The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  “Yes, that was definitely a mistake.”

  “They blew the whole thing. Hell, he was much more amusing when I had him out cold on the cellar floor,” Karl gloated, reminding Richard of his previous triumph over Peter.

  “Ah, yes, when you brought him to heel.” Richard wondered if Karl noticed the logical inconsistency of complaining about Peter’s escape after he had supposedly been brought to heel. Probably not.

  “Yes”—Karl smiled proudly, pleased that Richard remembered—“that goddamned cripple learned who was boss.”

  “Clearly,” Richard answered obscurely. “Anyway, the tape . . .”

  “Oh, that. Well, as I said, not much more on it.”

  “Ah, but I’d be interested in seeing the rest anyway.”

  “You would? Whatever for? There aren’t any more laughs in it.” Karl motioned in the air with the cassette.

  “Yes, but there is so much you can tell about the Untermensch mentality if you study their facial expressions. It is a hobby of mine. I’d really like to view this at some length.”

  “Oh, I see. I just thought they looked stupid,” Karl joked.

  Richard laughed. “Yes, but still there is something under all that stupidity—as you know, they can be quite treacherous. It really is an understudied field. I’m thinking of initiating some research projects in that direction with funds from . . .” He nodded his head upward in the usual manner. “Very hush-hush right now. But with your experience—especially with this fellow—well, I’m sure we’ll find your insights very, very valuable. And it would put paid to all those nasty, nagging questions . . . you know.”

  Karl nodded enthusiastically. “I’d love to help, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the time to sit and watch this now. I have a meeting I’ve got to get to! Maybe we can arrange a later time?”

  “Oh, you don’t need to stay, just give me the tape and I’ll get it back to you as soon as I’m done.”

  Karl made a face. “I’m not supposed to let it out of my sight,” he moaned, “and I’ve got to get it back to my source by tomorrow.”

  Richard shrugged expressively. “Oh, well, if you don’t want to help . . .”

  “It’s not that! It’s just that . . .”

  “If you don’t trust me . . .”

  “No, of course I do, it’s just that . . .” Karl grimaced. Handing Richard the tape, he whined, “Just don’t tell anyone! And make sure you keep it very safe!”

  Richard smiled. “You can trust me, Karl.”

  “Oh, I do, Richard, I do!”

  “Oh, and Karl?” Richard asked as Karl headed toward the door.

  “Yes?”

  “How long did you book this room for?”

  “Oh, I just booked this hour, I didn’t know you’d want to stay . . .” Karl grinned, unsure what to say at that point.

  “No problem, I’ll just stay until someone comes in. Have a good meeting.” Richard dismissed Karl in his best management voice—the voice and manner that had given him so much illusory power. With people like Karl, it always worked.

  Once Karl had left the room, Richard contemplated the videocassette player. There was no way to make a tape from another tape—he would needtwo machines. Tucking the tape into his jacket, he left the room and went to another well-equipped conference room. Nobody was inside and the hallway was quiet. Praying for a bit of luck, he pulled out his lockpick and opened the door. Using a handkerchief so that he did not touch the machine directly, he quickly unplugged it from the television and other equipment attached to it, and with a brazenness that was his only answer to having no real plan, he picked it up and carried it out of the room. He used the handkerchief on the underside, taking most of the weight on one arm, and only used the fingernails of his other hand to steady the machine as he carried it. It was unfathomably heavy. What did they put in these things? Lead?

  A secretary passed him in the hall and deferentially stepped aside. Then he met up with a junior officer. “Can I help you, sir?” the younger man asked.

  Richard swore to himself. Damn, a witness. “No, thank you,” he replied, willingthe man to move on and forget Richard’s presence there. Finally he reached the second conference room, and kicking the door shut behind himself, he dropped the stupid machine down next to the first and hurriedly attached the wires. As his hands fumbled with the connections, he feverishly thought of any excuse he could use if someone walked in while he was making the tape copy. Once the machines were connected, he realized, with a sudden dismay, that he did not have a blank tape. Swearing at himself for his stupidity, he left the two machines connected and walked to the nearest secretarial office.

  The woman looked up as he leaned in. “Mein Herr?”

  “Pen’s just gone out,” he said, mixing boylike helplessness with a charming smile.

  “I’ll get you another, mein Herr. ” She made a mark with her pencil on the document she was typing.

  “Oh, no, no—just point me toward the cupboard,” Richard said, already en route to the supply cabinet.

  “In there, mein Herr. ”

  He disappeared into the cupboard, found the locked cabinet, and hurriedly unlocked it. The secretary called out, “Is there a problem, mein Herr? ”

  “No, just found them now,” Richard replied happily as he quietly opened the cabinet and removed one of the empty tapes with his handkerchief. He stuffed it into his jacket, closed and locked the cabinet, and grabbing a pen from the shelf, stepped out into the outer office. “Had trouble finding a blue one,” he explained with a sheepish smile, “one as blue as those eyes of yours.”

  The secretary blushed.

  “Put it down on Vogel’s account,” Richard said, indicating the pen. “It’s his fault,” he added with a wink.

