Curtain Of Fear Part 9

THE PEOPLE'S REPRESENTATIVE

Kmoch was facing the lift gates, so had his back turned; but he caught Fedora's murmur before Nicholas could reply, and, swinging round, ordered her to be silent.

Ignoring him, she whispered a single last sentence. "All the same, whatever happens now, I want you to know that I thought it very generous of you to try to get me out as well as yourself."

"Be silent, I tell you!" Kmoch said in a sharper tone.

Nicholas gave him an angry look and asked in Czech, "Why shouldn't we talk if we want to? We are not criminals. We haven't even been charged with anything yet; and this is supposed to be a free country."

Kmoch waved the protest aside. "You may speak in Czech, but to talk in a foreign language is forbidden."

The lift had arrived at the bas.e.m.e.nt, and Kmoch took them across a corridor to a small office. Particulars of them were entered in a ledger, then Fedora was led away by a gross-faced, huge-limbed wardress. Nicholas called after her in English, "Keep your chin up", and was marched off by an equally brutal-looking warder, who locked him in a cell.

There was nothing particularly cell-like about it, and except for the grille in the door it might have been a small private ward in a hospital, as it smelt strongly of disinfectant. The narrow iron bed looked reasonably comfortable; it had a chair, a table, a bed-side lamp and a water bottle. Sitting down on the bed, Nicholas went over in his mind the happenings of the past half hour.

He wondered uneasily if Fedora had been right, and he ought to have stuck to his guns a bit longer. Evidently she reasoned that if he had succeeded in bluffing his way past the scientists they would then have been sent back to the Engelsv Dm and so secured another chance to escape; whereas by his confession, although it had not been believed, he had finally burned their boats.

After some cogitation, he decided that her hopes had been based on false premises, as she could hardly be expected to appreciate the sort of discussion his meeting with the Czech scientists would entail. He was certain that he could never have got through it; so to accept the challenge would have been only to postpone the evil hour, and having reconvinced himself of that he dismissed the matter.

Her belief that they would be charged with espionage sounded alarming, but he was not inclined to take that very seriously. All along she had displayed a fanatical hatred of the People's Government, and a conviction that it employed the most barbarous methods to keep itself in power. His experiences in the past few hours had badly shaken his own belief that this Socialist Soviet satellite country was all that his Marxist friends in England had painted it, but he argued that people like Frek could not be truly representative of the Czech Communist leaders. After all, Frek was a policeman, and all over the world bad police chiefs sometimes abused the licence they were given to carry out their job of maintaining law and order. Therefore, it did not follow in the least that the People's Government denied individuals a reasonable freedom, and failed to protect them from being imprisoned without trial or otherwise unjustly treated.

That he might, as Nicholas, be sentenced to a few months' imprisonment for having entered the country illegally, he now glumly accepted; but he decided that Frek could only have been bluffing when he had threatened him, as Bilto, with imprisonment for an indefinite period. At the time the threat had rattled him; but now he could regard it calmly he felt sure that the Government would never allow that sort of thing.

Fedora's fears, he told himself, could be put down to undue pessimism. If it came out that she was a member of this antisocial resistance group known as the Legion, things would certainly go badly for her; but there seemed no reason why it should. At the moment, if he stuck to his story about her false identification of him being part of a silly joke that they had agreed to play, she could be accused only of having failed in her duty towards the Party, and that was a very minor offence compared with a charge of spying for the British. As far as he was concerned the idea seemed absurd, as Frek had only to order a check-up in London to be informed that the record of his pro-Communist activities placed him above all suspicion of being a spy in the service of the warmongering Tory Government.

Somewhat comforted by these reflections, he lay down at full length on the bed and after a conscious effort succeeded in turning his mind to more pleasant things. Wendy was his natural target for such thoughts, and fond day-dreams about her merged imperceptibly into sleep.

As his eight hours or so of unconsciousness during the night had been mainly drug-induced, and since waking he had pa.s.sed through a long morning every moment of which had been exceptionally exacting, the sleep into which he fell was a very deep one; so he did not hear the guard enter his cell, and roused out of it only when the man shook him roughly by the shoulder.

