The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (4 page)

‘From his own government?'

‘Worse. From their masters as well.'

Her uncle emphasized that she could not be compromised. Neither Czechs nor Russians were likely to recognise her. She was nobody's secret agent and not engaged in any plot. She had only to watch the arrival of the passengers from Kren's flight and see that he obtained his ticket to London and passed back immediately into the departure lounge. After leaving the airport for town she was to telegraph an address in Budapest under any name she liked saying
Returning Today
if Kren was safely in the air and
Not Returning Till Tomorrow
if he had been met at the airport and driven away.

‘Shouldn't I have any way of reporting what actually happened?'

‘If you can disguise it somehow. Obviously he cannot be forcibly detained at the airport of a foreign country. And assuming he is suspected they'll want him alive and well for interrogation. So it is almost certain they will pick him up peacefully and he'll thank them for the courtesy. Any attempt to break away then and there would only make matters worse.'

‘And you, uncle?'

He was too honest a man to have all the discretion of a conspirator.

‘Don't worry, my dear! I'm in no danger yet. Lukash knew nothing. Poor Lukash!'

‘This Lukash is dead?'

‘I hope so. Forget it! Forget it! That was not his real name in any case. I'll put it this way. Something vital has been settled. On the other side they can count on it, but our channel of communication has been closed down. Everything destroyed in time! Kren has found another channel—old-fashioned but damned ingenious. I think it's completely safe, but he is not.'

Zia made the necessary arrangements with her usual calmness, a little astonished at herself although the run-up to action was familiar to her. In competition on horseback or with foil in hand she was never nervous. She sized up the opposition; she did her best; and then all that mattered was the excitement of the contest, lost or won. Luck seemed to be attracted by such indifference.

In this new sport, too, luck did not fail her. Head Office had no objection to her leaving Vienna for a holiday in the mountains. She could take a fortnight if she liked. She had intended to specify Innsbruck, but before she could do so her boss suggested Switzerland and the inspection of a promising hotel with which they had had some correspondence. That partially solved the only problem which was bothering her. Her passport, if ever examined by hostile eyes, would have shown a visit to Belgium when she should have been enjoying herself in Austria. If, however, she were combining holiday with work in Switzerland she could reasonably claim to have travelled up the Rhine and on to the Belgian Ardennes for fun.

She reached Brussels by train from Basle, arriving the night before Kren was due. Next morning at the airport it was easy to remain inconspicuous, mixing in a drift of package tour travellers off to the Mediterranean and purchasing from the airport shop a straw sun hat which she pulled well down over her forehead. Not many passengers came through into the concourse from Kren's flight and he was not among them. At last she spotted him at the Sabena desk. Evidently he had managed to slip out by the wrong gate and was now buying a ticket for the London flight.

But other eyes were more practised than hers. As he was hurrying towards the departure lounge with his briefcase, he was accosted by a uniformed chauffeur and a companion. He greeted them with a convincing show of surprise and pleasure as if he had not a care in the world and was looking forward to a successful business trip. His position was now deadly. He would have to explain the ticket to London in his pocket.

Zia for once was shaken. She had her first experience of the immense and ruthless power which was removing Karel Kren from ordinary life without any fuss and bother. He should, she thought, have bolted for the departure lounge, but then activities only suspected would be proved. Presumably he intended to bluff until his opponents disclosed their hand.

She bought a drink and sat at a table wondering what she ought to do. The alcohol gave no answer except that she should not sit there like a dummy. Whether or not there was anything more to see or hear she should be on the spot like a newspaper reporter. She jumped up and took a taxi to the Czech Embassy.

After changing hats and making such simple alterations to her appearance as she could, she stopped the taxi short of the Embassy and walked past it to a café in the same street where she had a distant view of the front door. From her table she could watch—possibly nothing, possibly Kren being driven away to his hotel after a quick interview in which his explanations had been accepted, possibly his arrival at the Embassy if he had interrupted the journey in the excuse of doing some shopping in order to find out how closely he was guarded.

Something of the kind must have indeed have happened, for she was not too late to see a black car drive up. The chauffeur opened the rear door. Karel Kren got out. The other man followed carrying the briefcase and as he lowered his head in the doorway Kren delivered a smashing uppercut. He either dodged or used his knee on the chauffeur—she could not see which—and was away with his case in his hand. He walked fast without running. The car slowly followed, the man in the back seat holding a handkerchief to his face. Fugitive and pursuers were careful to avoid any public curiosity. Nobody in the distant café seemed to have observed the incident, and at the moment of the attack nobody was on the pavement in front of the Embassy. Kren must have noticed that and made up his mind on the spur of the moment.

