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"The Marshall Plan is an imperialist trick!"
"Yes, it is," said Volodya. "And I'm afraid it's working. Our wartime allies are forming an anti-Soviet bloc."
"People who obstruct the forward march of Communism must be dealt with appropriately."
"Indeed they must." It was amazing how consistently people such as Ilya made the wrong political judgments.
"And I must go to bed."
It was only ten, but Volodya went too. He lay awake thinking about Zoya and Kotya and wishing he could kiss them both good night.
His thoughts drifted to his mission. He had met Jan Masaryk, the symbol of Czech independence, two days earlier, at a ceremony at the grave of his father, Thomas Masaryk, the founder and first president of Czechoslovakia. Dressed in a coat with a fur collar, head bared to the falling snow, the second Masaryk had seemed beaten and depressed.
If he could be persuaded to stay on as foreign minister, some compromise might be possible, Volodya mused. Czechoslovakia could have a thoroughly Communist domestic government, but in its international relations it might be neutral, or at least minimally anti-American. Masaryk had both the diplomatic skills and the international credibility to walk that tightrope.
Volodya decided he would suggest it to Lemitov tomorrow.
He slept fitfully and woke before six o'clock with a mental alarm ringing in his imagination. It was something about last night's conversation with Ilya. Volodya ran over it again in his mind. When Ilya had said "people who obstruct the forward march of Communism" he had been talking about Masaryk, and when a secret policeman said someone had to be "dealt with appropriately" he always meant "killed."
Then Ilya had gone to bed early, which suggested an early start this morning.
I'm a fool, Volodya thought. The signs were there and it took me all night to read them.
He leaped out of bed. Perhaps he was not too late.
He dressed quickly and put on a heavy overcoat, scarf, and hat. There were no taxis outside the hotel--it was too early. He could have called a Red Army car, but by the time a driver was awakened and the car brought it would have taken the best part of an hour.
He set out to walk. The Czernin Palace was only a mile or two away. He headed west out of Prague's gracious city center, crossed the Charles Bridge, and hurried uphill toward the castle.
Masaryk was not expect
ing him, nor was the foreign minister obliged to give audience to a Red Army colonel. But Volodya felt sure Masaryk would be curious enough to see him.
He walked fast through the snow and reached the Czernin Palace at six forty-five. It was a huge baroque building with a grandiose row of Corinthian half columns on the three upper stories. The place was lightly guarded, he found to his surprise. A sentry pointed to the front door. Volodya walked unchallenged through an ornate hall.
He had expected to find the usual secret police moron behind a reception desk, but there was no one. This was a bad sign, and he was filled with foreboding.
The hall led to an inner courtyard. Glancing through a window, he saw what looked like a man sleeping in the snow. Perhaps he had fallen there drunk: if so, he was in danger of freezing to death.
Volodya tried the door and found it open.
He ran across the quadrangle. A man in blue silk pajamas lay facedown on the ground. There was no snow covering him, so he could not have been there many minutes. Volodya knelt beside him. The man was quite still and did not appear to be breathing.
Volodya looked up. Rows of identical windows like soldiers on parade looked into this courtyard. All were closed tightly against the freezing weather--except one, high above the man in pajamas, that stood wide open.
As if someone had been thrown out of it.
Volodya turned the lifeless head and looked at the man's face.
It was Jan Masaryk.
ii
Three days later in Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented to President Truman an emergency war plan to meet a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
The danger of a third world war was a hot topic in the press. "We just won the war," Jacky Jakes said to Greg Peshkov. "How come we're about to have another?"
"That's what I keep asking myself," said Greg.