Still only half awake, and not realising where he was, he stumbled out into the corridor; then as they turned into a cross-pa.s.sage, he caught sight of Fedora and the wardress who looked like a female all-in wrestler. His brain at once began to tick over again, and, a.s.suming that he was now being taken up to be confronted with his relatives, he wondered which of them he would shortly be seeing after a lapse of so many years, in these unhappy circ.u.mstances. On reaching the office he saw from a clock in it that it was nearly five, and with a smile at Fedora he said: "It seems that I've been asleep for over four-and-a-half hours."

She returned his smile a little wanly. "I didn't do as well as that, but I managed to doze for quite a while."

At that moment the gates of one of the lifts opposite rattled open and they were ordered into it by their hefty guardians. Two minutes later they stood once more in front of the moonfaced, caterpillar-browed Frek, with fat, spaniel-eyed little Kmoch beside them, and their respective keepers standing rigidly to attention two paces behind their backs.

This time Frek did not invite them to sit down. Having ordered the male and female gorillas to stand back on either side of the door, he stared hard at Nicholas for a moment, then said: "I have had three members of the Novk family unearthed and brought here. When they enter this room I shall ask them if they know who you are, and I will not permit that their answers should be influenced in any way. You will, therefore, remain absolutely silent until they have given their opinions. I take it that is understood, as this test is being carried out at your request, and will otherwise be rendered useless?"

"That sounds fair enough to me," Nicholas replied; upon which Frek nodded to Kmoch and said, "Bring them in."

Kmoch went out and returned a moment later leading a short procession of five people. It consisted of a stooping white-haired woman, an old man, another woman of about Nicholas' age and two state policemen. The policemen took up positions standing as stiff as ramrods beside the warder and wardress, the others sidled with obvious reluctance after Kmoch until he halted them a few feet from Frek's desk.

With knitted brows Nicholas surveyed the three civilians who had been produced as his relations; he could not recognise any of them.

Frek addressed the trio. "Look well, please, at the male prisoner. Have any of you ever seen him before? If so, tell me who he is?"

The old man only shook his head; but the old woman broke into a swift, frightened gabble. "No, no, Comrade Minister! We do not know him. Why should we? If you have the idea that we mix ourselves up in the resistance movements you are quite mistaken. We are quiet people who do just what we are told, and every day we feel more thankful for the simple, happy life that Comrade President Gottwald and the People's Government have made possible for us."

Suddenly the younger woman took charge of the situation. She was plain, thick-set, with reddish hair that was turning grey, and a sullen mouth; but she had a determined chin. Laying a restraining hand on the older woman's arm, she said: "Be quiet, Mother. The Comrade Minister can have no reason to be angry with us if we tell the truth. This man is Nicholas. Surely you and Dad remember him. He is your English nephew, Nicholas."

Frek gave a loud grunt. The elderly couple looked at their daughter, nodded uneasily, then stood staring at the floor. It was obvious to Nicholas that whether or not they had recognised him at first sight, they were reluctant to admit it: but by now he had placed them all.

The old people were his Uncle Frantiek and his Aunt Anka; the younger woman was his cousin Ludmila, whom he had last seen as a fat-faced girl of fourteen with a couple of thick plaits. To see them as they were now shocked him profoundly. He knew that his uncle and aunt could only be in their later fifties, yet their lined, unhappy faces and stooping shoulders gave the impression that neither of them could be less than seventy. The clothes of all three were threadbare, and in any city they would have been taken for people of the working-cla.s.s. Yet in the old days the Novks had been, if not wealthy, at least moderately well-off. The family had owned a gla.s.s-manufacturing business, and its profits had been sufficient to maintain them all in solid middle-cla.s.s comfort. As one of the junior members of the firm Nicholas' father had been sent to travel its products in England, but for several generations its senior members had lived in quite large houses with three or four servants and had enjoyed the respect of all who knew them.

