Jan Tucek had changed a great deal. The broad shoulders sagged, his brown hair was thinning to baldness and his eyes had retreated into shadowed sockets. It was a shock to see how he had shrunk into middle age. ‘Dick Farrell! So it is you.’ His shoulders squared as he came across to meet me. The hand he held out was soft and white with neatly manicured nails. For a fleeting moment as I shook his hand I caught a glimpse of the Jan Tucek I’d known before. He smiled. ‘I hope I do not keep you waiting.’ In the way he spoke and in the sudden eagerness of his greeting, I found my mind switched back ten years to the sight of a shattered windshield splashed with oil, a burst of flame as I went into a dive and a voice in my earphones saying: I think I get him for you, Dick. For a moment as I held his hand it was the reckless, fanatical Czech fighter pilot I was greeting. Then memory was swamped by the present and I was looking into the tired, withdrawn eyes of Jan Tucek, head of the Tucek Steel works in Pilsen.
‘Sit down, please.’ He waved me to the chair beside his desk. The secretary who had brought me in, a short, dapper little man with an uneasy smile, went out and closed the door. I became conscious then of another person in the room. He stood over against the wall, a gangling, long-limbed man with the face of a seedy intellectual. He stood there with a conscious and studied unobtrusiveness that shrieked his presence aloud. As I glanced at him uneasily, Jan Tucek said, ‘You see to what we are reduced here in Czechoslovakia. This is my shadow. He go with me always.’
The man jerked to life, ‘Mluvte cesky!’ There was a sort of baffled tenseness in the way he spoke.
Jan Tucek looked across at me. ‘You do not speak any other language but English, you understand?’ It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. He knew it to be false and before I could say anything he had turned to the shadow and was speaking rapidly in Czech: ‘Mr. Farrell does not speak any language but English. I was with him when we fought the Germans over England. He is here as representative for a British firm of machine tool manufacturers. There is nothing political in our meeting.’
‘I cannot allow you to talk without an interpreter,’ the man answered.
‘Then you’d better find one,’ Tucek snapped, ‘for I’m not going to treat an old comrade-in-arms as though he is a stranger just because you are so badly educated you do not speak English.’
The man flushed angrily. Then he turned and hurried out.
‘Now we can talk.’ Jan Tucek smiled. The sunlight caught a flash of gold teeth. But the smile did not extend to his eyes. ‘But we must be quick. Soon he will return with an interpreter. Tell me, where do you stay?’
‘The Hotel Continental,’ I answered.
‘Room number?’
‘Forty-four.’
‘Good. You see, it is only during my working hours that they have their spies with me. How long will you stay?’
‘Till Friday,’ I answered.
‘Two days. That is not long. And after that — where do you go on Friday?’
‘To Milan.’
‘To Milan?’ For the first time I saw expression come into his eyes — a quickening of interest. ‘If I were to come to your room very late—’ He didn’t finish for the door was thrown open and his shadow entered followed by a rather plain girl with a red scarf and a hammer and sickle brooch. ‘And you are with this machine tool company?’ he said quickly as though continuing an interrupted conversation. ‘Why are you no longer flying?’
I thrust my leg out for him to see.
‘So you lose a leg, eh?’ He clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Above the knee?’
I nodded.
‘But nevertheless that should not stop you flying.’
‘It doesn’t help,’ I said quickly. And then, because I thought he was going to probe further, I added, ‘The competition’s pretty keen now with so many able-bodied fliers out of a job.’
He nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand. But when does this happen? When my squadron is posted you are all right.’
‘Oh, it happened much later. In Italy. I crashed up near the Futa Pass between Florence and Bologna.’
‘Then you are a prisoner?’
‘For just over a year,’ I answered. ‘They did three operations.’
‘Three operations?’ His eyebrows lifted. ‘But surely one is sufficient for an amputation.’
I felt the sweat breaking out on my forehead. Even now I could feel the knife and the grating bite of the saw. ‘They need not have operated at all,’ I heard myself say. ‘My leg could have been saved.’ Somehow I didn’t mind talking about it to him. He was so remote, someone from another world. Here, behind the Iron Curtain, what had happened to me didn’t seem to matter so much.
‘Then why?’ he asked.
‘They wanted me to talk.’
It was out before I could check myself. I saw his eyes staring at me and then they slid away to the photographs on his desk. ‘But you are free,’ he said. ‘Free to run your life as you wish to run it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He meant I was free of the constant supervision that surrounded him. But I wasn’t free. You can never get free of the past. ‘Those pictures,’ I said to change the subject. ‘Are they of your family?’
‘Yes. My wife and daughter.’ He sighed and picked up the larger photograph. ‘That is my wife. She is dead. The Nazis kill her. She was held up on the Swiss frontier the night I fly to England in 1939. I do not see her again.’ He set the photograph down gently on the big mahogany desk. ‘That other is my daughter. She is now in Italy with the Czech table tennis team.’
He held the photograph out towards me and I found myself looking at the face of a girl with a broad forehead, high cheekbones and a friendly smile. Her auburn hair fell to her shoulders and gleamed where it caught the light. Something in her expression, in the way she held her head reminded me that Jan Tucek had not always looked tired and drawn. ‘Her mother was Italian,’ he said. ‘From Venice.’
