Curtain of Fear (28 page)

The disconcerting thought came to Nicholas that, until a few hours ago, he had held the same ‘lunatic-belief' about Kenya and other native territories that were being ‘exploited' by Europeans. Pushing it out of his mind, he said:

“I'm still not quite clear how your mind worked with regard to me.”

“I shouldn't have thought that was difficult to fathom. Your likeness to Bilto is very striking, and as he had told me that he had a younger cousin I guessed at once who you were. The next thing I knew was that you were pretending to be him. I could make only the wildest guesses why; but one of them was that Bilto had suddenly got qualms of conscience and wanted a little more time to make up his mind. If that were so, he would have been afraid that if he didn't come out to the car, whoever had been sent to fetch him would come in and, perhaps, threaten him; and if he did come out to get rid of it that might mean a
most unwelcome argument in the street. Therefore, he had persuaded you to go out in his place, and on some excuse or other stall whoever had been sent for him until it was too late for anyone to come and bully him into leaving that night.”

“If that had been the case, he would have known that you knew I wasn't him.”

“But he wasn't expecting me. I've already told you that I hadn't seen him for a month, and that the Soviet Embassy contacted him direct about going to Prague. He might have banked on their sending a Russian who had never seen him, or one who had only done so once, and so could have been fooled in the semi-darkness for half an hour by your resemblance to him. Anyhow, that was the rough theory that I formed the minute or two you were standing on the kerb; and I felt that if I was right nothing could have suited me better, so I urged you to hop in.”

“I see. You thought that at Bilto's request I was getting him a bit of extra time, and that if he missed the plane you would be able to go back later and have a show-down with him; so in a way, unknown to each other, we were playing one another's game?”

“That's it,” Fedora sighed. “How I wish we had realised it then. But that state of affairs didn't last long. When you asked to be driven to the Sinznicks' I knew that my theory must be more or less right, and that you were only playing for time. I guessed then that you meant to hang me up there as long as possible, then make some excuse for not leaving at all. How I thanked God that your friends happened to be people that I knew and could deal with. Half those Left-wingers and fellow travellers are taking money off the Russians; so it was a certainty that I would be able to put the black on that wretched little man and his anarchist wife. Otherwise I might have had the very devil of a job to get you back into the car.”

“But why did you want to? If you had let me remain talking to them for half an hour before coming in, it would have been too late to do anything about Bilto; so he would have missed his plane, and that was all that either of us was trying to ensure.”

“Not by that time. Your impersonation had given me a golden opportunity. If I had detained Bilto at my flat, as I first intended, Rufus would have reported me to Vaněk, and he would have sent his cosh-boys along to get us. I'd have been taking a frightful gamble on being able to persuade Bilto, in half an hour, to do a disappearing trick with me; because if I'd still been there when they turned up I'd have been better off dead. And half an hour is mighty little to convert a pro-Communist into a Christian. That was possibility number one. Number two was that if I had let you remain at the Sinznicks' I would have had to report to Vaněk myself. Had I told him that you were an impostor, how could I have explained my picking you up in the first place, when he knew that I could not possibly have mistaken you for Bilto? If I had said that it was Bilto whom I had left at the Sinznicks' because he had changed his mind, Vaněk would have jumped in the car and gone out there to try to persuade you to unchange it, even if you had missed the plane for that night. You would have told him that you were Nicholas and I should have been caught out just the same. Number three was that if I hadn't gone back to report to Vaněk he would have gone to the Russell. So you see, whatever course I took I was going to be blown open. But by forcing you to go through with your imposture I reckoned that I could both have my cake and eat it. Apparently I would have done my job, but actually I would have gained a clear twelve hours at least in which to tackle Bilto and win him round.”

“So you sold me down the river in order to get a free field with Bilto?”

“That's it, my dear. I didn't give a damn what happened to you if only it got me long enough to make him go back to Harwell. The nasty twist that I couldn't foresee was that Vaněk would send me here with you.”

