When darkness enveloped them again they cautiously drew apart, but Nicholas had one of Fedora’s hands in his and he continued to hold it. She gave his fingers a slight squeeze, and said:
“You know, if I wasn’t in love with someone else, I believe I could like you quite a lot.”
He smiled at her. “That goes for me too.”
“In that case we had better make the best of one another.” She let her head fall back on to his shoulder. “I’m feeling pretty part-worn, and it’s rather a comfort to have you hold me instead of sitting bolt upright, or leaning my wretched back against the sofa.”
He put his arms round her again and laid his cheek against hers. “Yes; it gives me a more relaxed feeling too. Besides, if anyone pops his head over the edge of the box we’ll be better placed for going back into action.”
“I think the danger is past for the moment. We’ll have to stay here for an hour or two, though, until it is dark.”
“What do you think our prospects are of getting away?”
“Not too bad, if only we are not challenged in the street. My friends in the Legion should be able to hide us and smuggle us out of the country.”
“I take it that it was Legion men who rescued us. But what beats me is how they knew we’d be at a certain place at a certain time, and so were able to make arrangements for the ambush.”
“They must have been tipped off by someone at Frček’s headquarters. The police and warders are all swine, but some of the secretaries and lift-girls are good types. Theirs is a lousy assignment, as they have to sleep with whoever takes a fancy to them; but through them there’s not much that the Legion doesn’t get to know. One of them must have got a message out that we were being sent to Moscow on the evening train. The rest would have been simple.”
“I suppose so—given the guts,” Nicholas remarked, thinking of the dead lorry driver and the other man who had been wounded, and perhaps afterwards captured. “They must owe you quite a bit, to have fought a pitched battle with the police like that, in order to rescue you.”
“I’ve helped to get a few people away now and then,” she admitted modestly, “but all those who belong to the Legion must always be prepared to risk their lives, even if they have never met the brother or sister on whose account they are ordered to risk them. Otherwise they would never be accepted into the Legion to start with.”
“Why is it called that?”
“Because it is the successor to the famous Czechoslovak Legion that fought under General Gaida in the First World War.”
Somehow Nicholas did not like to confess to Fedora that he was a Pacifist, and, having a prejudice against even reading about wars, knew next to nothing about those which had taken place before his own time; so he said truthfully, “I remember my father telling me something about that, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the details.”
Starting up, she exclaimed in a shocked voice, “Forgotten! Since you have Czech blood in your veins I’m amazed that you’re not ashamed to admit it.”
“It’s a long time since I lost my father,” Nicholas hastened to excuse himself, “and I was brought up as an Englishman. But I’d like to hear about it. Please tell me.”
Apparently mollified, Fedora resettled her head on his shoulder. “Well, anyway, you must know that in August 1914 all our troops formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Many of them hated the Austrians and the old Emperor so much that as soon as the war started they went over to the Russians. Several divisions went over complete with their bag, baggage and officers; then as the war went on many thousands more allowed themselves to be captured. It was from them that the Legion was formed, to fight with the Russians for the liberation of Czechoslovakia.”
“I remember now,” Nicholas put in. “They got caught up in the Russian revolution, didn’t they?”
“That’s right. By the spring of 1918 there was a body of our troops 55,000 strong, in the middle of European Russia. Austria still held Czechoslovakia, and the Bolsheviks were trying to make peace with the Central Powers. The Bolshies tried to get our men to join the revolution and shoot their officers; but they wouldn’t. They wanted to go on fighting for the Allies; but the trouble was that without proper supplies and munitions they couldn’t form a front on their own, and there seemed no way to get them out of Russia. Then some bright boy at Versailles suggested that if they would march to Vladivostok, they could be taken off there and shipped right round to Europe to fight on the Western Front. Their officers agreed, so the Legion set out on its first great march. By then all Russia was in a state of anarchy, and not a day passed without them being attacked for one reason or another; but they crossed the Urals and fought their way through 5,000 miles of the worst country in the world, to the Pacific.”
Nicholas had poured out the rest of the champagne, and Fedora paused a moment to drink some, then she went on, “By the time they got to Vladivostok the whole situation had changed. The Allies were getting on top in the West, and reckoned that they could finish the Germans without any help from the Legion; but they had come to regard the Bolshies as a lot of mad dogs who must be destroyed. So instead of bringing the Legion back by sea to Europe they asked that it should remain in Russia to fight the Reds. As an inducement they offered to recognise Czechoslovakia as an independent state when they had finally defeated the Central Powers. That was the thing nearest the heart of every one of our men, so they turned round and started on the second half of their 10,000 mile march. Fighting all the way, without support, reinforcements or supplies, they recrossed the vast Siberian wastes and the Urals, until at last, with hardly a rag of their uniforms left, their proud columns re-entered their homeland. The Allies kept their word; the Legion had earned Czechoslovakia her independence.” Fedora broke off again, then her low voice came with a ring of pride. “It was one of the greatest military feats that the world has ever known. Its aim was to bring freedom to our people, and it could only have been accomplished by a combination of courage and discipline. That is why we call ourselves ‘The Legion’, and we endeavour to prove worthy of our predecessors.”
For all his ingrained Pacifist outlook, Nicholas could not help being impressed, and said, “Those original Legionnaires must have been darn’ good soldiers; but I think the crowd to which you belong even braver, because they have to work alone and in secret. Are there many of you?”
“Yes; several thousand. There is hardly a village in the country now that is not organised to rise at a given signal. The only depressing thing is that until the West is strong enough to back us with active support, and shows its willingness to do so, we dare not give it.”
“Was that poor woman who lent you the hat a Legionnaire?” Nicholas asked.
Fedora raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Not as far as I know. What leads you to think she might be?”
“Well, for one thing, the way she took a chance on being nabbed in order to help us; and for another, your calling her ‘sister’.”
“Oh, you don’t have to be a Legionnaire to take a hand against the Coms. In these days it has become second nature to nearly everyone outside the Party and their hangers-on to throw gravel in the works at every opportunity. As for my calling her ‘sister’, why not? If I had offered to buy the hat from her she would have felt most terribly hurt, so the best way I could show my appreciation was to let her know that I regarded her as just another woman like myself, whom I would have been glad to help as she was helping me. After all, Jesus Christ put up the idea that we were all made of flesh and blood long before Karl Marx, you know.”
Nicholas winced. Wendy had said very much the same thing to him only a few evenings before; but he was in no mood either to defend or to repudiate his old idol. Instead, at the thought of Wendy he said:
“The girl I’m in love with lives in Birmingham. Is your boyfriend a Czech, here in Prague, or someone in England?”
“He is in London at the moment, as far as I know.”
“I’m hoping to get married. How about
you?”
She rolled her head slightly in a negative motion. “I’d like to, but I don’t know. It’s all rather complicated, but I might be able to pull it off, if we are lucky enough to escape the Coms to-night and can get back to England.”
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 damnedest 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 Vaněk, 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 passing 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-passed. 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 Embassy 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. Vaněk 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. Pushing 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 Embassy 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 God 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 Vaněk, 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 Vaněk myself. Had I told him that you were an im
postor, 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, Vaněk 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 Vaněk 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 damn 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 Vaněk 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 Konečný 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 Vaněk that we had got you safely on board without any trouble. If I had defied orders at the last moment Konečný 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 slashing 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 Vaněk 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.”
Curtain of Fear Page 21
