This code, he thought, needed something more substantial behind it, and he began perusing the usual suspects: Mein Kampf, biographies of Hitler, and other patriotic texts. Then he got a break, a bit of cleartext that stated angrily: “Note!!!” followed by a number. It was the sort of frustrated mistake that a bright junior partner would make when dealing with stodgy, stupid, and uncooperative seniors. It was, he presumed, the publication number of the correct edition of the book that they were using as the base for their code, and the reason for the message was that complaints had filtered back about garbled messages, obviously due to another edition of the book. He went to the library and with the help of the librarian located the text with that publication number. It did not take long after that to break the code and to translate the texts.
The messages that he uncovered were no less perplexing than the strange code itself. They carried irrelevant information to and from scattered and apparently unrelated sources; nevertheless, he did not stop to ponder their significance but quickly relayed the information to the Council for political and military analysis.
Not long afterward, he began receiving similar coded strings from HQ. Apparently, they, too, had been picking up odd messages, and they began sending what they thought might be similarly encrypted information to the encampment for him to work on. He translated it without comment, refusing to explain the solution to his unseen counterparts. They began probing his knowledge, planting their own text within the genuine messages, so in retaliation, he onlyreturned bulk results, refusing to identify which bits of text came from which encrypted messages and translating as loosely as possible without compromising message integrity. It was a game both sides played with neither side admitting the game even existed. He knew that eventually he would have to lose, but for the moment he enjoyed his advantage and the obvious frustration of his Warszawa counterparts.
Without its ever being specified exactly why, two analysts were eventually sent in person to speak with him directly, “in order to exchange ideas and share information.” He was less than enthusiastic in his reception, speaking in vague terms about his work and explaining that most of what he did was by intuition. He freely volunteered to work on anything they sent him but confided that he really wasn’t able to be of any more help than that.
Zosia sat in on one of the interchanges and watched him with growing perplexity. In the evening they took a walk together, and as Joanna skipped ahead to explore a hollow log, they stood together, watching her play, in silence. It was that time of day when the sun hovered on the horizon—bright enough to irritate his eyes, yet casting too little light for him to wear his sunglasses. He took the glasses off and turned to smile at Zosia, but she did not look at him; instead she stared intently after Joanna. The silence grew heavy between them, and he waited uneasily for Zosia to say what was on her mind.
Finally, still without looking at him, she spoke. “You were lying to them today.”
“Yes, I was.”
“I think they knew it, too.”
“It doesn’t matter. They got the message.”
“And what was that?” she asked, apparently distracted by something in the distance.
“I’m not telling them anything,” he answered, following her gaze though he knew nothing was there.
“Why not?”
“Isn’t it enough that I decode the documents for them?”
“But what if something should happen to you?” she asked.
“Indeed.”
“Oh.”
Joanna had spotted another, more fascinating goal and had run on ahead. They walked after her in silence for a few minutes. Then Zosia finally asked, “Do you really think you need to do that? Don’t you think you can trust them?”
“Why should I? Why should I give away my only advantage?”
“So you think as long as you’re unique, you’ll be safer,” she guessed, kicking at a bit of sandy soil with her toe.
“I think they’ll be a little less careless with me. It won’t last all that long though. They’ll work it all out sooner or later on their own.”
“Maybe not. We’re always short of trained people, and those we have are always short of time.”
“Well, then, you’d think they’d be a little less cold toward me, wouldn’t you?”
“The world doesn’t revolve around you; maybe they have other concerns.”
“Yeah, but then I’ve got to look out for myself, don’t I?”
“Yes, I suppose you do.” Zosia’s voice had taken on a resigned and somewhat cold edge.
He felt that she was misjudging his motives. He didn’t care what any of the others thought, but he didn’t want her to think of him as selfish. He took her hand, stopped her in her stride, and turned her toward him so that she could see the sincerity in his eyes. “Zosia, it’s not like that. I mean, it is a bit, but you’ve got to understand I’ve had so many people tell me my life was worthless, that it was hanging by a thread. Even your friends were willing to just blow me away.” He sighed heavily. “Don’t you understand? I need some sense of security, some feeling that I am indispensable or . . . or at least not so easily trashed.”
It was growing dark, and in the dim light, he could not discern her expression. He added somewhat ruefully, “In any case, I’m not denying them much. It’s just a bunch of dross sent out by some conspiring officials, it’s not important. They know that, that’s why they weren’t all that upset.”
“It’s all right, you don’t have to explain.”
“Is it really all right?”
“Yes. I think I understand. And I trust you to do what’s right.”
He sighed again. What the hell did that mean?
They both stood in silence watching Joanna skip stones off a tree trunk. She went to pick up the stone she had thrown, then as if she had suddenly seen something, she broke into a run and disappeared down a slope. Zosia stared as if entranced, then gasped and ran in the direction Joanna had taken. Peter ran after her, calling to Zosia, “What’s wrong?”