Within yards of the café tables he hailed a taxi and she heard him say: ‘to the station'. The taxi drove off with the black car following. Shortly afterwards a second car shot away from the Embassy with two more men in it.

Zia too left for the station—risky since it would be the third time she had shown herself in the proximity of Kren, but she was confident that she could never have been picked out among the package tourists at the airport. Though her orders had only been to watch and report, it was too tame to give the warning of Kren's detention without also mentioning that he had escaped and that his journey to England was still possible.

Both cars were parked outside the station, which meant that all four men were trying to spot Kren among the waiting passengers and what his destination was. Zia thought it a fair bet that he would have jumped on board the first train leaving for anywhere at all. There was one for Lille and one for Ostend. Ostend and the crossing to Dover seemed the more likely; but passing quickly from platform to platform Zia recognised the two men from the second car. Their air of purpose hurrying down the length of the Lille train gave them away. She had time to pass them closely and memorise their faces. Kren, she realised, had never had a chance to do so. They entered the train just before it pulled out.

She could do no more and it was time to wire Budapest. She gave much thought to the wording of her telegram; if the KGB in satellite countries were already informed of the escape of Kren, so confirming suspicion, every telegram from Brussels could be examined for hidden meanings before it was delivered. She decided to pay her bill, travel over the frontier into France and wire from there. The delay would be less than a couple of hours.

Zia got off the train at Valenciennes, having composed her message on the journey:

NOT RETURNING TILL TOMORROW STOP MY RUDOLF HAS RUN AWAY AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS DO NOT TELL CHILDREN YET LOVE MARISHKA.

Once that was sent she was suddenly aware of being tired and hungry. Opposite the station was an old-fashioned hotel which promised stolid, nineteenth-century welcome more appealing to a woman drained of energy than lounges and pillars, eyes, lifts and uniforms. She went in and was ushered by Madame and an aged porter to just the sort of room she expected, of unplanned comfort and with bathroom separated from bedroom by a red velvet curtain.

She had every intention of leaving for Switzerland next day as if she had completed her short tour of the Ardennes; but when next day came and she was considering railway connections over excellent rolls and coffee she was vaguely aware that precipitate action had caused a problem. That situation was very familiar to her. The problem could usually be identified once it had been firmly placed under the microscope.

Her passport of course! It would show that she had entered Belgium via Luxembourg on May 20th and left Belgium on May 21st, crossing the frontier a hundred and twenty miles away. What had she been doing meanwhile?

Well, there was no evidence to prove that she had ever been in Brussels. So how about this? Stayed the night of the 20th at Namur, a reasonable stop-over if touring the Ardennes. Met a charming Frenchman who offered a lift in his car to Valenciennes. Stayed the weekend there before returning to Basle. You can check with the hotel.

As an amateur she was pleased with this decision. She was foreseeing an unlikely but possible danger and planning like a true professional to meet it. The future appeared delightfully secure. She spent Sunday familiarising herself with Valenciennes and the restaurants where her charming Frenchman might have taken her. His imaginary company helped to arouse some interest in a boring town.

The following morning, Monday, May 23rd, with time to waste before her train, she skimmed through the local paper. There, three short paragraphs on the second page, was the fate of Karel Kren. Zia was appalled, both by his death and the demonstration of her own inexperience. She was, her uncle had assured her, not compromised, not engaged in any plot, a mere reporter of Kren's movements; and so it might have been if she hadn't rushed her fences. Here she was, pretending that fantasy was security when in fact she was untrained, ignorant of the rules and pitted against an adversary who knew every trick of defence. She wished to God that Kren or the unknown Lukash were sitting on the bed to give her some guidance, but what they would say she knew: catch that train to Basle at once! Or would they? It looked as if this Georges Rivac held the key to that new channel of communication which Kren had been trying to open. They might say: keep out of trouble but get us the facts.

Zia telephoned Rivac's office and was told by his secretary that he was in London on business and expected back next day. One day made little difference. She decided to wait where she was and then go over to Lille, only thirty miles away.

