Prague Spring

44

There’s a noise in the city, an undercurrent like the coming of a flood. And then the immediate fact of someone knocking on their door and calling them to wake up. The phone is ringing in the other room. James can hear Zdeněk answering, speaking rapidly in Czech to whoever’s on the line.

‘Something’s happening,’ Jitka calls. She edges the door open. Her face, pale with anxiety, hangs in the shadow of the opening. Beside him Ellie emerges from the cocoon of her sleeping bag, looking confused. ‘What time is it?’

‘Early.’

‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’

‘The barbarians,’ Jitka says. ‘The barbarians are coming.’ Which seems uncommonly dramatic, poetic almost, words from the hand of Cavafy. But in Cavafy’s poem the barbarians didn’t come and everyone in the city was left in a kind of limbo, not knowing what to do. Here it is different. The barbarians have actually come and still no one knows what to do. ‘Russians,’ Jitka explains more coherently. ‘They’ve invaded the country. Soldiers, thousands of them, tanks, planes.’

In the next room Zdeněk puts the phone down, calls out something and leaves the flat, slamming the door behind him. James and Ellie are scrabbling for their clothes. Disaster is in the air, or in the ground, shaking the foundations. What do the tremors presage? Earthquake or tornado? Jitka is on the phone now. Rusi, she says to whoever is on the other end, rusi.

Then she’s asking if they’re ready because she has to go – unless they want to stay here. Maybe that would be better. But no, they’ll go with her. So, barely understanding what the hell’s going on, they follow her downstairs and out through the main door onto the pavement.

Dawn paints the street in the pallid colours of panic. There are people around, walking in the same direction, as though drawn to the epicentre of an earthquake, perhaps to rescue people from the rubble. Words are exchanged with passers-by. The tone is an untidy mixture of panic and anger. They feel like children being barely tolerated by an adult.

‘Where are we going?’ Ellie asks.

Jitka is distracted by what she has heard and what’s rumoured, saying things they half-catch and don’t understand. ‘Václavské náměstí,’ she says, and then, a concession to foreigners: ‘Wenceslas Square.’

‘But what the fuck’s going on?’ James demands. Then, turning a corner, they discover what the fuck is going on because it is there, a presence across the end of the street, a metallic alien thing amongst the nineteenth-century façades of the New Town. A tank. James thinks of The War of the Worlds, of Martian tripods tramping through London streets. Another part of him thinks arthropod, then reptile turning its empty gaze (half-blind, peering through small openings in the carapace) up the street and pointing its proboscis straight at them, the muzzle forming a perfect O. Then T-54, he thinks. This from another part of his mind, the part that used to play war-games. Surely it is not about to fire. That would be ridiculous. But still he shouts ‘Move!’, grabs Jitka’s hand and pushes Ellie in the back. They run across the street and press themselves into a doorway while the turret turns and the proboscis shifts back and forth as though sniffing the air, perhaps even trying to work out where the humans have gone. Then a remarkable thing happens: a hatch on the top of the machine opens and a head emerges, cased in a black leather helmet. The head looks round at the buildings and the watching people, then takes a moment to consult a map before looking back at the buildings and then down to the map. The man, the arthropod itself, the reptile, the T-54 battle tank and all who travel in her, has lost its way.

People gather, some just to watch in sullen silence, others to shout. The smell of diesel exhaust and despair fills the air. The figure in the turret takes no notice and after a moment drops back inside. With a roar and a cloud of black smoke the beast shifts, its tracks screeching on the tarmac and pavement. Figures emerge from a side street and run round it, like dogs at a bear-baiting. From somewhere out of sight a glass bottle arcs through the air and smashes against the flank of the beast. A blossom of flame erupts below the hull with a low wumph of exploding petrol. The machine bellows in anger, grinds kerbstones to dust and roars out of sight.

Václavské náměstí, Wenceslas Square, with dawn leaching between the buildings and flooding the space. The great sloping boulevard is filling with people. Trams are stopped, while crowds gather, talking, wondering what the hell is going on when what is going on is plain for all to see as tanks gouge their way up the slope and arrange themselves as though for battle. Saint Wenceslas dominates the scene from his pedestal in front of the museum at the top end of the square, but even he, at the moment of greatest need, when he is meant to emerge from the Blaník mountain, is powerless before the armour. There is the stench of diesel, clouds of black smoke as the tanks manoeuvre, the awful clangour of their tracks. A kiosk sells bread rolls and sausages while young men and women argue with soldiers.

‘Why have you come here?’

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Do you even know where you are?’

The soldiers have stock answers to hand as though they’ve been on a language course and have painstakingly learned the phrases without a glimmer of comprehension:

We are here to maintain order.

We are here to suppress the counter-revolution.

We are obeying orders.

We come as friends.

A whole litany of platitude.

A youth appears with a sheet daubed with the slogan идите домой! and manages to drape it on the rear of a tank. People cheer.

‘What does it mean?’ asks Ellie.

Jitka provides the translation. ‘Idite domoy. Go home. But they won’t, will they? They’re here for good.’

The air is stained with sound and fumes. From somewhere comes a sharp burst of gunfire. The crowd utters a collective gasp, as though there is a sudden shortage of oxygen. Some people run, others stand still. Perhaps a moving target is easier to spot than a motionless one. But the shots aren’t repeated, just the grinding of the tanks and the gruff sound of their engines. Others come into the square bringing news, so Jitka says, of the Central Committee headquarters under siege, of leaders being rounded up, of Dubček himself being led away to be shot. Someone places a transistor radio on the ground and a small crowd gathers round to hear the news. Ellie and James stand to one side, not wishing to intrude. It’s like a traffic accident where you can feel the horror but don’t know any of the victims, a tragedy that belongs to other people. Lenka is there. They don’t see her arrive, but she’s there, talking with Jitka, talking with others, giving a distracted wave of acknowledgement to Ellie and James.

More tanks appear, scouring the cobblestones up the slope towards the museum at the head, followed by a cry of ‘Radio!’, and people begin to move up the slope, fragile humans following the iron beasts. ‘The radio station is still broadcasting,’ Jitka explains. ‘It’s on Vinohradská beyond the museum. Who knows what will happen?’

There is noise from beyond the museum, the sound of metal, the rattle of machine-gun fire. A helicopter flies overhead, a great locust-like thing without markings but painted dun brown. Incongruously, the transistor radio on the ground nearby is broadcasting exactly the same sound – the gunfire, the clash of metal and the helicopter all sounding behind the calm voice of the announcer. Jitka attempts to translate – the studio is under attack and may be invaded but for the moment the staff will continue broadcasting the news as long as possible. When you hear unfamiliar voices on the radio, the announcer says, do not believe them!

Lenka hurries over. She’s distracted, as though they are unexpected mourners appearing at a family funeral, irrelevant to the real drama. ‘You must go,’ she tells them. ‘This is no place for you. People are killed.’

‘We want to show solidarity,’ Ellie replies, and suddenly Lenka is angry, as though the wrong thing has been said at the funeral, the wrong friendship mentioned, a previous relationship referred to, a hidden embarrassment exposed to the explicit light of day.

‘Just go! This is not student protest. Not banners outside the American embassy in London. Not even tear gas and throwing stones in Paris. This is rape and you must not be here. It is disgusting to watch. So now go. Go to your embassy and ask for safety. Go and speak with Sam Wareham and tell him Lenka sent you. But go!’

She turns and hurries away, half-running towards the museum at the top of the square where the tanks are lined up, leaving Ellie smarting as though she has been suddenly and unaccountably struck in the face. As if to confirm the words of warning a battered lorry roars into the square from the direction of the river. The vehicle is crowded with young men and on the bonnet sits a youth holding aloft a flag, a Czechoslovak flag smeared with blood. The watchers make noise, something between a cry of despair and a shout of triumph, as though spilt blood is a catharsis of some kind.

‘Go,’ Jitka says. ‘This is not safe. Go back to the flat and get your things. If they find English here…’ She gestures helplessly and turns to follow Lenka.

When Ellie moves to follow James grabs at her. She shakes him off. ‘I’m not fucking running away,’ she yells. The moment of indecision is over: she hurries after the other women. James follows as well. Pushing through the crowd up the sloping boulevard, there is the sensation of things moving out of control, of chaos blundering onto the scene. Lenka is ahead of them, taller than others around her. From somewhere a shot rings out but no one falls, nothing happens, the people just move on up the square towards the national museum whose soot-blackened façade is pitted with white scars. Tanks stand like boulders in the stream of people. There’s shouting. Stones are thrown. People are running around the side of the museum into Vinohradská. Further on, buses and lorries have been parked across the roadway as a barricade. Smoke and dust drift over the scene. Flags wave, a nation of flags, used to being called out in unison on patriotic parades but now jeering and derisive; the unison is in the chaos. A Soviet flag burns. Careless crowds confront tanks before the dull concrete building that bears its name across its façade: Československý Rozhlas.

There’s Lenka, pushing past a bus. Jitka runs towards her, and Ellie and James follow, blindly, not knowing what to do. A tank grinds and turns, its tracks screeching on the paving stones, its gun sweeping in an arc. Lenka looks back at them, then falls. Jitka and Ellie don’t see it – they’re watching the tank – but James does. A moment acid-etched into his memory, cut into the neurones and the synapses even as the rest of the morning fades into a uniform blur of movement and noise. Lenka pushing between the bus and a car, then falling.

There are screams. But there are screams everywhere. People huddle round. The tank moves forward and rams into the bus, like a spoilt child fed up with his toys. The smash and tear of armour against thin steel as the bus pitches over. People are lifting a figure out of the way, screaming at the smashing tank, scurrying with their burden to the side of the street to some kind of safety in the lee of a building. There are flames at the barricade now, a truck on fire, its fuel leaking out and blazing. Soldiers, civilians scatter away. A tank, engulfed in flames, smashes forward in some kind of animal panic, then reverses to back out of the fire. And Lenka lies on the pavement with people crowding round her and Jitka on her knees beside her and Ellie and James standing by helplessly.

There’s blood. Someone tries to staunch a wound behind her ear. Someone else folds a coat and eases it beneath her head. Words fly around. James makes out ambulance and doktor. A siren sounds and someone appears with a stretcher. They bundle Lenka onto the stretcher and carry her down a side street to where an ambulance is waiting, its rear doors open. Jitka follows, turning to Ellie and James and shouting, ‘Go! Go back to the flat! I’ll telephone when I can.’ She climbs in after the stretcher, the doors slam and the vehicle moves off, its siren wailing.

Ellie and James make their way through the city, a frightened city, a city with the air sucked out of it by the vacuum of Wenceslas Square and Vinohradská. They ask themselves pointless questions – Was she alive? How did it happen? Did she hit her head? – questions with no answer. The occasional car drives by with people waving flags from the open windows. People run, going nowhere in particular. The barbarians have actually come and nothing anyone has expected has come to pass. The occasional sign of normality – a man sweeping the pavement, two women arguing about something, a queue at a shop beneath a sign that says potraviny – lends an air of strangeness to the morning, as though all these people are playing a part in a film and merely waiting for the cameras to roll. From the queue someone shouts out to them. James spreads his hands helplessly. ‘Anglický,’ he calls back.

