‘Yes.’ He nodded, then turned and went towards the Humber. ‘Good luck,’ he called. The driver had been listening to the radio while he waited. ‘Any news?’ Sam asked him.
‘The demonstration in Wenceslas Square. It’s been called off. People gathered but then were asked by the authorities to disperse, not to provoke the Russians. It seems they did.’
‘Which authorities?’
The driver looked awkward. Sam could see his face in the mirror. That was what someone looked like when they were wriggling on the horns of a dilemma. ‘Just the authorities, sir.’
Sam attempted a laugh but it wasn’t easy. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’ve got to be back in the city as soon as possible.’
51
It was dusk by the time he got back to the embassy. There were things to do, a meeting with the ambassador and Eric Whittaker, grudging congratulations over the success with Egorkin and Nadezhda, a report to dictate, a whole day of chaos and confusion to attempt to understand. There were reports that the Czechoslovak leadership had been spirited out of the country. Some said they had been taken out and shot, some that they were still in Prague being held incommunicado. But the best bet, Whittaker said, was that they were already in Moscow.
‘Maybe you can find out something more concrete, Sam? You seem to have the best contacts.’
All this was the very stuff of his job, but utmost in his mind were other things, personal matters, matters of the heart and the soul. In his office he discovered a message from Steffie sent early that afternoon. She’d known how to get through by telex, using one of her friends at the Office. It was addressed formally for the attention of Mr Samuel Wareham, First Secretary, Chancery but the text was anything but formal. Darling, darling Sam, it read. She rarely addressed him as darling, never twice, and certainly not openly on something as public as a telex. You can’t imagine how distraught I am, worrying about whether you are safe. Please let me know as soon as you can. It puts everything else, our stupid uncertainties, in perspective, doesn’t it? I love you, darling, and miss you more than I can say. More than that, I’m frightened for you…
He tried ringing Jitka’s flat but got no reply. The hospital switchboard seemed perpetually engaged, so he took his car and drove round. There were still troops blocking the bridges, but now they were letting vehicles through one by one, slower than they had crossed the Iron Curtain itself at Waidhaus. He sat behind the wheel, his bowels eaten by anxiety, while he edged the car towards the barriers. Car boots were examined, bonnets opened. Someone was searching beneath vehicles with a mirror on a long handle. Having kept them at bay throughout the day, he allowed thoughts of Lenka to come pouring into his mind. There was a feeling of helplessness before the flood, boulders and rubble cascading through his life with a merciless inevitability, crushing him personally while all about him the Czechoslovak nation was itself being crushed.
Eventually the soldiers waved him through, and he turned towards the hospital. There were armoured cars outside the main entrance but it was always possible to find a place to park in this city that had so long been starved of cars. At the doors a sullen guard nodded him through when he showed his diplomatic pass; no one took any notice of one man in a crumpled suit making his way up the stairs and along the corridors. There was the clang of distant enamel basins being sluiced. Nurses and porters passed him by, always in a hurry to get somewhere else. The atmosphere was rank with that hospital smell that underlies the memory of so much personal tragedy. No one stood guard at the entrance to the neurology department, so he pushed open the doors and went along the corridor to Lenka’s room.
Both beds were occupied now, two women lying prone beneath intravenous drips, one of them well into her seventies, the other some decades younger, neither of them Lenka.
People looked vague when he asked, as though Lenka Konečková might never have been in their care, but eventually he found a nurse who knew. ‘Transferred,’ she said, moving on.
He felt a momentary panic and put out his hand to stop her. ‘Transferred where? Why?’
The nurse looked indifferent. ‘The Střešovická Military Hospital. Neurosurgery department.’
‘Military? Why military?’
‘Only the best for the Party, isn’t that the rule?’
‘What do you mean, the Party?’
But the nurse just smiled pityingly, detached herself from his grasp and walked away to whatever problem she faced next.
He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, not to panic. He could deal with this. He knew where the military hospital was. He’d go there, blag his way in somehow, find out what was happening, get her out, maybe. All kinds of fantasy passed through his mind. He’d take her to England, have her seen to by some British surgeon who was at the summit of his profession, not one of these Czech medics stuck behind the Iron Curtain, underfunded and underpaid. He’d be the knight in shining armour riding to the rescue.
He drove back over the river, edged his car through the roadblock on the bridge once more, and took the road that wound steeply up between the Letná heights and the Castle itself. The hospital – he’d been there during an official visit six months earlier – was in one of the smart suburbs beyond the castle, the kind of place where the bourgeoisie had once lived, now populated by the new elite, members of the Party. The car rattled over cobbles and tramlines, overtook a tram that seemed to be blocking the way, emerged onto the road that ran along the northern perimeter of the Castle where he could pick up speed, catch a glimpse of the spires of the cathedral over to his left, lose himself for desperate minutes in a maze of narrow roads before picking up the boulevard that led past the villas and gardens of the great and the good. Although street signs had been taken down to confuse the occupying army he found the left turn easily enough.
It was getting dark by the time he drew up at the gates of Ústřední Vojenská Nemocnice, the CENTRAL MILITARY HOSPITAL.
Arc lights had been turned on, casting pools of chalky light in the dusk. There was a guardhouse, barriers striped like barbers’ poles, flags flying, all the paraphernalia that he remembered from his national service. A young soldier flagged him down at the barrier. Sam explained the nature of his visit. He was looking for a patient, a civilian patient transferred from a public hospital yesterday sometime this morning. An emergency. He gave the name, showed his diplomatic pass, waited while matters were pondered and phone calls made. Almost he shouted. Almost he screamed, I crossed the bloody Iron Curtain twice today! I went across to Germany and then back into your damned country and here I am, being held up outside a fucking hospital! Almost he shouted these things, but he didn’t. He sat there in front of the barrier, tapping his finger softly on the steering wheel, waiting.
The soldier came back, puzzled. ‘This person is British?’ he asked.
‘No, she is not British. You can tell from her name. Lenka Konečková. I have just explained that. She is Czech, like yourself.’
‘I am Slovak.’
For a moment Sam closed his eyes and saw a world in which there was no stupidity. ‘I’m sorry. Like you, she is Czechoslovak,’ he said, with careful emphasis.
‘So if she is Czechoslovak, why do you want to see her?’
Because I am in love with her, he thought. Because I am desperate to see her get well. Because I am frightened of what the future might hold for her and for me. ‘Because she is a friend. I am a British diplomat and she is a friend.’