Snare of the Hunter E-Book

Helen MacInnes

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Irina Kusak's recently divorced husband, Jiri Hr ádek, is a high-ranking official in the Czechoslovakian secret police: cruel, ambitious, utterly ruthless. So when he turns a blind eye to her defection to the west, she is uneasy. Aided in her escape by a group of friends, including David Mennery, an American with whom she once had a passionate affair, Irina begins to feel herself truly free. But soon their journey becomes a nightmare. It becomes clear that Hr ádek only allowed Irina to defect in order to bait a trap for her father, a world-famous author living in secrecy in the west, but when she refuses to lead Hr ádek to his quarry, Irina herself becomes his prime target. As Hr ádek closes in and Irina's life hangs in the balance, David Mennery is drawn into a desperate fight to protect her and finds himself once more falling deeply in love...

Leseprobe

ALSO BY HELEN MacINNES

AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Pray for a Brave Heart

Above Suspicion

Assignment in Brittany

North From Rome

Decision at Delphi

The Venetian Affair

The Salzburg Connection

Message From Málaga

While We Still Live

The Double Image

Neither Five Nor Three

Horizon

Agent in Place

Snare of the Hunter

Print edition ISBN: 9781781163320

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781164402

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: December 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

© 1974, 2012 by the Estate of Helen MacInnes. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For Gilbert

with the sweet memory of my good fortune

For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter.

PSALM 91.3, THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Author

1

A feeling of laziness, of a gentle slipping into sleep, spread over the fields as the July sun arced slowly downward, deepening in colour, yet losing intensity. Here, at the edge of the trees, the cool shadows of late afternoon turned into evening cold. Irina Kusak drew the cheap raincoat, dingy brown and as unobtrusive as her grey skirt and blouse, more tightly around her. The dark headscarf, which had hidden her fair hair all through the long day’s journey south, was now loose over her shoulders. She pulled it closely around her neck, shivering not so much from the deepening shadows of the wood as from her mounting anxiety and fear as she stared down over the long naked slope of grass to the barbed-wire fence. The boundary. And across it, on the other side, in another country, was a stretch of quiet narrow road, sandwiched between the barbed wire of Czechoslovakia and the hills of Austria.

Josef, lying close to where she sat, propped on his elbows, his eyes watching now the road, now the wide slope of grass in front, now the trees protecting them, had felt her tension. “Relax.” His voice was low, almost a hoarse whisper, but not unkind. He even gave her a smile of encouragement. An improvement, she thought, on his sullen silence all through their journey. “Not so long now. Another forty minutes. Then we should see the car, a light-coloured Volkswagen, begin to drive along that road. They’ll be coming from the west. The sun will have set, but it won’t be completely dark. Don’t worry. They’ll see us, all right.”

“Anyone could see us.” She looked at the open field in front of them. It was vulnerable, stripped bare, a bleak contrast to the rich farm lands and confusion of streams, paths and country roads through which she had travelled. Here, all trees and undergrowth had been cleared right back to the edge of this high wood. She wondered if her feet, tired and blistered after the three hours of rough walking which had brought her to the last stage of her journey, could move quickly enough to carry her down to the fence. The last stage? It was the beginning of another journey, another life. That was what made her fearful. The anxiety came from the field in front of her, stark and threatening, and the barbed-wire fence. It tore at her heart.

“Anyone could see us,” Josef agreed. At last he was becoming talkative, even friendly. “That’s why the patrols only come along every two hours. They were here at six. But before eight, just as dusk begins, the car will appear on the Austrian side. And if there are some farmers driving their carts along that road—” he pointed to it as a cart did trundle along, heavily piled with hay “—well, we don’t have to worry about Austrians. They won’t report us at the nearest police station.” He almost laughed. “Strange, isn’t it? My grandfather used to curse the Austrians for taking over the Czechs. My father cursed the Nazis. My brother and I curse the Russians.” Suddenly his voice was bitter. “Is that all we can ever do? Curse the invaders? Form small patches of underground resistance?” He eased up, but still kept on talking in his hushed voice, as if he felt that words could bring her back to normal. “My brother—do you remember him? Alois?”

She searched her memory. She was honest enough to shake her head.

“He wrote for the Chronicle before it was closed down. But I don’t suppose your husband ever allowed you to see an underground newspaper.”

“I separated from my husband.” Her voice was as cold as her chilled legs. She rubbed them, and wished the lost warmth in her feelings could be as easily restored. “He divorced me last month.”

“Too much of a handicap for him? Even the daughter of the great Jaromir Kusak, our internationally acclaimed cultural hero, was of no more use to him?”

“Please—” She bit her lip.

He was silent, but he didn’t apologise. Didn’t she know he was guiding her to safety because she was Kusak’s daughter? Not because she had once been the wife of Jiri Hrádek. She had seen through that son of a bitch eventually; perhaps had never known how important he was in the security police. She’s had troubles enough, he decided. And once, long ago, she had been his friend. “It has been many years,” he said, his voice losing its harsh edge. A bunch of students gathered round a café table in Prague, talking about music, whispering about politics and the Hungarian revolt, waiting—well, we waited too long. “I still remember you, though, as the prettiest girl in Prague. How old were you then?”