Another thought which distressed Nicholas acutely was that by addressing Frek as 'Comrade Minister' they confirmed the impression given earlier by Kmoch, that he was a member of the Government, and so a fully responsible representative of it. But feeling that Ludmila's spontaneous recognition of him had now released him from his undertaking to remain silent, he thrust these thoughts aside, stepped forward and said: "I am sure, Aunt Anka and Uncle Frantiek, you remember me, but I am most distressed to see you all in such poor shape."

"Oh, we are well enough, nephew, well enough," his uncle replied quickly. "Your aunt and I are still quite capable of doing our s.h.i.+ft at the factory; and we enjoy it."

"But Aunt Anka never used to work there in the old days." Nicholas' voice held both surprise and disapproval.

"Ah! But we were still criminally blind to what each one of us owed to others, then," Uncle Frantiek hastened to rea.s.sure him. "You remember your cousin Bilto, and how greatly we all disapproved of his Marxist politics. We were wrong, very wrong; and he was right. We know better now, and we are doing our best to show our repentance for the evil, reactionary-bourgeois lives we lived, almost in idleness while taking the lion's share of the profits that really belonged to our workers."

Nicholas knew that as a joint managing director of the factory his uncle had worked far longer hours than any of his employees. What sort of menial job the poor old man had been given to do there now could only be guessed at. With his heart suddenly gone leaden he forbore to enquire, but asked: "What about the rest of the family? How are they?"

The old couple uncomfortably averted their eyes, and it was Ludmila who answered, "There was the occupation, then the war. Our family was greatly reduced by the n.a.z.i bandits. Some fell as honourable victim-martyrs in the purges, others were conscripted for the wicked war against our Russian brothers and we have never heard what happened to them." A bitter note entered her voice as she added, "Your cousin Ma is still in Prague. She has had the good fortune to please one of the Comrade Food Controllers; but she was always the lucky one, and she is too grand to know us now."

At a loss for a suitable reply, Nicholas turned to his aunt and enquired: "Are you still living at the house in Pelleova?"

Her glanced flickered in Frek's direction, and her wrinkled old face broke into a cringing smile. "Yes; oh, yes. Everyone has been most kind to us. Of course the house was always far too big for just us three, so several families live there now. But they have let us keep the bas.e.m.e.nt and ..."

Frek's booming voice cut her short. "That will do! I have heard quite enough to satisfy me." He turned to Kmoch. "Get rid of these people. No! Wait a minute. They may talk about this meeting with a Novk from England, and I don't want any rumours to start getting about. We had better detain them for a few days. Let the warder take them down to the cells. I wish the wardress and the two troopers to remain here."

Aunt Anka let out a sudden wail, and, clasping her feeble hands, made a move to throw herself on her knees in front of Frek's desk. It was her daughter who prevented her, by seizing her arm and exclaiming: "Mother! Be sensible! You heard what the Comrade Minister said. If you behave he will allow us to go home in a few days' time; but if you make a scene he may send us all to one of those labour camps."

Nicholas felt the blood hammering in his temples. He was horrified at the state to which his relatives had been reduced, and even more so at the implications of the sort of treatment to which respectable families of their kind were now subjected. He wanted desperately to intervene, but realised that it would be futile. Clenching his teeth and hands, he stood rigid with helpless indignation as the moronic-looking warder hustled his aunt, uncle and cousin from the room.

As the door closed behind them Frek said to him, "Well; you have proved your case. I little thought that my insistence on your meeting our scientists would produce such an unexpected result; but I see now that faced with it you had no alternative to throwing in your hand. I think you had better tell me about this imposture of yours from the beginning."

"There is nothing to tell," Nicholas shrugged. "I mean, nothing that I haven't already told you. Bilto asked me to explain to Comrade Vank why he wanted another night in London; then on the way to him I thought it would be fun to see if I could get myself a free trip to Prague, and persuaded Comrade Hoovsk to help me carry through my silly prank. That's all there is to it."

"You say this idea occurred to you only when you were on your way to see Comrade Vank."

"Yes."

"And that Professor Bilto Novk definitely intended to come to Prague the following night?"

"Yes."

"Then how do you account for the fact that you travelled on his pa.s.sport?"

