“I shan’t stay long,” Whiteshaw was saying, almost apologetically. He glanced again at Kate.
“That’s all right,” Clark said. “Delighted to have you drop in. How’s the family?”
“Just fine, thanks.” He looked around him. “This is a pleasant room you have here.”
“Liveable,” Clark admitted. “At present,” he added, thinking of the twins to come. “Of course, this is the first time you’ve been here, isn’t it?”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Kate suggested. She picked up a novel from the nearest bookshelf and went into the kitchen. If eleven o’clock was the hour chosen for a first visit, then Whiteshaw must have something to say.
That was Clark’s thought, too. “Sit down,” he said to Whiteshaw. Had he come here to find out where Sylvia had gone? Was he one of the search party that Pleydell might have sent out?
Whiteshaw sat on the edge of the couch.
“Have you seen the Echo?” Clark asked, following up his guesses.
“Yes,” Whiteshaw said gloomily. “It’s a bad deal. Not that I believe it. The implication, I mean.”
“I don’t suppose any readers will notice the implication except those who know Pleydell’s job,” Clark said. Odd, he thought, that he should be talking so encouragingly, when he knew—more than Whiteshaw could know—just how bad the deal actually was.
“I suppose so.” But Whiteshaw was still discouraged. “Pretty rough on Pleydell. It isn’t exactly pleasant, is it, to have your career blow up in your face through a small thing like this?”
“You mean, a small thing like a paragraph in a gossip column?” Clark was watching the younger man carefully.
“No.” Whiteshaw raised his eyes and looked frankly at Clark. “I mean the leak of information to the Czechs.”
There was a slight pause.
“Where did you hear about that?” Clark asked.
“At the office. There was some talk flying around yesterday.”
“Was there, indeed?” Clark’s lips tightened. “Thanks for the warning. We’d better stop the inside gossip before it seeps outside.” And then he noticed that Whiteshaw’s worry seemed to deepen. “You called it a ‘small thing’. What makes you think it is so small?” And just how much had Whiteshaw heard?
“It seemed small to me in comparison with other information the Czechs could get. But then,” Whiteshaw admitted frankly, “I’m not qualified to judge its significance, I suppose. Just how serious is it?”
“What did you hear?”
“The rumour was vague. Something about a trade treaty renewal which the Czechs weren’t yet supposed to know about.” He shook his head. “That doesn’t seem too serious. After all, the treaty is with Czechoslovakia, isn’t it? The Czechs are bound to be told about it some day.”
“Which isn’t now.”
“But they’d know eventually,” Whiteshaw insisted.
“So that excuses everything?”
“No.” Whiteshaw added after an awkward pause, “There shouldn’t have been any break in security. I grant you that.” I’m hearing two men talking, Clark thought: the one who persuaded Whiteshaw that a trade treaty renewal isn’t too big a secret anyway, the other who is Whiteshaw himself with his own honest misgivings. He said, “I know as little as you do about the actual terms of this trade treaty. That isn’t our job. But a trade expert could be worried about several things: for instance, why were we willing to renew a treaty at this moment when our relations with the Czechs have deteriorated? Possibly there are certain materials that we need, and the Russians will now know just how badly we need them.”
Whiteshaw looked up at Clark quickly.
Clark repeated, “Yes, the Russians. You weren’t leaving them out, were you?”
“Well, of course,” Whiteshaw said uncomfortably, “we’re only making a rough guess. We aren’t trade experts.”
“All right, let’s look at this treaty from a diplomatic point of view. What’s the effect on us? We lose some weeks which could have helped our position by the time the treaty was to be officially announced. If the Russians—I beg your pardon—if the Czechs know we’re still willing to trade in spite of recent troubles with them, they’ll get too damned sure about us. And that’s when they begin to think they can get away with anything. And so, eventually,” Clark half smiled as he stressed Whiteshaw’s word, “the tension in international affairs may be increased at a time when the maintenance of peace depends on lessening the areas of tension.”
