Prague Spring

by Simon Mawer

  The van threads its way through the mêlée and edges into a narrow garage. In the sudden gloom James leans across to Ellie and whispers, “What the fuck is this all about?”

  Wareham turns in his seat. Is he about to give an answer to James’s question? It’s hard to see his expression in the low light. “Any news?”

  Ellie replies, understanding what he means. “I’m sorry, no. Jitka was going off to the hospital when we left.”

  He nods. “I’ll ring as soon as I get a moment.”

  * * *

  “No, it’s not the responsibility of the consular department,” Eric Whittaker said sharply. “For God’s sake, Sam, you can see that this whole thing is bloody dangerous. Dozens of civilians driving their own cars through a countryside occupied by a couple of hundred thousand nervous Russians, all of them armed to the teeth and trigger-happy? What can possibly go wrong?” He was seeing himself as the soldier he used to be during his military service spent largely in Aldershot, standing at the window of his office with his hands clasped behind his back just like Montgomery. “So I want a senior man present at all times. Which means you, Sam. I’m sorry but there’s no question about it. Quite understand about your girlfriend and very sorry and all that, but I’m sure she’s getting the best possible medical attention and there’s nothing that you can contribute in that line of business anyway. I need you here, in the convoy, seeing that things are OK. You’re a Russian specialist and a Czech speaker where those idiots in consular can only just about manage Dobrý den. So that’s it, really.”

  Sam had already phoned Jitka’s flat once again and got no reply. The phones at the hospital appeared to be permanently engaged, or maybe they’d just been left off the hook. He felt the sickening of fear and the anger of resentment. All he needed was an hour to get over there and see how things were going, but instead he was stuck here being forced to play soldiers. He almost stamped to attention and saluted, just as he’d been taught during basic training. Instead, he managed a subdued “Very well, Eric,” and went back down to the courtyard where someone from the consular department was faffing around trying to instill some kind of order into the dozen vehicles maneuvering there. “If we don’t get a move on,” he said, “we’re going to miss the rendezvous with the Americans, and then we’ll have to do the whole thing on our own without any direct guarantee of safe passage.”

  * * *

  The vehicles finally left the courtyard of the British embassy at half past ten in the morning. Led by the ambassador’s car flying the Union Jack, the convoy drove slowly through the narrow streets of the Malá Strana and up the hill towards the Castle. There were other vehicles from other embassies on the move in the same direction, and by the time they reached the outer suburb for rendezvous with the Americans over three dozen vehicles had come together, a great shambolic serpent straggling through the streets and along the Pilsen road.

  The Americans had walkie-talkies. Of course they did. Harry Rose was standing in the middle of the street directing traffic and giving commands over the radio. “Stole them from the marine detachment at the embassy,” he told Sam with glee, waving his walkie-talkie around. “Always wanted to do this kind of stuff. How do you read me? Copy that. Over and out. Affirmative, negative, all the Hollywood crap. Hey, do you want to meet Shirley Temple? She’s over there in the Buick, hiding behind smoked glass.”

  “I just want to get the whole thing over and done with,” Sam said.

  It was past eleven o’clock when the cavalcade finally moved off, a motley string of vehicles more like a bank holiday traffic jam than a military convoy, forty-two in all from most of the NATO countries, with the US ambassador’s car flying the Stars and Stripes at the head.

  * * *

  Despite open windows, the air inside the van is thick with the smell of bodies. James’s head is singing, that whining in the right ear like the insistent stridulation of an insect. Feeling faintly sick, he clings to the breeze that comes in from one of the open windows while the stout man in the front seat—Harold Summery is his name—tunes a transistor radio to the BBC World Service, which is how they learn, scratchily through the ether, what is happening in the city they are abandoning. Street signs are being taken down, the reporter says, protests are growing, civilians against tanks, a strike has been called for midday. The country’s leaders have been detained by the occupying forces, their whereabouts are unknown.

  “We should have stayed,” Ellie says.

  “What good would that have done?”