“Seventeen.” She kept stretching her legs and feet, her shoulders and back. She mustn’t freeze up. She must be able to move, and move quickly.

“Fresh from the country, filled with enthusiasm. You had the merriest laugh, Irina. Yes, I used to remember it when I’d hear your name every now and again.”

She tried to laugh now, only managed an uncertain smile. “Was that why you volunteered to get me safely into Austria?”

“Put it down to curiosity. I wondered whether you were still your father’s daughter; or had your mother won in the end?”

“I never became a party member.” Her voice was scarcely audible.

“Well, I guess your mother was Communist enough for both you and your father. I must say—” But he didn’t. Tactless, he warned himself, it would sound too much like gloating. Hedwiga Kusak, the devoted party member who had been jailed as a deviationist back in the early sixties by her own comrades. She had had a taste of what she had dished out to others. “Politics really screws a family up, doesn’t it? So now you are going to join your father. Why didn’t you leave with him when the Russian tanks came in four years ago?” Yes, almost four years ago, he thought grimly: August 1968. Today was the twenty-fourth of July 1972. Four years, and the trials still going on.

There was a long silence. “I had two children then.”

He swore to himself. He had forgotten the tragedy of the children. Too busy having his own personal triumph over Hedwiga Kusak. (She had destroyed his father’s name, had him banned from teaching, lecturing, publishing.) “I am sorry, Irina,” he said.

She touched his hand briefly. “I think you are still my friend In spite of what you heard about my name. Even now and again.” She managed a firmer smile this time. “Today, you were so silent most of the journey. I began to think—ah, well—” She sighed, looked at the western sky. Clouds were streaked with gold, tinged with vermilion. Would she ever see another sunset from her own land? “Thank you for bringing me safely here.”

“I was given the assignment. It’s my job.” He was brusque, but pleased.

“You are good at it.”

He shrugged that off.

“Who gave you this assignment?” She was tense again. She could see the strong handsome face of the man who had once been her husband looking at her intently, speaking with sincerity. Jiri’s words were as clear in her ear now as if he were doing the talking, and not Josef. You’ll be safe. I have arranged it. No trouble. It could all have been a trick, another lie. Perhaps Josef and she were to be trapped at the border. Then Jiri could have her legally imprisoned, using that as the blackmail to bring her father back from exile. Yet Jiri’s voice had been sincere. She could sense by this time when he was lying. And in any case, this was her only chance to leave. Until those last few weeks, she had been closely watched, constantly under surveillance. In the last month she had been freed from all that. It was part of the deal that Jiri had made with her. “Sorry,” she told Josef. “You were saying?”

“I was saying I couldn’t tell you who gave me the assignment. The less you know, the safer for all of us. But you’re in good hands once you get through the fence. Ludvik Meznik will be in the car along with my brother.” He glanced at her startled face. “What’s wrong?”

“Ludvik Meznik—is he one of your group?”

“I didn’t know you had met him.”

“Only vaguely.” She nearly blurted out that she had seen him visiting Jiri: quiet visits. But that had been three years ago. And she told herself that Ludvik must have changed his politics—many were doing just that—or more likely as a secret member of the resistance, he had been assigned to infiltrating Jiri’s staff. She had lived too much with suspicions, she thought: they twisted her judgment. She could scarcely tell truth from untruth any more, or friend from enemy.

“Ludvik is all right,” Josef told her. “He did some good work for us in Prague. He has brains and he has courage. Doesn’t give a damn for danger.” He glanced at his watch. “Almost time.” Dusk was beginning to dim the fields and hills. “Enough light to see, not enough to be seen too clearly.” From one deep pocket inside his scruffy leather jacket he took out a pair of wire cutters, small but strong. From another pocket came heavy rubber gloves. He was wearing thickly soled shoes, again of rubber. He noticed her curious glance. “Cautious, that’s me. They may have some current turned on along that fence. I’ll go first. You count off ten seconds, then follow. But don’t touch any wire. I’ll see you through. Then I run like hell, just in case we’ve set off an alarm. The nearest border crossing is well guarded, but it is six kilometres to the east.”

“They could have searchlights mounted in jeeps,” she said as she rose. She pulled her scarf over her head, fastened it tightly around her chin. Barbed wire, she warned herself, and repressed a shudder. She picked up the canvas bag which had lain against the tree that had sheltered them.

“It won’t be dark enough for searchlights to be really effective.” Not altogether true, but he wanted to reassure her. She would have no need for extra worries in the next five minutes. “Besides, they’d have to bump along six kilometres of rough grass. The road is on the Austrian side, remember?” He smiled widely, a gaunt-faced man of thirty-three with sharp brown eyes that now softened as he studied her face. “You’re all right, too, Irina. Now, are we ready?” He pointed down towards the small ribbon of road. The Volkswagen had just come into view, travelling slowly without lights.

“Don’t come back this way, Josef,” she said quickly. “Don’t even collect your motor-cycle where you left it. Go in another direction altogether.” She was thinking of Jiri.

