Curtain Of Fear Part 12

That rang a big bell with Nicholas. Within a few minutes of having escaped from Kmoch, and while running down the street with bullets whizzing about him, he had found himself thinking, 'If only I can get away and across the frontier, I'll be able to stop Bilto. He has got to be rendered harmless somehow, even if it means having him arrested. If I get out of this gun-fight alive I must do my d.a.m.nedest to get home at the earliest possible moment. If I can get back there's still a chance that I may be able to have him locked up before the Russians can send him over here.' The thought of Bilto now rang another bell, and he said: "You know, you've never told me why you swore to my being Bilto, in front of Vank, when you knew darn' well I wasn't."

Fedora smiled. "For that matter, you've never told me why, in the first place, when you thought I didn't know Bilto and had mistaken you for him, you didn't attempt to disillusion me; but pretended that you were Bilto, and let me drive you off in the car instead of him."

"I did that on the spur of the moment. I'd meant to send the car away. But when it appeared that you took me for him, it seemed simpler to get rid of the car by letting you carry me off in it, than to enter into an involved explanation-particularly as I was afraid that chap by the lamp-post was a 'tec and was listening for anything we might say."

"But why did you want to get rid of the car?"

"In the hope that by messing up Bilto's arrangements I might prevent him from leaving England. He had told me less than half an hour before what he meant to do, and suddenly I decided that, somehow, I must try to stop him."

"Well, that more or less goes for me too. I'd been his sole contact for over eighteen months, but all the time I was working secretly for the other side. On every occasion that he gave me a sheet of those incredibly complicated notes and figures, I copied them out but altered them here and there before pa.s.sing them on. I knew that he was boiling up to throw his hand in at Harwell and skip to this side of the Iron Curtain, but I thought I'd be able to prevent that. There was always a chance that he'd see daylight about the Coms and cool off; and, naturally, I didn't want to have a show-down with him until I absolutely had to. If it did come to having a show-down I reckoned I could scare him out of going by threatening to turn him over to Scotland Yard; but to do that was to risk his letting the Coms know that I was double-crossing them; and, without doing any crystal gazing, I had a pretty firm conviction that if that happened I could be written off as a very dead duck."

Fedora took another drink of champagne, and went on, "My plan fell down because I was by-pa.s.sed. That's one of the worst things we are up against. What the top Coms will do next is always unpredictable. I don't think they suspected me, but somebody at the Russian Emba.s.sy must have decided that Bilto was ripe for a direct approach to desert to their side. Naturally it was made without my knowledge. Bilto was already toying with the idea and evidently agreed to it. Vank was instructed to make the arrangements. I hadn't seen Bilto for a month, and knew nothing about it at all until I was sent for, told what had been fixed up, and ordered to go and collect him."

"What did you intend to do if Bilto had come out of the hotel instead of myself?" Nicholas asked.

"I had decided to tell Rufus Abombo that I wanted to pick up something at my flat on the way down to Kensington; then on some pretext I'd have got Bilto to come up to it with me. I'd have come clean with Bilto then and done my utmost to persuade him to change his mind. I had known him a long time and he was fond of me. At least, I thought he was, until you told me about this old girl-friend of his that the Coms had promised to produce for him when he arrived in Prague. Anyhow, I had a gun in the flat; so if he refused to listen to me I could have held him up, made him go into the bathroom on the threat of telephoning the police if he refused, then locked him in there."

"How about Rufus, though? He was such a persistent type. You would have had a packet of trouble getting rid of him."

"Yes. That coloured boy is no fool, except for his lunatic belief that he and his half-educated, Com-financed friends could run his native Kenya better than the British. I hadn't had time to think out what to do about him, but I expect I would have managed somehow."

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. Pus.h.i.+ng 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 Emba.s.sy 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 G.o.d 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 Vank, 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 Vank 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, Vank 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 Vank 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 d.a.m.n 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 Vank 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 Konen 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 Vank that we had got you safely on board without any trouble. If I had defied orders at the last moment Konen 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 slas.h.i.+ng 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 Vank 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 d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 sn.o.b," 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 n.o.ble; 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 b.u.t.ton 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 Bergere you are going to be disappointed. The fact that the princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nt 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 regime. 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 s.e.xes and all cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tution 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 un.o.btrusively 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 cla.s.ses 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."

"How terrible!" Nicholas breathed, as she stood up and left the box.

