‘Yes, well Bret would say that. Bret was a psychology major at high school.’
Rupert looked at me, nodded solemnly, and said: ‘No one else you recognize in the photos then?’
‘I’m afraid not, Rupert.’
Still holding the pictures, he lifted his hand in a despondent gesture of farewell and said: ‘See you in Warsaw, Comrade.’
He knew I was dissembling, but I certainly didn’t intend to tell Rupert, or any of the other Departmental diehards, that, behind George Kosinski on that busy Warsaw pavement, I’d spotted my father-in-law. What was he doing in Warsaw, I wondered. He was supposed to be with Fiona and my kids, basking in the Jamaica sunshine.
12
Warsaw.
Now Poland was truly in the grip of winter. My plane cautiously descended through the wet grey clouds that provided snapshot views of the sunless landscape below. Only here and there did roads, tracks or trees hint at the rectangular shapes of fields. For the most part the snow had made a fearsome great grey world without end.
I had not heeded Bret’s hurry-ups to leave London. I had retired to bed with whisky and hot milk, enjoyed Mozart CDs, an assortment of books that I had put aside for reading some day, and assuaged my hunger with binges of fried eggs and fried smoky bacon with Heinz beans.
As on other occasions, unlimited indulgence proved a sure-fire cure for my ills. And so I was completely restored. Euphoria – the effect of favourite nourishment, heady music and guilt – soon gave way to unendurable languor. By the morning of the third day I jumped out of bed before it was light, sang while I was shaving and then booked a ticket on the first flight to Warsaw.
From the air you see only the new snow, but in the streets you saw it in layers. Like antediluvian faults the strata were of many colours, the layers dating back through blizzards and snowstorms, freezes and sleet, to the first fluttering snowflakes that long ago proclaimed the coming of winter.
Overflowing gutters contributed a delicate frieze along the roofs. Polski-Fiats splashed into the slush and sprayed it over the slow-moving pedestrians. In the street there were oozing streams, half-frozen rivers of brown and grey. Within a moment of falling, the snow was patterned by the grey residue of the exhausts of passing cars. While rattling half-frozen from the roofs, down through the giant drainpipes, the discharge had spread everywhere underfoot a lace-like bas-relief of ice that made the pavements uneven and slippery so that every step was uncertain. How well I knew these European winters, and how I hated them. I wondered what the surfing was like in Jamaica.
‘Do you hate it, Rupert?’ I said. We were sheltering from the wind in a doorway on Warsaw’s Vilnius Station, and the whole place was virtually deserted.
‘Hate it? Hate what?’ I suppose his mind had been on other matters, like not freezing to death.
‘All this. The snow and the filth. Poland in winter.’
‘How could I hate it? I live here.’
I nodded and pulled up my collar. Rupert was different from the other Brits with whom he worked. He really believed he belonged here. He refused to see himself the way we all really were: awkward, ugly, inconvenient aliens, suspect to the authorities and a burden to our friends. He felt at one with the landscape and the people, but he never tried to be a Pole. He had the sort of self-righteous confidence that armed nineteenth-century missionaries.
As an afterthought Rupert added: ‘These dark winter days… sometimes I pray for a snatch of sunlight.’
‘Yes,’ I said. The sky was as dark as granite, it pressed down upon the city like a weight.
‘The snow is not usually as early as this,’ he said. Visible above the collar of Rupert’s oversize Burberry trenchcoat there was one of those quilted Barbour linings. Worn with his checked cloth cap it was the sort of outfit that I would expect an English gentleman farmer to wear on market day. It looked out of place here in the middle of nowhere. He pulled his scarf tighter around his throat and stamped his feet.
‘Are you sure he said Vilnius Station?’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Rupert.
‘And he promised he would come?’
