The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (3 page)

‘Didn't he give you any particular message for Bridge Holdings?'

‘Only to tell Mr Spring to introduce me to the right man at the Ministry of Defence.'

‘So he didn't ask you to deliver anything?'

‘Just two copies of the brochure describing the new Intertatry engine.'

‘And did you show them to him?'

‘Yes. He wasn't interested.'

‘Of course. He mightn't be at first sight. But I can explain.'

‘Nothing to explain. If I'd had a chance I could have answered questions myself.'

‘Have you got the brochures with you?'

‘No. No point in it. They were for the Ministry.'

‘Where are they, Mr Rivac?'

‘In my office somewhere.'

‘Oh God!'

‘You aren't feeling sick, I hope?' he asked. ‘That was a fierce one.'

Miss Fodor replied shortly that she enjoyed the sea. Her exclamation, Rivac decided, must have been a comment on his thoughtlessness.

‘But I cannot be expected . . . my filing system . . .'

She calmed him down with a dazzling smile.

‘Of course. So long as they are available.'

A few miserable passengers were trailing round the deck huddled in raincoats, one by one experimenting with wind, salt and fresh air as a last defence against the onset of the inevitable. A lonely figure, faceless behind dark glasses and filling a short cloth jacket, belted and furred, which marked him as a Central European, passed them a second time, then halted and made a dash for the rail.

‘It's got him down at last,' Rivac remarked.

‘How do you know? Are you sure?' she asked eagerly.

‘He's just put his false teeth in his pocket.'

‘You're disgusting!' she said. ‘Please get me a brandy, Mr Rivac, quick!'

Rivac slipped down to the bar. The only customers were two red-faced north countrymen talking loudly, swilling double whiskies and showing off to the prostrate forms around who were too sunk in misery to notice them. The steward had just served him when he heard the double clang of the engine room telegraph and shouts from up top. The ship shuddered and wallowed. By the time he had negotiated the steps of the companion without losing more than half the brandy, choosing the port side in case the wind blew out the rest, the ship had nearly stopped. The two white lines of the wake ended in a whirlpool and at one point where waves charged their masses against one another the hurled spray was pink. A lifeboat, already manned, hovered above the seas until it took its chance and cast off. Horrified, he saw it pick up one part of what the propellors had left and cruise for another.

He quickly regained the starboard deck. Miss Fodor was not on the bench where he had left her. The man in the dark glasses had also disappeared. He strained eyes to distinguish what was in the lifeboat. As it turned, the roll gave him a clear view of the well before a blanket was thrown over the body. It was red all right, but the background was grey not green.

Concentrating on the lifeboat he paid no attention to the cluster of almost motionless passengers beyond and around the empty davits. When he had time to look the crowd was opening up. Two, nauseated by the motion or the accident, had fainted. The French were exclamatory, blaming the ship; the British were silent and sullen, blaming the sea. Miss Fodor at last came into sight talking to an officer while a woman with a loud, pretentious voice was insisting:

‘But this lady can tell you. I saw her bump into him.'

Miss Fodor was calm, not even showing contempt. She explained quietly that she had been walking along the deck and had cannoned into the missing man, thrown against him by a violent roll. She didn't think he had even noticed it, and he had certainly not fallen overboard.

‘But you, madam, did see him go overboard?' the officer asked his witness.

‘Not actually. I was resting, you see, and the movement was so awful that I closed my eyes again.'

‘So you are not suggesting that the bump was deliberate?'

‘Good heavens, no! An unfortunate accident! But I thought it was funny.'

‘I may be able to help,' Miss Fodor said. ‘I caught a glimpse of him as I turned away to the other side of the ship. He was leaning right over. I think he may have been trying to catch his teeth.'

Clever girl! An inspiration drawn from the earlier remark that the man had pocketed them. Rivac made up his mind at once to be a witness. Miss Fodor obviously was telling the truth about the passing bump, but the evidence of this wretched woman could lead to her being subjected to any amount of further questions when they landed, all of them pointless since the man in the dark glasses was heavy and the rail chest high. No accidental collision could have knocked him over.

‘But I can settle it at once,' he said impulsively. ‘This lady was feeling ill and I went down to get her a brandy. When I was just coming on deck again she was not where I had left her and the fellow at the rail was still there. Couldn't you spot from the bridge what happened?'

The officer replied shortly that they had enough to do without nursemaiding all angles of the deck, asked for his name and was of opinion that the Harbour Police would require a statement from M Rivac when they came aboard on arrival.

Miss Fodor thanked him very graciously as they returned to their seat. Rivac in a state of indignant excitement kept exclaiming against the irresponsibility of women who opened their mouths and shut their eyes. He had no hesitation at all, he yelled into the wind, in telling the necessary lie. She thanked him again, patted his arm and suggested that he should talk less loudly.

