by Eric Ambler
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What man?’
‘Our friend Brankovitch has been forced to admit a number of hostile foreign journalists for the purpose of reporting this trial. Do you suppose that while they are here he will make no attempt to neutralize their hostility? Of course he must try. I can even tell you the procedure he will adopt. Tomorrow perhaps, or the next day, after Vukashin’s evidence has been heard, Brankovitch will call a foreign press conference and answer questions. Then, perhaps the next day, someone will approach you privately with a great secret. This person will tell you that he has discovered a way of getting uncensored messages out of the country. He will let you persuade him to share the discovery. Of course, your messages will not be sent, but they will serve as a guide to your intentions, which can then be anticipated in the official propaganda. Brankovitch likes, for some reason, to use agents provocateurs.’ He looked at me sardonically. ‘I know his sense of humour. It was I who recommended him to Yordan for a place on the Committee.’
I offered him a cigarette again. He hesitated. ‘If I might take two?’ he said.
‘One for your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please take the packet.’
‘Thank you.’
It was not quite full. He counted the cigarettes in it carefully.
‘How did you meet Deltchev?’ I asked.
He looked up. ‘He was my partner,’ he said. He seemed surprised that I did not know.
I gave him a box of matches and he lit a cigarette.
‘Thank you.’ He blew smoke. ‘When Yordan first practised as a lawyer, I was his clerk. Later I became his partner. When he was appointed Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, I became his assistant and secretary. I was also his friend.’
‘What sort of man is he? Superficially, I mean.’
‘Quiet, deliberate, very patient. A sound lawyer. If you were a journalist interviewing him in his office, you would probably be irritated by a habit he has of looking past you when he is talking. He keeps his desk very tidy and empties the ashtray as soon as you have put your cigarette out. Yet polite. He would tend to put words into your mouth — criticisms of himself — and then answer them. A bad habit for a lawyer, that. A man with a family — wife, son, daughter — of whom he is very fond, but not a family man. A good man, but not at ease with himself.’
‘The sort of man who would betray a principle for a bribe?’
‘Yordan has never valued money enough to be corrupt in that way. Power might have tempted him once. You speak, of course, of his actions over the election promise.’
‘Yes.’
‘If he was paid to make that radio speech, he gave up what he might value — power — to gain what he did not value — money.’ He shrugged. ‘I have had plenty of time for thinking, and much bitterness has gone. At one time I thought of killing Yordan for what he did then, but even in hate I never supposed that he had been bribed.’
‘What is your explanation?’
‘I have none. Yordan was often accused of being merely a shrewd politician. In retrospect that seems as ridiculous as the accusation now that he is a murderer. By unnecessarily bringing about the November elections he committed political suicide and betrayed all the people who were loyal to him. You ask for an explanation.’ He threw up his hands. ‘It is as easy to say that he was insane as to deny that he was bribed. When I faced him in his room that night he did not look insane. He looked strangely at peace with himself. That made me more angry, and, you know, in anger many things seem clear. “Why?” I shouted at him. “Why?” “It is better so,” was all he replied. Then, when I had finished abusing him, I said, “Papa Deltchev has gone and the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has returned. Papa Deltchev was not strong enough to bear a people’s love!” ’ Petlarov looked across at me and smiled slightly. ‘But now I cannot remember what I meant,’ he added.
After a moment I asked, ‘Will the election matter be raised at the trial?’
He shook his head. ‘Not by the Prosecutor. For the regime, the less said about the election the better. But they might tolerate the defence’s making play with it to suggest Yordan’s fundamental sympathy with the regime.’
‘Who is defending?’
‘His name is Stanoiev. It amused me to use it here. He is the Party member appointed to defend. His arguments in mitigation will be given prominence. They will serve as the final condemnation.’ He frowned. ‘What I do not understand is this affair of the Officer Corps Brotherhood. Yordan’s attitude toward Soviet occupation — yes, that is something to argue and misinterpret, to deal with speciously. But the Officer Corps Brotherhood is another matter. They make so much of it that they must have something. Yet the idea is absurd.’
‘Surely it’s easy enough to manufacture evidence?’
‘Yes, but that is not their way. Consider the case of Cardinal Mindszenty. He was accused of an offence against the currency regulations. We know that it was only technically an offence and not committed for his own gain, but he was guilty of it and that was the reason it was used. If he had been charged as a corrupter of youth it would have made much better propaganda, and no doubt the evidence could have been manufactured. But no — the currency offence could be proved. The lie stands most securely on a pinpoint of truth.’ He took the last of his twelve biscuits and shut the box. ‘What do you want of me, Herr Foster?’
‘You have already given me a great deal.’
‘I have a suggestion. Why do you not talk to Madame Deltchev?’
‘Is it possible?’
‘Yes, for you. She and her household are under protection — that is, they are not permitted to leave the house, which is guarded — but your permits will allow you to pass. I will give you a letter to her. She will see no other journalist, I assure you. You will make a coup.’
‘Yes, I see that. What kind of woman is she?’
