The Best of British Crime omnibus (28 page)

‘Nonsense!' exclaimed Perdita, but at last the word had lost its ring of conviction.

‘I'm afraid it's true,' I said. ‘He attacked me in my room. He was looking for those trousers – remember?' Ruefully I fingered my swollen face. ‘You wouldn't like to model me instead of Uncle Joe, would you, Miss Manning?'

She turned away, gathering up her things. I think even she was shocked out of her complacency at last. Islwyn Thomas silently helped her. Mrs Clarke, still on the edge of hysteria, was assisted from the plane by a grim-faced Schofield. Cressey descended in a daze.

Tranter's front had completely collapsed. ‘It's hardly credible,' he said in a strained voice. ‘What a blackguard!'

‘Even by
your
standards, Mr Tranter?' I said.

He picked up his belongings and left the plane without another word. To him, of course, Bolting was now just another traitor to the cause.

‘Come on,' said Jeff, ‘we've got a lot of explaining to do.' He gripped my arm. ‘Oh,
boy
, we've made it.'

I pushed back my plate, took a sip of black coffee, and helped myself to a Lucky from Jeff's pack. We were in the airport restaurant – more or less on parole while the immigration people continued their inquiries about me – and I'd just had my first solid food in twenty-four hours.

I lit up, and sat back with a relaxed sigh. ‘That's better. Next time I impersonate anyone, I'm going to make sure beforehand that he's capable of eating and smoking like a normal person.'

Jeff surveyed me dispassionately. ‘You still look a bit of a wreck, bud. How's the head?'

‘It could be worse. By the way, Jeff – thanks!'

‘Forget it.'

‘He'd have killed me, you know. I could see it in his eyes.'

‘Me, too. That's why I hit him with the skate.'

‘It must have been a pretty near thing.'

‘I'll say it was. By the time I'd registered your shout and tried your door and rushed through Mullett's room, you were out cold and Bolting was just raising the boot. I never want to see anything nearer.'

‘Thank God you were still upstairs, that's all. What were you doing, hanging about there?'

He looked a bit sheepish. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just penning a line to Tanya. I thought that maybe she'd turn up again one day, and that if I left a note Kira could give it to her. Kind of optimistic, but I didn't like the idea of just walking out.'

‘Well, it was lucky for me. In fact, things turned out pretty well altogether. We'd have been sunk if Bolting hadn't been wearing his outdoor things.'

Jeff chuckled. ‘It sure was the perfect disguise. Of course, you're just his build and the glasses helped enormously, but all those wrappings were a gift. You almost had
me
fooled.'

‘There were some bad moments, all the same. I thought I was going to have to sign that message to Stalin and I hadn't the remotest idea how Bolting wrote his name. That shook me. And when the plane began to warm up, I thought someone might think it odd that I didn't unwrap at all. The trickiest moment of the whole lot, though, was when Mirnova called me away to see Vassiliev.'

‘That had me worried, too. Why didn't he bring the parcel in and make a little speech?'

‘The parcel was only an excuse. I wasn't taken to Vassiliev. I was taken to the Customs.'

‘The Customs!'

‘Yes. There were a couple of tough-looking birds there whom I hadn't seen before. One of them said “Keys!” and there was no fraternal nonsense about his tone either. I felt in one pocket after another, and I couldn't find them, and I thought to myself, “You've had it, chum,” and then suddenly they jingled. It's a good job you were thorough. Well, they opened the bags, and the packet of stamps was lying right on top of one of them. They removed it without a word, locked the bags up again, and returned the keys. I was taken to Vassiliev, who handed me the parcel of caviar, and then Mirnova brought me straight back. I didn't open my mouth the whole time, and no one seemed to expect me to.'

‘Darned queer!'

‘I thought so at the time, but I don't now. Put yourself in Bolting's place… '

‘Not bloody likely!' said Jeff.

