After Zenda

by John Spurling

  ‘Interesting about the Cossacks,’ I said.

  Instantly he became his old self, turning on me almost with a snarl:

  ‘Why?’

  I used my eyes as Andrzej recommended, but kept my voice cool and quiet:

  ‘Out there in Plotla, twiddling their thumbs. Why didn’t anybody mention them to me before?’

  ‘They have no relevance to your situation or any situation. They will return shortly to Ukraine, as Maitek said.’

  ‘Awkward if they don’t, though.’

  ‘It will happen.’

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  I’d seen nothing since that first evening either of Fisher John or the small dark girl, but as I got back to the hotel after parting with Grabenau, I met her coming out. She was with a man in a black bomber-jacket and jeans, his face mostly hidden by the peak of his baseball cap and one arm round her waist. I nodded and smiled at her as we passed and was surprised by the way she looked at me, eyes wide open and looking straight into mine, lips slightly parted, as if she were going to say something. I paused for a second but she didn’t speak and the man seemed to be steering her on impatiently, so I passed them and started up the steps to the hotel entrance. When I glanced back I caught her doing the same, but the man was muttering angrily to her as they turned left along the pavement. It was dark by now, but a street-lamp lit them from behind and something in the man’s hand behind her back glittered for a moment. Surely it couldn’t be a gun?

  Even if it was, what could I do about it? Shout after them, go inside and tell the hotel staff, call the police? Or tell myself I hadn’t really seen it - it was a trick of the light and anyway none of my business? Those were the reasonable options that went through my mind, but I didn’t fancy them. I ran down the steps, jumped the man from behind and drove him against a parked car, knocking the girl to her knees. It wasn’t a manoeuvre that would have earned me any praise from Andrzej - he was hot on elegance and control at all times, whereas the man and I were both sprawling and winded. Still, Andrzej might have approved of the way I kept the initiative by snapping the man’s right arm over the car’s outside mirror. He screamed with pain and the gun - it definitely was a gun - dropped under the car. But at this point the door on the far side of the car opened and the driver got out pointing a hand-gun of his own at me.

  ‘Get inside the hotel!’ I shouted to the girl, then kicking free of the first man, who was trying to get his head in my crutch, ducked and ran along the pavement while his accomplice fired, missed and started after me.

  The street emerged on to the river. Cars were whizzing along the embankment road between me and the river itself, but there was no cover and the man was still gaining ground while I hesitated. I took off just in front of an upcoming car. Its brakes squealed and it hooted angrily, but I made it. I was now beside the river. Unfortunately my pursuer was already halfway across the road and there was even less cover here than before. I started towards the nearest bridge, some two hundred metres ahead, and heard a shot. My pursuer was still gaining ground, but it wasn’t he who’d fired. Another shot: this time the bullet passed beside my ear. It came from in front and now I could see someone aiming a serious-looking weapon at me from behind the parapet of the bridge. No time to consider options - I ducked through the railing and dived straight into the river below the embankment as a third shot pinged into the railing.

  I don’t, as I mentioned earlier, recommend swimming in the River Volzer at any time of the year. It was still early autumn - not particularly cold - and there’d been no rain since I arrived in Strelsau, so I was lucky enough not to have to contend with a strong current, but I swallowed a cocktail of noxious chemicals and already felt sick before I was forced to get my head under again by another shot from the bridge. I was in danger of flooding my lungs simply from panic, but I trod water in the shadow cast by the bridge and forced myself to calm down, then swam slowly downstream underwater, coming up for air when I had to, and finally clinging to the side of a barge moored several bridges further down.

