‘Was that horrible old Pango?’ said Letta, still with her back to the room as she nudged the tray onto the cluttered table. (It couldn’t be Steff – he’d have been on his feet, helping her.)
‘His successor,’ said Grandad. ‘Pango had encouraged the Jews to settle in Potok.’
‘Hi, Sis,’ said the other man.
‘Van!’
‘Didn’t want you to jump like that with the tray in your hands. How’s life treating you?’
‘That’s not your bike!’
‘It is, too.’
‘Bike?’ said Grandad.
‘A great glistening monster painted our colours,’ said Letta. ‘Where did you get it? How fast does it go?’
‘A hundred-and-forty, supposed to,’ said Van. ‘I haven’t been over the ton. It’s a BMW.’
‘A gift?’ said Grandad in his quietest voice.
‘Not half!’ said Van. ‘Otto made quite a splash of handing it over. He sprang a farewell party on me in Vienna, and handed the bike over when the champagne was flowing. There’s a few things he wants me to do for him over here, and I’ve got to have transport, but mainly it’s to make up for being booted out of Varina.’
‘Booted out!’ said Letta. ‘Like Grandad?’
‘That’s right.’
‘In your pyjamas?’
She’d asked that seriously, without thinking, just trying to imagine the scene, but laughed at herself when Van laughed. Even Grandad smiled.
‘We had a tip-off,’ said Van. ‘We’ve been getting pretty good intelligence, so we had a couple of hours to set something up. I talked it over with Otto. I wanted to go into hiding, but he said it was too soon for that sort of thing, so we made them come and get me. We let them think I was just drinking with a few pals in this torno, the one with the pink umbrellas in Jirin Road, and they came swooping up in three of those black stretch limos to grab me, but our people poured out from every house in the street and blocked them in, so they radioed the army for help and I got up on a table and did my young-hero bit and said I was going quietly to save bloodshed. Then I let them take me and put me on a plane to Vienna. It was supposed to be only a stop-over for me there, but Otto had fixed things up for us both to get off so that he could spring the party and the bike on me.’
‘You mean they threw him out too?’ said Letta, with a leap of the heart.
‘He’d got some business to see to. They can’t sling him out that easily – he’s a Romanian citizen.’
‘I thought he was an exile, like Grandad,’ said Letta.
‘The difference is that he chose to live in Austria,’ said Grandad, still in that quiet voice which Van appeared not to notice. ‘I, for my part, was forced to live in England.’
Letta decided to change the subject.
‘Are you going back to Glasgow?’ she said.
‘No point,’ said Van. ‘I haven’t got a house, I haven’t got a girl-friend and I haven’t got a job.’
‘What!’
‘When I decided to stay on in Potok, I called them up and resigned. They’d have fired me anyway for overstaying my leave. Don’t worry, Sis. I shan’t be out begging in the High Street. Sue’s selling the house, so there’ll be a bit of money after the mortgage is paid off, and I’ve got a few things to do for Otto, so he’s paying me a retainer.’
‘Where are you going to live?’
‘Here, if Momma will let me. You’re in my old room, but Steff’s looks empty. Don’t look so baffled, Sis – it’s only a couple of months.’
‘I’m sorry. I was just surprised.’
‘Let us establish an island of calm in the hurricane of events,’ said Grandad. ‘Let’s have our tea and crumpets.’
‘God, you’re not going to light the fire,’ said Van. ‘It’s roasting in here already.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Letta. ‘You can’t have crumpets without. If you don’t like it you can go and move your bike. You’ll have to, anyway, before Momma gets home. She comes swooping in there. You don’t want it scrunched, I imagine.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Van. ‘Do a couple for me. Plenty of butter, please. Drooling with it, OK?’
He lounged out and clumped down the stairs.
Letta heard Grandad sigh.
‘Is this all right?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘It’s not entirely Van’s fault,’ said Grandad. ‘Popular enthusiasm is hard to resist. I had a visit from my policeman this morning.’
‘The tall thin one who met us at the airport?’
‘Yes. He is a good friend, in so far as he can afford to be. He has been putting together a file on Vasa. Some of this I knew already, but some I did not. After the war there was a penniless, parentless urchin who ran away from a camp for war orphans and fetched up in Vienna . . .’
‘Was he really a Varinian?’
‘He seems to have spoken Field as his first language.’
‘Bother. I suppose that pretty well proves it.’
‘I’m afraid so. Anyway, he ran errands for black-marketeers, and then worked for himself in the black market. There was a shortage of building materials. He found ways to supply them. He got to know the government officials who awarded the state building contracts, and became wealthy. All this I knew. But now my friend tells me that there is evidence that at some stage Vasa contacted the Ceauşescu regime and undertook various financial dealings for them when they were salting away their fortunes outside their country. Some of that money will have found its way into his pockets. So now he is genuinely enormously rich. He has several houses, a vast castle in Carpathia, a wife who is an Archduchess in her own right or some such nonsense. But he has no country. He is trying to buy himself one.’
‘He can’t do that!’
‘If we succeed in making Varina free, we will be citizens of the poorest country in Europe. And to the truly poor the rich are rich by magic. They have a secret. If you make a very rich man your president, he will use his magic to make your country as rich as he is.’
‘That’s nonsense.’
‘It is powerful nonsense. However, we think Vasa is not relying solely on his wealth. There are well-placed people in Bucharest who were once members of the Ceauşescu regime, with which Vasa had many contacts. Van himself has told us that Vasa is getting good intelligence. And does it not strike you that this motor cycle was bought and painted in our colours in a remarkably short time? Perhaps Vasa knew some time earlier that Van was about to be expelled.’
‘You mean he arranged it himself?’
‘Perhaps. Your friend Parvla has already told us that Van is a very popular figure, more popular with some than Vasa himself. Vasa would not tolerate that for long, I think.’
‘But it still doesn’t make sense. Why should the Romanians be helping Otto Vasa stir things up? Don’t they want it all to simmer down?’
‘Of course. That is what the Romanian government wants, officially. But the army itself contains many nationalist extremists, and there are local politicians who would be glad to gain popularity by whipping up anti-Varinian sentiment. I now think it may have been a combination of these which originally abducted me, and the central government then took over and decided to spirit me out of the country.’
‘So it wasn’t Otto Vasa’s idea after all?’
‘I don’t know. As I told you, he has many contacts with powerful officials who are still in place. He knows things which they would much rather keep secret, so he is in a strong position both to bribe and blackmail them.’
‘But what’s in it for him? He doesn’t want the Romanians to crack down on us either, does he? He wants Varina independent, just like we do, only he wants to be boss.’
‘He has the mentality of a bandit. He will believe that when the time comes he can ride the tiger.’
‘It sounds terrifying.’
‘It is.’
‘Why don’t you tell Van?’
‘He will have heard stories of this kind and dismissed them as lies to discredit Vasa. He will not believe them, even from me. I must . . .’