Prague Spring

31

Meetings in the embassy safe room are daily. Rumours abound, throughout the city, over the airwaves, from one embassy to another. Leaders from various Iron Curtain countries drop in on Prague without notice. Troops are reported to be gathering in Hungary, East Germany, Poland and Ukraine. There are stories of late-night phone calls between Prague and the Kremlin, between Brezhnev and Dubček.

‘The Czechoslovak leadership,’ Eric Whittaker said yet again, ‘is walking a knife-edge.’

Someone asked, ‘What’s our own position, Eric? If it should all go wrong, I mean. If the Soviets decide to move in. What the devil do we do?’

Eric winced. ‘Heaven forfend. Of course we just keep our heads below the parapet. Strictly their own affair. Just like Hungary in fifty-six. We’ll get everyone into the embassy and batten down the hatches.’

‘And HMG?’

‘The official government position is that any such escalation would be a strictly internal matter for the countries concerned – in this case, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.’

‘It seems like another betrayal, doesn’t it?’ Sam said. ‘Munich 1938 and now Prague 1968. Do you see the pattern? Nineteen eighteen the state is created. Nineteen thirty-eight it is betrayed by the Great Powers, 1948 the communists grab power. And now here we are in 1968. It looks ominous.’

‘I didn’t know you were a numerologist, Sam.’

‘Just a pessimist, Eric.’

‘Well, let’s have a bit of optimism. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’ Whittaker would have liked that lapidary sentence to be an end to the meeting, but someone – the head of consular services this time – was always there to ruin a good ending: ‘But are we preparing for the worst, Eric? What about the evacuation of British nationals in the event of an invasion? Since the place has become a magnet for every trendy socialist Tom, Dick and Harry we’ve got hundreds here. There’s even a bloody pop group due in a couple of days.’ He glanced at a typed sheet in front of him. ‘Apparently they call themselves The Moody Blues, although, God knows, it’s me that’s moody. And blue.’

Sam fell in beside Whittaker as they left the safe room. ‘I’ve just received this from the Russian embassy.’ He held out an envelope with his name written on it.

Whittaker glanced inside with a look of surprise. ‘Lucky you. That’d be a hot ticket in London.’

‘They’re from Gennady Egorkin himself. He seemed very insistent that I go.’

‘So what’s keeping you? Are you taking the young lady we saw you with? Madeleine was most intrigued. Found it better entertainment than the Brahms. I could barely drag her away at the end.’

‘I hope she doesn’t go shooting her mouth off to Stephanie. Not before I’ve had a chance to tell her myself.’

‘Is it serious then?’

‘It’s all a bit sudden, really. Not quite what I expected.’

‘Well, be careful. Playing away from home is not easy in these parts.’

‘Of course I will.’

‘And I won’t breathe a word of it to Madeleine. Mind you, she already thinks you’re a two-timing bastard.’

‘It’s not that simple, Eric.’

‘My dear fellow, it never is. Speaks an expert.’

32

It’s no longer Marienbad, of course, any more than Karlsbad is still Karlsbad. Once again, those are the German names lurking in the collective memory behind the Czech. Now the world-famous spa towns are Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad may be the more celebrated of the two, but there’s no doubt which is the more beautiful. Mariánské Lázně is a baroque jewel set in green velvet, a belle époque fantasy couched among wooded hills, a courtesan reclining in her bed. This is where Goethe came to take the waters and found his last and unrequited love, Ulrike von Levetzow; where the King-Emperor Edward VII failed to lose weight, chased tail and also encountered fellow emperor Franz-Josef I. Here Chopin stayed with his fiancée Maria Wodzin´ska, Winston Churchill spent part of his honeymoon with the lovely Clementine Hozier and Franz Kafka passed ten agonising days with his fiancée Felice Bauer. Finally, this is where General George Patton, he of the ivory-handled revolvers and a tendency to slap combat-fatigued soldiers, turned up with the US Third Army in May 1945, a fact conveniently forgotten by the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which acknowledged the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army alone.

The hotel Sam had chosen was in need of refurbishment, but beneath the faded paint and crumbling stucco you could see the elaborate wedding-cake decoration that had made the place so famous in its time. He parked the car in front of the main entrance. The Škoda that had followed them throughout the two-hour journey from Prague stopped fifty yards behind them, but he didn’t say anything about it to Lenka.

The receptionist checked them in with as much grace as the desk sergeant at a police station. ‘Chopin suite,’ he said, handing over a key that might have opened a prison cell. The lift was out of order. They carried their suitcases up the main stairs, out of the faded grandeur of the foyer into the drab functionalism of the upper floors where socialist ideals of uniformity and parsimony had long ago chased out any luxury that the nobility of Europe might have recognised. The door to the Chopin suite was marked with the composer’s name, framed by a treble clef and a selection of crochets and quavers. Within there was a sitting room with a plasterwork ceiling that gave only meagre hints of what once might have been, and a bedroom with a fanciful portrait of the composer himself over the bed. Full-height windows overlooked the spa gardens.

‘Did you see?’ Lenka asked as they unpacked. Already there was a kind of familiarity about their relationship, as though matters had been speeded up and domestication was the next step. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

‘Did I see what?’

‘Of course you saw. The car that followed us, the same as before. The same as we saw when we went swimming. They follow you everywhere.’

He watched as she hung her Munich dress in the wardrobe. ‘It’s always like that. You get used to it.’

‘I hate it. It is worse than we had before Dubček. At least we weren’t followed everywhere.’

‘But we were. Anyway, what does it matter as long as they haven’t booked into the room next door?’

She looked round and ambushed him with that smile – a flash of white teeth, a glimpse of naked gum, a creasing of her eyes. ‘I don’t care what they hear,’ she said.

Later they strolled in the spa gardens. Classical pavilions were scattered amongst the lawns, hiding within them the fountains that spurted life-giving waters whose details were specified at each spring – urinary diseases, locomotory diseases, gastrointestinal problems, gynaecological conditions, infertility, all were treatable. ‘If all this were true,’ Sam remarked, ‘you wouldn’t need doctors.’ He took photos, posing Lenka in the pavilion of the Karolina spring and snapping her as she walked through the arcade, alternately in shadow and out. One or two people paused to watch. At the Kolonáda a threadbare band played waltzes and polkas. On either side of the musicians the faces of Gennady Egorkin and Nadezdha Pankova stared out from posters as though expecting less levity, but Lenka ignored their disapproval, taking Sam’s hand and pirouetting with laughter while the musicians smiled and nodded. Sam took photographs of her spinning, her hair thrown out, her skirt billowing.

The recital that evening was held in a marbled hall decked out with neoclassical columns and naked goddesses. Just the two performers at the focus of the lights: Egorkin, dark and tense at the keyboard, and Nadezhda Pankova like a small, live flame (that crimson evening dress) beside him. As Egorkin had said, they’d chosen a demanding programme, opening with the Kreutzer Sonata and, after the interval, moving into the Slav world with Prokofiev and Janáček. The Prokofiev, vivid and melodic, was straightforward enough, but it was in the strange rhythms and echoes of the Janáček violin sonata that the Russian duo found their true métier, piano and violin throwing Janáček’s musical motifs back and forth, sometimes like children at play, sometimes like warring creatures snarling at each other, sometimes like lovers caressing. Melodies initiated by the violin were cut to pieces by the staccato piano, and then the roles were reversed, a lilting piano theme chopped apart by buzzing violin notes. At the end the whole piece reached a taut climax before drifting imperceptibly away into silence, like a person dying.