‘She was a schoolteacher in the town where we practised years ago. She came of a Greek family. If she had married me instead of Yordan, perhaps I should have become a Minister. But better that you should form your own opinion. If you wish, I will come here every evening at this time to give you what information and comment I can.’ He leaned forward and touched my knee with his forefinger. ‘Is it agreed?’
‘Agreed. But what is my part of the agreement?’
He hesitated. ‘Money — a little, what you consider fair — and your ration card. Not the restaurant tickets — those you will need and I could not use — but the ration card for bread, meat, butter, milk, eggs, and green vegetables. As a foreigner, you have one on the highest scale, I think.’
‘Yes.’
‘You still have it? You have not already disposed of it?’
‘No. It’s yours. I’ll get it now.’
He sighed. ‘It is as well that my wife is not here,’ he said. ‘She would weep.’
Later, when he had gone, I sat by the window and had a whisky and water in the toothglass. I was beginning to feel perceptive and understanding.
That was the point at which I should have packed my bag and gone home.
CHAPTER SIX
In the afternoon of the second day of the trial the Prosecutor completed his opening address to the court and began to call witnesses.
The first was Vukashin, the head of the government. There was a stir as he went into the witness box.
He was one of those politicians who in their dealings with the public are like small-part actors who specialize in playing such things as shrewd lawyers, family doctors, and wise fathers; their mannerisms of speech and gesture have been cultivated to fit the stock characters their physical peculiarities suggest. He was square and solid, with a short neck, and he stood awkwardly in the witness box, his big hands clasping the ledge in front of him, the shoulders of his ill-fitting jacket hunched about his ears. He had blunt features, with a muscular jaw and full, determined lips. His forehead was low and permanently knitted in a frown of concentration. In the p
opular edition of his biography published by the Propaganda Ministry he was referred to as a ‘veteran front fighter in the class struggle’, and from the illustrations you received the impression that he had spent most of his life marching up steep hills at the head of fist-brandishing processions of angry revolutionaries. The role he affected was that of ‘simple workman’.
In fact he was not simple nor, strictly speaking, had he ever been a workman. His father had been a small but fairly prosperous tradesman, and Vukashin himself had been a bookkeeper in a timber warehouse during the early part of his political career. It had been a natural talent for accountancy and office organization rather than revolutionary ardour that had raised him first to the secretaryship of a trade union and later to leadership of the party. He had a reputation for the kind of wit that makes a political statement in terms of some excretory or sexual function. He was a powerful man physically and was said to have once made a brutal assault on a colleague who had opposed him. But it was also said that the victim had been alone in his opposition and unpopular and that the assault had been calculated quite coolly for its disturbing effect on the morale of other intransigent colleagues. He was a brusque, direct speaker and very effective with big audiences. ‘What are the real facts behind this problem?’ he would shout; and although he never answered such questions, the sturdy conviction with which he pretended to do so, and his way of enumerating his sentences so emphatically that they sounded like hammer strokes of logic, usually concealed the deception.
The Prosecutor’s self-effacing deference to him was so abject that it was not even amusing. From a ranting bully who at least existed, Dr Prochaska became suddenly no more than a disembodied, impersonal voice, a prompter who fed the witness with a short question and then waited until the speech in reply was over and another question was wanted from him.
‘Minister Vukashin, in March of 1944 when the armistice negotiations began, what was the attitude of the prisoner, Deltchev?’
‘Our policy was peace, immediate peace to save the country from devastation by reactionary led forces seeking to continue their losing battle with our Soviet ally. Every hour of it meant another cottage, another farm destroyed, every day a fresh horror for our peasant workers in the frontier areas. Who could have said “Go on”? Not a man with heart and bowels! Only a blood-maddened beast. But there was such a creature. His name was Deltchev!’
‘Minister Vukashin, in what ways did the prisoner Deltchev work against the peace?’
‘It would be easier, Public Prosecutor, to tell the court in what ways he did not work against the peace, for then I could answer shortly, “in no way”. From the beginning of the negotiations he used his position on the Committee to hinder their conclusion. You may ask why this was tolerated, why he was not immediately removed from his post. The answer to that is simple. We believed at that time that he was in misguided but honest doubt about the terms of the negotiations that were under discussion. We were a responsible group acting not for a defeated country — we were never defeated — but for a resurgent nation. The terms offered us by Russia, however, contained, as was natural in the circumstances, military clauses that involved our surrendering certain rights of government. The interpretation put upon them depended upon one thing and one thing only — whether or not Russia could be trusted. We of the People’s Party did trust Russia, and in the event we have been justified. All the rights surrendered by us then have now been restored. The prisoner took a contrary view — or said that he did, for we know better now — and it was this view that he urged upon us as a justification for delay and for continuing his negotiations with the Anglo-Americans.’
‘Did he contend that better terms would be obtained from them than from our Soviet ally?’
‘No. The terms were no different in essence. They had been agreed to by the Foreign Ministers at the Moscow Conference of ’43. According to the prisoner, what would be different was the way in which they would be enforced. Or so he said.’
