had spent his whole life outdoors, so dark were his features.
Crossing on to the south side of the Ring in order to be close to the park as I came up the Schubertring, I found myself near the Russian Kommendatura, formerly the Imperial Hotel, as a large Red Army staff car drew up outside the enormous red star and four caryatids that marked the entrance. The car door opened and out stepped Colonel Poroshin.
He did not seem in any way surprised to see me. Indeed, it was almost as if he had expected to find me walking there, and for a moment he simply looked at me as if it had been only a few hours since I had sat in his office in the little Kremlin in Berlin. I suppose my jaw must have dropped, because after a second he smiled, murmured 'Dobraye ootra (Good-morning)', and then carried on into the Kommendatura followed closely by a couple of junior officers who stared suspiciously back at me, while I stood there, simply lost for words.
More than a little puzzled as to why Poroshin should have turned up in Vienna now, I wandered back across the road to the сafe Schwarzenberg, narrowly escaping being hit by an old lady on a bicycle who rang her bell furiously at me.
I sat down at my usual table to give some thought to Poroshin's arrival on the scene, and ordered a light snack, my new fitness resolution already ruined.
The colonel's presence in Vienna seemed easier to explain with some coffee and cake inside of me. There was, after all, no reason why he should not have come.
As an MVD colonel he could probably go wherever he liked. That he had not said more to me or inquired as to how my efforts were going on behalf of his friend I thought was probably due to the fact that he had no wish to discuss the matter in front of the two other officers. And he had only to pick up the telephone and ring the headquarters of the International Patrol in order to discover if Becker was still in prison or not.
All the same I had a feeling on the sole of my shoe that Poroshin's arrival from Berlin was connected with my own investigation, not necessarily for the better.
Like a man who has breakfasted on prunes, I told myself I was certain to notice something before very long.
Chapter 21
Each one of the Four Powers took administrative responsibility for the policing of the Inner City for a month at a time. 'In the chair' was how Belinsky had described it. The chair in question was located in a meeting-room at the combined forces headquarters in the Palais Auersperg, although it also affected who sat next to the driver in the International Patrol vehicle. But though the IP was an instrument of the Four Powers and subject in theory to orders from the combined forces, for all practical purposes it was American operated and supplied. All vehicles, petrol and oil, radios, radio spares, maintenance of the vehicles and the radios, operation of the radio network system and organization of the patrols were the responsibility of the US 796th. This meant that the American member of the patrol always drove the vehicle, operated the radio and performed the first-echelon maintenance. Thus, at least as far as the patrol itself was concerned, the idea of 'the chair' was a bit of a movable feast.
Although the Viennese referred to 'the four men in the jeep', or sometimes 'the four elephants in the jeep', in reality 'the jeep' had long been abandoned as too small to accommodate a patrol of four men, their short-wave transmitter, not to mention any prisoners; and a three-quarter-ton Command and Reconnaissance vehicle was now the favoured mode of transport.
All this I learned from the Russian corporal commanding the IP truck parked a short distance from the Casino Oriental on Petersplatz, in which I sat under arrest, waiting for the kapral's colleagues to pick up Lotte Hartmann. Speaking neither French nor English, and with only a smattering of German, the kapral was delighted to find someone with whom he could have a conversation, even if it was a Russian-speaking prisoner.
'I'm afraid I can't tell you very much about why you're being arrested, apart from the fact that it's for black- marketeering,' he apologised. 'You'll find out more when we get to the KSrtnerstrasse. We'll both find out, eh? All I can tell you about is the procedure. My captain will fill out an arrest-form, in duplicate everything's in duplicate and leave both copies with the Austrian police. They'll forward one copy to the Military Government Public-Safety Officer. If you're held for trial in a military court, a charge sheet will be prepared by my captain; and if you're held for trial in an Austrian court, the local police will be instructed accordingly.' The kapral frowned. 'To be honest with you, we don't bother much with black-market offences these days. Or vice for that matter. It's smugglers we're generally after, or illegal emigrants.
Those other three bastards think I've gone mad, I can tell. But I've got my orders.'
I smiled sympathetically and said how I appreciated him explaining. I was thinking of offering him a cigarette when the door of the truck opened and the French patrolman helped a very pale-looking Lotte Hartmann to climb up beside me. Then he and the Englishman came after her, locking the door from the inside.
The smell of her fear was only marginally weaker than the cloying scent of her perfume.
'Where are they taking us?' she whispered to me.
I told her we were going to the KSrtnerstrasse.
'No talking is allowed,' said the English MP in appalling German. 'Prisoners will keep quiet until we reach headquarters.'
I smiled quietly to myself. The language of bureaucracy was the only second language that an Englishman would ever be capable of speaking well.
The IP was headquartered in an old palace within a cigarette-end's flick of the State Opera. The truck drew up outside and we were marched through huge glass doors and into a baroque-style hall, where an assortment of atlantes and caryatids showed the omnipresent hand of the Viennese stonemason. We went up a staircase that was as wide as a railway track, past urns and busts of forgotten noblemen, through a pair of doors that were longer than the legs of a circus tall-man and into an arrangement of glass-fronted offices. The Russian kapral opened the door of one of them, ushered his two prisoners inside and told us to wait there.
'What did he say?' FrSulein Hartmann asked as he closed the door behind him.
'He said to wait.' I sat down, lit a cigarette and looked about the room. There was a desk, four chairs and on the wall a large wooden noticeboard of the kind you see outside churches, except that this one was in Cyrillic, with columns of chalked numbers and names, headed 'Wanted Persons', 'Absentees', 'Stolen Vehicles', 'Express Messages', 'Part I Orders' and 'Part II Orders'. In the column headed 'Wanted Persons' appeared my own name and that of Lotte Hartmann.
Belinsky's pet Russian was making things look very convincing.
'Have you any idea what this is all about?' she asked tremulously.
'No,' I lied. 'Have you?'
'No, of course not. There must be some kind of mistake.'
'Evidently.'
'You don't seem all that concerned. Or maybe you just don't understand that it's the Russians who ordered us to be brought here.'
'Do you speak Russian?'
'No, of course not,' she said impatiently. 'The American MP who arrested me said that this was a Russian call and nothing to do with him.'
'Well, the Ivans are in the chair this month,' I said reflectively. 'What did the Frenchman say?'
'Nothing. He just kept looking down the front of my dress.'
'He would.' I smiled at her. 'It's worth a look.'
She gave me a sarcastic sort of smile. 'Yes, well, I don't think they brought me here just to see the wood stacked in front of the cabin, do you?' She spoke with crisp distaste, but accepted the cigarette I offered her all the same.
'I can't think of a better reason.'
She swore under her breath.
'I've seen you, haven't I?' I said. 'At the Oriental?'
'What were you during the war an air spotter?'
'Be nice. Maybe I can help you.'
'Better help yourself first.'
'You can depend on that.'
When the office door finally opened it was a tall, burly-looking Red Army officer who came into the room. He