When the livid cliffs of Dover were just visible through the flung garbage of spray and rain Rivac was called to the captain's cabin.

‘You stated to my officer that you were just coming on deck again when you saw this unfortunate passenger still at the rail and Miss Fodor was not there at all,' the captain began.

‘That's right.'

‘M Rivac, there must have been an interval of perhaps a minute between the time this gentleman fell overboard and the time the alarm was given. You say that you saw him still in his position at the rail; so you must have left the bar well before the ship stopped.'

‘I suppose I did.'

‘The bar steward confirms that he served you a brandy but is sure, I'm afraid, that you had only just left the bar when the ship went astern. That is a big difference.'

‘Oh, he's mistaken! Nobody can trust their senses in this weather.'

A very awkward development and the sort of thing which sometimes happened when he was too eager. His account of his movements was far from criminal; but if exposed as a gallant lie the evidence of that detestable, resting, puking female might be taken more seriously. The steward's statement must be challenged. With a sudden inspiration he thought of the two semi-drunks and asked if they could be interrogated.

They had returned to the bar and were easily produced.

‘Yes, we remember him,' said Number One. ‘Yes, he'd gone topside before the ship stopped.'

That at least contradicted the barman, but Number Two broke in:

‘Seconds before, Fred. Only seconds.'

‘You'd just paid a round and we were ready for another.'

‘Ting-a-ling! Man overboard!'

‘Brandy he ordered. Not good for the stomach.'

‘Knocked your glass over when the ship stopped, Fred.'

‘Who did?'

‘Bloody ship did. He wasn't there then. Must have gone out with his brandy before that.'

‘Seconds before, Fred.'

‘Sixty seconds one minute. Minutes before.'

Rivac jumped on that one.

‘Perhaps minutes,' he said to the captain. ‘As I told your officer, I was just coming on deck and saw the man.'

‘Matter of second minutes,' repeated the two judiciously. ‘Tha's right!'

The captain thanked them and turned to Rivac.

‘Well, sir, for what it's worth they seem to disagree with the steward. Apparently you could have noticed the man at the rail, yet never saw him go overboard.'

‘You see, I was trying not to spill the brandy and looking for Miss Fodor.'

‘Is she an old friend of yours?'

‘No. We met on the boat. Very natural! The only two choosing the starboard side in spite of the wind.'

‘And when did you rejoin her?'

‘After the boat had been launched.'

‘So you were all alone with this man for a moment?'

‘I dare say I was.'

‘Yet you didn't see the accident and didn't hear him yell.'

‘What, with all that racket going on? Wunk! Thump! Swash! And the propellor out of the water half the time!'

‘Twice only, M Rivac. And that was not one of them.'

Chapter Two

The vivacity of Zia Fodor had become a habit, so that she could not help giving an impression of enjoying the present even when her mind was occupied by past and future. The present, in any case, was easy enough to enjoy. Like most of her contemporaries she accepted a state which ran smoothly and was full of amusement for youth. Neither she nor her friends talked much even in private about the Russian divisions stationed permanently within the national frontiers; they had to be accepted like the fact of death which seldom interferes with the pleasure of living.

Only once had she come to the notice of the police—for joining a mild demonstration against the dismissal of two popular professors who in their lectures had quietly ignored Marxist dialectic in favour of historical truth. The authorities, unduly alarmed by the precedent of rioting students in France, had reacted violently. She had been arrested—her current boy friend would have been a better catch—and questioned with purely verbal but insulting brutality. She was so sure of the enduring civilisation of her country that she told her interrogator he was unfit to be a Hungarian. The slap in the face which she got for that accounted for her excellent sea legs.

Zia kept her mouth shut about this incident though it was in her power to have set flowing a considerable undercurrent of resentment, for her name was well known in the athletic circles of the capital. She was a horsewoman approaching international standard and had fenced for Hungary as well. She wanted no protests, public or private, on her behalf; they could only lead to suspicion and careful surveillance when she travelled abroad. It was better that there should be no entry at all—not even an approving entry—on the file which somewhere existed under Fodor, Terezia.

Thoughts, however, could not be filed. Hers as seldom before were dedicated to her father who died when she was only four. Colonel Fodor had been shot by the Russians in 1956 for the crime of being a socialist in a socialist state. He supported the dictatorship of the proletariat wholeheartedly as well he might, for it had educated him, spotted his ability and intelligence during military training and opened for this son of peasants the relentless route from Corporal to the General Staff. What he did not support was automatic obedience to the hereditary enemy. The open hand of Marxism was just, but the fist too tightly clenched was unendurable.

