“Various reasons, Mr Cane?”
Shaw said smoothly and non-committally, “Totalitarian police aren’t quite like our dear old London bobbies, I’ll bet! Let’s leave—”
He broke off sharply. They had both heard the thin, distant wail, the siren of a speeding police car. It was coming nearer and sounded as if it would pass ahead of them. Shaw sprinted fast along the alley towards the wider road at the end. It was dark now, and headlights were beaming into that darkness, cutting it with twin undulating swathes of brilliance, and the siren was screaming out loudly, almost without stop-ping. The beams illuminated filthy, uncurtained windows, windows from which curious faces peered. A patrol car — long, low, black, and sinister — roared towards the end of the alley, then slowed a little to enter a narrower section of the road. As it did so Shaw caught a glimpse of the occupants. The car was crammed with officers of the Polish security police, and in the back were Charles Wicks and Gerald Fawcett.
Seven
Shaw and Tanner beat it fast out of the old town, and it was not long before Shaw found a telephone. He called the hotel and waited impatiently until Major Pope was brought to the phone. Before Shaw could get a word in the courier said, “It’s all right, Miss MacKinlay’s back. She came in just under an hour ago, quite unconcerned; said she’d been sightseeing and lost count of time and then had a snack in some coffee bar or other.” The voice was bitter. “Needs to be put across someone’s knee if you ask me. Want the job?”
“The moment I have the time, I’d be delighted. In the—”
“Oh, and by the way,” Pope broke in, “there’s no sign of Wicks or Fawcett. I think I’ll have to inform the police, in case—”
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” Shaw said pleasantly. “The police know where those two are, all right! I’ll be right back.”
When Shaw had a few brief words with Virginia about the broken date she was apologetic, but uncommunicative beyond what she had already told Pope; and when he mentioned that he’d seen Wicks and Fawcett in what looked like police custody, she expressed surprise. Nevertheless, Shaw was convinced that there was some unexplained connection between her own disappearance from the sightseeing party that afternoon and the arrest — if it was an arrest — of the two men. If Wicks and Fawcett, on the other hand, were not under arrest but had some hook-up of their own with the security police, then the whole thing stank to heaven. It was by no means impossible or even unlikely for the Russians to have planted agents among the tourists aboard the coach, counter-espionage operatives all neady documented and booked right through from London. The whole of Shaw’s mission could have been busted wide open. Everything could be known inside the Kremlin, and perhaps the authorities were merely waiting to be certain of the identity of both the killer and the Western agent before they dropped like a ton of bricks on the two of them. The detention of an agent of the British Defence Intelligence Staff, acting inside the Communist Bloc on behalf of the British Foreign Office, would obviously be a Pravda’s Delight, and indeed Shaw’s capture alone could rock the boat fatally. Besides which, Shaw strongly disliked the smell of personal failure.
He wasn’t in the least reassured on any point at all when Pope rang police headquarters and was told that the authorities had no knowledge whatever of Wicks or Fawcett or, indeed, of anyone from the British coach party having been brought in for questioning.
Early in the morning Pope, looking extremely relieved and surprised, sought out Shaw and Hartley Henderson. He said, “It’s a miracle. The police have just been on the phone. They admit having those two and they’re being released shortly. I’m to hold the coach for them. Well, all I can say is, thank the Lord that’s over!” He glanced at his watch. “We haven’t lost much time yet, but I hope they’ll hurry…”
“Was any reason given,” Shaw inquired, “for the arrest — or why they denied it last night?”
“None, on either count.” Pope hesitated. “I didn’t like the voice at the other end, I must say. Unfriendly is about the kindest word I can think of!”
“From which we may judge,” Henderson murmured, grinning at Shaw, “that the authorities aren’t very pleased at having to hand them back… but don’t quite feel they have enough to hold them on!”
“I thought,” Shaw asked sardonically, “you talked yesterday of any excuse being good enough?”
“And I still say so,” Henderson answered at once. “They may feel Wicks and his friend aren’t worth probing questions from our Embassy — that’s all. I said the man concerned would have to be really worth holding… and I dare say the reason they didn’t admit to having them last night was simply that our courier got on to some junior official who wasn’t going to commit himself.”
Shaw lifted an eyebrow quizzically. “You seem to know quite a bit about customs in police states,” he observed.
Henderson shrugged non-committally but didn’t comment. Shaw said, “Well, I suppose we’ll all be wiser when those two get back.”
The two men turned up in a police car — at noon.
No explanation was forthcoming from the escort as to why the telephone message had said they would be returned “immediately”. The police were correct and formal but cold — and obviously hostile. Shaw had a feeling they hadn’t finished with Wicks and Fawcett yet; he wondered if the men themselves shared this feeling. Pope at any rate didn’t appear to; he had been in a state of nervous tension all morning when the men didn’t show up and had done much telephoning ahead to Minsk about his itinerary, but now he was smiling in relief. Neither Wicks nor Fawcett had any notion at all, or anyway wouldn’t admit to one, as to why they had been arrested. Wicks said, as though stunned by events, “They simply hooked us off the street — just like that! I ask you!” His heavy face was flushed and angry. “We’d been doing some shopping, that’s all, but would they believe that?”
“No reason given?” Shaw asked.
“Not a murmur. They whipped us off to headquarters and shoved us in clink—”
“Separately or together?”
“Separate cells.” Wicks mopped at his jowls with a handkerchief. “They held us four hours before anyone came to see us, and when they did come…” He lifted his hands and the shirt cuffs fell back to show the thick, hairy wrists. “My God… if I could just get my hands on the bastard that questioned me!”
“Any brutality?”
“No… not brutality.” Wicks hesitated, glancing across at his friend. “Not unless you count an all-night interrogation, followed by another session that finished only about an hour ago. They kept us awake all bleeding night.” Indeed, they both looked dead beat, Shaw thought, red-eyed and haggard and unshaven. “One bloody question after another, with no time allowed for thinking in between.”
“What sort of questions?” Shaw asked casually. “Didn’t the trend of the interrogation give either of you any clues as to what you were being held for?”
“Did it hell,” Wicks answered scathingly. “They—”
“You, Mr Fawcett?”
“Same here,” Fawcett answered briefly, lighting a cigarette. “I just didn’t get the message.”
Wicks said, “They just went on and on and on… asking about our home life, family, friends, jobs, all that kind of thing. Why we’d booked on a coach trip when by all appearances we were well able to cough up for individual holidays. When they got to the end they just started again, and then again. The general impression I got,” he added, “and so did Jerry, was that they just wanted to establish we were who our passports said we were, and that we didn’t mean to act against the interests of the State, though why in flaming hell they should—”