There was a stillness in the auditorium, breathing suspended, hearts stopped. Then a blizzard of applause. As the storm engulfed them, the couple stood, holding hands aloft, bowing in careful unison. It was only then that Sam noticed something, a glance between the pair, shared smiles hastily suppressed, a second glance that lingered after the smiles had been extinguished. It was that in particular that convinced him, the held glance like a hand clasp that neither wanted to break. The maestro and his protégée were in love.

Dutifully the two musicians settled down to play an encore – a quiet, melodic piece by Tchaikovsky – and while the second round of applause was filling the auditorium Sam and Lenka slipped out and found their way towards the back. At a gilded door, an attendant blocked the way in the impassive manner of a palace guard.

There were a few moments of one-sided argument – only authorised personnel were allowed through – before Sam gave up and took one of his visiting cards from his wallet. He scribbled on the back: Brilliant! And then on an impulse added the name of the hotel where they were staying. ‘Can you see it gets to Maestro Egorkin?’ he asked the attendant, adding a ten-crown note to help the thing on its way. ‘He invited us here and we want to show our appreciation. Do you understand?’

Did he understand? He seemed far beyond understanding anything much, viewing the card with rank suspicion before opening the door behind him and speaking to someone inside. The card disappeared. So did the ten-crown note.

‘Thank you,’ Sam said. ‘Thank you very much.’ Beside him, Lenka swore softly.

At dinner that evening they sat amongst workers who had exceeded their quotas, managers of farming collectives who had manipulated the figures to create an impression of surplus, factory managers who had passed their targets on paper if not in reality, party officials who had kissed the right arses. The men wore ill-fitting, shiny suits, their wives clumsy floral dresses. A pianist played Chopin remarkably well and a master of ceremonies commandeered the microphone to welcome a fraternal delegation from Poland to ‘our Bohemian beauty spot, in the hope that mutual respect and cooperation might always be the bond that ties our two peoples together’. There was scattered applause, but the Polish delegates really wanted to get on with the meal. Soup came and went, the usual thin broth with a dubious liver dumpling floating in it like a turd in a lavatory pan. It was followed by pork and duck weighed down with bread dumplings, each portion carefully defined in grams as though parsimony ruled in the kitchens and every ingredient had to be accounted for.

It was as they were starting their main course that someone came over to their table from the Polish party. Sam half-rose from his seat but the man had eyes only for Lenka. ‘Lenička,’ he called her. ‘My dear Lenička.’

She looked surprised and faintly embarrassed at his attention, but she accepted a kiss on one cheek. ‘This is my friend, Samuel,’ she said. There was a shaking of hands and an exchange of names. Pavel Rovnák, he said. He was slight of build with dark hair and a sallow complexion. He wore a moustache that might once have been a homage to Joseph Stalin but was now trimmed to suit the times. ‘I am an old family friend,’ he explained, ‘but Lenka and I haven’t seen each other for some time. Isn’t it strange how even in a small country such as ours it is still possible to avoid someone’ – he looked accusingly at Lenka – ‘and then to meet up in Mariánské Lazně of all places?’ He paused, as though expecting some matching remark from her, perhaps an explanation of what she was doing there with this foreigner who appeared to speak such excellent Czech. ‘You look well,’ he said to fill the void. ‘And your lovely mother? How is she?’ And then when Lenka had offered her scant information, he turned back to Sam. ‘You are American, perhaps?’

‘English. At the embassy.’

‘Ah, the embassy.’ Rovnák pursed his lips – the moustache twitched – and looked again from one to the other as though searching for further clues. ‘You speak good Czech for a foreigner.’

‘Not as good as Lenka’s English.’

‘She has been studying the language at university. I’m glad you have done so well, zlato.’

Lenka shrugged, as though it was of no account. ‘Are you staying in the hotel?’ she asked.

‘Sadly I have to get back to Prague this evening. In fact’ – he glanced round – ‘I must get back to my table. These Poles cannot be left on their own for too long. It has been good to meet you, Samuel. And Lenička, you must keep in touch.’

Lenka said nothing and went back to her meal. An outburst of laughter greeted the man’s return to his table. Sam waited. Lenka drank some wine then carefully replaced her glass. ‘That’s him,’ she said quietly. ‘I told you about him. The aparátník. Pavel Rovnák.’

Sam had always perceived her as tough – smiling, delightful, but tough. Yet now it was as though he saw her through a magnifying lens. He could glimpse her insecurities, imagine her as a vulnerable young girl, a lumpish fifteen-year-old uncertain of the vagaries of her body, possessed only of a distant memory of her father and subject to a rancorous mother. And there was this man with his amiable and enticing ways, a guarantor of present comforts and future success.

‘I hated that moustache,’ she said, reaching for her glass again.

Rovnák was as good as his word and left when the meal had more or less come to an end and toasts were being drunk. He passed their table on his way out and lifted Lenka’s hand to his lips, renewing his exhortation to keep in touch. But he was very sorry, he just had to be back in Prague by that evening. Otherwise he would have asked Lenka for a dance.

‘His wife keeps him on a tight lead,’ she suggested when he had gone. It was difficult to interpret her tone. Was there some hint of regret there amidst the bitterness? The pianist had exhausted the possibilities of Chopin and begun to feel his way into a few popular numbers – ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, ‘The Continental’, that kind of thing. The Polish trades unionists and their wives took to the floor. Sam and Lenka followed. For a while they shuffled round amidst the insidious smell of sweet floral perfume and sour body odour that hung around the dancers before Sam suggested they take a breath of fresh air.

The spa gardens were beautiful at night, touched with a glimmer of their former glory. You could almost imagine the ghosts of the pre-war demi-monde encountering phantom crowned heads amongst the fountains and the colonnades. ‘I thought you might be angry to meet my first lover,’ she said as they walked. ‘I have heard that Englishmen can be very jealous.’

‘Not at all. He seemed very polite.’

‘He was wondering if I have become a prostitute.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I could see it in his eyes. And he was calculating what my price might be.’

It wasn’t particularly late when they returned to the hotel but the Polish group had gone and the dining room was shut. Only the disgruntled receptionist remained on duty in the foyer. As Sam took the room key the man handed over an envelope with grim ill-will, as though even passing on a letter went far beyond the call of duty. Sam pocketed the envelope without giving the receptionist the satisfaction of seeing him open it. Through pools of feeble light they climbed the stairs to the first floor. Sam unlocked the door to the Chopin suite and pushed it open for Lenka to go through into the sitting room.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Probably the bill. Just the kind of thing they’d do, in case we go off tomorrow morning without paying.’

But the envelope did not contain the bill. It was a simple one-line note, written in English. Perhaps a stroll to the Kolonáda tomorrow morning? Eight o’clock? It was signed Egorkin.

He smiled. In the more relaxed atmosphere of Mariánské Lazně the man clearly had a way of evading his escort. Lenka had gone into the bathroom. ‘It’s nothing,’ he called to her. He went into the bedroom and looked round, as though hidden microphones might reveal themselves to his gaze. Hotels in which foreigners might stay were notorious for being bugged. You didn’t wonder about it, you assumed it. But all he saw was the broken plasterwork of the ceiling, the heavy velvet curtains, the wardrobe with its poorly silvered mirror, the chest of drawers whose veneer was lifting away at the corners. He waited for her to come from the bathroom, her face scrubbed of makeup and as vulnerable as a young girl’s, before handing her the note and putting his finger to his lips.

