Background to Danger (28 page)

“Saridza went back to the Bastakis’ place after leaving you here,” said Tamara. “I put one of Smedoff’s men on to him after that. Saridza and Mailler left a short while after for the Hotel Amerika in Prague. There were two men with them, but they went off by themselves. I also put two of Smedoff’s men at the station to pick up Bastaki if he came back before we were ready. I thought maybe that would delay Saridza.”

“Good; but we must get Smedoff to countermand those instructions now. I don’t want to interfere with Bastaki if I can help it. How do we get out of this place?”

“There’s a piece of waste ground at the back. I would
have got to you before, but it was too dark to see anything and I couldn’t afford to take risks with you out of the running. Smedoff has only four men, including Peter, and they are where I told you. Otherwise I would have got help to you. Where are Grigori and Serge?”

Zaleshoff told her.

She was silent for a moment. Kenton saw the stony look which he had seen before in her brother’s face come into hers. Then she said: “Your wrists and hands are bleeding, Andreas, and so are Mr. Kenton’s.”

“We can see to them as we go.”

She led them through the gates over the siding, across a desolate, muddy patch of ground to a broken-down wood fence. Kenton saw the outlines of a row of small buildings and a group of gasometers in the middle distance. Then they were walking up a narrow, rutted road between tracts of scrubby waste land traversed by power lines and telegraph wires.

“Where to now?” said Kenton when they reached the car.

“First to a telephone and then home,” replied Zaleshoff.

He spent about thirty seconds in the telephone box, then he came back to the car.

“Our plans are changed,” he said abruptly as he got in again; “we will go to Smedoff’s. Mr. Kenton,” he added as the car started, “I should like you to exercise the greatest discretion over anything you may see or hear during the next hour or so.”

“All right.”

“What has happened, Andreas?” said the girl over her shoulder.

“Bastaki arrived at the Hotel Amerika ten minutes ago.”

“But the men at the station …?”

“He came by air.”

During the drive into Prague, Zaleshoff ignored the journalist and sat frowning fiercely at the floor of the car. He refused a cigarette with an impatient grunt.

It was now daylight and the Mercedes swung through the deserted streets of the city at racing speed. In the Altstadt, Tamara slowed and turned into a network of clean, silent streets of office buildings. The Mercedes stopped outside a narrow building belonging, ostensibly, at all events, to a firm of wood veneer manufacturers. The door to the offices was open.

They alighted from the car and went through the door along a stone corridor to a lift. They got inside and Zaleshoff pressed the button marked “Basement.” To Kenton’s surprise the lift rose slowly to the sixth floor and stopped. Zaleshoff opened a door on the opposite side to that by which they had entered and they walked on to a bare landing. For a moment Kenton could see no signs of any outlet. Then he noticed a flush door set in the wall at one end of the landing.

“Wait here,” said Zaleshoff.

He went to the door, pushed it open and walked straight in. The door swung to behind him.

“What is this place?” said Kenton.

“A friend’s apartment,” was the reply.

Kenton digested this tasteless piece of information in silence. Then Zaleshoff returned and beckoned to them.

“How would you like a bath and some coffee, Kenton?”

“Very much.”

“Good.”

He waved them inside.

Kenton found himself in a small carpeted hall with three doors facing him.

“Bedroom, parlour, bathroom,” said Zaleshoff, pointing to each in turn. “Tamara, you can have the bedroom and
make do with a wash. Mr. Kenton is very, very dirty. So am I. You take the bathroom first, Kenton, and be quick. The coffee will be ready in a minute.”

Kenton went into the bathroom.

The first thing he saw was a large
papier-mâché
plaque of Lenin’s head in bas-relief. It hung in the centre of the wall over the bath. He shut the door and looked at the rest of the room. One corner was filled with bottles and tins of bath salts in a bewildering variety of colours and perfumes. A shelf above was loaded with face creams, skin foods, lotions, astringents and cosmetics. All looked as if they were used frequently. There were no signs of shaving tackle. The owner was clearly a woman living alone. He gave it up and got on with his bathing.

The vulcanising tank had covered his body with rust. The crane had added a thick coating of black grease to his face and hands. By the time he had removed the worst of the dirt, Zaleshoff was banging at the door.