  Richard left the office, and the secretary dutifully accounted for the pen under Vogel’s name, smiling at a brief fantasy of marrying that kind, goodlooking, high-ranking official, whatever his name was.

  10

  OUR FATHER,WHO ART IN HEAVEN . . . In between refining his story if anybody walked in, Richard repeated the prayers he had learned as a boy. There was nothing else to do as the one machine reproduced the tape playing on the other. He had located a “high-speed-dubbing” button and used that. After twenty seconds or so, he had stopped the machines and checked that he was doing it right. Convinced that it all worked, he started at the beginning again—that way there would be no mysterious breaks in the footage—and now all he could do was pace nervously around the room. How long should he leave it? The entire tape? Or would the first half hour be sufficient? The tapes whirred. Would the speed compromise the quality? And what did they mean “high-speed”? It took an eternity!

  He lit a cigarette to steady himself, stopped pacing, and studied the smoke rings that he blew into the air. Yes, the story was gaining plausibility; he could carry it off. Besides, no one could tell what was being copied just by walking into the room; it would only be after the fact that the evidence gathered might be used against him. As usual, he thought. As usual, if he fell under serious suspicion, there was no hope: there was too much accumulated odd behavior, too many little pieces would fall into place if anyone asked any serious questions. It was little consolation that the same was true of all his coworkers: just working in the system left one incredibly vulnerable to denunciations.

  He smiled at that thought and let the plan expand in his head. Surveillance, yes. Accumulated evidence, yes. The security services did more surveillance of their own than anyone else. There would be photos somewhere. A master and his slave. Maybe in a hotel, maybe at the house. Peter had mentioned to Richard that he was fairly certain that there had been no surveillance inside the house, but still, there was sure to be something from outside, or from one of Karl’s business trips. If not, the identification that Peter had brought with him to the encampment would suffice. It would work. Richard leaned his head back and blew a stream of smoke into the air and laughed as it rose to the ceiling.

  His su
dden surge of confidence convinced him to copy the entire tape. Once the machines clicked to a stop, he removed the two offending tapes and tucking them into his jacket returned to his office and locked them in a filing cabinet. He then returned to the conference room and without difficulty disconnected the two machines and returned the one he had borrowed to the other conference room. The door was still unlocked and apparently no one had noticed the recorder’s absence. He placed it back on its shelf, rewired it, and with a flourish left the room, locking the door behind him. Success! Two witnesses had seen him with the machine, but neither had really taken notice; one secretary might reportthat he had signed out a pen, but she did not know his name and would probably not connect his visit with the tape that would turn up missing at the end of the accounting cycle. Of course, she would have to pay for the missing tape— consumer prices, not office-supply prices, and she might even lose her job, but nobody would assume the tape went missing for anything other than the usual black-market reasons.

  Richard returned to his office. He opened a desk drawer, removed some solvent, and putting a bit on his handkerchief—a nice white one with swastikas woven around the edge in white thread—carefully wiped both tapes. The one he copied should have been clean but he did it anyway; the other, however, he had been obliged to touch when Karl had handed it to him, and he paid careful attention to removing his prints from that. He put the copy in a safe place, picked up the original with his cloth, and inspecting it one last time, headed for Karl’s office. He was not sure how he would hand it to Karl without touching it, but need not have worried: Karl was not back yet. Richard smiled winningly at Karl’s secretary, explained he had borrowed something and was returning it, and marched into Karl’s office just long enough to place the tape in an unlocked drawer.

  Richard returned to his office and rubbed his face wearily. The conference room might have been bugged; it would be routine and the signal would simply have been recorded on tape and eventually discarded. How long until they dumped such tapes? Three months? His voice would be unmistakable as would Karl’s and the sound track of the tape. There was no camera in there—of that he was fairly certain, but that tape, if it existed, could be his death warrant. Was it worth waiting before he did anything with the videotape copy? He lit another cigarette and thought about it. Patience was one of the most difficult requirements of his job; he was not a patient man. Patience could save his life. Yet, the American elections were coming up, and if he acted fast enough, there was the faint hope that the publicity from Peter’s visit had not yet entirely died down. The timing was crucial—he could not afford to wait. He would get the videotape released and take his chances that the government would look for the leak elsewhere. There would be no a priori reason why they should look in his direction or Karl’s or at that conference room; there was no real reason to expect that conference room was currently bugged. Patience, he sighed to himself, was a virtue he did not possess, and that would one day get him killed.

  He stubbed out the unfinished cigarette and made a mental note to request a special mission by one of their operatives to find out about the conference room and erase any evidence as soon as possible. Then he lit another cigarette and contemplated what he should do next.

  The phone rang and an uninterrupted stream of calls and visitors kept him from thinking further about the problem until it was nearly time to leave. How to get the damn videotape out of the building. There was, in theory, no hurry, yet the longer he delayed the greater the danger of its being discoveredin his office. He rubbed his eyes and thought: there was the perfunctory search of his briefcase when he left the secure wing—it would probably not escape detection there and would raise questions. On the other hand, there was usually no frisking, but sometimes there was—even of high-ranking officials. If he carried the videotape on his person and it was discovered, there would be no suitable explanation—he and his wife and his children would be as good as dead. The thought scared him momentarily, and he had a sudden urge to fling the videotape out his window and be rid of it—and that thought solved his problem.