“Yes,” Nicholas agreed, “and that resulted in a sort of stalemate as far as Bilto was concerned. But why couldn't you have done a bunk from the airport? You could have told Konečný that you were going to the ‘Ladies' and not have come back.”

“He would have said that there wasn't time, and I must wait
until I was on the plane. As it was, we caught it only by the skin of our teeth.”

“You could have refused to board it.”

“You were in no state to appreciate the set-up, but Rufus remained hanging about until the plane actually left, so that he could report to Vaněk that we had got you safely on board without any trouble. If I had defied orders at the last moment Konečný would have run back to tell him; then Rufus would have stuck to me like a leech. He had a car and I hadn't. As the only alternative to risking his slashing my face to ribbons with his razor, I'd have had to go back with him in it. Within an hour I'd have been in one of the private cells at the house I took you to; and when Vaněk learned that I had fooled him about your being Bilto I'd have been nice and handy for them to take me apart. As an alternative to finally being hacked into a dozen pieces suitable for putting into small weighted sacks, then feeding to the fishes in the Thames, I preferred to continue my role as your ever-loving Comrade-companion, and come on here.”

“That clears up a lot of things that have been puzzling me,” Nicholas said thoughtfully. “But tell me one thing more. It's clear that you know the ropes here, and you arrived still unsuspected. I'm sure that during the course of the morning you could have got away on your own. Why didn't you?”

“I really don't know. I suppose I felt that having got you into this I ought to do my best to get you out.”

“No; that won't wash. You've just said that when you were planning to have me sent here on my own, you didn't give a damn what happened to me. And getting to know me better can hardly have made you regard me as a long-lost brother. This morning I nailed the Red flag to the mast and showed up as the type of chap you are fighting tooth and nail. When you found out that I was a pro-Communist I wonder you didn't throw me to the wolves and rejoice at having done so.”

Fedora gave a low laugh. “You're not a Com; and the only flag you could hoist is a washed-out pink. You're just a woolly minded Liberal with an infinite capacity for believing any lie he's
told. You wouldn't hurt a fly yourself; and if people like you ever formed a government you'd be eaten up by the real Marxists in ten minutes. The only thing I hold against you is that as a teacher you are entirely lacking in responsibility. You are handing out mental Mills bombs and Sten guns to young people, some of whom may be evil enough one day to use them.”

“Well, obviously that idea could not endear me to you,” said Nicholas stiffly. “Why have you taken big risks yourself to stick with me and try to get me out?”

“If you must know,” she replied lazily, “I suppose it is because I'm a woman. I got a silly maternal sort of feeling for you when you were sitting doped beside me in the aircraft. Then, later, it was so transparent that your head was filled with fool ideas only because you hadn't realised the truth. I didn't feel that I could possibly let you go like a lamb to the slaughter because I had made use of you. Another thing—you are quite different from most of the men I'm used to meeting, and by then I had decided that I rather liked you. I liked you all the more, too, for not making a pass at me when we were up in the hotel bedroom.”

Nicholas felt insulted, awkward and flattered in turn, and muttered, “I'm afraid I can't take much credit for that. As I told you, I'm in love and engaged to be married.”

“Oh, don't be stuffy!” she retorted with a little shrug. “Single, engaged, or married, there are few men of your age who wouldn't have tried their luck. That is the nature of men; and being in danger only makes them the keener to snatch at that sort of thing whenever they get the chance. But don't run away with the idea that I wanted you to. I'm in love with someone myself.”

For a few moments they were silent, then she asked, “Now I no longer have to pretend that you are Bilto, what would you like me to call you?”

“My friends call me Nicky,” he replied, “so I'd be glad if you would too; and I'll call you Fedora. But that's not a Czech name, is it? How did you come to be given it?”

“I was named after my maternal grandmother, who was a
Russian Baroness. She escaped from the Bolsheviks during the revolution and took refuge here.”

“Then it is hardly surprising that you are such a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary. You must have imbibed it with your mother's milk.”

