“Oh, no!” It was a pitiful cry, a cry from the heart. “You wouldn’t do that, Vorsak, not cut off —”
“Yes, Nada. In the long run, you’ll thank me. You won’t believe that now — but you’ll see!” He spoke with full confidence, but he’d overshot his mark this time. Nada started that terrible trembling again, although she’d only just had her fix; just the thought of deprivation was enough. She put her hands up to her face and began sobbing, and then, bringing her hands down again, with her small fists clenched tight, she moved towards the fat man, obviously not fully realizing what she was doing, but with the clear and immediate intent of striking him, beating at him with those balled fists. Vorsak gave a shout of warning and started to back; he was a little off his stroke, I could see that. He didn’t want to use his gun on the girl but he was finding the going tricky. Just when his attention was off me, I made it trickier. I reached for the tape recorder and flung it straight and hard for the gun-barrel. It hit accurately and the gun deflected, away from Nada Strecka. Bullets smacked into the walls of the room and some of them hit the oil heater. It went over. As red fire ran from it, liquidly across the floor, I saw Harry Foster move fast and his hands clamp down on the sub-machine-gun and I saw the girl beating at Vorsak’s fat body with her fists. She seemed close to dementia. Then something that I couldn’t quite see happened, and the sub-machine-gun dropped to the floor. I grabbed it and swung it — and knocked over the oil lamp on the table to add to the flames. The fire was already getting a grip on that old cottage, licking up the curtains towards the low ceiling, and spreading along it. There was an ominous crackle of burning woodwork as I swung the gun to cover Vorsak, and then the door to the outside flew open and I saw another man with a gun. He fired in the split-second that he became visible and before I got him, and killed him stone dead. He got Harry Foster. Harry went down heavily on the floor and lay there, not moving, with blood welling from his chest. By now the room was thick with smoke and the fumes were choking me, and the open door didn’t do any good either; the wind fanned the flames, quickly, into an inferno. I saw a fat body framed in the doorway and I fired, but missed. I heard Vorsak’s running footsteps on the path, and heard him calling out to someone, urgently, and I started to give chase. Not for long. In the smoke and fumes I wasn’t seeing all that well, and I fell flat over Harry’s body, knocking my head against the door jamb and passing out for a few moments. When I came to I heard Nada Strecka crying, and I heard the retreating sound of a powerful car’s engine coming back along the wind. I collected myself and dragged Harry out from the blaze. We got clear just about in time, but poor Harry had had it. I felt blazing hatred for Vorsak and his currently cremating armed companion. Harry had been a good man, the best there is; but there was no time just then to think too much about that. I dragged his keys from his pocket and ran for the garage at the side of the cottage, unlocked it, and brought the Jag out intact just one jump ahead of the flames. I yelled out to Nada Strecka: “Give me a hand to get Harry in the back, then we’re on our way.”
“But we’ll lose time —”
“Okay, so we lose time. I’m not leaving him here. Now, get busy!”
We got the body into the back of the Jag and I threw a rug and a prayer over it. I told the girl to get in the front, and I started up. She asked, “Where do we go now? To find Vorsak?”
“No,” I said. “It’d be like the needle in the haystack.” We were already moving fast down the gravel for the narrow lanes, leaving Max’s cottage to burn itself to the ground. “We’re heading right back into London. Now, I’ll admit I’m somewhat at a disadvantage, but if I were you, I wouldn’t try anything while we’re on the move. I’m going to drive fast, and a crash would make a nasty mess. Just bear it in mind.”
She said, “I’m not going to make trouble, Mr Shaw.”
“Commander Shaw. Harry Foster and I were in the same service.”
She looked at me sideways; I could feel her breath on my face. “You’re taking this personally?”
I said bitterly, “Oh, no, we’re not allowed to do that. We don’t get involved, you see. Let’s just say — I’m taking it hard.” I added, “Hard for your friend Vorsak. We shall meet again.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s up to you to tell me that, isn’t it?”
“If I could, I would. Please believe that.” Her voice carried sincerity, I thought. Recent events had shaken her façade. I was inclined to believe her, and I said so. She seemed pleased.