When Nicholas had hastily made up his story, that was a point he had entirely overlooked. Instantly he saw that it blew the whole thing wide open. No possible explanation could reconcile those two parts of his statement that Frek had picked upon so swiftly. Seeing his sudden discomfiture, the bull-like police chief leaned forward across his desk, and thundered: "I will tell you how your cousin's pa.s.sport came into your possession. You stole it."

No shot in the dark could have been better aimed. In vain Nicholas stammered a denial. The fact that the accusation was true temporarily deprived him of the wit even to grope for an alternative to account for his having come by it. Pressing his advantage, Frek shot out a thick pointing finger and repeated: "You stole it! Yes, and I will tell you why! It is not easy for people from the West to enter Czechoslovakia now. On learning of the arrangements for your cousin to come here you realised that it was a unique opportunity to get in unchallenged. You lied to him, had him arrested, killed him-for all I know-so that you could take his place. Once in, you hoped to disappear, ferret out our secrets, then slip back across the frontier and sell them to our enemies."

Nicholas paled. For a second he was struck dumb by this sudden revelation that Fedora's worst fears had been really justified. Then he cried, "You're crazy. I've already told you that I am a life-long follower of Karl Marx. If you don't believe me, ring up London. Get Comrade Vank to find out about me. There are a score of people prominent in the Peace a.s.sociations who will vouch for it that nothing would ever induce me to serve the British Government as a spy."

"Peace a.s.sociations!" Frek's voice rang with contempt. "Surely you do not think that we pay any serious regard to the sort of people who sit on the platforms of those puppet shows. They are valuable only as a means of sabotaging the rearmament drives of the pluto-democratic West. We pull the strings, but the people who sponsor them publicly are no more than a collection of cranks, visionaries and fools."

As though struck in the face with a tumblerful of ice-cold water, Nicholas winced. He could hardly credit that he had really heard that cynical exposure of what lay behind the crusade that he had partic.i.p.ated in so enthusiastically and for so long. Before he could recover sufficiently to speak again, Frek went on: "Irresponsible idealists who have never submitted to the discipline of the Party often go through a period in which they regard themselves as radicals of the extreme Left; but such people are an easy prey to other political ideologies, and quite frequently they become converts to Fascist-imperialism overnight. That may be your case. But I neither know nor care. I am concerned only with the fact that you entered this country as a spy."

"I deny it! You have not one atom of proof on which to base such an accusation. Even your theory about Bilto does not make sense. Is it likely that I would have betrayed my own cousin? Who would credit for one moment that, unless he had trusted me implicitly, he would ever have confided to me the deadly secret that he meant to come here and place his knowledge at the disposal of the Soviets?"

"I never said that he confided in you."

"Then who else could have told me about his intended journey?"

Frek's black eyes flashed. His arm shot out, and he pointed at Fedora.

"Her! This woman who is in love with you, of course! She was Professor Bilto's contact. She knew all the arrangements. She disclosed them to you; then the two of you hatched this plot in which you were to impersonate him."

"You're wrong! Utterly wrong! I'd never even seen her until the car came to the Russell Hotel to pick Bilto up."

"You lie! And do not dare to repeat to me that childish story about her pretending that you were Bilto as a joke entered into on the spur of the moment. Your having his pa.s.sport in your possession disproves it. That is conclusive evidence that the whole business was arranged beforehand."

Standing up, Frek walked round his desk and halted in front of Fedora. For a moment he stared at her in silence, then he said: "You were Professor Bilto's contact. You must have known him intimately, yet you identified this other man as him to Comrade Vank. Why did you do that? Was it love for him, or was it for money; or is it that for a long time you have been in secret a traitor to the Party? Answer me?"

In a low, expressionless voice she replied, "I have nothing to say."

Stretching out his left hand, he seized her beret and the coiled hair beneath it. Then, raising his open right hand, he slapped her with all his force across the side of the face.

The blow would have knocked her flat had he not been holding her up by the hair. Staggering sideways under it, she let out a choking gasp.

"You swine!" yelled Nicholas, and, reckless of the consequences, he sprang upon the Minister. Grabbing him by the shoulder, he swung him round, then aimed a blow with his clenched fist at the cruel, pasty, moon-like face.