  By the time I got up on to the deck of the barge I was totally exhausted and shivering uncontrollably. I hoped the men with guns might believe they’d finished me off in the river, but I couldn’t count on it and they might stay around the hotel waiting for me. There was nowhere else to go: Vladek lived miles out, even if I could find his particular tower, and I didn’t know Grabenau’s address. As for the police, I wasn’t at all sure it wasn’t some plain-clothes or off-duty squad of them that I’d been involved with - the sudden appearance of the sharpshooter on the bridge suggested this was a fairly sophisticated organisation with radio contact and no fear of authority. My best chance was to stay on the barge - preferably inside it. If I could hide out until the morning I might be safe walking around the busier streets until it was time for Count von Wunklisch’s car to collect me at the hotel.

  There were no lights on the barge, but parts of the deck were lit by the lamps along the embankment. Keeping to the shadows, I edged my way round to the door of the cabin at the back. The door was fastened and I began looking around for something to break a window with. But first - from a sort of absurd reluctance, I suppose, to break into someone’s property if they were actually there - I knocked on the door. Silence. Or was there a slight scuffling sound? I knocked again and tried the handle again. Now there were definitely sounds inside and suddenly a nervous voice speaking German from the other side of the door:

  ‘What do you want? Who is it?’

  ‘I’m English,’ I said. ‘I’ve been in the river and I’m dying of cold. Can you help me?’

  That seemed to cover my plight without at this stage introducing any suggestion of crime or danger to cause him further alarm. There were more sounds of movement inside, then quite a long pause. At last the door was unbolted and opened a crack, through which poked the barrel of a shot-gun. I held out my empty hands like a beggar and I must have looked as pathetic as I felt. The door opened wider and against the darkness inside a small, wizened-faced, white-haired man was revealed, with another face - a woman’s - seemingly balanced on his right shoulder. They stared at me silently for a while, then the man, still pointing his gun at my chest, advanced a step and peered either side of the door, so as to check that I had no lurking accomplices.

  ‘Speak English!’ he said in English with a thick accent.

  ‘My name is Edwin Fenton,’ I said. ‘I’m a journalist from London and I need help.’

  ‘Let him come in!’ said the woman in German. She was stout, nearly twice the size of the man, with grey hair in a bun and a round, brown, fleshy face.

  ‘Come in!’ said the man.

  They retreated carefully from the doorway, down a little ladder, and I followed.

  ‘Close the door behind you!’ said the man.

  I did so and threw the bolts. The windows were thickly curtained so that we were now in complete darkness for a moment until the woman lit an oil lamp on the table down one side of the cabin. The man continued to point his gun at me. They were both in their night clothes, with coats thrown over them. Shivering and dripping I sat down on the steps, with my arms folded tightly round my chest like the sleeves of a straitjacket. The woman now disappeared through a door at the far end of the cabin and reappeared almost immediately with a towel and blanket. She laid them near me on the end of a bench beside the table, then went to a cooker in the corner and put a kettle on. The man withdrew several paces and sat down on a chair, his gun on his knee, and pointed to the towel and blanket.

  ‘Please!’ he said.

  I stripped off and dried myself and wrapped myself in the blanket.

  ‘Please sit down!’ he said, indicating the bench.

  The woman picked up my wet clothes and hung them on a clothes horse, then brought me a mug of tea without milk and a piece of chocolate.

  ‘How did you come to be in the river?’ the man asked, as they both sat down at the far end of the table with thei
r own mugs of tea.

  I explained all the circumstances from the moment I’d seen the gun in the man’s hand.

  ‘You know nothing about these people?’ asked the man.

  ‘Nothing whatever. Would you have any idea?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘We live in bad times,’ said the woman, who had been staring at me with disconcerting concentration throughout my narrative. ‘You are English and you speak perfect German. How is that?’

  ‘My mother was German.’

  ‘She’s dead?’

  I nodded sadly. I did feel very orphaned at this moment, even though she’d died several years ago.

  ‘But not all Englishmen look alike?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No more than any other nation - in fact we’re probably more mixed up than most.’

  The woman nudged her husband and pointed at me.

  ‘Just look!’ she said.

  The man suddenly seemed astounded. His eyes flickered rapidly to and fro between me and something beyond me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, it’s him.’