“I think you might tell me where you fit,” she said.
I went along with that, now. I said, “6D2.”
“I rather thought it might be that.”
“We do get around, don’t we? Look, Miss Strecka. We’ve a long, long drive ahead of us. We may as well make the best use of the time. You’d better tell me everything you know — all about Drakotny, and Racilek, and Vorsak. And about yourself as well.”
“All right,” she said after a brief hesitation. “It’s a very involved story, though — as involved as our Czechoslovak politics, and believe me, that’s saying a lot.”
“Never mind. I’ve a reasonably quick brain!” As a matter of fact, I was beginning to doubt that. I should never have allowed that device to be … I jammed on the brakes, hard. Nada very nearly plunged through the windscreen. “Sorry,” I said, letting go my seat belt, “but I damn nearly slipped up again!” I scrambled out and ran round to the back of the Jag and felt along the underside of the rear bumper. After a while I found an obstruction, and prised away at the rubber cap until it came clear of the metal and lost its suction. It was just a small device, but it packed away a load of trouble. I would have liked to study it in detail, but couldn’t risk keeping it in my possession. I tossed it over a hedge and got back in the car. “Now our position is fixed as being in Farmer Giles’s best pasture land,” I said as I drove off again. As we came round a bend on the crest of a hill I looked back. Max’s cold and isolated cottage was blazing still, a real beacon in the night sky, a funeral pyre for Vorsak’s dead gunman. It must have been visible for miles and miles. Somewhere along the main roads, the fire engines would soon be pounding. And the police patrols, probably. Everyone except Vorsak, who wouldn’t wait to see and be seen. I said, “All right, Miss Strecka, let’s have it.”
*
In point of fact, the girl didn’t help all that much, except in a general sort of way. She confirmed that Drakotny and Racilek, while both Communists, were on opposite sides of an internal ideological fence. Drakotny was the strong-arm man, the authentic voice of Russian Communism — the stool-pigeon for the Kremlin, as Max had already told me himself. Racilek was the voice of liberalism, of a watered-down, Czech-brand Communism. He wanted more freedom for his people, more independence for the Prague Government, which currently he led — though he had temporarily and fully handed over to Drakotny, on Moscow’s orders, for the duration of what had already been a lengthy visit to Russia.
“What’s he doing there?” I asked.
“Principally,” she said, “he’s there to take part in extended talks about Czechoslovakia, but also to attend a summit conference of Communist states. Everyone except China is represented. There’s been a lot of factory touring too, and a look at the space programme and all that.” She added, “Racilek’s own personal object is to put to the Kremlin his ideas of liberalizing Czechoslovakia — to advance what he considers the best interests of his country.”
“And you?”
She seemed puzzled. “How d’you mean, me?”
“What do you consider the best interests of your country, Miss Strecka? Are you against liberalism and freedom?”
She shook her head. “No. No, I don’t think so …”
“Whose side are you on?”
She said, “Oh, I’m not really all that politically interested, Commander Shaw.”
“You’re just interested in Drakotny for his own sake?”
“I love Josef Drakotny,�
� she said, simply. “Yes, that’s my interest.”
I said, “Um-h’m,” but privately decided to reserve judgment on that one. I asked, “And Vorsak? I gathered he was a disciple of Racilek, but I must say he didn’t strike me as all that liberal-minded. He didn’t seem to go much on Western forms of culture, at all events, did he? What did he say — wine, women, and songs, and drugs?”
She gave a short laugh. “Vorsak was always difficult to understand. He’s — well, a little inclined to change sides. A Vicar of Bray in a sense … but only in a sense.”
“Vicar of Bray,” I repeated, with a touch of admiration for thoroughness. “They taught you well in Moscow, Miss Strecka.”