English? What are English doing here? People in the queue stare after them as they hurry past, Fando and Lis hurrying through the streets of Tar, trying to make sense of it all. Somewhere they take a wrong turning and emerge onto the embankment of the river, into sudden sunlight with a view across the water to the Malá Strana and the wooded hill of Petřín. A convoy of army lorries grinds past, filled with soldiers. Their features are vaguely Mongol, as though they might have come from the further reaches of the Soviet empire, the endless steppe of central Asia rather than the crowded buildings of a European city. Passers-by shout abuse but they take no notice. Further on three armoured personnel carriers are parked on the pavement surrounded by a group of young men, arguing with the crew members. A tram rattles by, passengers staring out at the parked armoured vehicles and the arguments while Ellie and James stand on the other side of the road, on the other side of the gulf of language, understanding nothing. But they understand well enough when the argument round the armoured car becomes heated, a protester climbing on the front of the vehicle and gesturing with his fist. A Russian soldier lowers his rifle and points it at his tormentor’s head. Is it an empty threat, a piece of absurd bravado? Theatre, perhaps, the one actor shaking his fist, the other pointing his weapon. And then these things happen. They seem to happen simultaneously, although logic says that there is a sequence of cause and effect. But still they appear simultaneous: the report of the gun, a deafening crack close to James and Ellie, the sting of stone beside James’s head, a scream, people scattering away from the shooter. James grabs Ellie’s hand and pulls her round the corner into the cover of the buildings. He feels a sense of detachment, as though none of this is happening to him. Yet when he touches the side of his face his hand comes away with blood on it.

Ellie gives a cry of alarm. ‘God almighty. Are you all right?’ Her voice sounds muffled to him, as though she is speaking underwater.

‘What the fuck’s happening?’ he asks, bewildered. He’s shivering now, as though with cold. First Lenka and now him. Ellie’s being motherly, reaching up and moving his hand away so she can see better, producing a handkerchief and dabbing at his cheek. ‘It’s just a graze. A bit of stone or something.’

His right ear sings in protest at whatever has been done to it. In the distance there’s more gunfire, the rapid rattle of a machine gun, while out of sight round the corner the armoured cars have started their engines and are driving away, people shouting after them.

She takes his arm. ‘Come on, let’s get back to the flat.’

45

The embassy was in an uproar. Phones rang incessantly. Teleprinters chuttered out reams of paper. Secretaries scurried from office to office with flimsies to be read, to be acted on, to be contradicted within minutes. Meetings were called one moment, to be cancelled the next. London wanted to know everything when there was nothing to know beyond what Czechoslovak radio reported. Furthermore – insult heaped upon injury – the embassy lay at the head of a short cul-de-sac and access was now blocked by a Russian armoured car lying across the entrance like a beached boat across the mouth of a harbour.

‘This sort of behaviour is intolerable,’ the ambassador decided, on being told of the offending vehicle, and ordered the Head of Chancery to demand that they leave at once.

Eric Whittaker put his head round the door and cut short Sam’s efforts to write a situation report for London. ‘Do be a dear and go and tell them that they aren’t really welcome. H.E. feels a point must be made and you’re so much better with the languages than anyone else.’

‘You mean he asked for me by name? How flattering.’

‘Not exactly. But you did seem the perfect man for the job.’

So Sam went down into the courtyard, duly had the gates opened and stepped out from the enclave of Britishness onto the cobblestones of the Malá Strana. Under the iron gaze of Russian guns he walked down the cul-de-sac to the armoured car.

There were two soldiers sitting on top of the vehicle. They wore no identifying insignia and neither did their vehicle, but it was plain enough what they were.

‘Chto zdes’ proiskhodit?’ he asked.

They showed no surprise at being addressed in their own language, just watched him with a gaze as indifferent as the stare of the assault rifles they levelled at him. Like a puppet appearing on stage, a grim-faced official from the interior ministry came round the vehicle. What did the Englishman want?

The Englishman smiled. He wanted to know what was going on here. It appeared that the embassy was under some kind of siege by the Russian army, and Her Majesty’s ambassador would like to see matters revert to how they had been before. It was the duty of the Czechoslovak authorities to protect diplomatic premises in their country.

The official didn’t smile back, for this was plainly not a smiling matter. The fraternal allies were here to protect the embassy from counter-revolutionary troublemakers.

‘But there are no counter-revolutionary troublemakers,’ Sam said, looking round as though curious to see if counter-revolutionary troublemakers were skulking around the nearest corner.

‘That shows how efficient our fraternal allies are.’

It sounded like the punchline to a joke. There followed a moment of stasis, each waiting for the other to make the next move. Sam offered a cigarette and waited for the moment of temptation – he could see it in the other man’s eyes – to pass and the offer to be declined. ‘Look, my ambassador’s on my back,’ he said, in a confidential tone that suggested they both knew what a pain in the arse such senior people could be. ‘Couldn’t you just move round the corner, out of sight? The guards could be here, of course. Just move the vehicle.’

The man’s expression did not change. ‘We have our orders. They’ – he meant the Russians – ‘have their orders. Your ambassador will have to talk to the relevant authority.’

Sam nodded. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it? Who exactly is the relevant authority at the moment?’

He glanced regretfully at the packet of cigarettes, slipped it back into his pocket and turned to walk back to the relative security of Her Majesty’s domain, all the while conscious of eyes and assault rifles levelled at him. Back inside the fortress of the British embassy he looked in at Whittaker’s office. ‘The Russians aren’t going anywhere for the moment, Eric. Sorry about that.’

Whittaker looked resigned. ‘We made the effort.’

Sam went back to his own desk. Through the window he could see smoke rising over the Old Town, in the area of Wenceslas Square. That’s where the radio reports were originating, in the street behind the National Museum, with the sound of gunfire coming across the transmission as background to the announcer’s voice. Was Lenka there? The agony of uncertainty, of hope pitched against likelihood. She’d be there, in the thick of things. He tried to recall the moment of her leaving. How had the mood been? What had been said? Not just the words but the emotions that informed them. But memory was a deceptive thing, an unreliable witness.

He picked up the phone again and rang the flat. The two guests sounded more or less all right. They wanted to know what was going on but he couldn’t give them much information. The Red Army is occupying the city. That was about it. And what should they do? Just sit tight.

He put the phone down and went back to drafting the report for Eric to send to London. It was a chaos of changing news and unconfirmed rumour. One of his contacts said Dubček and his lieutenants had been arrested. Another report even said they’d already been spirited out of the country. Yet the National Assembly was in continuous session and the radio was broadcasting Dubček’s words appealing for people to go to work as normal. And the president? The old man, silver-haired and pink-faced, a general who had fought alongside the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, had delivered an address over the radio calling on his fellow citizens to show calm and dignity. ‘A complicated situation has arisen in our country,’ he had told them with magnificent understatement.

Sam came to some sort of conclusion, took the draft report to Whittaker’s office and handed it over. ‘That’s as good as I can manage for now, Eric. If you don’t send it in the next half-hour it’ll be out of date. Now I think I’ll go out for a while, if you don’t mind.’

Whittaker looked startled. ‘Out? But I need you here.’

‘I’ve spent most of the time listening to the radio and the rest trying to ring people who won’t answer the phone. Anyone can do that. I’d be better employed finding out what’s really going on.’

‘Well for God’s sake be careful. We don’t want a diplomatic incident to go with the rest of the mess.’

He walked out of the embassy and down towards the armoured car at the end of the cul-de-sac. Was there a flicker of recognition from the soldiers as he edged past? Probably not. He dropped by his flat to see how the musicians were doing and found them in the sitting room with the television on with the sound turned down, and the radio tuned to the BBC World Service. They had the look of refugees in the middle of a war, sheltering from the bombs, fearful of rape and murder.

‘What’s happening?’ Egorkin asked.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

Nadia seemed to have been crying. She shook her head in disbelief as images flickered across the television screen of civilians throwing stones at tanks. ‘It is terrible,’ she kept repeating. ‘Just terrible.’

Egorkin said, ‘The phone has been ringing, but I didn’t answer it.’ His expression was anxious, as though he hoped to curry favour.

Sam closed his eyes in something like despair. ‘It might have been important.’

‘But then they might know we’re here.’

Anger flared. Sam almost shouted, almost lost his temper. No one gives a fuck about you now! he almost yelled. Instead he said, ‘You’re right,’ and picked up the phone to dial Jitka’s number. The only lifeline he had. But the phone at the other end just rang and rang in an empty flat that he couldn’t picture.

46

They climb the stairs, out of the noise and confusion and fear of the streets. Somewhere above them a phone is ringing. Is it Jitka’s? But as they pass the floors it stops, and when they reach the flat it is a haven of peace and quiet with only the distant sound of a siren breaking the calm. They close the door behind them and turn the key. Through one of the dormer windows James can see smoke rising over the roofs. He and Ellie don’t discuss what to do. Somehow it has been decided by a kind of communication that operates beneath the level of conscious thought. She begins packing her things away, rolling up her sleeping bag, collecting her stuff from the bathroom, while he rings the embassy and asks to speak to Mr Wareham. In placid tones – the British in a crisis – an embassy voice asks if he is seeking consular advice, in which case he should phone the consulate on—

‘I don’t want the consulate. I want to speak directly to Mr Wareham. Samuel Wareham,’ he adds, suddenly remembering the posh guy’s first name. ‘My name’s James Borthwick. Tell him Lenka told me to contact him. It’s about her.’

There’s a moment’s hesitation. He can sense the operator wondering about the importance or otherwise of this unknown voice with its Northern accent. ‘Hold the line please.’ There’s a pause. Silence on the line, just the rush of static in the earphone. Then the sound of the operator again. ‘I’m afraid Mr Wareham is unavailable at the moment. May I take a message?’

47

At the entrance to the Charles Bridge there was a Russian checkpoint. Only the day before TV crews had been filming that British pop group, with everyone basking in the fiction that the country was in the process of joining Western pop culture; now half a dozen Russian soldiers were rifling people’s bags and searching them for offensive items. But the procedure was less to do with security, more plain highway robbery: they were taking cameras, pens, wristwatches, anything that might have pecuniary value. A young soldier – a mere boy – advanced on Sam as he moved to go through. Sam waved his diplomatic pass. ‘Britanskoye posol’stvo,’ he said. British embassy. The soldier hesitated. Standing downwind of him Sam caught the sour scent of stale sweat. There was a brief conversation between the soldier and his officer before Sam was waved through onto the bridge.

The bridge itself was already daubed with graffiti. Red stars and black swastikas in intimate conjunction, BREZHNEV = HITLER chalked on the parapet in case you’d missed the point. In one place a Cyrillic scrawl exhorted the Russians to ИДИТЕ ДОМОЙ! GO HOME! On either side of the bridge the embankments had become a tank park, Soviet armour lying like a great, articulated reptile alongside the water’s edge. Gunfire punctuated the morning, while from the crowded buildings of the Old Town came a noise like the roar of a football crowd. Sam went on, past the statue of the emperor Charles IV, hung now with a Czechoslovak flag, past the incurious gaze of soldiers, towards whatever was happening in the heart of the city. The streets, the squares were rancid with the smell of the occupiers – diesel fumes, hot metal, unwashed bodies. The act of walking, hurrying, almost running, distracted him from his feelings, which were visceral, a sensation of vomit, a feeling of fear lying just below the sternum and spreading up the spine to his brain.

