The Logan File Page 10

  *

  London was now in a kind of turmoil. There was simply no hard information, only the renewed use of frantic imagination by the press, or most of it. The experts had a field day once the festive season was declining into the usual extended holiday when the fortunate went to Switzerland for the ski-ing and the less affluent indulged in Do It Yourself around the home. Veterinary opinion was much in demand; everyone wanted to be able to diagnose rabies as soon as possible if the threat should materialise. So they mugged it up from the newspapers, knowing that with rabies any delay would probably be fatal. Rabies was discussed in pubs and works canteens and during office coffee breaks and in the homes throughout the land. The various newspaper articles were quoted, as were the opinions of the pundits on TV and the wireless. Terry Wogan had interviewed a vet, along with a representative of the Department of Health. Esther Rantzen had been after Whitehall’s blood, and she had driven at once to Brighton to gather opinions in the streets. The general view was that, as usual, the government was not doing enough and that the lack of information, of action too, was nothing less than a scandal.

  “A bloody disgrace,” a well-dressed woman emerging from the Grand Hotel said. Others said more or less the same thing. Everyone, by now, knew what to look out for: in the first place, of course, foaming dogs and erratically-behaving cats. Rats and mice were to be stood well clear of. Not many people were bothered about bats. Not in Brighton, anyway. Then the symptoms: after about six weeks to two months — in the case of the normal strain, this was, but the new strain would be very much shorter — after a therefore currently unknown interval from being bitten by almost anything, even another human with the disease upon him, there would be dullness, depression, irritability and a general malaise. (As Esther Rantzen remarked laughingly, everyone suffered from that from time to time, so what?) But very soon there would come a difficulty, slight at first but worsening, in swallowing. The throat would appear to contract; and the voice would become hoarse so that the sufferer would emit a sound like barking. There would be a rise in temperature, perhaps to 40 or 41 degrees. Thereafter the disease would escalate and the most violent and painful throat spasms would follow any attempt to swallow liquids so that the patient would dread the drinking of water. Also, the sufferer would become ultra-sensitive to any sound, any slightest vibration such as from passing traffic or even footsteps in the sickroom. A draught of air, or the sound of splashing water, would produce horrifying convulsions. The afflicted person would soon become delirious and might try to bite anyone in the vicinity.

  And the end?

  “Death, generally,” the man from the Department of Health told Terry Wogan. “From general exhaustion, or heart failure, or asphyxia from the throat spasms.”

  “I see. And the recovery rate, John?”

  The man from the Department shrugged. “Very hard to be precise, Mr — Terry.” He was being evasive; he had no wish to spread alarm and despondency. When the interview was over, he told Terry Wogan, privately, that in cases that had been diagnosed as rabies and which had subsequently recovered, it was believed that the original diagnosis had been wrong.

  Which spoke for itself. Mr Wogan went home with uncomfortable inside knowledge in his head. Sometimes it was better not to ask too many questions …

  *

  There had been a number of telephone calls across the Atlantic, Number Ten to White House, person to person. The President was an anxious, but at the same time a highly doubtful, person.

  “Just don’t want to get involved,” he said, “in something that could turn out to be somebody’s idea of a great, big joke.”

  “That’s not the way we’re seeing it over here, George.”

  “Why, no, I guess maybe not, Charlotte, but … look, we’ve had nothing over here from this guy Logan, or Schreuder. Just nothing at all, and —”

  “Let’s suppose you do, George. What then?”

  “Well, that’s something I can answer better when it happens. If it happens.”

  “It’s often better to have a contingency plan, don’t you think?” Mrs Heffer was tart.

  “Well, maybe. I’ll be giving it thought, that I do promise. But it sounds very hairy to me, real lunatic. The guy has to be stark, staring mad, you know that?”

  Mrs Heffer breathed hard. “It’s crossed our minds, yes. But George … suppose it’s for real. Mad or not … it could come about. Now: if it does, Where does the USA stand? Can you tell me that?”

