Masaryk Station (John Russell) Read Online Free Page A

your countrymen are turning up here uninvited, and I’m the only person they have who can talk to them.’
    ‘I see. Well, maybe I can do something about that. A local volunteer, perhaps.’
    ‘It would help if your people stopped planting fakes among the real defectors. Kuznakov will probably keep me busy for the next week.’
    ‘Ah, you spotted him, did you?’ Shchepkin said, sucking in his thin cheeks and sounding like a gratified teacher. ‘You didn’t give him up, though? He’s an idiot anyway, and I can tell my people you helped smooth his passage. We need every success we can get.’
    ‘We do? I thought we were doing rather well.’
    ‘Well, Tikhomirov and Schneider don’t agree. They know that building your credit with the Americans requires the occasional sacrifice of one of their own, but they still don’t like doing it, and they need the occasional reminder that your uses extend to the here and now.’
    ‘All right. But getting back to the original topic—the Americans are sending me to Belgrade in a couple of weeks, so Berlin will have to wait at least that long.’
    Shchepkin was interested. ‘What do they want you to do there?’
    ‘They’re still deciding. As a journalist, they want me to sound out who I can, find out how real the row is between Tito and Stalin. But if past experience is any guide, they’ll also have a list of people they want me to contact. Potential allies, if they have any left, that is.’
    Shchepkin was silent for a few moments. ‘There’s not much difference between journalism and espionage,’ he said eventually, sounding almost surprised.
    ‘One is illegal,’ Russell reminded him.
    ‘True,’ Shchepkin acknowledged. ‘Needless to say, we’d like copies of any reports. And there may be people we want you to see. I’ll let you know.’
    ‘Sounds ominous. If Tito and Stalin really have fallen out, then my Soviet “Get out of jail free” card won’t be worth much.’
    ‘Your what?’
    ‘It’s a board game called Monopoly,’ Russell explained. ‘If you land on a particular square, you end up in jail. But if you already have a “Get out of jail free” card you’re released straight away.’
    ‘Fascinating. And what’s the object of this game?’
    ‘Bankrupting your opponents by buying up properties and charging them rent each time they land on one.’
    ‘How wonderfully capitalistic.’
    ‘Indeed. But returning to the point—I won’t be much use to Berlin if I’m stuck in a Belgrade prison.’
    ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Shchepkin said, with a smile. They had completed one circuit, and were halfway through a second. Away to their left, two British warships were silhouetted against the sea and sky. ‘I was in Prague a few days ago,’ Shchepkin said, surprising Russell. The Russian rarely volunteered information about himself or his other activities.
    ‘Not much fun?’ Russell suggested. The Communists had taken sole control only six or seven weeks earlier, and shortly thereafter the pro-Western foreign minister Jan Masaryk had allegedly jumped to his death from a window in the Czernin Palace. According to Buzz Dempsey, the borders had been effectively closed ever since, as the Party relentlessly tightened its hold.
    ‘You could say that,’ Shchepkin said.
    ‘I expected better of the Czechs.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You know your Marx. An industrial society, rich in high culture—isn’t that supposed to be the seed-bed of socialism?’
    ‘Of course. But the Czechs have us to contend with, the peasant society that got there first. And the more civilised the country, the tighter we’ll need to screw down the lid.’
    Shchepkin was right, Russell thought. It was the same everywhere.In Berlin his friend Gerhard Ströhm was continually complaining that the Soviets were destroying the German communists’ chances of creating anything worthwhile.
    ‘Look,’ Shchepkin said, ‘I understand your reluctance to come back to Berlin …’
    ‘You