I laughed, even though it hurt. ‘The thing is, he knew that the Russians knew everything he'd done. He knew that they'd decided to let him go, and why. But he must have had a pretty good idea, too, that they wouldn't let him get away with his loot. I imagine he'd realised all the time that they'd collect at the Customs, and that was why he'd put the stamps handy for them. Anyway, it all went off very smoothly.'

‘Well, I guess they're entitled to the stamps. I don't know what we'd have done with them.'

‘I'd have bought myself a new typewriter,' I said ruefully. ‘Still what the hell!' I lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. ‘You know, Jeff, I've been pretty dumb. I ought to have realised that Bolting was our man. The evidence was there.'

‘I suppose it was, in a way,' said Jeff thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we ought to have paid more attention to that job he had as an accountant. It showed his bent in the early years – you might even say it showed he was the sort of guy who might trade stamps as a sideline. Still, he wasn't the only one that could be fitted in.'

‘I didn't mean that sort of evidence. There was something concrete. You remember he told me that when he was in Moscow in 1942 he had a room on the third floor on the side overlooking the lane?'

‘That's what you said.'

‘Well, that was the give-away. When we were at that VOKS party, he told us a story – perhaps you weren't there at the time – about how he'd sat on his balcony during the war and watched the passengers in a trolley bus being sprayed with water. Well, he couldn't have seen any trolley buses from the room he said he had. He'd forgotten that first story. Funny! – you said that what we needed was a thundering lie, and when we got it I didn't even notice.'

Jeff shrugged. ‘He'd probably have talked himself out of it. The only sure way was to catch him red-handed.'

‘You must have done that literally! I wonder what's happened to him.'

‘Maybe he threw himself off the balcony when he came round. Best thing he could do, I should think.'

I pondered. ‘Somehow I can't see Bolting as a suicide. He's got too much self-confidence. I don't think he'd chuck his hand in as long as he had any chips left.'

‘Maybe not, but he hasn't any chips. He can't be any more use to the Russians – once this story breaks he'll be just a liability, and you can bet your life they don't love him. In fact, they must be pretty sore all round… ‘

He broke off, and I guessed what he was thinking. We'd been so careful, all through, not to make things worse for Tanya, and then at the end events had taken control and we'd had to act without giving her a thought. When the full story broke, the Russians would lose a lot of face and they'd probably take their revenge where they could. It was a sobering thought. At that moment, neither of us had any sense of triumph.

'There's not much we can do about it now,' I said sadly.

‘I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm just crazy but I've got a sort of idea… ' He was silent for a while. ‘Look, George, where are we going to get by spilling this story? The delegation's bust, anyway – Mullett's dead, Bolting's written off, and Tranter will have to crawl under a stone.'

I looked at him in surprise. Hitting the headlines would normally have been a good enough reason for either of us. Besides…

‘I don't quite follow you,' I said. ‘It's a story that'll make a tremendous stir here – I should think it'll be worth a division in the cold war. Soviet police framing an innocent man to protect a fellow-traveller – why, it's terrific.'

‘Maybe, but there's Tanya and there's Nikolai. The way I figure it, a couple of decent people are worth more than the bit we can add to the case against the M.V.D. We both hate the Kremlin's guts, we'd both like to have a crack at them in the headlines, but if two people go right down the drain as a result, we're just playing things the Communist way – ideology first and human beings nowhere.'

‘I'm with you there, of course,' I said, ‘but I'm afraid they're going to take it out of Tanya and Nikolai whatever we do.'

‘Well, are they? Suppose we offer to keep our mouths shut if those two are given a break?'

For a moment I was speechless. ‘They'd never make a deal like that.'

‘They might if we handle it properly. Hell, look what they stand to gain – complete silence on the whole unsavoury episode. And what do they lose? Nothing. They don't really care a hoot what happens to Tanya and Nikolai – those two are just pawns. They wouldn't even have to explain anything to anyone – you know that. They could simply let them go and drop the whole thing.'

‘But Jeff, if we tried this and by some miracle it worked, we'd have Bolting back here, scot-free and full of bounce, doing his stuff all over again and knowing damn well we could never say anything because of the hostages in Russia. That would be a hell of a thing after all that's happened. I'm not sure I could stomach it.'

