by Robert Brown
What news he had heard, Biniam hadn’t shared. Heinrich guessed it had been nothing good.
Biniam meant “lucky son” in the local language of Tigrinya. It looked like in Eritrea, only one person per family got a chance to be lucky.
After a pause, the hacker went on.
“The Nazis are gathering at ten tomorrow morning. It was announced on the same Dark Web forum I mentioned before. You can use the same user name.”
“Won’t it seem a bit weird that I was at a meeting in New York and a few days later I just happen to show up at a demonstration in Warsaw?” Heinrich asked.
“You aren’t the only far right bastard coming over to Europe to protest May Day. There’s a lot of buzz about doing that these days. Gives American Nazis a chance to network. These guys are getting organized, my friend.”
“Yeah, it looks that way.”
“Stay safe,” Biniam said.
“You too,” Heinrich replied.
They both laughed. Staying safe wasn’t in either of their DNA.
That evening, Heinrich bought a Polish SIM card for his phone. Now he could make local calls and get data. He put plenty of money on it. The old bag would pay for it and he didn’t want to run out of money at an important moment. He noted that the little hole-in-the-wall phone shop, which also sold cigarettes and beer, was run by a Pole. In most countries, those sorts of places were usually run by immigrants. He didn’t see many non-Poles in the Old City.
His next step was to check out the neighborhood the demonstrations would go through. It turned out to be a working class area beyond the old city center where the tourists clustered. Cheap bars and discount stores instead of boutiques and souvenir shops. Poles instead of Americans and British and French. Oddly, Heinrich hardly saw any immigrants even here. He’d read up on that and found that Poland had put a red light on the massive influx of immigrants coming into Europe from the wars in the Middle East. There were few Muslims living in Poland. He also didn’t see many gypsies, although there had been some panhandling in the tourist area, and no other racial minorities either. Listening to conversations in the streets outside the tourist areas, he had hardly heard any language except Polish.
So if Poland was one of the least diverse countries in Europe, what the hell were these neo-Nazis protesting against?
Besides checking out the buildings and people, he also kept an eye on the walls. He’d learned long ago that mainstream media and corporate advertising only told one story, and generally not the most important story. It was the tags and stickers and posters that told what really went on in the streets.
And they told him he was walking a political fault line. He saw crudely sprayed painted hammer and sickle emblems. Swastikas were daubed on the walls too. Many of each had been painted over or crossed out, or had angry notes written beneath them. He had trouble puzzling these out because his Polish lessons hadn’t included swear words.
Posters for tomorrow’s May Day march were plastered all over. A few had been defaced or scraped to pieces, but dozens remained on every city block. They were all the same. Beneath a drawing of workers striding arm and arm under a red banner was the headline “Thirty Years of Capitalist Rule, Thirty Years of Class Warfare!” Heinrich snorted. The Communist government in Poland had fallen in 1989, the year that Communist regimes had fallen like dominoes all over Eastern Europe. The Reds were saying their life was worse under democracy and capitalism.
“Feeling nostalgic for bread lines and censorship, meatheads?” he grumbled.
Under the headline were listed the time and place of the march and a few more slogans about fighting government austerity measures, sexism, racism against immigrants, and the rise of neo-Nazism.
The poster told him just as much with what it didn’t say as with what it did. Nothing about homophobia or racism against native Poles such as the Gypsies. This was Eastern Europe, and some people got no rights.
He saw plenty of stickers too, and they came in all varieties. Besides a host of different stickers for various Communists groups—one group of idiots even had Stalin on their emblem—he saw the red and black flag of Antifa. Antifascist Action was an international group of anarchists who liked to get into street fights with the Nazis. Mostly young kids looking for a brawl who if they had grown up in slightly different surroundings would have been running with the neo-Nazis and bashing Antifa activists. The politics were just a veneer for most of these people. There seemed to be a strong Antifa presence, or at least one guy with a lot of stickers, and that promised some fun tomorrow.
He also saw a fair number of fascist stickers. One reproduced an old painting of Crusader knights riding into battle against the Muslims with the word “Remember” written in Gothic lettering beneath. Another showed a skull inside a World War Two German helmet with the SS logo on the side. Heinrich furtively glanced around to make sure no one was looking and scraped it off with his fingernail. He also saw several strange emblems that looked vaguely fascist and menacing. When he photographed them and ran them through Tineye, a reverse image search engine that looked for similar images on the Internet, he discovered these were for Ultra clubs that supported various local football teams. The Ultras were a bit like the neo-Nazi and Antifa, people spoiling for a fight. The only difference is they used football rather than politics as an excuse. He wondered which side they would be on tomorrow. Probably the fascists unless there was a game on that kept them away.
He noted that there were more leftist stickers and posters and graffiti than there were for the far right. This was a Red stronghold, one that the neo-Nazis were determined to push into.