When Zia left her university with fluent English and serviceable French and German she took a job as personal assistant to a director of the Hungarian Travel Bureau. The tours she helped to organise were far from contributing to any love of her fellow Europeans in the mass, but she could not help observing that after all the self-sacrifice and bloodshed of the last thirty years the workers of Eastern Europe under communist leadership were only just reaching the same level of prosperity as the workers of Western Europe under social-democracy. She also observed that none of her tourists gave a damn for the governments which had achieved this affluence and were perfectly free to say so as loudly as they chose.

She had not enough solid facts for an informed opinion, but of one thing she was sure: whatever the fears and intrigues of the two super-powers, war that involved the two happily compatible halves of Europe was blinding idiocy.

Zia was seldom indiscreet but one evening she said as much to her uncle—her mother's brother—who had called for her at the Salle d'Armes and proudly taken her out to lunch. He was newly appointed to the command of a division and ought to have the answer.

‘It must involve us. It must, Zia,' he replied.

‘Do you want to go and fight the Germans?'

‘That's a professional hazard for all soldiers.'

‘Well, say with France and England and the rest.'

‘What else can we do? And if war is non-nuclear we win quickly.'

‘Do the countries of the Warsaw Pact plan for non-nuclear war?'

‘Zia, you really must not ask such questions. The answer is that of course they do. In nuclear war there is no winner. We all know that.'

He paid the bill and got up—for other tables were too close—and strolled with her along the Corso, a handsome couple and well aware of it without conceit. In Zia's awareness there was also a fleeting vision of impermanence: of so many passers-by, of the beauty of the sunlit city and the impassive Danube which would outlast them all.

‘If I were a soldier, I'd mutiny,' she said suddenly.

‘Then you'd end up very quickly facing a firing squad or the Arctic. So let's change the subject. Can you go abroad whenever you like?'

‘Officially, uncle?'

‘Of course. I know very well that you can't go rushing off to Monte Carlo.'

‘I can when there is show jumping or a fencing tournament.'

‘That's seldom. What I meant was: can you go abroad at short notice any time? To London or Hamburg or Paris for example?'

‘Somebody in the Bureau can always find an excuse for rushing off and—well, we try to take turns. I'd stand a chance.'

‘Lucky girl!'

He left it at that. She wondered what was behind his sudden interest and came to the conclusion that in the old tradition of gallant Hungarian officers he either wanted to reward a new girl friend with a trip abroad or, with Zia's help, to persuade one back from abroad.

It was not until a month later when she was actually and officially in London that she began to see a possible reason for his question. She was at a party at the Polish Embassy; it was primarily for the entertainment of British customers by exporters in Eastern Europe, but not too obviously commercial for there was also a flattering glitter of politicians, press and diplomatic society. Poles and Hungarians—they knew what a party ought to be.

Zia made herself useful though no special duty had been suggested. The guests seemed fascinated by her—she fully intended that they should be—and it was hard to shake the opinion of the more pressing that she had been invited for their continued entertainment at a later hour. She regretted, she told them, that she had nothing to offer but tours of Hungary, her frankness and laughter sending them home with enduring memories of this young executive who could swing her skirt so provocatively, smile so deliciously and pinch an ear with the sort of casual affection one would expect from a flirtatious young aunt.

After an hour of dutiful general post she found herself occupied by a Polish colonel. Though nearly double her age he was the kind of man she liked to be seen with, whose opinions would be worth hearing and whose surface repartee would be as light as her own. It was a disappointment when he handed her over to a dull Czech business man named Karel Kren, pointedly saying that Kren had been a friend of her father. Instinct told her that there was more to it than that. Probably the man, who spoke faultless Hungarian, had new ideas for combined tours of Prague and Budapest and wanted to talk routes and prices.

When the party broke up she found herself dining with him, though not entirely clear how it had happened. The Polish colonel and a Romanian friend of his had captured her, again drifted off and left her with Kren. He seemed too serious. As if he had read her thoughts, he admitted that Czechs could not compete with Poles and Hungarians; they had not the heart to face fate so graciously.

‘What fate?' she asked, giving nothing away.

He might be, for all she knew, employed to test the allegiance of business men and women who travelled freely abroad. He looked suspiciously international—a faintly smiling, prosperous manufacturer from anywhere at all. The prematurely white hair and the air of distinction were out of the common run. It was possible that he was a show piece to impress the foreigner.

‘I meant the fates of life and death.'

How like a Slav, she thought, to bring up life and death with Sole Mornay and a heavenly Moselle! She did not put it so baldly as that but she did stress wine and gaiety.

‘Grapes trodden by the exploited peasantry of France in conditions of appalling squalor,' he said.

‘Who told you that?'

‘It was told to his readers by a government hack when some young fool suggested the importation of French wine which we can't afford anyway.'

‘Aren't Hungarian wines good enough?'

‘I prefer them to the Russian. Miss Fodor, you remind me so much of your father.'

