Young Philby by Robert Littell Page B

wrapped around the barrel to keep it cooled.”
    “You must have learned that from All Quiet on the Western Front, ” Kim remarked. He plucked an indigestion tablet from a small tin and popped it into his mouth.
    “I learned it at a field camp where Communist instructors showed us how to use firearms,” Dietrich said.
    The filaments in the overhead electric bulbs flickered, then went dark again before coming on full force. Conversation in the café died away and we all stared at the fixtures, holding our breaths as we waited to see if the lights would remain on. They did. Kim shrugged. “Feeding in bullets sounds like something I can do,” he said in a normal conversational tone.
    A fat Viennese gentleman at the next table said, “This is not the moment to be joking about bullets, young man.”
    Dietrich, suddenly emotional, reached across the table to wring Kim’s hand. “I consider you to be one of us, Philby,” he announced.
    By the time Sergius turned up, we were each nursing a third cup of coffee. Out of breath, his eyes tearing from the cold outside, Sergius scraped over a chair and tried to get the attention of one of the waiters.
    “You have the key?” Dietrich demanded.
    “What key?” Sergius said.
    I could see from the look on Sergius’s face that he was finding the situation comical. Either that or he was trying to mask his nervousness. “The key to the coal bin,” I said.
    A waiter passed. Sergius plucked at his sleeve. “Beer,” he said. He grinned at Dietrich. “Why do you need coal at a time like this?”
    Dietrich leaned across the table. “This is not the moment to fool around. We’re supposed to retrieve a machine gun and ammunition from the coal bin that you have the key to.”
    “I have the key to the coal bin on”—Sergius mentioned an address in a back street not far from the café. “The bad news is the only thing hidden there is coal. We don’t own a machine gun.”
    “Why are you here?” I asked the comrade.
    “I was sent to tell you there is no machine gun. You can go see for yourselves if you want. There were a few rifles and pistols hidden in the coal bin, along with some cartons of Italian fireworks, but they’ve already been distributed to workers.”
    “Who ordered you to set up the machine-gun p-post on the roof?” Kim asked Dietrich.
    “Our cell leader.”
    “Telephone him.”
    “Can’t. He’s on a police wanted list. He never sleeps in the same bed two nights in a row.”
    “What do we do now?” I asked Kim.
    He looked from Sergius to Dietrich to me. “We ought to head for the epicenter.”
    “The tenements?” I said.
    My Englishman nodded.
    We heard trucks rumbling down the cobblestones outside. Kim and I rushed to the door of the café. Half a dozen flatbed trucks loaded with coils of barbed wire were driving slowly past the Herenhoff, the headlights of one truck illuminating the cargo in the truck ahead of it. Several of the trucks towed howitzers, their muzzles covered in canvas. I will admit I was quite alarmed at the sight of field artillery. As for Kim, I never detected the faintest suggestion of fright on his face or in his voice. Under that boyish grin he had nerves of steel. In my mind’s eye I see Kim, sensible as usual, counting the trucks passing in the street and nodding as if he had stored the information and understood its significance. The painfully shy Homo erectus who had washed up on my doorstep in a previous incarnation no longer existed.
    What a difference a hundred days can make.
    *   *   *
    Even after Kim brought me to safety in London, flickering images of the next several days—which is how long it took for Dollfuss to eradicate Socialism in Austria—would haunt me. (Kim claims they are fragments shored up against my ruin. Lovely phrase. He says he swiped it from a poet. I forget his name. Fragments. Ruin. Why not?) I notice a baby carriage in Hyde Park and I see orderlies in soiled white laboratory coats ferrying