So the hair was real titian. ‘She’s very beautiful,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘The photographer has been kind to her, I think. You cannot see the freckles.’
It didn’t matter to me whether she had freckles or not. It wasn’t the face so much as the person behind the face that was beautiful. Something about the expression of the eyes, the curve of the mouth, the defiant tilt of the chin seemed to reach out to me from the plain silver frame. It was the face of a girl who possessed sympathy and understanding — and something else; self-reliance, an ability to stand on her own feet. Somehow, in my loneliness, I felt the expression on her face was something that touched me personally through my old friendship with her father.
Tucek put the photograph down again. ‘Fortunately she play table tennis very well.’ The way he said it, the words seemed to carry a message, and again, for a moment, I was conscious of the resemblance between his face and the face in the photograph.
‘I’m sorry I shan’t see her,’ I said.
‘Perhaps you will — in Milan.’ Again his words seemed to carry additional meaning. Then, as though he were afraid I might make some comment, he glanced at his watch and pushed back his chair. ‘I am sorry. I have a conference now. I will send you to the head of our retooling section. Also I will ring him so that he know who you are. I have no doubt there are things we need that you have.”
I got up. ‘Perhaps we could meet—’ I began. But something in his eyes stopped me.
‘I am sorry. I am a very busy man.’ He came round the big, ornate desk and shook my hand. ‘It has been good to see you again.’ As I turned to go his hand was on my arm and he took me to the door. ‘Tell me. Do you hear anything of Maxwell these days?’
‘Maxwell?’ I started, wondering why the devil he had to talk to me about Maxwell. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I haven’t seen him since I left Italy.’
He nodded.’ He is here in Pilsen. If you should see him tell him—’ He seemed to hesitate for the message and then, so softly that I could hardly catch it, he whispered, ‘Saturday night.’ Then aloud he said, ‘Tell him — I shall always remember the times we had at Biggin Hill.’ He opened the door for me, called to his secretary and told her to take me to pan Marie. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘I will telephone him that you are coming.’ And he closed the heavy door.
My interview with Marie lasted nearly an hour. I was conscious of a view of one of the blast furnaces through tall, smoke-grimed windows and of alert eyes peering shortsightedly through thick-lensed, rimless glasses at my specifications. Of the details of the conversation I remember nothing. It was mostly technical. We were alone and we talked in English. I remember I answered many of his questions quite automatically, my mind going over and over again my interview with Jan Tucek. Why had he wanted to come and see me late one night? Why had he given me that message to Maxwell? I felt as though I had touched the fringe of something that could only exist on this side of the Iron Curtain.
My interview with Marie finished shortly after four. He informed me that he would examine certain of the specifications with his technical experts and telephone me tomorrow. Then he rang for his assistant and ordered him to call one of the factory cars. As I got to my feet and pushed my papers back into my brief case, he said, ‘Have you known/ran Tucek long, Mr. Farrell?’
I explained.
He nodded, and then with a quick glance at the door which was shut, he said in a low voice, ‘It is terrible for him. He is a fine man and he did great service to this country in 1939 when he fly to England with the blueprints of all new armament work in progress here including the Bren gun modifications. His wife is murdered. His father, old Ludvik Tudek, die in a concentration camp. Then, after the war, he come back and reorganise the Tuckovy ocelarny — that is to say the works here. He work like a man with a devil inside of himself, all day, every day, to make it what it is before the Germans come. And now—’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘He looks very tired,’ I said.
Marie peered at me through his glasses. ‘We are all very tired,’ he said quietly. ‘Twice in a lifetime — it is hard to have to fight twice. You understand? It is the spirit who become tired, Mr. Farrell. Perhaps one day—’ He stopped then as his assistant came in to say the car was waiting. He shook my hand. ‘I will telephone you tomorrow,’ he said.
Outside clouds had obliterated the spring sunshine and the huge steelworks belched smoke into a grey sky. I got into the waiting car and was driven out through the gates into grey, brick-lined streets.
Back in the hotel I made a few telephone calls and then had some tea brought up to my room and did some work. I’d been behind with it ever since I’d started on the trip. I had covered Scandinavia and Central Europe, constantly adjusting my mind to different atmospheres, different languages and I felt tired. It was difficult to concentrate. And though I stayed in my room till past six, I got very little work done. My mind kept running over my interview with Jan Tucek, and always it came back to that message to Maxwell. Tell him — Saturday night. What was Max doing in Pilsen? Why was Tucek so sure I should see him?
In the end I stuffed my papers into a suitcase and went down to the lounge. It’s an odd thing, being alone in a foreign country. Impressions are heightened, everything makes a much more vivid impact. And the sense of loneliness is strong. In Prague I had had contacts. But here in Pilsen my only personal contact was Tucek and, sitting alone there in the heavy, over-ornate furniture of the hotel lounge, I had the feeling of being hemmed in — the same sort of feeling I’d had during those interminable months of captivity. The place was perfectly ordinary, the people who came in and out or sat around smoking and talking were perfectly ordinary. Yet behind the ordinariness of it all I sensed the power of something alien. I thought of Mazaryk’s suicide and set it alongside Tucek’s manner. And then I began to think about Maxwell.