‘Bolting doesn't have to come back,' said Jeff eagerly. ‘We can make it clear that if he sets foot here again, the deal's off. For that matter, I shouldn't think the Russians would be all that anxious to let him go.'

‘He's still a British subject,' I pointed out, ‘and an important one. The only way they can keep him is to indict him for murder, and if they did that the whole story would come out anyway, so they wouldn't benefit from the deal.'

Jeff chewed over that for a while. ‘You're wrong,' he said at last. ‘They could easily keep him if they wanted to. They could tell him he'd be indicted if he asked for an exit permit!'

It was ingenious – I had to admit that.

‘Anyway,' I said, ‘are we in a position to make this deal? Suppose someone else talks?'

‘Who can? Who would? Not that bunch of delegates – they're not going to foul their own doorstep if they can help it. They'll sit tight and see what happens – if they're asked about Bolting they'll probably say he's ill. That's my guess, anyway. We could make sure by giving one of them a ring. Apart from them, no one else knows that Bolting did it – those other guys in Moscow may have a shrewd idea, but they've no evidence. There are your officials here, of course, but
they're
not going to rush into print. George, let's give it a trial. If the Russians won't play, we'll be no worse off, and if they will – well, I'll feel a darned sight happier.'

I gave him a rather lop-sided grin. ‘I believe you really fell for that kid.'

‘None of your business, George. But I did kinda like her.'

We left it at that.

That night I rang Schofield and told him that, for our own reasons, we proposed to say nothing about Bolting for the time being and that no doubt the delegation would be glad to take the same course. He sounded puzzled but extremely relieved, and he undertook to take care of Mrs Clarke, whom he described, with one of his characteristic understatements, as ‘somewhat vocal.' Apart from his misguided allegiance, he was a man I could have liked a lot.

Next day I called on the responsible authorities and got my personal position straightened out. I had to tell them pretty well the whole story, of course, and it was received with the greatest interest. It wasn't necessary to say anything about the plan that Jeff and I had evolved, for they took the view from the beginning that publication would be injudicious at a time when a crucial international conference was about to start; and I almost stunned them by agreeing.

Of course, I had to tell my Editor the full story to explain my sudden return, and he wasn't so keen on keeping quiet about it, but I won him round in the end. So that was that.

The approach to the Russians was tricky. They're rather less fond than most people of anything smacking of an ultimatum – as we'd found, they like propositions to be well wrapped up. In the end, we managed to concoct a letter which satisfied us, and I myself saw that it was delivered in the right quarter.

First, we set out the case against Bolting, with every detail included, right up to his assault on me. It was completely watertight and would unquestionably have won a conviction in any impartial court. Secondly, we showed how the Soviet authorities were implicated, from their discovery of the balcony route to their removal of the stamps from Bolting's case under my very eyes.

After that, we appended a hypocritical little piece about the importance of not worsening relations at such a dangerous moment in international affairs – very much on the lines that Ganilov had followed in that memorable and instructive interview we'd had with him. In the circumstances, we said, we were seriously considering not publishing these facts, but we pointed out that the return of Robson Bolting to England would make silence very difficult.

Finally, we said that as Nikolai had now been proved to be innocent, and Tanya to have been concerned only in a minor degree, we had the fullest confidence that justice and clemency would be shown to them.

It was an odd document, but so was the situation.

We heard nothing officially, of course, either then or later. The document wasn't acknowledged, and we didn't expect it to be. Very little came out of Moscow – only a brief paragraph to the effect that Mr Robson Bolting had been prevented from leaving with the rest of the delegation owing to illness, and was now recovering in a Moscow hospital. The days dragged on, and soon Jeff had to go back to the States. I promised to keep him posted.

It was no use worrying, because we'd done all we could, and anyway I was sent off on a short assignment and that kept me occupied. It was nearly a month later that I received a letter from Waterhouse, through a private channel. The essential paragraphs read as follows: