the living and the dead, neither one thing nor the other, like the country itself, neither free nor captive.

  Zdeněk leaves. There are things to do during the night. Posters to be made, plans to be laid, a petition to be composed and names of collaborators to be published in the streets: Kolder, Indra, Bil’ak, Jakeš, others. Names that will live in infamy. Jitka talks into the night, her sharp, frantic mind jumping from one thing to another. “What will you do?” she asks them. “You cannot stay here. It is dangerous for you. And perhaps for us.”

  James tells her about his contact with the embassy. “Tomorrow, they told us, wait until tomorrow.”

  “We don’t want to leave you,” Ellie says.

  “You have to,” says Jitka. “You have to. There is nothing here to stay for.”

  She might have been speaking for a whole people.

  50

  Sam spent the evening with Harold Saumarez, discussing how to deal with the Russian musicians. The SIS man had come up with a plan to get them out, a careful construct of cars and hiding places and false passports, with decoys and extras just to confuse the issue. Whisky made the whole idea seem plausible, but against Lenka’s injury it seemed a kind of blasphemy to be talking of saving the Russians while she lay unconscious in hospital. When Sam explained what had happened, Harold offered a bluff sort of comfort: “Don’t you worry, old chap. The one thing these fellows can do is medicine. She’ll be right as rain, just you wait and see.”

  The whisky bottle was half-empty when Harold left after midnight, dismissing any suggestion that there might be a curfew or that he might be subject to it. From the sitting room window, Sam watched him cross the square in front of the building undisturbed, and disappear round the corner. The Tatra that had been there earlier was nowhere to be seen.

  His bedroom—his and Lenka’s bedroom—was a refuge of a kind, filled with her possessions as though she had been there for months rather than…how long was it? Days or weeks? Time seemed distorted, both stretched and compressed by the gravitational fields of events swirling around him, by the shock and the misery, the fear and the hate. Disconsolately, he tidied up her things, scraps of underwear, her shoes, stockings, some books, pages of articles she had typed, including the last one about her encounter with Dubček, written but never submitted and no chance of publication now. He tried to put some items together that he might take to the hospital for her—toothbrush, soap, her hairbrush, a hand towel—but he really didn’t know what might be needed. Her nightdress, still redolent of her presence, lay where she had tossed it over the back of a chair. He picked it up and held it to his face, breathing in her scent, remembering. He didn’t put it aside with the other things but instead climbed into bed and tried to sleep, with the nightdress clutched to him like a comforter to a child.

  * * *

  Dawn seeped into the city, bringing with it the dashed hopes of another day. Tanks still blocked the bridges over the river. Armored cars still guarded the offices of state. The radio still broadcast defiance, exhorting listeners to take no notice of the renegade Radio Vltava and listen only to those voices they could recognize and trust. Do nothing to provoke the occupying forces, it said, but give them no help. Deny them even a drop of water. Say only that if they come as peaceful tourists driving Ladas then you will happily show them round your beautiful city; but as they have come in uniform and driving tanks you will not even look at them.

  Sam rang Jitka’s number as early as he dared. Her familiar voice was almost a comfort as he struggled to betray no panic, no sign of the desperation that bubbled up inside him. “Lenka? How’s Lenka?” But there was no news. Jitka was going to the hospital as soon as she could. “I’ll try to get over there sometime today,” he told her. “It’s just that everything’s happening here.” And he felt stupid saying that, because everything was happening everywhere at the moment, wasn’t it? To Lenka and Jitka and her kind much more than to the pampered foreigners who had their safety nets, their diplomatic immunities, their escape lines, their ways out.

  “Could you put one of the English kids on the line?” he asked as she was about to hang up. “I need to speak to them.”

  Words sounded in the background, and then the flat, Northern vowels of James’s voice came on the line. “‘Ullo. It’s James here.”

  “This is Sam Wareham. Are you ready to go? We did speak yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you remember speaking or yes, you’re ready?”

  “Both those things.”

  “Right. There’s a
road convoy being organized. There’s also probably going to be a train, but we’d like to get you out by road, is that all right? We’re going to send a van for you both, but we can’t cross the river because the Soviet army is blocking the bridges. So you’ve got to come over to this side under your own steam. Do you understand? You’re in the New Town, aren’t you?”