Frek ducked the blow and took a quick step back. Nicholas got no chance to strike at him again. Kmoch had been standing at his side, and only a pace away from him. Whipping a small automatic from the pocket of his long overcoat, the fat little detective rushed in and jammed its barrel against Nicholas' ribs.

"Move again and I fire," he cried. "Put your hands on your head and keep them there."

The two uniformed thugs had dashed forward at the first sign of trouble, but their a.s.sistance was not necessary. White with anger and still panting slightly, Nicholas did as he had been ordered.

For a moment no one moved or spoke. Slowly Frek's black eyes travelled over Fedora, surveying her from head to foot, then he looked at Nicholas and said: "Your childish attempt to play champion to Comrade Hoovsk tells me one thing. Whether or not she is in love with you, it is obvious that you are in love with her; otherwise you would never have risked the sort of punishment to be expected for aiming a blow at me. I mean to get to the bottom of this business. I want to know all the things you were instructed to try to find out while acting as a spy here, and full details of your contacts with the British Secret Service. Men can be stubborn about such matters, but they usually soften up when obliged to witness certain things done to a woman that they love. I think I shall learn quite quickly all I wish to know about you through her,"

He raised his hand, beckoning the two thugs and the wardress. Then, pointing to Fedora, he said: "Strip her."

CHAPTER XII.

A TASTE OF SOVIET JUSTICE.

Kmoch still had the barrel of his pistol jammed hard against Nicholas' ribs. In spite of that Nicholas lowered his arms and cried in ringing protest, "This is monstrous! Your order is a violation of all human decency."

Frek's underlings were just about to seize Fedora, but he waved them back, and said, "Whether my order is carried out or not lies with you. I am ready to cancel it if you are prepared to tell me what I wish to know."

"How can I?" Nicholas' voice was high-pitched with anger and exasperation. "There's nothing to tell! No one gave me any instructions! I don't know a thing about the British Secret Service!"

"Then we must see if Comrade Hoovsk's tears will refresh your memory."

"Nothing could make me remember things I never knew. And you're quite wrong in believing that I am in love with her."

"Then why should you show such recklessness in her defence?"

"Good G.o.d, does that need an answer! Any man would do his utmost to prevent a woman being treated as you are treating her."

"Prevent it, then, by a full confession."

"I have nothing to confess."

"Your stubbornness certainly suggests that you do not care for her very much; but we shall learn the truth about that after we have taken off her clothes."

"Your attempt to extract information from me by threats of what you will do to her reduces you to the level of the n.a.z.is."

"If you intend that as an insult to my way of conducting this affair, it is without point," Frek replied quietly. "The n.a.z.is were self-seeking protectors of a bourgeois-industrialist society; and therefore of criminal mentality. But their methods of dealing with spies and saboteurs were most efficient, and therefore admirable."

Nicholas glared at him. "To proclaim such a belief shows you to be utterly unprincipled."

"My principles are the teachings of Marx-Lenin as interpreted by Comrade Stalin, and no one has ever accused me of deviation. But we waste time. Are you or are you not prepared to answer my questions?"

"How can I? You might just as well ask me if there are men on Mars!"

Frek signed to his underlings to go ahead. The police troopers each took Fedora by a wrist. The hefty wardress stooped down, grasped a handful of skirt on either side, and pulled it up to her waist.

"One moment!" Nicholas threw up a hand. "Please listen to me."

Again Frek checked his underlings, then enquired, "Well?" "Am I right in believing you to be a Minister in the Czechoslovak People's Government?"

"You are."

"Then in the name of the People I appeal to you not to sully your honourable position by such unworthy conduct."

"As Minister of Police it is my duty to protect the workers from traitors like her, and capitalist-spy-swine like you."

Nicholas let the terms of opprobrium pa.s.s and said, "All right; but the essence of this affair is that you believe us to be guilty of having committed some crime against the State."

"Your admission that you entered this country on another man's pa.s.sport, and that the woman abetted you, makes that obvious."