‘Minister Vukashin, did the prisoner take part in the discussions with Soviet representatives?’
‘Very little. He was too busy licking the backsides of the Anglo-Americans.’
Laughter.
‘Minister Vukashin, in presenting his arguments for negotiations with them, what advantages did the prisoner claim would follow?’
‘He claimed so many advantages that you would have supposed us conquerors about to impose our will upon the defeated. But what were the facts at that time? First…’
The earphones softly droned out the translation, but above this sound his own voice persisted. It was loud and, in the harsh, penetrating quality of its lower notes, disquietingly aggressive. He claimed hostility as urgently as another might claim love, and to hate him was to submit to a seduction. In a way he was impressive.
The voice went on and the grotesque rubbish it talked was passively received in evidence. I watched the judges’ faces as they listened.
The floodlights for the cameras were on all the time now. The day was warm, and soon, as the afternoon sun poured in through the high steel-framed windows, those in the lights began to sweat. Most of them wiped their heads frequently and fanned themselves; but the judges, sweltering in their black gowns and biretta-like caps, seemed unwilling to acknowledge their discomfort before the eyes of the cameras. They had been judges before the People’s Party had come into power and it was known that all such appointments were under review by the government. Later, perhaps, in a cool cinema at the Propaganda Ministry, the film would be examined by subtle, hostile men able to construe the wiping of hands or forehead as gestures of disrespect to the Minister and his evidence. No momentary relief from discomfort was worth that risk to the judges. Two of their older colleagues had already been dismissed for showing reluctance to preside at this trial. Now, behind the sweating impassivity of those who had not shown reluctance, there was the terrible anxiety of men who, having sacrificed their principles, fear that the sacrifice may after all go unrewarded.
Only the prisoner did not sweat. He sat with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes closed, the back of his white head resting against the wooden rail which separated the lawyers’ tables from the body of the courtroom. His face was livid in the glare of the lights and he looked as if he might faint; but, incredibly, he did not sweat. But for the pricking of your own skin you might have fancied that the heat of the place was an illusion and that all the perspiration you could see was simply a visible manifestation of collective guilt.
The afternoon crept on and the shadows moved slowly across the courtroom until there were only narrow strips of sunlight on the walls. There were no more than ten minutes to go before the day’s adjournment when the incident occurred.
Vukashin had almost completed his evidence and the Prosecutor was asking him a series of questions about the meeting of the Committee at which it had been finally decided to accept the armistice terms.
‘Minister Vukashin, what was the attitude of the prisoner when it was clear that the majority of the Committee favoured acceptance?’
‘As always, he attempted to obstruct the wish of the majority. He repeated all his former arguments, and when these were rejected again by the rest of the Committee, he said that he had had further discussion with the Anglo-American representatives and that something might yet be done with them.’
‘He gave the impression that he was making these proposals to them?’
‘He had always given that impression. But now in the heat of the moment he made a slip that revealed his true intention. He said that the Anglo-Americans were only waiting for the word and at the snap of his fingers they would come.’
At that moment a strange voice in the court said something loudly and sharply, and, in the dead silence that followed, the interpreter automatically translated it.
‘That is a lie.’
Deltchev had risen to his feet and was facing the witness box. His hands were still in his jacket pockets, but he was standing very str
aight.
Vukashin looked startled for a moment, then turned his head to the judges.
‘The prisoner objects to the truth.’
The centre judge leaned forward. ‘The prisoner will be silent.’
Deltchev took no notice. ‘I do not object to the truth,’ he said. ‘Nor do I object to the fantastic perversions of the truth that the court has been listening to today, for no person in his senses will accept them. I do, however, object to lies which attribute to me statements which I have never made.’
The judge shouted angrily: ‘Be silent. You will have an opportunity of speaking later.’
‘Will the Minister Vukashin be available to me for cross-examination?’
‘Your counsel may examine the witness if he wishes to do so.’
‘He does not propose to do so. He values his own skin too much.’
There was a commotion at this, and the thin, dark man whom I took to be Stanoiev began to make some sort of appeal to the judges. As several other people, including Dr Prochaska, were speaking at the same time, the interpreter became tongue-tied. One of the judges began to shout.
‘The presiding judges call for silence,’ said the interpreter.
Vukashin had been standing in the witness box looking on with a grim smile. Now he raised a hand and, as the noise subsided, spoke, ‘I have given my evidence. Let him say what he wants.’
Deltchev faced him again. There was complete silence now. The prisoner’s voice was light but very clear and precise.
‘Minister Vukashin,’ he said, ‘was it with the Committee’s knowledge that I made the proposal to the Anglo-American representatives in 1944 that we should fight a delaying action in the north?’
Vukashin hesitated a fraction of a second. ‘Be careful how you answer,’ Deltchev put in quickly. ‘The facts can be checked. The minutes of the Committee still exist.’
Vukashin made an impatient gesture. ‘I am aware of that.’
