Background to Danger (14 page)

He lit it and inhaled deeply. He was beginning to feel better.

Zaleshoff turned to the girl.

“Where did you put that paper, Tamara?”

She went to the cupboard and returned with a sheet of grey paper covered with small writing. Her brother took it, pressed Kenton into a seat on the sofa and sat on a chair facing him. The girl sat behind the table with a pencil in her hand and a note-book in front of her.

“A court of inquiry?” said Kenton.

He saw a look of faint amusement flicker across the girl’s face.

“Not at all,” said Zaleshoff, a little too emphatically. He held up the grey paper. “Do you know what this is, Mr. Kenton?”

The journalist shook his head.

Zaleshoff held it out for him to take.

Kenton looked at the paper. It was headed “Dossier K.4596” and began: “Desmond d’Esterre Kenton, journalist, born Carlisle 1906.” It went on to describe, in German, his parents and their histories, his appearance, his character, his career, his political leanings and his work for various papers, with an accuracy and insight that he found very disconcerting. He read it through twice and handed it back.

“Very good,” he said; “but you’re wrong in saying that I spent most of nineteen-thirty-four in Hungary. I was in Rome for most of that year.”

Zaleshoff frowned and made a noise of disgust.

“Tamara, please make a note of that and report it.” He turned to Kenton. “It is so difficult,” he went on plaintively, “to get people to take proper steps to check up on their information. One is constantly made to look a fool.”

Kenton did not feel that he was expected to comment on this statement.

“I showed it to you, however,” the other continued, “more to make my position clear than to impress you. It is unimportant.” He threw it on the table. “Tamara, you may tear it up.”

Kenton noticed, however, that the girl put the paper carefully in the back of the note-book.

“And now to business,” her brother went on affably. “Supposing you tell us, Mr. Kenton, exactly how you came to be in the Hotel Josef the other night.”

Kenton examined his cigarette.

“I shall be glad to do so,” he murmured; “but I think
you have overlooked a very necessary preliminary.”

“Yes?”

Kenton raised his head and his eyes met those of the Russian.

“I want to know first to whom I am talking,” he said.

There was a slight pause, punctuated by a clatter of plates from the other end of the room.

Zaleshoff frowned fiercely.

“I do not see,” he said at last, “what my name has to do with this business. It will convey nothing to you. However”—he shrugged—“it is Andreas Prokovitch Zaleshoff.”

“Zaleshoff?”

The Russian scowled his confirmation. Kenton leaned back on the sofa thoughtfully. Then he snapped his fingers.

“Got it!”

Zaleshoff raised his eyebrows.

“I remember now,” Kenton went on. “Weren’t you deported from the United States for Communist agitation in nineteen-twenty-two? Pittsburgh, I fancy, though it may have been Detroit. Which was it?”

He waited, expecting an outburst of theatrical indignation. Then, to his intense surprise, he saw a deep blush creeping over the Russian’s face.

“Chicago,” muttered Zaleshoff almost sheepishly.

The girl began to laugh.

It was, thought Kenton, a very pleasant sound, but her brother rounded on her angrily and pounded the table with his fist.

“Stop, Tamara, stop at once!” He turned to Kenton. “You are right,” he said with a comical attempt at jauntiness. He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly. “I was very young at the time. A boyish escapade, nothing more. But it was nineteen-twenty-five, my friend, and in Chicago.” He laughed rather unconvincingly. “It was good to remember the name, but your facts were quite wrong.”

“That,” said Kenton, “is hardly to be wondered at. When you were being deported from Chicago I was a rather pimply adolescent. Until you spoke just now I had never heard your name before in my life.”

Zaleshoff leaned back in his chair and breathed noisily through his nose. It was the girl who spoke first.

“Do you mean, Mr. Kenton,” she said, her voice broken with suppressed laughter, “that you had no idea of our having been in America and that you made up that story about my brother?”

Kenton nodded.

“Yes, I made it up. You both speak English with an American accent and you speak it as fluently as I do. You must have spent a number of years in America. I had every reason to believe that your brother was employed by the Soviet Government. I wanted to annoy him into showing his hand. The deportation business had the right circumstantial feeling about it.”

“Well, I’ll be—” began Andreas Prokovitch Zaleshoff, but the girl interrupted him.