He paused for one brief moment, stared at her in surprise. “Don’t worry, Irina. I’m an old hand at this game.” He shouldered her bag and left, running swiftly. She made sure that the knot on her scarf was tight, ended a spaced count of ten, and stepped out of the trees. She raced after him, stumbled twice on the rough ground, but kept on running. He had reached the fence before she was half-way there, had started cutting the wire expertly. The car was still some distance off. Thank God, she was thinking as she reached the cruel tangle of barbs, thank God Jiri had kept his promise: no patrols crashing out from the shelter of the trees behind her, no sudden burst of machine-gun fire raking the field, no searchlights. There was just the grey veil of dusk falling more thickly over the wooded hills, shrouding colours, deepening the silence. She knelt down, touched the earth with her hand outstretched.

“Now!” Josef told her. He had dropped the wire cutters. He anchored the lower strands with his feet at one side of the gash he had made. The middle strands were forced aside, held with an effort. She crouched low, kept her arms close to her body, passed safely through with only one small rip on the sleeve of her raincoat. “Step clear,” he warned her as she turned to look at him. He stepped back himself as he let the wires go. He picked up her bag, tossed it high over the fence towards her. She couldn’t speak. She stood there looking at him.

Behind her, the car had stopped. A man jumped out, came running over the narrow strip of grass that separated the road from the boundary fence. He grasped her arm—it was Ludvik Meznik—and swung her round towards the car. “Get in!” he told her as he pushed past her to reach the fence. “Okay, Josef? No alarms?”

“All okay.” Josef was picking up the wire cutters, stowing them into his pocket.

And at that moment there was a shot. One bullet only, neatly cracking the deep silence, sending a swarm of ravens out from the tree tops. Their hoarse cries echoed across the shallow valley.

Irina, almost at the car, turned swiftly. At first she could only see Ludvik’s thickset body backing away from the fence. “Get in, get in!” he yelled at her, catching her arm. “They’ll shoot us all!”

She pulled herself free, stood looking at the cut fence. Josef was lying quite still. She started forward. Ludvik took a firmer hold on her arm, dragged her back to the car. The driver had left it. Ludvik caught hold of him too. “Get in, you damned fools,” he said. “We can’t help him. He’s dead. Get in, damn you, or they’ll get us all.” He thrust them ahead of him.

“We can’t leave him there,” Irina was screaming.

“He’s my brother—” Alois shouted.

Then all protest, all argument was over as a searchlight beamed across the sky and the distant sound of a powerful engine came closer, closer. “I’ll drive,” Ludvik said.

He drove furiously over the cart tracks and bumps, grim-faced, silent.

Alois said nothing at all. He was still in shock.

Irina was weeping. When she had enough control over her voice, she said, “But where did the shot come from?”

Ludvik was intent on the road they had entered, a broader road, well marked. He had turned on the car lights, kept a saner pace through a straggle of traffic. “We’ve just turned south from the border crossing. See the guardhouse back there? Symbolic last view of Czechoslovakia, Irina. Look well!”

She didn’t turn her head to look. She repeated her question. “Where did the shot—”

“From the wood, I thought.”

“No, no. We were hiding there. Josef had scouted it. He said it was safe.”

“Then from the trees farther east. That’s where those damn birds were nesting.”

She shook her head, unconvinced. “But the light was so poor. How could anyone shoot—”

“They’ve got all the gadgets, infra-red tricks. Don’t ask me. I’m not a small-arms expert. Or perhaps it was just a lucky shot from one of their special snipers. There was no wind, not even a breeze tonight. That’s what they like: no variables. A lucky shot, though. The first one came nowhere close.”

“Two? I only heard one.”

“The first that missed both of us. And just as Josef turned to run, and the birds loosed all hell on us, the second shot came. That’s when he fell.”

Yes, Irina could agree, she had heard nothing above the wild clamour of the ravens. She fell silent. Beside her, Alois was sitting stiffly, his hands clenched, his eyes closed.

Ludvik told her, “We are on Highway 2. We’ll have you safe in Vienna in a couple of hours.”

Safe. She thought of Josef’s still body. She began to weep again, but this time quietly.

Ludvik’s voice was angry. “Someone had to keep his head tonight. And what could we have done, anyway?”

Then they were all silent.

2

David Mennery kept trying to concentrate on his desk. There was plenty of work to finish there before he drove back to New York tomorrow morning. This week-end he had written a fairly good article, in spite of distractions from the weather (Saturday and Sunday had been perfect for swimming and lazing), but it needed editing, tightening up. As always, before writing a piece, he’d spent days worrying that he hadn’t enough material; and then, once he started, he would find he had far too much. So he re-read his typescript with a hard critical eye, began sharpening a batch of pencils, and made an effort to ignore the rhythms of the Atlantic breaking over firm white sand, or the afternoon sun baking down on the high dunes outside the beach cottage.

Its windows, recessed under the roof’s deep overhang, were opened wide, shutters folded back, letting the south-west breeze play through the free arrangement of rooms. (But not near this alcove, where loose papers and notes and concert programmes were scattered around to suit his reach.) The lighting, from a plexiglass skylight overhead, was efficient and tilted towards the north. He was almost cool, even with the temperature on his front porch hovering around ninety-four degrees. No complaint there. Since Caroline and he had split up—four years ago, my God, could it be really four? He had made sure his working conditions were good, simple but satisfying. Out had gone Caroline’s tripping rugs, draperies, cushions piled on unsittable couches, baroque-framed mirrors and Venetian sconces, however charming; in had come bookshelves and stereo and hi-fi speakers, a few comfortable armchairs on a wooden floor, lamps to read with, and a telescope for the stars over the ocean. He could accomplish more here than he did in the city, even allowing for a morning round of golf or a walk along the beach, or an afternoon spent soaking in the sun, or a dinner in the evening with one of the charmers who spent their summers perfecting their tans: pretty girls bloomed as rampant as roses in this stretch of Long Island. Four years had slipped easily away.