  “I dunno. I s’pose so.”

  “Well you are. What you’ve got to do is make your way to the Palacký Bridge. That’s the nearest one to where you are now. Cross over the bridge and you’ll find our minibus waiting for you at the first corner on the right. It’s a white VW. You shouldn’t have any problem with the Russians, but if they do stop you, show them your passports and say Britanskoye posol’stvo. That’s British embassy in Russian. Can you do that?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Repeat it to me.”

  There was a moment’s farcical lesson in Russian pronunciation, with the boy floundering around amongst the unfamiliar vowels.

  “Just saying ‘britanskoye’ should get you by. And calling him ‘tovarishch’ could be useful. That’s comrade.”

  “I know what tovarish means.”

  “Good.”

  “Why i’nt it a Transit?”

  “Why isn’t what a Transit?”

  “The van. Transits are made in England.”

  It was a joke. Sam laughed dutifully. “I’ll have a word with the ambassador. The driver’s name is Derrick, by the way. He will want you to identify yourselves of course, but he knows all about you. Is everything clear? Can you be there in half an hour? Timing’s important, we’ve got a road convoy leaving for the border at ten-thirty.”

  “We’ll get a move on.”

  “Fine.”

  “Just…” A pause.

  “What?”

  “Why are you doin’ all this for us?”

  “Just part of the service.”

  “I don’t believe that for one moment.”

  Not so stupid after all.

  * * *

  No traffic on the bridge, just as the Wareham guy promised, but half a dozen Russian soldiers standing by their vehicles watching pedestrians go past.

  “Is it the right one?” Ellie asks.

  “The bridge? ‘Course it’s the right one.”

  The soldiers eye them but make no move as they walk past towards the Malá Strana. Behind them was an approximate farewell with Jitka, before she rushed off to the hospital. Now, suddenly, all that seems very remote—Jitka and Zdeněk, friends for ten days, have already faded into the past. The present is this, the rucksack on his back, the slog of feet against tarmac, the road ahead once again, with Ellie, for better or for worse, beside him. Ahead is their next lift, the Volkswagen minibus waiting as promised with a stern policeman type behind the wheel. “Hop in the back,” the man says, once he’s given their passports a cursory glance. “You kids going home?”

  “Haven’t thought about it yet.”

  “Out of this madhouse, anyway.”

  The journey takes less than fifteen minutes, but it doesn’t lead to anything resembling a British embassy. Instead the driver parks the vehicle in a side street not far from the river, across the entrance to a small alleyway.

  “Where are we?” James asks.

  “A couple of passengers to pick up,” the driver says.

  There’s movement outside the van. The door slides open and there’s the guy from the embassy—Wareham, Samuel Wareham, standing there and giving a humorless smile while stating the bloody obvious: “You made it safe and sound.” Which is fine, but why does he have to sound as though he’s talking to children? “Now I’m going to need your cooperation. And we haven’t much time so I’d be grateful if you would do exactly as I say and ask no questions. Understood? We’ll want you off the backseat for the moment. Have your rucksacks on your laps. We’ve got a couple of passengers coming and one of them”—as they move places he reaches forward and lifts the rear bench seat to show a coffin-like space beneath—”goes in there. The other, a young woman more or less your age, sits between you, on top of him. He’ll be all right. Don’t worry about him. But she speaks hardly any English and she might be frightened, so you are going to treat her like she is your long-lost sister. Right? Smile and put your arm round her—not you, her,” he adds, pointing at Ellie—”and generally treat her like a treasure. She’s been briefed but still it’ll be a bit of a trial for her.”

  Ellie appears quite unfazed by all this. “What language does she speak?”

  “Russian. I’ll be in the front so I can talk to her when necessary. For the moment we’ve only got to drive round the corner to the embassy. There’ll be a control at the approach to the embassy, so get your passports out. They want to stop Czechos seeking asylum so it’s not a problem for you. Just hand your passports over when asked. OK? Any questions?”

  “What’s this all about?”

  He pauses for a moment, as though this might be the one question he did not want to be asked. “Look, you may recognize them, but if you do don’t say anything, all right? They want out. It’s a simple as that. And we want to help.”

  “Why this way, with us involved?”