“Our father was killed secretly by the Ochrana in nineteen hundred and ten. Our mother escaped from Baku with us to America, through Mexico, where I was born. But she never took out the proper papers and when Andreas got into trouble with the police for his propaganda they found out about us and we were deported. Our mother was dead; we spoke Russian better than English, so we claimed Soviet citizenship. It is quite simple.”

“If, Tamara, you have quite finished these domestic revelations,” snarled her brother, “I wish to talk to Mr. Kenton myself.” He turned to the journalist. “Now, Mr. Kenton, we seem to have answered your question. You know who I am. Supposing you answer mine? How did you come to be at the Hotel Josef?”

Kenton considered for a moment. Then:

“Very well, there seems to be no harm in that.”

Zaleshoff listened intently while Kenton described his meeting with Sachs, his reasons for accepting Sachs’s offer and his visit to the Hotel Josef. When he came to his interview with “Colonel Robinson,” however, the Russian began to interrupt with questions. What exactly had been said? Had the subject of oil been mentioned? How far did Mailler seem to be in his master’s confidence? When Kenton mentioned the Colonel’s “principals in London,” Zaleshoff’s eyes gleamed and he rapped out an excited comment in Russian to his sister. The Colonel’s intention of going to Prague was noted carefully.

“And then,” Kenton concluded at last, “you appeared on the scene; how, I cannot imagine.”

“That is easily explained. I saw Saridza’s men carry you out of the Hotel Werner. Later, I searched your room. I found a small piece of paper torn from a note-book in one of your overcoat pockets. It had two addresses on it, both obviously written by a Russian. One was the Hotel Josef, the other was the Villa Peschik. That was the name of the house in which I found you.”

“But how did you know of my existence?” A thought struck him. “I suppose that pasty-faced specimen that Sachs told me was a Nazi spy wasn’t one of your little friends?”

Zaleshoff looked mystified.

“Who murdered Sachs?” persisted Kenton.

The two Russians exchanged a quick look of understanding. Then Zaleshoff shrugged.

“Who can say?”

“All right,” said Kenton irritably, “let it go. Is there any further information I can give you?” he added ironically.

His head had begun to ache.

“Well, Mr. Kenton,” purred Zaleshoff, “there are just two things more.”

“What are they?”

“I heard the end of your conversation with Saridza from outside the window before you were taken to the cellar. Why, Mr. Kenton, did you not surrender the photographs and save yourself that rather painful interlude with Captain Mailler?”

Kenton laughed shortly.

“Zaleshoff,” he said, “my father was Irish, my mother was French. Rather to my surprise, I find that I have inherited from them two curious qualities—obstinacy and the faculty of resentment.”

The Russian glanced at his sister.

“Does that make sense to you, Tamara? I have told you what they were doing to him.”

The girl nodded. Her brother turned again to Kenton.

“The only thing I want to know,” he said, “is where I can find those photographs.”

Kenton thought swiftly. Zaleshoff had obviously not heard enough of his interview with the Colonel to know about the café.

“You really don’t know?”

Zaleshoff shook his head slowly. Kenton sensed a revival of the slight hostility in the other’s attitude that had coloured the earlier part of their conversation.

“Then, Monsieur Zaleshoff,” he said, “I’m going to bargain with you.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. During the past twenty-four hours quite a lot of unpleasant things have happened to me. I demand compensation.”

The Russian’s lips tightened and his jaw thrust forward aggressively.

“How much?” he said quietly.

Kenton registered horror.

“Dear me, not money! That makes the third time I have
been offered bribes in connection with this bunch of rather uninteresting photographs. I didn’t think it of you, monsieur,” he added reproachfully.

Zaleshoff’s face darkened.

“Come to the point, please.”

“Certainly. I am a reporter. Just before I met the late lamented Borovansky, I was wondering where I was going to get a news story that wouldn’t be hogged by all the news-agency men and foreign correspondents in Middle Europe five minutes after it had broken. Well, now I think I’m on the track of it. I want to know more of friend Saridza’s principals in London. I want to know who they are and what they are, and why they’re so interested in Bessarabia and Rumania. I want to know what oil has got to do with it and exactly where you come in. I want the dope, the low-down, the works, or whatever you used to call it in Chicago, in exchange for the photographs. How does the idea appeal to you?”