“Don't talk like an inverted snob,” she said sharply. “And don't get worried that you may have sold your spotless proletarian soul to the Devil by kissing me, either. I'm only one fourth noble; the rest of me is quite common Czech.”

“I wasn't trying to be priggish,” he protested. “I meant only that it is natural that you should always have been an anti-Communist.”

“But I wasn't.” Her tone had become friendly again. “At least, when I was a girl I had the same sort of advanced Socialist views that you seem to hold. It was seeing what they led to that made me change them. Even then I didn't become an active anti-Communist until 1950. My husband refused to allow me to be mixed up with his secret work, so I knew very little about the part he had played in the Legion until the Coms caught him and pulled me in. I was fool enough to think that by making a deal with them I could save him. They imagine that I believe that he is still living reasonably comfortably in prison as a hostage for my good behaviour; but I know for a fact that they did him in a few months after he was caught. By then, I'd already got in touch with the Legion myself, and I've been double-crossing the Coms ever since.”

“It must have been pretty ghastly for you,” Nicholas said sympathetically. “But if those old memories aren't too painful, I'd be awfully interested to hear more about your life and work.”

Lifting her head from his shoulder, she shook it slowly. “No, not now. We have been down here long enough. Someone may think it queer, and tumble to the fact that we have been hiding, if we don't at least make a pretence of seeing something of the show.”

As she spoke, she pressed the button beneath the table edge, and the hydraulic lift brought them slowly up to floor level.

The stage was now occupied by another set of dancers; but they too were clad in peasant costumes, and were doing a very similar dance to that of their predecessors; which caused Nicholas to remark:

“There doesn't seem to be much variety about this show.” Fedora smiled. “If you expected anything like the Folies Bergère you are going to be disappointed. The fact that the principal amusement of our rulers is making pretty women dance to their tune in private does not mean that they encourage, or even permit, anything at all suggestive in public. Leg-shows are ideologically connected with the bourgeois-capitalist exploitation of women, so barred as being both anti-social and frivolous. Even the films all have to be based on one theme—the unselfish worker who triumphs over some form of temptation and denies himself pleasure in order to produce more of something for the Soviets.”

“How dreary. And does this place never put on anything but peasant dances?”

“Oh yes; physical drill displays, amateur ballet, and sketches by young would-be playwrights in praise of the Com régime. It is one of the many places that have been turned over to the Sokols for propaganda purposes and winning recruits for their organisation.”

Nicholas well remembered the Sokols. When he visited Prague as a boy it was the great national youth movement. Young people of both sexes and all classes had belonged to it, and their rallies had been a feature of the life of the nation. There were over 300,000 of them, and they prided themselves on their special code of honour and their physical fitness. At times as many as 12,000 Sokols gave marvellously synchronised displays of physical drill and community singing. Glancing at Fedora, he said:

“I should have thought the Sokols would have formed the best basis for the Legion, as they were such a patriotic institution and had their branches in every village as well as in all the towns.”

“Is it likely?” Her low voice held a bitter note. “Do you
think the Coms are such fools as not to have realised the value of the movement? One of the very first things they did was to get hold of it and unobtrusively pervert it to their own uses. For years past thousands of helpless youngsters have been indoctrinated through it with the Com ideology, and many of them now are among our worst enemies.”

After they had watched a succession of dance groups for about three-quarters of an hour, Fedora said, “It must be dark by now, so I am going to telephone. Don't worry if I'm away for quite a time.”

“Why?” he queried. “Is the telephone service very bad?”

She shook her head. “No, it's not that; but I may have to telephone several people before I can fix up a hide-out for us. It is nearly three months since I've been in Prague, and a lot can happen in that time. Quite apart from Legionnaires being caught, there are the deportations. The Coms know that the old middle classes will always remain their enemies, so every month they make a swoop on several thousand unsuspecting people and send them either to the uranium mines or to Russia. One never knows from one day to the next when friends will disappear never to be heard of again.”