Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles 5)

“Twelve o’clock, at my office.”

“I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve spoken to Arnold Hardcastle.”

“Thank you,” said Bishara. “Now on to more important matters. Your first lesson in the dubious art of backgammon. One of the few games you English didn’t invent. The most important thing to remember about backgammon is that it’s all about percentages. As long as you can calculate the odds after each throw of the dice, you can never be beaten by an inferior opponent. Luck only comes into the equation when two players are equal.”

“Not unlike banking,” said Seb as the two men took their seats on opposite sides of the board.

* * *

When Harry opened his eyes, he had such a splitting headache that it was some time before he could focus. He tried to raise his head but he didn’t have the strength. He lay still, feeling as if he was coming around after an anesthetic. He opened his eyes again and looked up at the ceiling. A concrete block with several cracks in it, one producing a slow drip of water, like a tap that hadn’t been properly turned off.

He turned his head slowly to his left. The condensation on the wall was so close that he could have touched it if he hadn’t been handcuffed to the bed. He turned the other way, to see a door with a square window in it, through which he could, like Alice, have escaped if there hadn’t been three iron bars across it, and two guards standing on the other side.

He tried to move his feet, but they were also clamped to the bed. Why such precautions for an Englishman who had been caught with a banned book? Although the first seven chapters had been fascinating, he sensed that he hadn’t yet discovered the real reason every copy had been destroyed, which only made him even more determined to read the remaining fourteen chapters. They might also explain why he was being treated as if he were a double agent or a mass murderer.

Harry had no way of knowing how long he’d been in the cell. His watch had been removed, and he couldn’t even be sure if it was night or day. He started singing “God Save the Queen,” not as an act of defiant patriotism but more because he wanted to hear the sound of his own voice. Actually, if you’d asked him, Harry would have admitted he preferred the Russian national anthem.

Two eyes peered through the bars but he ignored them and continued singing. Then he heard someone shouting a command, and moments later the door swung open and Colonel Marinkin reappeared, accompanied by his two Rottweilers.

“Mr. Clifton, I must apologize for the state of your accommodation. It’s just that we didn’t want anyone to know where you were before we released you.”

The words “released you” sounded to Harry like Gabriel’s horn.

“Let me assure you, we have no desire to keep you any longer than necessary. Just some paperwork to complete, and a statement for you to sign, and then you can be on your way.”

“A statement? What kind of statement?”

“More of a confession,” admitted the colonel. “But once you’ve signed it, you’ll be driven back to the airport and be on your way home.”

“And if I refuse to sign it?”

“That would be remarkably foolish, Mr. Clifton, because you would then face a trial at which the charge, the verdict, and the sentence have already been decided. You once described a show trial in one of your books. You will be able to give a much more accurate portrayal when you write your next novel—” he paused—“in twelve years’ time.”

“What about the jury?”

“Twelve carefully selected party workers, whose vocabulary only needs to stretch to the word guilty. And just to let you know, your current accommodation is five-star compared to where you would be going. No dripping ceilings, because the water is frozen night and day.”

“You’ll never get away with it.”

“You’re so naïve, Mr. Clifton. You have no friends in high places here to take care of you. You are a common criminal. There will be no solicitor to advise you, and no QC to argue your case in front of an unbiased jury. And unlike America, there is no jury selection, and we don’t even have to pay the judges to get the verdict we want. I will leave you to consider your options, but in my opinion, it

is a simple choice. You can fly back to London, first class on BOAC, or take a cattle train to Novaya Uda that only has straw class, and which I’m afraid you’d have to share with several other animals. And I feel I should warn you, it’s a prison from which no one has ever escaped.”

Wrong, thought Harry, as he recalled from chapter three of Uncle Joe that it was the jail Stalin was sent to in 1902, and from which he had escaped.

36

“HOW ARE YOU, my boy?”

“Well, thank you, Arnold. And you?”

“Never better. And your dear mother?”

“Preparing herself for next week’s trial.”

“Not a pleasant experience to have to go through, especially when there’s so much at stake. Talk in chambers is that it’s too close to call, but the odds are shortening on your mother, as nobody thinks Lady Virginia will endear herself to the jury. She’ll either patronize them, or insult them.”

“I was rather hoping both.”