Eric Ambler - Judgment on Deltchev

‘I have a metal cup,’ I said, ‘and also a toothglass. If you like whisky-’

‘I tasted it once,’ he said courteously. ‘I thought it better than schnapps and more interesting than our plum brandy. You need not fear, however, that I shall insist on taking it away with the biscuits.’

I gave him the toothglass. He took a small sip and looked at me. ‘I know that you will forgive my telling you that before I came to see you this evening I looked up your name in an English reference book I have.’

‘You’d like to know what a playwright is doing writing articles about a political trial?’

‘Oh no. I see the connection. I was putting myself in your place for a moment. You have been in this city for two or three days perhaps. You do not know the country or the people. You are present at a trial which is like a game played for counters of which you do not know the value. Yet you have to interpret it for Western eyes.’

‘Something of the kind has already been said to me once today.’

He nodded calmly. ‘As a guide you have Pashik, a man so preoccupied with a problem of his own — self-preservation possibly, but we cannot be sure — that he can lead you only to the counter of the Propaganda Ministry.’ He took another biscuit. ‘Have you seen the official bulletin of the trial today?’

‘This?’ I took it out of my pocket. ‘They gave out copies as we left the courtroom.’

‘They will do so every day. Tell me, Herr Foster, what will there be in your articles that a clever, malicious journalist sitting in London could not contrive for himself from a set of these reports?’

‘I’m sure you have your own answer ready.’

‘Ah, I have offended you.’ He smiled. ‘But not seriously, I think, if you reflect. What I am suggesting to you, Herr Foster, is that you might find it useful to employ my services.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. How?’

‘As a guide. I make this suggestion without embarrassment. You were kind enough to invite me to tell you some things about Yordan and of course I will do so.’ He touched the biscuit box. ‘I should have been well paid for that. But I think that I could be of further use to you.’ His haggard eyes looked up at me with a cold little smile in them. He licked a crumb off his lower lip.

‘I’m sure you could,’ I said, and waited.

‘For instance,’ he went on, ‘I wonder if you have considered that some of the evidence against Yordan Deltchev might not be as stupid as the Prosecution makes it.’ He looked into the toothglass.

An unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind. ‘Your difference of opinion with him,’ I said, ‘was over his radio speech approving the election, wasn’t it?’

He was very quick. He said calmly, ‘If I were an enemy of his I would not need to beg a gift of biscuits, Herr Foster. I should be a witness at his trial. And if, as your caution may suggest, I am here as an emissary of the Propaganda Ministry to try to corrupt your judgment, then you cannot yet have identified the man whose task it will be to do so.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What man?’

‘Our friend Brankovitch has been forced to admit a number of hostile foreign journalists for the purpose of reporting this trial. Do you suppose that while they are here he will make no attempt to neutralize their hostility? Of course he must try. I can even tell you the procedure he will adopt. Tomorrow perhaps, or the next day, after Vukashin’s evidence has been heard, Brankovitch will call a foreign press conference and answer questions. Then, perhaps the next day, someone will approach you privately with a great secret. This person will tell you that he has discovered a way of getting uncensored messages out of the country. He will let you persuade him to share the discovery. Of course, your messages will not be sent, but they will serve as a guide to your intentions, which can then be anticipated in the official propaganda. Brankovitch likes, for some reason, to use agents provocateurs .’ He looked at me sardonically. ‘I know his sense of humour. It was I who recommended him to Yordan for a place on the Committee.’

I offered him a cigarette again. He hesitated. ‘If I might take two?’ he said.

‘One for your wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please take the packet.’

‘Thank you.’

It was not quite full. He counted the cigarettes in it carefully.

‘How did you meet Deltchev?’ I asked.

He looked up. ‘He was my partner,’ he said. He seemed surprised that I did not know.

I gave him a box of matches and he lit a cigarette.

‘Thank you.’ He blew smoke. ‘When Yordan first practised as a lawyer, I was his clerk. Later I became his partner. When he was appointed Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, I became his assistant and secretary. I was also his friend.’

‘What sort of man is he? Superficially, I mean.’

‘Quiet, deliberate, very patient. A sound lawyer. If you were a journalist interviewing him in his office, you would probably be irritated by a habit he has of looking past you when he is talking. He keeps his desk very tidy and empties the ashtray as soon as you have put your cigarette out. Yet polite. He would tend to put words into your mouth — criticisms of himself — and then answer them. A bad habit for a lawyer, that. A man with a family — wife, son, daughter — of whom he is very fond, but not a family man. A good man, but not at ease with himself.’

‘The sort of man who would betray a principle for a bribe?’

‘Yordan has never valued money enough to be corrupt in that way. Power might have tempted him once. You speak, of course, of his actions over the election promise.’

‘Yes.’

‘If he was paid to make that radio speech, he gave up what he might value — power — to gain what he did not value — money.’ He shrugged. ‘I have had plenty of time for thinking, and much bitterness has gone. At one time I thought of killing Yordan for what he did then, but even in hate I never supposed that he had been bribed.’

‘What is your explanation?’

‘I have none. Yordan was often accused of being merely a shrewd politician. In retrospect that seems as ridiculous as the accusation now that he is a murderer. By unnecessarily bringing about the November elections he committed political suicide and betrayed all the people who were loyal to him. You ask for an explanation.’ He threw up his hands. ‘It is as easy to say that he was insane as to deny that he was bribed. When I faced him in his room that night he did not look insane. He looked strangely at peace with himself. That made me more angry, and, you know, in anger many things seem clear. “Why?” I shouted at him. “Why?” “It is better so,” was all he replied. Then, when I had finished abusing him, I said, “Papa Deltchev has gone and the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has returned. Papa Deltchev was not strong enough to bear a people’s love!” ’ Petlarov looked across at me and smiled slightly. ‘But now I cannot remember what I meant,’ he added.

After a moment I asked, ‘Will the election matter be raised at the trial?’

He shook his head. ‘Not by the Prosecutor. For the regime, the less said about the election the better. But they might tolerate the defence’s making play with it to suggest Yordan’s fundamental sympathy with the regime.’

‘Who is defending?’

‘His name is Stanoiev. It amused me to use it here. He is the Party member appointed to defend. His arguments in mitigation will be given prominence. They will serve as the final condemnation.’ He frowned. ‘What I do not understand is this affair of the Officer Corps Brotherhood. Yordan’s attitude toward Soviet occupation — yes, that is something to argue and misinterpret, to deal with speciously. But the Officer Corps Brotherhood is another matter. They make so much of it that they must have something. Yet the idea is absurd.’