  They’ve been joined in the back of the minibus by one of the embassy secretaries, a sharp woman with a pinched Edinburgh accent. “I think you’re well out of it,” she tells them primly.

  Once out of the built-up area Harold turns to speak. They can let the hidden passenger out for a breather. It’s an awkward maneuver in the confined space, all four of them having to crowd forward so that the rear seat can be raised and the coffin opened. Gennady Egorkin rises, like Lazarus, from the dead. Middle-aged, balding, pallid, slick with sweat, he has the look of the hunted about him. For a few minutes he sits there in his coffin beneath the gaze of his fellow passengers while the girl leans over to minister to him, offering him water and words, presumably of comfort. The sight ought to be incongruous, perhaps even comic, but instead there’s something disturbing about it, as though one is watching a nurse administer a slow and uncomfortable medical procedure.

  “I need to piss,” Lazarus says. They’re the first words he has spoken in English and they betray a surprisingly colloquial command of the language. Harold passes an empty plastic bottle back. While the passengers look discreetly away, the renowned orchestral conductor unbuttons his trousers and pisses into the bottle. You might evade the sight but there’s no avoiding the sound or the warm smell of urine that pervades the enclosed space and wrinkles the Edinburgh woman’s nose.

  When the deed is done it is the young violinist who disposes of the urine, sliding the side door open a fraction and pouring the piss out onto the tarmac. Later, as they approach a built-up area, the man is closed back in his coffin, normal seating is resumed and the journey continues.

  * * *

  At Pilsen the column grinds to a halt. They wait, not knowing. The vehicle in front is a Karmann Ghia with West German number plates. In front of that an Opel, and then the British Embassy Humber. They can’t see any further. After a while the Wareham guy walks back down the road and leans in at the driver’s window.

  “Some kind of roadblock. Don’t know what the hell’s happening but there are soldiers all over the place.”

  Soldiers cannot be good. Wareham glances at his watch, then at the radio at Harold’s feet. “Can’t you turn that bloody thing off?”

  There’s a sudden silence in the van. The wait goes on. It’s stiflingly hot beneath the midday sun and people are getting out of their vehicles and wandering in the road, straining to see. When James pulls the side door open he’s told to stay inside by Harold, but it doesn’t take much to ignore him. He steps out into the sunshine and what little breeze there might be. Ellie climbs out after him, and then the embassy secretary and the violinist after her. It seems only a single move is needed to undermine the voice of authority. A haze of exhaust fumes rises above the snake of vehicles. The tarmac is hot, painted with a mirage of water.

  Soldiers come nearer, going to each vehicle, checking documents, opening car boots.

  Wareham asks of nobody in particular, “What the fuck are they looking for?”

  The embassy woman seems shocked by such language, especially from a diplomat. They don’t behave like that in Morningside. James thinks of war films, of Nazi guards walking down a train, peering into compartments. What will happen? Will someone break and run? Will there be a sudden shout, the raising of a rifle, the crack of a bullet fired like the one that flew past him only the day before and smacked into the wall mere inches from his head? The singing in his ear still hasn’t stopped.

  As the soldiers get nearer Nadezh
da scuttles back into the van. Ellie goes with her. Wareham is on the tarmac, saying something to the soldiers, offering a cigarette, even laughing with them. “Passport,” he calls to his charges. “They want to see your passports.”

  Ellie and the violinist are ordered out of the van. They stand by the open door while the soldiers lean inside, pushing a rucksack off a seat, peering beneath the front bench, grunting when they find nothing. The violinist is shaking. Ellie holds her hand as the soldier examines her passport, flicking through the pages to find the entry visa before handing it back without a word. Then the same thing for the others.

  Wareham glances at his watch and says something to the soldiers. They move on to the car behind, a Morris Minor Traveller with British plates. Everyone climbs back in the van. Wareham leans in through the window and says something to the violinist in Russian, then to the others in English: “Well done.”

  Ahead of them cars are starting their engines. With painful slowness the serpent begins to move forward, stretching its neck into the industrial smog of Pilsen and on to that empty border area which James and Ellie crossed only ten days ago. By the middle of the afternoon they come to a halt once more, but this time at the checkpoint where Czechoslovak border guards show scant interest in their documents. Foreigners getting out while the going’s good? Who gives a damn?

