Secret Kingdom (28 page)

In the auditorium the Hungarian colonel stands up to speak. He holds in his hand a stick like a conductor’s baton.

‘I will now present the evidence of what Leman and his imperialist saboteurs have done to our country.’

He asks for the overhead lights in the room to be dimmed. From the back a beam of light from a slide projector illuminates the screen behind him. For a moment he stands in its path and his image is thrown on to the screen, a demonic characterization that is greeted with brief laughter. Then he ducks away and the first slide is illuminated. It is in black and white and shows a ruined house, its roof gone, a few charred beams describing where it had once been, what remain of its window frames without glass, a pile of rubble outside the entrance to the house. The main door now leans against a damaged wall at a sharp angle, scarred black by fire.

More houses. More devastation. Slide after slide. The colonel’s voice unemotionally describes the damage, using a pointer to highlight his text.

‘… living quarters of the people utterly destroyed by heavy weapons, small howitzers, mortar bombs …’

Hearing only the voice of his superiors in his head, the Hungarian colonel is unable to catch the spreading restlessness among a few of his audience. He fails to pick up the growing mood of scepticism and anger as his listeners become aware of the scale of the deception that is being played on them. He is unprepared for the questions that are thrown at him the moment the lights go up.

What happened in the auditorium was witheld from the world’s view.

‘What size of force caused that damage, Colonel?’

‘I’m sorry.’ The colonel puts on the earphones for simultaneous translation. ‘Would you repeat the question, please?’

‘How large was the force that created such devastation?’

‘What you have seen was the work of Leman and his co-conspirators.’

‘Colonel,’ the questioner says, his English heavily accented. He is the representative of a Swiss newspaper. ‘You are showing us pictures of a wide area of devastation. You are asking us to believe that a small force, a few men, a few well-armed mercenaries was the phrase you used, have caused this destruction. My question to you is, what kind of force was it? How many tanks? How many field guns? How many men? Would you say it was a battalion?’

‘It was a large force, yes.’ Without a script the colonel is much less assured. His nervousness is communicated rapidly to his audience.

‘It would have to be to cause so much damage.’

‘That is correct.’

‘We are agreed, then, that a sizeable, heavily armed force caused this level of damage.’

‘Yes.’

‘This was unprovoked aggression by a military force against the sovereign state of Hungary?’

‘Yes. That is correct.’

‘Then why was a civilian like Leman put in charge of it? If the West meant business, surely they’d have appointed a leader with some military capability, not a civilian with none. How do you answer that?’

The room is filled with laughter. Somewhere, perhaps, in a dusty can, the echoes of that sceptical laughter are waiting to be discovered and to be heard once more.

‘I was wilfully misled by those I worked for, the British Government …’

‘I’m not watching any more of this rubbish. It’s all bloody communist lies.’ Watson-Jones stormed out of the room where Margaret had set up a projector and a special screen so he could watch the Leman newsreel.

Pountney hurried out after him. Watson-Jones was losing his rag and his bottle at the first sniff of a crisis, and he didn’t seem to care who knew it.

‘He’s sunk to the gutter, Gerry. How can he bring himself to betray his own country? Is he incapable of distinguishing right from wrong? The man’s a gutless bastard. He should be shot.’

‘Perhaps he had no choice.’ Why the hell was he taking Leman’s side? He disliked what he’d seen as much as Watson-Jones. ‘Perhaps he was forced to make that confession.’

‘We all have choices to make.’ Watson-Jones was shouting. ‘That’s what life is about. Yes and no is a choice. You learn that in the cradle.’ He was pacing up and down, furious.

‘The Soviets employ brutal methods when it suits them to do so.’

Again the unexpected defence of Leman. Why?

‘That bastard’s a filthy traitor. We should wash our hands of him and have done with it. There are bigger and more important fish to fry.’

‘He’s one of ours,’ Pountney said quietly. ‘We can’t leave him to rot.’

Whose phrase was that? Margaret’s?

‘I despise men without backbone, men who give in to playground bullies at the first shove. So do the British people. We expect more of ourselves because of what we are, who we are, our history, our culture.’ Watson-Jones was already at the despatch box, converting his anger into a political position. ‘We’re not cowards, Gerry, and we don’t take kindly to those who are. That’s the point I want to make.’