Memories of that walk became confused in retrospect, so that he could no longer plot the exact route he took through the streets of the Old Town. There was the incongruity of tanks in narrow streets, of armoured vehicles confronting trams, of soldiers ringed by arguing men and women. Roads were blocked. Trams tipped over as barricades. A bus driven into a shop front. Smoke and dust eddying in the narrow spaces. Groups of youths waved banners while a motorbike drove past distributing copies of Rudé Právo. Bullets pockmarked buildings. Façades were smashed and broken stonework lay on the pavements. The National Museum at the head of Wenceslas Square, dark grey with urban soot, bore white spots where shells had hit. On Vinohradská there was a litter of overturned vehicles blocking access to the radio station. Tanks had ground their way through the debris, spewing clouds of exhaust fumes. Guns fired. Boys argued with tanks. Flags waved. Girls screamed.

At one street corner an argument was going on between a dozen youths and a young Russian officer. Their common language was an amalgam of Czech and Russian. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘We came to help.’

‘We don’t need your help. You can see that. So go back home.’

‘We were invited.’

‘By whom? Not by the people.’

‘By your leaders.’

‘Dubček didn’t invite you. Císař didn’t invite you. Svoboda didn’t invite you. So what are you doing here?’

‘We came to help.’

So it went on, a circular litany with no end in sight.

As he stood in the midst of this chaos, Sam’s fear gave way to a curious sense of detachment, as though the ferment all around were happening in some other, parallel world. These tanks, these soldiers, the blunt fact of their presence had all been inevitable. What had people expected? What had Lenka and her friends, with their fifteen minutes of freedom, imagined would happen? This was reality. The last eight months had been but a dream.

A group of protesters walked past chanting Dubček’s name. They parted and flowed round him like water round an obstacle, like the river that had flowed round Lenka as she stood there in the stream. A gunshot rang out. People flinched and scattered, but Sam had learned from his national service basic training that you never hear the report of the shot that hits you, so that particular bullet, echoing between the buildings, was safe for him at least. He had never felt so indifferent to risk.

He walked on. The steel rasp of tank tracks ground paving stones to dust. Sunlight through smoke. The smell of oil. A fire blazed beneath an armoured car while the crew tried to beat out the flames, just as people would try to beat out the flames of Jan Palach’s body in five months’ time in more or less the same place. A passing motorcyclist shouted, ‘Take these!’ and thrust a bundle of leaflets at him. He walked on, handing the leaflets out to anyone he passed, not really caring what the leaflet said – the simple act was enough. Was this what combat was like: fear transcended to become something close to euphoria? He came across a young man also distributing leaflets. There was an absurd hiatus during which they compared leaflets and found them to be different. ‘That’s good, then,’ the youth decided. He wore a black leather jacket and jeans. His hair was down to his collar. A badge of some kind. ‘You German?’ he asked.

‘English.’

‘You speak good Czech.’

A lorry roared past filled with kids yelling and waving the Czechoslovak flag, chanting Dubček, Dubček, Dubček! ‘Oh, one thing. You don’t know a girl called Konečková, do you? Lenka Konečková?’

A frown. ‘I’ve heard of her. A journalist?’

‘She writes a bit. And speaks on the radio sometimes. Have you seen her?’

The youth shook his head, indicating the chaos all around. ‘I wouldn’t know her by sight anyway.’

‘Blonde, tall.’

The youth laughed. ‘Aren’t they all?’

Sam walked on, handing people leaflets until his supply vanished. What else to do? On the embankment there were groups of people arguing with the tank crews. Slogans had been chalked on the steel hulls – swastikas, hangmen, the exhortation to ‘go home’ in Russian, in Czech, even, presumably with an eye on the news media, in English.

‘When’s that guy from the embassy going to ring back?’

‘Why don’t you ring him again?’

‘Because he’s too busy to take my call.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘That’s what she said. Anyway, maybe he already knows.’

They have been bickering like this ever since they came back to the flat. What else is there to do? Once it was different. Once there was that mutual attraction of a kind, but it was always a fragile thing, and now they are kept together by no more than the kind of tension that keeps oil droplets together in water – a shared reaction to the unintelligible world around them. Outside in the streets people argue with tanks in a language they cannot comprehend; here in the cramped living room the TV shows a serious young woman talking to the camera in a blizzard of incomprehensible Czech. Whenever the transmission goes off the air, James retunes it to another channel and the picture returns. The announcer appears to be sitting in a room with bare walls, except for the Czechoslovak flag that has been roughly draped behind her. Every now and again she is interrupted by poor-quality film of tanks in the street. A bus lies on its side and one of the tanks goes at it like a petulant child, bashing it again and again, trying to climb over. People jeer from the sidelines. The building beyond the fallen bus has československý rozhlas across the front. They wonder whether a figure, caught for an instant on the edge of the picture, is Lenka. They wonder where she is now.

Ellie says, ‘We can’t just sit here on our bums.’

But James perceives the world differently. On his bum is precisely where he wants to be. He has a headache and his right ear is still singing from the crack of the bullet that almost killed him. Sounds are muffled on that side, as though he might have a perforated eardrum. It’s like observing the world from inside a glass tank, sounds coming to him deadened and occluded. ‘The embassy said stay put.’ He puts on an exaggerated accent, like the Queen doing her Christmas broadcast. ‘We are recommending all British citizens remain indoors if they possibly can. We will inform you of developments as soon as we are able.’

‘Well you can stay if you like. But I want a breath of fresh air.’ She gets up decisively.

‘Don’t be stupid, Ellie. You can’t go out by yourself.’

They argue about that, too. Why can’t she go out? He could if he wished. Girls against boys. But he won’t go with her because he’s got this ringing in his ear and this ache in his head and because he’s bloody well going to wait in the flat until either Jitka or Zdeněk come back to tell them what the fuck is happening, or that guy from the embassy phones.

‘You’re frightened.’

‘Of course I’m fucking frightened. I’ve seen Lenka shot—’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘— and I nearly had my own head blown off.’

‘Well we’ve got to get something to eat. There’s that shop just round the corner. Potraviny or something. We can try there. It’ll only take a few minutes.’

While they’re arguing the phone rings. James picks it up gingerly, expecting more incomprehensible jabbering on the other end, but it’s Jitka’s voice that sounds in his ear, his good ear, the one that still works properly. ‘Is that James? Is Zdeněk there?’

‘No, he’s not.’ This is the woman who just two days ago let him kiss her on the mouth and cup her breast in his hand. He wants to use a term of endearment, to let her understand what he feels for her despite his being entirely unworthy of her interest. But only the banal comes to him: ‘What’s happening? Where are you?’

‘I’m with Lenka. Tell him that. Tell him not to do anything stupid and to come round as soon as he can.’ Stoopid. That American intonation to her English. ‘Have you spoken with Sam at the embassy?’

‘I couldn’t get hold of him.’

‘Well try again. Tell him about Lenka.’

‘What do I tell him? Where are you? Where should I say?’

There is an edge of impatience in her reply. ‘Na Františku. Didn’t I tell you?’

‘What? No, you didn’t.’ He scrawls nafrantiskoo on the pad beside the phone, not knowing whether he has got it right or what it means. ‘Can you repeat that?’

There’s silence on the line.

‘Hello? Are you there?’

Her voice comes back. Perhaps the line is faulty. ‘I thought I told you. I’m sorry, it’s been difficult.’

‘People have been ringing but no one spoke English. What did you think you’d already told me?’

‘Nemocnice na Františku – it’s the hospital. I thought I already told you. I’ve been ringing round.’

‘How is she?’

‘I can’t talk now. There are others that want the phone.’

‘How is she, Jitka?’

She speaks rapidly, quietly, almost whispering. As though telling it softly might mollify her words. ‘She’s unconscious. It is not certain. Here it’s chaos, like war zone. I must go.’ And the phone goes dead.

He puts the receiver back on the cradle. Ellie is staring at him. ‘How is she, James?’

‘She’s unconscious.’

‘Still unconscious? How serious is it, James? Didn’t you ask her?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know how serious. She was in a hurry. Jitka, I mean. She was in a hurry because others wanted the phone. She didn’t say how serious.’

‘You should have asked!’

‘I didn’t have a chance. She rang off.’

She screams, her face contorted as though with pain, ‘But you should have asked!’

They’re trapped in a strange flat a thousand miles from home and familiarity, with people dying around them, and she’s screaming: Why didn’t you ask? Why didn’t you ask?

48

The nearest bridge was blocked to traffic by armoured vehicles, but people on foot could pass. Across the river, Kampa island was an oasis of quiet, but there was more armour in the wider streets of the Malá Strana and tanks in the square around the church of Saint Nicholas. He wondered whether to check on Egorkin and Pankova but decided against it and instead crossed the square and made for the narrow road leading to the embassy.

Little had changed there. The armoured car still blocked the cul-de-sac, soldiers still stood on stolid duty, the grim-faced official from the interior ministry was still there, the Union Flag still flew over the gatehouse. One of the soldiers moved to block his way, but the Czech official muttered something and the Russian stood aside. At the end of the cul-de-sac the gates opened just as he reached them, as if someone had been watching his progress up the alleyway through a peephole. Inside the gate was the reliable face of Derrick, the security man.

‘You made it back.’ He made it sound as though Sam had just been through the front lines of some kind of trench warfare. ‘What’s it like out there?’

‘Chaos. The Russians have come looking for a fight but all the Czechs want to do is argue. It’s a rather uneven contest.’

‘Who’s winning?’

‘The moral conflict or the military one?’

Derrick sniffed. He was a straightforward sort of man. ‘Not much point in winning the moral one if you’ve lost the battle.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right.’

In the courtyard there was activity round the embassy cars and talk of a convoy being organised to evacuate non-essential staff. A story was going round that the transport ministry was arranging a train to get foreign visitors out to Austria or Germany. Sam looked in at Whittaker’s office and gave a brief account of how things were in the Old Town. Eric listened with feigned patience. ‘You haven’t heard the latest,’ he said when Sam had finished. ‘It seems the powers that be have finally pulled their fingers out.’

‘Out of what?’

‘Their arses, Sam, their arses. It seems they’re sending us a plane.’

‘A plane?’

‘Apparently it’s those bloody pop singers. The Moody Men or whatever.’

‘Blues.’

‘That’s right. The ministry of defence has got permission for an RAF aircraft to fly in to evacuate them along with our non-essential staff. Unbelievable, isn’t it? First they give the Beatles the MBE, then they lay on a special plane for this Moody Blues lot. Next thing they’ll give Cliff Richard a knighthood.’

They laughed at the incongruity of it all. A plane, from a NATO air force, flying into a Warsaw Pact country in the middle of an invasion. It seemed absurd. ‘What about our musicians – Egorkin and Pankova? Can we get them out that way? Or by the road convoy?’

‘One way or another, I suppose we’ll have to try. We don’t really need an added complication, do we?’

‘But we’ve got one whether we like it or not.’

He went to his office and rang the switchboard. Someone from the American embassy had called. A Mr Harry Rose. And there had been a call from England. The telephonist couldn’t believe the system was still up and running, even for international calls. ‘Someone called Steffie,’ she said. But surely she knew exactly who Steffie was. His affair with Stephanie was hardly secret. ‘She asked if you were all right and said she was thinking about you. I told her you were fine and awfully busy. She said, maybe you could give her a call back.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh, and there was a call from a Mr Borthwick. I think that’s right. He said that Lenka told him to get in touch with you. I’m not quite sure what that means. It’s probably something consular, we’ve been snowed under this morning by that kind of call.’

