"Um-m-m, made a very strong case for Bukharin, in particular."
Simonov said, very slowly, "I don't understand. You mean this ... this film supported the, ah, Old Bolsheviks?"
"Of course. Why not? Everybody knows they weren't guilty." The Czech snorted deprecation. "At least not guilty of what they were charged with. They were in Stalin's way and he liquidated them." The Czech thought about it for a while. "I wonder if he was already insane, that far back."
Had he taken up his mug of beer and dashed it into Simonov's face, he couldn't have surprised the Russian more.
Ilya Simonov had to take control of himself. His first instinct was to show his credentials, arrest the man and have him hauled up before the local agency of Simonov's ministry.
But obviously that was out of the question. He was in Czechoslovakia and, although Moscow still dominated the Soviet Complex, there was local autonomy and the Czech police just didn't enjoy their affairs being meddled with unless in extreme urgency.
Besides, this man was obviously only one among many. A stranger in a beer hall. Ilya Simonov suspected that if he continued his wanderings about the town, he'd meet in the process of only one evening a score of persons who would talk the same way.
Besides, still again, he was here in Prague incognito, his job to trace the sources of this dry rot, not to run down individual Czechs.
But the cinema, and TV! Surely anti-Party sentiment hadn't been allowed to go this far!
He got up from the table shakily, paid up for his beer and forced himself to nod good-bye in friendly fashion to the subversive Czech he'd been talking to.