“They didn’t leave much to chance,” she agreed. She was silent for a while as we — metaphorically — crashed through the Exeter roundabouts. When I saw a telephone box I slammed on the brakes and told the girl to get out. I wasn’t taking any chances myself now, on letting her get away from me, so I took her into the phone box. It was risky, or could be, calling Max on an open line, but it was a risk I had by now decided I had to take. I called his private number and he answered quickly; it was not late and he would still be up. I said, “Shaw. I’ll make this brief. I’d like a stop order put on all air and sea ports. Subject is Czech, Vaclav Vorsak, alias Thomas Humphreys. Meanwhile, I’m coming in with what you wanted.”
“Anything else?” his voice barked at me.
“No, sir.”
“Right.” That was all; no questions, though he must have been intensely curious to know why I wasn’t following his original order to keep the girl in the cottage. He banged down his receiver, and Nada Strecka and I went back to the car and moved off again. Nada said, “You’ll never stop Vorsak, you know.”
“I do know.” There were plenty of ways in and out of a country for those who knew how to do it and had the backing of their governments, but it had been necessary to go through the routine. Of course, Vorsak might not in any case opt for out just yet; probably he would have another go at the girl first. I said, “You haven’t told me yet where you fit in all this, Miss Strecka. What was it you were going to do, that makes Vorsak so keen to stop you doing it?”
She countered that with another question: “Why were your people equally keen to stop me, if they don’t know my intentions, Commander Shaw?”
“I thought I’d already told you,” I said. “They want information on Drakotny. They believed you could supply it.”
“Do you still think I can?” I saw, in the light from the dash, that she was looking at me with an amused smile on her lips.
“Yes, I think so,” I said. “But let’s start with what I’ve just asked: what were you going to Czechoslovakia for, Miss Strecka?”
She said, “Nothing that need concern you, or 6D2 either.”
“I’ll decide who it concerns, if you don’t mind.”
She was smiling broadly now. “You know, you’ve no right in the world to question me. You’re not the Special Branch.”
“No,” I agreed at once. “I’m not! But if you refuse to co-operate, I can always hand you over to those boys. Somehow, I don’t really think you’d like that, Miss Strecka.”
She nodded, as if to herself, and looked away from me for a while, pondering her position and the wisdom of settling with the devil she knew. The Special Branch could be a tough proposition and I guess she knew that. Meanwhile, I was treating her like a lady and, so far at any rate, I had allowed her to have her fixes as required. I probably wasn’t going to do that indefinitely, but she wasn’t to know that. All she could be dead sure of was that the Special Branch was unlikely to be so accommodating. And after a good deal of silent thought, and, I dare say, much mental turmoil, she gave a long sigh and said, “All right, then. But I haven’t much to tell you. I was only going to see Josef Drakotny, that’s all. I hadn’t any political motives at all.”
“Just love,” I said sardonically.
“Exactly.” Her voice was tart, with a touch of hurt in it. “But I don’t suppose you’d understand that, would you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m human. I understand it all right … if it’s true. The thing is, I don’t believe it — that’s all!”
“Why not?”
“Look,” I said patiently, as I pulled out to overtake a late-night bus ambling along for Honiton, “Drakotny sent you away a long while ago. You’re in the past, like it or not. He’s not going to be pleased to have you turn up again, is he? Then there’s the question of your shockingly corrupt, Western-culture behaviour in the United States — not to mention the actual fact of your failure as an agent after the best Moscow could do for you! Can’t you see that if what you say is true, you’re going to be one hell of an embarrassment to Drakotny, and a considerable danger to yourself? Come, Miss Strecka — think! What do they do to agents who have fallen by the wayside and are then crazy enough to return? Make them Heroes of the Soviet Union — or send them to Siberia?”
She said with a mocking sound in her voice, “The way of the woman who loves the married man is hard.”
“Ah! Confucius, or Mao Tse-tung?”
“No, just Nada Strecka.”
I breathed hard down my nose. “Are you really sticking to that story of love?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then,” I said, “you’re mad, completely crazy. Maybe it’s the drugs. You’ll never get anybody over here to believe you’d risk arrest the moment you cross the frontier, just on the off-chance of a word with the boy-friend before he signs your death warrant.”
She smiled again. “Then you must go on disbelieving me, mustn’t you?”
