by Len Deighton
There was another delay while the coffee was brought to us and poured out. Through the window I could see the car park. There were half a dozen cars there veiled in snow, variously heavy coatings of it according to how long each had remained unused. The two Poles were standing by the ambulance talking together. I had the feeling that they expected to wait a long time.
‘Where were we?’ said Dr Urban after he’d put down his cigarette and settled back in his creaky swivel chair with his coffee balanced in his hands.
‘Mrs Kosinski,’ supplied Rupert.
‘I went to Berlin last week to make the travel arrangements,’ said Urban. ‘The Germans can be very difficult but in this case everything has gone smoothly. She arrives at the end of the week.’ Dr Urban stopped talking as he found something undesirable floating in his coffee. He bent forward, held his cup above the waste-paper basket, and expertly flipped the foreign body into it using his spoon. I had the feeling that he’d done it before. He looked up: ‘An insect,’ he said and then drank the coffee with relish.
‘Does Mr George Kosinski know all this?’ said Rupert.
‘Of course,’ said Dr Urban. He put down his half-empty coffee cup and rummaged around on his desk to find a United Kingdom passport which he held in the air like an author on a TV talk show. ‘George Kosinski has become a Polish citizen,’ he said. ‘This passport is no longer valid.’ Rupert stood up and reached for the passport. Urban said: ‘Look at it, yes. But you can’t keep it. It has to be returned through the official channels.’
‘Why are you telling us this?’ I asked while Rupert, a broody look on his face, examined George’s passport page by page.
‘Don’t you want your coffee?’ He stirred his own coffee zealously, and then set it aside and picked up his cigarette and blew on the end to get it alight.
‘It’s delicious,’ I said. In fact I didn’t want it. The look on his face as he evicted the insect from his own cup had quenched my thirst.
‘Because they tell me you are going off to Masuria to find him. He’s become a Polish citizen with full rights and privileges. His parents were born here. It was a simple matter once he’d decided. But now he would need permission to leave Poland, even if you persuaded him to go with you.’
‘George Kosinski is my brother-in-law,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Urban. ‘It makes no difference. The wife is Polish too.’
‘Are you saying she’s alive?’ I said.
‘Tessa Kosinski?’ He put a new cigarette in his mouth and lit it from the butt of the old one. Then he stubbed out the butt in an ashtray made from a brass shell case. Only after all that did he give a brief laugh. ‘Very much alive. More alive than most of the people on the District Hospitals Management Board to which I report.’
‘You spoke with her?’ I said.
‘I’ve just told you; I went to Berlin to see her and make the travel arrangements.’
‘She wanted to come to Poland?’ asked Rupert.
‘Yes.’
‘And the Germans are letting her go?’
‘She wasn’t a prisoner,’ said Urban. ‘She was just a patient in the Charité hospital in Berlin. Making her a Polish citizen simplified the paperwork for everyone: here and there too. Technically she is being repatriated.’ He smiled and then explained the joke: ‘She’s never been to Poland before, but technically she’s being repatriated.’
‘In hospital?’ I said.
‘Don’t try to make a fool of me, Mr Samson,’ said the cheerful doctor, becoming a trifle less cheerful. ‘You know the score. So do we all. You know why she’s coming back here.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said.
‘You’re talking in riddles,’ Rupert told him, closing the passport and putting it on Urban’s desk amid the other clutter.
Dr Urban looked from one to the other of us, a smile trying to get out of the corners of his tightly closed mouth. ‘You English,’ he said in grudging admiration. ‘You’re the best actors in the world. Not only Shakespeare, Bacon and all the way to Pinter. And Noel Coward, Lord Olivier and the Rolling Stones and the rest of them. I love them all, but acting is a talent flowing through the veins of each and every one of you. You don’t even realize you are doing it, do you?’
‘Acting apart,’ said Rupert patiently. ‘Why is she in hospital?’
Again the smile came. ‘You’ve come here today and you still pretend you don’t know. You come to the best maternity hospital in the sub-district – in the whole of Warsaw perhaps – and you say is the mother-to-be still alive? Really, gentlemen. It is time now to wipe off the greasepaint I think.’
‘Pregnant?’ said Rupert.
‘That is the whole point of it all. Why do you think that the Kosinskis wanted to become citizens? Why was the father so keen that his wife should be here in the homeland at this crucial time?’
‘So that the child will be Polish,’ said Rupert.
‘We Poles are a sentimental people,’ said Dr Urban proudly. ‘He wants a Polish son; yes.’
‘And you will control the parents through the child?’ said Rupert. ‘Your jurisdiction will enable you to manipulate the parents and have them say and do anything you wish.’ Rupert looked at me. He was alarmed as he thought of what it all meant. And how he would explain this bizarre Polish fait accompli to London.
‘No, no, no,’ said Dr Urban, without putting his heart and soul into the denial. He got to his feet and said: ‘This is a fine hospital. Let me show you around. We can do as well as the Germans in maternity care. Our only concern with the Kosinski woman was whether a mother should travel at such a late state of pregnancy. Some can, some can’t, it’s a matter of stamina… of constitution. That’s why I took our resident obstetrician with me. I don’t want an emergency on the train next week. In any case there will be a doctor and a nurse with her. There is nothing to worry about.’ A quick look from one to the other of us. ‘But they are Poles. If the worst came to the worst, at least I would not be facing a political dimension.’
Rupert was furious, but he kept his anger under tight control. He saw it all as solely a device to render the embassy people powerless. He said: ‘You don’t have to explain it in even greater detail, Doctor. We see the point of the naturalization procedure.’
