The brotherhood, p.12
The Brotherhood, page 12
She was on her feet, collecting her coat, while he sat with his eyes still closed, and said again: ‘All I did was interview him.’
He did not even hear her leave the room. The outside door had slammed before he was on his feet. He stumbled on to the landing and shouted: ‘Maya!’ Her footsteps, clattering down in the dark, did not stop.
He began to chase her, but his bad leg was no match for her. He heard the door to the street open when he had only gone down one landing; then a car engine snorted outside, and he was suddenly too tired even to look out and see whether it was a Humber, a sports car, or whatever they had given her this time.
She works for Cane, or Steiner, or both, he thought, as he limped back upstairs. She works for them, yet she hates them. A teacher in an infants’ school in Camberwell who’s met Bogdan Krok and wants to protect him.
It still made no sense. No sense at all.
Back in his flat he sat down and drank the rest of the Vyborova alone.
CHAPTER 2
Maya arrived five minutes late. That was as it should be, she thought: a girl should never be too punctual — always leave her partner room for doubt, even in a cold-blooded business like this.
He was alone at a table by the window. The nearest people to him were a couple of frowsty girls eating cake, and a filthy old man with a blotched face and sleep-dirt at the corner of his eyes who sat over an empty cup muttering to himself.
The man by the window was already on his feet, pulling out a chair for her. ‘Good morning. I hope you didn’t have too far to come?’ He did not smile or shake hands. His voice was toneless, disinterested; his face neat and clean, and very young, like a serious child. Except for his youthfulness, he was very much as she had expected: soft white collar, Gannex raincoat, fair hair shining in the light from the window.
‘I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,’ she said, sitting down.
‘I only arrived a moment ago myself.’ She watched him put a spoonful of sugar in his tea. ‘I won’t keep you long. It’s just a matter of routine. You know the gist of it, of course?’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’
He nodded, stirring his tea. When he looked at her his eyes were dry and distant, not looking at her as though she were a girl at all. He would look at every girl in the world like this, she thought. Girls weren’t important to him; he was schooled by higher thoughts, trained in perfect self-control; he was a neuter.
‘I understand you usually take your orders from Mr Steiner?’ he said at last.
‘That’s right. I’ve always dealt with Steiner until now.’
‘Mr Steiner has not been brought in on this operation,’ he said, sipping his tea. ‘That is why I am dealing with you directly.’ His eyes flickered sideways, at the two girls who were collecting their bags and going. ‘I’m sorry if you had to come so far out of your way.’ He lowered his voice: ‘You’re perfectly happy about going through with this, are you?’
‘Quite happy, detective sergeant.’
‘I’d prefer you didn’t mention my rank, if you don’t mind. I’m only interested in the operation being a success,’ he added, taking refuge in his tea. When he put the cup down, his mouth had a pinched look about the corners. Then he began to talk, in a soft flat voice, with no emotion, and as she listened, she knew she had turned pale.
She did not look at Peter Skliros. She sat with her shoulders hunched under her coat, staring desperately at a smear on the tabletop, longing for a cigarette — a drink — anything to break the monotony of that voice droning across the table. With Steiner it had been different: Steiner was an organiser, a time-serving bureaucrat. This man was an automaton.
At last it was over. When she looked up at him, he had taken a folded sheet of paper from inside his raincoat, and was handing it across to her.
‘That’s the timetable. I want you to read it carefully, memorise the details, then destroy it. Put it down the —’ he was about to say the lavatory, but checked himself in time — ‘dispose of it in the Ladies before you go.’
Oh you’re so beautifully well-mannered! she thought hatefully. His gentility reminded her of that concentration camp commandant who had always insisted that prisoners be clothed for the sake of decency before they were flogged to death.
She unfolded the sheet of paper. A column of figures ran down the left side, against notes written in ballpoint on the right. These notes were stark but explicit; almost nothing was left to chance.
Skliros said: ‘The only important factor is the human one. That is your responsibility. If for any reason he fails to co-operate, or the schedule is upset by his behaviour pattern, then the operation is to be called off at once.’