She was not, after all, away for very long; and when she returned, the bald-headed, mean-eyed old waiter followed her in. Producing her few notes, she waved a hand towards the empty bottle and asked: "How much?"

He gave her a long, steady look. "More than you have there, Comrade. I want five thousand Koruny."

"Don't be absurd," she said with a slightly forced laugh. "That Hungarian muck isn't worth more than three hundred Koruny a bottle, and you've had a tip already. The girl who owns the hat I'm wearing took it out to you. I'm quite willing to give you another, but you must be reasonable."

With a slow unpleasant smile, he retorted, "Five thousand Koruny is reasonable, Comrade. You are the couple the Coms were after. You admitted it by sending that bit on account to keep my mouth shut. I kept it shut, but I want five thousand Koruny before you go; otherwise I'm going to open it."

"I ... I haven't got it," she faltered. "Really I haven't. This is all I've got."

"Then you had better find some more. And don't think you can start anything, or get away without paying. There are twenty Coms sitting at tables out in front, and round about in the boxes. I've only got to give a shout, and pretend that I've just recognised you as the wanted couple. They'll nab you, or put bullets into you, long before you could reach the street."

"Listen!" she pleaded desperately. "We are in trouble; bad trouble. Please don't hold us up like this. Take all I have and let us go. My friend hasn't got any money at all on him; so with the best will in the world we can't find you any more."

"Oh, yes, you can," he replied, a gleam of cunning showing in his little eyes. "You must have friends somewhere in the city. This place won't be closing till midnight, so we've a couple of hours to go yet. One of you can go out and raise a loan. But the other stays here till the one who goes brings the money back."

Fedora's hand was resting on the edge of the table and Nicholas saw it tremble slightly, so he guessed that she was speaking the truth when she said: "We only got into Prague to-day, and we know hardly anyone here. There is no one I could go to who is likely to have that amount of money available to lend me at this time of night."

The man's hard little eyes showed no trace of pity, and he gave a shrug. "Well, you can't say I haven't given you a fair chance. The Coms always pay a good reward to anyone who turns in people on the run. I'll claim that instead. We'll wait here till this act finishes. It won't be more than a few minutes. Then when the lights go up I'll beckon over a couple of tough Coms to take you in charge."

CHAPTER XV.

THE FAITH THAT FAILED.

Nicholas was almost choking with ill-concealed fury. To have escaped the awful prospect which had faced them only two hours ago, to have survived a street battle uninjured, to have thrown their pursuers off the track, and now to be menaced again with all the horrors that the word 'Moscow' had conjured up for him since that afternoon, seemed an unbelievably brutal twist of fate. That this new threat to their liberty, sanity and lives should have arisen solely owing to the avarice of the miserable little old man who had it in his power to betray them made it infinitely worse.

More shattering still was the thought of all that hung on the retention of their freedom. Fedora's refusal to accept the waiter's offer to go out and get the money made Nicholas suppose that her telephoning had been unsuccessful; for had she located friends who could hide them for the night, it seemed that she could have gone to them now and that, somehow, they would have managed to raise the ransom demanded. But, if she had failed, there remained Jirka at the airport.

The barman had implied that morning that, given a few hours to work in, he could get them both out through the 'funnel'. Since their escape from Kmoch, Nicholas had been counting on that. To get back to England within the next twenty-four hours was their one hope of preventing Bilto's leaving for Prague. Now that Nicholas had seen for himself the evil and ruthless regime of the Soviets, the thought of Bilto's placing his awful secrets at their disposal made him sick with horror. Their escape and the chance to stop him had seemed a deliberate dispensation of Providence. Compared with the appalling calamity which might ultimately overtake humanity as a result of Bilto's treachery if he could not be stopped, then their own lives counted for nothing. Yet it was impossible to explain to this wretched blackmailer how much hung upon their freedom from arrest. Either he would have disbelieved it, or thought that if there was any truth in it at all he might get a still bigger reward for turning them over to the police.

These thoughts rushed through Nicholas' brain in a matter of seconds, to be followed by another. Anyhow Fedora must accept the offer to go out and collect the ransom. If she could not get it that could not be helped. She, at least, would be free. Even if she had no friends to whom she could go at once, she could make her way to the airport before morning, and fix up with Jirka to get her out through the 'funnel'. Even if he could not get her out until the evening she would be in Frankfurt, or in some other city on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in time to telephone London and have Bilto arrested before he caught the night 'plane for Paris. And that was the one thing above all else that mattered.

