Page 93 (1/2)

Steve didn’t argue that one; by then it had been too late, obviously, but why had the ?

‘I had you checked out,’ Gowrie suddenly said, as if slowly beginning to understand ‘I should have realized you were a phoney – I did wonder about you right froue about your past, but then I thought it lish and the Brits are always so tight-lipped My people couldn’t find out anything about your life up to the point where you showed up in Paris, but they got lots of details about your fae your people came from’

‘I visited there, o to France when I left Prague, because of the passport I was only permitted to board a plane to Paris’ Paul sood – remember? Nobody suspected me for a second’

‘How on earth did you survive there, though? Did you have any money with you?’

Paul shook his head ‘A few francs I got a job, of course, translating freelance for a Paris publisher – I had to sweat for hours to earn enough to live on’

‘And nobody realized you weren’t this Paul Broughaone to the police and reported hi?’

‘That was one of est pieces of luck He didn’t have a family His parents were dead and he was an only child He hadn’t lived in France for years’

‘But how did you get a job and somewhere to live so quickly?’

‘Through the international student grapevine I met up with some French students as soon as I landed I just went to the Left Bank and hung around in cafés until I uys who had connections with our group in Prague Because of the Russian invasion they were very sympathetic, they helped me out with somewhere to live and with introductions’

‘They didn’t suspect you weren’t who you said you were?’

‘If they did they never said a word They accepted ht it was bourgeois to ask questions The police ask questions – students didn’t want to sound like policemen They believed in individual freedom’

‘Freedos that you don’t even think about unless you haven’t got it,’ Steve drawled, and bothHe asked Paul, ‘But didn’t anyone you met know the real Paul?’

‘I just told you, he hadn’t lived in France for years And I only stayed there for a year, and had to work so hard there was no tiet too friendly, and I went on to London as soon as I had saved up enough I thought it would be safer to keepI didn’t want to be noticed by the police I started doing soot a job with a printer, but of course I didn’t get a chance to work on the presses because of the unions They said I was a foreign scab; if you hadn’t served your apprenticeship you couldn’t work as a printer I just got a job in the office, which hen I realized I had a head for business’

Gowrie burst out, ‘But how did you get all that money? Where did it co in an office’

Paul’s eyes flashed ‘I did, though I discovered so I’d never realized – that if you have the brains and the drive you can make money easily Most people just don’t have what it takes I meant to move on to Italy after a while in London, to the sun – London could be very cold – but I found I liked living in England, I didn’t want to leave – the at my taste for travel and politics It happens to us all, doesn’t it?’