  Soviet troops watch with the indifference of conquerors.

  The road goes on, cutting through the forest and slanting down into the wooded valley of the watercourse that the Germans call Rehlingbach, Fawnbrook, but the Czechs know simply as Hraniční potok, Border Stream. The black eagle of the Federal Republic of Germany flies on the other side of the bridge while a crowd waits beyond the checkpoint—American military, anonymous black limousines, television crews with cameras leveled at the refugees like weapons. There’s a festive air, the sense of release and relief.

  “What were you doing in Czechoslovakia?” a voice asks Ellie as they climb down from the van. A microphone is pushed into her face. A camera aims at her. “Tell our viewers what it was like.”

  James follows her out into the afternoon sunshine. Behind them the van moves away towards a couple of black Mercedes where men in suits gather round. He catches a glimpse of the girl being hurried into one of the cars, and then the other passenger, the man in the coffin, being helped into the other.

  “It was frightening,” Ellie is saying. “Tanks, soldiers, shooting. The people were so courageous.”

  “What do you have to say to the Russians?”

  “They should go home. They’re not needed and they’re not wanted.”

  As the cameras move on to other prey, unexpectedly the Wareham guy appears. “Where are you kids off to?”

  James looks uncertain. “Haven’t decided really.”

  “How you doing for cash?”

  “Got to get some, I suppose. We’ve still got koruna.”

  “That won’t be worth anything here. Look”—he takes out his wallet—”here are some Deutschmarks to tide you over.” It’s like handing out charity. One hundred D-marks in a mixture of notes. About ten quid.

  “We can’t,” Ellie says, but James has already folded the money away.

  Wareham smiles that annoying, patronizing smirk. He knows the one who has money plainly enough; by nothing more than their accents he can recognize the contrasts and conflicts between the two of them. “Take it as a present from Her Majesty, to say thank you. You did very well. I just want to remind you that we’d rather you kept quiet about the details of this whole business. You’ll read about it in the press, I expect—famous conductor flees the Russians, you know what I mean. But no one needs to know the details of how it happened. It does, as a matter of fact, come under the Official Secrets Act.”

  “We haven’t signed it,” James points out.

  Wareham smiles pityingly. “The Act is law, old chap. You don’t have to sign it any more than you have to have signed the Homicide Act before you can be convicted of murder.” He glances round. The black Mercedes are driving away from the border. The VW van has already gone back to the East and the embassy Humber is waiting for him with its engine ticking over. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back.”

  “Lenka,” Ellie says.

  He blinks. A man with his emotions well under control, but he blinks at the mention of her name. “What about her?”

  “We’re so sorry about what happened. And worried about her. Can you let us know how things work out?”

  * * *

  He paused, then took a visiting card from his pocket. “A bit impersonal, but if you drop me a line when you’re in Britain I’ll get in touch with you.”

  “And give her our love. I’m sorry I only got to know her for so short a time.”

  “Yes.” He nodded, then turned and went towards the Humber. “Good luck,” he called. The driver had been listening to the radio while he waited. “Any news?” Sam asked him.

  “The demonstration in Wenceslas Square. It’s been called off. People gathered but then were asked by the authorities to disperse, not to provoke the Russians. It seems they did.”

  “Which authorities?”

  The driver looked awkward. Sam could see his face in the mirror. That was what someone looked like when they were wriggling on the horns of a dilemma. “Just the authorities, sir.”

  Sam attempted a laugh but it wasn’t easy. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve got to be back in the city as soon as possible.”

  51

  It was dusk by the time he got back to the embassy. There were things to do, a meeting with the ambassador and Eric Whittaker, grudging congratulations over the success with Egorkin and Nadezhda, a report to dictate, a whole day of chaos and confusion to attempt to understand. There were reports that the Czechoslovak leadership had been spirited out of the country. Some said they had been taken out and shot, some that they were still in Prague being held incommunicado. But the best bet, Whittaker said, was that they were already in Moscow.