She looked at him enquiringly. ‘You will go?’

‘I think so.’

She reached behind her to unzip the dress, the outfit they had bought in Munich, and let it slide to the floor. Then she dropped her slip around her feet and stepped out of it as though stepping out of a pool of water, holding his eye and smiling. ‘Do you like what you see?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘And are you thinking of that man, Pavel Rovnák? Are you jealous of him?’

‘You asked me that already. I’m jealous of what he took from you. But more than that, I’m angry that he used you.’

She unfastened her brassiere and dropped it as carelessly as a child discarding sweet papers. ‘And I used him. So it was on both sides. And it was a long time ago. The past.’

But their love was entirely in the present, a slow, deliberate act, as though they had been lovers for years rather than weeks; at her climax convulsions racked her body in ways that couldn’t be contrived, couldn’t be anything but the ecstasy of the moment. He’d never known this with Steffie, never this intensity, never this incontinence. Anything else might be a lie, but this was not. Yet in the aftermath he looked at her lying there, spent, damp with sweat, and wondered about the hard core of her, that part which had accepted, even welcomed, the attentions of Pavel Rovnák.

Things were different in the morning. The morning was fresh and cool – the town lies six hundred metres above sea level, out of the smog and heat of the lowlands – and Lenka was lying on her back in the chaos of sheets. Sunlight from the open windows caught the froth of dun-coloured hair between her thighs and turned it the colour of honey. She smiled at him, and seemed, with that smile, entirely and delightfully vulnerable – and part of him in a way that he had never imagined a woman might be.

That moment could stand for ever, preserved in the fixative of memory.

At breakfast she seemed put out at the idea of his meeting Egorkin. ‘Why does he have to steal our time?’

‘I can’t very well ignore him. Maybe you should come as well. To offer your congratulations on his performance.’

‘I’ll wait for you here.’

‘You’re going to sulk.’

‘Sulk? What is sulk?’

‘What you’re doing now.’ He made a face, pouting.

She laughed. ‘Trucovat.’ And her laughter meant that she wasn’t. So she went back to the room to wait, while Sam, with that morning’s copy of Rudé Právo tucked under his arm, took a stroll in the spa gardens. A few drab figures wandered the paths, but it was early for the crowds and the magnificent wrought-iron Kolonáda was almost empty, like an elaborate stage set waiting for players.

What, he wondered, did the Russian want? Surely not just to thank him for coming all the way to his recital in Mariánske Lazně. He chose a bench and sat to read the paper, a task he had every morning at work, to deliver a digest of the morning’s news for Eric Whittaker to review. Today’s front page announced that the East German leader Walter Ulbricht was visiting Karlsbad with his sidekick Erich Honecker – an unforeseen event that stirred the commentators to a frenzy of speculation. Sam scanned the reports, pausing to read whatever caught his eye – in this case, Dubček meeting the unexpected guests at the airport and a young girl from the Pioneers dutifully presenting the East German leader with a bouquet of flowers and receiving an ill-aimed kiss on the neck in return. There had been a stony silence from the crowd that had gathered to watch. Ulbricht was hated in Czechoslovakia just as he was hated in his own country. But the question uppermost in Sam Wareham’s mind was, what was the man doing here? Leafing through the pages and loathing the newsprint that stained his fingers, he felt like a soothsayer trying to read the entrails of some sacrificial animal and thereby foretell the future. One thing he knew for sure: a visit from Ulbricht was like a knock on the door from the grim reaper himself.

‘Dobrý den.’

He looked up with a start. Egorkin was standing over him. Seen close and in the clear light of morning he looked older than previously. There were hints of acne scars on his cheeks. He’d cut himself shaving and there was a dab of cotton wool on his neck. Sitting down, he glanced at Sam’s newspaper and said, in Russian, ‘It looks as though we made the right choice to come here rather than Karlsbad. Of course, I am joking. I have no choice in such matters. They decide for me.’ He took out a silver cigarette case and held it out. ‘They’re American,’ he said reassuringly.

‘Thanks, but I’m trying to give them up.’

That seemed to amuse the man. ‘That is exactly what I am doing – converting to American cigarettes after a lifetime of Belomor is as good as giving up.’ He blew smoke away towards the vaulted ironwork overhead.

‘The recital,’ Sam said, ‘was wonderful. You played so well together.’

Egorkin nodded. ‘We are, what do you say in English? In harmony. But I didn’t come here to talk about my music. What I want to do is to explain my situation.’

Sam sat back on the bench and looked out across the gardens. He noticed inconsequential things. A woman walking a poodle. Two children running and laughing ahead of their parents. A fountain shattering sunlight into a thousand fragments. Quotidian events impressed on his retina and, perhaps, his memory. ‘Tell me.’

Egorkin hesitated, as though he had not really thought this through. But he must have. Whatever it was, he must have thought about it long and hard. ‘You perhaps know something of me by reputation.’

‘I know something.’

‘For example, that I have been outspoken about matters in my homeland and so I have been forbidden to travel to the West. My being here in Czechoslovakia is considered a great concession, almost a prize for having accepted my fate with good grace.’

‘I’ve heard something about it.’

Egorkin nodded. ‘And I am only here now because it is early morning and my escort is lazy. Like the whole Soviet system, they watch only when they know they are being watched.’ He laughed. ‘It is not quite as simple as that, however.’

‘I didn’t think it would be.’

‘I expect you to act in an entirely professional manner over this.’

‘Of course I will.’

‘So. There is also the matter of Nadezhda Nikolayevna.’ The Russian seemed to gather his thoughts, or perhaps, his courage. ‘She is, you understand, in love with me. And I’ – he hesitated as though he were not so clear on the matter – ‘I am in love with her.’

The man paused, smoking and looking out of the colonnade. The woman with the poodle had gone, so too the children. An ancient couple, who perhaps had come to the spa to find the key to eternal life, walked past. They looked at Egorkin as though they recognised him.

Sam asked, ‘What does this admittedly awkward state of affairs have to do with a British diplomat?’

Egorkin nodded thoughtfully. Finally he said, ‘I would like your advice. You see’ – another draw on his cigarette – ‘I want your assistance in getting us to the West. We wish to claim political asylum.’

‘You and Nadezhda Nikolayevna?’

‘Exactly. Does that surprise you?’

‘Not entirely. But I don’t see how I can help you. The very best you could expect is to gain entry to one of the Western embassies. You might be granted asylum of some kind, but that might mean the two of you becoming prisoners in the embassy itself. Like Cardinal Mindszenty in Budapest. Twelve years so far. Unless the Czechs would agree to your leaving.’

The man frowned. Dark eyebrows, pockmarked skin, a mouth clamped into a line of disapprobation, as though he had heard discord in the strings. ‘Did you know that the London Symphony Orchestra offered me the post of principal conductor when they got rid of Kertész? I was not able to take the post because my country did not allow it. That is what I have to deal with.’ He fidgeted another cigarette from his case, snapped at the lighter, drew sharply in. Sam continued, dredging up his knowledge of consular affairs.