  There was a pause; a long one. The President could almost be heard thinking, his inner wish that he had his Secretary of State standing by his side almost manifesting itself along the airy five thousand miles of satellite telephone communication. Then, cautiously, he spoke to Great Britain: “I guess, you know, that requires consideration, Charlotte. You’ll understand that. I guess what you’re suggesting, it’s kind of a war situation, you know? I call that wacky, Charlotte, considering the Reds are out anyway — look at what happened to Ceaușescu, look at Czechoslovakia.”

  “In the former satellite countries, yes, of course I agree. Not entirely in the Soviet Union itself … or if it is, George, then I fancy it could be more apparent than real. Don’t you?”

  There was a curious sound along the line. “Well, I guess I can’t really commit myself on that, Charlotte. I suggest you call me back, okay?”

  In Downing Street Mrs Heffer bit off a sarcastic retort. Call him back — when it would possibly be too late! In today’s world, things so often moved with the speed of light. Rabies itself had apparently been speeded up. Mrs Heffer put down the telephone with an angry gesture. George’s head had been turned ever since that meeting at Malta with Gorbachev in 1989, to which she, Mrs Heffer, had not been invited. The Americans would be the same as in 1914 and 1939 … but, as a thought, that would never do. It would sound as though war, in the Prime Ministerial mind, was becoming a real possibility, a real option. The British public would never take war again. Just the fact, if known, that the Prime Minister had war in mind even as an outside possibility, might lose the Party the next election.

  *

  Hedge was now beside himself. He was sitting up in hospital feeling better, but the future loomed as bleak and black as any Siberian night. He was seeing Siberia as no mere figment of his imagination. The plain-clothes man who had replaced the uniformed policeman by his bedside spoke volumes. Figuratively, that was. In fact, he said nothing. Hedge wished fervently that the man would open his mouth and say something reassuring. All Hedge’s questions had remained stonily unanswered.

  He was in a tizzy.

  Where, for God’s sake, was Shard?

  Shard should never have allowed him to get into this terrible predicament. What was the assistant under-secretary, or the Under-Secretary — and come to that the Secretary of State himself — doing about him?

  Nothing, probably. Of course, they wouldn’t know … and for his part he couldn’t communicate. In the circumstances, the circumstances of his being despatched to West Berlin, he knew he couldn’t reveal his status to the Communists. If he did, they would treat him as a spy.

  On the other hand, they might not, might they? He was a person of importance in the Foreign Office, after all. Persons of his rank didn’t spy. Perhaps, from time to time, like now it might be said, they found things out. But that was different.

  Hedge dithered, pulled the sheet and blanket closer to his chin, since the room — a side room it was, not a ward — was chilly. Then he pushed them down again; they were dirty, had probably been used by someone else since last they had been washed. They might contain the germs of some disease …

  Rabies, the whole reason, really, for his current situation?

  Hedge shook with horror and tried again to ask his urgent questions, concerned mainly with trying to establish what the wretched Communists meant to do with him. He wished he was at home, even without Mrs Millington, who, if in fact she was back from attending upon her sister-in-law, would be worrying dreadfully about him.
>
  His question remained unanswered still. The plain-clothes man stolidly read a Communist newspaper and as stolidly picked his nose.

  Then there was a commotion. Doctor’s rounds. Just like the West; a bouncy little man in a black jacket traipsed along with his retinue of other doctors, sisters, nurses, what looked like social workers in dark blue coats and skirts and man-like shirts with neckties. They all came into Hedge’s room, filling the entire space and submerging the plain-clothes watchdog, who protested, uttering the first sound to be heard from him. A social worker smiled at the man vaguely but otherwise he was ignored. So was Hedge; the whole procession looked at him and shook their heads and gabbled away in German but Hedge was not spoken to and understood only a word or two here and there. Of course, all foreigners always spoke very fast and were quite impossible to comprehend even if you did happen to speak their ridiculous lingo.

