Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

‘Rail terminus? What on earth were you doing there, old chap? Trainspotting?’

There was a stir of amusement at the table.

‘If you remember, Eric, you sent me on a fact-finding tour of Slovakia when I first got here.’

‘Good God, I’d quite forgotten. What on earth had you done wrong?’

Laughter. Sam inclined his head, as though acknowledging applause. ‘But the rail terminus is actually rather interesting. It’s one of those forgotten corners of Europe, close to the point where Ukraine and Hungary meet with Slovakia – I believe geographers call it a tripoint – and there’s this enormous railway terminus with over nine hundred sidings. Makes Clapham Junction look like Adlestrop.’ He looked round at his audience. ‘I’m sorry, am I boring you?’

‘Not yet,’ Whittaker said, ‘but I bet you’re going to.’

There was further laughter. ‘I fear I already am. The problem is, Russian railways have a broader gauge than the rest of Europe, which means that every single trainload that crosses from East to West or West to East – goods, passengers, even politicians – has to trans-ship from one gauge to the other at Čierna. It makes for the most fantastic bottleneck, so much so that a few years ago they even built a broad-gauge spur over a hundred miles into Slovakia, just to bypass Čierna and ferry Ukrainian iron ore to the steelworks at Košice.’

The military attaché felt the need to contribute. He was a major in his final posting before retirement and was always conscious of being out of place amongst the diplomats. Perhaps he thought that Sam was trespassing on his territory. ‘It is worth pointing out that Russian armed forces have to do exactly the same thing when moving westwards – tanks, armoured cars, all materiel, in fact, has to be brought to Čierna nad Tisou, offloaded and either transferred to road or to another train. Wipe out Čierna and you block the way to the West for the Red Army.’

Eric raised his eyebrows in that infuriating manner he had when spotting a red herring swimming through the pond of his meeting. ‘But we’re not talking about war , are we David? At least, I hope we’re not. We’re talking about Dubček and his partners in crime being summoned to a meeting with the entire Soviet Politburo at this godforsaken railway station. Why on earth, one wonders, choose this place?’

Sam said, ‘I think the Czechoslovaks are most reluctant to meet outside their own borders at the moment. If you’re riding a tiger you don’t want to ride it into the tiger’s own den.’

‘To stretch a metaphor.’

‘Beyond its breaking point, I fear.’ More amusement at the table. He and Eric were good together, Chancery putting on a show of irony and self-deprecation, qualities that had once been a stand-by of such people through centuries of empire and now seemed equally well adapted to Britain’s lowered status in the post-war world. ‘At the same time, Comrade Brezhnev appears a little nervous about being seen in Czechoslovakia. I understand the Russian train is due to be shunted across the border to Čierna in the morning for talks, and then, in the evening when the discussions are over and they’ve had a jolly dinner with the fraternal comrades, they’ll be shunted back to Russia for the night. That’s what we gather.’

‘You’re not serious? They’re frightened of spending the night in Czechoslovakia?’

‘Something like that.’

They digested this piece of news in silence before Whittaker spoke again. ‘We can only await developments, I suppose. And hope that common sense prevails. In the meantime, I would like to draw your attention to a report that comes, unattributed and unattributable, of course, from the Friends.’

The Friends, everyone knew and no one mentioned, were those enigmatic individuals who rooted around in the shadows of events like dogs raiding dustbins in a back alley, and came up with what they called, oxymoronically at times, intelligence. They were an inferior species to the true diplomats, inferior yet somehow enviable. It was hard not to have grudging admiration for the rather stout fellow who was their particular Friend, a man of no apparent consequence and even less significance, but who was here or hereabouts all the time, pretending to be responsible for cultural affairs while reporting not to His Excellency, Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic but rather to a man in Century House on the Thames in London, a man who was head of an organisation so secret that even its true name was secret, a man who himself was only ever known, in the manner of the worst spy thrillers, by a single letter – C.

‘This is, of course, most secret,’ Whittaker said, adding in one of his familiar parentheses: ‘I do so hate the word “secret”. It always sounds like an invitation to tell all.’

The stout man remained impassive. Others round the table smiled knowingly. ‘Just a straw in the wind, really, Eric,’ the man said. ‘Nothing to get too excited about. It seems that SIGINT has detected attempts by Russian forces to cut telecommunications from Prague to the outside world. Just brief moments of blackout. Probably trials.’

The little group, couched in its sealed room, was silent. Whittaker raised an eyebrow. ‘SIGINT?’

The man looked crestfallen. ‘An acronym, Eric. Sorry. Signals intelligence.’

‘Ah. An Americanism, no doubt.’

‘I fear so.’

‘But not really an acronym sensu stricto . More an abbreviation.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Eric. Anyway, it seems possible that these blackouts are some kind of rehearsal. If the Warsaw Pact forces were to intervene—’

‘—invade.’

‘They would wish to move in beneath an electronic blanket.’

Whittaker nodded wearily. ‘So that is the background against which the Czechoslovak presidium is meeting with Brezhnev and his henchmen at’ – he glanced hopelessly at the papers in front of him – ‘Trainspotters’ Delight.’ There was more amusement round the table, the laughter of relief. ‘How do you divine the mood on the streets, Sam? You seem best equipped to give us the low-down. To use another Americanism.’

Sam thought of Lenka and her friends. ‘There’s a kind of bloody-minded insouciance about the activists. If they do invade, so what? Armies cannot defeat an idea whose time has come. That seems to be the general feeling.’

‘Sounds like flower power to me,’ the major said. ‘Armies cannot defeat a crowd of hippies. Unfortunately it’s not true. There could be a lot of blood.’

‘Somehow, I doubt it. The Czechs…’ Sam hesitated. It was the kind of statement that you made with caution. You needed to phrase it exactly right. People might quote him. ‘…are pragmatists. It’s not for nothing that Good Soldier Svejk is their hero. They know when not to kick against the pricks – but how to deflect them instead. Look at what happened in 1938. Or rather, what didn’t happen. Had they fought, the country would have been destroyed and this city would have been left in ruins.’

‘Not got the stomach for a fight,’ the major said briskly.

Sam turned on him, still thinking of Lenka, but now imagining her lying in the street with blood on that elegant Slavic face. ‘Look what happened to the ones who did fight. Look what happened in Warsaw during the war, or East Germany in fifty-three or Hungary in fifty-six.’

Whittaker sensed tempers rising. ‘Let’s hope common sense prevails,’ he said pacifically. ‘As always we must hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And to that end, I want to circulate this proposal for how we might look after the best interests of families and auxiliary staff in the event of a Soviet’ – he hesitated – ‘ interference in local affairs. Contingency planning, that’s all. Just in case. Naturally, I wouldn’t like this information to get out of these four walls lest it cause more upset than circumstances deserve…’