The Warsaw Conspiracy

by James Conroyd Martin

“That’s enough, Barbara. I know of no one in the Third Department. I can promise nothing.” He thrust his arms into his frock coat, pulling it on in a frenetic manner. “It’s best you forget this notion.” He made for the door.

  “I do not forget, Viktor,” Barbara shouted at his retreating form. “Neither does my mother! Nor my brother Michał! He’s coming to visit Cousin Zofia tomorrow. Perhaps he’ll manage to do something. We Stelnickis remember!”

  Opening the front door, he found himself calling back, “But you are a Baklanov now, Barbara!” He had been caught off guard and immediately regretted the parry.

  The door had scarcely closed behind him when he heard a crash against it and the sound of shattering glass. He took the few steps to the street, colliding head-on with a street vendor pushing her cart toward Market Square. He gave no acknowledgement to the startled old woman who cursed him. Viktor steadied himself. His lameness had made him a master at staying upright in such circumstances. The woman had gone down, and a passerby was helping her up now. Viktor took his bearings and began making his way to his office.

  Good god, he thought, how had the morning come to this? He moved slowly, not because of his disability but because his mind was in a ferment. It had been a while since he had thought of his own father, and Barbara’s mere mention of him roiled what had been placid waters. On several occasions Barbara had asked about his life at home in Russia, but he had always put her off. How could she—with her ideal family, one so full of ideals—understand? When he did think of his father these days, it was with no feelings of longing or sweetness. Mikhail Baklanov had been a low-level bureaucrat in Moscow, one who—to hear him tell it—had never received his due. And he had taken his bitterness out on his wife and one of his two sons in such abusive ways Viktor could still cringe at the violence he had witnessed growing up. Viktor and his mother took the brunt of Mikhail Balkanov’s anger and frustration, his inexplicably favored elder brother, Fyodor, usually fully escaping any verbal or physical affronts. While his brother’s name meant “God’s gift,” at the earliest of ages, four or five, Viktor instinctively perceived that his club foot made himself the easiest target. Even in siring his children Mikhail—to his mind—had been proven imperfect. Viktor thought now how he had come to hate his father, more for the harm done to his stoic and saint-like mother than that done to him. In time, however, after his mother’s early death and his father’s dismissal from state service—with the meagerest pension—and descent into a drunken retirement, he came to feel pity for the man and his failure at life. Viktor could admit to himself now that he had, at first, obtained his position in the government as a revenge quest. He was determined to show his father how to rise within the ranks. He would succeed and finally be noticed by his father. How he would enjoy that! Fyodor had, after all, become a ne’er-do-well caught up in a distillery business.

  Viktor’s hate had yielded to pity for his father, and now he realized for the first time that beneath the overlay of hatred and pity lay the ruins of—what? Affection? Love? Was it possible? No, it could not be that. Anything but that for the man who had reigned over an unspeakable domestic nightmare, the husband who had regularly blackened his wife’s eyes for a supper that didn’t meet satisfaction or wasn’t produced on time, the father who had dragged his lame son down the street by his ear for his lack of celerity.

  Viktor would be everything that his father aspired to—and more. He would succeed where his father had failed. Doing so had consumed his life, and only his marriage to Barbara and the birth of their twins held any meaning commensurate in any way to his desire for position and power. Thoughts of his family made him realize, too, that he wished to succeed in the domestic area of his life.

  Oh, he could tell Barbara the unhappy details of his life, and she would attempt to empathize—and perhaps she truly could understand—but, he thought, a heat rising into his face, doing so would shame him. He could not bear that, nor sympathy from anyone for his club foot.

  As he turned the corner, ignoring the beggars outside a church, he remembered Barbara’s own imagined meeting with the Imperial Commissioner. She wouldn’t dare, would she? Doing so would likely bring down a house of cards, destroying both his professional and personal lives in one swoop. It was a far-fetched idea, one that he forced out of mind. But more threatening was this visit from his brother-in-law. What did it portend? Was it merely social—or would the meddlesome Zofia or Barbara set Michał Stelnicki to investigate the whereabouts of his father? Perhaps he had his own notion to do so? His brother-in-law’s arrival in Warsaw could spell nothing but trouble.

  Viktor despised Michał and knew the feeling was mutual. Damn, he thought, how he would like one day to show him just what he thought of him, his disdain for Russia, his status as minor nobility, his damned peacock strutting. How he wished he could hint, merely hint, at the power he himself had at his beck and call. That would take him down to size.

  Having taken a circuitous route to his place of work, Viktor was nearing Kanonia Square, where an unmarked, five-storied building, once used by the clergy of the nearby St. Jan’s Cathedral, now housed the offices of General Nikolai Novosiltsev, the Imperial Commissioner, second in power in Warsaw only to the Grand Duke Konstantin. Viktor’s office was small, but it was at the rear and had the enviable advantage of two square windows. The other offices and interrogation rooms of the Third Department were secreted in the cellar.

  Following his custom of avoiding the front entrance, he entered the alleyway that led to an unimposing back entrance. Here there was no one to notice the care he had to take in managing the stairs. He had no sooner entered the building than he heard a muffled commotion below. Instead of proceeding to his office, he picked his way down stone steps into the cellar and pushed back a heavy iron door.

  Upon the door’s closing, the cellar became very dark. It stank of mold, urine, sweat and fear. Several of the cells were occupied. As he walked the long, narrow hallway that ran down the cellar’s middle, he could hear one detainee pacing, another coughing, another whispering—no, praying. Here the Third Department detained suspects and conducted interviews. Viktor picked up his pace, passing, on each side, cubicles once used by the clergy for their monastic-like retreats. More masochistic than monastic, he thought. He had converted from Russian Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism as a requirement to marry Barbara, but he had little use for any church, and after his wedding ceremony never again accompanied Barbara to Mass at Saint Martin’s.

  He moved toward the light emanating from the little window-like opening of one of the cells. He could hear the questioning more clearly now, sense the fear in the trembling tenor voice answering his inquisitors.

  At the window now, once used by servant nuns to pass meager meals to the clerics, he peered through the lacework curtain that had been hung there so that he might watch without having those being interrogated see him, recognize him as an officer in the Third Department, the secret police. His anonymity in connection to the Third Department made for a distinct advantage. And his marriage had made it an absolute necessity.

  His argument with Barbara that morning disturbed him, and like a wound that refused to heal, an old, festering regret opened. If only he had thought to rig the lacework years before, he would feel more secure now in his position, in his marriage. But standing in that very spot four years ago, he could not have guessed that revealing his face to a prisoner—a particular prisoner—would later haunt him and threaten his position—and his marriage. The memory chilled him. Neither Barbara nor any of the Stelnickis must ever know of his position in the Third Department.

  Two of Viktor’s lieutenants, Sergei and Luka, were questioning the young, pitifully pale cadet. Strapped into a straight back chair and streaming tears, the boy was answering in short, staccato sentences. The cadet’s right hand was held in place by a cuff fastened to the table. Entwined about the base of his fingers were thin leather straps that could be tightened by the turn of a knob. The straps were taut, the fing
ers bluish. Sergei looked toward the window and caught the motioning signal from Viktor. Momentarily he turned the questioning over to the hulking Luka and left the cell. Luka started right in on the boy. “What of this plan do you know?” he demanded. His Polish was as crude as his demeanor was imposing. With luck both would work the will of the Third Department.

  “Well?” Viktor whispered even before Sergei could close the door behind him.

  The thin Sergei gave a sheepish roll of his dark eyes and a shrug.

  “You mean you have nothing to report?”

  “The boy says he has heard of nothing, that he knows nothing.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “He’s a frightened child, sir. If he knows anything of value, I think he would have broken by now.”

  “You’ve been too easy on him.”

  As if on cue, the boy cried out as the device was tightened. Luka’s threatening voice made up in volume and gruffness for what it lacked in vocabulary.

