The Lure

39 Embassy

‘So what do we do? Send in the Marines?’ Bull turned to a thin, bird-like woman in her fifties. Behind thick spectacles, her eyes were like blue pebbles. ‘What have we got out there, Ms Rothwell?’

‘Miss Rothwell,’ she corrected the President. ‘An Embassy, sir.’ Her diction was precise and there was a slight nervousness in her voice. It was the first time she had spoken to the President, and the first time she had been to Camp David. ‘In Bratislava, as it happens. It has the usual offices, commercial services, public affairs, Defense Attaché. They run a few Peace Corps volunteers.’

‘So where do you hide the CIA?’ the President asked impatiently. ‘In the Peace Corps?’

‘No, sir. We front a travel agency, mostly for handling commercial information. And we have a well-placed source in their Foreign Office. Regional Security harvests economic intelligence. Our military liaison team — five Americans in the Slovak Ministry of Defence — has the full blessing of the Slovak government.’

The CIA Director, Al Sullivan, interrupted. ‘None of which is useful to us in the present situation.’

‘What about our Defense Attaché?’ the President asked.

Miss Rothwell flicked through some sheets of paper. ‘A Lieutenant Colonel Herschel, seconded from the Indiana National Guard. We have a bilateral military programme with the Slovaks. We help their Mig-29 pilots with specialised English, we gave their rapid reaction battalion a couple of million dollars’ worth of communication equipment and so on. Herschel’s responsible for the whole spectrum of our military interest out there.’

‘Which means he almost certainly runs some people,’ Sullivan interrupted again.

‘I wouldn’t know, sir. But they wouldn’t be useful to us.’

Sullivan gave Miss Rothwell a look. She coloured slightly.

Bull grunted. ‘So, in a nutshell, your little nest of spies isn’t worth a diddly.’

The State Department lady agreed. ‘They’re not geared up for a dragnet.’

‘Right. Right. So the Embassy are out of it.’ The President looked over at the DCI, who was sitting across from him, hunched forward. The CIA Chief had a worried frown. ‘Al, can you get a team out there?’

‘To find Petrie and Størmer?’ He shook his head. ‘The manpower lies with the Slovak police and they know their own country. We can’t compete with that.’

Judith Rothwell coughed. ‘If we mounted a manhunt on Slovak territory, and the Slovaks found out, which they probably would, there’d be diplomatic hell to pay.’

‘Yeah.’ Bull clasped his hands and looked meditatively across at the CIA Director.

The DCI said, ‘Look, these missing scientists have no money and no contacts. They’re in a foreign country and they don’t even speak the language.’ He spread his hands expansively. ‘They haven’t a hope. The Slovaks will have them in days.’

The President wrinkled his nose sceptically. ‘Maybe. So what happens to them when they’re caught? What does the East Europe desk have to say?’ He looked at the State Department woman with raised eyebrows.

‘The Slovak Constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention.’

‘I’m talking real life, Miss Rothwell.’

‘If the scientists are arrested they’ll have to be given a hearing within twenty-four hours and either freed or taken to a court for remand. If they’re remanded, they can get a second hearing within twenty-four hours. After that, it’s due process all the way, with the Supreme Court stepping in if—’

Bull raised a hand to stop the flow. He sighed. ‘I’ll try again. What I’m asking is this. What’s the Slovak government’s record on human rights? Have there been, let’s say, disappearances? Maybe even extrajudicial killings? Hell, the country was Communist for fifty years.’

‘I see.’ She pursed her lips primly. ‘The Department gives Slovakia a clean bill of health on human rights.’

‘Uhuh?’ Bull waited.

Miss Rothwell took the cue. ‘Of course we do carry out a lot of business there. Manganese ore, pharmaceuticals. The country’s expanding, post-Communism.’

‘And we wouldn’t want to rock the boat by getting oversensitive,’ the President suggested.

‘No, sir. Then there’s the political aspect. It’s in all our interests to stay friendly. And the Slovak government does respect its country’s Constitution.’

‘Uhuh.’

‘But there are some little problems.’

The wait was longer.

‘Mostly racial. The Romany population complains of occasional police brutality, followed by threats if they try to press charges. Skinhead attacks against racial minorities don’t get investigated.’

‘And we can’t let a few gyppos with a persecution complex get in the way of a good commercial thing.’ The air was heavy with the President’s sarcasm.

‘It’s not like that, sir. The Slovak government are trying to deal with it.’

Sullivan said, ‘Hell, Seth, I wouldn’t want to be black, vagrant and under arrest two blocks away from here.’

‘There was one possible extrajudicial killing,’ Miss Rothwell said, warming to the theme. ‘That was Jan Ducky, a former Economy Minister, and Head of the National Gas Distribution, a state monopoly. He was bumped off in the lobby of his apartment in January 1999. He was under investigation for financial shenanigans and the speculation is he was killed to keep him quiet.’