Borthwick? He struggled to put a face to the name, and then he recalled the two hitchhikers. James, that was one of them. James Borthwick seemed likely – it had a Northern flavour to it. Or was it Scottish?

‘Did he leave a number?’

‘No, he didn’t. He seemed quite agitated but he insisted that he didn’t want consular assistance, just to talk to you. I gave him our standard message about staying safe and he rang off.’

Sam thought for a moment, while possibilities and probabilities chased themselves through his brain. Missed calls were some kind of reproach – calls for help, cries for attention, pleas for understanding. But if the youth hadn’t left a number what was he meant to do? ‘If he calls again, make sure you get his number. In the meantime, can you get me Harry Rose at the American embassy? Counsellor Rose, that is.’

It was a couple of minutes before the call came through and Harry’s familiar voice sounded in his ear. ‘Is that Sam? Good to hear from you. We’re burning all our classified documents at the moment. What are you doing?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m as serious as Brezhnev himself. Aren’t you burning your stuff?’

‘We don’t think it’s that dangerous. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Typical British phlegm. I wish you could send a bucketload of it over here. We’re in need. Any news? Washington’s on the line asking what the hell’s going on, but the truth is they know more than we do.’

‘Dubček and the others have been arrested, that’s for sure. Černík, Smrkovský, Kriegel at least.’

‘We know that.’

‘Some reports say they’ve already been flown out.’

‘That too. What a fucking mess. They never saw it coming, that’s what’s incredible. These guys were good communists – didn’t they know the score? Tread on our toes and we’ll stamp on your face. That’s always the way. I’m mean, look at how we treat other countries, and we’re the nice guys. Jeez.’ There was a moment’s silence while they contemplated the Harry Rose analysis of US foreign policy. ‘Hey, don’t go telling Ambassador Beam I said that.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Good fellow. So, what’s our news? We’re getting a road convoy organised to get people out. I told you about the Hollywood crazies, didn’t I?’

‘The Man from Uncle?’

‘Napoleon Solo himself. And Shirley Temple. And a hundred participants at some damn conference.’

‘We can’t match Hollywood but we have got The Moody Blues.’

‘The whose?’

‘Some pop group. Sub-Beatles. Long hair and lacy shirts.’

‘Guys?’

‘So the girls inform me. Apparently we’re planning a road convoy too.’ They discussed how they might coordinate operations for a convoy, the number of vehicles, the route out. And there was also the possibility of a train to Austria. At the moment one of Rose’s colleagues was talking with someone from the transport ministry and it looked as though that might happen. They’d keep each other informed of developments. ‘Nothing like an invasion,’ said Rose, ‘to bring the diplomatic community together.’

It was only when he hung up that Sam remembered. It was obvious really, but events had scrambled his mind: the hitchhikers – James Borthwick and Ellie whatever-her-name-was – were staying in Jitka’s flat. Lenka had given up her room for them. The fortuitous event that had ended up with Lenka in his flat, in his bed, in his whole world. He rang Jitka’s number that Lenka had scribbled down, and when the youth answered he thought how stupid he’d been not to make the connection before.

‘It’s Sam Wareham here,’ he said. ‘I believe you phoned earlier.’

A small fragment of his mind wondered why Jitka or her husband hadn’t answered. What was his name? Zdeněk. He could imagine him out in the streets, confronting the tanks in that grim, fanatical manner that he had. The kind of fellow who would end up doing something foolish – throwing a Molotov cocktail or hitting a soldier with a brick or something.

‘Yeah. Look…’

‘Is everything all right with you? The best thing to do is just sit tight for the moment. I think you’ve been told that already. Don’t expect anything much until tomorrow, do you understand? Things are being organised to get foreign nationals out of the country, but it takes time. We have your number – I’ll make sure it has been passed on to the consular department – and they’ll get in touch. But for the moment it’s best to keep out of trouble and off the streets.’

‘Yeah. Look – sorry, my head’s buzzing – we were out earlier. You know, Wenceslas Square and that.’

‘Were you? Well, discretion’s the better part of valour at the moment. Just stay where you are—’

‘And we saw what happened. To Lenka, I mean.’

‘Lenka?’ It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room and he had to struggle against some kind of vacuum merely to breathe. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She was injured. At the radio station.’

‘Injured? How?’

‘I don’t really know. She fell. They took her off to hospital.’

‘Hospital, which hospital, do you know which hospital?’

‘Jitka told me. I was just going to phone the embassy when you called—’

‘Which hospital?’

The youth hesitated. ‘Something like nafrantishkoo. I tried to write it down.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I know it. When was this? When did it happen?’

‘Couple of hours ago, I reckon. I’m not sure exactly—’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Sam put the phone down. Overhead a jet aircraft tore through the sky, barely clearing the domes and spires. It passed away, reverberating round the ancient buildings, leaving behind only a distant murmur of its passage. He told the secretary that he was going out. ‘Tell Mr Whittaker. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Summer warmth greeted him in the courtyard. It should have been a pleasant sensation, but with it came something else, a sound, ill-defined and tuneless, as though the whole city was moaning with pain.

49

He walked as quickly as he could. He couldn’t take the car because the bridges had been blocked to traffic, but as he had discovered earlier, it was still possible to cross the river on foot. It took him twenty minutes to reach the hospital.

The František Hospital was more reminiscent of a prison than a place of healing – a forbidding block of stone on the right bank of the river, with only a hint of Jugendstil decoration to alleviate its grim façade. Ambulances were coming and going. Sirens sounded. Soviet military vehicles provided the only elements of stasis as men in white overalls manoeuvred stretchers in through the doors. Most people moved on the edge of panic while Russian soldiers looked on with sublime indifference.

Sam pushed his way inside. In the entrance hall the familiar hospital stench of disinfectant papered over other smells – hints of ordure, the tang of blood, the scent of torn flesh and torn lives. At a desk he asked for Lenka by name but got nothing more than indifference. A passing nurse was more helpful, giving some sort of direction that he could try. He walked along corridors of institutional bleakness, past anonymous doors which gave an occasional glimpse of other lives, other problems, other disasters. Finally he knew that he had reached the right place when he saw a cluster of people gathered outside doors that said Neurologie.

Doctors and nurses hurried in and out. Occasionally a stretcher was wheeled through. Jitka was there, and her husband, Zdeněk. The others he recognised from that evening after the concert, and the political meetings he’d witnessed. Jitka detached herself from the others and came towards him. She had been weeping. He could see scorched eyes and flushed cheeks.

‘How is she? Can I see her? What happened?’ All questions that were easier to ask than to answer.

She gave a sketchy account. The barricades outside the radio building. Tanks, soldiers, vehicles blocking the way. Was there a gunshot? There had been firing. One moment Lenka was pushing past a wrecked car, the next she was on the ground with blood coming from her head. It seemed no one really knew.

A surgeon came out of the department, dressed in white and wearing an apron. Almost like a butcher. There was muttered discussion, talk of cranial trauma, of pressure on the brain. X-rays showed a foreign object – maybe a ricochet, maybe a shell fragment – lodged against the brain. After a while they were allowed in to see her, a few at a time, down the corridor into a bare room with two beds. Sam was next in line, after Jitka and Zdeněk.

Lenka was in the bed by the window, lying on her back. Her body, beneath sheet or shroud (it was impossible to say which), was preternaturally still. What is the difference between life and death? It seemed a debatable point. She was somewhere on the borderline between the two states, neither one thing nor the other, neither the lovely living rusalka wading into the flow of the river Vltava, nor yet a cadaver ready for burial. Her head was bandaged and her features were familiar in the way that the features in an indifferent portrait may be familiar – her and yet not quite her, recognisable but not convincingly lifelike. A bottle hanging over her dispensed liquid parsimoniously down a narrow tube into a vein while another tube came out from under the sheet and drained pale yellow liquid into a bottle on the floor. Perhaps these two flows, of liquid in and liquid out, were a sign of animation. A wider tube, held between her lips by surgical tape, emerged from her mouth and disappeared into the mechanical ventilator beside the bed. Although her chest rose and fell faintly, that was only in response to the black rubber bellows of the machine, which opened and closed repeatedly like a concertina playing the same notes over and over. But no musical sound came out, just a succession of sighs, as though the constant movement was infinitely tedious.

Sam stood beside the bed looking down on her and felt nothing. There’s no training for this, he thought. No experience, no guidance, no special knowledge. There was just the sight of her lying between a life and an end, and the vivid sensation of the fragility of the border itself which was nothing more than a narrow line over which one might step or be pushed in a moment. He thought probably that his heart was broken and that this is what it felt like – not overwhelming grief or anything like that, but just this void, this absence of feeling, as though the very part of him that might experience pain and misery was, in fact, broken.

After a while he did some of those things that you do, pointless things that bring some kind of comfort to the visitor if not the patient. He called her name and saw no response, touched her hand and felt no answering movement. After a few minutes like that he turned away and went out.

‘We have to be patient,’ another doctor was saying to the sorry little group outside in the corridor. He had other patients to attend to but she was being closely monitored, he could assure them of that. They were doing their very best for her. Now, if they would excuse him…

Sam stood with the others for a while, but it was too much like a gathering of mourners at a funeral. He had to go. He had to do things, anything to get away from this feeling of helplessness. ‘Let me know,’ he said to Jitka. ‘Any change at all. Do you have my number?’ Just in case he took out one of his cards and wrote the telephone number of the flat on it below the number of the embassy.

When he got back to his apartment building the Tatra was still parked outside on the cobblestones. He stopped beside the car. A face peered out at him, like a creature inside an aquarium, something that lives on the bottom and grubs around in the detritus for food. He rapped on the glass and the man wound the window down. There was a release of rancid air, the smell of stale sweat and cigarette smoke.

‘Why don’t you fuck off?’ Sam shouted. The man looked puzzled. ‘You heard me. People are dying thanks to your bloody Russian friends and all you do is sit in your car and obey orders. You’re just a couple of shits.’ His Czech was approximate but the meaning was clear enough, yet the man’s expression didn’t change. He just turned to his companion and shrugged, then wound the window back up.

In the flat, Egorkin was whining. This wasn’t right, that wasn’t right, he shouldn’t be cooped up like this, they shouldn’t be cooped up like this, they should have been taken to the embassy, the Americans would have done it better. Sam tried to focus on Egorkin in order not to think of Lenka. Egorkin he could deal with. His complaints he could deal with. ‘You don’t understand my importance in the world of music,’ the man insisted. But Sam knew full well that the embassy, the ambassador, the whole pyramidal ziggurat of the British Foreign Office right the way up through the ranks to the Permanent Under Secretary (who might sound ‘under’ and ‘secretary’ but was in fact lord high everything and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George to boot), no one in this great artefact of state would actually want Gennady Ivanovich Egorkin if they ever came to know of his existence. They wouldn’t give a shit. The only people who would want him, presumably, were those worthy souls who commanded the cultural life of the country and politicians who would make a bit of political capital out of it. And the journalists who would work it up into a story.

‘Listen,’ he said to the man. ‘André Previn might think you’re the greatest thing since Toscanini, but at the moment, here in Prague, no one gives a toss about you. In fact, I’m the only friend you’ve got. So you’d better just shut up and play along to my tune.’

Egorkin looked as though he had been struck across the face.

‘And at the moment,’ Sam continued, ‘the woman I love, the woman whom I am going to marry, is lying critically ill in hospital. So believe it or not, Mr Egorkin, you are not even high on my own list of priorities.’