The city, of course, was his necessity, his base of operations as a music critic for The Recorder, a monthly magazine with an appreciation of sound whether it was classical or contemporary, jazz or rock, lieder or country-and-western, opera or symphony. David Mennery was one of The Recorder’s permanent stable of writers, with a couple of pages of general criticism in each issue. In addition to that, he headed a specialised department of his own, which he had more or less invented by virtue of having written a book dealing with music festivals. He had combined two of his chief enthusiasms, travel and music, and discovered that thousands of Americans who loved music were also travel-prone. A Place for Music established him as a foot-loose critic with wide-ranging tastes. Just as importantly, it had provided for his travels as well as for such necessities as butcher’s bills and house repairs. He had never quite fathomed how a book he had so much enjoyed writing should have earned him money and won him an opening into a steady career. The freelance criticism which he had done, previous to the book, was all right for the feast-or-famine years when he had been in his twenties and was still searching. Now, at thirty-nine, he knew what he could do and couldn’t do; and at least he could feel he had a definite idea of where he was going. He would settle for that and count himself lucky. (He need not have been so modest. He wrote well, with a good critical bite. He had standards and wasn’t afraid to judge by them. He knew a lot about music, about the composers, about the people who conducted or performed it. He belonged to no clique, followed no fashion. He was very much his own man.)

He had sharpened his last pencil, poured himself some cold beer, and could find no more excuses to postpone the compulsory, always painful, self-amputation. He began crossing out the unnecessary sentences, obliterating phrases, making rewrite notes in the margins. A passage he had somehow imagined last night to be tactfully diplomatic was a fuzzy mess to today’s colder eye: a spiritual wallow in intellectual ooze. There was just no way to handle a modern composer gently when his jangle of sounds was basically thin and tedious. Just no way. The kindest criticism you could give such a man was to tell him to stop wandering down a path to nowhere, avoid the cute tricks, and get back on to a road which could lead him to something with real promise. Music was more than a collection of sounds.

He worked on, forgot about the sea and the sun outside, forgot about time. He rewrote the whole article, got it into proper shape at last, and began to type it out into good clean copy. He wanted it ready for delivery tomorrow before he took off for the Salzburg Festival. It was then that the telephone rang.

As he rose to answer it, he noticed the dock at the side of his desk and was startled to see that it was almost six. He picked up the receiver. Cocktail time, he was thinking, and the usual casual summer invitation. He was preparing a gentle refusal, but he never had to use it. The call was from New York.

At first he didn’t recognise Mark Bohn’s voice, simply because he hadn’t expected it. Bohn was a journalist who now lived mostly in Washington, specialised in foreign affairs, travelled around. He was an old friend, but sporadic in his appearances: it must have been almost four years since he had last surfaced. And here was his voice, as quick and business-like as ever, telling Dave he was one hell of a fellow to track down. Bohn had called David’s apartment in New York several times, had eventually telephoned the superintendent and extracted—with difficulty—David’s unlisted East Hampton number. “And,” said Bohn reprovingly, “I only got it out of him by telling him your brother had had an accident and I was the family physician.”

“Brother James won’t be amused. What kind of accident?”

“Automobile accident. If he’s anything like you, he’s car-crazy, isn’t he?”

Which was Bohn’s way of saying that David enjoyed driving and Bohn did not. David said nothing. He was now past the surprise of hearing Bohn’s voice. He began to speculate on the reason for the call: Bohn in New York, finding the heat and humidity as bad as Washington, thinking of borrowing a cottage beside a cool ocean for a few days.

Bohn was rattling on. “I want to see you, Dave. Urgent. When are you coming to town?”

“Tomorrow around noon.”

“I’ll drop in at the apartment. Twelve o’clock?”

“Not possible. I’ll be clearing up some things at The Recorder.”

“Then after lunch. Two o’clock or three?”

“Packing. I’m flying out early tomorrow evening. I’m heading for Salzburg.”

“I know. I know.” Bohn sounded sharp, as if he were worried or annoyed. “You’re going to the festival.”

“How did you know?”

“I read The Recorder and listen to your friends’ chatter. But I thought the festival was in August?”

“It begins the last week of July. This Wednesday, I’ll be at the opening night, seven o’clock sharp.”

“What’s playing?”

“The Marriage of Figaro.”

“Couldn’t you skip it? Hear it the next time round? You must have listened to it twenty times.”

“But not with Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic.” David’s voice was cool. Bohn was a highly knowledgeable man, but he was damned ignorant about some things. “And I can’t hear it next time round, because on that night I’ll be listening to Geza Anda, just one of the top pianists in this whole wide world. What’s more, you just don’t switch tickets around at this date. I booked last January, like thousands of others. Sorry, Mark. Can’t see you tomorrow. We’ll have to wait until I get back at the end of August. I thought I’d fit in a quick visit to Bayreuth after a week in Salzburg, and then breeze on to Switzerland for Lucerne, and then to Scotland for Edinburgh.” That silenced Bohn, or perhaps he was making other calculations. Or was he consulting with someone else? At last he said, “Could you possibly cancel any engagement for fun and games tonight?”