The neighborhood was quiet as if waiting for tomorrow’s battle. Even though it was early, the bars and cafes were almost empty and the metal shutters on the shops were down and locked. Through the grill of one he saw an intriguing antique shop with a gramophone in the window. He noted the location on Google Maps to check out later. If they had a gramophone that looked like it dated from the early Twenties in the window, they might have some good 78s inside.
He peered through the window, trying to spot anything in the jumble of shadows.
A soft step beside him made him whip around.
A pair of policemen—a man and a woman—stood a couple of paces away, giving him the fisheye.
Heinrich decided this wasn’t the time to try his Polish. He put on his best Dumb Tourist look and smiled at them.
“Good evening!” he said in English. “I just got here. Love your city.”
“The store is closed,” the female cop said. She wasn’t bad looking but the open hostility didn’t exactly warm Heinrich’s heart.
“Yes, I’ll come back tomorrow.”
The female cop clicked her tongue. “Tomorrow you not want to be here. The Communists cause trouble.”
Heinrich gaped. “Communists?”
“May Day parade,” the male cop said in English so heavily accented Heinrich almost didn’t understand him. Obviously his partner had paid more attention in school.
Heinrich turned to the woman. “The Communists will riot?”
“They do every year,” she said. “You don’t want to be here or you get in trouble.”
Heinrich nodded, then got an idea. “I was in Budapest last year when the Communists had a parade. The Nazis started a riot and hurt a bunch of people.”
The female cop’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t have such problems here. Patriots don’t cause trouble. It is the Communists who cause trouble.”
“I see. Well, I better get going.”
The male cop pointed down the road. “Old City that way.”
Heinrich turned and walked back toward his hotel as the cops muttered to each other. Those two had taught him something just as important as all the street messages that the cops had taken a side.
Tomorrow would be one hell of a party. He hoped that antiques store didn’t get burned down before he had a chance to check it out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Heinrich fel
t queasy throughout breakfast. He tried to tell himself it was a combination of jetlag and the matron’s bad cooking, but he couldn’t hide from the real reason. If he wanted to find out what was going on, he’d have to march with the fucking fascists. Biniam hadn’t sent him any more intelligence overnight, which meant the Dark Web had gone silent. Even on that anonymous side of the Internet, radicals took care. The leaders of the neo-Nazi movement had made their final plans offline. He knew the counterdemonstration was merely the most public face of what they had planned. If other Nazi attacks on May Day parades in other countries were anything to go by, there would be assaults on isolated Leftists, a firebomb or two, and some immigrants on the other side of town would get bashed. Those were the typical tactics. Some of the most hardcore neo-Nazis wouldn’t be at the counterdemonstration at all. Already known to police, they’d shy away from the main event and cause trouble well away from the television cameras and the heavy police presence.
He had no way to find out what those guys would get up to. They’d work on their own or in little groups that made their plans face to face. He’d have to stick with the big May Day fight and try to get in good with the scumbags. Hopefully he wouldn’t bump into those two cops again. That chick looked like the type who never forgot a face.
Even in the tourist center he saw a heightened police presence that morning. Cops stood at every intersection, and pairs of mounted police clopped along the old cobblestone lanes. A group of students handed out fliers in English about class warfare that included a long list of grievances against the government. Near the top was that the police favored the Nazis in demonstrations. Yeah, he had already figured that one out. An interesting omission was any mention of the May Day parade. The Commies expected trouble and didn’t want any tourists caught in the crossfire. Bad publicity.
He crumpled up the flier, threw it in a trash can, and headed to the kickoff site for the neo-Nazi demonstration. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths and had to keep his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling.
The morning air felt crisp and Heinrich was grateful for the heavy gray overcoat he wore. Spring was slow in coming this year.
They gathered in a small square lined with nineteenth century buildings and an equestrian statue of some dead general in the center. Heinrich was surprised at the numbers. He estimated at least five hundred, mostly young men who looked ready for a fight, although there was a fair number of women and old people as well. He even saw a few families. A big banner as wide as a city street read “Purity for Poland”. Several protestors carried handmade signs saying “Immigrants Out!” and “National Pride” and a few others his still-limited Polish couldn’t make out. He wished he had another couple of weeks to prepare for this case. Then he would have been close to fluent.
Considering how many people had gathered, the police presence was pitiful—just two cop cars and maybe ten officers, none in riot gear. He figured the heavy infantry would stick with the Communists, waiting for the two demonstrations to meet.
If the neo-Nazis wanted to cause trouble before that, though, the few cops on the scene wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing to stop it.
Several flags waved above the crowd. Some were the white and red horizontal stripes of the Polish flag while others had added to the design. Several Polish flags had an arm and a sword in black. Another had the Celtic cross which looked ominously like the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.
He barely made it into the crowd before someone stopped him.
“Where are you from?” the question was in Polish, and came from a mountain of a man, six foot six if he was an inch and every bit muscle. A shaved head and heavy brow shaded beady, suspicious eyes.
“I’m American,” Heinrich replied in Polish. “Online my name is NorseWarrior23. I write on Stormfront and other forums. You speak German? I prefer my own language.”