“Just for now — okay,” I said, feeling I was at a certain disadvantage in regard to pressure methods while driving a Jag; to say nothing of the fact that Max had given me practically nothing to go on, no psychological levers that might loosen this girl up. Except of course, Drakotny himself. The object of love … I pondered that one for a considerable while as the A30 peeled away behind and, at long last, brought me to the M4 again, and some real speed. Max had made the point that the girl had been genuinely in love with Drakotny — he’d even made a point of that distinction between loving him and being in love with him, stressing the former. A grand passion; there were such things, and I wouldn’t deny it. But there still had to be a more concrete reason. Underneath the drugs, Nada Strecka, I would have thought, was a level-headed young woman. Not the sort to stick her neck out stupidly and pointlessly. Unless that was the drugs, as I’d suggested. I glanced sideways at Nada; she was moving around in her seat, and her face was beginning to look strained again. I fancied she was getting near another fix, but she wasn’t asking for one yet. Maybe she was doing her best to hold out, maybe she had a desire, somewhere deep down, to get off the hook; but then perhaps they all have that, I wouldn’t know. She had more basic guts than most, though, I’d have sworn an oath on that. As we went along, her condition grew visibly worse. She had the shakes again, badly, and her teeth were chattering. When she couldn’t take any more she gave me a quick, rather crafty look and turned to reach over the seat-back for her grip.
I said, “No. Leave it — a little longer, anyway. Try to stretch the periods in between. It’s the only way.”
“What do you know about it?” the words were almost hissed at me, and her face was ghastly in the headlamps from the westbound carriageways. She went on reaching, and almost toppled head first into the back. Her short skirt rode right up her buttocks, and I saw thin white panties under the tights. I grinned and, dangerously, gave her behind a whack with my left hand.
“You bastard,” she said flatly. “You are a big man physically. Big men usually have big minds, but not you.” She was all screwed up now, and her fingers were fumbling at the locks of her grip, making very heavy weather of it. I hated to see the degradation and I told her, sharply, to let it go and sit down and try to ride it; and she told me, in so many words, to get stuffed. Meanwhile her feet were getting in my way and I’d had
enough; I began to feel cruel, and I began to feel something else that linked with the cruelty: this could be the moment to dig out the truth. Disregarding motorway regulations about stopping only in emergencies, though in all conscience this was one, of a sort, I pulled over and came to rest on the hard-shoulder. I grabbed Nada Strecka and said savagely, “Put that lot down at once!”
She screamed at me, and lashed out with her legs. One foot, luckily shoeless by this time, caught me on the ear. I seized it and pulled, got my arms around her waist, and forced her back into her seat. She was trembling as if with a violent fever, and I caught the sharp smell of perspiration. Her skirt was right up around her waist now and I saw how terribly thin her thighs were, no flesh on them at all; if she hadn’t been big-boned, there would have been nothing of her. She thrashed about like a lunatic, crying and screaming, largely I think with sheer rage, but I held her down hard and hoped a police patrol wouldn’t choose this moment to stop and investigate my emergency. At the very least, I’d be inside on a charge of having drugs in my car. To say nothing of the dead man in the back, under the rug. I shouted in her ear, “Take it easy, for God’s sake take it easy! You can have your bloody fix soon if you’re so gutless!” I wasn’t driving any further with a human tornado alongside me. I went on, still shouting over the screams, “But you’re going to tell me something first, if I have to hold you down all night. I mean that, believe you me!” I fought with her, wildly, then I got my body on top of hers, with my backside almost through the windscreen, and I held her down with sheer weight and took her face in my hands and slapped it till her teeth stopped chattering and rattled instead. By this time I had stopped feeling a brute; I just felt mad, period.
When I had finished work on her face, I held it so that she was forced to look at me. The eyes were terrible, sunken and wild, and red in the whites like a drunk coming through after a week’s binge. I said, “Drakotny. Josef Drakotny. You love him. You’re going to try to see him. Why? Why?”
Tears ran down, tears of anguish, tears of frustration — tears of sheer, bloody-minded rage. “Oh, you bastard!” she said.
This Drakotny_A Gripping Spy Thriller Page 4
