The Spy and the Atom Gun

by Ronald Seth

  What he was asking was, on the face of it, reasonable. But I knew these patriots. They would take any risk, fearlessly endangering their own lives, if only they could strike some blow at the enemy. But Maran and his people clearly knew the conditions and the country and could help me to avoid all kinds of pitfalls.

  "Very well, Mr. Maran," I told him. "I agree, so long as you will promise me not to take unnecessary risks."

  "That I promise solemnly," he assured me.

  "You are very wise, captain," the doctor commented. "I will be here a little after seven in the morning. It takes a good two hours to reach Tredentz from here if you avoid main roads. I'm proud to be associated with you, captain, very proud."

  He bowed and shook my hand again, and a moment or two later his car started up with a roar and he had gone.

  "I was sure the doctor would have the solution," Maran said. "It will be some risk for you, captain, but there is no other way I can think of which would be so successful."

  So the first part of our plan was decided and I cheered up considerably.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tredentz

  Dr. Balun was as good as his word, and at ten minutes past seven next morning drove as noisily back into the farmyard as he had left it the previous afternoon.

  All of us had worked hard since he had left us. Robert, Francis and Raymond had transformed the appearance of the late fertilizer salesman's car until it was quite unrecognizable. They had changed its license plates and the village schoolmaster had come to the farm and cunningly altered the insurance and other permits required in Gallonia for moving a car along any road.

  He had also manufactured for me a Gallonian identity card in the name of David Bremer of Skoltz, a small town in northern Gallonia. I was the nephew of Maran and the cousin of Maria, Francis and Raymond, an agricultural worker, employed by my uncle.

  So that I might be able to answer any normal questions should we, by any stroke of ill luck, get caught in a spot check, Robert, whose home town was Skoltz, described his home for me and the most important features of the little town. Patiently he took me over all the points of my cover story for three full hours until, in the end, I could answer any questions he asked without hesitation.

  "That is excellent, captain." He smiled his quiet smile at me. "All we have to hope is that you will not meet Gombroch himself."

  "Gombroch!" I said. "Who is Gombroch?"

  "Gombroch is the head of the L.P.R., the secret police," I was told. "He is a monster! He will stop at nothing to wring information from anyone who may have the great misfortune to become his victim. The worst thing that could happen to you in Gallonia is to fall into the clutches of Gombroch."

  "Then I sincerely hope I never meet him," I said, and meant it.

  After a good deal of discussion among themselves they had decided that Raymond should drive me into Tredentz. In Gallonia it is possible to obtain a driving license at fifteen, because of the shortage of labor; and Raymond had held one for six months, qualifying as soon as he had passed his fifteenth birthday. He was very mechanically minded. "Mad about engines," his father described him—and it was because he was a much more proficient driver than Francis, who had few opportunities for driving, that he was finally appointed my chauffeur.

  Apart from this, his knowledge of the secondary roads was much better than Francis', and there would be the additional point that if we were stopped on the way to Tredentz the police would be far less likely to question closely a young boy driving a car than they would a grownup.

  I had felt like protesting at first, but I realized that if I did I should hurt Ray's feelings. He would think that I did not trust his driving. But it was not that. I did not like the idea of a young boy of his age running into any danger on my account. But I had seen his eyes light up when his father had suggested that he should take me. Even if I had not seen the force of Maran's arguments, I should have hesitated before saying definitely that I would not agree.

  He was outside checking over the engine just once more when Dr. Balan arrived.

  The doctor brought his bag and put it down on one end of the kitchen table. From it he took cotton and bandages and a bottle of some lotion or other. Within ten minutes he had bound up my right eye. Besides giving me the apparent excuse for visiting Dr. Paranu, the bandages also hid half my face and were a very effective disguise.

  "I have written a letter to Paranu," he said when he had finished, handing me an open envelope. "I have said that as far as I am capable of diagnosing, you have developed an infection of the optic nerve which already causes partial blindness. By the way, what name have they given you?"

  "David Bremer," I told him.

  He took back the envelope, withdrew the letter and filled in my cover name.

  "It's just as well I remembered I hadn't filled the name in," he remarked calmly. "If you were required to show it in any police check, the blank space would have given the whole game away. By the way, I have used the name of one of my colleagues in Budens. Don't think I am quite unscrupulous. Chermik is his name, and he is a very good Party man. I 'happen' to have a blank prescription pad of his. I haven't tried to forge his signature, but the police won't know unless they check with him."

  His eyes twinkled as if it were quite a joke, but I could see his point. If anything did go wrong and we had used his name he would be in trouble.

  He waved the paper backward and forward to dry the ink, then replaced it in the envelope and gave it back to me.

  "You will eat breakfast with us, doctor?" Maria suggested.

  "I've had breakfast, my dear," he replied. "But I'll take a cup of coffee."

  At breakfast everyone talked and laughed a great deal, as though they were afraid to think of the future. Only Raymond seemed to be quite calm.

  "That man," he announced solemnly to me as he came in from the yard and sat down beside me, "that man was a very bad driver, captain. The clutch is so worn, soon it will be slipping, and then the car will be no good. It is a great pity!"