At the bottom of the slope Joanna was standing stock-still. Zosia skidded to a stop just behind her. Both of them stared at a small white stone planted discreetly under a large pine.
Peter had stopped with Zosia, and he gasped quietly at the pain the sudden exertion had caused him. “Co to jest?” he asked softly.
“It’s Adam’s gravestone,” Zosia replied in English. Obviously she did not want to include Joanna in the conversation. She stroked her daughter’s hair as she spoke.
“Is he buried there?” Following Zosia’s lead, Peter had switched to English as well.
“No, of course not. I have no idea where his body is.”
“I’m sorry.”
Joanna stood quietly looking at the stone. Zosia continued to stroke the child’s hair. “We always have a service and a memorial stone for our lost ones. I had not noticed that we were so near to it—not until Joanna ran down the hill.”
“You are sure that Adam is dead?” he asked, perturbed by the twisting he felt in his gut. What if the answer was no?
Zosia threw him a glance that made him wish he had not been so crass. Whatin the world had led him to ask something so incredibly insensitive? “Yes,” she answered finally. “His death was registered in their files. They don’t usually bother to send us formal notification,” she added sarcastically.
He had not meant his question to sound the way it had come out. Wasn’t it possible that he had wished there was hope for Adam? “What did he die of?” he asked, hoping to sound conciliatory, but realizing immediately that this question was even stupider than the last.
“A heart attack,” Zosia answered as if repeating an oft-told lie.
Joanna turned to her mother, wrapped her arms around her leg. “Can we go home?”
“Of course, dear.”
Peter picked up Joanna and they began walking slowly back to the camp. Joanna wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his shoulder; within minutes her
steady breathing told them that she was dozing. They continued walking in silence, each immersed in his or her own thoughts. Peter felt comforted by the trusting child in his arms and pressed his head against hers affectionately. He struggled to find the right words to apologize to Zosia without putting his foot in his mouth again, but Zosia interrupted his thoughts before he had decided what to say.
“What does it feel like?”
“What do you mean?”
“To be questioned. To be tortured. What did Adam feel?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you were tortured, weren’t you?”
“You know I was.” Nightmarish images flashed before his eyes. “I imagine it wasn’t the same for him though.”
“Then what do you think it was like? I mean, to be interrogated like that? Did he feel hopelessness? Despair? Did he feel abandoned?”
“I can’t say, Zosia. I’m sure it’s different for each person. For me, I’d say there was always a strong feeling of being betrayed by humanity.”
“All of humanity?”
“In a way. I think people in pain want the rest of the world to offer help, or at least sympathize, but for me the only people I saw were ones who enjoyed seeing me suffer. My pain was not only preventable, it was deliberately caused by other people. I think anyone who is used to normal human interactions finds that a bit of a shock.”
She did not say anything, so after a moment’s reflection he added, “Until one gets used to it, and comes to expect it even.” He did not add, And comes to believe it is justified .
“Do you think that’s what Adam felt?”
Peter shrugged. “His situation was quite different from mine; in his place, I might have been more concerned about not betraying anyone. Most of the time, I wasn’t even asked anything. Nothing relevant, anyway. That relieved any fear ofbetraying anything, so in some ways I was less afraid than I might have been. And I didn’t have a family to lose, so maybe that made it easier for me to accept the thought of dying.”
Zosia walked on beside him, her face set in stony silence.
He paused, trying to recover some of what he had felt in those horrible prison cells when left alone with his pain. When he realized that she had not said anything, he turned to look at her questioningly. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was being stupid again—she wasn’t asking about his experiences at all! What must she have felt when she learned of Adam’s capture? When she knew he was almost certain to die a horrible death? He thought about what Adam must have felt and wondered what his own feelings would have been if he had known that Zosia and Joanna were praying for him. Would it have changed anything?
Carefully, so as not to aggravate the pain he knew she must be feeling, he said, “Zosia, when I said I had nothing to betray, it also meant I had nothing to hold on to. When I said that I had no family to lose, it also meant that there was no one worth dying for. I only know that my greatest fear was dying alone, unknown and unmourned. Adam had you, and even if you weren’t there, he knew he had your love. And he knew that Joanna would carry something of him into the future. Don’t worry, Zosia, you were there for him.”
She stopped walking for a moment and looked up at him. Gently he wiped the tears from her eyes.
7
THE FOLLOWING MORNING he told the visiting analysts how to decipher the nonstandard code. They were grateful and genuinely surprised.
“It would never have occurred to us!” Teodor asserted. He was the elder of the two—short and nearly bald, looking like a somewhat belligerent gnome.
His young companion, a woman named Halina, nodded her head in agreement. She was also short, with dark hair and a tired-looking, thin face. “We’ve been working at this too long! To miss such a schoolboy’s trick!”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Teodor agreed. “We’re overbooked, that’s the problem. And one would hardly expect such a sophisticated system to be used to carry someone’s private code. Still that’s no excuse . . .” He shook his head in consternation.