‘Whether an embassy would give you shelter is entirely at the discretion of the ambassador. You understand that, don’t you? Most countries, including my own, do not recognise the legality of what is known as diplomatic asylum – sanctuary in one of its embassies. Legally a refugee cannot apply for political asylum until he is actually in the receiving country’s territory.’

‘But isn’t an embassy—?’

‘—an extraterritorial possession? That’s a popular misconception. Under international law an embassy remains the territory of the host nation. It’s just that the agents of the host nation may not enter the embassy without the express permission of the ambassador. So you, or anyone else seeking refuge, would be relying on the goodwill of the ambassador. His job would be to consider what risks you might run if he were to insist that you leave his embassy, but above all he would have to consider the best interests of his own country. I’m afraid I’m beginning to sound like a textbook. Or a lawyer. Maybe I will have one of your cigarettes.’

There was a pause for the little ritual of lighting up. Sam attempted a smile. ‘There go my best intentions. Up in smoke.’ He glanced at his watch and wondered when he could politely extricate himself from this conversation. It wasn’t difficult to feel sympathy for Egorkin, a talent put at the mercy of the Soviet state, but the matter was hardly his concern. ‘In your case there would be a further complication because the host country in this case – Czechoslovakia – is not hostile to you, so it is difficult to see what danger you would be in if you were asked to leave the embassy. In Moscow you would clearly be in jeopardy, but here, as things are at the moment…’ He shrugged.

The man digested these unpleasant facts, smoking and looking out across the gardens. Suddenly he seemed very vulnerable, crushed by the situation. Sam thought of Russia and what it did to its children. The largest country in the world, yet as claustrophobic as a prison cell; lives trapped and stifled; genius smothered. And how the contagion spread to its neighbours. He thought of Lenka, orphaned and shamed by the state, trading her body for the hope of education. He thought of hope itself, the violinist’s name, Nadezhda, and how for the moment hope flourished here in Czechoslovakia, at least. Hope against hope.

‘I can have a word with people in the embassy but I can’t promise anything.’

Egorkin nodded, as though weasel words were only to be expected. ‘Tell me, Mr Wareham, how is it that you speak Russian so well?’

It was a relief to shift the conversation on to firmer ground. ‘Two years of intensive Russian during my national service, followed by a three-year degree.’

‘So you loved our language.’

Was it a question? ‘I still do. The poetry and the prose. But particularly the poetry.’

‘And you will know that our writers have had their creative lives crushed. Pasternak unpublished in his own country and forced to refuse the Nobel Prize. Mandelstam killed in the gulag. Akhmatova banned for decades. Soul-destroying, Mr Wareham. Surely you understand that. Surely you feel it.’

‘I don’t see how my feelings come into it.’

Egorkin gave a dry laugh. ‘That is because you are not yourself. You are just a representative of a government. A functionary. But I am an artist, representing no one but myself. I deal with the emotions and the soul. You heard us play yesterday evening. Didn’t that speak to your soul? And to the soul of the woman at your side?’

‘I’m sure it did.’

‘Are you in love with her?’

He thought of Lenka, waiting in the hotel room, and then of Stephanie in her parents’ house in England. He thought of loyalty and betrayal, of passion and affection, of desire and love, all those abstract nouns that were so difficult to pin down and were so inimical to diplomacy. The trouble with diplomats, Steffie had once told him, is that you never know what they’re thinking. He made to get up. ‘As I said, my feelings have nothing to do with it.’

Egorkin put out a hand to restrain him. ‘Listen to your soul and help us, Mr Wareham. I am begging you.’

Sam stood, trying not to give the impression that he was abandoning the man. ‘I will do what I can, Mr Egorkin, but I cannot promise anything. You have my phone number if you need it. Where are you staying in Prague?’

‘At the International Hotel.’

‘If I have anything positive to tell you, I’ll contact you there.’

‘We are watched. All the time, we are watched.’

‘Then maybe you can phone me. At the embassy. Give me until Wednesday next week. But as I said, I really cannot promise anything.’ He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, and walked away. Lenka would be wondering where he had got to.

33

A reception at the ministry of foreign affairs, to celebrate the fraternal visit to Prague of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Tito had paid a flying visit a few days ago and been greeted by ecstatic crowds. Now it was the turn of the enigmatic leader of Romania.

The British ambassador had been invited and so had Eric, but the Whittakers were away in Austria for the weekend and Eric was damned if he was going to ruin his break for some tiresome duty bash. Sam would stand in for him, wouldn’t he? Wave the flag alongside His Excellency?

Sam rang a contact at the protocol section of the ministry and got Lenka’s name added to the guest list in place of Madeleine Whittaker. ‘You can write a piece about it for one of your journals,’ he told Lenka, and she appeared delighted at the possibility. These days anything seemed possible, even someone like her, with her family history, being admitted to the purlieus of power. They shunned driving and instead walked up the long slope of the Castle Hill. Lenka was once again wearing the dress and shoes they’d bought in Munich. She appeared excited at the prospect of even being in the same room as Dubček. ‘I might even get a chance to talk to him,’ she said with childlike enthusiasm.

In Hradčany soldiers were on duty at government buildings and policemen were marshalling the traffic. Sam and Lenka joined a queue shuffling forward to be admitted to the portals of the Černín Palace. Sam could feel Lenka tense beside him as their names were checked against the guest list, but then they were in, wandering past gilded columns and Flemish tapestries with the other milling guests. There was no receiving line – apparently their hosts were still in private discussions in the Hrad, but the ambassador was already there, in conversation with a South American counterpart. He detached himself and came over to be introduced to Sam’s guest. His bright, beady eyes didn’t miss a trick, either at bridge, which he and his wife played mercilessly, or in the complex social intercourse of the diplomatic world. He was, he claimed as he smiled on her, delighted to make her acquaintance.

‘Lenka’s a student,’ Sam explained.

The ambassador’s smile was benign. ‘Everyone seems to be these days. Surprised there’s anyone left to do any work. How’s Stephanie? Sorry she had to leave us.’

‘I haven’t heard from her for a while. I believe she’s fine.’

‘Belief is a great comfort, Samuel. I think it is what is sustaining our hosts at this very moment. One wonders’ – glancing round pointedly – ‘where they might be.’

‘I believe they are still locked away in talks.’

‘There you are again. Belief. What would we do without it?’ He laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘But please don’t let me bore you with my prattle. Go and circulate. Show Miss Konečková what fun we in the diplomatic corps have.’

‘I don’t think I like that man,’ Lenka said as the ambassador moved away.

‘He’s all right. He’s just a Wykehamist, that’s all.’

‘A Wykehamist?’

‘It really doesn’t matter.’

‘Anyway, whatever he is, he did not have to mention Stephanie.’

Sam laughed. ‘Oh yes, he did.’

They moved through the crowd, nodding greetings here and there. An American diplomat whom Sam knew came over. He was part Czech in origin, part Czech, wholly Jewish and every bit American, his family surname Růžička translating into Rose when his grandfather passed through Ellis Island in 1888. Harry Rose. He looked approvingly at Lenka. ‘A real live Czech? As rare as hen’s teeth at an event like this. Where did Sam find you?’

‘I found him.’