Stuck for hour after hour in that provincial town she had nothing to occupy her thoughts but Kren and Rivac. That was as well, for by the afternoon she had come to the conclusion that it was folly to visit Lille. There could be little doubt that the two men who had followed Kren on to the Lille train were in some way responsible for his suicide. They too would have read the same paper and discovered—possibly for the first time—that this Rivac was involved; so his office might be watched and he himself in danger. The right game was to have patience for still another day, look up his home number and call him on Tuesday evening.

Over the telephone Rivac seemed to be an uncomplicated, rather flustered business man, and yet he knew the name of Lukash and where Kren was going in England. Could it be that Kren, spotting that he was closely shadowed and unable to shake off his followers, remembered in desperation the Intertatry agent and passed over whatever compromising document he carried in his briefcase, persuading him on some excuse to deliver it?

She threw in a mention of Brussels but he did not respond. Instead he announced that he was off to Prague—proof to her that he was of vital interest and that any knowledge he had would be mercilessly extracted from him. The result might be deadly to this club which played with unreliable soldiers. There was nothing for it but to claim that she herself worked for Bridge Holdings and to tempt this innocent—almost certainly innocent—into returning to England in her company. She and she alone could explain to this Mr Spring, the club's agent or correspondent in England, all that Rivac had either muddled or did not know.

Chapter Three

Rivac had hoped that his quick interview with the captain of the cross-channel ferry would be the end of the matter; but no such luck. On arrival at Dover, Harbour Police came aboard and neatly segregated the witnesses while allowing the rest of the passengers to leave. A passport on the larger segment of the deceased had established that his name was Rippmann and his nationality East German. He had travelled from Brussels.

The lady who had seen Miss Fodor slide into Rippmann was quickly dismissed and Miss Fodor herself, who very frankly admitted the momentary contact, was at once exonerated after the First Officer had pointed out that considering the height of the rail no mere bump could have sent the man overboard. If he had not in some way been lifted, he must have leaned far out and overbalanced—perhaps indeed reaching to catch his dentures.

When it came to Rivac's turn to give evidence, the point which most interested the superintendent who questioned him was whether he and Miss Fodor had known each other before sailing; to that he could honestly reply that they had not. Then the interrogation kept pegging away at where he had stood when he saw Rippmann still at the rail and what his own movements were thereafter. He had the impression that his questioner reserved judgment on the steward's statement and was more interested in the time of his arrival on deck—just before or long before. The two Yorkshire drunks, red-faced and belligerent when confronted by police, had turned on each other, one backing Rivac and the other the barman.

Could it have been suicide? he was asked. That seemed to imply that the police accepted him, barman or not, as a truthful witness. He jumped at the way of escape, saying that the passenger had looked extremely ill and that in such a crossing one became indifferent to death or at least to the normal precautions necessary to keep alive. He knew at once that he had overdone it there. The superintendent pressed more severely for the time of his arrival on deck, and Rivac remembered the captain's rather pointed question: ‘So you were all alone with this man for a moment?' He was told that it might be necessary to get in touch with him again and was asked for his address in England. He replied that he did not yet know it and presented his Lille business card.

When Harbour Police had finished with him he joined Miss Fodor in the entrance hall ashore. Passport Control gave them no trouble. He was surprised to see her pass through the channel for aliens. In spite of her slight and appealing accent he had unreasonably expected her to possess British nationality, probably as a child refugee from Hungary in 1956. It seemed odd that a Hungarian should be employed by any firm so unmistakeably British as Bridge Holdings.

Having missed the boat train they arrived in London three hours late—too late, she said, to catch Mr Thompson at the office. She refused to have dinner with Rivac on the grounds that she needed a long rest at home to recover from her ordeal, and arranged to call for him at the Grosvenor Hotel next morning at half past nine. Naturally enough she was not her calm, collected self.

Rivac slept well, having nothing on his conscience but a white lie and looking forward to at least a morning with this most attractive and sensible sprig of Europe. He hoped that by then she would have recovered her poise. He felt—and was ashamed of it—some resentment against the late Rippmann for managing to fall overboard, thus exposing Miss Fodor to slight unpleasantness and himself to a shade of suspicion besides delaying their departure from Dover and making his evening session with this Mr Thompson impossible. He also blamed the deceased for not knowing his way around. It was pointless to travel from Brussels to London by sea when he had an airport handy. Rivac vaguely wondered why he had.

