“These good sheets are all in standard foolscap of the sort that has been used for many years in England. It has been kept in a cool, dry place. The ink on it might have been applied yesterday. It might have been applied in 1920. Without ordering chemical tests of the ink itself and how it has aged, I am willing to allow that it dates from the April of 1948, which is the purported date of Mr Churchill’s memorandum.” I turned and smiled easily at Macmillan, who was fiddling with his pipe and looking complacent.
“But let us turn to the charred sheets. I will pass only the one entire sheet around, and ask you to look again at the watermark.” I smiled again and swallowed. “You will notice at once that this sheet is of different manufacture. It is, in fact, Russian.” I looked briefly over at Foot. He was leaning forward, impatient to lay hands on the sheet that was passing from one tipsy but nervous hand to another. “This does not say anything in itself. People often use two different kinds of paper when writing a long document—especially if the document is written over several days and at more than one desk, which is what may have happened here. And, for the past fifteen years, Russian imports have supplied most of our cheaper paper. Nevertheless, if you look closely at the watermark, you will see three heads above the Hammer and Sickle emblem of the Soviet Federal Union. The large one in the centre is Lenin. The one to the left is Stalin. The one to the right is Beria, the present General Secretary of the Communist Party.”
I looked about the Room. Heath looked as if he’d just had a stroke. Someone else was clutching at himself. Foot was smiling at me with cold interest, both hands on view as he drummed lightly on the tablecloth. I didn’t look left at Macmillan, though I could hear the sudden change in his breathing. I took time to light a cigarette and watch the cloud of my own smoke merge in with the general fog above the table.
“I hope you will all remember,” I went on, a slight tremor now in my voice. “that Stalin died of food poisoning in January 1950. Beria did not assume his present eminence for another nine months after that. This paper, therefore, could not have been in existence in the April of 1948. Since all the charred sheets—so far as I was able to tell on my brief inspection this afternoon—bear the same watermark, I can say, without any need for further tests, that those parts of this document that give the whole its alleged meaning must be a crude forgery.
“I will not say that there was no secret protocol to the Treaty of Pressburg. All I will say is that Mr Macmillan’s document proves absolutely nothing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
You could have heard mouse droppings fall in that dining room. It was a silence that couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. But it seemed to last an age and a half beyond an age. Trying to keep my hands from shaking, I flicked ash from my cigarette and found myself looking at Kenneth Tynan. He looked back with a wolfish grin. If he were ever allowed to write this up for his newspaper, it wouldn’t be the account Macmillan had been hoping for.
The silence was broken by a slow and derisive handclap from Michael Foot.
“Bravo, Dr Markham,” he called scornfully, “bravo!” He lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my direction. With a strangled gasp beside me, Macmillan grabbed two of the half sheets and held them up together to the light. He dropped them so that one fell unregarded to the floor. With a mighty effort, he took control of his features and turned to Foot.
“Would I be right to suppose, Michael,” he asked with a fair semblance of good humour, “that this is all one of your little jokes? If so, I can only observe that it has been in remarkably poor taste, and I look forward to hearing your explanation to Cook. She has”—he waved vaguely about the table—“done her very best for a party that wasn’t really called for.”
The door opened and one of Foot’s men came in. He whispered in his master’s ear. Foot scowled and whispered a question. There was a short conversation that left Foot as troubled as Macmillan had been. As the man nodded and made back for the door, there was a distant burst of machine gun fire. A man at the other end of the table screamed softly. Heath looked pleadingly at Macmillan. Foot smiled suddenly and got up.
“Gentlemen,” he said with soft irony, “the Workers’ State does not joke. If you feel at all upset that the authorities may soon be walking in to arrest the lot of you under the Conspiracy Act, you should address your complaints to Harold. He, after all, has had six hours to do what Markham has just done. Instead, he spent them counting chickens that will never hatch.”
He looked about and bowed to the hushed, now terrified company. There was another burst of gunfire. Though still distant, it might have been closer than before.
“Dear me, Michael,” I asked, “have Powell’s men broken through your ring of invisible light?”
“Not exactly,” he said with one of his madder smiles. “But they do seem to have found a way of blocking it on a narrow front. What you hear is my men preparing to die in the cause of working people everywhere as they enable my escape.”
“Kill him, Michael,” Macmillan grated with a sideways look at me. “Kill him now!” Foot smiled again and pulled out his remote control box. While my throat tightened to the point where I thought that alone would kill me, his fingers hovered over the buttons. He dropped the box lightly onto the table.
“No, Harold, I won’t kill the Indian boy,” he said. “I won’t kill him because he only did tonight what someone else would surely have done on Monday. And I won’t kill him because I may have a better use for him. This conspiracy is at an end, and so is your leadership. Remember what Dostoyevsky said about fanatics, fools and informers? I think I can be sure at last you weren’t an informer. Neither were you a fanatic.” He ignored Macmillan’s attempt at a reply, and looked at me. “Let us see, Dr Markham, how much a fool can learn once he’s set his mind to the task. How do you think I propose to get the pair of us safe out of here?”
“I think you have a bomb in the house,” I said. Someone screamed softly at the other end of the table. From somewhere else, there was the smash of a dropped wine glass. I smiled. “It will go off at a fixed time, or when you press a button. Whatever the case, the house and everyone in it will be blown sky high, and that will take all attention away from you.” Foot began his slow handclap again and smiled about the room. There was another explosion that rattled all the windows, and now the gunfire became continuous.
“There is a bomb in the house,” Foot confirmed. Macmillan tried to get up, but fell back in a manner suggesting a stroke. No one paid attention. All attention was now on Foot. “Yes, there’s a bomb. Even before that goes off, though, I’d like you lot to create a nice disturbance for me. Whatever Harold said, you’re not up to much. But even you can, with a touch of prompting, create an impressive crowd scene.” He pointed round the still, terrified gathering. I saw Ian Gilmour shrink down in his place. Others rubbed their eyes, doubtless trying to work out if this were a drunken hallucination. No one moved. Foot looked at his watch. “Come on, you stupid fuckers,” he snarled—“or are you too pissy drunk on Harold’s booze even for that?” He pulled a revolver from one of his trouser pockets. He cocked it and, having chosen a victim at random, took careful aim. Almost before I’d registered the noise of the shot, I saw Robin Day jerk backward in his place, his forehead smashed in as if it had been a boiled egg attacked at breakfast.
Even after this, there was another moment of silence. Foot took another shot, now at Kenneth Tynan. This time, he missed. But it was enough to begin the stampede. With a scraping of chairs and a collective wail of terror, everyone was on his feet and fighting to get out through the door. Foot let off another shot at the ceiling, and another that got someone in the back. Above the squeals and babbling of terror, I heard Foot’s voice still raised, as he shouted his encouragement. He broke off for a cackle and then a cough. He hugged himself and climbed on the table to dance for joy. But I didn’t wait about. He’d told us to get out of the room. Since I was sat pretty close to it, I was among the first half dozen to get out into the darkened main hall. Almost at once, I bumped into one of the servants. I think she’d been by the big front door to watch the gun battle outside.