‘Tell me about him. Where did you meet him?' she asked, getting on to safer ground.

‘We were testing a new pressed steel support for a heavy machine gun—he acting for the Hungarian Army and I for the factory. Thereafter we met more often.'

‘You know how he died?'

‘Yes. My mother died of the same disease, caused by a different virus. But I thought you didn't want to talk of life and death and fate. Yet you talk of them with your uncle, I believe?'

‘Philosophy?' she replied, parrying the thrust. ‘No, we usually talk about horses. Do you know him too?'

‘I have never met him. But one might say we belong to the same club.'

‘I suppose women aren't allowed to join.'

‘They wouldn't be quite at home there, Miss Fodor. It's a very male club. We even play with railways and soldiers.'

‘Model soldiers?'

‘They are not very reliable.'

‘I am sure you will soon catch up with western manufacture.'

‘Miss Fodor, I am not surprised you fence for Hungary. I have admired the way you never commit yourself till I have. Now I shall. Has it ever occurred to you that the armies of the Warsaw Pact are the greatest guarantee of peace?'

‘My uncle once told me that in non-nuclear war we win quickly.'

‘Possibly. But suppose the enemy—the nominal enemy—can hold. Their strength is in anti-tank weapons and it might take longer for the Russians to overrun Europe than they think. In that case they cannot be sure of their allies. They could be faced with insurrections in Poland, Hungary, Romania and my country. At the best that means trouble for them on the Lines of Communications; at the worst some of our troops engaged in the front line might go over to the enemy. Yes, we might risk in battle what we dare not do in peace. And they suspect it.'

‘Was it my uncle who said you could talk to me like this?'

‘Not directly. His suggestion came a long way round.'

‘What do you want from me?'

‘Nothing except to remember that you were bored stiff by a dull Czech who could only talk about business. But if ever your uncle wants some little service from you, give it!'

‘He must know I would. He could have asked me himself.'

‘Miss Fodor, in a club the members suggest and the committee decides. For example, you wouldn't put somebody's favourite niece in charge of a tour without personal inspection.'

‘Sometimes I am ordered to put people in charge of a tour whom I do not know.'

‘That of course is another point to be considered. Always remember their faces! Always! And now I will try not to be a dull Czech any more and remember I had a Romanian mother.'

The rest of the evening was easy and pleasurable, for Kren had wit which fully compensated for his lack of humour. Determined and even ruthless, she guessed. Undoubtedly a man's man rather than a woman's. He made no further reference to his club except when they parted. Eyes directly meeting hers and again sombre, he said that hatred was a poor thing and often unfair; one did not serve from hatred but from love of Europe. He hoped that they might meet again.

They never did—at least not to speak to each other—and the only effect the conversation had on Zia was that she became more alert to innocent chat which might not be innocent. However, there was no sequel to what had seemed an invitation, so that after a couple of months she began to wonder whether the presumed probing and acceptance of her had after all been no more than indiscreet dinner-table talk. Her uncle was at his headquarters and she had no chance of comparing notes with him. She was not sure in any case whether she should.

His visit to the flat was entirely unexpected. As never before he looked like a military automaton with set face, though she knew he was nothing of the sort. She kissed him and regretted that her mother was out.

‘Yes, Zia. I waited until she was. You remember Karel Kren?'

So the curtain had risen and she was on stage. She had never spoken to him of Kren or the party at the Polish Embassy in London.

‘Of course I do.'

‘He is flying to Brussels early on Saturday May 21st. Can you find an excuse for being at the airport when he arrives?'

‘No. But I can be in Vienna on business. I could ask if I might have a few days off in the mountains and then fly to Brussels with nobody any the wiser.'

‘Vienna—that's useful! Your mother chaperoned you when you rode in the dressage there.'

‘Should she go with me? She has a valid visa.'

‘Perhaps later, if it's advisable. Now yours is a very simple assignment. I'll tell you what is wanted from you and as little about the reasons as I can.'

‘The club's business?'

‘He used that word?'

‘Kren? Yes.'

‘Well, it sounds better than that nasty name of Military Junta.'

The general told her that Karel Kren had a genuine unquestionable excuse for going to Brussels on business, but the real object of his journey was a quick visit to England. He believed that he might be already under grave suspicion and dared not buy a ticket to London because it would be at once reported that he had. He hoped to be able to get his ticket at the Brussels airport, taking the first available flight out and returning the same day.

‘Suppose there is someone to meet him at Brussels?'

‘That's the point, Zia. I wish I had you on my staff. There is no reason why he should be met. He never is, and he hasn't asked for it. He's a plain business man and he normally goes straight to his hotel. And so if there is a car from the Embassy with a secretary—a very special sort of secretary—to meet him, we shall know that he is in trouble.'