  Having looked and gabbled they all went away again. Hedge became terribly agitated and began calling out, asking in a high voice for someone to come and help him. He rose from his bed and put a foot on the floor. The plain-clothes man got up immediately and pushed him back with very strong arms and then yelled out for a nurse who came and gave Hedge a sedative, injecting fluid into his buttocks with a needle.

  *

  The Dresden police had contacted their Foreign Affairs ministry.

  “A man, an Englishman. Portly in shape. Upon him there are papers of the British Foreign Office. His name appears to be Hedge.”

  “And entered, did you say, in the back of a lorry from the Western sector?”

  “Yes —”

  “What was in this lorry, what was it carrying?”

  “The lorry was empty. It belongs to a farming co-operative producing largely sugar beet, with warehouse premises in the city.”

  “Yes. I see. This Hedge. The British Foreign Office — he is perhaps of some importance, though why a sugar-beet lorry I really do not know. But the British are so curious. And he was injured? You must question the members of the farming co-operative, and the driver himself. Then report again.”

  “Yes. And the man himself?”

  There was a pause; then, “I believe this to be a matter for Moscow. We have still our treaty obligations even though … and we must not tread too hard on the toes of Moscow.” There was still the fact of the Warsaw Pact — still in existence and never mind all that had happened in the last two or three years. East Germany, Wall or no Wall, Iron Curtain or no Iron Curtain, was more or less in the Soviet area of influence. “The man is to be closely held until the affair of his curious entry is resolved.”

  Later that day, when the effects of the sedative had worn off, Hedge, covered with bandages and plaster, was removed to the mind-bending confines of a police cell.

  To Hedge, the cell had all the appearance of a torture chamber. There were heavy ring-bolts set into the walls, there was a raised plank for a bed, there were traces of blood, he believed, on the stone floor, there was no window but a glaring, unshaded electric light bulb stared down at him balefully from behind a sort of steel-mesh safety cover.

  There was a grille, covered from the other side, in the immensely thick door. Hedge shouted through this, desperately. He needed to relieve himself, all the worry and uncertainty having, it seemed to him, to have congregated in his bladder.

  A man came and the grille was uncovered. Hedge managed to make himself understood. The warder or whatever he was had some English.

  “Piss, yes. Under the bed look.” The grille was shut again. Beneath the plank, Hedge found a chamber pot.

  *

  In the house in Magdeburg, Logan/Schreuder had affirmed that indeed his loyalties had not changed. In rambling fashion he told Brosak how he had come to be where he was. “Wicked men,” he said, coughing violently, almost a kind of spasm. When this had passed he went on, “Men whom we trusted, you and I — all of us trusted them implicitly to bring back the ideals of our beloved Führer.”

  “Yes,” Brosak said impatiently. “But now we have to —” He broke off. Schreuder had turned a nasty colour very suddenly, a greenish tinge coming over his features while his lips remained red, though quite quickly thereafter a bluish tinge appeared. The old man’s breathing became laboured. Brosak started forward towards the fireplace. As he did so, the old man lurched sideways. Brosak caught him as he fell from his chair; Logan was a good deal heavier than he had appeared, and Brosak was taken off his guard when one of Logan/Schreuder’s captors made a sudden move. There was a shout of alarm from one of Brosak’s men as a heavily sprung cosh came down, just missing his head but striking his shoulder. Brosak, literally wrong-footed, staggered under Logan’s weight, lurching towards the fire.

  Logan fell into the glowing coals and flickering flames. Brosak, yelling imprecations, dragged the old man clear. With him came a number of glowing coals to drop upon the carpet and roll beneath the chair in which Logan had been sitting. At once a general melee started up, and shots were fired. A miniature battle took place around Shard, whose wrists were still tied. Within a matter of seconds the fire had taken hold and Logan’s chair was ablaze. A trail of fire ran across the carpet towards the thick fabric of the curtains over the windows.

  Shard moved, dangerously, between the legs of the men. He found a glowing coal, turned his back to it and set his teeth as, sitting on the carpet, he manoeuvred his tied wrists onto the red-hot coal.

