‘For fuck’s sake!’ says Wareham.
There are soldiers at the driver’s door. Wareham is suddenly transformed, speaking Russian to them, even laughing at something said. James’s own laughter vanishes as a face peers in at the side windows, like someone observing exhibits in a vivarium. The door slides back to reveal the owner of the face, a soldier in a khaki blouse and forage cap. There’s a red star gleaming like a drop of blood on each of his collar tabs. Slung over his shoulder is an ugly piece of ironmongery that James recognises, because he knows this kind of thing, as a standard issue AKM assault rifle. The soldier has a scrubbed, youthful look, unblemished by stubble but marked instead by a small cluster of acne spots on either side of his mouth. ‘Passport,’ he demands. James says, ‘Tovarich,’ as he hands his over and there is, perhaps, the ghost of a smile from the Russian. He leafs through the documents, glancing up at the passengers, comparing with the photographs, sucking his teeth as though that might aid his concentration. Beneath his look the woman – Nicola? – tenses. Perhaps the soldier is an amateur violinist, perhaps he knows what’s-her-name Pankova, maybe he’s even seen her perform in Moscow or Leningrad or Kiev or wherever he comes from. ‘What a bloody mess, eh Nicola?’ he says to the woman and receives a frightened smile in response. She’s trying to play the game, attempting, with the few tools at her disposal, to be Nicola Jones, student, born in London on 16 September 1946. ‘Yes,’ she says. Yes. At least she has got that right.
The soldier nods and hands the passports back. ‘Ládno,’ he calls to the driver, sliding the door shut. The van moves forward up the short cul-de-sac towards forbidding fortress doors. Nicola – Nadezhda, James remembers – is breathing again. As though by magic, the fortress doors open at their approach, allowing them through an archway and into the courtyard of the Thun Palace, where cars are jammed and people are running around as though there’s a fire to put out somewhere.
‘Well done,’ Wareham says, glancing back.
The van threads its way through the mêlée and edges into a narrow garage. In the sudden gloom James leans across to Ellie and whispers, ‘What the fuck is this all about?’
Wareham turns in his seat. Is he about to give an answer to James’s question? It’s hard to see his expression in the low light. ‘Any news?’
Ellie replies, understanding what he means. ‘I’m sorry, no. Jitka was going off to the hospital when we left.’
He nods. ‘I’ll ring as soon as I get a moment.’
‘No, it’s not the responsibility of the consular department,’ Eric Whittaker said sharply. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, you can see that this whole thing is bloody dangerous. Dozens of civilians driving their own cars through a countryside occupied by a couple of hundred thousand nervous Russians, all of them armed to the teeth and trigger-happy? What can possibly go wrong?’ He was seeing himself as the soldier he used to be during his military service spent largely in Aldershot, standing at the window of his office with his hands clasped behind his back just like Montgomery. ‘So I want a senior man present at all times. Which means you, Sam. I’m sorry but there’s no question about it. Quite understand about your girlfriend and very sorry and all that, but I’m sure she’s getting the best possible medical attention and there’s nothing that you can contribute in that line of business anyway. I need you here, in the convoy, seeing that things are OK. You’re a Russian specialist and a Czech speaker where those idiots in consular can only just about manage Dobrý den. So that’s it, really.’
Sam had already phoned Jitka’s flat once again and got no reply. The phones at the hospital appeared to be permanently engaged, or maybe they’d just been left off the hook. He felt the sickening of fear and the anger of resentment. All he needed was an hour to get over there and see how things were going, but instead he was stuck here being forced to play soldiers. He almost stamped to attention and saluted, just as he’d been taught during basic training. Instead, he managed a subdued ‘Very well, Eric’, and went back down to the courtyard where someone from the consular department was faffing around trying to instil some kind of order into the dozen vehicles manoeuvring there. ‘If we don’t get a move on,’ he said, ‘we’re going to miss the rendezvous with the Americans, and then we’ll have to do the whole thing on our own without any direct guarantee of safe passage.’
The vehicles finally left the courtyard of the British embassy at half past ten in the morning. Led by the ambassador’s car flying the union jack, the convoy drove slowly through the narrow streets of the Malá Strana and up the hill towards the Castle. There were other vehicles from other embassies on the move in the same direction, and by the time they reached the outer suburb for rendezvous with the Americans over three dozen vehicles had come together, a great shambolic serpent straggling through the streets and along the Pilsen road.
The Americans had walkie-talkies. Of course they did. Harry Rose was standing in the middle of the street directing traffic and giving commands over the radio. ‘Stole them from the marine detachment at the embassy,’ he told Sam with glee, waving his walkie-talkie around. ‘Always wanted to do this kind of stuff. How do you read me? Copy that. Over and out. Affirmative, negative, all the Hollywood crap. Hey, do you want to meet Shirley Temple? She’s over there in the Buick, hiding behind smoked glass.’
‘I just want to get the whole thing over and done with,’ Sam said.
It was past eleven o’clock when the cavalcade finally moved off, a motley string of vehicles more like a bank holiday traffic jam than a military convoy, forty-two in all from most of the NATO countries, with the US ambassador’s car flying the Stars and Stripes at the head.
Despite open windows, the air inside the van is thick with the smell of bodies. James’s head is singing, that whining in the right ear like the insistent stridulation of an insect. Feeling faintly sick, he clings to the breeze that comes in from one of the open windows while the stout man in the front seat – Harold Summery is his name – tunes a transistor radio to the BBC World Service, which is how they learn, scratchily through the ether, what is happening in the city they are abandoning. Street signs are being taken down, the reporter says, protests are growing, civilians against tanks, a strike has been called for midday. The country’s leaders have been detained by the occupying forces, their whereabouts are unknown.
‘We should have stayed,’ Ellie says.
‘What good would that have done?’
They’ve been joined in the back of the minibus by one of the embassy secretaries, a sharp woman with a pinched Edinburgh accent. ‘I think you’re well out of it,’ she tells them primly.
Once out of the built-up area Harold turns to speak. They can let the hidden passenger out for a breather. It’s an awkward manoeuvre in the confined space, all four of them having to crowd forward so that the rear seat can be raised and the coffin opened. Gennady Egorkin rises, like Lazarus, from the dead. Middle-aged, balding, pallid, slick with sweat, he has the look of the hunted about him. For a few minutes he sits there in his coffin beneath the gaze of his fellow passengers while the girl leans over to minister to him, offering him water and words, presumably of comfort. The sight ought to be incongruous, perhaps even comic, but instead there’s something disturbing about it, as though one is watching a nurse administer a slow and uncomfortable medical procedure.