The Night of Wenceslas (15 page)

My head had begun to throb again and I felt suddenly dry and sour as hell, my mouth like a birdcage. I took another sip of the Pilsener, but it was too tangy and I got up and went to the bathroom and emptied the glass and took a drink of water. It was hot in the bathroom, the single frosted-glass french window shut. I opened the window and looked out. It was still heavy and grey. A few doors along the balcony, a young blonde was sitting out in a négligé, showing rather a lot of leg. She smiled at me. I went back in.

I took my jacket and shirt off and loosened my belt and flaked out again, kicking the raincoat to the foot of the bed. I shoved the Norstrund under the coverlet where I could feel it by my side, and after a minute got up again and put my passport and wallet there, too. Presently the throbbing in my head stopped again and I dozed.

A soft tapping on the door brought me out of it and I lay still with my eyes closed and let Josef come in and shake me. Josef came in, but he didn’t shake me. After a bit I wondered what the hell he was doing and opened my eyes a slit. He was standing by the door, not looking at me. He was looking round the room. After a moment he picked up the glass and sniffed it.

My heart gave a lurch, a single sickening thump. I thought:
there was something in the beer
. I knew this couldn’t be, that I was on edge, that there was no reason why anyone should put anything in the beer. If they suspected anything they could haul
me off quickly enough. But the beer had tasted queer. It had dried my mouth. My heart began to pump Very unpleasantly.

My breath must have come out sharply, and he turned and looked at me. The bed was in shadow and I closed my eyes quickly. I heard him put the glass down. I felt him bending over me; warm, slightly sweaty, the faint tang of shaving lotion. Presently he moved away.

I didn’t open my eyes again until I heard him over at the other side of the room. He was closing the french windows, his back broad, much broader than I’d realized in the black morning coat. He turned from the window, rubbing his hands gently, and gazed thoughtfully round the room. Then he began to search it.

M
Y
case was over on the slatted luggage rest and he went soundlessly across to it. The case was not locked; he went through it carefully and then moved across to the wardrobe and went through the stuff there. He ran his hands over the top and bent and peered underneath.

When he straightened up, I shut my eyes again. I thought he’d be trying the bed next, under the pillow, the mattress. I didn’t know what to do if he looked under the coverlet. The Norstrund was there. I could feel it against my side. I had given no serious thought to the nightmarish contingency of being discovered. I was too appallingly frightened to do so now.

I thought: shall I let him take the Norstrund if he finds it?
God, no. But why not? He wouldn’t find anything inside it, unless he was specifically looking. And if he was specifically looking, what chance would I have anyway? The only prospect then would be to try and brazen it out. I wondered where the British Embassy was, if I could somehow get down into the street, jump on a tram, hide.

My heart was going like a steam hammer. I couldn’t control my breathing. I heard a rustle of cloth, and opened my eyes again. He was fumbling with something and I couldn’t see what it was until he held it up. My mac, at the foot of the bed. He was feeling the pockets. He withdrew something.

Maura’s Norstrund. I had forgotten it. I had totally forgotten it. But now with a single flash of inspiration, I saw a chance of salvation, a slim, slim chance. He didn’t know about Maura’s Norstrund. Nobody did. If he showed any kind of informed interest in it, I’d have to wake up, stall, get him out of the room for a few minutes while I did something about the other one. I didn’t know how I would do this. I felt sick with terror at the prospect. It seemed the only chance.

He’d turned half away from me and I Couldn’t see what he was doing with the damned thing. Presently he dropped the mac and took something out of his own pocket. It was a moment or two before I realized what he was about. A small delicate movement of the elbow: he was cutting. I thought,
Oh, God,
he’s on to it, this is it
, and, half vomiting with the beer rising in my throat, stretched and groaned and sat up.

I didn’t see what he did with the Norstrund. In one movement, he bent, began tidying my shoes where they had fallen beside the bed, and picked up the mac.

‘Ah, you’ve wakened, Pan Whistler. A good sleep?’

‘Yes, thanks. God!’ I said, holding my head. ‘How long have I slept?’

‘It’s early yet, not quite half past four. I came in to shut the windows. The loudspeakers were making a great noise.’

‘Do you have such a thing as an aspirin?’

‘Right here,’ he said, and changed hands on the mac to fiddle in his inside tailcoat pocket, and I saw how he’d got the Nor-strand,
in the hand holding the mac. I thought I’d better let him leave the room with it. It would take a few minutes for him to fiddle with it and find nothing there and seal it up again.

I licked dry lips. I said, ‘I’d be glad of a cup of tea, Josef.’

‘Right away, Pan Whistler. I will just hang up your raincoat.’

He turned with his darkling smile and opened the wardrobe to do this. And then the clumsy oaf dropped the book. There was no possibility of looking away. It bounced off the bottom of the wardrobe on to the floor.