  “Maybe you can find out something more concrete, Sam? You seem to have the best contacts.”

  All this was the very stuff of his job, but utmost in his mind were other things, personal matters, matters of the heart and the soul. In his office he discovered a message from Steffie sent early that afternoon. She’d known how to get through by telex, using one of her friends at the Office. It was addressed formally for the attention of Mr. Samuel Wareham, First Secretary, Chancery but the text was anything but formal. Darling, darling Sam, it read. She rarely addressed him as darling, never twice, and certainly not openly on something as public as a telex. You can’t imagine how distraught I am, worrying about whether you are safe. Please let me know as soon as you can. It puts everything else, our stupid uncertainties, in perspective, doesn’t it? I love you, darling, and miss you more than I can say. More than that, I’m frightened for you…

  He tried ringing Jitka’s flat but got no reply. The hospital switchboard seemed perpetually engaged, so he took his car and drove round. There were still troops blocking the bridges, but now they were letting vehicles through one by one, slower than they had crossed the Iron Curtain itself at Waidhaus. He sat behind the wheel, his bowels eaten by anxiety, while he edged the car towards the barriers. Car boots were examined, bonnets opened. Someone was searching beneath vehicles with a mirror on a long handle. Having kept them at bay throughout the day, he allowed thoughts of Lenka to come pouring into his mind. There was a feeling of helplessness before the flood, boulders and rubble cascading through his life with a merciless inevitability, crushing him personally while all about him the Czechoslovak nation was itself being crushed.

  Eventually the soldiers waved him through, and he turned towards the hospital. There were armored cars outside the main entrance but it was always possible to find a place to park in this city that had so long been starved of cars. At the doors a sullen guard nodded him through when he showed his diplomatic pass; no one took any notice of one man in a crumpled suit making his way up
the stairs and along the corridors. There was the clang of distant enamel basins being sluiced. Nurses and porters passed him by, always in a hurry to get somewhere else. The atmosphere was rank with that hospital smell that underlies the memory of so much personal tragedy. No one stood guard at the entrance to the neurology department, so he pushed open the doors and went along the corridor to Lenka’s room.

  Both beds were occupied now, two women lying prone beneath intravenous drips, one of them well into her seventies, the other some decades younger, neither of them Lenka.

  People looked vague when he asked, as though Lenka Konečková might never have been in their care, but eventually he found a nurse who knew. “Transferred,” she said, moving on.

  He felt a momentary panic and put out his hand to stop her. “Transferred where? Why?”

  The nurse looked indifferent. “The Střešovická Military Hospital. Neurosurgery department.”

  “Military? Why military?”

  “Only the best for the Party, isn’t that the rule?”

  “What do you mean, the Party?”

  But the nurse just smiled pityingly, detached herself from his grasp and walked away to whatever problem she faced next.

  * * *

  He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, not to panic. He could deal with this. He knew where the military hospital was. He’d go there, blag his way in somehow, find out what was happening, get her out, maybe. All kinds of fantasy passed through his mind. He’d take her to England, have her seen to by some British surgeon who was at the summit of his profession, not one of these Czech medics stuck behind the Iron Curtain, underfunded and underpaid. He’d be the knight in shining armor riding to the rescue.

  He drove back over the river, edged his car through the roadblock on the bridge once more, and took the road that wound steeply up between the Letná heights and the Castle itself. The hospital—he’d been there during an official visit six months earlier—was in one of the smart suburbs beyond the castle, the kind of place where the bourgeoisie had once lived, now populated by the new elite, members of the Party. The car rattled over cobbles and tramlines, overtook a tram that seemed to be blocking the way, emerged onto the road that ran along the northern perimeter of the Castle where he could pick up speed, catch a glimpse of the spires of the cathedral over to his left, lose himself for desperate minutes in a maze of narrow roads before picking up the boulevard that led past the villas and gardens of the great and the good. Although street signs had been taken down to confuse the occupying army he found the left turn easily enough.