It’s a queer thing, trying to escape from the past. I’d broken with flying, with all my old contacts. I’d voluntarily taken a job that would keep me wandering round Europe like a nomad. And here, behind the Iron Curtain, I had been given a message to one of the three men who knew my story. I remembered how kind Maxwell had been when I’d reported back to him at Foggia — his damnable kindness had taught me to hate myself. And now…. My mouth felt dry and harsh. The clink of glasses at the bar drew me like a magnet. For months I’d kept clear of the stuff. But now I needed a drink. I just had to have a drink. I went through into the bar and ordered a slivovice, which is a plum brandy and not the sort of drink to make one want to go on.
Nevertheless, I missed out dinner that night and took a bottle of konak up to my room. And there I sat with the bottle and my glass in front of me, staring out at the lights in the houses opposite, smoking cigarette after cigarette, waiting for Maxwell to come. I don’t know why I thought he would come, but I did, and I was determined to be drunk when he came. I tried to analyse my state of mind. But I couldn’t. It was beyond analysis, something deep down inside of me that hated myself for the weakness that had once overwhelmed me. I stuck my leg out in front of me, the one that didn’t belong to me, and stared at it. I hated that leg. It would be with me till I died, always there to remind me of the heat and flies and the screams that were torn out of my own throat in that hospital overlooking Lake Como. And when I died, they’d pull it off me and give it to some other poor bastard who’d lost his flesh-and-blood leg.
It was nearly eleven and the bottle was half-empty when I heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside my room. The footsteps were heavy and solid and decisive. I knew they were Maxwell’s before he opened the door. God! Hadn’t I heard those footsteps night after night at the mess at Biggin Hill, night after night in our billet at Foggia? And I’d known he’d come — known it ever since Tucek had given me that message. I’d been sitting there, waiting for him, trying to get drunk enough to face him. Well, I didn’t care now. Let them all come and stare at me now I was drunk. I didn’t care a bloody damn for the whole lot of ‘em. They hadn’t fought through the Battle of Britain, flown over sixty bomber sorties in less than two years and then … God damn them! They didn’t know what it was like to feel your nerves….
Maxwell shut the door and stood there looking at me. He hadn’t changed much. Maybe his face was a little thinner, the eyes a little more crinkled at the corners, but there was the same quick vitality, the same thrust forward of head and chin. ‘Drink, Max?’ I asked. He didn’t say anything but came across and pulled up a chair. ‘Well, do you want a drink, or don’t you?’ My voice sounded taut and harsh.
‘Of course,’ he answered and stretched over to the washbasin for the tooth glass. He looked at me as he picked up the bottle and poured himself the drink. ‘So you’ve become a commercial traveller?’ I didn’t say anything and he added, ‘Why didn’t you stick to aviation? A man with your experience—’
‘You know very well why,’ I answered angrily.
He sighed and said, ‘You can’t run away from yourself, you know, Dick.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’re your own worst enemy. Damn it, man, nobody but yourself—’
‘Can’t you leave the past alone?’ I shouted at him.
He caught hold of my arm. ‘For God’s sake keep your voice down. Nobody knows I’m here. I came up by the fire-escape.’
‘By the fire-escape?’ I stared at him. ‘What are you doing in Pilsen?’
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He sat there, staring at me and toying with his glass, his eyes searching my face as though looking for something inside me that he wasn’t sure existed. At length he said, ‘You remember Alec Reece?’
I jumped to my feet, knocking over my drink. Reece! Why the hell did he have to talk about Reece? Reece was dead anyway. He’d died trying to escape. So had Shirer. They were both dead. I didn’t want to think about Reece. I’d introduced him to Maxwell — got him the job. He’d been so desperately keen to succeed on that first mission to the partigiani. He was the part of me I wanted to forget — Reece and his sister Alice. Sentences from that last letter of hers ran in a confused jumble through my head. / wanted to be proud of you…. I have forgiven you, but you must see that it is impossible…. I fumbled on the carpet for my glass, picked it up and reached for the bottle. But Maxwell took it from my hand and placed it on the other side of the table. ‘Sit down, Dick,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise—’
‘What didn’t you realise?’ I cut in. ‘Didn’t you know I was engaged to Alice Reece, that she broke it off when she knew? Why do you think I cracked up like that? A man’s mind doesn’t go—’ I stopped then. The room was beginning to spin and I sat down quickly. ‘She thought I killed him,’ I heard myself saying slowly. ‘And the hell of it is, she was right. To all intents and purposes—’
‘Alec Reece is alive,’ he said.
I stared at him. ‘Alive?’
He nodded.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true.’
‘And — and Shirer?’ I asked.
‘He’s alive too. Didn’t you know?’
I shook my head.
‘He stayed on in Italy and bought a vineyard. He’s living …’
I didn’t hear the rest. A great load seemed to have been lifted from me. I put my head in my hands and let that feeling of relief flood through me. When I became conscious that he was shaking me, I realised that I was crying. I felt the rim of a glass against my mouth. The drink seemed to steady me. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.