“I’ve no engagements, except for some work to be finished.” David hoped the hint was strong enough. It wasn’t.

“An hour will do us, not much more. Are you alone down there? No week-end guest helping you with the typing?”

“I’m alone.”

“Good.” There was another pause. (He is consulting with someone else, thought David.) “I’ll see you about eight o’clock.”

“You’re driving a hundred and ten miles in two hours?” That wasn’t Bohn’s style. “You know,” David added, “there are other cars—not to mention trucks—on the highway. I think you’ve a fixation on accidents today.” And what’s so urgent that he’d even suggest this idea? “What’s it all about?”

“I’ll see you around eight, perhaps half-past. I’d like to find your cottage before it’s too dark to judge what turn I make at the potato fields. Last time I visited you, I came down the Montauk Highway, made a sharp left at the pond, passed the village green, kept on going along Main Street—old houses and big trees, then some shops, et cetera, and then a windmill. And then what?”

“Bear right and take the next turn on your right. Follow that until you reach the golf course. Then turn left keep on going for half a mile.”

“And then the potato fields. Are they still there?”

“Mostly. Take the second lane on your right towards the ocean.”

“And there you’ll be, among the honeysuckle, thornbushes, and dunes. See you.”

David was left staring at a dead receiver. He replaced it thoughtfully. Mark Bohn’s telephone calls were usually brief. Bohn liked his comforts, and five hours of driving (here and back to New York) wasn’t his idea of bliss. Bohn never did anything without a purpose. So what was bringing him out all the way here? Urgent, he had said. It must be damned urgent.

David put one of his long-playing tapes into the machine, adjusted the volume and tone, went back to his typewriter. He had the work completed by half-past seven, with a varied selection of Vivaldi and Albinoni keeping him cheerful company. The special thing about that kind of music, he thought as he changed into his swimming trunks, was that it didn’t add to your aggravations and annoyances. It didn’t jar your spine, set your teeth on edge. And the miracle was that it didn’t cloy either. Small wonder that people were still listening to those clever old Venetians after two hundred and fifty years.

He went into the porch, waited for the last movement of an Albinoni concerto to end. You couldn’t walk away from that interweave of strings with the trumpet dominating the intricate background. Just the finest trumpeter in the world, he thought as Maurice André let his last notes ripple and soar. Soar as high as these white clouds, tinging now with gold, over the immense sea. Then there was only silence and the steady beat of breaking waves.

He walked over the short stretch of rough grass, followed the path between beach-plum bushes and dog roses, came to the big dunes that blocked his cottage from winter storms. The path went round one side of them—Long Islanders didn’t approve of breaking down dunes by trampling over them—but tonight David went straight over, running now as he jumped on to the deep soft sand. His pace increased as he reached the harder stuff, packed and smoothed by the tide’s reach. He let out a long war whoop as he raced for the edge, running slow-motion until the water was waist-high. Then came the big ones rolling in from the Atlantic. He dived at the base of an upcurling wave, got safely through before it smashed downward. Another dive and he was beyond this line of surf and swimming strongly. It was almost calm tonight, by Atlantic standards, but it was wiser to turn back before he reached the second line of breakers which rose and fell over some unseen reef or sand bar. This was far enough from the shore: he might enjoy taking a risk, but he was not foolhardy. The return was easy, with the ocean helping him tonight: the spasms of the hidden waves floated him in. Some days, he almost had to fight his way back; other days, he wouldn’t put an ankle into this water.

He flopped down on the empty beach, rested in its peace. There wasn’t a fishing boat in sight. Some gulls. Some sandpipers, scuttling along the frothing edge of the waves, their sharp bills busy searching for food before the brilliant sunset ebbed away. At last he picked himself up and began walking to the cottage. He was beginning to feel cold, but pleasantly: it was the first time he had been really cool today. He wondered, still listening to the perpetual waves, how the whalers in the old days managed to get their boats launched through that surf. They did, too. Now that was real toughness for you, he told himself, as he broke into a jogging run.

A Buick was standing in the driveway beside the cottage. Two men were waiting on the darkening porch.

“Eight-fifteen,” Mark Bohn called out. “I told you we’d manage it. And I brought a good driver along with me, just to make sure. Hugh McCulloch.” He nodded to a tall man beside him.

Hugh McCulloch? David studied the stranger briefly. Am I supposed to know him? he wondered. “Let’s move inside,” he suggested. He shook hands and led the way, switching on the lights. “Pour yourselves a drink. I’ll find some clothes. You both look so damn formal.” Hugh McCulloch was carrying a briefcase, looking round uncertainly for a place to drop it. David moved into the bathroom for a quick shower to free the sand from his hair and skin. Dressing took a couple of minutes: chino pants, short-sleeved shirt, feet shoved into loafers. Outside in the living-room he could hear Marie fixing the drinks and doing all the talking. It struck David suddenly that all three of them were embarrassed by this meeting, each in his own way. It was an intrusion on him, certainly. (“Look at this,” Bohn was saying near the desk, “he really has been doing some work!” It obviously surprised him.) On the other hand, it had certainly been one hell of a nuisance for these two men to come chasing down all this distance. Bohn would go anywhere in search of a story. But McCulloch did not look the type to make unnecessary journeys.