‘Touché. You know what?’ That was how he always started his stories. You know what? ‘Believe me, this is true. East German intelligence just reported American tanks crossing the border from Austria. Yesterday or the day before, this was. Invasion! Outrage! Claimed it was NATO belligerence, for Christ’s sake. Tried to get the Soviets interested in starting World War Three. The reality? They were old World War Two relics, props for some damn war film they’re making at Barrandov, can you believe it?’ He basked in their laughter. ‘It’s true, it’s true. We’ve got the whole lot here – Ben Gazzara, Bradford Dillman, Robert Vaughn. Half of Hollywood. You know these guys?’

‘I know the man from U.N.C.L.E.’

‘That’s him.’

‘What is uncle?’ Lenka asked.

‘It’s some James Bond-type TV show.’

‘United Network Command for Law Enforcement,’ Harry said with glee.

‘There is such a thing?’

Harry laughed, entranced by Lenka’s credulity. ‘You mustn’t believe everything you see on TV.’

‘James Bond fights SMERSH, and there is such a thing as SMERSH. Smert shpionam, death to spies. In Czech we say smrt špionů.’

‘Well, this lady sure knows her stuff. You’d better watch your back, Sam. Hey, and we even have Shirley Temple, would you believe it?’

‘Shirley Temple’s in a war film?’ Conversations with Harry lurched from the improbable to the unbelievable and back again within a couple of sentences.

‘No, she’s here for some convention or other. Probably singing “The Good Ship Lollipop” to a plenary session. I’m surprised she didn’t get an invite to this party – she has political ambitions, apparently. Wants to be a senator, wants to be president. Film star for president? Who the hell knows? Weirder things have happened. I mean, here we are meant to be representing the free West and our main concerns when the balloon goes up will be what the hell to do with half of Hollywood.’

A disturbance at the entrance announced the arrival of the hosts. People scurried to see. Svoboda came first, white-haired and red-faced, then Dubček, tall and awkward, like a heron in a stream worried about fish. Beside him was the dapper figure of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The trio came though the press of enthusiastic guests, smiling and nodding, pausing briefly for Dubček to exchange words with someone. In the background, observing all through horn-rimmed spectacles, was the Soviet ambassador Chervonenko.

A member of the ministry staff came over. ‘Mr Samuel Wareham,’ he said, ‘I am so sorry that Mr Whittaker could not be present but it is good to bump into you again. That is the right expression, isn’t it? To bump into someone?’

‘It certainly is.’

‘And this lovely lady is…?’

‘Miss Lenka Konečková.’

‘Ah, yes. I know about Miss Konečková.’

Lenka’s embryo smile died. ‘You know about me? What does that mean, exactly?’

The man pondered her question for a moment. All around him there was the press of guests, reaching for the buffet. ‘I have read some of your articles, of course. That student newspaper, what is it called?’

‘Student.’

‘Ah, yes. Not very imaginative.’

‘The name of the paper or my articles?’

‘Oh no, your articles are very imaginative.’

‘We are all imagining a world where you may speak your mind, aren’t we?’

The man turned to Sam with a wry smile. ‘Your lady friend is very beautiful, Mr Wareham. But she bites. You must keep her on a tight lead.’

‘I’m not on anyone’s lead, thank you.’

Sam took her arm and eased her out of the crush. Lenka’s fury heightened the colour in her cheeks yet turned her eyes glacial. It was a disturbing combination. ‘I don’t think picking a fight with a senior functionary in the interior ministry is the best way of passing the evening,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and find ourselves something to drink.’

‘What is that man’s name?’

‘Kučera. Petr, Patrik? I can’t remember.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘You meet all sorts in my line of work.’

‘What a horrid job.’ She looked round the crowded room as though to get her bearings. ‘Now let’s go and speak to the First Secretary.’

‘The First Secretary? Don’t be daft. They won’t let you near him.’

‘Daft? What is daft?’

‘Silly, stupid.’

‘It is not silly. Or stupid. He is meant to represent the people, is he not? I am the people.’

‘Actually he represents the Communist Party, which is a very different thing.’ But she was already away across the room, pushing amongst the crowd to where the Czechoslovak and Romanian officials were making a little festive scrum. Sam hurried after her. He reached the edge of the group just as she achieved the middle.

‘Comrade Dubček,’ he heard her say. Someone tried to move her back but Dubček put up a hand to stop him. ‘I just wanted to tell you that we are all behind you,’ she said. ‘You are surrounded by all these officials who keep you from mixing with the ordinary people, so I thought you ought to know.’

He smiled benignly on her. ‘And what is your name, miss? You appear to know mine – I feel I ought to know yours.’

She hesitated. She was normally decisive, but this time she did hesitate. And Sam knew exactly what she was going to say before she even uttered a word.

‘I am Lenka Vadinská.’

There was a terrible stillness. The name sounded in the silence like a funeral bell. People shifted away as though leaving space at a graveside. Lenka and the awkward, smiling Dubček were left alone.

‘The daughter of Lukáš Vadinský,’ she added, just to make things clear.

If it had been a common name, a Novák or a Novotný, perhaps, maybe nothing much would have happened. Perhaps Lenka would have been forced to explain, and thus the potency of the name would have been dissipated among the words. But she didn’t have to explain. Vadinský is not a common name and Lukáš Vadinský was beyond any confusion or doubt.

Dubček spread his hands helplessly. ‘He was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened. No one did. I want to ensure that such things will never happen again.’

‘No one doubts your sincerity, Comrade First Secretary. The question is, will the Russians let you?’ She waited for a moment as though for an answer, then turned away. People stood aside and let her through. Behind her there was a sudden outburst of talk, random things said about the splendour of the rooms in which they found themselves, the magnificent Flemish tapestries on the walls, the excellence of the food, the quality of the wine and, of course, the eternal friendship of the Czechoslovak and Romanian peoples. While the Russian ambassador watched impassively.

Sam caught up with her as she reached the door. He grabbed her by the arm. ‘What the devil was that all about?’

‘Did I offend your diplomatic sensibilities?’

‘You treated him as though he were to blame.’

‘He was to blame. They were all to blame. Dubček himself believed in the whole system. He used to think that Stalin was wonderful, the father of all working people.’

‘But he’s a man of goodwill, you know that. He wants things to change.’

She pulled away from him. They went down the stairs into the pillared entrance hall. Uniformed staff watched them go. Outside, where the fleet of diplomatic cars waited, she finally stopped and turned to him. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever used my father’s name. The first time.’ Her expression hesitated between defiance and tears. He put his arms around her. The hard bones of her shoulders seemed suddenly fragile, as though they might snap if he squeezed too hard. ‘All my life I was made to feel ashamed and now I feel proud.’ She blinked tears away, looking directly into his eyes. ‘Will you get into trouble?’

‘For what?’

‘For introducing a subversive into the halls of power.’

He laughed softly, breathing in her scent, that mixture of things that he still couldn’t fathom. ‘The ambassador will probably summon me to his presence and give me a ticking off. Rocking the boat, he’ll warn me about rocking the boat. They don’t like people rocking the boat. Very nautical, the British.’

A policeman came over and told them to move on. The strange thing was, he did it politely, with a smile. That’s what had happened in the last few months. People had learned how to smile, how to be polite, how to be helpful. Service with a snarl, so characteristic of the past, had been given a facelift. They walked along towards the Hrad and then down the hill into the Malá Strana, into the soft glow of gas lamps and the weight of history that pervades the streets of the Little Quarter. That whole ancient part of the city seemed to have its breath held as they went down towards the river and the modest Renaissance building where his flat was.