  "But we could not keep it in any case," Robert put in. "It would be too dangerous."

  Presently the doctor, having finished his coffee, stood up to go.

  "I must be going on my rounds," he said. He came round to me and shook my hand. "Good luck, captain. If I hear nothing more from you I shall be very happy."

  It was a strange thing to say, but I understood what he meant. They would only hear of me if I were caught.

  Raymond and I got ready to leave not long after the doctor had gone. Only at the last moment did his father let his real feelings be seen. When we were in the car and he had wished me good luck, Maran said to his young son: "Ray, take good care of yourself. Remember that we all love you." And the boy answered solemnly: "I shall come back, Father."

  We had not gone many miles before I realized that I could have had no better driver than Raymond. He handled the car with great skill and knew the roads, the twisting country roads, so well that only once did we have to risk crossing a main road.

  At the end of an hour and a quarter's driving, the towers and spires of Tredentz came in sight.

  Tredentz has been the capital of Gallonia for more than seven hundred years. It is built on a low flat mound which, in olden times, gave it its first protection against attacking armies.

  In 1453, at the time of the sack of Constantinople by the Turks, the ruling grand duke added to the protection of his capital by enclosing it completely within a great wall, thirty feet high and fifteen feet thick, pierced by four gates. Though the modern city has sprawled outside the walls, all the government offices, the Central Hospital, the university and the principal shopping center are situated within the walls.

  It was ten minutes to ten when we approached the west gate and met our first obstruction. Ahead of us was a long line of cars, trucks and horse- and mule-drawn carts, moving forward only a few yards at a time every ten minutes or so.

  "Police check!" Raymond said.

  "Do you think we
ought to try another gate?" I asked.

  "Either they will have closed the other gates or there will be checks on them too," the boy answered.

  "Would you rather we went back?" I suggested.

  "No," Ray said. "If we turn out of the line now we shall attract attention to ourselves. Besides, they may do this for a week and we should be no better off tomorrow. They will only want to see our papers, and yours will pass this sort of check quite easily. I think we should go on, captain."

  "Shall I go on, on foot?" I asked.

  "No, captain. You would never get to the hospital before Dr. Paranu closed his clinic for today," he said. "Give me your identity card and pretend to be ill. It would be better if you lay in the back seat. Leave the talking to me."

  He spoke so confidently that I was willing to obey him. His coolness and his courage made it very difficult for me to remember that he was only fifteen. His manner and bearing were those of a veteran soldier who has been in battle many times. During the next hour and a half my opinion of him was to rise higher and higher. He proved himself to be a partner whom I would have been willing to accept in any ugly situation.

  I did not get out of the car, but climbed over the front seat into the back. It took us nearly an hour to come within sight of the gate. Ray was half-leaning out of his window, trying to find out what procedure the police were adopting, while I lay back in the rear seat trying to look as ill as I could, but tensed and ready for action should the need arise.

  Little by little we crept forward. Presently Ray drew in his head and said quietly without looking around: "They are just inspecting identity cards, so we shall be all right."

  Again we went forward, slowly, yard by yard.

  Suddenly, with more bewilderment in his voice than alarm, Ray exclaimed: "What's happening? They've made one of the cars draw in to the curb. The man and woman are getting out. They're being taken into the police station under the gate."

  "Perhaps their papers aren't in order," I murmured.

  "I hope so," Ray muttered. "Where do you live?" he went on without pausing.

  Without hesitation, I said: "Number 28, The Street of the Bakers, Skoltz."

  "What is your father's name?"

  "Felix Bremer—deceased."

  "Your mother's maiden name?"

  "Elisabeth Bremer—also deceased."

  "When were you born?"

  "May 12th, 1928."

  "Where were you born?"

  "Skoltz."

  And so on. He took me through the whole of my cover story, and while he fired his questions at me we edged forward.

  Presently he said: "Here it comes, captain."

  I was quite calm, though my heart was thumping more loudly than it normally did. I lay back, closed my eyes and let my body relax limply.

  I sensed the policeman's presence as he bent down and put his head level with Raymond's.

  "Papers!" he snapped.

  "Here's my identity card, my driving license, the insurance papers," Raymond said. "And here is my cousin's identity card."

  "Right… right . . . right!" the policeman said with short pauses in between, and I heard Raymond taking back the papers.

  "What's the matter with him?" the policeman asked.

  "He's going blind," Raymond answered. "He's already blind in one eye, and the good one is beginning to go."

  "Let me see your identity card again," the policeman said.

  "But you've seen it once," Raymond protested.

  "Come on! You're holding up the line," the policeman demanded again.

  I opened one eye and looked up to see what was happening. The policeman moved away and spoke to a colleague standing on the pavement with a man in plain-clothes by him.

  "Have they discovered anything?" I whispered.

  "No, it's my identity they're looking at. And that's genuine. He's coming back."

  The policeman put his head inside the car again, and said: "Pull over to the curb."

  Raymond at once put up a wail of protest.

  "But comrade, why? Already we are very late," he exclaimed. "My cousin has to see the great Dr. Paranu at the Central Hospital before midday."

  "Will you do as you're told?" the policeman replied sharply.

