Curtain of Fear (37 page)

She said that she had not come earlier as she had wanted to give them as long as possible to sleep, and would have given them still longer, but for the fact that Sunday service was to be held in the barn in three-quarters of an hour's time.

On Nicholas looking rather mystified, Fedora told him in a quick aside that the Coms had closed nearly all the churches as places liable to be used for reactionary gatherings, and forbidden the holding of religious ceremonies in private as anti-social activities; so they now had to be held in secret.

Mrs. Sova said she understood that they would be leaving that day, and asked if they would like a parcel of food to take with them, or if there was any other way in which she could be of help.

Nicholas thanked her and declined the food, but said that they wanted to be at the Ruzyně Airport by midday at the latest, and they were not certain either how far off it was or how to get there.

“That is simple,” she smiled. “The airport is only about six kilometres away, and the left-hand fork of the road south leads right past it. As for getting there, my good man can easily drive you over in the gig, after service.”

“We must not put him to that trouble,” said Fedora quickly, “and it is just possible that if he is seen with us he might be questioned afterwards. We can walk that distance in a little over an hour.”

The apple-cheeked farm-wife had already been regarding Fedora's flushed face and feverish eyes with concern. “No,” she
said firmly. “Perhaps it would be wise for him to drop you half a kilometre this side of the airport, but he shall certainly drive you that far. You are in no state to walk, my dear, or travel at all for that matter. I wish I could put you to bed in the house. As that can't be managed, why not let me make you as comfortable as I can here for a day or two?”

Fedora shook her head. “It's terribly kind of you, Paní Sova, but we have a date with friends who hope to get us away, and it is very important indeed that we should stick to our arrangements. I would be grateful, though, if you could let me have some aspirin.”

“I'll bring you some when I come back for the breakfast things,” Mrs. Sova agreed, “and some lavender water to cool your poor forehead.”

When she had left them Nicholas made a good breakfast, but he could persuade Fedora only to swallow a few mouthfuls of bread and bacon with the milk. It was clear that she was running a high temperature, which was not to be wondered at in view of all she had been through the previous day; but, worried as he was about her, there was nothing he could do, except hope that the aspirin would bring it down before they had to make a move.

Soon after they had finished eating, Mrs. Sova returned with it and, having given Fedora a couple of tablets, insisted that she should take the rest of the bottle with her. Then she sponged the girl's forehead, cheeks, neck and wrists with home-made lavender water, and told her to lie quiet until it was time for her to go.

But to that Fedora said, “If I may, Paní Sova, I would very much like to come down and attend the service. I'm sure that wouldn't make me worse.”

The good woman smiled. “God forbid that I should restrain anyone from worshipping their Maker, child. You will be welcomed by both Him and us. But it would be better if you don't join in the singing or exert yourself more than need be. It will be starting in about ten minutes' time.”

As she descended the ladder to the floor two men carried in a
small harmonium and set it down at the far end of the barn. Soon other people began to collect, until a small congregation had assembled consisting of eight men and about a score of women. Nearly all of them were middle-aged or elderly and all were of the peasant class.

Fedora got up to go down and join them, but after a moment's hesitation she turned to Nicholas and asked, “Wouldn't you like to attend the service too?”

He smiled up at her a shade apologetically. “I'd rather not; if you'll excuse me. I gave up all that sort of thing when I was a boy, so I'd only feel embarrassed. But perhaps I'll say a private prayer up here.”

He watched her join the group of women round Mrs. Sova, then saw the pastor come in. At his entrance a hush fell on the congregation and they quietly took their places: the men all together at one side and the women at the other, in the old Lutheran manner. Seeing that the service was about to begin Nicholas felt that it was not proper for him to remain there sitting up aloft like a spectator at a barn-play; so he got up and clambered over some bales of hay to the back of the staging.

Behind the bales it was almost dark; so, noticing a wooden door in the side wall of the barn, he pulled it open a few inches and sat down beside it. The door looked out on to the road and was about nine feet above it, so that wagons could draw up immediately below and load or unload crops direct from or to the loft.