The fire of anger had burned itself out by the time he appeared in the embassy. ‘I needed you,’ Eric said when he saw him, ‘and you were nowhere to be found.’

Faced with his boss he felt no more than a kind of exhaustion. ‘She’s in a coma, Eric.’

‘Coma? Who?’

‘Lenka. The woman whose name you forgot. The woman I couldn’t have with me because they weren’t letting their own people take refuge in foreign embassies.’

Whittaker looked shocked. It was rare to see him disconcerted. He just had single interrogatives to deal with, like someone struggling with a new language. How? Why? When? He seemed sorry, he was sorry. And shocked and appalled and distraught and all those other emotions one lays claim to at moments of consternation, whereas Sam felt only the cold hand of anger descend once more.

‘If you want to go home, old fellow…’

But Sam shook his head. ‘Brooding on my own is the last thing I need, Eric. Tell me what I can do.’

Whittaker considered. ‘You are our Russian specialist. You can talk to them better than anyone else we have. Perhaps you can get on the phone to the Soviet embassy, to whoever you have some sort of understanding with, and explain to them that we are proposing to evacuate a substantial number of our citizens by road and we need their understanding and cooperation. Because with their little toy soldiers all over the place, trigger-happy and frightened out of their wits, this whole circus parade could go horribly wrong.’

Sam smiled. It was not a smile of amusement or even complicity. It was a smile of something close to despair. ‘I can do that, Eric,’ he said. ‘I know just the man to talk to. But he’ll not be able to guarantee that poor frightened Ivan won’t pull the trigger of his Kalashnikov. After all, I doubt anyone was given the order to fire the bullet that hit Lenka. And yet there she is, unconscious in a hospital bed.’

Whittaker winced. Sam watched him for a moment, then nodded and went to his office.

Zdeněk has come from the hospital, come from seeing Lenka. Ellie and James try and talk with him, although it’s not easy to communicate across the barriers of language and anger. But medical words are more or less the same in English as in Czech. That’s the way with such vocabulary – an international language of disaster. Kóma, he says. Trauma. Ventilátor.

‘I think,’ he says, ‘she die.’

Ellie weeps. It’s a shock to imagine her broken like that. James feels sad enough but, hey, it’s not the end of the world, not yet. Lenka’s world maybe, yet she’s still alive, isn’t she? There’s always hope. But Ellie weeps and somehow he envies her weeping, the fact that she can have access to a great well of feeling that seems denied to him.

Outside, the city drags wearily towards evening. Guns are fired in the gathering darkness, lines of tracer arcing through the sky like a blizzard of shooting stars. Perhaps this is to signify the beginning of a curfew imposed by the occupying forces and announced by posters plastered all over the city. Perhaps it is just the city weeping for its lost freedom and not to be comforted.

Jitka returns late, her face drawn in anguish. When asked how Lenka is she merely confirms what her husband has already conveyed, that Lenka lies on the borderline between the living and the dead, neither one thing nor the other, like the country itself, neither free nor captive.

Zdeněk leaves. There are things to do during the night. Posters to be made, plans to be laid, a petition to be composed and names of collaborators to be published in the streets: Kolder, Indra, Biľak, Jakeš, others. Names that will live in infamy. Jitka talks into the night, her sharp, frantic, mind jumping from one thing to another. ‘What will you do?’ she asks them. ‘You cannot stay here. It is dangerous for you. And perhaps for us.’

James tells her about his contact with the embassy. ‘Tomorrow, they told us, wait until tomorrow.’

‘We don’t want to leave you,’ Ellie says.

‘You have to,’ says Jitka. ‘You have to. There is nothing here to stay for.’

She might have been speaking for a whole people.

50

Sam spent the evening with Harold Saumarez, discussing how to deal with the Russian musicians. The SIS man had come up with a plan to get them out, a careful construct of cars and hiding places and false passports, with decoys and extras just to confuse the issue. Whisky made the whole idea seem plausible, but against Lenka’s injury it seemed a kind of blasphemy to be talking of saving the Russians while she lay unconscious in hospital. When Sam explained what had happened, Harold offered a bluff sort of comfort: ‘Don’t you worry, old chap. The one thing these fellows can do is medicine. She’ll be right as rain, just you wait and see.’

The whisky bottle was half-empty when he left after midnight, dismissing any suggestion that there might be a curfew or that he might be subject to it. From the sitting room window, Sam watched him cross the square in front of the building undisturbed, and disappear round the corner. The Tatra that had been there earlier was nowhere to be seen.

His bedroom – his and Lenka’s bedroom – was a refuge of a kind, filled with her possessions as though she had been there for months rather than… how long was it? Days or weeks? Time seemed distorted, both stretched and compressed by the gravitational fields of events swirling around him, by the shock and the misery, the fear and the hate. Disconsolately, he tidied up her things, scraps of underwear, her shoes, stockings, some books, pages of articles she had typed, including the last one about her encounter with Dubček, written but never submitted and no chance of publication now. He tried to put some items together that he might take to the hospital for her – toothbrush, soap, her hairbrush, a hand towel – but he really didn’t know what might be needed. Her nightdress, still redolent of her presence, lay where she had tossed it over the back of a chair. He picked it up and held it to his face, breathing in her scent, remembering. He didn’t put it aside with the other things but instead climbed into bed and tried to sleep, with the nightdress clutched to him like a comforter to a child.

Dawn seeped into the city, bringing with it the dashed hopes of another day. Tanks still blocked the bridges over the river. Armoured cars still guarded the offices of state. The radio still broadcast defiance, exhorting listeners to take no notice of the renegade Radio Vltava and listen only to those voices they could recognise and trust. Do nothing to provoke the occupying forces, it said, but give them no help. Deny them even a drop of water. Say only that if they come as peaceful tourists driving Ladas then you will happily show them round your beautiful city; but as they have come in uniform and driving tanks you will not even look at them.

Sam rang Jitka’s number as early as he dared. Her familiar voice was almost a comfort as he struggled to betray no panic, no sign of the desperation that bubbled up inside him. ‘Lenka? How’s Lenka?’ But there was no news. Jitka was going to the hospital as soon as she could. ‘I’ll try to get over there sometime today,’ he told her. ‘It’s just that everything’s happening here.’ And he felt stupid saying that, because everything was happening everywhere at the moment, wasn’t it? To Lenka and Jitka and her kind much more than to the pampered foreigners who had their safety nets, their diplomatic immunities, their escape lines, their ways out.

‘Could you put one of the English kids on the line?’ he asked as she was about to hang up. ‘I need to speak to them.’

Words sounded in the background, and then the flat, Northern vowels of James’s voice came on the line. ‘’Ullo. It’s James here.’

‘This is Sam Wareham. Are you ready to go? We did speak yesterday.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, you remember speaking or yes, you’re ready?’

‘Both those things.’

‘Right. There’s a road convoy being organised. There’s also probably going to be a train, but we’d like to get you out by road, is that all right? We’re going to send a van for you both, but we can’t cross the river because the Soviet army is blocking the bridges. So you’ve got to come over to this side under your own steam. Do you understand? You’re in the New Town, aren’t you?’

‘I dunno. I s’pose so.’

‘Well you are. What you’ve got to do is make your way to the Palacký Bridge. That’s the nearest one to where you are now. Cross over the bridge and you’ll find our minibus waiting for you at the first corner on the right. It’s a white VW. You shouldn’t have any problem with the Russians, but if they do stop you, show them your passports and say Britanskoye posol’stvo. That’s British embassy in Russian. Can you do that?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Repeat it to me.’

There was a moment’s farcical lesson in Russian pronunciation, with the boy floundering around amongst the unfamiliar vowels.

‘Just saying “britanskoye” should get you by. And calling him “tovarishch” could be useful. That’s comrade.’

‘I know what tovarish means.’

‘Good.’

‘Why i’nt it a Transit?’

‘Why isn’t what a Transit?’

‘The van. Transits are made in England.’

It was a joke. Sam laughed dutifully. ‘I’ll have a word with the ambassador. The driver’s name is Derrick, by the way. He will want you to identify yourselves of course, but he knows all about you. Is everything clear? Can you be there in half an hour? Timing’s important, we’ve got a road convoy leaving for the border at ten-thirty.’

‘We’ll get a move on.’

‘Fine.’

‘Just…’ A pause.

‘What?’

‘Why are you doin’ all this for us?’

‘Just part of the service.’

‘I don’t believe that for one moment.’

Not so stupid after all.

No traffic on the bridge, just as the Wareham guy promised, but half a dozen Russian soldiers standing by their vehicles watching pedestrians go past.

‘Is it the right one?’ Ellie asks.

‘The bridge? ’Course it’s the right one.’

The soldiers eye them but make no move as they walk past towards the Malá Strana. Behind them was an approximate farewell with Jitka, before she rushed off to the hospital. Now, suddenly, all that seems very remote – Jitka and Zdeněk, friends for ten days, have already faded into the past. The present is this, the rucksack on his back, the slog of feet against tarmac, the road ahead once again, with Ellie, for better or for worse, beside him. Ahead is their next lift, the Volkswagen minibus waiting as promised with a stern policeman type behind the wheel. ‘Hop in the back,’ the man says, once he’s given their passports a cursory glance. ‘You kids going home?’

‘Haven’t thought about it yet.’

‘Out of this madhouse, anyway.’

The journey takes less than fifteen minutes, but it doesn’t lead to anything resembling a British embassy. Instead the driver parks the vehicle in a side street not far from the river, across the entrance to a small alleyway.

‘Where are we?’ James asks.

‘A couple of passengers to pick up,’ the driver says.

There’s movement outside the van. The door slides open and there’s the guy from the embassy – Wareham, Samuel Wareham, standing there and giving a humourless smile while stating the bloody obvious: ‘You made it safe and sound.’ Which is fine, but why does he have to sound as though he’s talking to children? ‘Now I’m going to need your cooperation. And we haven’t much time so I’d be grateful if you would do exactly as I say and ask no questions. Understood? We’ll want you off the back seat for the moment. Have your rucksacks on your laps. We’ve got a couple of passengers coming and one of them’ – as they move places he reaches forward and lifts the rear bench seat to show a coffin-like space beneath – ‘goes in there. The other, a young woman more or less your age, sits between you, on top of him. He’ll be all right. Don’t worry about him. But she speaks hardly any English and she might be frightened, so you are going to treat her like she is your long-lost sister. Right? Smile and put your arm round her – not you, her,’ he adds, pointing at Ellie – ‘and generally treat her like a treasure. She’s been briefed but still it’ll be a bit of a trial for her.’

Ellie appears quite unfazed by all this. ‘What language does she speak?’

‘Russian. I’ll be in the front so I can talk to her when necessary. For the moment we’ve only got to drive round the corner to the embassy. There’ll be a control at the approach to the embassy, so get your passports out. They want to stop Czechos seeking asylum so it’s not a problem for you. Just hand your passports over when asked. OK? Any questions?’

‘What’s this all about?’

He pauses for a moment, as though this might be the one question he did not want to be asked. ‘Look, you may recognise them, but if you do don’t say anything, all right? They want out. It’s a simple as that. And we want to help.’

‘Why this way, with us involved?’

A hint of impatience in his expression. ‘They’re looking for a middle-aged man and a woman. Instead they’ll see you three kids with rucksacks. Sleight of hand.’