Whiteshaw stirred restlessly. There’s Clark as usual, he thought, the plodding diplomatic mind with its pat phrases. Areas of tension... He knew there was danger when they coincided. Then, at such a moment, even a pistol shot in Sarajevo had been enough to start a world war. He knew all that. He hadn’t come here to have a Washington Post editorial read at him. “That’s fairly obvious,” he said. “But eventually”—he repeated the word determinedly and he didn’t smile—“eventually, it would be all the same anyway.”
“Would it?”
“It’s the same regime we’re dealing with, now or later.”
“I’m willing to bet on one thing,” Clark said slowly. “In the next few months, you’ll see a wave of arrests and trials in Czechoslovakia.”
Whiteshaw looked up at him, startled.
“They’ll weed out the Czechs who would have welcomed a trade treaty with the West as a chance to limit Russian domination.”
“Titoists?” Whiteshaw asked quickly.
“You could call them that. Or Czech Communists who’d like to run their own country. And the fact that we were willing to renew a trade treaty will convince the Russians that we were trying to influence the nationalist-Communists.”
“As we were, no doubt.”
“No doubt. But—what’s more important—would we have made a gesture towards the nationalists, if there weren’t nationalists in places of power?”
Whiteshaw said nothing for a moment. “I see,” he said at last. “So our friends will be purged.”
“I didn’t call them our friends. They don’t give a damn for us. But they’ve lost the rose-tinted glasses they used to wear when they looked east.”
Whiteshaw shrugged that aside. “They’ll be purged from the government,” he said quickly. “And we turned the spotlight on them.”
“We didn’t,” Clark said sharply. “Blame that on the man who informed about the trade treaty.”
Whiteshaw sat very still, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him.
“There’s no need to discuss this with anyone,” Clark said, bringing the interview to a close.
But Whiteshaw made no move to leave. “I shan’t talk about it,” he said quietly. His impatience with Clark had gone. He was frowning as he searched for his next words. Then suddenly he faced Clark. “Where did the leak come from? That’s what has been worrying Minlow and me.”
Clark stared at him. “How did Minlow hear about all this?”
“From two reporters, tonight.”
“What?” Clark sprang to his feet. Then, restraining himself, he said, “You mean, the newspapers know that there’s been a leak of information to the Czechs?”
Whiteshaw nodded. “After the reporters left Minlow—they met at a bar, by accident, and I suppose they remembered he used to know something about international trade—” Whiteshaw paused, as if his thoughts had made him forget what he was about to say.
“Go on, go on. After the reporters left Minlow, then what?”
“He came to see me. And I talked him into coming to see you.”
“Then where the hell is he?”
“In his car.”
“You mean he’s waiting downstairs—” Clark halted his question and stared at Whiteshaw in amazement.
“When we got here—well, Minlow decided there wasn’t much point in coming up here, after all. He thinks you don’t like him, you know: that you’re prejudiced against him.” He looked at Clark anxiously.
“Well,” Clark said frankly,
“he’s always been prejudiced against me. I give as good as I get. What’s Minlow got to do with all this, anyway?” He watched Whiteshaw carefully as he waited for the reply.
“Oh, he’s just a little worried. As we all are. Naturally.”
“You wouldn’t even have got him as far as my front door if he weren’t worried stiff about something.”
“That’s rather harsh,” Whiteshaw said, but he didn’t deny it.
“How often did he see Brovic?” Clark asked suddenly.
Whiteshaw looked at him in surprise.
“There have been vague rumours,” Clark said dryly, and didn’t enlarge on the extent of his information. “Did he tell you nothing?”