‘I didn’t know you were engaged to Alice Reece,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted Reece to get that job on his merits. I was afraid you’d think—’ I stopped and shrugged my shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter now. But I thought they were dead — both of them. That’s what they told me at H.Q. I thought I’d killed—’ He shook me then and I pulled myself together. ‘Why did you ask me about Reece?’ I asked him.
He paused uncertainly. Then he said quietly, ‘He and I are both in Intelligence still. He’s waiting in Milan now for me to—’
‘In Milan?’ I had a sudden, awful vision of our meeting face to face. I’d have to miss out Milan. Somehow I’d have to persuade my firm…. But Maxwell had caught hold of my arm. ‘Pull yourself together, Dick. I’m trying to tell you something. I need your help. Listen. You represent B. & H. Evans, machine tool manufacturers of Manchester. That gives you an excuse to visit any of the big industrialists in this town. Jan Tucek is here in Pilsen. Remember Jan Tucek, who commanded the Czech squadron at Biggin Hill in 1940?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw him this afternoon.’
‘You saw him this afternoon?’ He cursed softly. ‘Then you’ll have to see him again. I daren’t go there. And I daren’t go to his home either. He’s too closely watched. My contacts are with Czech air force men. But I’ve got to get a message to him. As soon as I heard you were—’
Tunny,’ I said. ‘He gave me a message for you.’
Maxwell was suddenly tense. ‘What was the message?’ he asked quickly.
‘I was to tell you — Saturday night,’ I answered.
He nodded. ‘The trouble is that that isn’t soon enough. It’s got to be tomorrow night. You’ve got to see him and tell him that. Tomorrow night — understand? Thursday night.’ He was leaning forward, drumming it into me as though he thought I was too drunk to understand what he was saying. ‘Can you see him first thing tomorrow morning? It’s urgent, Dick — very, very, urgent. Do you understand?’
I nodded.
‘Can you see him tomorrow morning?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maric, the head of their tool section, is ringing me tomorrow morning. I should be able to make an appointment with him for the afternoon.’
‘All right then. The afternoon. But you’ve got to see Tucek. Tell him Saturday may be too late. It must be tomorrow night — Thursday. Understand? You know the bookshop just opposite here, on the corner?’ I nodded. ‘I’ll be there at five. Don’t talk to me openly. Just tell me whether it’s okay or not as you pass. Got that?’
I nodded.
‘Don’t fail me, Dick.’ He knocked back the rest of his drink and got to his feet. ‘Good luck!’ he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. ‘See you tomorrow at five.’
As he turned to go, I said, ‘Wait a minute, Max. What is all this? Is Jan Tucek in trouble?’
‘Ask no questions,’ he murmured.
‘Are you getting him out of the country — is that it?’ I demanded.
He swung round on me angrily. ‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake.’
‘Is that’s what’s happening?’ I persisted in a lower voice.
‘I’m telling you nothing, Dick. It’s best if—’
‘You mean you don’t trust me,’ I accused him angrily.
He looked at me. ‘If you like to take it that way, but—’ He shrugged his shoulders and then added, ‘Would you mind having a look out in the corridor to see if it’s all clear?’
I opened the door and peered out. The corridor was empty. I nodded to him. He went quickly down to the end and turned right. I went back to my room, closed the door and emptied the remains of the bottle into my glass.
By the time I went to bed I was very drunk — drunk and happy. Reece was alive. Shirer was alive. I hadn’t killed them, after all. I managed to unstrap my leg and get most of my clothes off. Then when I’d fallen into bed, I suddenly had a feeling that I had made a mistake in the report I’d been working on earlier in the evening. I rolled out of bed, switched on the light and got the report out of my suitcase. The last thing I remember was trying to decipher the blur of writing through eyelids that kept on shutting out my vision.
I awoke to a blinding light on my eyes. I remembered that I had fallen asleep with the light on and put out my hand to switch it off. It was then that I discovered that the light was off and that it was the sun shining on my face. I sat up, trying to separate the roar of traffic outside the window from the noises in my head and wondering when during the night I had switched off the light. I looked at my watch. It was only seven-thirty and no servant would have been in the room yet. At some time during the night I must have wakened and switched it off. I lay in the bright sunlight thinking about Maxwell. His visit seemed unreal, like a dream.
I was called at eight-thirty. As soon as I was dressed I went down to breakfast. In the entrance hall I stopped to buy a paper. ‘Good morning,pane.’ It was the night porter. He was just putting on his outdoor things and his face had a confidential smirk. I paid for my paper and turned away. But before I was halfway across the room, the man was at my side. He was still struggling into his overcoat. ‘I hope you did not mind my letting a visitor up to your room so late,’ he said.
I stopped and glanced down at him. He was a little, rat-faced man with bulging blue eyes and a thin, greedy mouth. ‘Nobody came to my room last night,’ I said.
He shrugged the padded shoulders of his overcoat. ‘Just as pana says.’ He stood there and it was perfectly clear what he was waiting for. I cursed Maxwell for having been so careless. He must have mistaken my hesitation, for he added, ‘One o’clock is very late for an Englishman to receive visitors in a hotel in Czechoslovakia.’
‘One o’clock!’ I stared at him. Maxwell had left shortly after eleven.