  I was sitting, as I said, on the end of the bench near the door. I was facing the curtained windows and mainly in profile to the old couple sitting at the inner end of the cabin. I’d bolted the door but suddenly had the nasty feeling that somebody must have come in -perhaps one of my pursuers. I turned my head nervously - nobody. Then I saw for the first time that there was a picture pinned to the wall beside the door: a page cut from some glossy magazine - a coloured photo in profile of the waxwork of Rudolf Rassendyll. I’d been posing right in front of it, well lit by the lamp on the table, for the past half hour.

  ‘His hair would certainly be red, you can see,’ said the woman.

  ‘We are remarkably alike,’ I said.

  ‘There could be no mistake,’ she said.

  ‘Well, no,’ I said, too tired to argue, ‘but will you keep the secret?’

  ‘What secret?’ she said. Her husband had put his gun on the floor and seemed to have gone into a trance as he stared at me.

  ‘He was my great-grandfather,’ I said. ‘My name is Rassendyll.’

  ‘But did he have children?’

  ‘Just one. My grandfather.’

  ‘Who was the mother?’

  ‘I can’t say any more about it,’ I said, ‘Will you please keep my secret?’

  She smiled, got up from where she was sitting and sat next to me.

  ‘When I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘I saw the Queen.’

  ‘Did you really?’

  ‘I could never forget. Those were bad times when we lost our Queen.’

  I nodded sympathetically, but I felt utterly finished and distinctly ill.

  ‘Would you mind if I went to sleep?’ I managed to say, then dropped my head on to my arms on the table and swam immediately into unconsciousness.

  7 Previce Castle

  I’m not a person that worries much. Maybe I inherited a relaxed temperament from my great-grandfather or maybe as a child I learnt to leave all the worrying to Mum and Dad who specialised in it. But I did worry through that night in the barge - or at least my feverish mind did. It had got hold, as feverish minds do, of the simple idea that my only hope was to be picked up by the Count’s car and it kicked and pummelled this idea through every possible variation. So all night I was waiting for, missing, wildly pursuing vehicles of every description - Skodas, Porsches, 2CVs, a milk-float, a Nissan with a puncture, a Rolls with no engine, a bicycle rickshaw - until at last, aching and pouring with sweat, I opened my eyes to see daylight.

  I was lying on a mattress on the floor with a blanket over me. My hosts were sitting at the table with mugs of tea, watching me steadily- Seeing my eyes open, the woman came and put her hand on my damp head.

  ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘Very much indeed. But I must be going.’

  ‘No hurry,’ she said, pouring me a mug of tea.

  ‘I have to be at my hotel by half past nine.’

  ‘What hotel?’

  ‘The Astoria.’

  ‘Astoria?’ She turned to the man.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Or Lenin?’ I tried.

  ‘Ah, Lenin. Not so far.’

  I looked at my watch, but though claiming to be ‘water-resistant’ it had failed to resist the toxic waters of the River Volzer.

  ‘Do you know the time?’

  ‘Nearly nine,’ said the man.

  ‘Then I must hurry.’

  I started to get up, realised I was naked under the blanket and looked about for my clothes. They were still on the clothes-horse. I wrapped the blanket awkwardly round my waist and stood up shakily. The woman, meanwhile, had been putting food - rye bread and slices of sausage - on a plate and now she laid the plate on the table and patted the seat in front of it.

  ‘Eat first!’ she said.

  ‘How long to the hotel?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  Getting myself on to the bench, I lost the blanket and glanced apologetically at the woman, who never stopped watching me.

  ‘Only like your mother,’ she said and gave me a motherish smile, though there was something flirtatious about it too.

  ‘We saw you when we moved you,’ she added. ‘You will be a handsome man when you grow your hair.’ She gestured towards the magazine-page on the wall: ‘Just like your grandfather.’

  I swallowed some of the food, then struggled into my still damp clothes. My real mother, I thought, would never have let me do that without an appalling fuss.