It was hard to believe that this desolate open space was so near to the centre of Warsaw, or any large European capital city. It was even harder to believe that where we stood had once been a busy rail terminal, a place the wealthy holiday-makers, the revered scholars and the business tycoons came to board the night express – with its bars, diner and sleeping compartments – to travel to the ancient city of Vilna (or Vilno or Vilnius according to which language you spoke). All the nations coveted that medieval show-place, a centre of Jewish learning and the site of one of Europe’s oldest universities. Poland wanted it, the USSR grabbed it, the German invaders razed it and massacred its large Jewish population. Now Vilnius was the capital of Lithuania. But no longer did any trains leave this station and get to Vilnius. The platforms had been levelled, the old waiting-rooms and baggage-rooms demolished. Now it was just the spot where two railway lines ended. Now and again an austere little train departed to take commuters to nearby destinations. Beyond that the track had been uprooted, the sleepers burned as fuel, and the way to get to Vilnius was to go to the Central Station and travel via Moscow. And that was the way Poland’s Soviet masters preferred it to be.
‘He said he would come,’ said Rupert, ‘but that doesn’t mean he will come. You know what Poles are like.’
‘No. What are they like?’ I took my hands from my pockets and blew on them to restore circulation. I vowed to buy gloves: big fur gloves.
‘Secretive. Clannish. Do you know about the unknown warrior?’
‘What about him?’
‘The tomb of Poland’s unknown warrior – in Pilsudski Square – is where every foreign dignitary comes to lay a big floral wreath, and make a solemn speech about peace. The Soviets are all very keen on peace and very keen on speeches about it. And Moscow to Warsaw is the right distance. It makes a perfect weekend of banquets, sightseeing and vodka. So each and every year Moscow’s leaders, generals and senior apparatchiks vie to attend this solemn ceremony, where bands play suitable music, generals wear acres of shiny medals, and the wives get a chance to show off their new outfits.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. He tended to go on a bit, I’d forgotten that.
‘Very big crowds always gather at the ceremony. The Poles look on with an unusually smug satisfaction. Because it hasn’t yet dawned upon the Russkies that the unknown Polish soldier’s body, over which they like to pontificate about the peace-loving Red Army’s advance to Berlin, was not recovered from some Second World War battlefield. It contains the body of one of Pilsudski’s men, who fell in the 1920 fighting outside Warsaw when the angry Poles kicked the mighty Red Army back where it had come from.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Not even the most resolute Polish communist has ever revealed that secret to the Soviet comrades. That’s what the Poles are like: clannish.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, the impossible bloody language helps them there.’
‘And the religion,’ said Rupert. ‘Lutheran Germans to the west of them, Protestants to the north, Orthodox to the east. The Poles are Catholic, and devout ones too. Take a look around; the churches are full and a Polish Pope sits in Rome.’
‘Are you a Catholic, Rupert?’
‘No. Well, sort of,’ he said. ‘I was once.’ I didn’t take too much notice of that denial; every dedicated Catholic I know says he’s lapsed.
‘So is George Kosinski,’ I said. ‘A very serious believer. Is this him now?’
A VW Beetle came bouncing along across the ice and snow, snorting and sliding, its rear wheels spinning so that the car was skating around perilously. But I learned that this was the way many Poles drive in winter; they like to feel the car sliding around, and they get good at controlling the skids. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Rupert.
Two men climbed out of the car and then leaned inside to pull the seat-backs forward, so that two teenage boy
s could extricate themselves from the confined interior. The icy wind blew the big hat from one of them, and he had to chase it to get it back. As he ran, the skirt of his heavy coat was whirled up by an especially violent gust of wind that created a twister of dirty powdery snow. ‘It’s not him,’ said Rupert.
When the wind died down it would snow again, at least that was what the locals were saying. The driver of the VW scowled and pulled his hat down tight upon his head before getting back into the car and driving away. The other three marched off in the direction of the Russian War Memorial without looking back. Now there was no one in sight over the wide flat expanse of the old railway station. George still had not come.
‘What motivates the bugger?’ said Rupert.
‘Love,’ I said. ‘He’s in love, desperately and hopelessly in love.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘In love with his wife. Some say it accounts for almost everything he does.’
‘You’re a cryptic sod, Samson.’
‘I don’t mean to be.’