  “Of course, sir, you may try your hand.”

  “Watch it, Sergei, or you’ll find yourself doing guard duty in Siberia.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergei responded, properly chastened.

  Viktor let out a sigh. “If he doesn’t know anything, that does not preclude his learning something in the future, does it, lieutenant?”

  “No sir.”

  Viktor thought for a moment, then said, “Take off his finger.”

  “Sir?

  “His index finger—take it off. If he is right-handed, take that one off.”

  “But, sir—”

  Viktor had only to issue a signal with his eyes for Sergei to realize he was serious. “If doing so offends your sensibilities, Sergei,” he said with sarcasm, “have Luka do it. I’m certain he can make a good job of it.”

  Sergei swallowed hard. “Shall I warn him? Shall I give him one more chance to speak?”

  “No,” Viktor spat. “Just do it, and tell him, my friend, that unless he comes back with real information, with having heard something substantive, next time it will be his ear.”

  Viktor turned and retraced his way the length of the hallway, moving toward the steps. He had hoped to have the heavy iron door closed behind him before the shrill scream could follow him. His foot had slowed him down just enough, however, and he paused at the door, momentarily closing his eyes at the animal-like cry.

  Viktor slowly climbed the steps and made his way to his office.

  “Good morning,” Anzhela said as he entered the outer office.

  He replied in kind, wondering if there wasn’t something different in her lifeless monotone this morning, something ominous. His secretary was at least fifty, unnaturally thin with sharp features exaggerated by her dark dress, and a sour disposition, all descriptors that belied her name: she bore no relation to an angel.

  He had just reached for the door handle to the inner office when she spoke up, as if just remembering something. “The general sent for you a while ago.”

  “Did he?” Viktor asked before turning back to her.

  “He did.” Anzhela glanced up from a neat pile of papers and nodded, her lips so thin as to be invisible, her eyes an indecipherable cypress green.

  Viktor turned his back to her and entered his office. Damn the woman, he cursed. Was there more here today than her usual cloying taciturnity? He moved past the desk and stood in front of the mirror, smoothing his straw-colored hair and adjusting his tall standing collar and wide tan cravat.

  He left the office then, silently passing Anzhela and making for the staircase. Imperial Commissioner Nikolai Novosiltsev had his offices at the top of the building. Four flights, Viktor cursed. What was wrong with the man? God rot him! He must be nearly seventy and yet he seemed to enjoy taking the stairs. Viktor wondered if perhaps he most enjoyed wearing out his visitors before they came before him. It would be just like him. There was a strategic advantage in such a staging. It was the equivalent of standing over someone being interrogated. Viktor knew that technique well enough.

  For Viktor the stairs were a real hardship. He held to the railing on the right, painstakingly lifting his right foot from one step to the next, drawing up the lame leg behind, all the while listening for the sounds of others so that he could steel himself against the humiliation of having others see him, of having others pity him. Today he was thankful he had the staircase to himself.

  On the fifth level he stood outside the office many minutes, catching his breath, straightening his coat and cravat, collecting his thoughts. What did the man want so early in the day? Then, again, Viktor had come late. Had Novosiltsev noticed? Was he petty enough to mention it? No, his was a sly pettiness. The general’s having him sent up the moment he came in was his way of mentioning it.

  When he entered the outer office, Larissa glanced up at him, her gray eyes tightening, but she said nothing and went back to the business of sorting through some papers on her desk. Color had come up into her cheeks. She was beautiful as ever.

  “The general wanted to see me.”

  She did not afford him even a glance. “Still does, I imagine. You’re late. Go on in.”

  Viktor moved toward the door. Her indifference was feigned, the tension in the room palpable. Larissa had not forgiven him and although he couldn’t blame her, it was nonetheless annoying as hell.

  He gave a light knock at the door and upon hearing the general’s response, pushed it open.