He cocked his head on one side. ‘And pan Tucek is a well-known-figure here in Pilsen.’ He shrugged his shoulders again. ‘But of course if pana says no one visit him, then I believe him and I also say no one visit him.’
I remembered how the light had been off when I woke and how Jan Tucek had said he’d come to see me at the hotel. But if he had come, why the devil hadn’t he wakened me? I could have given him Maxwell’s message then. The porter was peering up at me uncertainly. ‘Pana must understand that I have to report everything of an unusual nature to the Party, particularly if it concerns an Englishman or an American.’ His lips tightened into a smile. ‘But life is difficult here in Czechoslovakia. I have a wife and family to think of, pane. Sometimes economics are more important than Party loyalties. You understand, panel’
‘Perfectly,’ I said. He was like a small sparrow searching determinedly after scraps in a cold spell. I pulled out my wallet and slipped him fifty kronen.
‘Dekuji uctive. Dekuji.’ The notes disappeared into his trouser pocket. ‘I remember now. It is just as pana says. There was no visitor at one o’clock this morning.’
He was turning away when I stopped him. ‘Did you show this visitor up yourself?’
‘Oh no, pane. He walk straight through the entrance and up the stairs. I know he is not a resident, so I follow him. It is expected of me.’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘And you recognised this person?’
‘Oh, yes, pane.’ Then he smiled. ‘But, of course — no, pane. I do not recognise him any more now. I do not know to which room he go.’ He smirked and with a little bow, turned and walked quickly out through the hotel entrance.
I went through into the breakfast room. After several cigarettes and innumerable cups of black coffee I had got no nearer a solution of the matter. The porter wasn’t lying. I was certain of that. He had been far too sure of getting a fat tip. But if Tucek had come to see me so late at night, he must have had a reason, and an important one. Then why didn’t he wake me?
The problem was with me all that morning. I took a couple of aspirins to clear my head and went out into the bright spring sunshine. The buds shone fat and sticky on the smoke-black chestnut trees across the road. Birds were singing above the rattle of the trams and girls were wearing summer frocks. I paid three calls during the morning and did some business. When I got back to the hotel I was relieved to find that Marie had rung me. I was to call and see him at three-thirty. I could deliver my message to Tucek then.
At the Tucek works I was escorted by one of the factory police to the main office block. Maric had two of his technical experts with him. We discussed specifications. From a business point of view the meeting was successful. When the conference broke up, I remained seated. Maric glanced at me through his thick glasses. He got rid of the others very quickly and then, when the door was shut, he turned to me and said in English, ‘You wish to see me alone, Mr. Farrell?’
‘Well—’ I hesitated. ‘I didn’t think I should leave without saying good-bye to Mr. Tucek. You see, he and I were together—’
‘Quite, quite.’ Marie nodded and sat down at his desk. He took off his glasses and wiped them. Then, when he’d clipped them on to his nose again, he looked across at me.
‘But I do not think you can see him.’ His fingers had closed on a sheet of paper and he slowly crumpled it into a ball.
‘Is he in conference?’ I asked. ‘If so I will wait.’
He seemed about to say something. Then his small blue eyes retreated behind his glasses. ‘I do not think it will be any good waiting. But perhaps if you care to see his secretary—’ His voice sounded vague and uncertain.
is ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see his secretary.’
He nodded and rang for his assistant. The sudden decisiveness of his movements suggested a sense of relief. His assistant came in and he instructed him to take me to Tucek’s personal secretary. ‘Goodbye, Mr. Farrell.’ He dropped the crumpled ball of paper into his waste-paper basket and shook my hand. His fingers were soft and damp in my grip.
His assistant took me down two flights of concrete stairs and along a passage that was full of the noise of typewriters. Then we passed through swing doors marked Sprava zavodu and we were in the administrative block where the sound of our footsteps was lost in the deep pile of a carpeted corridor. It was the same corridor I’d walked down the previous day. We stopped at the door marked Ludvik Novak, tajemnik reditelstvi. My guide knocked and I was shown into the office of Tucek’s personal secretary. ‘Come in, Mr. Farrell.’ He was the dapper little man with the uneasy smile I’d seen the day before. There was no warmth in his greeting. ‘You are back again very soon. Was your meeting with pan Marie not satisfactory?’
‘Perfectly,’ I said.
‘Then what can I do for you?’
‘I would like to see Mr. Tucek before I go.’
‘I am sorry. That is not possible.’ He gave me a rubber-stamp smile.
‘Then I’ll wait until he’s free,’ I said.
‘It is not possible for you to see pan Tucek to-day.’ His eyes were quite blank.
I felt as though I were up against a stone wall. ‘You mean he’s not here?’ I asked.
‘I have told you, Mr. Farrell. It is impossible for you to see him.’ He crossed to the door and opened it. ‘I am sorry. We are very busy to-day.’
I thought of Maxwell’s strange visit the previous night. It’s urgent, Dick — very, very urgent, ‘Whether you are busy or not,’ I said, ‘I wish to see Mr. Tucek. Will you please tell him.’
The man’s eyes stared at me without blinking. ‘Why are you so anxious to see pan Tucek?’ he asked.