  9

  Hedge, whose wristwatch had been removed along with his braces and his shoe-laces and his tie, had no idea how long he had been left in his dreadful cell, which smelled of urine. The chamber pot had not been emptied before he made use of it. The place was just like what he understood the Lubyanka prison in Moscow was like, bestial and harsh. Soon, no doubt, he would be removed to somewhere else and there would be an interrogation. But they appeared to be in no hurry, so far as he could tell. Not that he was able even to distinguish night from day; no daylight penetrated from anywhere at all. Meals were brought; nasty dry black bread, some tepid lentil soup, a jug of water. Not at all what he was used to; he thought again about Mrs Millington and about her cooking. Sadly, he had never really appreciated her.

  Would he ever see her again?

  Would they ever come for him so that he could attempt to explain?

  At last, they did.

  The heavy door was jangled open. Two men stood there, hard-looking men, one of them carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, the other holding a large bunch of keys.

  “Come,” the key-holder said. As Hedge obeyed and went through the door into a passageway, the man gave him a heavy shove. Hedge squeaked with fright and surprise. It was undignified to be shoved like that, and the fact that he could do nothing about it robbed him of such self-confidence as he had left. He moved in obedience to the shove towards the end of the passage where there was a staircase, a stone-stepped one. He looked round questioningly, and the man with the rifle said something in German and nodded, so Hedge went up the stairs.

  He was halted outside a door. The door was knocked upon and prisoner and escort were admitted.

  At a desk set in front of a window, a thin man sat writing. This man, whose face was long and lined and sallow and somehow devilish, wore uniform, a curious and slovenly uniform, not smart like the communists of old would have been. He didn’t look up at Hedge’s entry; he continued writing, filling in some sort of official form, Hedge saw. Hedge stood before him, tieless, no shoe-laces, no braces. His stomach was failing to keep his trousers up; although his stomach was large, the waist-band of his trousers, made in Savile Row, was larger. He felt like a naughty schoolboy up before the headmaster.

  It was, he believed, a good five minutes before the uniformed man spoke, and when he did speak it was brief and in English and uttered while still writing on his form.

  “You are called Hedge.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Did he, or did he not, admit anything at all? He’d thought about this in his cell and had decided to play it by ear. B
ut, faced with a decision now, he dithered.

  “You are called Hedge. Kindly listen, Hedge, when I address you.” Hedge took a deep breath. Well, of course they knew; they had taken his wallet along with all the rest and he could scarcely hope to bluff his way out of that. He said, “Yes.” It was probably all right; in the last war, if captured by the enemy, you could give your name, rank and number.

  “Of the British Foreign Office.”

  “Well … yes, I am.” Actually, they might treat him better now; although, obviously, they had known it all along — his wallet again — his confirmation would mean they knew he knew they knew … Hedge gave it up and hoped for the best. He drew himself up a little, tried to look his rank. His trousers sagged a little further and he reached down to pull them up.

  “You will keep your hands still, at your sides.”

  “Yes … I’m sorry.”

  At this point the man looked up, keenly, cold greenish eyes seeming to bore right into Hedge. “Of the British Foreign Office. Why did you enter the Democratic Republic in the back of a sugar-beet lorry?”

  Hedge said at once and with truth, “I didn’t know it was a sugar-beet lorry.”

  The man snorted. “You evade the question with stupid utterances, Hedge. Now answer.” He leaned forward across his desk and jabbed his ballpoint towards his victim. “Why did you enter clandestinely from West Berlin?”

  Hedge floundered. Father Christmas would be an unlikely story and in any case he must not speak about Logan whatever else he might be forced into saying. He said at last, “It was involuntary, I’m afraid.”

  “Not of your own volition?”

  “Oh, by no means. I was, I think though I’m not sure, thrown in.”

  “Thrown?” Scepticism abounded. “By a person?”

  “No, I doubt that. I really don’t know … there was an accident and I was injured — I may have been projected in. I’ve been thinking about that,” he added. “I —”