It was a lovely May morning with the peace of Sunday on the countryside. Soon, as he sat there, the murmur of prayers, the clear voice of the pastor, and the chanting of age-old litanies came to him. He rather wished now that he had accepted Fedora's invitation to join in, for he had suddenly become strongly conscious that there was something fearless and fine and indestructible about these people's simple faith.

Their voices were raised in a hymn when he saw a big furniture removal van come round the bend of the road. To his surprise it slowed down and pulled up immediately beneath the door behind which he sat half concealed. From the seat
next to the driver, a young boy of about eleven jumped down. Waving his hand excitedly, he shouted something and pointed to the barn.

Next moment a single-decker bus came into view and jolted to a standstill behind the lorry. Out of it poured a score of State police. Following the boy, they ran towards the gate of the stable yard. Springing to his feet, Nicholas pushed the door to from which he was looking. Out of the blue an evil fate had struck at him, Fedora and their friends. The barn was about to be raided: and from it there was no escape.

For a moment Nicholas stood stockstill. To have rushed out from behind the bales of hay and shouted a warning to the congregation would have been futile. By the time he made himself heard above the singing, the leading men in the running squad of police would be at the main doors of the barn. It was already too late for anyone to get out that way without being caught. There remained the small door to the loft, near which he was standing. For the congregation to escape that way was equally impossible. The police would follow, call on them to halt, and open fire if any of them attempted to jump down into the road. For him alone it offered a means of escape, providing he did not involve himself with the congregation, and providing that no police had been left on watch with the vehicles below.

Realising that, as far as he was concerned, everything hung on this last point, he opened the door a crack and peered through it. The roof of the big removal van blocked a large sector of his view. Beyond it the road was empty, but he could hear voices.
He felt certain that someone was standing on the far side of it, talking to its driver.

Suddenly the singing ceased. The harmonium played on for a moment, then died in a wail. For a matter of seconds there was a tense silence. It was broken by the bark of a harsh order. Hard upon it came a babble of mingled shouts of anger and cries of fear.

Nicholas pulled the Luger, which he had used in the warehouse, from his pocket. He knew nothing about weapons and wondered if its immersion in the canal had rendered it temporarily useless. The pistol had been well greased and, to his relief, he found that its recoil chamber still slid back easily. Pressing the magazine button, he quickly removed the clip, and saw that it had only three bullets remaining in it. Ramming it into his pocket, he reloaded with one of the full clips that Fedora had given him. Then, holding the weapon at the ready, he clambered back across the bales of hay until he could see down into the middle and far end of the barn.

Crouching there, still under cover, he took swift stock of the situation. The police already had the little group of men covered with sten-guns. They were crowded into a corner with their hands above their heads. Their faces were sullen but resigned. It was clear they realised the uselessness of putting up a fight. The women were proving more difficult. They were screaming abuse and, in several cases, attempting to break through the police in the hope of getting away. Fedora was among them. She was struggling wildly with a tall, dark man. Stooping her head, she bit him on the wrist. With a curse, he let her go, but hit her. She fell to the floor. He dragged her up and hit her again.

Nicholas was desperately tempted to intervene; but he was not a practised shot with an automatic. He knew that at that distance he was just as likely to hit Fedora as the thug who was maltreating her. Another thought also restrained him. There was more at stake than Fedora, or himself, or any individual life. Unless one of them could stop Bilto he would leave England that night. To-morrow it would be too late to prevent him
making a present of the secrets he held to the men who ruled behind the Iron Curtain, and were endeavouring to force their hideous tyranny on the whole world. That Fedora should have been captured was tragic, but that made it all the more imperative that he should do his utmost to retain his freedom, so that he might yet get back across the frontier and telephone a warning to London in time.

In any case, no one man could have rescued Fedora now, in the face of a score of armed police. Had Nicholas attempted it he would have been shot down long before he could reach her, and thrown away his life to no purpose. That thought allayed a little his feeling that it was cowardly to play the role of an onlooker; but he could have cursed aloud with fury at his impotence to help, as his gaze continued fixed upon her.