‘I was with him in the most critical days of our fight against the Germans,’ I said. ‘I am not in the habit of leaving a town without saying good-bye to old friends.’ I realised that I’d got to get under the cold official to the man beneath. ‘You are his personal secretary,’ I said. ‘You must have fought against the Germans. Surely you can understand that I want to see him before I leave?’
For an instant his eyes had warmth and feeling. Then they were quite blank again. ‘I am sorry. You cannot see pan Tucek to-day.’
There was no more I could do. He had opened the door. I went out. It was only after the door had closed behind me that I realised he had not called any one to escort me out of the works. I had begun to walk down the corridor before I realised this. I stopped and looked back. At the far end of the corridor was a big mahogany door. On it I saw — Jan Tucek, predseda a vrchni reditel. I quietly retraced my steps and stopped outside the door. There was the sound of somebody moving inside. I turned the handle and walked in.
Then I stopped. Opposite me was a big, glass-fronted bookcase. The glass doors had been flung wide and books littered the floor. A man paused in the act of rifling through the pages of a gilt-bound tome. ‘What do you want?’ He spoke in Czech and his voice was hard and authoritative. I glanced quickly towards the desk. Another man was seated in the chair Jan Tucek had occupied the previous day. The drawers had all been pulled out on to the floor. The carpet was littered with files. And from the midst of the pile the smiling face of Tucek’s daughter looked up at me. The steel filing cabinets against the wall by the windows had also been rifled. ‘What do you want?’ The man by the desk was also looking at me now. The sudden chill of panic crept along my spine. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was looking for pan Novak.’
Fortunately my Czech is quite good. The two men looked at me suspiciously. Then the one at the desk said, ‘In the next office.’
I murmured apologies and shut the door quickly. I tried not to hurry as I walked back along the corridor. But every moment I expected to hear the sound of Tucek’s door opening and a voice calling me to stop. But apparently they were not suspicious. Nevertheless, it was only after I’d passed through the swing doors and heard the sound of my feet on the concrete passage beyond, that the feeling of panic left me.
At the stairs I hesitated. If I left now, without knowing what had happened, Maxwell would think me scared. I hurried up the two flights of stairs and went into Marie’s department. ‘I think I left my gloves in pan Marie’s office,’ I told his assistant. ‘Can I go in?’ I didn’t wait for him to answer, but walked straight through into Marie’s office. He was sitting at his desk, staring out of the window. He turned with an obvious start as I entered.
‘Oh, it is you, Mr. Farrell.’ The sudden panic drained out of his eyes, leaving them expressionless — as blank as Novak’s eyes had been when I had asked to see Tucek. ‘Is there — something you wish to see me about?’ His voice was nervous and he fidgeted with the ruler on his desk.
‘Yes,’ I said. I glanced towards the door and then lowered my voice. ‘What’s happened to Jan Tucek?’
‘I do not know what you mean.’ His voice was wooden.
‘Yes, you do,’ I said.
He got up then. ‘Please go,’ he said. He was very agitated. ‘My assistant—’ His mouth dropped at the corners.
‘I’ll go as soon as you tell me what’s happened to Tucek,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been down to his office. There are two men there, searching it. There were files and books all over the floor.’
He sat down then and for a moment he said nothing. His body, hunched in the big armchair, seemed suddenly shrivelled and old. ‘Jan Tucek has been arrested,’ he said slowly.
‘Arrested?’ I think I’d known it ever since I’d walked into his office. But to hear it put bluntly into words shook me.
‘Why?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why is any one arrested in Czechoslovakia to-day? He fought in England during the war. That alone is sufficient to make him suspect. Also he is an industrialist.’ His voice was low and somehow fatalistic. It was as though he saw in this the beginning of the end for himself.
‘Is he in prison?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘They do not go so far yet. That is why they search his office. They look for evidence. For the moment he is confined to his house. Perhaps he will be released tomorrow. And then — perhaps not.’ He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. ‘This sort of thing hangs over all of us of the old Czechoslovakia. So many have disappeared already.’
‘But what has he done?’ I asked.
‘I do not know.’ He took off his glasses and began to polish them as though afraid of showing some emotion. There was a heavy, audible silence between us. At length he picked up a newspaper from under a pile of papers, peered at it and then held it out to me. ‘Column two,’ he said, ‘The Rinkstein story.’
It was down-page quite a small story headed: DIAMOND DEALER ARRESTED — RINKSTEIN ACCUSED OF ILLEGAL CURRENCY DEALS. ‘Who is Rinkstein?’ I asked him.
‘Isaac Rinkstein is one of the biggest jewellers in Prague.’
‘What’s his arrest got to do with Tucek?’
‘Everything — nothing. I do not know.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘All I know is he deal in diamonds and precious stones.’
‘But he’s been arrested for illegal currency operations,’ I pointed out.
He smiled wryly. ‘That is the legal excuse. It is his dealings in precious stones that will interest the authorities, I think.’ He bent the ruler between his two hands till I thought it must break. ‘I am very much afraid Rinkstein will talk.’ He got up suddenly and took the paper away from me. ‘You must go now. I have talk too much already. Please repeat nothing — nothing, you understand?’ He was looking at me and I saw he was frightened. ‘Sixteen years I have been with the Tucek company.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Goodbye, Mr. Farrell.’ His hand was cold and soft.
