Andrew Taylor - The Second Midnight

‘You have brought the package? There was no trouble with customs?’

Kendall nodded. He crossed the room to the basin in the corner and picked up the shaving brush which stood on the glass shelf above it. The handle was made of metal. He unscrewed the base and extracted the small chamois leather bundle.

‘It’s stitched together. Do you want me to open it?’

‘Of course.’

He slit the neck of the bag with the blade of his penknife. Madame Hase snatched the bag from him and upended it over the palm of her hand. Seven cut diamonds, small but flawless, trickled out. She sucked in her breath sharply. For the first time she smiled.

‘Satisfied?’ Kendall asked with heavy sarcasm.

‘Perfectly.’ Her pudgy fingers clenched around the stones, as if she was trying to squeeze the virtue out of them. ‘But we may have a problem at the other end of the transaction.’

‘What do you mean?’ Kendall had assumed that she would hand over the papers now she had the diamonds; he knew nothing about possible problems. Now he came to think about it, he knew very little about this whole business. Stanhope-Smith hadn’t been very informative.

‘I have not yet obtained the information.’ Madame Hase’s English might be fluent, but she pronounced it as if it was a dead language, with equal stress on each syllable and without inflections. ‘The principals with whom I am dealing lack confidence, both in me and in London. They do not trust me because I am a woman and because my origins are bourgeois. And of course they have only my word that London is the source of these.’ She unclasped her hand and prodded the little pile of diamonds.

Kendall shrugged. ‘I’d have thought diamonds were diamonds wherever they come from.’

‘Not if they come from Berlin. That is their worst fear, I think. But these men see enemies everywhere. Can you blame them? England and France were our allies; they guaranteed to maintain our borders; and then they betrayed us at Munich because of a ranting bully with a big stick. Or perhaps they think these diamonds come from closer home. The Deuxième Bureau has never loved us and Moravec is a man who likes to hold all the strings in his hand. No one trusts our government any more: those Fascist toadies dissolved the Communist Party just before Christmas.’

Kendall took his time over filling and lighting a pipe. A familiar sense of helplessness swept over him; and that as usual made him angry. As far as he could see, the only course open to him was to return to London, empty-handed. He had a shrewd suspicion that Madame Hase meant to keep the diamonds whatever happened. He could hardly force her to return them; she would probably shriek the place down and accuse him of trying to rape her.

If he returned to London without those papers (whatever they were), he would be back to square one: he would have failed Stanhope-Smith; there would be no more lucrative little jobs. Worst of all, England would suffer because of his failure.

‘Is there nothing we can do to convince them that we’re all above board?’ He spoke more loudly than he had intended; Madame Hase looked at him sharply.

‘Perhaps,’ she said after a pause. ‘We have one strong card in our hand: they need help from somewhere. Any resistance network needs money and it needs access to the outside world. We thought Moscow would provide both, but they are being dilatory and time is running out. You are here and you can offer what they want.’

‘Would it help if I met them?’

‘It might. But that would take time to arrange – and there might have to be several meetings.’ A fit of coughing interrupted her. ‘It would help if you were more important. They may consider that a mere messenger boy can have nothing useful to say to them.’

Kendall’s face became mottled. Madame Hase appeared not to notice.

‘But of course they do not know what your rank is,’ she continued. ‘Nor do I. I simply draw inferences.’

‘I fail to see—’

There was a tap on the door.

Madame Hase snapped open her handbag, dropped in the diamonds and pulled out something else. A sense of unreality caught Kendall by the throat, making him literally gasp for breath. She was holding an automatic pistol.

This time it wasn’t a tap: it was an impatient double knock. Madame Hase concealed the pistol in the folds of her fur coat and signalled to him to open the door.

It was almost with a sense of anticlimax that he found one of the pageboys waiting in the corridor.

‘Pan Kendall?’ The youth held out a dented silverplated salver. On it was a flimsy grey envelope addressed to Kendall at the Hotel Palacky.

Kendall took the letter, dropped a tip on the tray and closed the door. He ripped open the envelope and extracted the single sheet of paper it contained. Madame Hase returned the automatic to her handbag.

‘Oh, my God.’ Kendall suddenly sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

When Hugh had looked at the statue, he went on to the end of Vaclavske Namesti. The broad avenue ended in a T-junction. He turned right, hoping eventually to reach the river.

Before he came to the Vltava, he emerged into a rectangular open space. He consulted the guidebook and decided he might be in Charles Square. The centre was laid out as a public park. The snow was still thick on the grass, contrasting bleakly with the bare branches of the trees.

A covered fiacre clopped past him; the nearside wheels of the carriage sprayed his legs with slush. Hugh wiped it off as best he could with his handkerchief. He was beginning to feel cold. He sidled nearer to a brazier on the corner of the park, hoping to steal a little heat. Chestnuts cracked and sizzled above the glowing charcoal. Hugh’s mouth watered. It was a long time since lunch. He wished his father had given him a little pocket money. Aunt Vida’s half-crown wouldn’t be much use here.

A small van pulled over to the kerb and parked. Two men got out, both wearing faded blue overalls. One of them opened the back of the van and appeared to be rummaging around inside. The other came over to the brazier and held his hands over the fire. He was tall and thin, with very large blue eyes. Hugh backed away: this looked like a real customer.

‘ Dobry den ,’ the newcomer said to the owner of the brazier .

That meant ‘Good day’ in Czech, according to the list of useful phrases in the back of the guidebook. Hugh felt pleased: already he was learning to swim in strange waters.

The man said something else and was given a cone of newspaper filled with chestnuts that steamed in the cold air.

He paid for them and sauntered over to Hugh.

‘English?’ He held out the cone. ‘For you. Take.’

Hugh made a half-hearted attempt to explain in sign language that his parents had told him never to accept presents from strangers. But the man was insistent and it seemed easier to take the cone, just to keep him happy. Besides, Hugh told himself, this was Prague, not London: the old rules were no longer so important.

The first chestnut burned his fingers and scorched his mouth; but it tasted wonderful. Hugh politely offered the bag to his benefactor.

The man shook his head. He laid a hand on Hugh’s arm. ‘Come. My friend speak English good.’ With his other arm he gestured to his friend at the back of the van.

Hugh hesitated: his parents had also told him never to go anywhere with strangers, either. But a few paces across a crowded pavement was surely a different matter. It seemed churlish to refuse.

The other man turned as they came up. He was built like a bull, with thick shoulders and a massive head. The van doors were open, but the interior was still sheltered by a pair of canvas curtains.