Curtain of Fear (15 page)

“That's it. Now for goodness' sake try to behave normally. It will probably be another ten minutes or more before Jirka has fixed the electrician and the store-keeper. Pretend to be enjoying your breakfast, and make a show of talking to me as if you liked me—even if you don't.”

He had already had several mouthfuls of the stew and, while disposing of two more, tried hard to think of something to say; but the extraordinary circumstances which had brought them together there seemed to rule out any ordinary conversational opening. At length, after glancing out of a window near which they were sitting, he said rather lamely:

“It's a lovely day, isn't it?”

Appreciating his difficulty, she smiled and tried to help him out. “Yes. Tell me what you would do during it, if you could spend it any way you liked?”

His answer came without hesitation. “I would have one of those aircraft out there fly me to Birmingham, so that I could take part in a tennis tournament there this afternoon. What would you do?”

“I would get you to drop me off in London; then I'd do my utmost to catch up on a date I missed last night.”

“Listen,” he lowered his voice again. “Trying to fit this jigsaw together is making me go crackers. You simply must tell me what it's all about?”

She shook her head. “I daren't, here. It would take some time, and if we keep on whispering that blonde girl may become suspicious of us. I will tell you everything as soon as we are alone. In the meantime, it's essential to give the impression that we haven't a care in the world. The easiest way to do that is to go on with our game. Which aircraft shall we choose to travel in?”

Glancing out of the window again, he studied the half-dozen planes that were scattered about the nearer part of the airfield
then replied, “I don't know much about aircraft, but I rather favour the long thin one over there on the left. Which is your pick?”

Half turning in her chair, she followed his glance. Suddenly her mouth opened, and she suppressed a gasp.

“What's the matter?” he asked with swift concern.

“Kmoch!” she murmured. “Didn't you see him. He's only about a hundred yards off, and walking this way. It's not twenty minutes since he left us. Something's gone wrong.”

Nicholas gave a quick look at the bar, then at the food counter. Jirka was still absent and the blonde girl at her place. As he turned back to his companion he saw she had lit a cigarette. While holding it in her mouth, just as she had done at the bar, she began to talk softly through her fingers:

“For some reason we'll soon know he's gone back on our arrangement, and is coming to pick us up. Otherwise, he would have spent the whole hour with his cronies at the police post. Any hope of our being able to hide in the cold-room has gone up in smoke now. We'll have to go with him; but unless he has rumbled us already we can still play for time. This means that for the present you'll have to keep up the fiction that you are Bilto.”

“I won't!” he muttered resentfully. “If I did I'd only get myself in deeper; and I'm damned if I see why I should. Anyway, I couldn't maintain the part once they began to question me.”

“Yes, you could,” her low voice was insistent. “Pretend to be a bit dopey still, and very angry. For the moment, the only really nasty one with which you will be faced is to give a plausible explanation why, after having agreed to come here voluntarily, it should have been necessary for us to drug you before we could get you into the plane.”

“There is no answer to that except the truth—and that's what I'm going to tell them.”

“Oh, no, you're not; and there is an answer. You can say that the thought of changing your mind about coming had not even entered your head. It was simply that you wanted to postpone
your departure for twenty-four hours, but Vaněk would not agree to that. Blame the whole thing on him. Accuse him of acting arbitrarily and demand that he should be punished.”

He grinned suddenly, but his whisper held a sneer. “You'd like to see him get it in the neck, wouldn't you? For that matter, so would I. But it's about the only desire we have in common.”

“Still, you'll play the game out on the lines I suggest?”

“No, it would be pointless. If I've got to meet a lot of other scientists at this reception lunch Kmoch spoke of, within five minutes they will tumble to it that I am not Bilto.”

“You fool! You wretched moron!” Again her words came faint but clear from between half-closed lips. “Haven't you the sense to realise that it is the next three hours I want you to play for? Give me the morning, and with luck you won't have to attend the lunch. Our one last chance to escape lies in your keeping up for a little longer the deception you started yourself.”