3

“Well,” David Mennery said briskly as he returned to the living-room, “do we eat now or later? There isn’t much to offer you, I’m afraid. Closing up house, you know.”

“Wouldn’t trouble you,” McCulloch said. “We can stop for some food on the way back to New York.” He left the bookcases, where he had been studying the titles. He had a pleasant voice, quiet and gentle like his manner, yet firm. He stood at least six feet, a couple of inches above David and four inches more than Mark Bohn. His hair had been reddish blond: it was now well mixed with white, and thinning. It was conservatively cut, giving him a neat, smooth look. So were his clothes, a lightweight grey suit, a white shirt, a navy tie. Observant brown eyes; pale complexion as if he spent a lot of time indoors. A man in his mid-forties? Not much more. No, thought David, I don’t remember this McCulloch at all, yet there’s a friendly look about him as if he recognised me.

“No trouble,” David lied cheerfully. Too bad about that steak he had hoped to broil tonight. Divided three ways, it would supply a couple of mouthfuls apiece. “There’s cheese and some ham. And,” he added with a grin, as he caught sight of Bohn’s face, Mark the well-travelled epicure, Mark the connoisseur of wines, “we can always fill up the corners by opening a can of beans.”

“I think we should talk first,” Bohn said.

“Fine,” David agreed, and took the Scotch Bohn handed him. Bohn was trying to appear at ease, but he was definitely nervous. Physically, he looked much the same as always: thin-faced, hawk-featured, with amused grey eyes behind round wise-looking glasses. He had dark hair, straight but now long-stranded with limp locks straggling over his collar. By startling contrast, there was a fuzz of sideburns, thick and grey, bulging from his cheeks. If Bohn had grown all that hair in the hope of looking younger, he had achieved the opposite effect. He looked a tired fifty, with all the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders. Actually, he was two years younger than David, making him thirty-seven. David resolved to have a good haircut tomorrow, not short, but not below the collar line either. “Well, what’s all this about?” And what, he was wondering again, could bring three men like us together?

McCulloch had taken a chair, his briefcase lying neatly and not too obviously alongside. He was going to leave the talking to Bohn. A very diplomatic type, thought David, sitting opposite him: he looked as cool and crisp as if he hadn’t travelled almost the length of Long Island on a hot and sticky evening. Bohn, by contrast, was feeling the humidity, although the chill sea air was circulating through the room. He pulled his wide Italian silk tie loose, opened his striped English shirt, then went the whole way and took off the creased jacket of his light gabardine suit. He threw it aside, took another drink, ran his hand through his hair. Yes, thought David, definitely nervous. Of me? That’s unlikely. Of McCulloch, who looked like a good-tempered kind of man? Then Bohn’s hesitations dropped away from him. He became his old business-like self; very capable, quick-talking, thoughts arranged in neat patterns. He went straight to the matter. “Jaromir Kusak’s daughter wants to get out of Czechoslovakia.”

David felt all expression drain from his face. “Irina?”

“Irina. And she needs help.”

David made no reply. The door to one of the rooms in his past life had been wrenched open. He had closed it, locked it, eventually thrown its key away, and here it was, forced ajar and gaping. At least, he thought, he could now bring himself to look inside, see it all as a small museum. Sixteen years was a long time in emotional drainage. He had no feelings left about Irina. Now he could even let himself remember her, remember Prague in the autumn of 1956. A girl he had met on his first day there. By accident. The totally unexpected. And himself when young, almost twenty-four, just out of the army, with enough money saved to let him wander through Europe for a couple of months. It might be a while before he’d ever be able to travel there again; it would give him time to decide whether or not he was going back to college. He had enlisted voluntarily at the end of his sophomore year at Yale, in the middle of the Korean War, when the draft had been stepped up. Partly because an enlisted man had some choice in his branch of the service. Partly—to be brutally truthful—because the group around him talking of draft evasion (and let the other guys do it) had given him a small pain at the base of the spine. What other guys? Anyone except me, me, me? Of course, no one put it as bluntly as that: rationalisations were neat as always, and even dear old morality got dragged in by the hair of its head. The comic thing was, he had enlisted in a state of depressed anger, and then he hadn’t been sent to Korea to get his tail shot off. Instead, he had been assigned to West Germany. And when he was free, he had headed for Vienna because the action was there, music and international politics, his two developing interests. (The German experience hadn’t been all sausage and sauerkraut.)

Eastern Europe in that autumn had been simmering with revolt. The first Polish riots had taken place in July, and failed, with fifty killed and hundreds wounded. By September there were still dangerous tremors in Warsaw. So he left Vienna for Prague, thinking that he might reach Poland by way of Czechoslovakia; or if that failed then he’d try for Hungary, where—the talk in Vienna had it—there could be some trouble too. Just the brash bright young observer, about to produce some inspired reporting, definitely a find for The New York Times and a future winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, he thought now, I was very young.