‘I know. That’s what makes it so irritating. You still don’t believe it, do you? You just can’t bring yourself to believe that Tessa Kosinski is still alive, can you?’
‘I never said that.’
‘They don’t go to all this trouble for nothing. Not those Stasi bastards.’ He was getting more and more bad-tempered as the cold wind chewed into him.
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, you would know. But in my experience they know exactly what they are doing, and why.’ He didn’t pursue it. He hadn’t had a great deal of experience with the day-to-day cloak-and-dagger side of the Department’s work. He was a money man, getting the right sort of currency to the right people at the right time. It was a hazardous task and I didn’t envy him. He had carried a lot of money over the years – sovereigns and thalers and dollar bills; diamonds and rare stamps too, when that was what they stipulated. Twice he’d been attacked and badly hurt. It wasn’t easy and you had to be at the top of the reliable list. It wasn’t a job where you could get a signed and dated receipt.
He said: ‘We’re sitting ducks out here on this railway station. A man with a sniperscope… did you think of that?’
‘It did cross my mind,’ I admitted. I was surprised he’d not noticed me nervously surveying all the likely spots, and squinting at every approaching pedestrian.
‘Do you ever get frightened, Samson?’
‘Fast heart rate, rapid breathing, measured basal metabolic rate and galvanic skin response? Is that what you mean?’
‘Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood… Lend the eye a terrible aspect. That sort of thing.’
‘No. Only public schoolboys get frightened like Shakespeare. Kids like me shit ourselves.’
‘I was only asking.’ He looked around and then looked at me. ‘We should have remained in the car. How much longer should we wait?’
I could understand his concern, if my face was as chilled as his appeared to be. His lips looked sore and cracked, and the frosty wind had rouged his cheeks and nose like the face of a clown. ‘In the car we wouldn’t have been able to spot him. Give him another five minutes,’ I suggested.
‘The Rozycki flea-market is just along the street. Ever been there?’
‘Not for ten years or more.’
‘You didn’t take Cruyer along there on your last visit? To show him the lower depths of life in the big city?’
‘Dicky isn’t into open-air flea-markets, especially not markets like the Rozycki. He likes first-class restaurants.’
‘This is not his sort of town then?’
‘No.’
‘Two Polish traders were badly injured in the Rozycki. They are still in hospital. Beaten up by two foreigners. The police asked if we knew of any British criminals in town. It exactly coincided with the time you and Cruyer arrived.’
‘Did it? Well, I’m certainly glad I didn’t go along there. That could have happened to me and Dicky.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Rupert.
‘Ambulance approaching,’ I said. ‘This will be it.’ I don’t know why I said it but I just knew that vehicle was something to do with George.
The ambulance was not one of the shiny new Russian ones I’d seen on the streets. Or the Polish army’s camouflaged trucks with red crosses on the side. This was a lovely old slab-sided ‘Star’ from the FSC factory in Starachowice. Two men, equally old, got out and one of them opened the door at the rear.
‘We’ve come to collect you,’ said the other man in passable English. ‘Mr George sent us.’ The men were not threatening; they didn’t have the build to be threatening. ‘Thirty minutes,’ promised the man as he opened the back doors.
I wasn’t inclined to go along with them until Rupert climbed into the back of the ambulance. It was only after we were inside, and bumping along over the corrugated ice, that I began to suspect that Rupert was so cold he would have jumped into almost anything to escape the cold wind. But at the time, I reasoned that Rupert was almost a local, and he had the diplomatic passport that would probably get both of us out of trouble with the law.
‘Are you armed?’ Rupert asked suddenly, as if regretting his action.
‘No,’ I said. He was looking around in an agitated way that suggested claustrophobia. The interior was gloomy, illuminated only by a tiny yellow bulb in the roof. The main part of the ambulance was occupied by two stretchers locked into wheeled racks. Two grey army blankets were draped over each of them. A respiratory apparatus was in a rack over a hard uncomfortable bench, upon which we were now seated, crushed tightly together. Just inside the door there was a metal wall-cabinet marked with a red cross. It was secured by a brass padlock.