  "But our papers are in order," Raymond whined. "Why do you make us…"

  Both my attention and his had been on the policeman, and I think he was as startled as I was when the other front door opened with a violent wrench and a hand holding a revolver was thrust in and a harsh voice shouted: "Pull over to the curb—immediately!"

  "You'd better do as they say, Ray," I said quietly.

  "But we shall miss Dr. Paranu," he said again.

  "Pull over, Ray, and let's see what they want," I told him firmly.

  "I'm glad you have some sense, comrade," said the plain-clothes man, withdrawing his gun.

  As Raymond drew in to the side of the road, I said under my breath: "Don't annoy them too much, Ray!"

  "You've got to show them you're not afraid," he returned, and I realized then that what I had thought was foolhardiness was, in fact, a deliberate plan.

  At the curb the plain-clothes man opened the door and said: "Get out!"

  We did as we were told, and when we were standing on the pavement I put my hand on Raymond's shoulder as though I wanted him to guide me.

  "Take them into the station," the secret policeman said to the uniformed man with whom he had been standing.

  "Come on!" the policeman said. "This way."

  I did not like this turn of events at all. I felt, as I had done about my visa, that my forged identity card would pass a spot check, but that if it were looked at at all closely its forgery would be noticed. But there was no escape this time. The only thing to do was to try to face out any interrogation through which they might put us. My greatest worry was the threat to the boy by my side.

  I could not tell what he was feeling or thinking, but outwardly he was calm, only puzzled.

  The policeman led us into a waiting room and pointed to a bench running around the wall.

  "Wait there," he said, and going to a door leading to an inner office, knocked, waited for the summons and went in, leaving the door open behind him.

  Through it came the sound of a high-pitched man's voice screaming a question which I did not catch, because my attention was distracted by the weeping of a woman.

  Raymond turned to the man sitting nervously playing with his hat next to him.

  "Who's that?" he asked.

  The man's lips mouthed a word, and though no sound came from him, I knew at once what he had said.

  It was the one word dreaded throughout all Gallonia, the name of the hated chief of secret police—Gombroch!

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Monster

  Raymond turned to me and said the name under his breath, and as we were sitting close on the bench, I could feel the sharp tremor that ran through his body.

  I could hear, too, his brother-in-law, Robert's, voice saying to me on the previous evening, as he had finished questioning me about my cover story: "That is excellent, captain. All we have to hope is that you do not meet Gombroch himself."

  And here the man was, in the next room to us!

  The door of the inner office opened and the high-pitched voice of the secret police chief leaped out.

  "Go away! Go away, woman! Take your sniveling woman away, comrade, and the next time she has to answer questions see that she does not snivel! Otherwise…"

  Before he finished the sentence the weeping woman, helped by her husband, came through the door and hurried across the waiting room.

  "Who?" I heard Gombroch's voice demand. It seemed that he was so used to bullying that he could not speak in a normal controlled voice.

  A man's voice mumbled some reply.

  "All right!" Gombroch exclaimed. "I'll see them next."

  A few seconds later the policeman who had brought us into the station came to the doorway and said: "Raymond Maran and David Br
emer."

  "Leave this to me as much as possible," Raymond whispered.

  A long table ran across the far end of the office and behind it sat, not a man, but a great mountain of flesh. I remember going to a circus as a boy and afterward visiting the tent of the fat lady. She had been colossal; four hundred and twenty-three pounds, they had claimed, and I had readily believed them. She had been seated in a specially made steel chair and could only stand up when hauled upright onto her feet by a harness which went round her shoulders and under her arms, fixed to a pulley. It took three men pulling on the rope to move her.

  Gombroch was not so immense, but he was quite the fattest man I have ever seen. He looked a vast, flabby balloon. The slightest movement of arms or legs set his tremendous, rounded stomach quivering. On top of this body was a head of normal size, quite out of proportion with the rest of his body and so looking many times too small. This added to the grotesqueness of his total appearance. Two gray, steely eyes, alight with cruelty, stared from the lean, chinless face.

  He was a monster! And to heighten the impression was his high-pitched, almost woman's voice.

  On his left sat a city policeman in uniform. From the silver braid on his tunic he was clearly of high rank. On the other side sat a man in plain-clothes with a pad in front of him on which he was making notes of Gombroch's questions and his victims' answers.

  Raymond went straight up to Gombroch, with me doing my best to stumble realistically after him.

  "Comrade," he said. "I don't know why you wish to see my cousin and me, but we must be at the Central Hospital before midday to see Dr. Paranu. My cousin is blind in one eye, and the sight in the other is going already, and only Dr. Paranu can save him, if anyone can. It is now twenty minutes past eleven, comrade. See, here is a letter from our Dr. Chermik, of Budens, to Paranu. We have come a long way, from Kobo-Vazon, comrade, and it is urgent…"

  "Just a minute! Just a minute, my boy!" the high-pitched voice wailed. "Take a deep breath… Do you know who I am?"

  "Of course, comrade!" Raymond announced with a sort of cheekiness which made an icy tremor of apprehension shoot down my spine. "You are Chief of Secret Police Gombroch."