She began to read through the timetable again, more anxious to conceal the look in her eyes than to refresh her memory. ‘You’re not giving us much leeway?’ she said at last.
‘A maximum of half an hour one way or the other. It should be enough. But if it isn’t, as I told you, we call it off and try another time.’
She heard his chair scrape back. ‘Very well, you’re all clear now?’
She nodded, folding the paper up again.
He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have to be getting along now. How long will it take you to memorise it?’
‘Not long,’ she said. ‘Five minutes perhaps.’
‘Remember to get rid of it immediately afterwards.’ He glanced round, at a coloured woman who was settling two children down at the next table. ‘Very well, good luck then.’
She watched him walk towards the stairs, knowing that in that last moment Cane and his gang had made their first serious mistake. They had allowed the opposition the one opening they were looking for — a trial before a British court of law. Nesbitt and Scammell and the others had been on their own, and the set-up had been foolproof. But this time there would be witnesses, and there would be evidence.
She waited five minutes, in case he returned to surprise her; then got up and went into the lavatory. She could not be certain that someone — some little man queueing up for the tea urn — had not been left there to watch her.
After thirty seconds, she pulled the chain and walked slowly out into the street.
Magnus was not feeling well that day. It had taken him even more than the usual amount of black coffee, Vitamin C and saline solution to restore him to working order.
At six o’clock, just before the evening editorial conference, Rissell appeared at the door of his room, beckoning. Inside, everything was just as it had always been. The gas fire stuttered, Rissell stood sucking his pipe, eyes downcast. ‘You’re off at seven, aren’t you, Magnus?’
He nodded, knowing the routine. He would not be off at seven: this was Rissell’s standard prologue to keeping a reporter on several hours after his shift was officially finished.
‘It’s your friend Krok,’ Rissell mumbled round his pipe. ‘There’s a reception for him in Bloomsbury somewhere tonight. You might get a few quotes, bearing in mind some of the things he said last night. Conflict of interests and so forth.’ His eyes flickered sardonically under their long lashes, as he gave him a Roneo-typed handout, again on behalf of Satellite Films Ltd.
Magnus knew that it would all now follow with frightening simplicity. Yet he could still not quite accustom himself to thinking of the stately precincts of The Paper as being a menacing part of the plot.
The handout said that the reception, to be given by the East-West Cultural Association in honour of Bogdan Krok, would be held at the Radcliffe Hall, off Red Lion Square, at 7.30, with drinks, buffet and dancing. Rissell said casually: ‘Just drop in and have a look. It might be quite fun — and he gave us a good run last night.’
It was true — the morning’s Press had treated Krok proudly. His face, wild-eyed and windswept, glared from the pages of even the more serious papers, above at least one caption that seemed in danger of catching on: ‘The Red Beatnik’.
Rissell had gone back to clipping together a pile of telex sheets. There was no more to be said and Magnus left him. Rissell would have been well briefed, and it was no part of Magnus’s function — whatever that function exactly was — to pry into Rissell’s inner motives.
Magnus left the office a few minutes before seven o’clock — little knowing then, as he stepped down into the marble entrance hall and acknowledged the stiff nod from R.S.M. Bostock, that he was leaving The Paper for the last time.
He took his car to the meeting, intending to phone his story through over dinner, and return directly to Battersea afterwards. He found a parking space a few yards from the Radcliffe Hall.
The room upstairs was bright and drab, with rows of chairs round the walls as though for a village dance. About two dozen people stood about, talking quietly. Jan Steiner was waiting just inside. ‘Glad to meet you, Mr Owen. Mr Krok’s not here yet — he had to see some film people at his hotel in the Gloucester Road. I expect he’s been held up by the traffic. Come over and have a drink.’
‘Only a small one,’ Magnus said, following Steiner to a table laid with an unexpectedly lavish stock of whisky, gin, Polish and Soviet vodka, plates of red caviar sandwiches, ham, salami, and pickles.
‘Vodka?’ said Steiner.