Once safe inside, she asked if she could use his typewriter. ‘What is the expression? Make iron while it’s hot.’

‘You mean you’re going to write something?’

‘A fejeton for Literární listy. They’ll take this, I’m sure.’

Fejeton, feuilleton. He’d never taken her writing seriously, in fact he’d never seen her write and had only glanced at one or two pieces that appeared under her by-line in the student magazine. But now he watched her sitting at his portable, hammering at the keys, cursing when she couldn’t find diacritical marks and had to reach for a biro to ink them, and he found himself convinced by her energy.

‘You never told me.’

‘It was obvious, wasn’t it? A Jewish father, you know that. Therefore Jewish grandparents. Therefore dead at Auschwitz or somewhere similar. That is what happened here.’

He left her side and walked over to the window. The strange medieval shadows of the bridge towers were a contrast to the clatter of keys behind him. He thought of what he didn’t know about Lenka, which was almost everything. And then wondered how much you need to know about someone before you fall in love. Probably, he supposed, almost nothing. What did Romeo know of Juliet? Just enough to get both of them killed in the most idiotic way imaginable.

He looked over her shoulder at what she had written so far and laughed. ‘Will they allow “shit”?’

She shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’ And went back to her typing while he went back to watching her. Her hunched figure of concentration over the typewriter. Her bare legs. The way her toes moved as though they had life of their own. Things like that.

And then the phone rang. He went out into the hallway to answer it and at first he didn’t recognise the voice on the other end. ‘Mr Samuel Wareham?’ it asked, almost whispering. He might not have known the identity of the caller but he did know the whisper. It was the natural instinct of someone who fears the line may be tapped, as though lowering the voice might make it less easily heard.

‘Sam Wareham here, yes.’

‘This is your pianist friend,’ the voice said. Suddenly the Russian accent was obvious. ‘I would like to meet, is that possible? Immediately. At Stalin?’

‘What is this all about?’

‘Just a meeting, Mr Wareham, at Stalin, you know? As soon as you can.’

It was there in the voice, an urgency and a sense of panic just beneath the surface calm. Sam said, ‘It’ll take me fifteen minutes or so. Is that all right?’

‘Of course.’ And then the line went dead.

He stood for a moment trying to make sense of the call. Stalin was clear enough, although Stalin was no longer there, hadn’t been ever since they blew him up in 1962. Until that moment he had been the largest monumental statue in Europe, a fifteen-metre granite representation of the great leader standing on the edge of the Letná escarpment overlooking the city. All that remained now was the massive stone plinth on which the monument had been erected, but they had called the place u Stalina, ‘at Stalin’, ever since. Tourists went there during the day for the view over the city; couples went there after dark when the view really didn’t matter very much.

‘I’m going to have to go out for a while,’ he told Lenka. ‘Half an hour maybe.’

The typing stopped. She looked round. ‘Now? On your own?’

He considered. Motives clashed against each other – loyalty and betrayal and some ridiculous sense of professional propriety, but also plain fear, fear for her and fear for himself. What if? What if this were all some complicated entrapment? Should he get hold of the SIS man, Harold Saumarez? Backup of some kind? But as far as Sam knew Harold didn’t have a team of heavies to give him help. He’d only panic.

‘On my own.’

She didn’t ask anything more, that was what impressed him. ‘Is it about the same dog as last time?’

He smiled. ‘It’s Egorkin. The conductor. He wants to meet me at Stalin.’

‘Letná Park? Is he a queer or something?’

He laughed, looking for a pen and scribbling Harold’s phone number on a scrap of paper. ‘If I’m not back by midnight, ring this number and tell him. He’s Harold.’

She looked at him. She appeared entirely composed, neither concerned nor fearful. ‘Why are you afraid?’

‘Not afraid, just cautious.’

She nodded. ‘I remember cutting a lecture to see Stalin being blown up. We watched from the other side of the river and we cheered when it went BOOM! The police tried to clear us away. People were meant to stay indoors.’

‘It won’t be as dramatic as that this evening.’

‘I hope not.’ She turned back to the typewriter.

34

The vast Letná parade ground, where the Party gathered to celebrate May Day, appeared deserted; across the road, the Sparta Prague stadium was a mass of darkness. Sam parked the car as inconspicuously as possible, hiding it beneath trees with its number plates masked by bushes. There were people around in the dusk, young lovers looking for somewhere to be alone, a group sitting in a circle on one of the lawns around an apology for a camp fire. A guitar was being strummed. There was laughter, some singing, the glow of cigarettes. A crescent moon was just rising – barely enough light to follow the paths through the trees towards the edge of the plateau where steps led down to a paved esplanade overlooking the river and the Old Town.

Moonlight glimmered faintly on the great curve of the river below. Beyond the water the Old Town buildings were picked out in lights. He could make out the needle-like spires of the Týn Church thrust upwards into the belly of the night sky. Behind him the wall at the back of the esplanade seemed huge, the bastion of a fortress. It was up there that the great monument had once stood, the largest group sculpture in Europe – a gaggle of workers, farm labourers and soldiers all pushing and shoving behind the solemn figure of Joseph Vissaryonovich Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, who stood at the front and looked thoughtfully over the city. With bitter irony they nicknamed it fronta na maso, the meat queue. Constructed of seventeen thousand tons of reinforced concrete and clad with thirty thousand blocks of granite, it was an exercise in posthumous sycophancy, because by the time it was finished Stalin had already been dead two years. On the orders of Moscow the grandiose monument was demolished in 1962.

How do you demolish such a monstrosity without getting egg on your face? You first attempt to hide the whole construction behind wooden fencing before blowing it up with a total of one thousand eight hundred pounds of high explosive and hoping that no one notices. As it was built in the most prominent place in the entire city, that is rather difficult.

It is said that President Novotný wept when the monument vanished in a cloud of concrete bits and granite chippings. What is certain is that the original designer of the thing did not shed a tear over its disappearance – he was long dead, having committed suicide a month before it was officially unveiled.

And now? Now there was nothing. Elsewhere in the night sky there were stars, but not there. It was as though the vanished presence of Uncle Joe still cast a kind of shadow, a void that seemed vaster and more frightening than any material monument to the man.

Sam stood close to the wall, feeling happier with his back to the stones. It was like standing on an ill-lit stage, waiting for the lights to come up and the performance to begin. There were others already there, mere blots in the uncertain light: a couple sitting, apparently wrapped in each other’s arms, on the low wall that would be the apron of the stage; a solitary male figure standing apart, smoking. Was that Egorkin?

Shadows played tricks with perspective. Doubts crowded in. This was idiotic. What the hell did the Russian want? He thought of Lenka back in the flat, typing away at her fejeton and thinking of bed. He thought of the bed itself, a place that only had meaning with her couched within it.

Meanwhile on the esplanade a second figure joined the solitary one. The two exchanged a few words and went off together into the shadows. Sam almost laughed out loud. Queers. A world of secrecy and evasion existing below the surface of everyday life just as surely as the world of spies and traitors. Was this, he wondered, Egorkin’s idea of a joke? He lit a cigarette and glanced at his watch. The luminous minute hand crept on. A cigarette seemed as good a measure of time as anything. He’d finish this cigarette and then go.

