Snare of the Hunter (6 page)

He returned to his newspaper. McCulloch had taken out some legal-sized sheets from his briefcase, put on his glasses, uncapped a ball-point pen, and was apparently absorbed. David began reading. It didn’t take him long to finish the Reuter’s dispatch—its four columns covered about a quarter of the full-sized page of the newspaper. Its headline had been misleading. “Two More Subversion Trials” meant, in fact, two places—Prague itself and the town of Brno—where a number of trials, each involving groups of the more liberal Communists, had been going on for the last week and were still continuing. The defendants were all educated men and women: doctors, historians, a philosopher, two engineers, a clergyman, lawyers. They had been arrested last November, before the Czech elections, for handing out leaflets which reminded citizens of their constitutional rights in voting. Some, too, had given interviews to Western newsmen. They could get as much as ten years in prison. It was, so the paragraph lightly circled by McCulloch’s pencil told David, an attempt “to eliminate any remaining active political opposition once and for all. That this is evidently declining is indicated by the fact that in the months before the trials began Western correspondents heard less than usual from the underground opposition movement.” And there was another eye-catching detail: the present Communist party leader, now in control of the government, was trying to keep the trials in low profile, not disturb the general calm of the country, and give no opportunity to hard-liners “to step in with tougher measures.”

There’s a clue there, thought David, to the way our intelligence agencies are acting, and I can’t quite find it. He re-read the dispatch. The due was there, still evading him. But he had learned something. There were four political groupings in Czechoslovakia. First was the minority who now held power; they were middle-of-the-road, trying to show Russia they were all good Communists too—see how we can keep discipline? Secondly, there was a majority, now out of power, as liberal but not quite as daring as Dubcek in the Prague Spring of 1968, who were being disciplined to encourage them to hold their heads down. Thirdly, there was the group in the background, the hard-liners, the new Stalinists, ready “to take tougher measures”—which meant the seizure of power and shock tactics. They’d hold bigger and better trials: staged shows with charges of treason, just like the old days. And fourthly, there were the non-Communists and ex-Communists, possibly the smallest group of all, now relegated to silence—at least they had been brushed aside in the Reuter’s account:
in the months before the trials began Western correspondents heard less than usual from the underground opposition movement
.

David folded up the paper, placed it beside McCulloch. He closed his eyes, searched for the key to the riddle. The underground was not dead, or else Irina would not now be safe in Vienna. But it was obviously cautious, avoiding any open publicity. And the American intelligence agencies, the British too, were keeping well away from the Czech opposition movement. Was that the key? No link-up of any kind between Western governments and the Czech underground? No chance of handing the hard-line Communists an excuse for show trials, and for a takeover of power to ensure full discipline? Certainly, bigger and better trials needed sensational evidence, something to keep the world startled and silence its objections. “Sure,” people must be persuaded to say, “sure they’re guilty, look how the CIA is behind it all: damn shame the way they stir up trouble and leave these poor fools to pay the bill.” All they’d see would be the results of the agony: arrests, wholesale purges, sentences that brought a life-time’s hard labour if not execution. They’d never know the real cause of it: that would be buried under a massive mudslide of propaganda. Which, of course, was exactly what the hard-line Communists wanted. It made their power-plays that much easier.

Well, this time, he thought grimly, we’re not obliging the propaganda planners. We’re a purely civilian outfit. He looked at McCulloch, who was glancing at the aisle, almost said aloud, “I take it all back. I’m clued in. Washington is best kept out of all this.” But he restrained himself. You may be an amateur, he told himself, but at least you can try to seem professional. And just then he felt McCulloch’s elbow dig quickly into his side.

A man, thickset, healthy colour in his cheeks, was passing down the aisle. David noted a shock of grey hair, a heavy moustache, strong eyebrows, and a lightweight tweed jacket, neutral in colour. So this was Walter Krieger. He carried a pipe in his hand and a book under his arm. He looked neither right nor left.

Five minutes to wait. At the end of them David said, “Think I’ll stretch my legs,” and made his way over McCulloch’s feet. Jo was coming back to her seat. He stepped aside to let her pass, acknowledged her “thank you” and was on his way.