Sullivan said, ‘Could have been anyone. Not necessarily the government.’

‘And then there was the kidnapping of the President’s son.’

‘The what?’ Bull stared.

‘Kidnapping and torture. He was abducted to Austria. The Interior Ministry was heavily influenced by the SIS — the intelligence service — and the intelligence service was out of control. Their boss, Ivan Lexa, was charged along with about a dozen SIS people.’

‘What happened?’

‘Lexa pleaded immunity but Parliament removed it in 1999. He fled the country and there’s an international arrest warrant out for him. But the point is this, Mr President. If our fugitives are arrested, I believe the Slovak government will respect their rights.’

‘But you’ve just given me torture, kidnapping, judicial killings,’ Bull pointed out.

‘Not by the government,’ Miss Rothwell insisted. ‘By renegade elements within it.’

Sullivan said, ‘The message is clear. The odds are against us but it’s imperative that we capture this pair before the Slovaks get to them. We’ll have to mount a covert operation.’

‘Renegade elements within the government. I’m glad I don’t have that problem.’ The President grinned at Sullivan. ‘I don’t have that problem, do I, Al?’

The rattle of a passing tram startled Petrie. He was still out of breath. He had sprinted along a narrow lane, with the fat policeman’s footsteps in his ears. At a corner he had glanced quickly behind and with a surge of terror saw that the man had drawn his revolver. Dodging frantically through the passers-by, he finally reached a busy, cobbled pedestrian street. He recognised an archway — St Michael’s Gate — ran towards it and turned sharp right on to another lane. An old lady shouted something at him. There was a restaurant, closed for business. A van driver was heaving a tray of bread into the front door. The keys were in the ignition. Petrie leaped into the van and crashed into gear. In the mirror he saw the van driver rushing out of the restaurant and the policeman colliding with him. Then he was round the corner of the lane and back into the Roland’s Café square. There was no sign of Freya or the other policemen. He had driven through the pedestrians-only square, swerving to avoid someone half-hidden under a pink frilly umbrella, and on to another road. On a busy main road, with traffic crawling, he had lost his nerve — the bright red van would be picked up in minutes — and he had turned into a side road, ditched the van, and sprinted off in a random direction.

Running attracts attention. Now he was walking, although his chest was still heaving. The embankment was too open, and there was nobody on it but himself. A hundred pairs of eyes looked at him from the Danube Hotel across the road, plainclothes police were spotting him from every passing tram, and men with binoculars were watching him from the high concrete tower which straddled the flyover bridge.

Cut the panic. Get a grip on yourself.

He walked, smartly but not conspicuously so, past a floating hotel and a moored restaurant: the Cirkus Barok, flying the skull and crossbones and festooned with coloured lights. It looked closed. Further along he came to the Café Propeler; he climbed down a wooden gangplank.

The waiter waved him to a seat overlooking the river. Now that he was sitting, Petrie found that he was shaking with fright. A small Turkish waiter approached and Petrie ordered a coffee. He looked around. A middle-aged couple sat a few tables away. He had black hair, bushy eyebrows and unhealthy grey skin; he was immaculately dressed in a cheap grey suit, cheap shirt and nondescript tie, and he was smoking a cigarette. She had shoulder-length hair and was talking animatedly to him over her spectacles. In a corner a heavy man of about thirty, with designer stubble and an over-large blue shirt hanging out of his trousers, was staring at a sheet of paper. There was an occasional click of a Biro as he scribbled.

A haven, for the time it took to drink a coffee. Get your breath back. Think.

The coffee arrived. He tried to stop shaking but he spilled some into the saucer. Alarmed, Petrie read a world of suspicion in the waiter’s glance.

The truth was that, in focusing on the escape from the castle, the scientists had paid almost no attention to what they would do once they were out of it. The goals were clear: get out of the country, fire an answering signal, and tell the scientific community and the world about the shattering discovery. But how to achieve these goals?

Petrie found himself drifting into fantasy, one with sensational announcements to packed press conferences, worldwide CNN broadcasts, intense debates at the United Nations, the carefully prepared response to the signallers, the plaudits, the prizes. Again he dragged himself back to harsh reality. HMG, in its wisdom, had decided the knowledge was too dangerous, had decided to kill it — was trying to murder one of its own citizens.

The border was by now sealed, he was nearly out of money and there was a manhunt in progress. He didn’t speak the language and had no friends here. His own Embassy was a hostile place.

His probable survival time was minutes or hours, depending on luck. Maybe stretching to a day or two.

Solution: none immediately occurring.

Petrie looked at the snow-covered woodland across the river, but his mind’s eye saw Freya.