  He wrapped the videotape securely in crushed paper, put it in a large envelope, and sealing the envelope, went up two flights to the top floor and into the men’s toilet. No one was there. He opened the window, looked across the shaft to the unsecured wing of the building that was used for documentation of new residents, and listened for sounds from the men’s toilet that was opposite and one floor down. The window was open, not surprisingly—the room was small and unventilated—and no one seemed to be inside. He quickly checked that no one was around or looking out and casually flung the envelope across the chasm. It landed with a thud on the linoleum and Richard smiled: not bad for never having practiced!

  With deceptive calm, Richard left the secured wing and crossed the great marble hall of the entrance where Peter had stood in terror so many years before. The hall was nearly empty now—the orderly queues of applicants had been sent home long ago to come and wait in line another day. Richard laughed to himself at what passed for organization nowadays. People who had managed to complete three-quarters of the process were told to throw away their documents and come again to start fresh on the morrow. Why should they expect service or courtesy— it was a government office!

  He showed his identification to the solitary guard posted at the entrance of the unsecured wing and passed into the building without difficulty. Although it was not late—only six-thirty—the wing was essentially empty. Richard had expected that—the offices were open to the public for limited hours so that the late afternoon could be used to finish all the paperwork; however, the officials were not so easily coerced into being helpful. They slowed the process by doing the paperwork as the public waited and waited. The morning crowd was then dispersed as the offices closed for two or so hours for lunch and then reopened for the afternoon, starting the process over again. At the end of the public hours at four, the officials had little to do and could head for their homes at an early time—usually by five or six.

  Richard climbed the steps to the appropriate floor, walked casually down the hall and into the men’s toilet. He found the package lying on the floor of a cubicle and picked it up as if he had just noticed it and thought to turn it in to the front desk. Carrying both the briefcase and package seemed cumbersome, so he conveniently stored the found package in the briefcase and just as conveniently forgotabout it. He used the facilities, then strolled into the hall, poked his head into an empty office, and shrugging at the absence of his friend or acquaintance, headed toward the door.

  Outside he hesitated a moment to light a cigarette and contemplate his options. Should he take a taxi or the train? Should he get rid of the tape immediately or head home? It was a long enough pause for him to notice that he was being followed, and he cursed to himself. Often being tailed was a good sign, it meant a promotion was under way, but today, it meant he could not rid himself of the videotape. So, he could not go to the bookstore; he would have to go home. He sighed and hailed a taxi.

  His tail followed him but abandoned him near his house. Clearly the house was under separate surveillance. It was a bit soon for a promotion, and the more he thought about it, the more the surveillance worried him. He was cursing as he walked into the house, and Leszek, as he took Richard’s coat and briefcase, frowned at his superior officer’s infinite capacity for bad moods.

  “Anybody here?” Ryszard asked in German.

  “No.”

  “What about . . . ?” Ryszard gestured around the room.

  “Nobody’s been here since the last sweep.”

  Ryszard glared at him.

  “Nevertheless, I checked this morning, as scheduled. What’s up?”

  “I’m being followed. Make sure you and your wife are on good behavior when you’re near the windows. No smoking, and so on.”

  “We know the drill.”

  Ryszard scowled, then motioned for Leszek to light him a cigarette.

  “I suppose next y
ou’ll want me to smoke it for you?” Leszek suggested humorously.

  “Just do your job,” Ryszard snapped. “And tell the kids no Polish outside— not even a whisper in the yard. Oh, just tell them to speak German all the time, inside as well as out.”

  “They won’t like that.”

  “Neither do I. Just tell them.”

  “It would be better coming from you,” Leszek ventured. “They need to talk to their father now and then.”

  Ryszard had a sudden urge to hit Leszek. Of course, he didn’t; but he understood now why Karl had so regularly pummeled Peter. It was just too easy! Any mood, any irritation, any unappreciated comment, and with one quick gesture all the tension could be released. Why practice self-control, why respond with reasoned argument when it was so easy to just blow off steam?

  Leszek waited expectantly.

  “Yeah, okay,” Ryszard mumbled. “I’ll tell them. Would you fetch Andrzej for me? I have a job for him.”

  Ryszard explained to his son that he wanted him to take the videotape to thebookstore, adding, “If you’re caught with this one, Son, we’re all dead. Do you understand?”

  Andrzej wondered at his father’s serious tone but did not question it. He nodded solemnly. “I won’t get caught.”

  “You know the routine? You know how to make sure you’re not followed?”

  “You know I do, Dad.”

  “Turn around if you have even the slightest doubt.”

  “I will. You can depend on me,” Andrzej answered bravely. Why was his father looking at him like that?

  “I don’t have any choice,” Ryszard sighed. “Make sure they know I want it to get all the way to the NAU, into my father’s hands. I don’t want this held up for clearance in Warszawa. They can send a copy there if they want; in fact they can distribute it to everyone if they want, but I want a copy to go directly to your grandfather. He’ll know what to do with it. Do you understand?”