He dressed hurriedly and went into the “parlour.”

It was a small room furnished with steel chairs with red seats, a glass-topped steel table and a divan covered with black American cloth. Over a chromium-plated electric fireplace hung a reproduction of a Juan Gris still-life. On the opposite wall was a faded brown photograph of Rosa Luxemburg in a rococo gilt frame. The general effect was, to say the least of it, bizarre.

Seated at the table drinking coffee were Zaleshoff and Tamara. Facing them was one of the fattest women Kenton had ever seen. She was talking in Russian to Tamara.

Zaleshoff waved to him to sit down.

“Have some coffee. This”—he indicated the fat woman—“is Smedoff.”

The woman glanced at him, nodded and resumed her conversation with Tamara. Zaleshoff went into the bathroom.
The journalist sipped his coffee and stared fascinated at Madame Smedoff.

She might have been anything from sixty to ninety years old. The flesh of her face, which quivered as she talked, was a mass of tiny wrinkles partly filled in by the thick coating of white powder that clung like a fungus to the mask beneath it. Her hair was short, henna’d and dressed in innumerable curls that stood out stiffly round her head, so that with her back to the light she looked like a rather disreputable chrysanthemum. Her mouth was very carefully painted to correct an obtrusive lower lip. Two feverish dabs of rouge, a little too high on the cheeks, plucked and pencilled eyebrows and dark blue eye-shadow completed the work. There was not a vestige of character left in the features. She wore a black silk dress with long sleeves from the ends of which protruded two small well-shaped hands. On the third finger of the left hand was a large soapstone ring. Round her shoulders was, of all things, a red tartan shawl. She adjusted it repeatedly as she talked.

Suddenly she broke off in the middle of her conversation with Tamara and fixed Kenton with a piercing stare. Then, to his amazement, the blue eyelids fluttered coquettishly and an arch smile twisted her lips.

“I have heard of you, Mr. Kenton,” she said in English. “You remind me very much of de Maupassant. You have the same mouth.”

“That is impossible, Madame Smedoff.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is impossible that you should remember. You can have been no more than a young child when de Maupassant died.”

Madame Smedoff looked surprised, then preened herself, giggled and turned to the girl.

“You say he is an Englishman, Tamara Prokovna? I cannot believe it. He is as insincere as a Frenchman, and as
grave as a German. It is droll.” Her body shook with silent laughter.

Feeling rather foolish, Kenton buttered himself a piece of bread. The fat woman resumed her conversation with Tamara; but now from time to time she cast roguish glances in his direction, and after a while he kept his eyes on the tray in front of him. He was relieved when Zaleshoff returned to the room.

In spite, however, of Madame Smedoff’s distracting presence he did a certain amount of thinking. Almost imperceptibly, he realised, he had come to regard himself as an ally of Zaleshoff and an opponent of Saridza. The fact that this alignment of sympathies had been brought about largely by Saridza’s brutal tactics was beside the point. Where exactly did he stand? He was wanted by the Austrian police for the murder of Sachs. His presence in Czechoslovakia was both illegal and precarious. He had lost a considerable amount of sleep and his nervous system had probably suffered incalculable damage. This Russian, Zaleshoff, had it in his power to put him out of danger so far as the Austrian police were concerned. He would not do so. He, Kenton, was virtually a prisoner awaiting the pleasure, through their representative, of the Soviet Government. The thought irritated him. He must be firm with Zaleshoff—present an ultimatum. Zaleshoff must arrange for the immediate delivery of the man Ortega, or he, Kenton, would … would what? Give himself up? Out of the question. Get away to England? He had been over all that before. There was nothing he could do except, he concluded bitterly, write to the
Times
about it. He munched his breakfast gloomily. The sight of Zaleshoff, pink and businesslike from the bath, intensified his sense of frustration. The fellow wasn’t even good at his job! Here was that thug Saridza making ready to leave for Bucharest at any moment while the champion of the forces
of democracy was passing the time taking baths and drinking coffee with a preposterous old harridan who ought to be …

“Well, Andreas,” he said with a trace of acerbity in his voice, “what do we do now?”

“That,” said Madame Smedoff, wheeling round suddenly, and breaking into English, “is what I want to know. What, Andreas Prokovitch, have you decided?”