‘A small Vyborova.’ He grinned: ‘Since it’s the national drink.’
Steiner did not react; his face was closed, betraying nothing.
He was not drinking himself, and moved off to welcome more guests who had just arrived. A gramophone began to play songs by the Red Army Choir.
Magnus was standing by the table, fingering his glass despondently, when a beaky-faced girl moved up beside him and began picking about among the hors d’oeuvres.
‘Hello!’ she said, glancing sideways at him with a keen smile. ‘You’re a new member of the Association?’
‘No. I’m from The Paper.’
‘Oh, a journalist.’ She hesitated, long enough for her plucked eyebrows to remind him of blackheads. ‘My name’s Marlene Almar,’ she added. ‘How do you do?’ Her hand felt like a small fish. ‘I suppose you’re waiting to see Bogdan Krok?’
He nodded, glancing round for a chance of escape, but she had already begun telling him what a great admirer she was of the Polish cinema. ‘They’ve got such a lot to teach us, you know. There’s a real spirit of creative endeavour over there — so wonderfully refreshing after the sickening commercial tripe we get from America!’
Magnus nodded dutifully. ‘But I understand the Party line on Krok’s is rather reserved?’
‘Reserved?’
‘His latest film has been more or less banned over there.’
‘Banned? But it’s just about to open in London — he’s been allowed to come to the West and publicise it!’
Magnus nodded glumly, having no stomach for argument with the girl. But she spared him by introducing a shiny-faced man in a brown suit and red woollen tie. ‘Mr Owen — meet Mr Leslie Tyler. Mr Tyler’s our London representative for the East-West Cultural Association.’
Tyler shook hands vigorously. ‘Glad to meet you. Can’t say I read The Paper very often — I’m not much of a highbrow — but I’d be glad to give you any gen you want about our work.’ He wore a badge on his lapel — a red banner with the heads of Lenin, Marx and Engels overlapping in relief. Here at least was no enigma, and Magnus was grateful for the man’s honesty.
‘You got a drink? Give yourself a refill,’ Tyler said, turning to the table. ‘Careful though — this Polish stuff’s got a real kick! Ever been in Poland, Mr Owen?’
‘Never.’
‘I was there last year. Cheers! Plucky little country — got real guts. Those German bastards razed her to the ground and she really pulled herself up right by her bootstraps. More than you’d get for this country with all the bigwigs stuffing themselves on three-hour lunches and spending six months a year on the Riviera.’
‘Have you seen any of Krok’s films, Mr Tyler?’
‘Oh yes, saw his first. Marvellous technically. That’s what they’ve got over there, you see. Technique. They allow a director to experiment. None of this penny-pinching you get here. Because in the socialist countries it’s government money — that is, the people’s money. That’s to say, it’s the people who go to the film who pay for it. The director just takes over from there — you see?’ Magnus said he saw, wondering if Bogdan Krok would have agreed. He looked at his watch. Krok was now more than an hour late. The gramophone was still playing the Red Army Choir, as Magnus became aware that Miss Marlene Almar had insinuated herself again at his side. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘The music — “Song of the Fields”. It’s one of the great hymns of the Revolution. Just compare it with something like “The Dam Busters March”.’
Magnus listened to the soldiers’ chorus rising to a slow crescendo, and had to admit that she had a point — although he was not quite sure what it was. But as the record came to an end, the temptation to rile her became too much for him.
‘It’s a rousing old tune, but I think it’s just as well you played it before Bogdan Krok arrives.’
‘What do you mean?’ She gave him a sharp, eager stare which made his heart sink.
‘The Poles aren’t reputed to be very pro-Russian,’ he said lamely, noticing Tyler closing in to defend the girl.
Unfortunately she did not need defending. ‘There you go again!’ she cried exultantly. ‘What you’re talking about are the old traditional hatreds that any intelligent Pole has forgotten long ago. There may have been differences with Russia in the past, but at least the Russians today don’t go around arming the Germans and threatening to seize back Poland’s eastern territories.’
