When they were clearly out of range, Michał turned back to Jerzy. “Please help me search further. There was fighting in Bankowa Square. Let’s try there. I can’t face my mother without news of Józef. Even if it’s bad news.”
“But I don’t understand, Viktor,” Barbara said. “What is it you’re doing?”
Viktor had his back to his wife, who stood in the open doorway of the bedchamber. He was rifling through drawers and tossing things helter-skelter into a valise. He paused momentarily, drew in a long breath, attempting patience. He would not raise his voice. The last thing he needed was for the twins to wake up. “I explained to you, Barbara Anna, that there’s a little revolution going on out there and it’s gotten out of hand, more than anyone expected.”
“I knew that before you arrived. There was fighting just below on the street. But why must you leave? This I don’t understand.”
Viktor placed his extra pistol on top of the clothing and snapped closed the bag. Turning, he approached Barbara. “It’s very likely that the Grand Duke has been assassinated and that will incite the Poles to more violence. It’s already dangerous for me. Truly dangerous.”
“Why is that? Your job at the Imperial
Commissioner’s?”
“Exactly. Most likely Novosiltsev is already close to Russian soil.”
“So? Surely you cannot be blamed for your work on his accounts, can you?”
Viktor’s eyes met Barbara’s, transmitting a truth he had not intended.
“What is it, Viktor?” Barbara pressed. “You’re more than an accountant, is that it?”
“It matters little now.”
“What is your position that makes things dangerous for you? I’ve wondered how we could afford an apartment such as this. You must be quite high up, yes? Tell me. I demand to know.”
“The less you know, the better. There will be men looking for me. If you have no information, you can’t tell them anything.”
“Oh, but they’ll tell me something about you, won’t they? What will they say? Have you swindled money? Is that it?”
Viktor set down his valise. Of course, she was right. It would be cowardly not to say something himself. “They will tell you . . .”
“What, Viktor? What?”
“They will tell that I have worked for the Secret Police.” There—the long hidden truth was out.
Barbara took several seconds for his statement to register. “You’re not one of them, are you?” She smiled oddly, as if at a humorless joke, for the thought was too ridiculous. However, her face reflected a mind quick enough to assemble a hundred hints from their past life together that lent it credence. She was taking in his face, too, and his intensely serious expression made for the coup de grace. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, my God in Heaven!”
“Don’t go off on one of your ravings. Not now. It’s my job and it’s put food on your table and provided nice things for you and the boys.”
“But the Secret Police—my God! How they have tortured us Poles! How many have they sent to dungeons or to die in the cold North? How many have they killed outright? And you, Viktor, you are part of this?”
“I am not like that,” Viktor said.
“What are you like, then? You are not the husband I thought you were, the one who would hold me in the mornings. My God, who are you?”
“I’m your husband, Barbara Anna and father to our children. I love you and the boys, you know that.”
“And yet you leave each morning and go about persecuting my neighbors, my countrymen? How can this be?”
He shrugged. “I must go, Barbara. There is a good deal of money in the top drawer of the dresser.”
“Money! What do I care for money when I find that my life has been a sham!”
“Nevertheless, you will need it. I’ll send more when I can. This little revolution will be short-lived. I will return when order is restored.” Viktor picked up his valise and moved past Barbara and out of the bedroom.
“What makes you think we will still be here?” Barbara called.
Viktor paused and turned about. “Ah, actually, I think it would be best if you take the boys and stay with your parents at the Gronska town house.”
“I’ll go where I like and take the boys with me.”
Viktor was at the door. “Keep them safe, Basia.”
“Ha! Oh, and don’t worry about the safety of your precious Grand Duke!”
Viktor turned about. “What do you mean? Why did you say that?”
“Because he escaped the assassination attempt, that’s why. His bodyguards paraded him right down this street and he’s no doubt out of the city by now. Good news for you, yes, that your fellow Russian scoundrel lives?”
Viktor closed the door behind him without a final goodbye.
Fear was a new emotion for Viktor and he didn’t like it. As long as he was on the street, he ran the risk of being confronted by cadets or any of the populace that had been roused to take up arms. He moved as quickly as he dared without appearing suspicious. At last he came to the correct avenue.
Limping, Viktor lugged his valise through a street dark as pitch and made his way up the front stairs of General Rozniecki’s city mansion, lifted the brass knocker and brought it down hard against the oak door several times so that the sound reverberated within. He waited, knocked again. He put his ear to the door. He could hear someone moving about. He pounded now at the heavy oak. He heard a faint metallic sound and suddenly became aware of a glint of light at a peephole in the door. An eyeball.
He stood back from the door so that he might be seen. “I am Viktor Baklanov,” he shouted. “I demand that you open at once.”
A long pause ensued. At last he heard the sounds of bolts being unloosed. The door opened slightly and a face appeared. Viktor pushed open the door and entered, forcefully knocking aside the man who had opened it. A single candle at a nearby side table did little to light the interior. The place looked and resonated like a vault.
“Where’s General Rozniecki?”
“Gone,” the man said, closing the door, but not without a wary glance at the street.
“Gone where?”