He took a last drag, dropped the butt on the ground and stamped it out. As he was about to walk away the fused couple on the wall divided amoeba-like into two individuals. One of them walked across the esplanade towards him, leaving the other seated, watching, her face a smudge of white against the shadows.

‘I’m sorry to have kept you,’ Egorkin said. It was hard to make out his expression – just shadows, an abstract combination of dark and light. But his voice was unsteady, as though there was a fracture somewhere deep within it.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘It’s… there’s been a problem.’ He glanced behind him at the lonely figure. ‘We are in trouble.’

‘Trouble?’ It sounded ridiculous, the kind of euphemism used to cover teenage pregnancy.

‘We’re being sent back to Moscow. Our programme for the next week has been cancelled. Tomorrow, that’s what I’ve been told.’ His hand darted across the shadows and grabbed Sam’s wrist. ‘We have no time, that’s the truth. We must go now.’

‘Now?’

‘I’m asking you for help. We are. Both of us. Now.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘This is not the moment for jokes, is it? We need to be taken to the British embassy.’

Sam had a moment’s vision of the chaos and confusion were he to knock on the embassy gate at eleven-thirty at night on Friday night with a couple of renegade Russians in tow.

‘Look, I haven’t spoken with anyone yet. Haven’t had the opportunity, and now it’s the weekend. I can’t just turn up with you. They’d have to get the ambassador out of bed. I’m in his bad books already this evening. Me trying to deliver the two of you into his care would be the last straw.’

‘But there is no time. They will soon see that we are both missing. It won’t take them long to realise we have left the hotel.’

‘And if I do get you into the embassy, the story will be in Moscow by lunchtime tomorrow. You’ll end up trapped there with no way of getting you out and Mr Brezhnev demanding satisfaction from the Czechoslovak government.’

‘You have no secrecy?’

‘Locally employed people. Maids, stewards, even some secretaries in the consulate. They all report to the StB.’

‘So what do you suggest?’

It was ridiculous. The whole situation was ridiculous. He could, of course, offer his apologies and walk away. That would be the safer option, at least for Sam Wareham, First Secretary at the British Embassy; not for Gennady Egorkin and Nadezhda Pankova, though. ‘I’ll take you to my flat,’ he said, ‘at least for tonight. Then we’ll see.’

The girl came over, a small figure with the stolid face of a Russian peasant. Very different from the slight, fierce figure he had seen in concert. ‘Nadezhda Nikolayevna,’ she said, shaking his hand. She seemed sullen rather than frightened. What, Sam wondered, was her particular talent as far as Egorkin was concerned? But then the man took the girl’s hand and she looked up to give him a sudden, fleeting smile and Sam thought maybe, just maybe, it was love.

‘Don’t you have a suitcase or anything?’ he asked. ‘Clothes? Washing things?’

‘Nothing. Not even Nadia’s violin. It would have been suspicious. We were rehearsing for our recital tomorrow and we stepped out of the hotel for some fresh air. That’s it.’

The sheer idiocy of their action crowded in on Sam. No planning, no preparation, just acting on the spur of the moment. Like children. Here I am, please sort it out. Was this the artistic nature Egorkin had talked about? You are a functionary, he had said accusingly. But at least functionaries plan ahead.

They made their way to the car, walking slowly – that was what Sam suggested – as though strolling through the park in the evening was the most normal thing to be doing. Ahead where the campfire flickered through the trees there was something else flickering – the blue light of a police car. Egorkin stopped.

‘It’s just kids being moved on,’ Sam said.

They walked forward until the patrol car was visible. Familiar white door panels and the letter VB in black; the blue light sparking on the roof; a cluster of figures gathered round it, arguing. The kids argued with the police these days. As big a change as you could imagine. Egorkin and the violinist followed Sam past the scene and a few moments later they were climbing into the Mercedes and feeling safer. Not safe but safer. As he started the engine Sam wondered a dozen things but the most immediate was, what the hell was he going to do about these people? What would Eric Whittaker say? What would the ambassador say? What the fuck would the Foreign Office say when one of their officers had picked up a couple of stray Russian musicians and offered them sanctuary? Embarrassment, that was the great fear. If you want to make it to the top, a senior diplomat had once told him, never, ever embarrass the Office. Embarrassment is the one unforgivable crime.

There was something funereal about the drive back down to Malá Strana. Egorkin and Sam sat in the front like two undertaker mutes while the girl sat alone in the back like a principal mourner, sniffing quietly to herself.

In the square outside his apartment building there was nobody about, no watching policemen, no waiting cars, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. A light showed behind the curtains at the windows of his sitting room, which gave him some kind of comfort. He ushered his passengers from the car into the building. The hallway was silent and empty. They crept up like thieves to the first floor. His door key grating in the lock seemed loud and intrusive, an alarm to waken the dead.

‘It’s me,’ he called into the interior of the flat as he opened the door. ‘I’ve got people with me.’

There was a moment when he thought perhaps she had gone. And then she was there at the door to their bedroom, bare-legged with a towel held to her front, her face pale with anxiety, her eyes wide.

‘Go back inside,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

The Russians had followed him in. They stood now, a disconsolate couple, in the middle of the hallway, like refugees from the outbreak of war. Egorkin seemed diminished in size compared with the man Sam had encountered in the gardens in Mariánské Lázně. And the woman beside him, who had appeared proud and vigorous on stage, was now seen in the hall light to be a mere slip, a bewildered child looking at him with horror, as though the full import of what she had done was only just dawning on her.

Sam pushed them past the bedroom and the living room, past the kitchen and bathroom to the spare room at the back. There was nothing there beyond some of his old clothes. The bed wasn’t even made up, hadn’t been touched ever since his mother had come to stay the previous year. He found some sheets in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe and tossed them to Nadia. ‘You’ll have to make the bed,’ he said in Russian, and she smiled at hearing her own language in a foreign mouth. ‘Towels, soap, but I haven’t got anything else. Not even a spare toothbrush. We’ll have to get stuff for you in the morning. I can find you something to eat if you want.’

They wanted nothing. Frugal was the watchword for Russian defectors in the hands of their hosts. Egorkin sat on the bed, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his forearms hanging slack between his legs. He wore the expression of someone who has jumped over the cliff and suddenly understands that there is no way to go but down. It was the girl, Nadezhda Pankova, who started to do something. She shoved him off the bed and into the only chair in the room. Then she began to make the bed, as though housework was the solution to all their problems.

Sam closed the door on them and went back to his own room where Lenka waited, her face set against the world. ‘What are they doing here?’ she asked.

Sam began to undress. ‘They are guests for the night.’

‘They are Russians. Perhaps they are musicians, but they are Russians. Why are they here?’

‘Because they have just run away from Russia.’

She considered this, looking at him with suspicious eyes. ‘Who can blame them?’

35

A brief telephone call, first thing next day. Sam tried to picture Eric Whittaker in his pyjamas, yawning and scratching his head and trying to work out who this might be disturbing him so early on Saturday morning. And Madeleine lying in bed beside him, wearing, presumably, some exotic French nightdress. ‘Guests? What guests?’ Eric asked irritably.

‘Perhaps if you were to come round. I’d rather not talk over the phone.’

Whittaker was round in fifteen minutes. Sam opened the door to him and ushered him into the sitting room. ‘It’s Gennady Egorkin,’ he said before Whittaker could utter a word.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s here, in the spare room.’

‘Here?’

