It took her a long time, long enough to ensure that someone would be waiting when he got back to the Slovan.
When she returned they all walked out to the pavement, and a cab was duly waved down. Klima gave the driver his instructions, which included an awful lot more than the name of their hotel, if the cabbie’s face was any guide. Russell gave Effi a parting kiss, wished both women an enjoyable afternoon, and climbed into the front seat.
‘And you have a good rest,’ Effi said sympathetically.
As Russell had hoped, his driver headed for the Legii Bridge. There were traffic lights at the far end, and his 50–50 chance came good-they were red. He slid the $10 note into the other man’s pocket with one hand, opened the nearside door with the other, and deftly stepped on to the road. ‘Cigaretten,’ Russell said, miming a smoke and raising a hand in farewell. The cabbie sat there stupidly for a few seconds, until the rising chorus of horns behind forced him to let in the clutch.
Russell walked in the opposite direction, and ducked through the doorway of the first suitable sanctuary, which turned out to be a junk store piled high with old furniture. He didn’t think the cabbie would come looking for him, but those the man reported to probably would. Russell skulked inside the store for at least ten minutes, searching through a tray of second-hand earrings, swapping smiles with the bewildered proprietor, and keeping a watch on the street.
Eventually he ventured out. The tram route was two blocks north, so he hurried in that direction, keeping as much as he could to the shadows. Once aboard a northbound car, he consulted his watch. He had almost three hours to kill before his treff with Janica, and he didn’t want to spend them out in the open. A bar seemed a good bet, and after changing trams and re-crossing the river he found one in the Old Town backstreets, about a ten-minute walk from Masaryk Station. With only an incomprehensible Czech newspaper to read, he worked his way through two beers and a compensatory cup of strong black coffee, before finally setting out on the final lap. The first thing he did on reaching the station was find the public toilets, and relieve the pressure on his bladder.
Back on the concourse, he sought out an ill-lit corner and began his vigil. It somehow seemed fitting that his future should hang on a meeting here, in a station whose name reeked of failure. Both father and son had sought the humanist middle ground between rampant capitalism and communism, and both had failed. They had not been alone-the entire European left, himself included, had sought in vain for a socialism that worked-but Jan Masaryk’s tragic end, thrown from a window by communist thugs, seemed like the final straw.
Masaryk Station, the end of the line.
It was getting busier by the minute, as people who worked in the centre of town took their trains home to the suburbs. Which was perhaps why Janica had chosen that time of day. If so, it was a smart move.
The clock above the platform barrier was showing two minutes past, but so far he hadn’t seen the face in the photograph. But it was then that he noticed her, sitting on a bench on the other side of the concourse. As he did so, she threw him an irritated glance and nodded slightly. She’d probably been there for a while.
He ambled over and sat down beside her. ‘Janica, how good to see you,’ he said softly in German. Merzhanov had claimed she spoke it quite well, or at least much better than he did. ‘Have you been visiting your mother?’ Russell asked, completing the password which the Russian had given him.
‘No, she moved to Brno,’ Janica answered, which according to Merzhanov was actually true. She was a slightly plump, full-breasted woman, with dark shoulder-length hair, an attractive mouth, and surprisingly steely eyes. Her ensemble of white blouse, black skirt, and two-inch heels nicely avoided the twin pitfalls of too conspicuous and too anonymous. Another smart move.
And she looked younger than her photograph, which was a definite bonus, now that that they wouldn’t be making her up.
‘Let’s walk,’ Russell suggested, getting to his feet.
She followed suit, taking his arm, and only asked where they were going as they emerged on to the street.
Russell steered them across before answering. ‘To Wilson Station to buy you a ticket,’ he said. ‘In my pocket there are papers with your picture in the name of Ruza Zdenec,’ he told her, remembering how Effi had considered it a good omen that Grelling had chosen the Czech equivalent of Rosa. ‘Do you have the film with you?’
‘It’s in my bag. And it stays there until we cross the border.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ Russell said. ‘My wife will be taking the film to Berlin, and I shall be taking you to Salzburg, and Merzhanov. It will be safer for us all that way. My wife is less likely to be searched at the German border than you are, and if they stop you at the Austrian border you’ll be better off without the film. A lot better off. You’d only get five years for trying to leave the country without permission, but if you’re caught with this film the Russians will shoot you.’ Though exaggerating for the Czech woman’s sake, he still felt a shiver of apprehension for Effi.
Janica was silent for a while, mulling over what he had said. Eventually she asked the inevitable question-‘why should I trust you?’
‘I can’t answer that.’ He had thought about confiding Effi’s plan to hide the film among others, but the StB might get that information out of her before Effi reached the border. ‘Except to say this,’ he went on, ‘why would we get you false papers and buy you a railway ticket if we meant to betray you?’
‘I haven’t seen these papers yet.’
The street they were on was empty. ‘Take them now,’ he said, extracting the envelope from his pocket. ‘Put it in your bag,’ he advised her. ‘The papers are there, and the money you’ll need for the ticket to Vienna. You can see for yourself in the station toilet.’
They walked across the park that fronted Wilson Station and in through the main entrance. Russell waited while she went off to examine the contents of the envelope, and on her return he led the way to the station buffet. There was an empty table in one corner.
‘I will trust you,’ she told him, when he came back with two coffees. ‘I have no other choice. Do you want the film now?’
‘Not yet,’ he decided, looking around. ‘You must get your ticket now. Tomorrow morning, the ten A.M. train to Vienna. You will probably need to show the papers, and if anyone asks you why you’re going, say you have a Russian boyfriend there. If you leave your bag with me, I’ll take the film first chance I get.’
She nodded, left it open on the floor between them, and strode calmly out of the buffet. Glancing down after a decent interval, he could see the reel of film. It wasn’t in a box, and would fit nicely in his jacket side pocket. A minute or so later, when no one seemed to be looking, he reached down a hand and worked the transfer.
Looking up again, he half-expected to see a posse of StB thugs lunging towards him, but there was only the same bunch of customers, enjoying their coffee and cakes.
She was back in ten minutes, bearing a ticket with a seat in Coach 4.
‘I’m in Three,’ he told her, showing his own. ‘But it’ll be safer for you if we don’t make contact again until the train reaches Vienna. As a foreigner, I’ll be watched.’
‘I understand,’ she said, closing up her bag.
‘Where are you going now?’ he asked.
‘Home,’ she said, without volunteering a location.
‘Very well then, I’ll say goodbye.’
She smiled slightly, the first time she’d done so, kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked off towards the exit.
A cool one, he thought. It was only then that he realised she’d never even mentioned Merzhanov.
But that was the Russian’s problem. Russell’s was the film now burning a hole in his jacket pocket. As he headed south towards Wenceslas Square he wondered what the StB would do with the reel if they ever got hold of it. Meekly hand it over to the Soviets or melt it away in a furnace? No one was safe with a secret like this.