His eye caught mine. He said slowly, ‘Ah,
pardon
. There was something in the pocket,’ and picked up the book. He didn’t know what to do with it, and stared from it to me. I gazed at him in dull horror. He placed the book on the table and left the room.

I moved quickly off the bed, locked the door and got Cunliffe’s Norstrund from under the coverlet. I didn’t know what the hell to do with it. I looked round the room. No hiding place they wouldn’t spot easily enough. I went through to the bathroom. Nowhere here, either. The single french window was open and I looked out on the balcony. There was a flowerbox against the short stretch of wall between the bathroom and bedroom windows. It was an oblong box with a few pots of petunias standing on a gravel base.

I reached out and pulled it towards me. I took two of the pots out, scrabbled up the gravel, pushed the book into it and smoothed the gravel over again before replacing the pots. Then I pushed the box back and washed the gravel and sand off my hands.

I had worked quickly and in extreme panic and not more than half a minute had elapsed since Josef had left the room. I wondered how far he had got with Maura’s Norstrund and picked it up. There was no mark on the front flyleaf. No mark on the back, either. I couldn’t make out where he’d been cutting and examined the book all round. Something fell out, into my hand, a tiny strip of what looked like red leather. A bit of the binding. I saw then what he’d done. He’d sliced a shaving off the
bottom of the bulging spine. I poked my little finger inside the gap. There was a loose slim shield of cambric, and something else. I edged it out. A corner of rice paper showed.

My forehead had gone cold and I felt sick as a dog. I thought,
I’ve hidden the wrong one. I’ve got them mixed up somehow
. I couldn’t understand how it could have happened. I couldn’t understand why the paper was hidden in the spine instead of under the flyleaf. I pulled it out. It was a single sheet, folded over, about four inches long and three wide. It was written in ink with a very fine nib, a mass of figures, letters, equations.

My body seemed to be covered with fine cold sweat all over. I was shaking like a leaf. I thought,
it can’t be, it can’t be
. I knew I hadn’t mixed them up. This book had stayed in my raincoat pocket all the time at the glassworks. It had been the other one I’d left on the desk. There wasn’t any doubt about it, no room at all for error. I’d left it on the desk, and then it had been returned to me, and I had carried it in my hand ever since, had slipped it under the coverlet when I stretched out. It was now in the flower box. Yet the formula was in this one.

I sat down on the bed, my legs shaking, staring stupidly at the book. There was no dot on it. Of course there was no dot on it. I had put the dot on the other one. I had put it on in this very room. I remembered it clearly. I’d got the two books spread out in front of me. But then Svoboda had telephoned. The bloody phone had gone on ringing. Had I put the dot on the wrong one?

Now wait
. Think, I told myself.
Work it out
. I had known which one was Maura’s because it was an earlier edition, 1950. Cunliffe’s had been 1953.

I opened the book. It said 1953.

All right
, I said, streams of sweat running down my forehead, and accepting this nightmarish fact.
This one is Cunliffe’s. I
accidentally switched it. It was Maura’s I left on the desk at the
glassworks. It is Maura’s that is now in the flower box. This one
here in my hand is Cunliffe’s. It stayed in my pocket all the
time
.

Then how the hell, I thought, does this one come to have the
formula in it?
The sweat trickled over into my eyes. The answer was all too clear. There was only one way it could have the formula in it. I had brought it in with me.

There was something very peculiar going on here. I thought again,
Now wait. Think. Be absolutely certain. Check the other
book again
.

I got up, went through to the bathroom at a shambling trot, pulled the flower box to me again and got out the Norstrund. I brushed it off in the washbasin, checked the publication date. 1950. It was undoubtedly Maura’s. I got out my penknife, ripped open the flyleaf, front and back. I ripped off the bottom of the spine. Nothing. Nothing at all. Yet this was the one I had left at the works. There could now be no doubt at all.

I buried the book in the flower box again and went through to the bedroom. The formula was lying on the table next to Cunliffe’s Norstrund. It floated off on to the floor in the draught of my hand as I reached for it. I bent and picked it up. I had examined it briefly before. Now as I held it close in the dim green light, I saw that the top line was in clearer notations and stood slightly away from the rest. I screwed up my eyes and read it. The top line said:
Amend Aldermaston 8, 3rd stage,
Banshee
.

I crumpled the paper up in my hands at once. I said aloud, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, no.’ My knees began literally to knock. I looked wildly round the room, licking my lips. There was only one place for this. I went through to the bathroom again, somewhat unsteadily, dropped the screw of paper in the w.c. and flushed it down. My face in the mirror was ghasdy and shiny with sweat.

I thought I heard the rattle of tea things along the corridor and belted back to the bedroom in a panic. I unlocked the door, closed the Norstrund on the table and lay back on the bed again. Aldermaston had rung a bell in my mind. Something secret. Something atomic. I had just realized what it was. Aldermaston was the place where they developed nuclear weapons. The Banshee was the latest. I turned away from the door, more terrified, and with better cause, than ever before in my life.

