Shaw shook his head. “I don’t want my passport, Colonel. I’m quite happy in Russia. My trouble’s a different one.”
“So?”
Shaw had assumed an expression of puzzlement. He said, “Well, it’s most extraordinary, but I’ve lost my invitation card. I really can’t think what can have happened to it… unless those troopers of yours pinched it — took it by mistake, I mean — when they came for me the other night.”
Snake’s-head looked at him with cold hostility. “My men are most careful, Mr Alison. What kind of invitation was this?”
“Why, to the reception at the Baku Hotel to-night, of course—”
Snake’s-head pounced, looking triumphant. “How do you know about that?”
Shaw said, “Why, because I was invited! I wouldn’t have heard about it otherwise, I dare say. You see, my Moscow office was given advance notice that Dr Carew was visiting the port and they were given the invitation, which they passed on to me and asked me particularly to make use of it.” Shaw drew now on his memories of Carew as reported in the Press at the time of his disappearance. “I expect you know that Dr Carew’s university training was paid for by my organization — he was a steelworker’s son, elementary education, no money — only brains. So naturally we take a very great personal interest in him. It’s most annoying to have lost the invitation, Colonel. I was hoping to meet Carew myself, you see.”
“You hoped to meet him — you, an Englishman?”
“Yes. I’ve told you why.” Shaw shrugged. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Comrade, but then you don’t quite understand.” Shaw brought out a WIOCA handout that Chaffinch had given him in Moscow and flourished it at Snake’s-head, who looked bored and irritable. “My organization doesn’t let things like that upset it. Culture is international, after all. It transcends all barriers of class, race, and colour. We of WIOCA are dedicated, you understand — I’ll leave you this pamphlet — to the wonderful cause of promoting peace and goodwill and understanding throughout all the nations of the world — spreading culture everywhere, whatever men’s political beliefs and so on may be. We of WIOCA…”
Shaw kept it up for some time, improvising with confidence, watching the glazed look in the policeman’s eyes. At last Rogovin could take no more of it and he broke in angrily, “Yes, yes, yes — I understand perfectly. I am a very busy man but I will see if by some mischance your invitation was taken the other night.”
Irritably he slammed his fist on his bell-push.
The policemen concerned were sent for and hectored long and loud but with no result. They had seen, they swore it, no card; they had touched nothing, in obedience to the specific order of the Soviet as to personal freedom and the inviolability of private property. Shaw’s passport was brought out in case the card should have been slipped into it. It was flicked through page by page, and then flicked over again. Even Shaw himself was allowed to give it a third going over.
But there was no card.
Snake’s-head, tired of the whole business by now and weaving his neck angrily, snapped, “I am sorry. But — there is no card!” He threw up his hands.
“Well, yes, so I see.” Shaw sighed. “It’s most unfortunate. My Council believes in—”
“Yes, yes, yes—”
“Er… I was wondering, Colonel, if perhaps you could issue me with a pass of some kind?”
“No.”
“Oh, dear.” Shaw clicked his tongue. “My Council isn’t going to like this. I’ll be in trouble.” He gnawed at his lip. “Are you certain there isn’t some way of giving me a pass? I mean, you know who I am, don’t you? You’ve got my passport.”
Snake’s-head rapped his fingers on his desk. “Mr Alison, you are a nuisance. You are taking up too much of my time with this frivolity. Certainly I, Colonel Rogovin, have the power to issue you with a pass if I am satisfied, perfectly satisfied, as to your bona tides and that you had an invitation in the first place, but I refuse absolutely to do this without authority from your own office in Moscow. And,” he added triumphantly, “since all communication with Moscow is temporarily suspended, even the telephone, I do not see how you can obtain such assurances for me! Please, will you go away?”
“Just a moment. Your telephone — the official police-line? Is that cut too?”
“No, it is not!” Rogovin glowered at him. “No telephones are cut, the service outside the area of Moltsk is merely suspended until further notice. This naturally does not apply to any official lines, but—”
“Well then,” Shaw said happily. “I’ll give you the number. I’d really be awfully obliged.”
Rogovin clenched his fists in despair. “You will leave me alone thereafter, Mr Alison, if I agree to this as a special concession?”
“Yes, of course I will. I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
Rogovin reached out for his telephone and asked for the line to Moscow. Shaw didn’t know how he got through the next half-hour; he was sent outside while the connexion was being made and Rogovin turned his attention to other matters meanwhile. Chaffinch had looked an intelligent kind of man, but this thing was certainly being sprung on him without notice. He hoped, too, that Chaffinch, if he was going to back him, would be able to square his own yard-arm through the Embassy afterwards.
Shaw was brought in again when the call came through and he realized that bluff had paid off. From Snake’s-head’s nods and grunts he could see that Chaffinch was backing him to the hilt. At the end of that conversation the MVD man banged down the receiver and reached into a drawer. He pulled out a pad of official forms and scrawled on the top one. In dead silence he signed it and rubber-stamped it. Still in silence he detached it and held it out to Shaw.
“Thank you so much,” Shaw said.
After Shaw left his office, Colonel Rogovin pressed his bell again and a uniformed man came in.
Rogovin said wearily, “There is more work for you and me, Bulyin, in connexion with the Minister’s reception. There is a fool of an Englishman who has lost his invitation. Because he is a high official of WIOCA and has some contact with Comrade Doctor Carew, I have issued him with a pass signed by myself — but now, my poor Bulyin, you must redouble your precautions. Who knows who may have found that lunatic’s original invitation? Why, the only person we can now be sure of is the Englishman himself…”
Nineteen
“You have not seen Bronsky?” Triska, fresh and desirable in a neat suit, looked up anxiously into his face when he met her as arranged outside the medical research centre.
He said, “Not a sign of him all day. Now look, Triska. I’m going to hook Carew at the reception. I don’t expect a great deal of trouble for one reason and another. I want you to wait in the car, clear of the Baku Hotel — park somewhere quiet along the northern end of the street, ready to get away as soon as we’re in. Give me until… let’s say nine o’clock. If I haven’t turned up then, drive out to Godov’s house and lie up there till I get word through to you or come myself. All right?”
“Yes, Peter.”
“And you’d better have this again.” He handed her the pocket transceiver. “I’ll want to use it later on but I’d rather not risk having it found if they decide to frisk the guests.”
An hour later he took a car to the Baku Hotel, a tall, ultra-modern, hideous building near the outskirts of the town.
He got out on a broad concrete sweep in front of the hotel, one of scores of guests arriving for the reception. He walked up the steps to the doorway into the foyer, where half a dozen uniformed MVD men were checking the invitations and every now and again frisking someone; having anticipated this Shaw had the Luger strapped to the inside of his right leg. As it happened, however, Snake’s-head himself was there when Shaw came in and he gave Shaw one look and said something to one of the troopers. They didn’t bother with him after that.