Freya with the long hair, glowing golden in the way that no peroxide could quite reproduce. Freya, who chattered and laughed infectiously and whose charming, knowing smile could reduce him to a jelly. Whose slender body carried that heavy rucksack as if it were filled with paper. Whose every movement and gesture was filled with life and happiness, in stark contrast to his own introverted gloominess. And the first girl he had shared intimacy with. He preferred to forget that ghastly encounter as a teenager (‘Come on, duckie, shoot your load, I’m losing business here’).

And now she was gone and Petrie was suffering pangs of longing and anxiety. He wondered whether she was now on a bus to Plešivec, to attempt an even more desperate underground escape to Hungary and points beyond; or whether they had caught her in that frantic sprint from Café Roland. Maybe she was even now being interrogated in some police basement or an army barracks.

Petrie finished his coffee. He glanced at his watch; it was mid-morning. He looked up at what he could see of the embankment traffic. He half-expected to see police cars trawling the streets but at the moment there were no signs of unusual activity.

Forget Freya. Survive, damn you! Find some way out of this trap!

Maybe she was even now dead.

At that moment, Freya was shampooing her hair a few hundred yards from Petrie, in the cloakroom of a large department store.

She had lost her police pursuers almost immediately. The forty metres’ start, along with an athletic build and a fast acceleration, had taken her into a busy pedestrian precinct adjoining the square in seconds; rather than run along the lane she had instinctively turned into a chemist’s shop. The cash Petrie had thrust at her was still in her hand. As she closed the door, trying to look calm and return the female assistant’s smile, the policemen ran past, almost within arm’s length.

The blonde hair!

She had bought a colour shampoo, eyebrow pencil, a dark lipstick and dark glasses, and had picked out a pink frilly umbrella from a rack. At the door of the shop she was in full view of one of the policemen. He had stopped running and was looking around. She had put on the glasses, put the umbrella up and sauntered back towards the square. Then she had crossed the square with nothing more eventful than a near-miss from a red van driven by a maniac; then she was through an archway with decorated windows and into a small courtyard. Into the museum, where she spent an hour investigating Slovakian viniculture through the ages before daring to emerge into the streets. She had recalled seeing a large department store, and had found it after an increasingly nervous half-hour of wandering the streets. She had bought some underwear, a smart dark skirt, a black sweater and a long black coat. In the store’s cloakroom she had applied the eyebrow pencil and the lipstick and shampooed her hair. Finally, with the depleted supply of cash, she had bought a cheap briefcase and re-emerged in the icy streets as a dark-haired businesswoman.

Now all she had to do was sleep, eat and stay at large. Without money.

‘May I speak English?’

The voice was female, Midwest. It said, ‘Sure.’ To Petrie, it summoned up a movie-inspired vision of log cabins and feisty homesteaders.

‘My name is Petrie. I’m British and I need help.’

‘This is the American Embassy, Mr Petrie. Your people are on Panskà Ulice, just round the corner from us.’

‘I have information which may affect the interests of the United States.’

Silence.

Petrie, heart still thudding in his chest, turned the screw: ‘I’m talking vital interests, national security, major league.’ Petrie didn’t know a thing about leagues, major or minor; just so long as it impressed.

Another long silence. Then: ‘Hold the line a moment, Mr Petrie.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Brenda. Why?’

‘I’ll call you back, Brenda, I don’t want you tracing me. Make sure I’m put straight through to someone relevant.’

Petrie put the receiver down and stepped out of the Pizza Hut. He wandered round a corner and was met by a forty-foot woman, dressed in white and carrying a packet of Persil. Water from the verandah above had created a streak of discolour down the side of the tenement mural but it had apparently been stopped by her hat. The broad streets were busy and there were queues for the trams and trolley buses. He hovered around a little street market for some minutes. There were no security cameras but he felt increasingly exposed. He took off past a taxi stance into an enormous Tesco — a sure sign that capitalism was here to stay — and lost himself amongst the cheeses and baked beans and strange meats for half an hour. Then he went back to the busy pizzeria.

Brenda, her voice a little cautious. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Petrie.’

A momentary silence, a faint click which could have been anything, and then a deep male voice came on the line, vowels drawling slightly. ‘Dr Petrie. We need to meet.’

Dr Petrie. How did he know? ‘You’ve been sold some story about me.’

‘Yeah, it’s a beauty. Want to hear it?’

‘No, you might trace me.’ A dark-skinned waiter shouted something. Petrie recognised the word ‘peperoni’.

‘Okay, Tom, but we can’t assume this line is secure. Just imagine we’re shouting at each other from the treetops, okay?’ The man’s drawl was suspiciously slow.

Petrie was having to raise his voice above the buzz of the restaurant. ‘You’re trying to trace me.’

‘Hell no, Tom, I know exactly where you are. That was Darko. They’re doing an eat-all-you-can promotion just now. Stay put, I’ll be along in a few minutes.’

‘How will I recognise you?’

‘I’ll be wearing a grey Cossack hat and I look mean.’