Josef came into the room. ‘Pan Whistler,’ he said. ‘Wake up, Pan Whistler. Your tea, Pan Whistler.’

In the moment before I sat up, I decided what I had to do. I had to get out of the room in some smooth and plausible fashion. I had to go downstairs, out of the hotel, find the British Embassy. I had noticed a row of telephone directories on the shelf beside the zealous receptionist. There would doubtless be another row in the post office – a few yards up the street, Josef had said.

I turned over, sat up, groaned.

Josef was standing there, relaxed and smiling. He had put the tray down on the table where the Norstrund had been. It wasn’t there now.

‘You have slept again, Pan Whistler,’ he said jovially. ‘You have drunk too much beer.’

‘I must have.’

‘Well now, refresh yourself.’ He was pouring out the tea. ‘Maybe you’d like to write your letter now. You can catch the earlier post.’

My heart was thumping wildly. ‘I think I’ll make it a postcard. Are there any picture postcards downstairs?’ I knew there were. I had seen a display of them.

‘Certainly. I’ll send up a selection.’

‘Don’t bother I need to wake up. I’ll go down myself.’

‘As you prefer,’ he said. I thought he seemed rather pleased at this. It would probably give him an opportunity to nip back in the room again with the Norstrund.

I waited till he had gone, then slipped off the bed, poured the tea out in the washbasin and rinsed my face. I felt cold and sick. I picked up my jacket and went out of the room. There was no one in the corridor. I walked down the stairs, across the hall. It was crowded, open shirts, sandals, perfectly normal. I didn’t think anyone noticed me; not even the receptionist looked up. I strolled slowly and thoughtfully to the entrance. Then I was out, in the street.

It was still grey and hot outside. I was shivering, my teeth chattering, limbs rubbery. As I’d told Cunliffe, I was no hero. I was not cut out for this desperate nonsense. If some hand should fall on my shoulder now, I knew quite certainly I would be sick on the spot.

No hand fell on my shoulder. Nipping in and out of the endlessly streaming crowds, I was at the post office in three minutes. It was a big place, crowded, the huge hall full of that curious shifting dreariness that seemed to go with long lines of open collars.

I found the telephone booths, looked up the British Embassy. B.
Britske Velvyslanectvi. Thunovska
14,
Malostranske Namesti
. 66144.

I didn’t know where the Malostranske was, couldn’t place it. I’d never been in such a jittery, knee-knocking, teeth-chattering panic in my life before. I had a sudden overpowering urge to hear a British voice. I went into a booth, rang 66144.

The number went on ringing.

‘There is no reply,’ said the Czech operator.

The box was terribly airless. My heart was beating dully. I said faintly, ‘There must be a reply. Try it again, please.’

The ringing began again, went on. Suddenly the receiver was taken off. A testy Cockney voice said: ‘Hello, hello. British Embassy.’

I said, ‘Thank Christ for that. Whereabouts are you?’

‘Who is that speaking, sir?’

‘My name’s Whistler. I’m a British citizen. I’ve got to come round there. Whereabouts are you?’

‘Thunovska, just off the Malostranske. Know it?’

‘No. How do I get there?’

‘Got a car, have you, sir?’

‘No. No, I haven’t. I’m in the Vaclavske Namesti.’

‘Right. Take a number five or nine tram over the river. Then change at the first stop over the other side, that’s the Ujezd. You then want a number twelve coming up to Malostranske. It’s three stops. All right?’

‘Right,’ I said, scribbling frantically on a cigarette packet. ‘I’ll be along right away.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t do that, sir. Nobody here now – they’ve all gone for the night.’

I had felt a warm wave of relief sweeping over me at this splendid, solid, understandable sort of fellow at the other end. My toes now began to curl inside my shoes. I felt my voice dry up in my throat. I actually said in a kind of falsetto, ‘All gone for the night?’

‘That’s right, sir. Open again at ten in the morning.’

‘But I’ve got to get there tonight,’ I said. I suddenly found my voice. ‘I’m in serious trouble. I’m in deadly danger. I’m a British subject. I’ve got to have protection.’

‘Run into a spot of bother, have you?’

‘Bother!’ I said. ‘Look, the secret police will be after me any minute now. They’re probably looking for me right this very moment. You’ve got to –’

‘Well, it’s no use telling me about it on this phone, sir,’ he broke in tartly. ‘It’s an open line – follow what I mean?’

I followed what he meant. I found myself idiotically dropping my voice. I whispered into the phone, ‘Look, I’ve simply got to get to the Embassy. I can’t explain now…’

‘All right, sir,’ he said. ‘I live here. Keep a cool head. Things aren’t always as serious as they seem in this country, you know. We’d be called in if you was in any real difficulty. I should sleep on it if I was you, sir. And don’t forget to bring your passport. Can’t let you in without that.’ He hung up right away.