by Len Deighton
‘No, they didn’t say he had been in this hotel, Dicky. They suggested that we try to find him in another hotel with a similar name. It’s on the other side of the airport. It’s a sleazy dump for overnight stays. He won’t be there. It was just a polite way of telling us to drop dead.’
‘I’ll never get the hang of this bloody language,’ said Dicky. He smiled and slapped his hands together in the forceful way he started his Tuesday morning ‘get-together meetings’ when he had something unpleasant to announce. ‘Well, let’s go there. Anything is better than sitting round in this mausoleum.’ He produced his room key from his pocket and shook it so it jangled.
I was tired after doing the rounds of the city. The official line was that the last of the political prisoners had been released the previous year, but for some unexplained reason all the people given to airing political views the government didn’t like were still serving indefinite detention in a labour camp near Gdansk which had been doubled in size to accommodate a couple of hundred extra detainees. Most of my other old contacts had moved away after the big crack-down, leaving no forwarding address, and my enquiries about them had not been met by neighbourly smiles or friendly enthusiasm.
Now I wanted to have a drink and then sit down to a leisurely lunch, but Dicky was a restless personality, ill-suited to the slow-paced austerity of communist society. I followed his gaze as he looked around with pent-up hostility at everything in the hotel lobby. Its institutional atmosphere was like that of a hundred other lobbies in such gloomy communist-run hotels. The same typography on the signs, and the same graceless furniture, the dim bulbs in the same dusty chandeliers reflecting in the polished stone floor, the same musty smell and the same surly staff.
The skittish way in which Dicky nagged his Department into doing his will was less effective when pitted against the ponderous systems of socialist omnipotence. And so Dicky had found that morning, as he tried to press the hotel manager – and individual members of the staff – into providing him with a chance to search the hotel register for George Kosinski’s name. I knew all this because a full description of Dicky’s activities had been provided to me by a querulous German-speaking assistant manager who was placated only after I gave him a carton of Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
‘I’ll have a quick drink, Dicky, and I’ll be with you,’ I said.
‘Good grief, Bernard, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning. What do you need a drink for at this hour?’
‘I’ve been outside in sub-zero weather, Dicky. When you’ve been outside for an hour or two you might find out why.’
‘Thank God I’m not dependent upon alcohol. Last night I saw you heading for the bar and now, next morning, you are heading that way again. It’s a disease.’
‘I know.’
‘And the stuff they call brandy here is rot-gut.’
‘I can’t buy you one then? The barman is called “Mouse”. Pay him in hard currency and you’ll get any fancy Western tipple you name.’
He disregarded my flippant invitation. ‘Make it snappy. I’ll go and get my coat. I didn’t bring an umbrella but perhaps I can shelter under yours.’
When we emerged on to the street Dicky seemed prepared to yield to my judgement in the matter of avoiding a senseless trek to the hotel’s inferior namesake on the other side of town. ‘Where shall we go first?’ he offered tentatively.
‘I heard George was trying to buy a gun,’ I said.
‘Are you serious?’
‘In the Rozyckiego Bazaar in the Praga. It’s a black-market paradise; the clearing house for stolen goods and furs and contraband from Russia.’
‘And guns?’
‘Gangs of deserters from all the Eastern European armies run things over there and fight for territory. It may look law-abiding but so did Al Capone’s Chicago. Keep your hands in your pockets and watch out for pickpockets and muggers.’
‘Why don’t the authorities clear it out?’
‘It’s not so easy,’ I said. ‘It’s the oldest flea-market in Poland. The currency dealers and black-marketeers all know each other very well. Infiltrating a plain-clothes cop is tricky, but they try from time to time. They might think that’s what we are, so watch your step.’
‘I can handle myself,’ said Dicky. ‘I don’t scare easily.’
‘I know,’ I said. It was true and it was what made Dicky such a liability. Werner and me, we both scared very easily, and we were proud of it.