‘I’ll be back in Pilsen in about three months,’ I said as he took me to the door. ‘I shall look forward to seeing you again then.’
His lips twisted in a thin smile. ‘I hope so,’ he said. He opened the door and called to his assistant to get me a car. It was with a feeling of relief that I was swept through the factory gates and out into the streets of Pilsen. Black clouds were coming up from the west and as I got out at my hotel the first drops of rain fell on the dry pavements.
I phoned the airport and checked that my passage to Munich and through to Milan was fixed. Then I got my raincoat and hurried across the road to the bookshop on the corner. It was not quite five. I searched through the paper backs with my eye on the door. Five o’clock struck from a nearby church. There was no sign of Maxwell. I stayed on until the shop shut at five-thirty. But he didn’t come. I bought several books and after waiting for a bit in the doorway, went back to the hotel. There was no message for me at the desk. I ordered tea to be sent up to my room and tried to finish off my report. But my mind could concentrate on nothing but Tucek’s arrest. Also I was worried about Maxwell.
In the end I went down to the bar. For a while I tried to persuade myself that Tucek and Maxwell were nothing to do with me. But it was no good. What had happened filled me with a sense of helplessness. It made me want to get drunk again, so I went in to dinner. And after dinner I went out to a cinema where an old English film was showing. I got back shortly before eleven. There was no message for me and nobody had called to see me. I got a drink and took it up to my room. I stayed up, waiting for Maxwell.
But he didn’t come and when the church clock struck midnight I went to bed. It was a long time before I could get to sleep. I kept on thinking of Jan Tucek, somewhere over on the other side of Pilsen under house arrest, and wondering what had become of Maxwell.
I was called at eight-thirty the following morning. The rain was beating in at the open window and the clouds were low and wind-blown. It looked like being a dirty trip over the Alps. But I didn’t care about that. I was glad to be leaving Czechoslovakia. I knew I’d been on the fringe of a political whirlpool and it was good to know I was getting out before I was sucked down into it.
I had breakfast, paid my bill and got a drozka. The flight was scheduled for eleven-thirty. I paid one call on the way out to the airport and arrived well before eleven. I checked my bags and then went to the passenger clearing office. I handed my passport to the clerk. He looked at it, flicked over the pages and then nodded to a man standing near me. The man came forward. ‘Pan Farrell?’
I nodded, not trusting my voice. I knew what he was.
‘You will come with me please.’ He spoke in Czech. ‘There are some questions we must ask you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, putting a front on it. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am of the S.N.B.’ His hand was on my arm. ‘Come this way, please. We have a car waiting.’
I looked about me quickly. I had a sudden, urgent desire to make a break for it. I’d been through all this before. I knew what it was like. I’d lost a leg and nearly lost my reason, too. But the grip tightened on my arm. There was another of them on my other side. And then suddenly I was angry. I’d done nothing, nothing at all. They couldn’t arrest me without a reason. I shook my arms free and faced them. ‘Are you arresting me?’ I demanded.
‘We wish to question you, pan Farrell.’ It was the smaller of the two who replied, the one who had spoken before. He was very broad in the shoulders and his small eyes were protected by sandy lashes that blinked very rapidly.
‘Then please put your questions to me here. My plane leaves at eleven-thirty.’
The corners of his lips turned down slightly. ‘I am afraid you will miss your plane. My instructions are to take you to the Reditelstvi S.N.B.’
‘Then I am under arrest,’ I said. ‘What is the charge, please?’
‘We only wish to question you.’ His hand was on my arm again, his face quite expressionless. I knew it was no good trying to bluff him. He had his instructions. There was only one thought in my mind, to see that somebody knew what had happened. ‘Very well then. But first I must telephone my Embassy in Prague.’
‘You can do that later.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ I snapped. ‘You arrest me without making any charge and then try to deny me the right to inform my own Embassy of what has happened.’ I leaned over the desk and picked up the telephone that was there. He moved to stop me, but I said, ‘Either I telephone or I make a scene. There are sure to be some English or Americans here at the airport. If they report what has happened you will find the repercussions at a much higher level.’
He seemed to appreciate the point, for he shrugged his shoulders. Fortunately I got through right away and I was able to get the third secretary, a man named Elliot whom I’d met at a party in Prague only a few days ago. I explained what had happened and he promised to take immediate action.
I put down the telephone. ‘Now if you’ll find my bags for me,’ I said, ‘I’ll come with you. But please understand I have business appointments in Milan and I shall hold your office responsible for seeing that I have a reservation on the next plane.’ I took my passport away from the clerk who had been gaping at us the whole time and, after collecting my two suitcases, we went out to a waiting police car.