“You knew that I wasn't Bilto from the beginning, then?”

“Of course I did! But what's that matter now? Kmoch will be here any minute. What d'you mean to do?”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” he replied tersely. “We are on opposite sides of the fence. I don't know what you're plotting; but you are a reactionary, and I refuse to involve myself with you further. I believe in Peoples' Governments, so I intend to rely on the good-will and decency of this one.”

Opening her bag, she took from it a small capsule, pushed it over the table to him and said: “I've been a fool to bother with you; but as it's through me you're here I'd still like to save you from the worst. Hide that if you can until you have lost your illusions about the sort of treatment you are likely to receive from the People's Government; then pop it in your mouth. It is cyanide, and will give you a quick get-out.”

At that moment the restaurant door opened and little Kmoch in his too-long overcoat came in. Picking up the capsule, Nicholas slipped it into his breast pocket; then, instinct bidding him cover the action, he pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He was still blowing it when the short, fat man halted beside them, bent over their table so that his voice should not carry to anyone else, and said:

“I telephoned Comrade Frček and he was much distressed to hear of the Professor's state. He says we were quite right not to take him to the hotel, and that I am to bring him and you, Comrade Hořovská, at once to Headquarters.”

“The Professor is much better already,” she said quickly. “You can see that for yourself. I'm sure he won't give us any trouble now, but he needs rest after his journey, and Comrade Frcek is much too important a man to be bothered about such matters unnecessarily. I suggest that we go straight to the hotel, and you can telephone him again from there to relieve him of his anxiety.”

“No.” Kmoch shook his head. “It is an order.” Then he turned to Nicholas and said, “Now that you are recovered, please allow me to welcome you back to Czechoslovakia. We are very proud that Prague should have produced such a distinguished scientist.”

“Thanks,” Nicholas replied non-committally. He was still a little staggered at the thought that he was now carrying the means of instant death in his pocket; and having been given it to use on himself in an emergency had once more thrown him into a state of frightful indecision. But Kmoch was obviously anxious not to keep his chief waiting; so without further remark, he hurried them out into the hall. Having flashed his pass in front of two state policemen on the main door he led
his charges over to a car driven by a third, told them that their bags were already in the boot, and bundled them in.

Much of the country round Prague is well-wooded and beautiful, but after a few miles the road from the airport lost its attraction owing to ribbon development. Subconsciously Nicholas noticed occasional rows of jerry-built, ill-kept looking bungalows, with here and there, near factories, big blocks of workers' flats; but he was much too absorbed in his own problem to take the interest he would normally have done in the new suburbs of the Czechoslovakian capital.

For years past he had read avidly all the Left-wing material that had come his way on conditions in the Soviet satellite countries. That, and innumerable discussions with people who thought as he did, had given him a fixed belief that they were governed for the benefit of the great mass of their people. The fact that in them land, property and accumulated fortunes had been confiscated for the benefit of the State he entirely approved. Those measures necessarily created a discontented minority who would stop at nothing to sabotage the smooth running of these worker-republics, and obviously such activties had to be severely repressed. Such suppression he accepted as the unavoidable birth-pangs of a new and better order, but he was convinced that the stories of nation-wide terror and arbitrary imprisonment were capitalist lies.

On this basis he realised that only active enemies of the State had anything to fear from it. Obviously the blonde young woman now sitting beside him was such an enemy. That had been made clear beyond doubt by her conversation with Jirka, the barman. But he, Nicholas, was not. On the contrary he was in entire sympathy with the regime. Therefore, it seemed, he had only to tell the truth—apart from the fact that he had deliberately impersonated Bilto to begin with in an endeavour to prevent his going to Prague—to be certain of a sympathetic hearing, and humane treatment afterwards. Whereas should he continue the deception and be found out, his association with the girl would be taken as proof that he was a member of the subversive ‘Legion' to which she belonged, and he would no longer have
any reasonable cause for complaint if they treated him too as a potential saboteur.