The man turned to Viktor, who recognized him as Bartosz, the general’s most trusted servant. It was Bartosz, a Pole and the go-between who supplied the payroll for Viktor and his men. He was a tall, sturdy man in his forties. The forehead of his roundish face had suffered a wound that extended up into the balding front of his head. “He escaped.”
“Escaped?”
Bartosz nodded. “From a gang of hoodlums—soldiers and students mostly. They came in knocking things about and looking for the general.”
It made sense, Viktor thought. The man was anything but discreet about his darker dealings as Chief of Police. Pole or not, he would be a prime target. “How did he manage to get away? I see that you did not.”
“He took to his hiding place and when they left, he commandeered a coach and bribed the driver to allow him to drive. As far as I know he escaped wearing the coachman’s cloak.—Has the whole city been given over to the young revolutionaries?”
“Much of it has. But some of those fools rising up are old fools. At any rate, it should not last long. The Grand Duke has escaped and he will no doubt rally his forces to suppress it.”
“I see.”
The comment showed no bias and Viktor could only wonder whether Bartosz might sympathize with the rising. “You didn’t run?”
“No, I would have nowhere to go.”
“I don’t intend to run, either. Tell me, Bartosz , where is this hiding place the general had?”
Viktor was led to a small room at the east end of the sprawling mansion. As Bartosz lighted several tapers, Viktor took note of a large desk with a cushioned leather chair behind it and a considerably simpler and less comfortable wooden chair in front. The only other thing of consequence was a very large tapestry of peacocks in a garden setting. It was framed in gold-painted bamboo and took up much of the wall
that in most rooms would have housed the fireplace. Viktor recognized General Rozniecki’s utilitarian purposes here. He had no doubt that this room was where the general received reports from his own spies and interviewed suspicious characters. It was best to keep them in a cold place and on a hard chair. And no doubt the oversized peacocks—with the eye-shaped markings on their feathers reminiscent of the evil eye—lent an unsettling aura to the room.
Bartosz approached the tapestry, knelt, and adjusted something at the bottom of the bamboo frame. Viktor heard a faint click and watched as the frame moved forward on vertical hinges. Behind the frame the gray stucco wall seemed quite ordinary—until another adjustment beneath a floorboard and a gentle push from Bartosz caused a stuccoed door to push open, revealing another room. The servant took two tapers, handed one to Viktor and led the way. Stooping to make his way through the doorway, Viktor followed, passing through the brick fittings of what had once been the fireplace for the office. Inside he stood to his full height, took stock, and whistled as he perused the amenities. Although it was windowless, the large room housed a bed, several chairs, a table with silver candelabras, and a well-stocked bookcase situated near a wine cupboard, equally well-stocked.
“Your master is a cautious man, it seems, Bartosz. Clever and cautious. So the room finally served its purpose.”
“Oh, it’s been doing that for years,” Bartosz muttered.
“What do you mean?” Looking around now, the room and its contents—a mussed bed, empty bottles, dirty plates, open books—did appear to have been used often.
Bartosz cast his dark eyes on Viktor, his expression indicative that he may have said too much. But he thought for a moment, gave a little shrug as if to allay his second thoughts, and moved back to the door, motioning Viktor forward. He pulled closed the framed tapestry, then pushed the door closed. He opened now a small hinged window in the door. Viktor had failed to notice it before. Bartosz pulled a nearby chair over. “If you take a seat, you will understand, my lord.”
Viktor sat. He looked through the window and realized he could see into the other room through two peepholes.
“You are looking through the center eyes of two of the peacock feathers.”
Another whistle. He shot a questioning glance at Bartosz.
“One can also hear fairly well what goes on in that room,” Bartosz said. “The general had Macrot, his secretary of spies, sit exactly where you are sitting. He would transcribe the conversations that were carried on in the other room.”
“Ah, so walls do have ears. And if someone incriminated himself, it became a matter of record.”
Bartosz began to pile the dirty plates on the table. “While that no doubt happened, my lord, the primary use of this little arrangement was to cheat his own spies. You see, when his mercenary spies came to him with information, he would have Macrot here record the content of the reports. Then, when the spy would be led to another room for libation, the secretary would emerge from behind the tapestry and provide the general with the document, one that he had predated, of course.”
Viktor looked at Bartosz with undisguised astonishment. “Then the general would use that to prove to the spy that the information was old news—stale and worthless, yes?”
“Exactly. I believe he took great enjoyment in cheating his own spies.”
Viktor remembered several instances when his men had come back to him with just such a story of Rozniecki and his mysterious spies. An intense—but impotent—anger simmered inside him.
Bartosz took notice. “No honor among thieves, as they say, my lord.”
“Or among spies apparently, my friend. What’s become of Macrot?”
Bartosz stood with a pile of dishes. “When the rebel patrol came in to find the general and take his personal papers and files, Macrot and several of his satellites fired upon them. It was a stupid thing to do and they paid for it. Shot dead they were.”
Viktor noted the off-handedness of the remark and could make nothing of it. Did Bartosz harbor some sense of allegiance to the Polish cause? He moved to a more comfortable chair and sat thinking after Bartosz had carried the dishes out of the hidden chamber.