“Tonight—” Whiteshaw began uncomfortably. “Look, he’s been a fool.” He hesitated. “I’m not saying anything now that I didn’t say to his face, tonight,” he added quickly, emphatically. “But he’s completely innocent, though. I’m sure of that. He didn’t give any information of any kind to Czernik or Vlatov or Brovic. Yes, he went to see them. He was just gathering material for a series of articles which he hoped would establish him as a reporter. He’s been finding it hard to break into the free-lance field, you know.” Whiteshaw looked at Clark worriedly. “Czernik and Vlatov and Brovic are seemingly here on a cultural mission—”
Clark said angrily, “Cultural mission, my God!” He stared in amazement at Whiteshaw. “All right, all right,” he said, “we needn’t go into that now.” Or the fact that Czernik was born and bred in Russia.
Whiteshaw flushed. “You make it all sound worse than it actually was. Minlow says the Czechs only wanted better public relations and were glad to give him facts and figures about education and cultural activities in Czechoslovakia.”
“And what did they get in return?”
Whiteshaw’s lips tightened. “Minlow said they got nothing. I’m convinced of that. He didn’t even know what the information was that had leaked out to the Czechs.”
“And you told him that it concerned the renewal of a trade treaty?”
“Well, I—Yes, I did.” Whiteshaw paused. “After all, we are both friends of Payton Pleydell. But,” he added quickly, “the reporters who spoke to Minlow—they hadn’t known much. They had just heard that a piece of information on trade had slipped into Czech hands.”
Clark had been pacing in front of the small fireplace, five short steps one way, five short steps back. Now he halted abruptly. “Isn’t that quite enough?”
Whiteshaw nodded gloomily. “We’ll suffer for this, all right.”
“The crazy fool, the self-opinionated little bastard,” Clark said softly. He could see next week’s headlines: State Department Infiltrated by Communists. Important Documents Revealed to Czech Government.
Whiteshaw rose. “I think I’ll get Minlow up here. After all, you’d better hear his story fully just so you can handle matters.”
“Who can handle them now?” Clark asked explosively. Then he calmed down. “Get Minlow up here. And tell him I’ll not go throwing any aspersions around to annoy him if he’ll lay off calling me a fascist beast. Okay, okay.” They exchanged smiles, Whiteshaw’s a little strained.
He still hesitated, though. “I think Minlow is telling the truth,” he said. “How could he give anything away to the Czechs? He saw a lot of Pleydell, yes. So did I. But Pleydell isn’t the kind of man who talks much about his job.”
Clark said quietly, “So you and Minlow never discussed international conditions with Pleydell.”
“Of course we talked about them.” Whiteshaw was partly amused, partly on the defensive. “In a general kind of way.”
“No discussions about Jugoslavia?”
“It’s an interesting problem,” Whiteshaw admitted, a little startled by the sudden digression.
“No talk about the possibility of a similar problem developing in Czechoslovakia?” Clark prodded him.
Whiteshaw was silent.
“No speculation about the power of trade to encourage such independently minded Czechs?”
It seemed, suddenly, as if something had connected in Whiteshaw’s memory, connected fully and decisively at last.
“And did Pleydell offer any opinion, pass any judgment? You and Minlow listened to him and dropped any arguments you were making, didn’t you? Naturally enough. He’s one of the experts.”
Whiteshaw said at last, “Yes, that’s how it was. But I put it out of mind purposely—it’s a habit I have—”
“Sure,” Clark said understandingly. It was a habit he had developed too. Security taught your mind strange tricks.
“—So I didn’t even remember it until this minute. Not fully, that is.” Whiteshaw paused. “I suppose I half remembered it earlier this evening.”
“Yes. I wondered why you said ‘Titoists’ so quickly.” Clark paused. “Now what about getting Minlow up here?”
Whiteshaw nodded. He walked slowly to the door. Somehow, his willingness to bring his friend to see Clark had turned to misgiving. “I don’t think we should pre-judge him,” he said, still hesitating.
“All right. Let’s hear his story. It’s probably the best thing for him. Don’t worry,” Clark reassured Whiteshaw, repressing the bitterness in his voice, “he’ll suffer least of anyone.”