Wareham steps back. As though at a signal things happen, more or less as predicted: two figures emerge from the alley, a man and a younger woman, both of them hurrying almost as though pursued by a third figure behind them. Except that James recognises them, that’s the bizarre thing. He recognises them from that concert, the Birgit Eckstein one – the bloody conductor, all bow tie and tails then but nothing of the kind now, and the violinist.

‘Bloody hell,’ he says to Ellie, and he can see that she’s recognised them too.

The man comes first, ducks into the van and dives into the space beneath the seat. Wareham slams the seat down on him. Then the girl, as frightened as a rabbit, clutching her own rucksack, sits on the bench on top of him and peers at James and Ellie as though they might be predators. Ellie holds out her hand. ‘I’m Ellie,’ she says. ‘We heard you at the concert. We loved your violin playing.’ She smiles warmly but the woman looks aghast and responds with a small torrent of words that make no sense. The door slides shut. The driver and the Wareham guy are climbing into the front. The engine starts and the van lurches forward.

‘OK back there?’

‘OK.’

Along with her rucksack the woman is clutching a passport, a battered British passport with the name Miss Nicola Jones written in the window.

‘Nicola?’ Ellie asks.

The woman looks helpless. It’s not her name. It’s not her passport. She opens the document and displays a photo of herself looking startled at the very idea of being documented.

‘Just play along with it,’ Wareham says, watching them from the front. ‘She’s just a friend of yours, someone you’ve joined up with. OK?’

The van turns onto a main road, turns again, bumps over cobbles and edges through tight alleys between buildings that are like something out of the Brothers Grimm. Finally it comes to a halt at a military roadblock.

‘Passports ready,’ Wareham calls back. ‘Just act naturally, as though you don’t have a care in the world. Should be straightforward.’

Should be. A whole world of uncertainty is subsumed under that innocent phrase. Their situation, a little while ago dangerous but more or less comprehensible, now seems completely mad. They’re sitting in front of a Russian violinist pretending to be Nicola Jones yet speaking not a word of English and on top of – on top of, for Christ’s sake! – an orchestral conductor of international fame, at this very moment lying prone within the stifling, claustrophobic box beneath their seats. James begins to laugh. Giggle, really, like in school assembly when something catches your attention and you cannot control yourself.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ says Wareham.

There are soldiers at the driver’s door. Wareham is suddenly transformed, speaking Russian to them, even laughing at something said. James’s own laughter vanishes as a face peers in at the side windows, like someone observing exhibits in a vivarium. The door slides back to reveal the owner of the face, a soldier in a khaki blouse and forage cap. There’s a red star gleaming like a drop of blood on each of his collar tabs. Slung over his shoulder is an ugly piece of ironmongery that James recognises, because he knows this kind of thing, as a standard issue AKM assault rifle. The soldier has a scrubbed, youthful look, unblemished by stubble but marked instead by a small cluster of acne spots on either side of his mouth. ‘Passport,’ he demands. James says, ‘Tovarich,’ as he hands his over and there is, perhaps, the ghost of a smile from the Russian. He leafs through the documents, glancing up at the passengers, comparing with the photographs, sucking his teeth as though that might aid his concentration. Beneath his look the woman – Nicola? – tenses. Perhaps the soldier is an amateur violinist, perhaps he knows what’s-her-name Pankova, maybe he’s even seen her perform in Moscow or Leningrad or Kiev or wherever he comes from. ‘What a bloody mess, eh Nicola?’ he says to the woman and receives a frightened smile in response. She’s trying to play the game, attempting, with the few tools at her disposal, to be Nicola Jones, student, born in London on 16 September 1946. ‘Yes,’ she says. Yes. At least she has got that right.

The soldier nods and hands the passports back. ‘Ládno,’ he calls to the driver, sliding the door shut. The van moves forward up the short cul-de-sac towards forbidding fortress doors. Nicola – Nadezhda, James remembers – is breathing again. As though by magic, the fortress doors open at their approach, allowing them through an archway and into the courtyard of the Thun Palace, where cars are jammed and people are running around as though there’s a fire to put out somewhere.

‘Well done,’ Wareham says, glancing back.

The van threads its way through the mêlée and edges into a narrow garage. In the sudden gloom James leans across to Ellie and whispers, ‘What the fuck is this all about?’

Wareham turns in his seat. Is he about to give an answer to James’s question? It’s hard to see his expression in the low light. ‘Any news?’

Ellie replies, understanding what he means. ‘I’m sorry, no. Jitka was going off to the hospital when we left.’

He nods. ‘I’ll ring as soon as I get a moment.’

‘No, it’s not the responsibility of the consular department,’ Eric Whittaker said sharply. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, you can see that this whole thing is bloody dangerous. Dozens of civilians driving their own cars through a countryside occupied by a couple of hundred thousand nervous Russians, all of them armed to the teeth and trigger-happy? What can possibly go wrong?’ He was seeing himself as the soldier he used to be during his military service spent largely in Aldershot, standing at the window of his office with his hands clasped behind his back just like Montgomery. ‘So I want a senior man present at all times. Which means you, Sam. I’m sorry but there’s no question about it. Quite understand about your girlfriend and very sorry and all that, but I’m sure she’s getting the best possible medical attention and there’s nothing that you can contribute in that line of business anyway. I need you here, in the convoy, seeing that things are OK. You’re a Russian specialist and a Czech speaker where those idiots in consular can only just about manage Dobrý den. So that’s it, really.’

Sam had already phoned Jitka’s flat once again and got no reply. The phones at the hospital appeared to be permanently engaged, or maybe they’d just been left off the hook. He felt the sickening of fear and the anger of resentment. All he needed was an hour to get over there and see how things were going, but instead he was stuck here being forced to play soldiers. He almost stamped to attention and saluted, just as he’d been taught during basic training. Instead, he managed a subdued ‘Very well, Eric’, and went back down to the courtyard where someone from the consular department was faffing around trying to instil some kind of order into the dozen vehicles manoeuvring there. ‘If we don’t get a move on,’ he said, ‘we’re going to miss the rendezvous with the Americans, and then we’ll have to do the whole thing on our own without any direct guarantee of safe passage.’

The vehicles finally left the courtyard of the British embassy at half past ten in the morning. Led by the ambassador’s car flying the union jack, the convoy drove slowly through the narrow streets of the Malá Strana and up the hill towards the Castle. There were other vehicles from other embassies on the move in the same direction, and by the time they reached the outer suburb for rendezvous with the Americans over three dozen vehicles had come together, a great shambolic serpent straggling through the streets and along the Pilsen road.

The Americans had walkie-talkies. Of course they did. Harry Rose was standing in the middle of the street directing traffic and giving commands over the radio. ‘Stole them from the marine detachment at the embassy,’ he told Sam with glee, waving his walkie-talkie around. ‘Always wanted to do this kind of stuff. How do you read me? Copy that. Over and out. Affirmative, negative, all the Hollywood crap. Hey, do you want to meet Shirley Temple? She’s over there in the Buick, hiding behind smoked glass.’

‘I just want to get the whole thing over and done with,’ Sam said.

It was past eleven o’clock when the cavalcade finally moved off, a motley string of vehicles more like a bank holiday traffic jam than a military convoy, forty-two in all from most of the NATO countries, with the US ambassador’s car flying the Stars and Stripes at the head.

Despite open windows, the air inside the van is thick with the smell of bodies. James’s head is singing, that whining in the right ear like the insistent stridulation of an insect. Feeling faintly sick, he clings to the breeze that comes in from one of the open windows while the stout man in the front seat – Harold Summery is his name – tunes a transistor radio to the BBC World Service, which is how they learn, scratchily through the ether, what is happening in the city they are abandoning. Street signs are being taken down, the reporter says, protests are growing, civilians against tanks, a strike has been called for midday. The country’s leaders have been detained by the occupying forces, their whereabouts are unknown.

‘We should have stayed,’ Ellie says.

‘What good would that have done?’

They’ve been joined in the back of the minibus by one of the embassy secretaries, a sharp woman with a pinched Edinburgh accent. ‘I think you’re well out of it,’ she tells them primly.

Once out of the built-up area Harold turns to speak. They can let the hidden passenger out for a breather. It’s an awkward manoeuvre in the confined space, all four of them having to crowd forward so that the rear seat can be raised and the coffin opened. Gennady Egorkin rises, like Lazarus, from the dead. Middle-aged, balding, pallid, slick with sweat, he has the look of the hunted about him. For a few minutes he sits there in his coffin beneath the gaze of his fellow passengers while the girl leans over to minister to him, offering him water and words, presumably of comfort. The sight ought to be incongruous, perhaps even comic, but instead there’s something disturbing about it, as though one is watching a nurse administer a slow and uncomfortable medical procedure.

‘I need to piss,’ Lazarus says. They’re the first words he has spoken in English and they betray a surprisingly colloquial command of the language. Harold passes an empty plastic bottle back. While the passengers look discreetly away, the renowned orchestral conductor unbuttons his trousers and pisses into the bottle. You might evade the sight but there’s no avoiding the sound or the warm smell of urine that pervades the enclosed space and wrinkles the Edinburgh woman’s nose.

When the deed is done it is the young violinist who disposes of the urine, sliding the side door open a fraction and pouring the piss out onto the tarmac. Later, as they approach a built-up area, the man is closed back in his coffin, normal seating is resumed and the journey continues.

At Pilsen the column grinds to a halt. They wait, not knowing. The vehicle in front is a Karmann Ghia with West German number plates. In front of that an Opel, and then the British Embassy Humber. They can’t see any further. After a while the Wareham guy walks back down the road and leans in at the driver’s window.

‘Some kind of roadblock. Don’t know what the hell’s happening but there are soldiers all over the place.’

Soldiers cannot be good. Wareham glances at his watch, then at the radio at Harold’s feet. ‘Can’t you turn that bloody thing off?’

There’s a sudden silence in the van. The wait goes on. It’s stiflingly hot beneath the midday sun and people are getting out of their vehicles and wandering in the road, straining to see. When James pulls the side door open he’s told to stay inside by Harold, but it doesn’t take much to ignore him. He steps out into the sunshine and what little breeze there might be. Ellie climbs out after him, and then the embassy secretary and the violinist after her. It seems only a single move is needed to undermine the voice of authority. A haze of exhaust fumes rises above the snake of vehicles. The tarmac is hot, painted with a mirage of water.

Soldiers come nearer, going to each vehicle, checking documents, opening car boots.

Wareham asks of nobody in particular, ‘What the fuck are they looking for?’

The embassy woman seems shocked by such language, especially from a diplomat. They don’t behave like that in Morningside. James thinks of war films, of Nazi guards walking down a train, peering into compartments. What will happen? Will someone break and run? Will there be a sudden shout, the raising of a rifle, the crack of a bullet fired like the one that flew past him only the day before and smacked into the wall mere inches from his head? The singing in his ear still hasn’t stopped.

As the soldiers get nearer Nadezhda scuttles back into the van. Ellie goes with her. Wareham is on the tarmac, saying something to the soldiers, offering a cigarette, even laughing with them. ‘Passport,’ he calls to his charges. ‘They want to see your passports.’

Ellie and the violinist are ordered out of the van. They stand by the open door while the soldiers lean inside, pushing a rucksack off a seat, peering beneath the front bench, grunting when they find nothing. The violinist is shaking. Ellie holds her hand as the soldier examines her passport, flicking through the pages to find the entry visa before handing it back without a word. Then the same thing for the others.