  A hint of impatience in his expression. “They’re looking for a middle-aged man and a woman. Instead they’ll see you three kids with rucksacks. Sleight of hand.”

  Wareham steps back. As though at a signal things happen, more or less as predicted: two figures emerge from the alley, a man and a younger woman, both of them hurrying almost as though pursued by a third figure behind them. Except that James recognizes them, that’s the bizarre thing. He recognizes them from that concert, the Birgit Eckstein one—the bloody conductor, all bow tie and tails then but nothing of the kind now, and the violinist.

  “Bloody hell,” he says to Ellie, and he can see that she’s recognized them too.

  The man comes first, ducks into the van and dives into the space beneath the seat. Wareham slams the seat down on him. Then the girl, as frightened as a rabbit, clutching her own rucksack, sits on the bench on top of him and peers at James and Ellie as though they might be predators. Ellie holds out her hand. “I’m Ellie,” she says. “We heard you at the concert. We loved your violin playing.” She smiles warmly but the woman looks aghast and responds with a small torrent of words that make no sense. The door slides shut. The driver and the Wareham guy are climbing into the front. The engine starts and the van lurches forward.

  “OK back there?”

  “OK.”

  Along with her rucksack the woman is clutching a passport, a battered British passport with the name Miss Nicola Jones written in the window.

  “Nicola?” Ellie asks.

  The woman looks helpless. It’s not her name. It’s not her passport. She opens the document and displays a photo of herself looking startled at the very idea of being documented.

  “Just play along with it,” Wareham says, watching them from the front. “She’s just a friend of yours, someone you’ve joined up with. OK?”

  The van turns onto a main road, turns again, bumps over cobbles and edges through tight alleys between buildings that are like something out of the Brothers Grimm. Finally it comes to a halt at a military roadblock.

  “Passports ready,” Wareham calls back. “Just act naturally, as though you don’t have a care in the world. Should be straightforward.”

  Should be. A whole world of uncertainty is subsumed under that innocent phrase. Their situation, a little while ago dangerous but more or less comprehensible, now seems completely mad. They’re sitting in front of a Russian violinist pretending to be Nicola Jones yet speaking not a word of English and on top of—on top of, for Christ’s sake!—an orchestral conductor of international fame, at this very moment lying prone within the stifling, claustrophobic box beneath their seats. James begins to laugh. Giggle, really, like in school assembly when something catches your attention and you cannot control yourself.

  “For fuck’s sake!” says Wareham.r />
  There are soldiers at the driver’s door. Wareham is suddenly transformed, speaking Russian to them, even laughing at something said. James’s own laughter vanishes as a face peers in at the side windows, like someone observing exhibits in a vivarium. The door slides back to reveal the owner of the face, a soldier in a khaki blouse and forage cap. There’s a red star gleaming like a drop of blood on each of his collar tabs. Slung over his shoulder is an ugly piece of ironmongery that James recognizes, because he knows this kind of thing, as a standard-issue AKM assault rifle. The soldier has a scrubbed, youthful look, unblemished by stubble but marked instead by a small cluster of acne spots on either side of his mouth. “Passport,” he demands. James says, “Tovarich,” as he hands his over and there is, perhaps, the ghost of a smile from the Russian. He leafs through the documents, glancing up at the passengers, comparing with the photographs, sucking his teeth as though that might aid his concentration. Beneath his look the woman—Nicola?—tenses. Perhaps the soldier is an amateur violinist, perhaps he knows what’s-her-name Pankova, maybe he’s even seen her perform in Moscow or Leningrad or Kiev or wherever he comes from. “What a bloody mess, eh Nicola?” he says to the woman and receives a frightened smile in response. She’s trying to play the game, attempting, with the few tools at her disposal, to be Nicola Jones, student, born in London on 16 September 1946. “Yes,” she says. Yes. At least she has got that right.

  The soldier nods and hands the passports back. “Ládno,” he calls to the driver, sliding the door shut. The van moves forward up the short cul-de-sac towards forbidding fortress doors. Nicola—Nadezhda, James remembers—is breathing again. As though by magic, the fortress doors open at their approach, allowing them through an archway and into the courtyard of the Thun Palace, where cars are jammed and people are running around as though there’s a fire to put out somewhere.

  “Well done,” Wareham says, glancing back.