On the other hand it would be necessary to lie about how he had first got drawn into the affair, and—would he be believed? If not, should they decide that he had been her willing confederate all along, he would in that case, too, be treated as a saboteur, and—what would happen then?

He was still of the opinion that she had deliberately over-dramatised her situation, and that neither of them stood in any danger of torture or death; but all the same it was difficult entirely to discount the fears she had expressed to Jirka and his immediate acceptance of them. Even the lurking thought that the Czech state police might have found it necessary, in their war against sabotage, to follow the example of the Nazis—under whom their country had suffered for so long—was distinctly unnerving. She had looked as if she really meant it, too, when she had said that she did not fear death but dreaded the treatment she expected to receive before it.

It occurred to him then that although, if he could tell a few convincing lies, he might get himself in the clear, that would not necessarily clear her. What lay behind her having had him brought to Prague still remained a mystery; but evidently it tied up in some way with her subversive activities, and she had left him in no doubt that her only hope of escaping exposure was his continuing to play her game. Presumably, therefore, if he did not, ruling out her exaggerated fears, she would shortly find herself in prison.

He thought that she probably deserved it; and his immediate reaction was that, anyway, he owed her nothing. But on second thoughts he recalled her attitude to himself—that having got him into this mess it was up to her to get him out of it. That showed a generosity of spirit which it was not easy to ignore; and he felt it only fair to assume that the course she had urged upon him was the one she believed offered the best hope for them both.

Her attempt to evade the interview at Headquarters had been promptly blocked by Kmoch; but if they could get past Comrade
Frček, who was evidently Kmoch's chief, and were allowed to go on to the hotel, there seemed a good prospect that, with the help of her underground associates, they could manage to disappear. If so, and Jirka's ‘funnel' worked, they might both be outside the Iron Curtain before morning.

Putting aside, on the one hand, his inclination to tell the truth, and on the other, his natural reluctance to be the cause of anyone's being sent to prison, Nicholas again strove to weigh up the chances. After they had covered another mile he decided that in the final analysis they must be judged on what was likely to be believed by Comrade Frček, and what was not. The odds were obviously heavy against his acceptance of a statement that the man brought before him was
not
Bilto, because it could never even have crossed his mind that it would not be the person he was expecting; from which it followed that, apart from the remote possibility that he had known Bilto in his student days, he would have no reason to suspect an impostor. Therefore, in the first case detention was certain, but in the second unlikely.

There still remained the disturbing thought that while the chances of deceiving the police chief were good, the hope of continuing the deception if faced with a gathering of Prague's leading scientists at luncheon was virtually non-existent; so Nicholas had to face the fact that should the young woman who was the cause of all his troubles fail to get them away from the hotel in the hour or two he could gain for her, his last case would be very much worse than his first. But finally he decided to risk that, and gamble on her succeeding both in obtaining for him a quick get-out and saving herself.

The car was approaching the capital from the north-west, and from a long way off Nicholas had been able to see the outline of the vast Hradcany Castle. When they came within clear sight of its steeply-sloping roofs and myriad-pointed gables, he expected that they would turn off to it, for he knew that it was now used as the central administrative offices of the People's Government; but instead they continued on round the shoulder of the hill across which it sprawled. From the high ground he could now see a good part of Prague, and the bend of the river
Vltava that separates the richest residential district from the greater part of the city. Beyond the beautiful Charles Bridge lay the Old Town with portions of its original walls and many fine medieval buildings. He could pick out the Powder Tower, the Týn Church and the Town Hall; then, further off, the massed buildings covering the slopes on which lay the New Town with its big hotels and principal shopping streets. Another few minutes and the car was running down between the big old private houses and blocks of one-time luxury flats. It crossed the river to the east bank, ran on through several streets, crossed the broad Příkopy, and two hundred yards further on pulled up in front of a tall modern concrete office block.