“Really?” Shaw smiled. “I dare say it’s most people’s first, except Miss Absolom.”
“From whom God preserve me,” Henderson said with a shudder. “Rather you than me, my dear fellow. However, it’s not surprising, is it? I mean, Russia’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and they aren’t really on the tourist map, even now.” He was looking at Shaw with interest. “May one ask what brings you on the tour, Mr Cane?”
“Sheer interest. I’ve always had an urge to see the Kremlin…”
“I too,” Henderson said with animation. “Curious, isn’t it, what a tremendous fascination the Kremlin exerts — on pretty nearly everyone, I shouldn’t wonder. Again, that’s not surprising when you consider its enormous power for good or ill.”
“Good?” Shaw lifted an eyebrow.
“Oh, come, my dear fellow!” Henderson sounded quite put out. “You’ll admit the Kremlin has a power for ill I’m sure. Well, it follows automatically that it also has a power for good, if only in a negative sense. Personally, I believe it has a power for good in a very positive sense if it cares to use it, and I feel that’s a view that must be shared by anyone who takes the trouble to give the matter any thought…”
“And if it isn’t,” Virginia MacKinlay put in sweetly, “we’d better all be heard saying it is, I guess. Don’t look now, but we’re being watched.”
Shaw glanced sideways.
A uniformed man, a member of the Polish Security Police, was moving towards them, a hand on the butt of a revolver at his belt. Shaw heard Wicks’s quick intake of breath. He could almost feel the man’s fear as Wicks met his friend Fawcett’s eyes, an emanation of animal fear that seemed to communicate itself to the rest of the people in the room.
Four
The man lounged across, shifting his hands and hooking his thumbs into his belt. He was a long-faced man with a sour gray expression which appeared to betray chronic indigestion. The men at the bar fell silent; the bar-man suspended operations on a cocktail shaker and stood there looking from one face to another, the shaker held in front of his chest like a glittering chrome shield. The policeman stopped close to Shaw and Hartley Henderson and announced, “You are from the English coach party, going to Moscow.”
Henderson said evenly, “Correct. You seem to know all about us?”
Shaw felt a sudden tightness in his throat. Wicks and Fawcett seemed to be holding their breath, and Fawcett’s fingers tightened nervily on a cigarette, almost pulping the paper.
“I am Major Loga. Where is your courier?”
“He was seeing the ladies of the party settled in,” Virginia said, “then he was going to change for dinner, I think.”
“Please tell him that I wish to speak to him.”
Shaw said pointedly, “Just a moment, Major Loga. We aren’t messengers, we’re passengers who’ve paid for our holiday. If you’ll be so good as to ask at the reception desk they’ll send up for Major Pope.”
The policeman glared. He seemed about to snap back a short answer, but evidently reconsidered. He gave a small ironic bow and said, “You will all remain here,” and turned away, marching stiffly out of the bar.
Shaw heard his voice bullying the reception clerk. Moving away from the bar, Shaw looked through the open door into the foyer. There were other uniformed men there, all of them armed. Shaw sauntered casually back to the bar, his heart thumping. It could be that Treece’s fears had been realized and something had leaked, that the Poles had been instructed by Moscow to hold the coach and its passengers until they had isolated Conroy; if that happened, all secrecy would be automatically blown. The balloon would go up, and his own position would be exposed.
“What’s all this in aid of, I wonder?” Hartley Henderson, still standing by the bar, lifted his eyebrows amusedly. He at any rate seemed completely unworried and so did Virginia. Henderson went on, “If there should be any difficulty over our papers or anything like that I may be able to smooth the way for our cornier. It so happens I have a good friend in our Moscow Embassy… Sir Hubert Worth-Butters, one of the First Secretaries, you know. Delightful man. Think we’re going to need him, Cane?” he added with a half-smile.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Shaw answered, shrugging. There was something about the urbane Henderson that suggested, unkindly perhaps, that he was a name-dropper. “If there’d been anything wrong with anyone’s papers the gentry back at the East Berlin checkpoint would have spotted it, I’d have thought.” He glanced idly at Wicks as he spoke. The farmer looked away from him and made some remark to his friend Fawcett. Shaw said, “In the meantime we might as well fortify ourselves with one more drink. You’ll join me, Henderson?”
“With pleasure! Like you, I’ll stick to whisky. Vodka’s an overrated beverage, if you ask me.”
Shaw nodded at the barman, who poured the drinks. Once again, conversation became general. Virginia MacKinlay excused herself while the men were drinking and went over to a corner table where she leafed through a magazine. She was on edge — and somehow, Shaw felt, expectant. Twenty minutes later, Pope came into the bar, looking upset and apologetic. Major Loga was behind him. Pope said, “I’m awfully sorry about all this, but I’m instructed by Major Loga to ask you all to go to your rooms at once.”
Wicks was getting restive. He snapped, “What’s he think we are, then, a lot of kids out of school?”
“He’s just asking for your co-operation, Mr Wicks,” Pope said wearily, “That’s all.”
“Ask” was something of an euphemism. Major Loga, his face even sourer than before, herded them from the bar as if they were being hustled out of court to the death cell.
Shaw didn’t need to open the door of his room; it was open already, and one of the security police was in possession. All Shaw’s belongings had been turned out of his grip and heaped on the bed, and it was only too obvious that everything had been gone through with minute care.
Shaw snapped. “What’s the idea?”
“We have orders to search,” the man answered stiffly, “and we are searching.”
“So it seems! May I ask what you’re searching for?”
“That is our business.”
“I rather think it’s mine too—”
“Mr Cane, you are not the only one.” The policeman, aping his superior, hitched his thumbs into his belt. “Each of the party is being searched. I am not authorized to say more than this. You will now strip.”
“Like hell I will!”
The man shrugged. “I have plenty of time. If you do not co-operate you will be removed to police headquarters for interrogation. Once you are there, the process may take much longer and it is possible that the coach will leave without you.”
Shaw seethed, a muscle twitching at the corner of his jaw. He had, in fact, nothing to hide beyond his identity. He had come on this mission unarmed, for guns could be discovered by frontier guards; they could always be come by on the territory later. He would, he knew, do well to co-operate now that he had put up a token show of anger.
He undressed slowly, throwing each article of clothing towards the policeman, who examined it meticulously, running his fingers closely along the seams, tapping the heels of the shoes with a piece of metal. Shaw had got the message now. They were after a smuggling racket of some kind — or it could be, of course, that they were looking for coded messages on microfilm. Such messages had before now been carried in hollowed-out heels — but so had drugs. After examining all the clothing, the man straightened and said impersonally, “That is all. You are free to go.”
Shaw said, “I shall represent this matter to the British Embassy as soon as we reach Warsaw.”