‘There are no windows.’
‘No windows in ambulances; no pockets in shrouds. They don’t want us to see where we’re going,’ I explained. ‘It will be okay.’
‘I hope so.’
A peep-hole controlled from the driver’s compartment snapped back and one of the men up front said: ‘We’ll bring you back.’ Then he closed the shutter without waiting for our reaction.
I could hear the traffic around us but the ventilator in the roof provided no chance of seeing out, not even a glimpse of the sky. I noticed we did not make an excessive number of turns and I guessed that they were going directly to our destination, so I settled back and waited. I decided it came into the category of ‘calculated risk’, the sort of hazard I was paid to suffer.
The ambulance journey took only twenty-five minutes. When the doors were opened at the other end we were in a parking bay outside a large ugly building standing in a dozen acres of grass most of which was now hidden under the snow. Regimented trees lined the drive and there was a sign at the gate announcing that this was the Madame Maria Sklodowska-Curie Clinic. The double Nobel Prize-winning Madame Curie was much celebrated in her home town but a large section of the sign’s wooden supporting trestle was missing, suggesting that some passer-by had wanted to pursue radiation experiments of a domestic nature.
I knew more or less where we were. You can’t get lost in Warsaw since the Soviets built the world’s ugliest building there and made it so tall you can see it from Vladivostok. We followed the two Poles in through the main entrance of the building. As we entered the lobby they removed their hats and looked around respectfully, as if entering a cathedral. Then a grey-haired woman came striding along and engaged them in rapid Polish. She was dressed in black skirt and blouse. What not so long ago was the uniform for female office workers throughout Europe now made her inadvertently chic.
I raised an eyebrow at Rupert, who explained softly: ‘We are about to meet the head administrator of the clinic.’
The long corridor along which we were taken was bare and cold. We passed doors that opened on to small wards with half a dozen beds in each. ‘Here,’ said the grey-haired woman. From somewhere behind one of the doors a baby began crying and another joined in.
The head administrator’s
room was slightly larger, warmer and marginally more comfortable than any of the wards we passed on the way to it. He was introduced as Dr Urban and, despite the white cotton coat, my suspicion that he was not a physician was soon confirmed when he told us that he had previously been managing a printing plant in Lodz. He laughed when he told us this. But his spoken English was fluent, due he said to having spent a year as an exchange student in New Jersey.
‘I want to be frank with you. Clear and above board. And that’s why it is better that Mr Copper is here to represent your embassy. I don’t want you saying that you were tricked by those crafty Poles.’
‘We were expecting George Kosinski,’ I said. The grey-haired lady took our overcoats, put them on hangers, hung them in a closet and then departed.
‘Your brother-in-law,’ said Dr Urban. ‘It’s better to do it without him.’ He smiled conspiratorially. ‘Much better.’ Anyone locked into the notion that all Poles were thin, reflective and lugubrious had not met Dr Urban. He was a short restless man with a thick mass of wavy auburn hair, a chubby cheerful face and piercing blue eyes. His time in the United States had obviously had a profound effect upon him, for his informal manner and his style – loosened tie and feet resting on a pile of books – was markedly transatlantic.
‘Is he all right?’ I asked. Dr Urban waved at a chair and I sat down.
‘He is all right. Our friend Mr George? Yes, but he becomes too anxious. We understand why; he has endured a stressful time.’
‘Yes,’ I said. After spiralling round like a restless dog Rupert settled into a battered armchair.
Rupert said: ‘Mind if I smoke?’ Such formality seemed superfluous, since Dr Urban had filled the air with acrid blue smoke and was still working at it. On the table there was an open packet of Benson and Hedges. He swivelled it round, offering the cigarettes to Rupert, but Rupert took one of his own from his monogrammed silver case. Having blown a little smoke, Rupert said: ‘The body is it? The body of the wife?’
‘Ah!’ said Dr Urban, opening his eyes wide to look at Rupert as if he’d not expected him to do anything but sit quietly and listen. To counter this unexpected development he said: ‘You’ll take coffee?’