And on his first day in Prague he met Irina. He forgot everything else. It was Irina, Irina... Three weeks of laughter and music and love. He had never felt that way before, never since. A mad and wonderful kind of happiness, a joy that floated you over the solid grey buildings, set your heart dancing in prosaic city streets. Yes, it was love in all its first tenderness and delight, world without end. Except that it was ended for them. Power politics took over. Irina was locked in. He was locked out, sent back to Vienna scarcely knowing how it had all been done so adeptly. But that was what happened to you when you fell in love with a girl whose mother was a Communist party official and whose father was far from Prague, unable to help anyone. He was a prisoner confined to the limits of his house and garden. And that was what could happen even to a major novelist, a Nobel Prize nominee, if he was too admired among his own people, too famous abroad to be jailed without international protests.

“Dave,” Mark Bohn’s voice said with marked patience. “Dave didn’t you hear me? Jaromir Kusak managed to get out of Czechoslovakia four years ago. He’s living in exile. Irina wants to join him. She needs help.”

“Then give it to her,” David answered sharply. He got control of himself, and added in a quiet unemotional tone, “You have connections in Washington who would know how to help. Get your friends in the CIA to take on the job.”

“They won’t touch it.”

“What?”

“Neither will the British. MI6 has backed off too.”

“Aren’t they interested?” David was incredulous.

“Definitely. Most sympathetic. They wish Irina all the luck in the world, but they won’t become involved.”

“Why not?”

McCulloch broke the long silence. He said to Bohn, “I think we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. Why don’t you start your story from the beginning, and give Mr. Mennery a better idea of the whole problem?”

David cut in, getting well ahead of both of them. “If you’ve come here thinking I can be of any use, forget it.”

“Why?”

“I’m not trained for this kind of job. I’m no escape expert. I’d be no help at all. I couldn’t get into Czechoslovakia in the first place. Not legally. I was thrown out of there pretty damn quick in 1956.”

“That was quietly done, all sub rosa. No official record was made. Irina’s mother saw to that. She had the power at that time, and she used it.”

“All for the sake of her husband,” David said bitterly. That was the reason she had given him before she had him deported. If he stayed, if he insisted on seeing her daughter, she would be powerless against her husband’s enemies. They’d say that his daughter was being used to reach him. A Western militarist (wasn’t David barely out of the army?), certainly a capitalist and an anti-Communist, possibly an agent of the CIA (proof wasn’t necessary, only an official statement)—yes, there was enough there to have her husband arrested on conspiracy charges. Neither his reputation nor his name could save him then. A serious charge, always: a deadly charge at this moment, when a revolt had just started in Poland in spite of the magnanimous handling of the July riots. Even now, David could hear the rat-a-tat of her angry words, streaming at him like machine-gun fire. “And for her own sake too, I guess.”

“There’s always that,” McCulloch agreed. “But she did protect her husband, even when they were miles apart, both ideologically and physically. And what would have happened to her, do you think, if her daughter had left, without permission, for America? She would have been held accountable. They take that kind of thing rather poorly in Communist countries.”

“Well, even if I’m not on any official blacklist, I still haven’t been trained for the job of getting Irina out. Safely. And, it’s her safety that matters.”

“We don’t want a man with special training. We need a man who can identify Irina. We need a man who is a capable driver and can bring her out of Vienna.”

“We?” There was challenge and wariness in David’s eyes. McCulloch repressed a small sigh. “I am not connected with the CIA, or any other branch of United States Intelligence.” And why should any of us have to apologise like this? he wondered. If we had no intelligence agencies we’d be back to the stupidities of Pearl Harbour. “I am a lawyer, working mainly in Washington, who was once with the State Department. My firm specialises in legal work for American businesses investing abroad, and for foreign firms who are setting up branches here. We have offices in Paris and Geneva. That is as far as my international involvements extend.”

Once with the State Department? David said, “I keep thinking I ought to remember you somehow. Should I?” He looked at McCulloch long and carefully. “Vienna?” he tried.

“Yes. October 1956, although I don’t suppose there was any reason for you to remember me: I was one of the junior officers and no help to you at all.”

That was when I haunted the consulate and the embassy, pleading with them to get Irina Kusak out of Czechoslovakia so I could marry her. “And I was another citizen making a nuisance of himself. My God, I was young, wasn’t I?” he added, and he could smile at himself. “But how the hell could you remember me? You had hundreds of complaints and demands.”

“Mostly forgotten. But I noted you. The name of Jaromir Kusak rang all the bells. I was one of his enthusiasts. I still am. A very great writer, a very great man.”

Bohn, who felt he had taken a back seat long enough, broke into the conversation. “It was Hugh here who suggested you as the best candidate for this job. I made out a list of five Americans who had known Irina personally. One is a symphony conductor, now on a world tour. Another is a geologist, testing for oil somewhere in the wilds of Alaska, not available at such short notice. The third is with a branch of national security. The fourth is running for Congress. I still think we should have twisted an arm or two in the CIA, and got them to take action. However, time is short, I just had to settle for you.”

“How about an Englishman? Jaromir Kusak has friends in London—the publisher who brought out a collected edition of his early works last year.”