  “Ah, Viktor,” General Nikolai Novosiltsev said, looking up from his desk, “at last.” He remained seated. The Imperial Commissioner’s office was situated at the front of the building so that the four large windows on the wall behind his great desk—two on either side of a massive mirror—allowed for the unusually bright November sun to spill into the room, the coruscating light momentarily blinding Viktor. Another disadvantage for someone being summoned.

  Viktor moved toward the desk, stopped, bowed.

  “Sit down, Viktor. Sit down.”

  Viktor obeyed, sitting in a hard, uncushioned chair positioned in front of the desk. It seemed a bit low so that he had to peer up at his superior.

  The gray-haired general folded his hands together on the desktop, his milky blue eyes set deep in a puffy face like robins’ eggs in a nest.

  Viktor took in the situation. To see the general’s demeanor, one would think him Viktor’s spiritual advisor who was about to impart some profound advice. And sometimes the general did presume that stance. But not today. No cleverly polite observations or little jokes today. Something was amiss. The hackles at the nape of Viktor’s neck rose. He waited.

  “How goes the investigation into the academy?”

  “Nothing to report of any importance, sir. But we’re not wasting time, you can be sure.”

  “Meaning what, Viktor? Be specific, man.”

  “One of the cadets has aligned himself with us.” Viktor hoped the exaggeration sounded genuine. “We hope to get a break soon.” He could only pray that the cadet below would not make a liar of him. God help him if he did not provide the break.

  “Good. You’ve put pressure on him? There’s something afoot and we may not have a lot of time.”

  “I know, sir. I can assure you that he does indeed know we mean business.”

  “As do your men?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Viktor breathed a little inward sigh of relief, thinking his presentiment of something more serious was groundless. He was certain that he was about to be dismissed when Novosiltsev rose instead and turned away, facing the nearest window.

  His body silhouetted against the invading sunlight, Novosiltsev peered out the fifth level window for a long minute, looking down on the square. “Your brother-in-law, Michał Stelnicki.”

  It was not a full thought and yet it seemed to take Viktor by the throat. What was this about? “Michał Stelnicki,” Viktor parroted.

  Novosilsov swung around, his eyes honing in on Viktor. “How devoted of a brother-in-law are you, Viktor?”
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  An easy answer here. “There is no love between us, sir.”

  “None?”

  “None, sir. No kinship of any kind other than accidental.”

  “You would not protect him?”

  “Sir, with a clean conscience I could send him off to Siberia.”

  Novosiltsev smiled neatly. “You’ve already done something of the kind, haven’t you?”

  Viktor’s stomach tightened at the allusion. He did not respond.

  Nikolai Novosiltsev came around the desk and stood over Viktor. “Tell me, did you know of your brother-in-law’s arrival in Warsaw?”

  Viktor looked up, noting the sallow complexion and loose skin at the neck. “Only this morning, sir,” he said, taking in the smell of old pipe tobacco on the commissioner’s clothing, alcohol on his breath. “Barbara told me he’s due tomorrow. I’ll have him watched, you can be sure.”

  “You’re tardy to the battlefield, Viktor,” Novosiltsev snapped. “That won’t do.”

  “Sir?”

  “The fact is, Jan Michał Stelnicki arrived yesterday.”

  The general seemed to be checking Viktor’s facial reaction. Viktor’s surprise was sincere and too sudden to be masked.

  “Do you remember last May when Prince Czartoryski visited the Stelnicki estate?” Novosiltsev asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you remember how his visit raised questions. And suspicions. You yourself observed the prince in consultation with your brother-in-law. The prince has been at the top of our watch list for some time. We wondered at the visit and whether the prince wasn’t trying to enlist him in some intrigue. Something we should be on guard about. I recall that you said you heard a few key words while listening at the door to the room where they had sequestered themselves. Words like plot and insurgents, Viktor. Highly suspicious, you said, and going forward, your department was to keep an eye on the situation. Is this the case or not, Viktor?”

  “Of course, I remember. We did keep an eye. We did and nothing arose. For months there wasn’t even innocent correspondence between the two. I’m certain—”