The driver of the car was badly cut about the head and neck, but Deltchev, although he had been flung against the half-open door and much shaken, was not seriously hurt. In the ensuing confusion, however, his protests that the pain in his shoulder was caused only by a bruise were ignored and he was taken to a hospital with the driver. Within an hour rumours that he was dead or dying were circulating in the cafes, and a large crowd gathered outside the hospital. By this time Deltchev had returned to his home, where the police were collecting fragments of the grenade in the presence of an even larger crowd. There was a great deal of hostility toward the police.
It is said that when the Chief of Police reported to Vukashin later that night that the attempt on Deltchev was being described openly as the government’s reply to the stadium speech, the Minister exclaimed, ‘Did they think we would reply in the chamber?’ The story may be untrue, but, in the light of what followed, it is not incredible. Certainly from that moment on there was an ominous change in the Propaganda Ministry’s public attitude toward Deltchev, and it is likely that the decision to try him was made at this time. The Ministry’s official statement on the affair had a sort of angry jocularity about it that did nothing to change the general belief that the government had known of the attempt in advance. It asserted that the grenade was of American manufacture, and went on to suggest that the obvious place to seek the criminal was in the ranks of Deltchev’s own party, where there were many criminals with Anglo-American imperialist connections.
The editor of a newspaper that described this statement as ‘unsatisfactory, but significantly so’, was immediately imprisoned. A series of savage attacks on the Agrarian Socialist Party now began. Their violent tone and the barely concealed threats that accompanied every allusion to Deltchev conveyed unmistakable warnings. The opposition had become intolerable and was going to be liquidated; but first Deltchev must be disposed of. He had a choice. He could escape abroad and be condemned or stay at home and be condemned. In any event he would be condemned.
Deltchev chose to stay. A month later he was arrested.
That was all. For a while I looked out of my hotel window across the flat roofs and Byzantine spires of the city, as still in the moonlight as the landscape of a dead world; and at last I became sleepy.
As I collected up the mass of news cuttings, notes, and manuscript that composed Pashik’s file and began to put them back in the envelope, I noticed a paper that I had not seen before. It had been clipped to the back of a wad of sheets with cuttings pasted on them and therefore easily overlooked.
It was a page from a memo pad I had seen on Pashik’s desk. On it was typed, ‘Case of K. Fischer, Vienna ’46 — Aleko’s hand?’
For me, then, it was not the most interesting thing about the file. I went to sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pashik had promised to drive me to the trial, and we met for breakfast. He nodded at the envelope I was carrying with the approving smile of a friendly schoolmaster.
‘Ah, Mr Foster, you have been reading.’
‘Yes. There’s a lot of material there. Did you collect it?’
He fingered his chin self-consciously for a moment; he had shaved. ‘Why do you ask, Mr Foster?’
‘Because a lot of the unpublished stuff was obviously done by someone who knew Deltchev very well and liked him. You?’
‘Ah, the memoir.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘That was commissioned by one of my papers from Petlarov.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘He was Deltchev’s secretary and friend — until the elections. Then they quarrelled. He was paid for the memoir, but it was not used. It was not the moment.’
‘Where is Petlarov now? Is he here?’
‘He may be.’
‘I should like to talk to him.’
‘He will know nothing about the trial, Mr Foster.’
‘I’d still like to talk to him.’
‘He may not wish to see you.’
‘Then he will say so. You said you wanted to be helpful, Pashik. Here’s your opportunity.’
He wriggled unhappily. ‘Please, Mr Foster. I see I must explain to you.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You do not understand. After the arrest of Deltchev, Petlarov was naturally arrested too. He is released now, but he is still suspect. It would be most indiscreet to have relations with him. I cannot take the risk.’
‘You don’t have to. Just get a message to him from me. I suppose he can speak German?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps not.’
‘Send a message as if from me asking him to telephone me at my hotel this evening.’
He sighed. ‘Very well, Mr Foster. But I think it will be useless.’
I held up the envelope with the file in it. ‘We don’t want to take this with us, do we? We could leave it at your office on the way and write a note to Petlarov at the same time. Your office boy can deliver it.’
He pursed his lips together at this. ‘I see you still do not trust me, Mr Foster,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
He saw the danger of explaining just in time. ‘It is not important,’ he said with dignity.
He took the envelope from me. Then I remembered. ‘Oh, by the way,’ I said, ‘what does this refer to?’ I showed him the paper with the Aleko note on it.
He looked at it blankly for a moment. ‘Oh, that, Mr Foster,’ he said, and taking it from me put it in his pocket, ‘that is nothing. Something from another file.’
When once you know how a person lies, it is difficult for him to deceive you again. With Pashik it was a special tone of voice he used for direct lies that gave him away — a cold, too matter-of-fact tone. He had used it before in telling me the untrue story of the American journalist who had tried to go to Greece for the weekend. I supposed the fact that he had lied about this piece of paper to be equally unimportant.
The large courtroom at the Ministry of Justice had been thought too small for a political trial of such moment. It was being staged, therefore, in the main lecture hall of the Army School of Aeronautics, a modern building on the outskirts of the city.
The walls, ordinarily decorated with engineering charts and war trophies, had been hung with flags — those of the Republic and of the Soviet Union, and, at greater intervals, those of the other sympathetic nations of Eastern Europe. Just above on either side of the judges’ dais two draped Soviet flags bulged over (but, tactlessly, did not quite conceal) one of the trophies, the tail plane of a Russian aircraft, presented by a German flak unit during the war. Pinned to some of the flags were notices printed in four languages saying that smoking was prohibited. In the balcony a row of soundproof booths had been erected for the interpreters relaying translations of the proceedings to the earphones of the foreign diplomatic and press representatives below. In the balcony, too, on heavy stands or clamped to the balcony rail, were big floodlights pointing down into the court to illuminate it for the Propaganda Ministry’s film cameras. Beside the judges’ dais, on both sides of the prisoner’s rostrum, at the corners of the hall, in the balcony, by the doors, and below every flag on the walls, guards were posted. They were all officers or NCOs and armed with machine pistols, which they did not sling, but held ready in their hands. It had been explained by the Propaganda Ministry that when the evidence against the criminal Deltchev was publicly known, attempts might be made by the people he had deceived to kill him before justice could be done.
The courtroom was crowded. My place and Pashik’s were in the foreign-press section, below the edge of the balcony and to one side. In the centre was the diplomatic section. On the ledge in front of each seat in these two sections were a pair of earphones and four plug sockets marked with letters distinguishing the Russian, French, English and German interpretation channels. Also on the ledge was a duplicated copy of the indictment in French. There seemed to be no seats for members of the public without tickets, but several rows behind us were prominently labelled with notice cards bearing initials, which Pashik said were those of prominent trade union organizations. The occupants of these seats were obviously in their best clothes and on their best behaviour. They all wore badges, and in one row there was a group of peasants in national costume. They looked as if they were attending a prize-giving. The front rows, however, had a different look about them. These seats were reserved for