“George Sylvester? Yes, he’s an old friend. It was through him I tried to get British Intelligence interested. No go. And as for two Englishmen who met Irina when they were in Czechoslovakia some years ago—well, one of them is now with NATO and the other works for the British Government.”

David made one last try. “I only had a few phrases of Czech. I can’t even speak it now.”

“You aren’t going into Czechoslovakia. You are going to Vienna. You speak German well. You can handle a car. You know the Austrian roads—you’ve driven there, haven’t you?”

“Only in certain areas.”

“And you’ve driven through northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany.”

“Only in certain areas,” David insisted. And I’ve told you too damn much about my life, he thought as he eyed Bohn.

“You’re a natural,” Bohn said with a wide grin. “You have a good reason for being in Austria for the next couple of weeks.”

“For one week.”

“You could stretch it.”

Yes, I could stretch it. But do I want to stretch it? It could be too painful. And what about Irina? Would she want to see me again?

“No one, not even the Czech state security boys,” Bohn was saying, “could possibly guess that you were going to be involved. You’re in Salzburg, right? Black tie and dinner jacket, doing your thing. All arranged months ago, long before I got a letter from Irina. You’re perfect.”

“I thought I was your last choice,” David said dryly, and rose to pour himself another drink. He refilled McCulloch’s glass too. Bohn was already at his third.

“Not among the amateurs,” Bohn said.

“What about that letter?” David asked suddenly.

“What about some food?” countered Bohn. He led the way to the kitchen. The late Caroline had left some improvements here, he thought as he headed for the refrigerator. Did Dave know she was divorcing her second husband, and had already staked out her third? No, better not mention it tonight. Dave had to be kept in a serious mood, and Caroline was a comic character.

* * *

They ate a quick meal, and Bohn began talking as they finished their coffee around the heavy wooden table at one end of the kitchen.

Late in June a letter had reached Bohn in Washington. It was mailed in Vienna and it came from Irina. It had been written in Czechoslovakia and—this was Bohn’s fairly obvious assumption—smuggled out of that country by one of Irina’s friends in some resistance group. The letter stated that her mother was dead, her two children were dead, she had left her husband who was now divorcing her, and she had contacted some friends who were willing to help her leave the country. They could take her as far as Vienna. From there she needed help to reach her father, wherever he was. She was enclosing a note for Bohn to forward “to anyone who can reach my father.” The note was brief. Please let me see you. I need you. She gave a Vienna telephone number which Bohn could use to make contact with her. Any message sent there, using the name Janocek for identification, would be passed on to her. She begged him to let her know if he was willing to help her. If so, she could leave in a matter of weeks.

“Everything stated clearly and simply,” Bohn said.

“And that telephone number was real.”

“You telephoned?” David asked.

“Why not? I wanted to test that letter. The Janocek dodge worked. And I also learned that they plan to get Irina out of Czechoslovakia by early August. So that’s our target date: the first week of August. My guess is that she will be hidden in a safe house in Vienna by her Czech friends until we can pick her up.” He noticed David’s frown. “No compliments on my efficiency? Come on, Dave, what’s bugging you?”

“You actually telephoned you were going to help her? Even before you had anything lined up?”

“What would you have done—left her unanswered?”

“No. I’d have said I was trying. I’d have said I had got the letter, and I’d let her know if I could get something worked out.”

“But I was working on it,” Bohn said with some annoyance. “I began that very day. I went out to Langley and saw one of my CIA pals. The letter was passed on to someone else out there, presumably higher up. I heard that other agencies were consulted too. Big huddle. But Jaromir Kusak is a big name, and now more than ever.”

As Bohn paused to pour himself some brandy, McCulloch leaned over to David and said quietly, “I can fill you in on the increasing importance of the name. Later. Along with any other points you may want developed.” He went back to drinking his coffee.

Bohn again took centre stage. “I was pretty sure that one of our intelligence outfits would come to the rescue. I was wrong. I was even told that they didn’t know where Kusak was. So I called George Sylvester on the ’phone—that’s the London publisher who must be in contact with Kusak, or else how could Kusak’s manuscripts reach him? I told him I had a note from Irina for her father, and I had just mailed it to him; he’d better make sure he was the only one to open it. I asked him to call me back when he had received it, and let me know how he could help. I thought his friends in Whitehall might be interested and could arrange for everything to be handled efficiently. I also said I was ready to fly to London as soon as he had something definite to suggest, have a private discussion, and show him a letter I myself had received from Irina.” Bohn drew a deep breath. “Yes, I think you can say I did go to work on it.” He looked pointedly at David. “Then I called on Hugh and enlisted him for the battle. He has connections, knows ways and means.”

“You were really desperate,” McCulloch said, smiling.

“No results with George Sylvester?” David asked.

“Yes and no. He had sent Irina’s note to Kusak, but he wouldn’t give me Kusak’s address. Said he didn’t know it: he only knew the first step in a series of contacts that led to Kusak. And there had been a lot of interest among Sylvester’s friends in the intelligence field, but they suggested I should do the job myself. Funny fellows. The last time I was in Czechoslovakia, I left with rumours chasing me out. I’m definitely on the Czech blacklist. Of course I had no actual connection with any intelligence agency, but the Czechs were paranoiac about that.”

“And still are,” murmured McCulloch.