‘Are you a coward if you cooperate when someone holds a pistol to your head?’

‘The man’s as good as dead, so what difference would pulling the trigger make?’

‘I’m not sure I would have the courage to say no if I was on my knees, hands tied behind my back, knowing that my life – as about to end if I didn’t agree to what I was being asked to do.’

Push him as far as he’ll go. Try to make him see there’s another side to this.

‘We’re not in a university debating chamber here, Gerry.’ Watson-Jones’s anger was only just under control. ‘This is real life. These are real issues. If one of our people betrays his own side, why should
we lift a finger to help him? He’s better off where he is, in bed with his Soviet friends.’

‘He doesn’t want to live with the Russians. He wants to come home.’

That was a mistake. Never fall for direct confrontation. Take him from the flanks, where he’s more vulnerable. Watson-Jones turned towards him to make their confrontation physical. He could be an impressive man when he stretched to his full height.

‘Leman chose to shit on his own side. He didn’t have to do so. It was a voluntary action. His choice. By fulfilling the requests of his captors, he has ruled himself beyond our reach. There are no votes in working one’s arse off to save traitors like Leman. Do I make myself clear?’

Pountney left him to it. Any further argument was pointless. If he’d stayed longer he might have said things he would have regretted later. The process of politics remained an enigma he would never fathom, however hard he tried. Somehow your weaknesses didn’t inhibit you from aspiring to a senior position in government, even though you might possess few of the qualities required. It was clear to anyone who worked with him that Watson-Jones was wholly unsuited for the responsibilities he craved, yet even though his shortcomings were common knowledge in Westminster, the press and his Party took his ambitions seriously. (‘Surely a candidate for the leadership of the Tory Party one day.’) It was an upside-down world.

‘The Minister would like his tea,’ Pountney said to Margaret as he met her in the corridor. ‘Make sure you mix it with hemlock.’

‘Archie Randall’s on the telephone,’ she said, stopping him in his tracks. ‘He wants to speak to you now.’

‘I’ll take it in my office.’

Randall’s temper was little better than Watson-Jones’s. ‘Gutless bastard. Making us a laughing stock. Christ, we all feel sick here, I can tell you. A real kick in the balls. Nobody wants to help the little shit. We’d like to see him fry.’

‘I understand your anger.’ Pountney the conciliator, years of training with Harriet coming into their own. ‘We share your mood here. Everyone’s very unhappy. Of course it’s a dreadful thing Leman’s done. We can’t imagine what could have come over him. But until he declares for the other side, we have to see Leman as one of ours.’

‘The bastard’s already changed sides.’ The telephone line crackled in sympathy.

‘That’s not true, Archie. Not true at all. What we saw was a Soviet propaganda exercise. It’s up to all of us to keep a cool head on this one. We mustn’t lose our judgement, whatever the provocation. That’s what the Soviets want us to do. We have to deny them the pleasure.’

Silence while Randall took this in. ‘How’s London taking it?’ he asked.

‘With gritted teeth. No one’s happy. We’re worried about the trial. We see this present business as a curtain-raiser.’

‘What does the Minister say?’

He’s spitting blood, wants to let the man stew.

‘We’re working on a response. Watson-Jones wants you to keep close to him,’ Pountney lied.

‘You’re asking a lot, Gerry. You know that, don’t you?’

‘You and your people are up to it, Archie. Don’t let us down on this one. The stakes are high here too. Just remember that, and count to ten when the going gets rough.’

He put the telephone down, feeling statesmanlike. How unlike him this was. He was decisive, conciliatory, consoling, far-sighted (dare he use the word ‘vision’? Probably not). Why? Surely he should be devastated by events? Instead, he was taking control. What was happening to him?

*

‘I keep asking myself the same question over and over again,’ Anna Livesey said, less than an hour later. ‘Why did he do it? I can never find an answer, not one that makes sense.’

She was pale and drawn, but she hadn’t broken down when they’d shown her the newsreel footage. When she’d asked for a glass of water, her voice had betrayed no signs of stress. Her self-control was impressive, as he’d expected it to be.