In the lounge, definitely close quarters, there were five men and three women and a general eyeing of every newcomer. David took a seat, smiled around, and ordered a Scotch. “No,” Walter Krieger was replying to a man who had sat down beside him, “I don’t live in New York any more. Just visit it.”

“I’m from the Midwest myself. Plastics. Better than glass and china. There’s a big market for them in Europe. New. That’s what they like: something new. We can’t keep up with the orders.”

“That’s fine,” said Krieger. He had a deep rich voice, full of resonance. If he ever turned it on full power, David thought, he could blow out the side of the plane. A physically strong man who might be pushing fifty, but could possibly outfight the rest of us in this room. Not tall. Less than medium height, but well muscled and taut. He had a magnificent head—perhaps it looked imposing because he was short in stature. Beg pardon, David told Krieger silently, you aren’t short, just five feet six, with a chest development that puts the plastics guy to shame. Most of Plastics’ girth had settled around his waist. A nice guy, though: baby-faced and openhearted.

“Yes,” he was saying, “there’s a great future in synthetics. The world’s before us. All we need is peace. Right? But it’s coming, it’s coming.”

“That’s good,” Krieger said.

“I’m on my way to Vienna. Then to Czechoslovakia, if all the arrangements hold up. You never can tell. Still, they’re a booming market. We can use their stuff—”

“Such as glass?”

“Well—that, and other things. And they can use ours. I hear they’re filling the shelves in the grocery stores now. No scarcities. Keeps people happy.”

“A good market, obviously.”

“The life of trade. What’s your line of business?”

“Chocolate.”

“Oh? You’re with a foreign firm? Or is it domestic?”

“We amalgamated some years ago.”

“So you’re the European representative?”

“If that isn’t too ambitious a description.”

“Where’s your head office?”

“Vevey.”

“Switzerland? What takes you to Vienna? You said you were going there—or did I get that wrong?”

“No,” said Krieger. “That’s where I go. Several times a year. Austria makes good chocolate too.”

“You don’t say. By the way, what do you think of McGovern’s chances? Or are you for Nixon? You vote from Switzerland, I suppose. Absentee ballot or something?”

“I manage to get back around election time.”

“If you ask me—” Krieger hadn’t, but the business-man from the Midwest went on talking. Not one of our silent majority, David thought as he finished his drink. Travel loosened a lot of tongues. He listened to the mixture. (My dear, you
wouldn’t
recognise Acapulco... I wonder what St Laurent is cooking up this season... Personally, I always liked Jamaica... And the Dow Jones average... Munich has really put money on the line for the Olympics... Two-fifty a seat, five dollars for the two of us, and we just keep walking out! Whatever happened to...?) Then he slipped away before he could be drawn in. But Walter Krieger was now more than a name.

McCulloch had finished his work. The briefcase was closed. The newspaper had disappeared, along with the legal documents. He was fast asleep. It seemed as if Jo was asleep too, like the chateaux ladies and the small boy. Some others were watching the movie, earphones adjusted. It was one he had seen at a special preview in New York two weeks ago, and even if he hadn’t paid two-fifty for his seat, he had walked out. Yes, whatever happened to?

He didn’t feel like reading either. He was restless in his mind. He closed his eyes, wondered what part of the Atlantic they were over now, envied McCulloch his unflappable calm, let his thoughts run jumbled through his head until, without realising what was happening, he dozed off.

When he awoke, it was time to fasten seatbelts for Amsterdam.

David arrived in Salzburg with his thoughts still restless and his emotions divided. He fought himself for the first three hours there, and then—as he was shaving before he got dressed for the opening performance of
Figaro—
he made the decision. He was facing two jobs: one for
The Recorder
; one for Irina: each quite separate. So he’d keep his mind separated too. He would be absorbed in music for the next eight days; and once that was over, he would concentrate on the journey west. Because if he didn’t, if he kept worrying about one and then the other, as he had been doing for the last twenty-four hours, he wouldn’t write a critical piece worth a damn and he’d end up in Vienna frustrated and angry—no way to take on any emergency.