General Aleksander Rozniecki, as Chief of Police, had been his superior, of course, but Viktor had considered himself lucky to report directly to the Imperial Commissioner, General Nikolai Novosiltsev. As despicable as Novosiltsev was, at least he had not turned coat on his own country. Rozniecki had served in the Polish army forty years, even commanding a brigade under Napoleon—supposedly with honor—but under the imposed Russian government of recent years he had been corrupted into a tool of tyranny, one who became known for swindles, bribery, extortion. Those who dared oppose him found themselves in prison. Viktor recalled an accusation of poisoning, but the proceedings were somehow obviated. No little wonder there. After all, the general was a close friend of Grand Duke Konstantin.
Viktor took in his surroundings. This will do, he thought. This will have to do. After all, the little cadet insurrection could not last long. A few days? A week? Sooner than would have been the case had the Grand Duke been killed, for the news would have to reach the tsar before retaliation could take place. With Konstantin alive, he would no doubt move swiftly with his Russian soldiers and those Polish soldiers who knew their own interest and stayed true to him. In the meantime, he would be safe here.
He thought about Barbara and the boys. He hoped she had the good sense to get them to Zofia’s. He sighed heavily at the thought that they were to be separated, however long it might be. Somehow, he would win back her heart and have his family again.
He could hear Bartosz returning now. He could manipulate the servant, make him provide his meals, discourage any would-be intruders. He would bully him if need be.
Viktor watched Bartosz closely as he stepped into the hidden chamber. The question was, could he trust this Pole?
18
30 November 1830
MICHAŁ CAME TO STAND IN the reception room of the Gronska town house. Dawn had broken. A terrible mixture of fear and hope were on the faces that turned toward him now, the image of Józef emblazoned on every one of them: Jan, who had already lost one son in the Napoleonic debacle; Anna, Józef’s mother, who had taken a sacred vow to hold her son back from the military; Iza, whose face showed both concern for young Józef and compassion for his parents.
Michał cleared his throat, wishing he could bring these faces to life, knowing that he could not. “We—Jerzy and I—have searched through the night . It has come to naught.—Józef is missing.”
“Missing?” The word was little more than a breath from Anna.
“You found nothing?” Jan asked, his gloved hand tightening on his wife’s hand. “Nothing?”
Michał nodded. “We know that he was one of the detail that made the attempt at the Grand Duke’s.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Anna hissed.
“He was to kill him?” Jan demanded.
“We don’t know that, Father.” Michał had called Jan Father for years without a second thought. After all, Jan had adopted him, treated him as his own, loved him unconditionally. But the old pain of having to face him after losing Tadeusz—Jan’s natural son—on the trek back from Moscow rose up in force. It was a guilt he had tried to put to rest, and yet here he was forced to deliver bad news about Jan’s youngest son, a mere boy.
“What do you know?” Jan asked. “What of his comrades? The others?
“His roommate, Marcin . . .”
“Yes? You found him?”
Michał couldn’t get the words out. His expression, he knew, told the story.
Iza moved from her chair to sit at Anna’s feet. Anna’s free hand reached for hers. “What of the hospitals?” Anna asked.
“We’ve checked, Mother. We’ll check again later.” Michał moved toward Anna and stood awkwardly before her. “You’re not to think the worst, Mother. You must not. He is a Stelnicki, you know.”
“So was Tadeusz,” she said, “my litt
le Tadek.”
Michał’s heart tore at the profound sadness in her voice.
Anna’s head came up at once now and she gave it a little shake, the silver in the fading auburn glinting in the new light coming in from the window. “No, I won’t think the worst, Michał.” She brushed back at an unshed tear and attempted a smile. The voice became stronger, too. “None of us will, do you hear?”
Jan squeezed her hand even as he looked up at Michał. “Michałek,” he asked, “how goes it in the city?”
His stepfather used his diminutive and for that Michał could have kissed him. For now at least, the pain and guilt ebbed away.
Michał pulled up a chair, collected himself, and spoke of the events of the previous night as he had witnessed them, taking care not to mention his finding Józef’s miniature portrait of Emilia Chopin on the floor of the Grand Duke’s Palace. Neither did he mention his altercation with Viktor Baklanov—the revelation of his brother-in-law’s true identity would keep for another time.
“We heard something from the speakers on Długa Street,” Jan said. “But how do we stand now?”
“Plans have been put into place for the defense of the city. Detachments now hold the garrison at the bridge, not far away, and wagons have crossed the bridge to Praga to carry back ammunition from the great armory there. The Russians guarding it were forced to retire not only by our infantry but by a significant segment of the populace of Praga.”
“The people are ripe for this, it seems,” Iza said. “And in the city itself, Michał?”
“The enemy occupies the northern quarter of the city to the barrier of Powazko as well as part of the southern part.”
“And the Grand Duke?” Jan asked.
They think he is with the largest force at the Powazko Barrier.”
“Has he retained Polish soldiers, as well as Russian?”
“He has.”
“That will be a dicey thing for him,” Jan said, “once he chooses to put down the insurrection, as he surely will. Will Pole fight Pole?”
The Warsaw Conspiracy Page 24