Zaleshoff looked grim.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Kenton, that you are doomed to disappointment. I am, indeed, a little surprised that a man of your experience should make such a suggestion. I can assure you that I, at least, have no sensational revelations to make.” He smiled slightly. “Perhaps Tamara can think of something?”

“Don’t you want your photographs?”

“Yes, Mr. Kenton, I do; but I am not empowered to make statements to the Press. In any case, the affair is purely commercial. It has no political significance.”

“I am inclined to doubt that.”

“No paper would publish anything so unimportant.”

“I’ll tell you about that when I’ve heard the facts.”

There was a long pause, then the girl spoke.

“I think, Andreas,” she said, “that we shall have to compromise with Mr. Kenton.”

The Russian glanced at the journalist for a moment or two. Then he shrugged.

“Very well. I suppose it makes no difference.”

“No difference?” Kenton found the statement a little odd.

But Zaleshoff did not explain.

“One can only regret,” he was saying viciously, “that one did not leave Mr. Kenton to the excellent Captain Mailler for just a little longer.”

Rashenko brought them tea in glasses. Zaleshoff crushed a slice of lemon into his glass and stirred the contents moodily.

At last he looked up.

“You must understand, Mr. Kenton,” he said with an air of brisk candour, “that my connection with this affair is purely accidental. I am a private Soviet citizen with business interests in Switzerland—the importation of machinery, to be precise.”

He paused.

“However,” he went on, sipping at his tea, “the Soviet citizen is, in common with other nationals abroad, always ready, should the occasion arise, to place his country’s interest before his private business affairs. When, therefore, I was requested, for various reasons that would not interest you, to assist in a rather unusual matter of Government business, I had no alternative but to agree. That, Mr. Kenton,” he concluded a trifle defiantly, “explains my position in this affair.”

Kenton, secretly amused at this naïve evasion, nodded solemnly and lit a cigarette.

“And Borovansky’s murder?” he said.

Zaleshoff waved the question aside.

“An insignificant incident. We will talk about it later.” He leaned forward earnestly. “You are a journalist, Mr. Kenton; you know more than the ordinary man; I do not need to do more than hint and you will understand. When I tell you that a certain prominent exile from Russia seeks once again
to taste power, much will be clear to you. In nineteen-seventeen and eighteen this man rendered great services to Russia; but there was in him the taint of personal ambition. He craved power. Russia has no room to-day for those who place the service of their vanities above the service of the people. He was expelled.”

“Are you talking about Trotsky?”

Zaleshoff nodded portentously.

“It would have been better, perhaps, to have shot him,” he said regretfully, “for he has not ceased to plot against the State. Round him he has gathered a brood of fanatics drunk with the desire for power. They are dangerous. France expelled them. Norway and Sweden expelled them. Of the other countries of the world, only Mexico would receive them. They have worked for the downfall of the Soviets for years; many great servants of the people have been corrupted by their subtle poison. Those unhappy men have had to pay the price. When a limb is poisoned it must be amputated, lest it infect the health of the whole body.”

“The nineteen-thirty-six trials?” queried Kenton.

Zaleshoff assented rather impatiently to this intrusion of the specific.

“The nineteen-thirty-six trials brought the danger to the notice of the people; but it still remains. The aim of these vermin is to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of her neighbours. They pursue that aim with relentless determination. They will go to any lengths. You, Mr. Kenton, have experienced some of their methods. Borovansky was a Soviet citizen, a man of the people. By chance, these impudent forgeries, which you yourself have examined, fell into his hands. He informed Moscow and was ordered to lay aside his work and bring them here to Linz for examination. Like the true patriot he was, he set out immediately. But they were swiftly on his track. He handed them to you, an Englishman whom
he saw he could trust, for safe keeping. Then the fiends murdered him and turned their attention to you. The results you know only too well. What our enemies reckoned without was the loyalty of the Soviet citizen to the people of whom he is but an insignificant unit. I was called upon. I answered the call and was able to save you from the torture. I take up Borovansky’s work where he left off. Now you know all. In Borovansky’s name, Mr. Kenton, I request you to return to me the photographs entrusted to you.”