The Praga is the run-down mainly residential section of Warsaw that sprawls along the eastern side of the river. Most of its old buildings survived the war but few visitors venture here. Running parallel with the river, Targowa is the Praga’s wide main street, the widest street in all the city. Long ago, as its name records, it had been Warsaw’s horse market. Now dented motors and mud-encrusted street-cars rattled along its median, past solid old houses that, in the 1920s, had been luxury apartments occupied by Warsaw’s merchants and professional classes.
Now the wide Targowa was patched with drifting snow and, behind it – its entrance in a narrow sidestreet – we suddenly came to the Rozyckiego market. Overlooked on every side by tenements, there was something medieval about the open space filled with all shapes and sizes of rickety stalls and huts, piled high with merchandise, and jammed with people. This notorious Bazaar had been unchanged ever since I could remember. It had drawn traders and their customers from far and wide. Gypsies and deserters, thieves and gangsters, farmers and legitimate traders had made it a vital part of the city’s black economy, so that the open space was never rebuilt.
‘And are you going to buy a gun too, Bernard?’
‘No, Dicky,’ I said as we went through the gates of the market. ‘I’m just going to find George.’
The ponderous sobriety that descends upon Eastern European towns in winter was shattered as we stepped into the active confusion of the market. Women wept, men argued to the point of violence, whole families conferred, children bickered. And scurrying to and fro there were men and women – many bent under heavy loads – shouting loudly to call their wares.
‘Those communist old clothes smell worse than capitalist ones,’ said Dicky as we made our way through the crowds. Noisy bargainers alleviated the bizarre variety of deprivation that communism, with its corruption, caprices and chronic shortages, endemically inflicts. Here, on display, there were such coveted items as toilet paper and powdered coffee, used jeans in varying stages of wear, plastic hair-clips and Western brands of cigarettes (both genuine and fake). Women’s shoes from neighbouring Czechoslovakia were hung above our heads like bright-coloured garlands, while exotic sable, fox and mink furs from far-off regions of Asia were guarded behind a strong wire fence. Elderly farmers and their womenfolk, enjoying a measure of private enterprise, offered their piles of potatoes, beets and cabbages. A solemn young man sat on the ground before a prayer-rug, as if about to bow his forehead upon the rows of used spark plugs that were arrayed before him.
A tall man in a green trenchcoat stopped me, waved a cigarette, and asked for a light. I tucked my umbrella under my arm, held up my lighter, and he cupped his hands and bent his head to it. ‘I thought you were on the flight to Paris,’ I said.
‘They’ve killed George Kosinski,’ he said hoarsely. ‘They lured him out to his brother’s house, slit his throat like a slaughtered hog and buried him in the forest. You’ll be next. I’d scram if I was you.’
‘You are not me, Boris,’ I said. Tiny sparks hit my hand as he inhaled on his cigarette. He threw his head back, his eyes searching my face, and blew smoke at me. Then with an appreciative smile he tipped his grey felt hat in mocking salute and went on his way.
‘Come along!’ said Dicky when I had caught up with him again. ‘They just want to talk to foreigners. We can’t be delayed by every bum who wants a light.’
‘Sorry, Dicky,’ I said.
By this time Dicky had eased his way into a small group of men who were passing booklets from hand to hand. Two of
the men were dressed in Russian army greatcoats and boots; the civilian caps they wore did not disguise them. One was about forty, with a face like polished red ebony. The other man was younger, with a lop-sided face, half-dosed eyes and the frazzled expression that afflicts prematurely aged pugilists.
‘Look at this,’ said Dicky, showing me the book that had been passed to him. It had a brown cover, its text was in Russian with illustrations depicting various parts of an internal combustion engine. Another similar book was passed to him. He looked at me quizzically. ‘You can read this stuff. What’s it all about?’
I translated the title for him: ‘BG-15 40mm grenade-launcher – Tishina. It’s an instruction manual. They all are.’ The booklets were each devoted to military equipment of wide appeal: portable field kitchens, rocket projectors, sniperscopes, nightsights, radio transmitters and chemical protection suits. ‘They’re Russian soldiers. They’re selling in advance equipment they are prepared to steal.’
Dicky passed the booklets to the man standing next to him. The man took them and, seeing Dicky’s dismay, he looked around the group and snickered, exposing many gold teeth. He liked gold: he was wearing an assortment of rings and two gold watches on each wrist, their straps loosened enough for them to clatter and dangle like bracelets.