At the second blow she had fallen again. Now she was lying on her back at the side of the barn, sprawling half across a pile of cattle-cake. Her right arm was flung out at an awkward angle above her head, and she lay quite still.

As Nicholas stared at her, he recalled the gloomy thoughts that had obsessed her when they had first settled down in the loft some six hours earlier—her feeling that she was finished, that she was burnt out and had nothing left to live for, her wish to pretend that it was their last night on earth. Had that been some strange foreboding that her death was imminent? He was no believer in fortune-telling and the ‘mumbo-jumbo of the occult', preferring to explain away the inexplicable by attributing it to the as yet little understood affects of cosmic rays, or by other meaningless pseudo-scientific jargon. Yet he knew that there were cases of incontestable authenticity in which people had received previous warning of their own deaths. Had Fedora had such a warning? Had the policeman's last blow broken her neck? Had her gallant heart at last failed, after she had been through so much, at learning fate's decree that she was not to escape after all? As she lay slumped and twisted there, was she already dead?

The police now had the whole congregation under control.

The officer in charge of the raid took a paper from his breast
pocket and in a careless gabble read it out. It was a decree by the People's Government of Czechoslovakia prohibiting all religious assemblies held without an official permit, and making anyone caught attending such an assembly liable to a minimum penalty of one year's labour in the uranium mines.

Stuffing the paper back into his pocket, the officer gave an order, and his men began to hustle the cowed peasants towards the doors of the barn. He was standing near the pastor and, turning, gave him a vicious kick on the behind with his jackboot, as a send-off in the right direction.

Not long since, Nicholas had inveighed against priests of all denominations as parasites, and propagators of outworn superstitions the continued observance of which was not consonant with the ‘Dignity of Man'. Yet his gorge rose, not on account of the physical brutality of the act but from an instinctive feeling that the indignity had been inflicted upon something in essence higher than any individual man, of which this humble Lutheran pastor was only the representative.

As he continued to stare down at the heart-rending spectacle of the Sovas and their fellow-worshippers being hurried from the barn, he saw Fedora move her arm, and the policeman who had hit her pulled her stumbling to her feet. His heart leapt with relief at the knowledge that she was not dead, but had only fainted.

Next moment he was given swift cause to think of himself. The boy of eleven who had led the raid was standing near the officer. He had caught him by the arm and was pointing to the loft. Owing to the hubbub which was going on below, Nicholas could not catch his words; but it was clear that he was suggesting that before they had entered the barn some of the congregation might have hidden themselves up among the hay, so the loft ought to be searched.

Without waiting for further indications of his peril Nicholas scrambled back. Next moment he was again standing in the semi-darkness beside the door of the loft. It was, as he had left it, open a few inches. He peered through. There was no one in sight, but he could still hear voices on the far side of the removal
van, and at any second now the police would be bringing their prisoners out from the yard into the road. If he jumped down, capture was as good as certain.

The reason why the police had brought the removal van was now obvious. It was the perfect type of vehicle in which to lock up and cart away a score or more of men and women. Apparently it was in normal use during the week and commandeered only for such raids on Sundays; as on its top, which was heightened by the usual two-foot board along its sides and ends to keep light goods stacked there from slipping off, there lay a pile of hessian wrappers and a tarpaulin.

In a flash of inspiration Nicholas saw the chance it offered. He had only to step out on to the roof of the van and pull the furniture wrappers over him to escape detection. As he opened the door he heard footsteps running up the ladder on the far side of the hay. Without the loss of a second, he pocketed his gun and stepped across the yard-wide gap which was all that separated him from the roof of the van. Throwing out his hands, so as to fall upon it with as little noise as possible, he dived below the level of the side-board, which then screened him from anyone approaching along the road. Grabbing the coverings with both hands, he pulled the whole bundle on top of himself and lay still, so that if the searchers who had come up the loft chanced to look out of its door they would see nothing to arouse their suspicions.