'I'm not going to do anything, old boy.' But he couldn't get his tone right. ‘We're alone here, and there might not be another chance like this. We can talk the whole thing over and do a deal on the quiet. I'll accept your word and you can accept mine. Give me a brief confession and I can arrange that you won't get more than three years, good conduct, special remission, you know the drift. Otherwise it's for life. Now do be sensible.'
I tugged at the last drawer but it was locked and I had to open it with one of Voskarev's keys. Then they were in my hand: 35mm strip of negs and a set of prints. I'd always thought it was how they'd done it, with photographs.
The streets looked different but not because of the new snowfalclass="underline" there weren't so many people about and the traffic was thinning; between Praga and the city centre there was a darkened car standing at almost every intersection. Those who didn't want to be involved were keeping indoors and those who were waiting for midnight were lying low.
No one stopped us: the car carried police-plates.
There'd been a briefcase in the office and I'd cleared it out and refilled it with the stuff I wanted and it was on the carpeted floor with Voskarev's. The main document was on my lap and I leafed through it because there might be a chance to summarise the key facts in signals before I had a go at breaking a frontier. That would be when they'd get me, if I reached that far. Voskarev was working satisfactorily as a hostage but there was a deadline on that: he and Foster weren't officially involved in the counter-insurgent operations but they were in liaison with the police divisions and they'd be reported as missing, any time now.
'After all, we only need to prove our point that the uprising was incited by the West. We've nothing against you personally.' His smile had great charm in it and his tone was patient. 'Once you've been convicted you'll be of no further use to us — sorry to put it that way but I'm sure you understand — so there'll be no point in taking it out on you afterwards We're not spiteful, you know.’
He was on the tip-up seat: he seemed to like it there. I remembered something about back-trouble, a slipped disc or something: at parties he always chose an upright chair. I said:
'You couldn't have used Merrick, didn't you know that?' On the relevant pages of the document Merrick's name had been crossed out and Longstreet written above it by hand. 'He's got diplomatic immunity… The most you could have done was kick him out of the country.’
'Generally speaking yes, but we'd have made sure he'd elect to go on trial. That's why we chose him, instead of a known agent like Browning of M.I.6 — he's piddling about at the Embassy. I expect you're aware of that.'
'I never know anything about M.I.6.'
He gave a soft laugh. 'Same old thing, the departments in London don't hit it off, do they, never have. But young Merrick was just the job, you see: we wanted to create an inexperienced man and groom him for stardom. Someone we could rely on to say the right things at the trial. Then you turned up.'
'Supposing you can ever get me inside a tribunal, you think I'll say all the right things?’
'You don't need to. You've been incriminating yourself since the day you flew in, and it's all down there in the reports sent in by Merrick. It won't really matter what you say.'
Lights reflected in the glass division and I watched them and they steadied and followed for two blocks through the central area past Ogrod Saski Park and I began sweating because the minute Foster was reported missing the Moskwicz would become a trap.
'I don't think it's a police car, old boy. But it will be, sooner or later.' He leaned towards me and said with absolute sincerity: 'You'll have to accept my little offer, so you ought to do it now, because don't you see you're only adding to the charges, playing right into their hands? I'll try telling them I went with you to the Commissariat of my own free will, but old Vosky's going to bleat out the whole story. You must see you're making things difficult for me.'
Basic brainwash technique: the operator allies himself with the subject without any pretence of switching loyalties: 'their' hands. Friendly attitude: 'old Vosky', not such a bad chap if you treat him right.
'What d'you think the chances are, Foster?'
He wouldn't tell the truth unless it suited him but it'd give me an idea of what else he wanted to sell me.
The puffy lids opened wider in surprise. 'They're a hundred per cent. I give you my word that the maximum will be three years, providing you — '
'The chances of Moscow sending tanks in.'
He looked away. I hadn't done it deliberately but for a moment he'd thought I was hooked.
'It depends how far things go.'
That could be the truth. For the past three days there'd been careful announcements about tank regiments carrying out winter manoeuvres ten miles outside the city, 'to test the efficiency of mobile armoured units in snow conditions'.
'How far d'you think things'll go?'
He spread his hands in appeal. 'We've done all we can, as you know, to weed out the rowdy elements. If those remaining decide to make a nuisance of themselves then we'll just have to keep order. Surely that's reasonable? We had to do it in Prague.'
Page 9 paragraph 3: The proven guilt of the accused will not only make it clear that incitement to disturbance was wholly motivated by foreign capitalist powers, but also that similar motivation led to similar events in Czechoslovakia, a fact that hitherto other nations have shown the most obdurate reluctance to accept.
'It was different there. In Prague there weren't any talks set up. It'll make you think twice this time.'
'Actually no.' His eyes had gone sleepy again. 'In Prague we lacked evidence of foreign conspiracy. Any necessity to keep order in Warsaw tomorrow will be seen to be fully justified. As a matter of fact — unofficially of course — we'll be rather in your debt.'
The Hotel Alzacki was in a side street of the station district and a commissar-style saloon would attract attention there but we couldn't get out and walk the last hundred yards because the M.O. patrols were stopping everyone and checking papers and we could be past the deadline by now: they might be looking for Foster as well as for me.
'Take it east of the river and leave it in the dark and make your way back separately.'
I got Foster across the pavement and inside.
He recognised me, the man with the Bismarck head and the weathered face. He said they were upstairs.
It was a billiard-room on the first floor and the guns came out when they heard us and I hold them to put the bloody things away. Strain was setting in and I tended to sweat too easily and resented it because there wasn't time for the nerves to start playing up.
Voskarev was on the floor with his back to a leg of the billiard-table. A thin boy with a torn coat and a shocked face was huddled in a leather armchair and Alinka was crouched near him, rubbing his blue hands to warm them. The three Czyn people stayed near the door after we'd come in: one of them was the driver who'd brought Voskarev here. Voskarev looked numbed, his face waxy in the flat hard light from the lamps over the table. He was clutching his handkerchief in a stained ball.
'Who hit him?'
'I did.'
Medium weight, gymnastic type, the small eyes close together, the head lowered a fraction as he came across to me, typical boxer's pose for the local sports page. His hands came up much too late and he spun once and smashed into the rack of cues and sent a chair over and hit the wall and slid down it and didn't move any more.
The other two looked at him.
'I told you to leave that man alone. The same thing goes for this one. God help you if you forget again. Throw some water on him.'