The hands of the two soldiers were callused and scarred, and covered from wrist to fingertip in a meticulous pattern of tattoos like blue lace gloves. I recognized the dragon designs that distinguished criminal soldiers who’d served time in a ‘disbat’ punishment battalion. Until very recently, to suffer such a sentence had been universally regarded as shameful, and kept secret from family and even comrades. But now men like these preferred to identify themselves as military misfits, defiant of authority. Such men liked to use their tattoos to parade their violent nature, to exploit frightened young conscripts and sometimes their officers too.
‘Let’s move on,’ I said.
‘What were they saying?’
‘Gold-teeth seems to be the black-market king. You heard the soldiers say tak tochno – exactly so – to him instead of “yes”. It’s the way Soviet soldiers have to answer their officers.’
My whispered aside to Dicky attracted the attention of the soldiers. The limited linguistic skills of all concerned were clearly hampering the transaction, and I didn’t want to wind up as the interpreter for these Russian hoodlums and their Polish customers. ‘Move on,’ I said.
Dicky got the idea. He moved away and the black-marketeers closed in upon the soldiers again. At the next stall Dicky hunkered down to feign interest in piles of old brass and copper oddments piled up for sale. I took the opportunity to look around. There was no sign of George anywhere.
‘Look – umbrellas!’ said Dicky, standing up and rubbing his knees, and then pointing to an old woman carrying dozens of them, of all shapes and sizes and colours. ‘What did you pay for yours?’ When I didn’t reply, he said: ‘Can you imagine those bloody soldiers selling their weapons! That’s what comes of having all those races and nations mixed together. Thank God the British army could never sink to that.’
‘The elder of them had four small kids, and his unit hasn’t been paid for three months,’ I said.
‘I knew you’d find some excuse for them,’ said Dicky in a voice that mixed jokiness with sincerity. ‘Where do you draw the line, Bernard? If you hadn’t been paid for three months, would you simply sell off anything you could lay your hands on?’
Knowing that a flippant answer would be stored up in Dicky’s memory and used when I least expected it, I found something to occupy his mind: ‘I think I see one of George’s relatives,’ I said.
‘Where? Where?’
‘Take it easy, Dicky. Or we’ll start a stampede.’
‘Selling the beads?’
‘It’s amber,’ I said, ‘and that can be expensive. But the leather bag round his neck almost certainly contains diamonds. He’s a well-known dealer.’
‘You know him?’ Dicky slowed, as if intending to stride across the aisle to confront the old man, but I took his arm and kept him going.
‘I saw him in London at one of George’s cocktail parties. But I didn’t speak with him; he arrived as I was leaving. He’s rich; leave him for another time. Appearances are deceptive in Poland; there are probably quite a few rich people in this market today.’
‘And are George Kosinski’s family all rich?’ Dicky stopped at a stall piled high with sports shoes: Nike, Reebok and all the famous brands in cardboard boxes. It was hard to know whether they were counterfeit or imports. Dicky picked up a pair of running shoes and fiddled with the laces while trying to decide.
‘I don’t know, but names ending in ski denote the old Polish gentry. It’s especially so in the country areas, where everyone knows everyone and you can’t get away with adding a ski ending to your name, the way so many of the townspeople have.’
‘I like the padded ankle collar… What have you seen?’ He started to replace the shoes he was inspecting.
‘Keep hold of that pair of shoes, Dicky. Bring them up before your face and admire them.’ I was moving round to the other side of the market stall to see better.
‘Look, Bernard…’
‘Do as I say, Dicky. Just keep talking and holding up the shoes.’ He held them up for me and provided an excuse for a good look at the far side of the market.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Three of them; at least three. With maybe two or three more watching from other top-storey windows. They’ve marked us, and two of them are coming this way.’
‘Who?’
‘Hoodlums. Just take it easy. Stay stumm; let me talk to them.’
‘Where?’
‘The fat fellow in the fur coat signalled to someone at an upstairs window. Bodyguards. Minders. Stay cool.’