* * *
Clark entered the kitchen. Kate was sitting at the table, her feet propped on a stool, the novel opened in front of her.
“I made some coffee,” she said, pushing aside the cup at her elbow, “but I thought you probably didn’t want me fluttering around as the complete hostess.”
“That’s all right,” he said, opening the refrigerator to get some ice. “You’ll hear more in the next few days than you ever could hear tonight.” He tugged at the ice-tray. “Goddamnit,” he began, losing his temper for the next half minute. “Sorry, Kate. Get some soda from that closet, will you? We’ll all need a drink.”
“Hasn’t Whiteshaw left?”
“To fetch Minlow.” He watched Kate arrange a tray of glasses. “Do you know what the human tragedy is, Kate? People who don’t know what they do.”
She took the ice cubes from him and held them under the hot water faucet for a moment.
“And the human comedy,” he added wryly, “is people who think they know what they are doing. People like me. And Payton Pleydell.”
But Kate didn’t smile. She said, “Did he try to find out where Sylvia was?”
“Whiteshaw? No. He wasn’t thinking much about Sylvia.”
She looked up at him, puzzled. But at that moment, they heard the returning footsteps. “They’re here,” she said. “I’ll go into the bedroom.”
“And waken Amy?”
“I shan’t switch on the light.”
“Sit in the dark? Nonsense. And stop this pretence.” He closed the novel. “Come on, give me your support. Help me pour out the drinks. Don’t worry, you’ll hear no state secrets. Only protestations of innocence.” He led the way, carrying the tray of drinks, leaving the bowl of ice so that she had to follow him into the living-room after all.
22
Martin Clark had been right: Minlow was worried and nervous, but completely sure that the Czechs had not cross-examined him about anything important. “I was asking the questions,” he repeated. “I’ll send you a copy of my articles, by the way. You’ll see the kind of things we talked about.”
Clark nodded. The articles would explain everything, he told himself grimly. He congratulated himself on his equanimity, though. Whiteshaw was watching him, grateful that he had kept both his promise and his temper. Kate had deserted them, however: she had gone back to the kitchen as soon as she had iced the glasses, back to reading a novel whose problems were all easily untied, back to sitting at the table, no doubt with her hands over her ears. Kate’s simplicity, he thought as he looked at Minlow, was something to be prized.
“The unfortunate thing is,” Minlow went on, “that this leak of information, real or imagined, came just around the time I’d been seeing
Brovic and his friends.”
“Most unfortunate,” Clark agreed.
“But still, it was a coincidence. You can’t condemn a man for a coincidence.”
“Has anyone been condemning you?” asked Clark mildly.
Minlow shrugged his shoulders. “That will come, no doubt.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, that’s all there is to say.”
Clark stopped him as he rose. “Perhaps you could help us, though,” he said casually. “Whiteshaw and I are worried— not about you, but about the effect the news will have on the Department.” He looked at Whiteshaw. “That’s why you came here, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Whiteshaw said frankly. “That was the main reason.”
Clark’s attention returned to Minlow. “Have you any ideas who might have been responsible for this break in security?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“And the reporters who talked to you, tonight—how much did they know?”
“Oh—just that a trade treaty was to be renewed with Czechoslovakia, and the Czechs had learned about it.”
Whiteshaw was startled. “I didn’t know they knew that much—” he began, and then fell silent as he glanced at Clark.
“It’s very little,” Minlow said. “Much ado about nothing. As I pointed out to them, the Czechs would have known about the treaty eventually. It was all just a matter of timing—more or less.”
“Slightly more than less,” Clark suggested quietly enough— he was conscious of Whiteshaw’s embarrassed eyes. He resisted the impulse to repeat the word “eventually.”
“Did they listen to you?” he asked. “Or are they more interested in finding the informer whose idea of timing didn’t coincide with ours?”
“No doubt they are,” Minlow agreed. “There’s another witch-hunt starting. That’s definite, certainly.”
I and My True Love Page 24