Wareham glances at his watch and says something to the soldiers. They move on to the car behind, a Morris Minor Traveller with British plates. Everyone climbs back in the van. Wareham leans in through the window and says something to the violinist in Russian, then to the others in English: ‘Well done.’

Ahead of them cars are starting their engines. With painful slowness the serpent begins to move forward, stretching its neck into the industrial smog of Pilsen and on to that empty border area which James and Ellie crossed only ten days ago. By the middle of the afternoon they come to a halt once more, but this time at the checkpoint where Czechoslovak border guards show scant interest in their documents. Foreigners getting out while the going’s good? Who gives a damn?

Soviet troops watch with the indifference of conquerors.

The road goes on, cutting through the forest and slanting down into the wooded valley of the watercourse that the Germans call Rehlingbach, Fawnbrook, but the Czechs know simply as Hraniční potok, Border Stream. The black eagle of the Federal Republic of Germany flies on the other side of the bridge while a crowd waits beyond the checkpoint – American military, anonymous black limousines, television crews with cameras levelled at the refugees like weapons. There’s a festive air, the sense of release and relief.

‘What were you doing in Czechoslovakia?’ a voice asks Ellie as they climb down from the van. A microphone is pushed into her face. A camera aims at her. ‘Tell our viewers what it was like.’

James follows her out into the afternoon sunshine. Behind them the van moves away towards a couple of black Mercedes where men in suits gather round. He catches a glimpse of the girl being hurried into one of the cars, and then the other passenger, the man in the coffin, being helped into the other.

‘It was frightening,’ Ellie is saying. ‘Tanks, soldiers, shooting. The people were so courageous.’

‘What do you have to say to the Russians?’

‘They should go home. They’re not needed and they’re not wanted.’

As the cameras move on to other prey, unexpectedly the Wareham guy appears. ‘Where are you kids off to?’

James looks uncertain. ‘Haven’t decided really.’

‘How you doing for cash?’

‘Got to get some, I suppose. We’ve still got koruna.’

‘That won’t be worth anything here. Look’ – he takes out his wallet – ‘here are some Deutschmarks to tide you over.’ It’s like handing out charity. One hundred D-marks in a mixture of notes. About ten quid.

‘We can’t,’ Ellie says, but James has already folded the money away.

Wareham smiles that annoying, patronising smirk. He knows the one who has money plainly enough; by nothing more than their accents he can recognise the contrasts and conflicts between the two of them. ‘Take it as a present from Her Majesty, to say thank you. You did very well. I just want to remind you that we’d rather you kept quiet about the details of this whole business. You’ll read about it in the press, I expect – famous conductor flees the Russians, you know what I mean. But no one needs to know the details of how it happened. It does, as a matter of fact, come under the Official Secrets Act.’

‘We haven’t signed it,’ James points out.

Wareham smiles pityingly. ‘The Act is law, old chap. You don’t have to sign it any more than you have to have signed the Homicide Act before you can be convicted of murder.’ He glances round. The black Mercedes are driving away from the border. The VW van has already gone back to the East and the embassy Humber is waiting for him with its engine ticking over. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to get back.’

‘Lenka,’ Ellie says.

He blinks. A man with his emotions well under control, but he blinks at the mention of her name. ‘What about her?’

‘We’re so sorry about what happened. And worried about her. Can you let us know how things work out?’

He paused, then took a visiting card from his pocket. ‘A bit impersonal, but if you drop me a line when you’re in Britain I’ll get in touch with you.’

‘And give her our love. I’m sorry I only got to know her for so short a time.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded, then turned and went towards the Humber. ‘Good luck,’ he called. The driver had been listening to the radio while he waited. ‘Any news?’ Sam asked him.

‘The demonstration in Wenceslas Square. It’s been called off. People gathered but then were asked by the authorities to disperse, not to provoke the Russians. It seems they did.’

‘Which authorities?’

The driver looked awkward. Sam could see his face in the mirror. That was what someone looked like when they were wriggling on the horns of a dilemma. ‘Just the authorities, sir.’

Sam attempted a laugh but it wasn’t easy. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’ve got to be back in the city as soon as possible.’

51

It was dusk by the time he got back to the embassy. There were things to do, a meeting with the ambassador and Eric Whittaker, grudging congratulations over the success with Egorkin and Nadezhda, a report to dictate, a whole day of chaos and confusion to attempt to understand. There were reports that the Czechoslovak leadership had been spirited out of the country. Some said they had been taken out and shot, some that they were still in Prague being held incommunicado. But the best bet, Whittaker said, was that they were already in Moscow.

‘Maybe you can find out something more concrete, Sam? You seem to have the best contacts.’

All this was the very stuff of his job, but utmost in his mind were other things, personal matters, matters of the heart and the soul. In his office he discovered a message from Steffie sent early that afternoon. She’d known how to get through by telex, using one of her friends at the Office. It was addressed formally for the attention of Mr Samuel Wareham, First Secretary, Chancery but the text was anything but formal. Darling, darling Sam, it read. She rarely addressed him as darling, never twice, and certainly not openly on something as public as a telex. You can’t imagine how distraught I am, worrying about whether you are safe. Please let me know as soon as you can. It puts everything else, our stupid uncertainties, in perspective, doesn’t it? I love you, darling, and miss you more than I can say. More than that, I’m frightened for you…

He tried ringing Jitka’s flat but got no reply. The hospital switchboard seemed perpetually engaged, so he took his car and drove round. There were still troops blocking the bridges, but now they were letting vehicles through one by one, slower than they had crossed the Iron Curtain itself at Waidhaus. He sat behind the wheel, his bowels eaten by anxiety, while he edged the car towards the barriers. Car boots were examined, bonnets opened. Someone was searching beneath vehicles with a mirror on a long handle. Having kept them at bay throughout the day, he allowed thoughts of Lenka to come pouring into his mind. There was a feeling of helplessness before the flood, boulders and rubble cascading through his life with a merciless inevitability, crushing him personally while all about him the Czechoslovak nation was itself being crushed.

Eventually the soldiers waved him through, and he turned towards the hospital. There were armoured cars outside the main entrance but it was always possible to find a place to park in this city that had so long been starved of cars. At the doors a sullen guard nodded him through when he showed his diplomatic pass; no one took any notice of one man in a crumpled suit making his way up the stairs and along the corridors. There was the clang of distant enamel basins being sluiced. Nurses and porters passed him by, always in a hurry to get somewhere else. The atmosphere was rank with that hospital smell that underlies the memory of so much personal tragedy. No one stood guard at the entrance to the neurology department, so he pushed open the doors and went along the corridor to Lenka’s room.

Both beds were occupied now, two women lying prone beneath intravenous drips, one of them well into her seventies, the other some decades younger, neither of them Lenka.

People looked vague when he asked, as though Lenka Konečková might never have been in their care, but eventually he found a nurse who knew. ‘Transferred,’ she said, moving on.

He felt a momentary panic and put out his hand to stop her. ‘Transferred where? Why?’

The nurse looked indifferent. ‘The Střešovická Military Hospital. Neurosurgery department.’

‘Military? Why military?’

‘Only the best for the Party, isn’t that the rule?’

‘What do you mean, the Party?’

But the nurse just smiled pityingly, detached herself from his grasp and walked away to whatever problem she faced next.

He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, not to panic. He could deal with this. He knew where the military hospital was. He’d go there, blag his way in somehow, find out what was happening, get her out, maybe. All kinds of fantasy passed through his mind. He’d take her to England, have her seen to by some British surgeon who was at the summit of his profession, not one of these Czech medics stuck behind the Iron Curtain, underfunded and underpaid. He’d be the knight in shining armour riding to the rescue.

He drove back over the river, edged his car through the roadblock on the bridge once more, and took the road that wound steeply up between the Letná heights and the Castle itself. The hospital – he’d been there during an official visit six months earlier – was in one of the smart suburbs beyond the castle, the kind of place where the bourgeoisie had once lived, now populated by the new elite, members of the Party. The car rattled over cobbles and tramlines, overtook a tram that seemed to be blocking the way, emerged onto the road that ran along the northern perimeter of the Castle where he could pick up speed, catch a glimpse of the spires of the cathedral over to his left, lose himself for desperate minutes in a maze of narrow roads before picking up the boulevard that led past the villas and gardens of the great and the good. Although street signs had been taken down to confuse the occupying army he found the left turn easily enough.

It was getting dark by the time he drew up at the gates of Ústřední Vojenská Nemocnice, the CENTRAL MILITARY HOSPITAL.

Arc lights had been turned on, casting pools of chalky light in the dusk. There was a guardhouse, barriers striped like barbers’ poles, flags flying, all the paraphernalia that he remembered from his national service. A young soldier flagged him down at the barrier. Sam explained the nature of his visit. He was looking for a patient, a civilian patient transferred from a public hospital yesterday sometime this morning. An emergency. He gave the name, showed his diplomatic pass, waited while matters were pondered and phone calls made. Almost he shouted. Almost he screamed, I crossed the bloody Iron Curtain twice today! I went across to Germany and then back into your damned country and here I am, being held up outside a fucking hospital! Almost he shouted these things, but he didn’t. He sat there in front of the barrier, tapping his finger softly on the steering wheel, waiting.

The soldier came back, puzzled. ‘This person is British?’ he asked.

‘No, she is not British. You can tell from her name. Lenka Konečková. I have just explained that. She is Czech, like yourself.’

‘I am Slovak.’

For a moment Sam closed his eyes and saw a world in which there was no stupidity. ‘I’m sorry. Like you, she is Czechoslovak,’ he said, with careful emphasis.

‘So if she is Czechoslovak, why do you want to see her?’

Because I am in love with her, he thought. Because I am desperate to see her get well. Because I am frightened of what the future might hold for her and for me. ‘Because she is a friend. I am a British diplomat and she is a friend.’

‘Does she perhaps work for the British embassy?’ the youth asked, as though that might explain everything.

Sam clutched at that particular straw. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she works at the British embassy.’

The soldier seemed to relax. ‘Then you may visit. You will park over there’ – he pointed ahead where cars were drawn up in military ranks – ‘and you will go with an escort.’

Military it might be, but the sensations were the same as the civilian hospital – the same long, uniform corridors, the same harsh lighting, the same smells and sounds. Eventually the escort brought him to the department of neurosurgery, where no one else waited under the plain, unshaded bulbs of čekárna, the waiting room. There were a dozen metal-framed chairs with plastic seats and backs. A framed photograph adorned the walls, a portrait of the president, white-haired and smiling and looking as though Spencer Tracy had auditioned successfully for the part. Two ashtrays on aluminium stands underpinned the room with the smell of stale cigarette smoke. The escort left. Taking the cue from the ashtrays, Sam lit a cigarette and waited. A nurse glanced in on him but disappeared before he had time to speak. Was he even in the right place? Somewhere a phone rang but no one answered and the ringing went on and on. He got up, went to the door and looked down empty corridors. Nothing. There was the feeling that he was actually in the final, never completed, never even started Kafka novel – Das Krankenhaus, The Hospital.

Samuel W. awoke one day to find himself in a deserted hospital…

Finally a footfall sounded in the corridor and he looked up to find a doctor standing at the door. His white coat bore military tabs on the collar. A major. ‘I understand you are asking after a patient.’

Sam stubbed out his cigarette. ‘That’s right. I was told she’d been transferred here.’

‘And your name is?’

‘Samuel Wareham. I’m at the British embassy.’

The major nodded. ‘Come with me, please.’