‘Your papers?’ demanded the first of the men to arrive, and announced himself: ‘Inspector Was of the UB.’ He spoke in English while showing me a card with his photo on it. He snapped the card closed and put it away. His eyes were jet-black, his face thin and drawn. He wore a woollen hat and a short leather jacket. I held out to him the West German passport that carried the business visa permitting repeated entries into Poland. He passed it to a fat man in a dark fur coat who had by this time arrived slightly flushed and out of breath. The fat one pushed his steel-rimmed glasses tighter on to his ears before reading it. He was red-faced and sweating. I guessed he had impetuously descended too many flights of steps after watching our arrival from his vantage-point in the nearby tenements.
‘Him?’ said the wiry Inspector Was, pointing at Dicky.
‘Him?’ I echoed, pointing a finger at the fat man and gently prising from his fingers my bogus passport.
‘Search them,’ Was told the fat man. I held up my arms and he frisked me, and then Dicky, to see if we were carrying guns.
‘Come with me,’ said Was when the fat man gave him the okay. ‘Both of you.’ He unbuttoned his jacket as if he might be making ready to reach for a pistol.
‘We have to go with them, Dicky,’ I said.
The somewhat Laurel-and-Hardyish pair pushed us ahead of them through the crowds, which parted readily to allow us to pass. As we got into Targowa, our two guards closed in tightly upon us. The streets were crowded with beggars and pedlars and people going about their business. At the kerb, two men were changing the wheel of a truck heavily laden with beets, while a man with a shotgun sat atop them balanced on a bundle of sacks. No one gave us more than a glance. It was too cold to enquire too deeply into the misfortunes of others, and too dangerous. There were no cops in sight and no one showed concern as we were escorted along the street. We had gone no more than fifty yards before the thin one signalled to an entrance that led into one of the open courtyards that were a feature of these buildings.
The cobbled yard, littered with rusty junk and rubbish that could not be burned for fuel, held a couple of cars and a line of large garbage bins. It was difficult to decide i
f the cars were in use or had been dumped here, for many of the trucks and cars on the street were even more rusty and dented than these ancient vehicles.
‘Here,’ said Was and prodded me with his finger. The fabric of the building was in a startling state of neglect, with gaping holes and broken brickwork and windows that were held in position by improvised patchworks of timber and tin. The only fitments in good order were the bars and grilles that fitted over half a dozen of the lower windows, and the ancient steel door through which we were ushered.
There were more grilles inside. They were made from steel and fitted from floor to ceiling. Along this ‘wall’ there was a long table, like the lunch counter of a roadside cafe. Behind the counter there was a heavy safe and some filing cabinets. The other half of the room – the part where we were standing – was windowless and empty of furnishings except for a calendar advertising canned milk.
The man who called himself Was closed the steel door that led to the yard. With only a couple of fluorescent tubes to illuminate the room it became stark and shadowless. ‘Through here and upstairs,’ said Was. He opened a door and pushed us into a smaller room. ‘Upstairs,’ said Was again, and we went through a narrow door that opened on to the lobby of a grand old apartment house. I led the way up the wide marble staircase. On the landing wall hung two grey racks of dented mail-boxes. Some of the flaps were hanging open; it would need a great deal of confidence to put mail into them. Perhaps the whole building was owned by these men. At the top of the second flight of steps we came upon a silent tableau. Two flashy young women were propping a plump well-dressed man against the wall. He was white-faced and very drunk, his tie loosened and wine stains down his crisp white shirt. The trio watched us as we passed, as curious about us as we were about them, but the three of them remained very still at the sight of our escorts and no one spoke.
‘In here.’ There were two doors on the top landing. They were freshly painted light brown. They’d been repainted so many times that the decorations in the woodwork, the peep-hole and the bell push were all clogged with paint. There was a surfeit of wiring too: phone and electricity wires had been added and none ever removed, so that there were dozens of wires twisted and drooping and sometimes hanging to show where a section of them had been chopped away to make room for more. He unlocked one of the doors. ‘In here,’ he said again and pushed Dicky, who fell against me. And we stumbled into the darkness.