Oh she knows it all, he thought despairingly, and gave himself another vodka.
Tyler butted in between them, his tie beginning to come undone. ‘Mr Owen, I want to be honest with a serious newspaper like yours. Now I admit that before 1956 the Soviet Union made mistakes…’
Magnus looked up and saw Maya at the door, shaking hands with Steiner. The gramophone began to play jazz. Marlene Almar broke in: ‘Thought we might get a bit of dancing going.’ She turned to Tyler: ‘Recognise it, Les? That new Czech band from Prague.’
Tyler smiled: ‘Very nice, Marlene. A lot better than these screaming nits with long hair.’ He looked round demandingly at Magnus: ‘That’s one thing they’ve stamped out in the Socialist countries. The young people over there have better things to worry about. They’re interested in building up their country, instead of dressing up in fancy clothes and taking drugs and listening to all this pop music!’
Magnus saw Maya still talking to Steiner.
‘That’s right,’ Marlene said. ‘Over there you don’t have to look twice to see who’s a man and who’s a girl. Of course, they’ve got a few hooligans — youth’s always a problem, especially in an industrialised society.’
But as Magnus listened, it seemed that he had heard all this before — that he were back in that private banqueting room, with Sir Lionel Hilder ranting on about British youth and the Long-Haired Lilac Brigade, and how the Soviet Union knew how to deal with the problem — no messing about — they packed their hooligans and intellectual delinquents off to labour camps or lunatic asylums.
He turned and saw Maya standing beside him. She smiled at Tyler and Miss Almar, and Magnus said to them: ‘Excuse me a moment.’ Miss Almar eyed them both with undisguised malice, as they moved to the end of the table.
‘What are you doing here?’ Maya said.
‘I was sent by The Paper. Is Krok with you?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m here to interview him.’
‘You interviewed him last night.’
‘That’s right. So why don’t you ring up my News Editor and ask him why he’s sent me out to interview Krok two nights running?’ Her expression did not change. ‘Is he coming here?’ he asked again.
‘He’s here already. In the lavatory.’
‘Sober?’
She laughed, with no humour. ‘Oh he’s got a hard head, Bogdan. Like me.’ She glanced down at the glass in Magnus’s hand: ‘How have you been doing?’
‘Steady as a rock. Wonderfully restrained, considering the temptation.’
She looked round the room. ‘What’s it like here?’
‘Swinging. The whole fifth column from Marble Arch have come in force. He should love it.’
There was a stir from the door, and Magnus caught a glimpse of Krok’s blond head swaying in above the crowd. He still wore his checkered jacket and jeans, but he was shaved now and looked superb — like a fully paid-up god, Magnus thought.
His eyes were clearer than they had been last night, but they held a dangerous glint as he looked round the room, making up his mind whether he liked or disliked what he saw. It was evident from his expression that he hated what he saw. Tyler, very red in the face, had rushed forward with a glass of vodka, handing it up to him with the cry of: ‘Nazdrovye tovarich!’
Krok was looking at the badge in his lapel: ‘So you speak Russian?’
Tyler beamed: ‘Thanks, Mr Krok, but I was having a bash at Polish!’
‘Tovarich is Russian,’ Krok said. ‘And I am a Pole.’
An uneasy hush fell round him. Tyler grinned stupidly, still holding the glass of vodka he had offered to Krok. A big Jewish woman stepped between them, smiling busily. ‘Ah, Mr Krok! — you’ve met Mr Leslie Tyler?’
But Krok was not listening. His eyes had fixed on Magnus and Maya, who were still standing at the end of the table. The Jewish woman was saying, ‘You must meet our other friends in the Association’ — but Krok pushed past her and started down the table.
‘You!’ he cried, pointing his left hand at Magnus’ chest. ‘You are the one who told me at the airport about General Morowski?’
Magnus swallowed hard and nodded. Krok took a step forward. ‘Why do you do it? — in front of all those people.’ He was now touching Magnus, his voice thick and menacing. ‘So you can write in your newspaper that in Poland they call me a degenerate hooligan?’