  ‘Georg will show you the way,’ she said, when I was ready.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘We are pleased you’ve come back,’ she said. ‘We will come to see you wear your crown.’

  ‘You think I will?’

  ‘Why not? We have always had kings. Ruritania without a king is like a man without the bulge.’ She pointed at the crotch of my tight, wet trousers.

  ‘I’ll keep you seats in the front row of the cathedral,’ I said and went over and kissed her on both brown cheeks.

  Georg guided me with hardly a word all the way to the hotel. When it seemed clear that no one was lying in wait for me, he shook my hand warmly and left, while I went quickly to my room to change and re-pack my rucksack.

  Vladek was in the hall when I came down and led me outside to the car I’d been dreaming about all night - one of the few I hadn’t dreamt about, in fact - a Range Rover. As we were about to get in, the hotel receptionist appeared at the top of the steps waving an envelope.

  ‘Mr Fenton?’

  Vladek, to whom I’d already described my adventure of the night before, urged me into the front seat of the car before running up the steps and taking the letter.

  ‘Were you afraid of a trap?’ I asked, as he got in behind and closed the door.

  ‘Your friends on the barge had the right idea,’ he said. ‘We should behave seriously and correctly. You should not be the one to fetch messages.’

  The car’s driver was a sturdy-looking fellow in a thick, khaki-green jersey matching the colour of the Rover. He had a rugby forward’s head and his short fair hair was cut straight over his forehead. He glanced sideways at me as we drew away from the pavement.

  ‘His Majesty’s secret is safe with me,’ he said solemnly.

  I glanced back sharply at him, but he wasn’t being humorous.

  ‘This is Thomas,’ said Vladek, ‘the Count’s chauffeur and bodyguard.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Thomas, ‘I am from Switzerland, not Rumania.’ Meaning, I took it, that he was better manufactured and more reliable than the alternative.

  I opened the envelope. Inside was a short note from the girl I’d rescued:

  Thanks for your help. I got away. I only hope you did too. I don’t know how they knew I was in that hotel. I am hiding now with friends, but I hope we meet again. The American sends greetings.

  Gerda.

  I gave the letter to Vladek.<
br />
  ‘It makes no sense to me,’ he said. ‘Who is the American?’

  I told him about Fisher John and his mission to make reciprocal arrangements with the folk in the mountains.

  ‘There was a community there in the past,’ he said, ‘but they’ve not been active this century and I thought they’d been more or less wiped out by communism.’

  ‘Mountains make madmen,’ said Thomas from Switzerland.

  I soon began to fall asleep and when Vladek noticed, he got Thomas to stop the car so that we could change places and I could lie on the back seat. I was woken - I don’t know how many hours later - by the car’s engine being switched off and the sound of voices. It was a road-block. Vladek and the driver wound down their windows and showed papers to soldiers with AK47s. The soldiers peered through the windows at me and I peered blearily back without raising my head. But they insisted on seeing my passport and searching the car, so I had to sit up. We were among low wooded hills with a range of mountains on the horizon in front. There were quite a lot of troops about and a couple of armoured vehicles were parked either side of the road where it passed over a stone bridge. An officer was now examining my passport.

  ‘You are a journalist, Mr Fenton?’ he asked in passable English.

  I nodded apathetically. I was beginning to feel nausea again.

  ‘Answer please, Mr Fenton!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, also in English, ‘I’m a journalist.’

  ‘What you make here?’

  ‘Going to stay with a friend,’ I said.

  ‘Count von Wunklisch,’ put in Vladek anxiously. ‘He sent his car specially for Mr Fenton.’

  The officer ignored him.

  ‘In what newspaper you are writing?’

  ‘Not a newspaper. A business magazine called Open Sesame.’

  I could see he wasn’t following this, so I repeated it in German.

  ‘Are you a spy?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘All English businessmen are spies.’

  ‘The Count has invited him for a weekend’s shooting,’ put in Vladek again. It seemed the wrong thing to say in the circumstances.