Zaleshoff lit a cigarette.

“I haven’t decided.”

The fat woman snorted and turned on Kenton.

“You, young man. You appear to have some sense. What do you think?”

“I think you’re wasting time here. Saridza may be getting away.”

“There’s no train to Bucharest until four this afternoon. There’s no plane to Bucharest until to-morrow morning. There is one man watching Saridza’s car and another on the second floor of the hotel watching his room.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Didn’t you hear what we were talking about?”

“He doesn’t speak Russian,” said Tamara.

Madame Smedoff emitted a little screech of laughter.

“Then the poor boy doesn’t know what a wicked old woman I am!” She wriggled her huge body kittenishly.

“Olga!” snapped Zaleshoff.

She waved the interruption aside. Her eyes gleamed shrewdly at Kenton.

“Listen, Mr. Kenton,” she said; “this man Zaleshoff is all very good in his way, but he has no sense of strategy. He talks a lot, no one is better at talking; but as for strategy, as distinct from tactics, mark you, he has no sense of it. I have. When you came into this room you looked at me. I knew what you thought. In spite of her age, you said to yourself, this woman has charm, she is attractive, she
has appeal, she is to be preferred to inexperienced girls.”

“Huh!” said Zaleshoff.

“Didn’t you think that?” persisted the fat woman.

“Yes,” said Kenton.

Madame Smedoff turned triumphantly to the others.

“You see. I have manœuvred him into a false position immediately. He is forced to lie. If,” she went on contemplatively, “I had decided to take advantage of that position it would have been difficult for him.”

Kenton felt his face turning a bright red.

“The point,” she resumed briskly, “is this. There is no substitute for good strategy. Your attempt, Andreas Prokovitch, on the Bastaki house was doomed to failure.”

“It failed because of a piece of darn’ bad luck,” said Zaleshoff vigorously.

“Doomed to failure,” insisted Madame Smedoff. “The strategy was at fault. It was crude. Now again you make the same mistake. You would go to the Hotel Amerika and wave pistols at these men, club them, bind them, search for the photographs. I tell you, my friend, that even if you are successful in your violence you will not find the photographs.”

“Why not?”

Madame Smedoff rearranged her shawl.

“Because they are not there.”

“Ridiculous, they must be there.”

“They are not there. You take Saridza for a fool. He is not. Up to a point you were right. When he met Bastaki at the cable works the photographs were with him. Good. But you forget one thing. That same night, he saw you. He knew what you wanted. It is obvious that he would put the photographs in a place of safety. But where? That we must find out and quickly. I think Saridza will travel by car this morning.”

“Why?”

“The four o’clock train is a bad one. It is necessary to change at Budapest, there is long to wait, and there are many stops between there and Bucharest. Also Saridza rarely travels by train.”

“Prague is a large place and the photographs are small.”

“Then we must wait for Saridza to leave and follow him. You ought to be able to do something between here and the Hungarian frontier.”

Zaleshoff thrust out his jaw.

“I don’t like the sound of it.”

“Neither do I,” said Madame Smedoff complacently; “but perhaps you can suggest where we may find the photographs. It is now half-past eight. Bastaki has left and gone back with his wife to his home. Saridza will be starting soon.”

“It is absurd, Olga, and you know it. He might have left the photographs in the hotel safe or at the luggage office at the station—anywhere.”

“If I might make a suggestion?” put in Kenton apologetically.

“Well, young man?”

“If I were in Saridza’s place, knowing that further attempts might be made to recover the photographs, I should have a copy made by re-photographing the original prints and put it somewhere safe.”

Madame Smedoff heaved herself out of her chair, went over to Kenton and patted him on the head.

“There, Andreas Prokovitch, you see he has intelligence. A copy, of course. We should have thought of that.” She beamed at Kenton. “And how do you suggest we find out which photographer he went to?”

“He wouldn’t go to an ordinary photographer. The man might think it queer stuff and make an extra print. I don’t know whether you’ve seen those mobilisation orders, Andreas. They’re stamped on every page with your Government
seal. Very official and authentic, they look.”

“That,” said Zaleshoff impatiently, “is the trouble.”