And that journey was going to have its problems. Of that he was sure. Irina’s husband wasn’t going to let them drive out of Vienna, free and easy. He would take a personal satisfaction, call it masculine ego, in hauling Irina back to Czechoslovakia. Jiri Hrádek might have disowned her publicly for his own personal—or political—reasons, but he’d never forgive her for the last insult of escaping from his security agents. These were tough guys, disciplined and dedicated, and as devious as any secret police. How in hell had Irina managed it? David wondered for the hundredth time. Now that’s enough, he told himself sharply: you made your decision, so stick with it. Keep your mind off Irina, or else you’re going to cut yourself with this new blade and you’ll arrive at the Grosses Festspielhaus dripping all over your shirt front.

She’s safe, isn’t she? She’s safely hidden, and possibly in less danger now than when she steps into your car.

He finished shaving, started dressing and reading the programme notes for tonight, a combined operation as usual.

Standard routine was a pacifier. He was in control, no more self-argument, by the time he stepped into the busy street outside the hotel and joined the steady procession of people, couples, singles, small groups, making their way across the bridge to the Old Town. A quiet crowd, young as well as middle-aged with a sprinkling of elderly veterans, low-voiced and smiling, the women in their prettiest late-evening dresses with the breeze from the river fluttering long skirts around satin slippers, lending a raffish note to broad daylight. But there was more than handsome clothes. These people knew their music: they had travelled a long way to hear it. There was nothing bored about them, either. There was a feeling of expectancy in the voices, of excitement in the air, as the looming domes and towers of Salzburg welcomed the pilgrims into its narrow twisting streets. Here, thought David, is another world. Unreal? Scarcely. It had had its centuries of danger and desperation; even—only thirty years ago—its bomb craters and flames, piles of rubble and cold ashes: reality enough for anyone. Suddenly he thought back to one of his antagonists on the staff of
The Recorder
, a recent addition who was devoted to hard-rock festivals. (He’d have trouble with that guy: he was out for David’s job.) Well, Woody, he told him now, you can have all the subcultures you can swallow. I’ll take civilisation.

And with that he entered the vast hall, pressed through the gathering crowds, and saw two friends waiting at the foot of the staircase. He waved to them, caught their attention. Honest smiles and a warm welcome. He was not only under control now; he was back to normal.

* * *

The eight days were over. The last reports he had made were already in the mail for
The Recorder
’s copy editor. The hired car was being delivered to the hotel door. The hotel bill was being added up at the desk. He had packed, leaving a suitcase with the porter, jamming the more workaday clothes into a bag which could easily be hauled around. He had the road maps, which he had picked up at the automobile agency yesterday spread out on his bed along with his own guide to Austria—there was an adequate plan of Vienna at the back of the little book—and these he studied attentively as he waited for the desk to call.

The telephone rang. “Yes?” he asked, his mind still calculating kilometres: about a hundred and seventy miles on the big new throughway to the outskirts of Vienna. It avoided all towns and villages. So it would take three hours, perhaps less, if he travelled when most others had stopped for lunch. Allow about half an hour, at least, to get through twelve miles of suburbs and streets, until he could arrive in the heart of the inner city. “Yes?” he said again, realising it wasn’t the desk ’phoning about the car, “Mennery here.”

“And how nice!” said a woman’s voice. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I’m just about to take off.”

“I thought everyone slept till eleven in Salzburg after a heavy night. Lucky I did call early. There’s a slight change in plans.”

It was Jo Corelli, no doubt about that. He switched from surprise to worry. “Oh?”

“Nothing to trouble you. Very slight. You’ll be driving in from the west, so once the expressway ends you might go through the Wienerwald. I could meet you somewhere there. You name a place.”

“Why not Grinzing?” He had intended it as a small joke. It was a once-upon-a-time village, now swallowed up in the sprawl of Vienna suburbs: a tourist lure with conscious local colour.

But she took him up on that and very quickly. “Wonderful,” she said. “Couldn’t be better for me.”

“A mob scene like that?” Hardly her style, he thought.

“By the time you get there, most of the crowd will have eaten and left. All we’ll find is a few tired waitresses and some beer coasters on the tables. There’s a quaint little place right on the trolley-car lines. Green shutters, red geraniums—yes, I think that’s right. It’s got a name like the Jolly Peasant, something pretty close to that. You can’t miss it: there’s a streetcar stop outside its front door, and a parking area at its side. Simple. You’ll get there around two, and—”