They went up a floor and along further corridors. Doors bore nameplates with titles and ranks – generálmajor prof. MUDr; plk. prof. MUDr – and then there was yet another waiting room, only this one had a photograph of the president shaking hands warmly with Marshall Zhukov. Glass doors led to a balcony but it was dark outside and the windows did little more than mirror the room itself and the two people waiting there. Lenka’s mother was one, standing in the centre of the room like a ruined reflection of her daughter. Beside her, with his arm protectively round her waist, was the same man Sam and Lenka had encountered at the hotel in Mariánské Lázně, the man who had once been her mother’s lover and then, in a perverse succession, had become Lenka’s own. Pavel Rovnák.

‘Paní Konečková,’ Sam said. ‘I’m so sorry we have to meet again like this.’

The woman nodded, as though he was confirming something she had long expected, as if all this was the conclusion to some explanation she had been attempting in their previous encounter in her tiny, stained flat. This is what happens. This is what belief does.

Sam turned to the man. ‘Pane Rovnák.’ The two men shook hands. No surprise registered in the mother’s face that he and Rovnák already knew one another, so he assumed he had already been discussed, his presence here mulled over, explained, considered. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘I was told—’

‘She’s in the operating theatre,’ Rovnák said. ‘In the best possible hands.’

‘I saw her at the other hospital. Why was she transferred? Why a military hospital?’

‘It’s the best we have.’

‘Pavel arranged it,’ the woman said, as though that explained everything.

‘And she’s being operated on now, you say?’

‘That’s right.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Over two hours now.’

There was a strange abstraction about the scene, that they were here in this soulless room and Lenka was somewhere near, unknowing, lying prone beneath glaring lights with surgeons stooped over her like priests at a mummification.

‘What do the surgeons say?’

Rovnák didn’t answer immediately, but solicitously sat Lenka’s mother down in one of the chairs; then he took Sam’s arm to lead him away through the glass door onto the balcony. There was something paternal about the man’s behaviour, as though it was his daughter rather than his former lover who now lay beneath the surgeon’s scalpel. He lit a cigarette, offered one to Sam. They stood side by side in the cool evening air, smoking and looking out over the hospital complex. There were people moving along the dimly lit paths between the buildings, nurses and orderlies as white as ghosts. Sirens sounded in the distance. Ambulances drove in, blue lights flashing. Perhaps something had occurred in the city, some incident between the occupation forces and civilians. Presumably injured Russian soldiers would be brought here for treatment.

Rovnák spoke. His voice was level and emotionless, as though he were talking about the weather. ‘The chances are about even, that’s what I was told.’

‘The toss of a coin?’

‘If you want to put it like that. Even if they are successful, she may have suffered brain damage. When they spoke to Kateřina they appeared more optimistic and less precise. They talked of modern techniques, how so much can be done.’ He pondered the matter of modern techniques as though he didn’t believe it either. The burning end of his cigarette glared like an angry eye. ‘I love her, you know that? Whatever she may have told you.’

Strangely, Sam found that he rather liked the man. There was something matter-of-fact about him, something honest. ‘I can understand that. I love her too. And I’m sure she’ll come through.’

‘How can you be sure? As you said, the spin of a coin.’

‘It’ll come up heads.’ He wondered whether his confidence in the ability of these unknown military surgeons was entirely misplaced. ‘How did you get her admitted here?’ he asked. ‘I though it was reserved for the military.’

‘And the Party.’

‘But Lenka’s not a member of the Party. And neither is her mother.’

Rovnák smiled wryly. ‘But I am. And I’ve always looked after them.’ He said no more, just smoked and looked at what passed as a view. Finally he asked, ‘Do you know what happened to her?’

‘Lenka?’

‘Of course Lenka. Who else?’

‘Only what I’ve heard from her friends. She was at the radio station yesterday morning, when they were barricading the place against the Russians troops. A stray bullet or something.’

The man turned towards Sam. His voice rose out of its flat calm. ‘You could have stopped her.’

‘I could have stopped her? What do you mean by that?’

Quite unexpectedly, absurdly really, there was anger in the man’s face. ‘She’d dropped those foolish friends of hers and moved in with you, hadn’t she? You’d turned her head. Trips to Mariánske Lázně. Even to Munich. You had her that close and yet you let her go.’

‘How do you know all this?’

Rovnák looked away again, as though something in the darkness had attracted him. When he spoke again it was tangential to Sam’s question. ‘She phoned me yesterday morning from your house. Wanted to know what was happening. I told her to keep away, but it’s not easy to persuade someone on the end of the phone. But you could have stopped her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’s an adult – she can decide what to do and what not to do. And she was determined to go into the city to see what was happening.’

The man drew on his cigarette. Sam watched his fingers, the same fingers that had known Lenka. How had they been? Probing, insistent, shameless. Rovnák shook his head. ‘She had no business to be there in the Old Town.’

‘She had no business there? For Christ’s sake – what about the fucking Russians?’

He went back inside after that and sat next to Lenka’s mother, while Rovnák stayed out on the balcony. They waited. The woman smoked. Her breathing was harsh, as though she had obstructions deep inside her chest. Time moved with glacial slowness. Noises beyond the room seemed to come from another world where people did things – calling, talking, hurrying along corridors, pushing trolleys – yet in the waiting room time appeared suspended. This gave each trivial movement an enlarged significance, as though it was observed through a magnifying lens. Such as when Sam reached across and took hold of Kateřina’s hand and she grasped his in return. The faint smile she gave him. Her skin was tough and dry; her finger joints swollen by arthritis. She swallowed, moving her lips as though contemplating speech. She said nothing.

How many minutes passed before steps sounded in the corridor outside? Ten? Twenty? But then there was a footfall outside and a man appeared in the doorway. He was robed in white like a priest and wore a white surgical cap. A cotton mask was pulled down below his chin. Kateřina got to her feet. Rovnák came in from the balcony. The man looked at them with an expression that was curiously neutral, as though he had done this many times before and had become indifferent to the task, whether it was good news or bad.

‘Paní Konečková?’

Sam stood up, watching the slow interplay of people – the man in white, the woman with the broad hips and brassy hair, the man with the moustache who had just come in from the balcony with a lit cigarette in his hand. Time seemed dilated by the gravitational fields of events around him, stretched out on a rack and close to breaking point, close to confessing all its secrets. One day, he thought, all this will be past. It will be consigned to memory, twisted into different shapes, given that patina of age that will hide most of the pain. Perhaps it will be taken out once in a while and wiped free of the dust of forgetting, so that for a few minutes it may shine bright again; but it will be past, whatever happens.

52

They’ve walked away from the border as far as the village. There was so much going on at the border – military, radio and TV crews, journalists all milling around like flies at an open wound – that no lifts were forthcoming. So they walked, and now they’ve found a Gasthof on the edge of the village – Gasthof zur Grenze, with Biergarten and Gaststätte, whatever that is, and rooms, a dozen of them, tucked under the eaves. The place is full of that slightly dodgy Bavarian cosiness, manifested in wood carving and wrought ironwork and paintings of lads and lasses dancing round the maypole, that they even have a word for: Gemütlichkeit. Ellie might not be able to speak German but she produces that word from somewhere. Enveloped by this Gemütlichkeit, they’ve been served beer and plates of pork and sauerkraut by a middle-aged woman in a dirndl. Enriched as they are by the Wareham bloke’s contribution to their funds, they can afford it all. James’s head has almost stopped singing and his hearing is less muffled, but still there’s a sensation of unreality about the last ten days, as though everything happened to other people, Fando and Lis, perhaps. They discuss it all in the abstract – Jitka, Lenka, Zdeněk, even the embassy guy, Samuel Wareham – as if somehow the people no longer exist in the round but have faded into two dimensions, identified only by what they might have said or done. And in this bucolic beer garden, in the slanting August evening sunlight, the whole vision of Russian troops in their helmets, their uniforms, their massive tanks, seems something of a fantasy.

‘I just hope Lenka is all right,’ Ellie says.

‘She will be.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

What makes him so sure is that he is too young to have witnessed much in the way of death. A couple of ancient grandparents, neither of whom he saw very often; that’s about it. His beer finishes and is replaced by another. ‘You fancied her, didn’t you?’ he says.

The conversation trips. Ellie’s expression changes. She’s suddenly caught between emotions, embarrassment and excitement in clumsy juxtaposition, battling for command of her expression.

James sips his beer through the foam. ‘I saw you after the swim. You went off to dry and I saw you touch her.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. I saw you, that’s all. You touched her shoulder and then her tits and she laughed. And then you kissed her. On the lips.’

‘You dirty pervert. Peeping Tom!’

He laughs at her embarrassment. ‘You did, though.’

Ellie says nothing for a while, but she’s still thinking about it. ‘I’ve never touched a woman like that before,’ she says eventually. ‘Never really wanted to. But she…’ She gives a small, humourless laugh. ‘Do you think I’m a lesbian, Jamie?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It does if I’m going to start wearing tweeds and a collar and tie and cutting my hair short.’

‘And smoking a pipe.’

‘And wearing brogues and talking in a gruff voice and calling myself Elmer or something. One of our dons is just like that. Dr Sappho we call her. She’s really Safford.’

‘Somehow I don’t think you’ll be like that.’

‘Have you ever felt anything for a man, Jamie?’ She has never called him Jamie before.

‘I haven’t. But there’s a bloke in college does. Fancies me, as a matter of fact. Asked me if I was interested.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I told him I wasn’t. But if I ever changed my mind, I’d certainly let him know.’ She laughs. He has always been able to do that, make her laugh. ‘And hey, what about the Russians? Egorkin, and what’s her name?’

‘Nadia Pankova.’

‘Sam got quite peculiar about it. Official Secrets Act and all that. But it’ll be all over the papers tomorrow, won’t it?’

They speculate a bit, their ideas getting more and more absurd. They should sell their story to the highest bidder. They should write a novel. They should… More beer. People at a nearby table ask if they are American. ‘Everyone asks if we’re American,’ James tells them. ‘But unlike the Americans, we speak proper English.’

There’s laughter.

Ellie points at James. ‘He doesn’t. He’s from oop North and speaks a strange dialect.’

More laughter. Gemütlichkeit, that’s what it is. Jolly laughter and contentment. After a while the English pair bid their German interlocutors good night and make their way upstairs. The floors creak beneath their feet, the door creaks as they shut it, the bed creaks as they lie on it. ‘Do you want to?’ James asks.

Ellie hesitates, and then says, ‘Yes, OK.’ So they do it. It’s brief and not very skilful, but at least it’s companionship of a kind, and no tears.

Early next morning there’s a feeling of renewal, that they still have a journey to make, although where they might go remains undecided. Tar has been dispensed with. Do they continue south as originally planned? Or?

Arguing about where and what, they sling their rucksacks and head towards the main road. There’s little traffic but they expect that now. This border area is a wasteland. Empty fields and woods. Fences and military patrols. But after a short distance they do pick up a lift, a local farmer who speaks unintelligible German at them and laughs at what they say back to him. He and his battered NSU take them to a junction near his destination, where the road branches left and right.

Left is to Regensburg and München, right is to Nürnberg. They stand by the roadside and face the choice. Ellie takes a coin from her pocket and hands it to James. ‘Heads left, tails right,’ she says.

He flips his thumb. The coin sings as it climbs, spinning over and over, glittering in the morning sunlight. They watch it rise and fall.