“Do we know yet what their little conspiracy is about?” Peter asked.
Teodor laughed. “World domination!”
“Either that or a woman.” Halina giggled. “It’s always one or the other with these types.”
“Just as well we didn’t prod the American Security Agency into helping us,” Teodor commented. “We tried, but they ignored us.”
“They always ignore us,” Halina observed.
“They’re so incredibly jealous of their information there!” Teodor grumbled. He looked to Peter. “I don’t suppose your lot ever got any useful information out of them?”
“Yes and no.”
“Ah, now that is cryptic,” Halina said with a laugh.
“Well, ‘no’ because we rarely got any real-time information out of them,” Peter explained.“Everything seemed to be jealously guarded, and as far as I could determine, the whole Underground structure was viewed as so much cannon fodder, even the HQ staff. But ‘yes’ because we’d get some help with the training. I, for one, was tutored by an American. Not really an American—an Americanborn Brit, actually. Anyway, they’d come over for a year or two and try to make themselves useful, so they could get to know what it was all about. Then they’d go back claiming to represent us. In fact, I think it was a requirement to run for a position in the government in exile, spending time in England, that is. At least it seemed to be the custom.”
Peter reflected on the number of Americanized Brits he had seen. Each had come “back” to the “homeland” eager and enthusiastic and full of energy and ideas. By the end of their stay most were tired and disillusioned and desperate to get out. Their romantic dreams were shattered as they discovered that the heroically brave freedom fighters were nothing but a pack of ill-tempered, often drunk, chain-smoking humans who had no patience with and no respect for idealistic children playing at war. They learned the awful truth that there was no nobility in suffering through the usual government punishments, that rotting in prison for a few years was often sufficient to break a person’s resistance, that petty bureaucratic harassment and the inability to find work would silence most protesters, that those who continued the fight were often considered, quite rightly, fanatics. They were particularly horrified to discover that a good portion of the Underground’s revenues came from illegal activities such as bank robberies and drug and alcohol sales, and they were dismayed to learn that the “ unified front” that was presented with such success in the NAU was a complete sham, that hatred of the Nazis was not enough to cause Monarchists, Republicans, Socialists, Communists, and others to genuinely love each other.
“. . . same thing here,” Teodor was saying, “except it is a requirement, written into our emergency constitution, that all our representatives are born and raised in the Reich. The exiles are always trying to change that, but so far, we’ve managed to at least hold on to that much control of our government. Of course, once one of our people—usually from HQ—is called to serve, they immediately forget where they came from and start catering to their American constituency. And since we don’t get a vote, there’s not much we can do.”
“Our one great advantage—the Empire—has been turned against us,” Petercommiserated. “Now they rule everything from Toronto instead of London and we’re just another damn colony. We don’t even get a vote. They said it was just too impractical and would be too dangerous for us.”
“I heard,” Halina added, “that there is pressure from the NAU government to keep so-called foreign influence to a minimum. They’re afraid of the Communists. They don’t want to recognize governments on their territory voted in by people who are not under their jurisdiction.”
“What a crock of shit,” Teodor commented. “The Communists have virtually no support here—which should come as no great surprise with their big brothers next door being so helpful murdering our people.”
“Oh, Comrade Teodor!” Halina mocked the singsong Russian accent. “Do you not know, they were not m
urdered! They went happily to their deaths in the Siberian mines to help the Soviet war effort against . . . er, who was it again? Oh, yes, that belligerent little group of nations that stood between us and the Reich!”
“Psychopaths to the left of us, murderers to the right,” Teodor sang.
“And the Reds and the Nazis always kiss and never fight!” Halina joined in the chorus.
Peter joined them as they laughed uproariously. Rubbing the tears from his eyes, he opined, “Clearly you two have worked together far too long.”
“Yeah. With no help. To get back to our original track,” Teodor agreed.
“Single though it may be, it is well beloved,” Halina chimed in.
Peter nodded. They had already told him about the perilous state of their human resources. During the first several years of their occupation, before America even entered the war, the Nazis and the Soviets had murdered nearly everyone with any higher education whatsoever, and though, over the years the Home Army had pieced together an education network and had tried to recoup their losses, the attrition rate was still appalling, and experts in any field were few and far between. However, because the regime was so brutal and murderous, there was no shortage of volunteers to carry out less specialized tasks, and it was this great army of volunteers, most of whom lived tragically short lives, that provided the backbone of their cryptanalysis: most of what they knew about the enemy’s security systems they simply stole, often at a terrible cost in young, idealistic lives.
“But to get back to what you were saying,” Peter said, “for all their political pressures, it still doesn’t explain why they can’t offer more technical assistance. Especially with espionage and analysis. We risk our fucking lives and they sit on their arses and fret about trivialities.”
“Well, you know, they never know when we’ll be infiltrated or simply crack under torture and give up all their precious secrets,” Halina offered as a diplomatic defense.
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