‘He called me last night. Threw himself on my mercy, more or less. Him and his girlfriend.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Nadezhda Pankova, the violinist. You saw her playing the Brahms. And then I heard them in Mariánské Lázně, and—’

‘What the hell’s going on, Sam?’

‘They’re looking for asylum.’

‘Asylum? And you’ve done what exactly? Taken it upon yourself to grant it to them?’

‘Not exactly. I just thought we ought to consider it. There’s nothing wrong with putting them up for the night, is there? And then we can go from there.’

‘Nothing wrong? For fuck’s sake!’ Eric Whittaker’s face seemed about to explode. There was something almost geological about it, his whole countenance trembling under the onslaught of internal disturbances like the surface ripples from an earthquake buried deep below his crust of elegant complacency. Occasional eruptions broke out along the fault lines. A twitch, an open mouth, a grimace. ‘What do you want, Sam? A row with the Soviet Union just when they’re looking to pick a fight with the Czechos? Jesus Christ!’

‘I just did what any human being would do – tried to help them.’

‘Human being? But you’re not a human being – you’re a bloody British diplomat!’

He turned away and went over to the window, stood there looking out at the dunce-cap towers of the bridge gate rising over the neighbouring roofs. ‘What the hell is H.E. going to say? I’ve no idea but I tell you one thing, whatever the final outcome, this is going down on your annual report as a pretty black mark.’

Sam smiled, grateful that Eric had his back to him because he would only have interpreted the expression as mocking or smug or something, whereas really it was relief. ‘My annual report against two artists desperate for freedom? It doesn’t really balance, does it, Eric?’

Whittaker turned. ‘Do you know how pompous that sounds, Sam?’

‘You know Gennady Egorkin, Eric. You’ve been to one of his concerts—’

‘Two, actually. Heard him playing Beethoven at the Royal Festival Hall a couple of years ago.’

‘So you understand his importance. And Pankova. We’re talking about artists here. I know it doesn’t fit in with politics or economics or whatever it is that occupies the Foreign Office mind at the moment, but it’s every bit as important. I mean, look at Ashkenazy, for example. Or Nureyev. Not only a triumph for art but also—’

‘A triumph for politics.’

‘I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say, a humanitarian act.’

‘But it’s the political side of things that London appreciates. And anyway, the wretched man is here, not in London.’

‘So we get him out.’

‘That, my dear Sam, is easier said than done.’ Whittaker shook his head despairingly. ‘Look, I’ll have a word with him if you like, but I don’t want to give him the impression that this is official, is that clear? Not until we’ve got some kind of clearance from head office. Or at least from H.E. So the story is, Egorkin appealed to you and you took him and his girlfriend back to your flat as nothing more than an act of kindness. A private decision. Is that clear?’

It was clear. It was precisely what Sam had told them. ‘I’m not a bloody idiot, Eric.’

‘That, dear fellow, remains to be seen.’

Egorkin was duly summoned to the sitting room to meet with the Head of Chancery and be told the hard truth, that his appeal would be considered but that it put Her Majesty’s government in a very difficult position at this crucial time in relations with Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. For the moment he and his companion could only consider themselves private guests of Mr Wareham – after all there was nothing wrong with that – but they could not themselves rely on any official diplomatic protection from the British embassy.

‘Perhaps,’ Egorkin said, with solemn pride, ‘you can contact Mr André Previn of the London Symphony Orchestra.’

Whittaker smiled. ‘Mr Previn could not tell me anything I do not already know, Mr Egorkin. No one doubts your standing in the world of music, but it is the broader political picture that we have to consider in a case like this. I’m afraid it will take some time and I can by no means guarantee the outcome.’

‘We don’t have no time,’ Egorkin replied. It wasn’t quite English but the sense was plain enough. The violinist had appeared behind him, watching the discussion with blank incomprehension. ‘Now we have gone and they will be looking for us. We have made our move, Mr Whatever-your-name-is, and it is your duty to protect us.’

Eric inclined his head, as though acknowledging applause. ‘So what I suggest is that you remain here – if that is all right with Mr Wareham – and keep strictly out of sight. And in the meanwhile, I will expedite my enquiries on your behalf.’ He had the unnerving ability to talk in the language of official memos and draft accords. ‘For the moment you are on embassy property, which gives you a degree of security, exactly as though you were in the embassy itself. The local authorities may not enter the embassy or any of its official properties such as Mr Wareham’s apartment under any circumstances without the express permission of the ambassador. However, given the circumstances, and should they demand it, we might find it necessary to hand you over to representatives of the host country.’

Egorkin shook his head. ‘It is not the Czechs I have to worry about. It is my own countrymen. Let me assure you that if the KGB discover we are here, they will take no notice of diplomatic property or the status of this apartment. They will break in, take us both and that will be the end of it.’ He seemed about to add something, then thought better of it and remained silent.

‘In that case, I am afraid there would be little we could do beyond express our outrage through the official channels. But let’s hope that you remain hidden and nothing untoward occurs.’

With that Whittaker excused himself, leaving nothing behind him but the vague words expressed and equally vague hopes invoked. Sam ushered the guests back into their room, trying to reassure them. ‘We’ll sort things out,’ he insisted. ‘In the worst case, I’ll drive you to the border myself.’

Back in the bedroom Lenka was getting dressed – shorts, a battered old shirt, walking boots. There was some plan to meet up with Jitka and her husband, to get out of the city to go hiking. Very Czech. An overnight stay at some place that she wanted to show him, an old castle or something. And those two English kids they seemed to have adopted, they’d be coming along. But now he’d have to remain behind, to keep watch over the Russians.

Couldn’t they go somewhere else? Lenka suggested. The embassy? Why here? Why disturb our lives? For the first time she sounded petulant and proprietorial, as though possessing rights of ownership over Sam, his flat and his life.

‘I’m sorry but that’s not possible. I’m afraid you’ll have to go by yourself, Lenička’

‘You never wanted to go anyway, did you?’ she said.

‘Of course I did.’

‘No, you did not.’

‘I did. Really.’ One of those stupid arguments that come out of nowhere, a storm on a summer’s day. And to make matters worse, he had to get her help doing some shopping. Food and cigarettes of course, but Egorkin and Nadezhda Pankova needed other things – clothes, toiletries, even reading material. Could she help him get some items? A couple of pairs of knickers, a bra, a couple of blouses, anything you might need for a weekend away. And some sanitary towels.

They drove round to the nearest Tuzex and shopped bad-temperedly for the various items like a long-married couple.

‘They won’t fit you,’ the saleswoman said, holding a pair of knickers and looking Lenka up and down.

‘They’re not for me,’ she snapped back, as though she were being forced to shop for her husband’s mistress.

Sam drove her round to the railway station and left her with all the usual admonishments: ‘Give Jitka and, what’s his name – Zdeněk? Give them my regards. And tell them next time for sure. And Lenička—’

‘Yes?’

‘Not a word to anyone about our guests. Please remember. No one must know. For their own sakes.’

‘So what do I say?’

‘Something came up, that’s all you have to say. The embassy, work. They’ll understand. But nothing more. Absolutely nothing more.’

She walked away towards the station entrance. As he watched her go, he felt the anxiety of separation like something tearing deep inside. Never with Stephanie, never that deep, organic pain. For a moment he contemplated the possibility of getting out of the car and running after her, but then he dismissed the idea, shoved the car into gear and drove away.