Miss Fodor turned up soon after half past nine, exploiting her good looks, he thought, a little blatantly. He preferred his windswept companion of the boat; but, after all, this was London and a young woman had to be what business men expected of her.

‘All ready?' he asked.

‘All ready. And when the taxi drops us at Lower Belgrave Street you should ask for Mr Spring again and then we'll go up to Mr Thompson afterwards.'

Rivac was puzzled. The office of Bridge Holdings was not more than two minutes walk from the hotel, and as she worked there she must know it. He had only the lightest of hand baggage and she had none, so why the taxi? He ran through in his mind their telephone conversation of the previous evening but couldn't exactly analyse what was bothering him. He sat down again in the hotel lounge and she joined him with a pretty flounce of the skirt.

‘Miss Fodor, excuse me asking but do you really work at Bridge Holdings?'

‘Well, Mr Thompson has a lot to do with them.'

‘Then surely we should go directly to him?'

‘I don't think that after all he's going to be much good.'

‘He does of course exist?'

She hesitated while Rivac nervously expected to be snubbed, and then answered with a smile in which there was no shade of shame:

‘No, he doesn't.'

‘Then may I ask how you knew about my visit to Bridge Holdings?' Rivac demanded with as much severity as he could manage towards such an entrancing young liar.

‘You told me yourself,' she retorted. ‘I said to you that English friends knew Karel Kren as Lukash and you answered: 'Damn it, they didn't!'

‘Please explain this Lukash.'

‘If Mr Kren told you to show the brochures to Herbert Spring at Bridge Holdings and mention the name of Lukash it must be familiar to them.'

‘But if Mr Thompson doesn't exist, who does employ you, Miss Fodor?'

‘Nobody. At least not this week.'

‘Well, frankly, I am not going to Bridge Holdings to make a fool of myself again.'

‘You would rather have gone to Prague?'

‘Of course. I am sorry, but I shall return to Lille at once.'

‘Do you know what will happen to you if you accept the invitation to Prague? You will be interrogated by the KGB until they find out why Kren called on you, what he wanted you to do and what your relations with him were.'

‘But I haven't any!'

‘All the worse for you! When they get nothing out of you because you have nothing to say they will put it down to your courage, Mr Rivac. And after being treated for courage they couldn't allow you to return to Lille in that state, so you might be regrettably run over by a bus like Karel Kren.'

‘Nonsense! My dear Miss Fodor, you're making this up! Karel Kren was a trusted member of the Party.'

‘Which makes it far worse.'

‘And nobody at all pushed him under a bus,' Rivac went on. ‘If it wasn't an accident it was suicide. He told me that he had an ulcer and couldn't stand pain.'

‘He had no ulcer, Mr Rivac. And you too—if you knew what was coming to you—might commit suicide when you were terribly afraid you would talk under torture.'

That was impressive. Rivac did not in the least want to be mixed up in any such melodrama, whether all invented or with a grain of truth in it. He said so, and added sternly:

‘Now where do you live in London?'

‘I don't. I found a hotel last night.'

‘But where do you come in on all this?'

‘It was my job to see that Kren got safely through to London and to report if he didn't. That's all. I lost him in Brussels and then I read how he died in Lille.'

‘You are . . . you are somebody's agent?'

‘I was thinking to myself last night that a stupid security policeman would probably file me as a beautiful spy.'

Rivac, calming down, courteously remarked that he'd certainly be half right.

‘Thank you, Mr Rivac.'

She made a little bow and held the compliment between finger and thumb as if to examine it. She had the grace of a ballerina. He remembered how erect she had carried herself dancing down the deck, the toss of her skirt as she sat down at the beginning of this awkward interview and now this humorous gesture of head and hand. Beautiful? That was too monumental a word for her. Pretty? Of course. Debonair? Decidedly, holding herself as if she owed a duty to the world to walk through it with grace.

‘Then who the devil are you working for?'

‘Call it our Europe. I think that's true.'

‘Miss Fodor,' he replied, refusing the bait, ‘you're on your own. I am not going to accompany you to Bridge Holdings.'

‘I thought all French were gallant.'

‘I was brought up in England.'

‘I thought all English were sports.'

‘What's Europe got to do with it anyway?'

‘I can't tell you that.'

‘
Merde, alors
!'

‘
D'accord, M Rivac. Il y en a beaucoup
!'

‘Tell me why the hell I should take you to Bridge Holdings!'