The moment of genuine anger which had carried me as far as the phone call to the Embassy had evaporated now, and I admit that, as we drove back through the suburbs of Pilsen, I was pretty scared. It was true that I’d done nothing. But if they checked up on me…. Suppose they’d arrested Maxwell and knew that he’d come to see me by way of the fire-escape? Had the night porter kept his mouth shut about Jan Tucek’s visit? And what about the two men I’d interrupted searching Tucek’s office? If they checked up on me thoroughly I’d have a job convincing them that I was completely outside the whole business. And what was the business anyway? What had happened to make them suddenly arrest me? And then I began to sweat. Suppose they’d got Maxwell? Suppose they confronted Maxwell with me? He’d think I’d given him away. My God! He’d think the mere threat of trouble had frightened me into talking. All my other fears were suddenly of no importance. They were swamped by this new and to me much more terrifying possibility.
At the Reditelstvi I was put in a dingy little waiting-room that looked out on to the ruins of a bombed building. A uniformed policeman was placed in the room with me. He stood by the door, picking his teeth and watching me without interest. There was a clock on the wall. It ticked the minutes away slowly and relentlessly. It was the old technique. I tried to relax, to ignore the slow passage of time. But as the hands of the clock slowly moved round the dial I felt the silence preying on my nerves. I tried to get into conversation with my guard. But he had his instructions. He just shook his head and said nothing.
After forty minutes a police officer entered and told me to follow him. I was taken down a stone corridor and up a flight of uncarpeted stairs, the guard following behind me. On the first floor I was shown into an office. There were shutters across the window and the place was lit by electric light. A small bearded man in plain clothes was seated at a desk. ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Please sit down.’ He waved me to a seat.
I sat down. He fumbled amongst the papers on his desk. His face I remember was very pale, almost yellow, and he had bright button eyes. The back of his carefully manicured hands were covered with black hair. He found the paper he was looking for and said, ‘You are Richard Harvey Farrell?’ He spoke in Czech.
I nodded.
‘And you represent the company of B. & H. Evans of Manchester.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was due to catch the plane to Munich and Milan at eleven-thirty this morning. Would you be good enough to tell me why I have been arrested?’
He looked across at me with a slight lift of his tuffy eyebrows. ‘Arrested, pan Farrell? Come now — all we wish is to put a few questions to you.’
‘If there was any way I could have helped you,’ I said, ‘surely it would have been sufficient to have sent an officer down to the hotel before I left?’
He smiled. I didn’t like that smile. It was slightly sadistic. He was like a psychiatrist whose career has taken some peculiar twist. ‘I am sorry you have been inconvenienced.’ He made it clear that he enjoyed inconveniencing people. I waited and after a moment, he said, ‘You knew pan Tucek I believe?’
‘That is correct,’ I answered.
‘You are with him when he is in England in 1940.’
I nodded.
‘And you saw him at the Tuckovy ocelarny the day before yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you talk about?’
I gave him the gist of our conversation in front of the interpreter. His eyes kept glancing down to the paper on his desk and I knew that he was checking my account with the interpreter’s report. When I had finished he nodded as though satisfied. ‘You speak our language very well, pan Parrel. Where did you learn?’
‘In the air force,’ I answered. ‘I find languages come quite easily to me and I was stationed with Tucek’s Czech squadron for several months.’
He smiled. ‘But on Wednesday, when you see Tucek, you do not speak any language but English. Why?’ The question was barked at me suddenly and his little button eyes were fixed on mine. ‘Why do you lie and make it necessary for an interpreter to be found?’
‘I didn’t lie,’ I answered hotly. ‘It was Tucek who said I spoke nothing but English.’
‘Why?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘How should I know? Probably he felt it was not very nice to talk to an old friend in front of a spy.’ I was speaking in English now and I saw him straining to translate.
‘Are you sure you do not come with a message to him?’ The fact that he was now speaking haltingly in English, together with the negative phrasing of the question made it clear that he had nothing definite against me.
‘What message could I bring him?’ I asked. ‘I hadn’t seen him for over ten years.’
He nodded and then said, ‘Please give me an account of all that you do since you arrive in Plzen. I wish every minute to be accounted for, pan Farrell.’
Well, I took him through everything from the moment of my arrival at the Hotel Continental. When I had finished he sat looking down at the papers on his desk, drumming with his fingers. ‘Would you mind telling me why you find it necessary to question me about this meeting between Tucek and myself?’ I asked him.
He looked at me. ‘The man is politically suspect. He has many contacts in England.’ He stopped short there and shouted to someone in the next office. The door opened and the man who had stopped me at the airport came in. For an awful moment I thought he was going to confront me with the night porter of the Hotel Continental. ‘Take pan Farrell back to his hotel,’ he ordered. Then he turned to me. ‘You will remain at your hotel please. If we have no further questions to ask you, you will be allowed to leave by tomorrow’s plane.’
I said nothing, but followed the police officer out of the room. Outside the Reditelstvi police car was waiting. I got in. As we drove off I found I was trembling. The reaction was setting in and I wanted a drink. The rain-wet smell of the streets was very sweet after the dead mustiness of S.N.B. headquarters. Gradually my nerves relaxed. The police car drew up at the hotel and I got out. The officer put my bags on the pavement and the car drove off. I took my things into the hotel and went through into the bar. I was ordering a drink when a voice behind me said in Czech, ‘Perhaps pana would be kind enough to give me a light?’ I turned. It was Maxwell. He made no sign of recognition and when I’d struck a match and lit his cigarette, he thanked me and went back to his seat in a corner of the bar.