Urgently, he said to her in English, "For G.o.d's sake stop arguing! Get out while the going is good. If you can't get the money that will be just too bad. But you're not to come back or worry about me. Somehow you've got to get through the Curtain to-morrow. You know why!"

In spite of the two hours' relief from strain she had had since their escape from discovery in the box, now that she was faced with another crisis pain and fatigue seemed to have temporarily dulled her mind. Shaking her head she replied in the same language: "I can't! It's no use! I daren't leave here."

There was no time to ask her why. The gaily-clad peasants on the stage had entered on a wild Czardas that obviously heralded the end of their turn. At any moment they would cease their whirling. With the applause the lights would go up, and the horrid bald-headed little vulture blocking the way to the door of the box would be calling to some of the uniformed men in the audience to arrest them.

"All right," said Nicholas in Czech. "Then I'll go."

He did not wait for Fedora to make any comment, but added to the old waiter, "I think I know a man who will lend me five thousand Koruny." Then he pushed past him.

Nicholas had had only a matter of seconds in which to make up his mind. He had no hope whatever of raising the money, but with luck he might reach the airport and get Jirka to arrange for him to be smuggled out through the 'funnel'. On the other hand it meant abandoning Fedora, and that, after all they had been through together, he could not bring himself to do.

He had no sooner pa.s.sed the waiter than he pivoted on his toes and stretched out his hands. As he fell with all his weight on the old man's back his clutching fingers closed round the skinny throat, choking back the beginning of a cry. His victim gave at the knees, and Nicholas, still grasping his throat in a vice, crushed him down on to the floor.

Instantly Fedora's look of helpless despair vanished. Leaning across the table she swiftly pressed the b.u.t.ton below its edge, and the lift began to descend. It was not a moment too soon. A burst of clapping sounded from the auditorium; as the platform of the box came gently to rest six feet down the lights went up.

"Quick!" whispered Nicholas. "Get something to gag him with."

Fedora was stooping over the two writhing men. "No," she whispered back. "Keep your fingers pressed hard on his windpipe. He'll be dead in under two minutes."

Suppressing a shudder at her ruthlessness, Nicholas muttered angrily, "Is it likely that I'd kill him?"

"You must!" she breathed. "Our safety-and much more than that-may depend on it."

"I'll not become a murderer!"

"This won't be murder, but self-defence. Dead men tell no tales."

"What can he say about us that the police don't know already?"

"Nothing! But if you let him live I'm sure he will become an additional danger to us."

"I can't help that! It's bad enough my having shot that policeman. I'll not kill another man in cold blood."

"Nicky, be sensible! He's a dirty blackmailing swine. He asked for it."

"I won't, I tell you! Give me something to gag him, or I'll have to take one of my hands away to grope about. Then he may manage to cry out."

"You squeamish fool," Fedora whispered; but she grabbed up two rough paper napkins from the table and knelt down beside him.

With a heave Nicholas turned the waiter over on his back. His face had gone purple and his mean little eyes were bulging from their sockets. Seizing his nose between her finger and thumb, Fedora gave it a violent upward jerk, then crammed the paper into his gaping mouth. To complete the job she undid his rag of a black tie, pushed the middle of it between his yellowed teeth and tied the ends tightly behind his head, so that he could not possibly work the wad of paper out.

He was still too near strangulation to offer further resistance; so between them they got his coat off without trouble, and, tearing strips from its lining, first knotted them together, then used them to tie his wrists and ankles. Within three minutes of being set upon, he was trussed like a turkey and stowed out of sight under the table.

Their hearts were hammering heavily from the violence of their exertions, and Fedora said breathlessly: "We had better remain down here till the lights go out for the next turn."

He nodded; and as they reseated themselves on the sofa she added, "It's a pity to have spoiled the s.h.i.+p for a ha'porth of tar; but all the same, I take my hat off to you for the way you handled the little toad."

His laugh was a trifle nervous, and he was still trembling as he replied, "I'm sorry to have had to disappoint you about reducing the population here still further, but I have an old-fas.h.i.+oned respect for human life."

"As you have been behind the Iron Curtain only about fourteen hours, I suppose that is understandable," she remarked with a touch of sarcasm. "To get the full flavour of it you need to be here, and on the run, for twenty-four. If you survive that long you'll no longer need any persuading that if you don't kill an enemy when you have the chance the odds are you will be a dead duck yourself before the big hand has gone round the clock again."