The Russia House Read Online Free PDF Page B

the despairing Landau presented himself as a last resort and with the greatest of reluctance, it was only by dint of high entreaty and some honest-to-God Slav tears that he fought his way to the rarefied ear of the Honourable Palmer Wellow, author of a discerning monograph on Liszt.
    And if Landau had not used a new tactic, probably the Slav tears would not have helped. Because this time he placed the briefcase open on the counter so that the doorman, who was young but sceptical, could crane his pomaded head to the recently installed armoured glass and scowl down into it with his indolent eyes, and see for himself that it was only a bunch of dirty old notebooks in there and a brown envelope, not bombs.
    ‘Come-back-Monday-ten-to-five,’ the doorman said through the wonderfully-new electric speaker, as if announcing a Welsh railway station, and slumped back into the darkness of his box.
    The gate stood ajar. Landau looked at the young man, and looked past him at the great portico built a hundred years earlier to daunt the unruly princes of the Raj. And the next thing anyone knew, he had picked up his briefcase and, defeating all the seemingly impenetrable defences set up to prevent exactly such an onslaught, was pelting hell-for-leather with it – ‘like a bloomin’ Springbok, sir’ – across the hallowed courtyard up the steps into the enormous hall. And he was in luck. Palmer Wellow, whatever else he was, belonged to the appeasement side of the Foreign Office. And it was Palmer’s day on.
    ‘Hullo, hullo ,’ Palmer murmured as he descended the great steps and beheld the disordered figure of Landau panting between two stout guards. ‘Well you are in a muck. My name’s Wellow. I’m a resident clerk here.’ He held his left fist to his shoulder as if he hated dogs. But his right hand was extended in greeting.
    ‘I don’t want a clerk,’ said Landau. ‘I want a high officer or nothing.’
    ‘Well, a clerk is fairly high,’ Palmer modestly assured him. ‘I expect you’re put off by the language.’
    It was only right to record – and our committee did – that nobody could fault Palmer Wellow’s performance thus far. He was droll but he was effective. He put no polished foot wrong. He led Landau to an interviewing room and sat him down, all attention. He ordered a cup of tea for him with sugar for his shock, and offered him a digestive biscuit. With a costly fountain pen given him by a friend, he wrote down Landau’s name and address and those of the companies that hired his services. He wrote down the number of Landau’s British passport and his date and place of birth, 1930 in Warsaw. He insisted with disarming truthfulness that he had no knowledge of intelligence matters, but undertook to pass on Landau’s material to the ‘competent people’, who would no doubt give it whatever attention it deserved. And because Landau once again insisted on it, he improvised a receipt for him on a sheet of Foreign Office blue draft, signed it and had the janitor add a date-and-time stamp. He told him that if there was anything further the authorities wished to discuss they would very probably get in touch with him, perhaps by means of the telephone.
    Only then did Landau hesitatingly pass his scruffy package across the table and watch with lingering regret as Palmer’s languid hand enfolded it.
    ‘But why don’t you simply give it to Mr. Scott Blair?’ Palmer asked after he had studied the name on the envelope.
    ‘I tried, for Christ’s sake!’ Landau burst out in fresh exasperation. ‘I told you. I rang him everywhere. I’ve rung him till I’m blue in the face, I tell you. He’s not at his home, he’s not at work, he’s not at his club, he’s not at anywhere,’ Landau protested, his English grammar slipping in despair. ‘From the airport I tried. All right, it’s a Saturday.’
    ‘But it’s Sunday,’ Palmer objected with a forgiving smile.
    ‘So it was a Saturday yesterday, wasn’t it! I try