‘Then I am under arrest,’ I said. ‘What is the charge, please?’
‘We only wish to question you.’ His hand was on my arm again, his face quite expressionless. I knew it was no good trying to bluff him. He had his instructions. There was only one thought in my mind, to see that somebody knew what had happened. ‘Very well then. But first I must telephone my Embassy in Prague.’
‘You can do that later.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ I snapped. ‘You arrest me without making any charge and then try to deny me the right to inform my own Embassy of what has happened.’ I leaned over the desk and picked up the telephone that was there. He moved to stop me, but I said, ‘Either I telephone or I make a scene. There are sure to be some English or Americans here at the airport. If they report what has happened you will find the repercussions at a much higher level.’
He seemed to appreciate the point, for he shrugged his shoulders. Fortunately I got through right away and I was able to get the third secretary, a man named Elliot whom I’d met at a party in Prague only a few days ago. I explained what had happened and he promised to take immediate action.
I put down the telephone. ‘Now if you’ll find my bags for me,’ I said, ‘I’ll come with you. But please understand I have business appointments in Milan and I shall hold your office responsible for seeing that I have a reservation on the next plane.’ I took my passport away from the clerk who had been gaping at us the whole time and, after collecting my two suitcases, we went out to a waiting police car.
The moment of genuine anger which had carried me as far as the phone call to the Embassy had evaporated now, and I admit that, as we drove back through the suburbs of Pilsen, I was pretty scared. It was true that I’d done nothing. But if they checked up on me…. Suppose they’d arrested Maxwell and knew that he’d come to see me by way of the fire-escape? Had the night porter kept his mouth shut about Jan Tucek’s visit? And what about the two men I’d interrupted searching Tucek’s office? If they checked up on me thoroughly I’d have a job convincing them that I was completely outside the whole business. And what was the business anyway? What had happened to make them suddenly arrest me? And then I began to sweat. Suppose they’d got Maxwell? Suppose they confronted Maxwell with me? He’d think I’d given him away. My God! He’d think the mere threat of trouble had frightened me into talking. All my other fears were suddenly of no importance. They were swamped by this new and to me much more terrifying possibility.
At the Reditelstvi I was put in a dingy little waiting-room that looked out on to the ruins of a bombed building. A uniformed policeman was placed in the room with me. He stood by the door, picking his teeth and watching me without interest. There was a clock on the wall. It ticked the minutes away slowly and relentlessly. It was the old technique. I tried to relax, to ignore the slow passage of time. But as the hands of the clock slowly moved round the dial I felt the silence preying on my nerves. I tried to get into conversation with my guard. But he had his instructions. He just shook his head and said nothing.
After forty minutes a police officer entered and told me to follow him. I was taken down a stone corridor and up a flight of uncarpeted stairs, the guard following behind me. On the first floor I was shown into an office. There were shutters across the window and the place was lit by electric light. A small bearded man in plain clothes was seated at a desk. ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Please sit down.’ He waved me to a seat.
I sat down. He fumbled amongst the papers on his desk. His face I remember was very pale, almost yellow, and he had bright button eyes. The back of his carefully manicured hands were covered with black hair. He found the paper he was looking for and said, ‘You are Richard Harvey Farrell?’ He spoke in Czech.
I nodded.
‘And you represent the company of B. & H. Evans of Manchester.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was due to catch the plane to Munich and Milan at eleven-thirty this morning. Would you be good enough to tell me why I have been arrested?’
He looked across at me with a slight lift of his tuffy eyebrows. ‘Arrested, pan Farrell? Come now — all we wish is to put a few questions to you.’
‘If there was any way I could have helped you,’ I said, ‘surely it would have been sufficient to have sent an officer down to the hotel before I left?’
He smiled. I didn’t like that smile. It was slightly sadistic. He was like a psychiatrist whose career has taken some peculiar twist. ‘I am sorry you have been inconvenienced.’ He made it clear that he enjoyed inconveniencing people. I waited and after a moment, he said, ‘You knew pan Tucek I believe?’
‘That is correct,’ I answered.
‘You are with him when he is in England in 1940.’
I nodded.
‘And you saw him at the Tuckovy ocelarny the day before yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you talk about?’
I gave him the gist of our conversation in front of the interpreter. His eyes kept glancing down to the paper on his desk and I knew that he was checking my account with the interpreter’s report. When I had finished he nodded as though satisfied. ‘You speak our language very well, pan Parrel. Where did you learn?’
‘In the air force,’ I answered. ‘I find languages come quite easily to me and I was stationed with Tucek’s Czech squadron for several months.’
He smiled. ‘But on Wednesday, when you see Tucek, you do not speak any language but English. Why?’ The question was barked at me suddenly and his little button eyes were fixed on mine. ‘Why do you lie and make it necessary for an interpreter to be found?’
‘I didn’t lie,’ I answered hotly. ‘It was Tucek who said I spoke nothing but English.’
‘Why?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘How should I know? Probably he felt it was not very nice to talk to an old friend in front of a spy.’ I was speaking in English now and I saw him straining to translate.
‘Are you sure you do not come with a message to him?’ The fact that he was now speaking haltingly in English, together with the negative phrasing of the question made it clear that he had nothing definite against me.
‘What message could I bring him?’ I asked. ‘I hadn’t seen him for over ten years.’
He nodded and then said, ‘Please give me an account of all that you do since you arrive in Plzen. I wish every minute to be accounted for, pan Farrell.’
Well, I took him through everything from the moment of my arrival at the Hotel Continental. When I had finished he sat looking down at the papers on his desk, drumming with his fingers. ‘Would you mind telling me why you find it necessary to question me about this meeting between Tucek and myself?’ I asked him.
He looked at me. ‘The man is politically suspect. He has many contacts in England.’ He stopped short there and shouted to someone in the next office. The door opened and the man who had stopped me at the airport came in. For an awful moment I thought he was going to confront me with the night porter of the Hotel Continental. ‘Take pan Farrell back to his hotel,’ he ordered. Then he turned to me. ‘You will remain at your hotel please. If we have no further questions to ask you, you will be allowed to leave by tomorrow’s plane.’
I said nothing, but followed the police officer out of the room. Outside the Reditelstvi police car was waiting. I got in. As we drove off I found I was trembling. The reaction was setting in and I wanted a drink. The rain-wet smell of the streets was very sweet after the dead mustiness of S.N.B. headquarters. Gradually my nerves relaxed. The police car drew up at the hotel and I got out. The officer put my bags on the pavement and the car drove off. I took my things into the hotel and went through into the bar. I was ordering a drink when a voice behind me said in Czech, ‘Perhaps pana would be kind enough to give me a light?’ I turned. It was Maxwell. He made no sign of recognition and when I’d struck a match and lit his cigarette, he thanked me and went back to his seat in a corner of the bar.