‘I’m sure we’d all like to know the answer to that. It’s probably best not to speculate,’ Pountney said.

‘It didn’t sound like Joe. Could he have been drugged?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘The language was all wrong, as if someone was speaking through him. That’s not the way Joe speaks.’

‘His script was written by the Soviets. They find characterization outside their own demonology very difficult.’

‘He read out his text mechanically.’ She’d watched Leman’s performance closely. ‘When it didn’t appear to make sense, he stumbled over the words. He never looked up once, did he?’

‘His behaviour suggests this wasn’t a voluntary confession,’ Pountney replied.

‘His face was so pale. His eyes have sunk into his head.’ She wasn’t listening to his answers, he knew that. She was in the grip of the questions and impressions that were racing round her head. He couldn’t blame her, not when she was showing more restraint than Watson-Jones. ‘I hardly recognized him. He’s changed so much. Something terrible must have happened since his arrest.’

She was looking for Pountney to help her find any explanation to excuse Leman for what he had done.

‘I’m certain the Soviets exerted great pressure on him,’ Pountney said, offering what comfort he could. ‘What’s damaging is that Joe agreed to go through with it. That makes him an accomplice and people don’t like that. Somehow you’re expected never to give in to the kind of pressures only the Soviets know how to exploit. It’s easy to say that. It’s a damn sight harder to live up to it when the power of the Soviet system is ranged against you.’

‘He’s not a man who gives in easily,’ she said. What she wanted to say but couldn’t bring herself to do so was that, despite appearances, Leman wasn’t a coward. Pountney sympathized with her difficulty.

‘I’m sure he’s not.’

‘They must have done something terrible to him.’

‘We know the Soviets to be skilled persuaders. I don’t think it would be helpful to go into detail.’

‘If I hadn’t seen that newsreel with my own eyes,’ Anna said, her despair mixed with anger, ‘I would never have believed he was capable of doing something like that. He always preferred silence to words.’

‘It’s best not to rush to judgement until we know more.’

‘Do you think he did it to save his own skin?’

Her investigation into Leman’s motives was no different to the questions they had all asked themselves, and to which they had no
answers. It was wrong to condemn a man unheard, however tempting such an act might be.

‘We’ll know more when we are allowed to see him,’ Pountney said. ‘The ambassador is pressing the Hungarian authorities to arrange a meeting.’

‘Can anything be done?’ she asked. ‘Or do we have to sit around and watch this drama getting worse every day? I don’t think I could stand that.’

‘At this moment, there’s nothing useful we can do except wait.’ Leman was beyond their reach now. It was better to let tempers cool, and the enormity of what he had been made to do settle into some kind of perspective. ‘That’s what’s so damaging. By making his confession public, he’s given the Hungarian authorities everything they wanted, propaganda against the West and a guilty verdict. He’s done them a good turn. You can’t expect people here to warm to Joe right at this moment, can you?’

She was crying now, holding a handkerchief to her eyes. For a moment he was surprised. He imagined they’d gone past the point where she might break down. ‘What am I going to tell his parents?’

Margaret was at her side, her arm round her, comforting her. ‘You must give them something to hope for. You must do that.’

‘What is there to hope for? Joe might as well be dead. None of us is going to see him again, I know we’re not. I can’t tell them the truth but I can’t deceive them either, can I?’

She gave way then to uncontrolled sobbing, her anguish and misery destroying the control she had so steadfastly imposed on herself since her arrival.

No, we won’t see him again, Pountney wanted to say. You’re right. Leman’s as good as dead. He’s cast himself off. Perhaps he was already dead when he appeared in front of the press. He must have known there’d be no way back once he’d crossed that boundary. Leman might be an idiot but he certainly wasn’t a fool.

‘Tell them we’re doing everything in our power to bring him back,’ Pountney said. How easily the hypocrisies fell from his lips. Had the system slyly corrupted his soul too? Or was he lying out of sympathy for this drowning woman?

‘Please help him,’ she said. ‘I know you think what he did was wrong. Believe me when I say he would never have done that unless
he had no alternative. I know him because I love him. Nothing will ever change that.’