‘Because they must know about Lukash.'

‘But it's just a holding company for export businesses.'

‘Suppose that's cover for something else?' she suggested.

‘Then we'll both end up in gaol as two foreigners fiddling with state secrets. And we'll be lucky if they don't put us through the hoops again over the late Mr Rippmann.'

‘I don't mind. If they must, they must.'

Wide-open eyes expressed her surrender to cruel necessity.

‘Well, let's hope Harbour Police have enough,' he said, getting up to accompany her and, he felt, leaving common sense behind in the empty chair.

They walked round to 48 Lower Belgrave Street and Rivac rang the front door bell. As before he was asked by the panel to state his business. He said weakly that he was afraid it was Mr Rivac again to see Mr Spring.

Upstairs the door was opened by the same clerk or manservant. Mr Spring popped out of his office in the same way.

‘Come in, come in, Mr Rivac! And this is?'

‘Miss Fodor, a foreign friend—well—er—a Hungarian.'

Rivac observed that this time the retainer had accompanied them into the room and that neither of them had so far been asked to sit down. Mr Spring, though as genial as ever, appeared a person of more authority: the Managing Director himself rather than the Public Relations man whom Rivac had conjectured.

‘Now I was favourably impressed by you on your first visit, Mr Rivac, and we agreed there must have been some mistake. What brings you back again?'

‘It's still this Lukash. He's probably a friend of Karel Kren, not Kren himself. And this lady confirms it.'

‘But I still do not know Karel Kren.'

‘I just couldn't make her believe it,' Rivac said.

‘Where are you staying, Miss Fodor?'

‘Nowhere. I shall go back today.'

‘To Hungary?'

‘To Switzerland.'

‘And what was the purpose of your visit?'

‘I was sure you would be interested in Lukash and the message which Kren was trying to deliver.'

Her hands apologised for having taken such a leap in the dark, while a tilt of the head suggested that even so they would land safely on the other side. Mr Spring was unimpressed.

‘I have already told Mr Rivac that we are not. Rivac, how did she get you into this?'

‘She thought she could explain to you better than I.'

‘Did you know this Kren, Miss Fodor?'

‘Yes, I think his message was somehow in the Intertatry brochure of their new engine because he could not send it through Lukash. And then he was trapped and committed suicide.'

‘I see. Merely a case for psychiatry perhaps. But I had better warn you, Miss Fodor—if you are quite innocent—that little games of this sort are liable to be investigated by Security. Now, Mr Rivac, I can appreciate that Iron Curtain contracts offer—well, all kinds of attractions. But my advice as one plain business man to another is to leave them severely alone and stick to your profitable small agencies. I am sorry that I cannot help you. I have no knowledge of this Kren or any Lukash.'

The manservant—on second thoughts he looked too physically fit to be a clerk—saw them all the way down to the street and out.

Rivac walked aimlessly up Buckingham Palace Road with a silent Zia at his side. He felt utterly useless and frustrated. What he had expected from Herbert Spring he could not exactly say, but certainly some relief from the labyrinth of futilities into which this damned girl had led him. No, not damned girl. A bit intimidating and too sure of herself. As the secretary he had first thought her she'd drive her boss to drink. But, well . . . luminous and impertinent as a star in a storm sky.

‘Kren got the name wrong, Miss Fodor,' he said.

‘You're sure of Bridge Holdings?'

‘Absolutely.'

She too was lost in intangibles. Her experience of western offices and business methods was too limited.

‘What did you think of them?' she asked.

‘I don't know. In England a holding company can have quite a small place as its registered office. Bridge Holdings—I think they might have very wide interests and official backing.'

‘Kren was not the sort of man to make a mistake. Lukash must have told him to go there.'

‘Who the devil
is
Lukash?'

It was obvious to her that Lukash, before he was caught, controlled in some way the channel of communication, but even so the facts did not fit together. If he was in a position to give the London address where Kren should deliver his message, he could equally well have advised the organisation to send a courier to Brussels. Kren could then have passed over his information and avoided the risk of flying to London.

She was about to answer that she did not know; but on second thoughts this agent from Lille, nervous and full of goodwill, deserved more generous treatment than that.

‘Lukash has been arrested and is probably dead.'

‘But look here, Miss Fodor! People are dying all over the place! This is absurd. Nothing's worth it. The sooner we get out of here, the better.'