Man Mountain stared at him with a mixture of puzzlement and suspicion. Another guy cut in, older and more intelligent looking. Dressed in a conservative gray overcoat and dress shoes, his blonde hair combed back over an intelligent brow, he looked more like a bank manager than a neo-Nazi. Heinrich realized those two things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“Glad to meet a fellow German. I’m Hans,” the guy said in German, shaking Heinrich’s hand. Heinrich resist the urge to wipe it clean.
“Actually I’m American. My family came from Wałbrzych a couple of generations ago.”
“Glad to have you with us,” Hans said, not quite managing to get all the suspicion out of his voice. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I like coming to fight the Reds in Europe on May Day. It’s sort of an activist vacation. A lot of the American brothers in arms are doing it these days. We’ve beaten the Reds at home but they still show up here, the bastards. I was in Budapest last year.”
Hans’ eyes lit up.
“We were there too!” Hans said. He nudged Man Mountain and said something in Polish too quick to catch. Heinrich could guess because Man Mountain finally gave him a nod of approval.
“We showed them who’s boss, didn’t we?” Heinrich said.
Hans laughed. “Remember the fight on the bridge? That longhair fell right off into the water!”
Heinrich smiled, unsure of himself. Was this guy trying to trap him with a fake anecdote? There was something calculating in that look.
Before he had to reply, he got saved by a middle-aged man in camouflage mounting the statue and addressing the crowd through a megaphone.
Heinrich only caught about half of the speech. The guy introduced himself as the Warsaw chief officer for something called the National Revival of Poland. When he said that, those carrying the Polish flags with the arm and sword drawn on them waved them eagerly. He welcomed all the different groups who had come together and called for greater unity among them against their common enemies of Communism, Islam, immigrants, and Jews. Heinrich shoved his hands back in his pockets so he could flip the guy off. A total schoolboy move, but it made him feel better.
The announcer said something reassuring to the cops, either that the marchers wouldn’t cause trouble (clearly untrue) or they were all on the same side (a sentiment at least some local cops could get behind). Once again Heinrich felt frustrated that he had been given only a week to learn Polish.
Then the announcer welcomed the family of Dieter Freytag, all of whom were dedicated National Socialists and stood with their fallen relative in support for the cause. Heinrich craned his neck to see where the announcer indicated but he couldn’t pick the family out of the crowd. He perked up his ears when the announcer described how Dieter got killed. The guy had been walking home alone one night when he was set upon by two or more assailants and stabbed to death. No witnesses.
At least that’s what he picked out from the unfamiliar words over the buzz of the crowd. A police report would be handy. He reminded himself to check for newspaper reports online. He hadn’t had the chance to do that yet.
The announcer said the police didn’t know who the murderers were.
“But we know who it was!” the announcer said. “Who was it?”
“The Communists!” most shouted.
“The Jews!” Hans shouted.
“The Muslims!” Man Mountain shouted.
Jesus, guys. Get your story straight, Heinrich thought.
The announcer outlined the route they would to take, gave final instructions about not starting anything with the cops, and the march got moving.
The crowd flowed onto the widest street opening out from the square. The banner went in front, followed by a phalanx of tough young men. Behind came the older folks and the few women and children. Most of the flags were in this section. Around the sides and at the rear came more young toughs, few of them carrying flags. They kept their hands free for other jobs.
“You know why our young men don’t carry flags?” Hans asked in German. Heinrich blinked. He hadn’t noticed him move up alongside, but the guy sure had no
ticed where Heinrich’s gaze had been roving. Hans didn’t miss a thing. He’d have to watch himself.
Heinrich forced a smile. “They don’t want to carry flags so they can have their hands free to beat up the Reds.”
Hans laughed. “They could do that better with a flag pole, no?”
Something in Heinrich’s mind clicked. “Yeah, but the cops could arrest them for carrying a weapon. The police have done the same thing to Antifa in the United States.”
Hans made a face. “You will see some Antifa today, and by the end of the day they will be redder than the Communists. They are fools to come to this fight. The Reds hate them almost as much as we do. They are anarchists, and the Communists are authoritarians.”
And the fascists aren’t?
He wished he could punch this guy. A good left hook to smash his jaw and lay him out flat. That would keep Hans from talking crap. It sure would ease some of Heinrich’s tension too.
People started to raise their fists and began chanting in Polish. Heinrich walked along without doing either, his bad Polish the perfect excuse for not joining in.
Other than the march itself, the street was all but empty. A couple of TV cameras had set up on a side street to film as the march went past. Heinrich took care to avert his face. From the windows of the buildings to either side, a few people peeked out. One old lady even waved and cheered, but the vast majority of windows remained shuttered tight, row upon row of closed eyes that did not want to see history repeating itself in the street below.
The chants continued. They had made it four or five city blocks now and there were still not enough cops around and few onlookers. Heinrich wondered if the entire city had gone dead, or only the areas through which the opposing sides would march, if the regular people who only wanted to live their lives free of trouble had all gone to a different district for the day, turning their backs on the radical politics that threatened to tear their country apart.