‘And George Kosinski goes along with all this?’ I asked.
‘Mr Kosinski is a deeply religious man. He has always prayed for a child; they both have.’
‘And now their prayers have come true?’ I said.
He looked at me with narrowed eyes: ‘Not quite yet,’ he said. ‘But they enjoy something for which to light a candle or two.’ He buttoned his shirt collar and tightened the knot of his brown tie. ‘You’ll see.’ From behind the door he took his jacket from a hanger and put it on. I should have guessed all along I suppose. Poland was still under de facto martial law, no matter what soothing noises were coming from the government.
Dr Urban’s jacket was khaki and complete with campaign medals and badges of rank. A major in the supply services. Every institution was under the direct control of the army, so why not the finest maternity home in the sub-district? ‘We have only a few days to wait,’ said Urban, looking at me. ‘I would dearly like to get this absurd misunderstanding settled once and for all. So can I have your assurance that when you speak with Mrs Kosinski, and hear her say that she prefers to be a Polish citizen, you will report in those terms to your masters in London?’
‘Tell me, Major Urban,’ I said politely. ‘Exactly what are the full rights and privileges that come with becoming a Polish citizen?’
‘You will have your little jokes, you Englishmen,’ he said, and laughed as he strapped on his leather pistol belt.
It was only after we were back at Vilnius Station and in the car that Rupert had left there, that Rupert gave vent to his frustration and rage. ‘The little bastard. Bezpieca! I could see that from the start.’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘I can recognize a secret policeman wh
en I see one.’
‘You mean he was a secret policeman wearing a uniform as a disguise?’
‘Why are you always so damned argumentative?’
‘I was just asking.’
He shuddered. ‘When we were in that stinking old ambulance I thought they were going to slit our throats.’
‘They wouldn’t want to mess up their nice clean blankets,’ I said. ‘They wanted to make us a little nervous.’
‘Well, with me they succeeded,’ said Rupert. ‘Can you imagine what London are going to say when I tell them how we’ve been outmanoeuvred? It’s not even worth your chasing after George Kosinski any more. You can see how they’ve twisted him round their finger.’
‘Poor George.’
‘And the child will be Polish. As two Polish nationals there can be no question of the baby getting a UK passport.’
‘No,’ I said. It was typical of Rupert and all his clan that every situation was rendered down into its relevant paperwork. These are the sort of bureaucratic pen-pushers who think a peace treaty is more important than a peace.
We sat there in the car with neither of us speaking. Vilnius Station was even bleaker now that evening was approaching. The sky was almost black and the sodium lamps on the station were orbs of orange-coloured light made fuzzy by the condensation on the car’s windows.
‘The Poles are not bad people,’ said Rupert, as if to himself. I could see that he was trying to think of some way of presenting the bad news he would be sending to London. ‘The regime is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Between Moscow’s tanks and Wall Street.’
‘Tanks and banks,’ I said. ‘It’s a predicament.’
‘You’re a lot of bloody help aren’t you?’ he complained. ‘Yes. No. I suppose so. What the hell’s wrong with you?’
‘You’re preparing a message for tonight?’
‘They’ll need something more than a message,’ he said. ‘This development will have them climbing the walls.’
‘So why not hang on for a day or so?’ I suggested.
‘Can’t.’
‘That wasn’t an official meeting. Who was there? You, me and his nibs. If we forget that it happened, Dr Urban might as well have been talking to himself.’
‘Probably tape-recorded.’
‘I doubt it. He was too relaxed.’
‘I’ll have to tell London sooner or later.’
‘Later.’
‘It’s all very well for you to say later. You won’t get the rocket when suddenly they hear that Tessa Kosinski is in Warsaw and having the baby.’
‘Write a memo to yourself about the meeting. Say I didn’t believe a word of it, and neither did you.’
‘That won’t cover me, Samson, and you know it.’
‘Say in the memo that you immediately sent me off to check the story.’
‘Check it with George Kosinski? Is that what you mean?’
‘That would be one way of doing it,’ I agreed.
‘You’re a devious bastard, Samson.’
‘It was just an idea.’
He looked at me and wet his lips nervously. He didn’t like the idea of conspiring with me. I was not one of his intimates, and deceiving authority was in any case distasteful to him. ‘You don’t give a damn, do you. I suppose you falsify your reports whenever it suits you to do so.’
‘Of course not,’ I said.
‘Sometimes I wish I could be like you, Samson. Life is so much easier if you bend the rules to your own convenience.’
‘Are we going to sit here all night while you sing my praises? Or are you going to summon up the guts to do what you know has to be done?’
He looked at me without answering. Then he switched on the engine and said: ‘Let’s get you back to that flea-bitten little place you’re staying. Even for workers’ apartments: that’s an unusually grim place. Why do you choose to stay in places like that?’
‘I feel at home there.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You go and find George Kosinski. I’ll take responsibility.’
When we got to where I was staying with an old pal of mine, a man who sold American electric generators on the black market, Rupert stopped me from getting out of his car.
‘But before you go, Samson, tell me one more thing. Why is George Kosinski giving us all this trouble? Why doesn’t he just phone the embassy and ask us what we want from him, and get it over with?’
I looked at Rupert and tried not to sigh audibly. What was wrong with me? I never made sufficient allowance for the slowness of people like Rupert, Dicky and Bret and the rest of them. They never understood what was really happening. Even after I’d drawn them a large-scale street map and made chalk marks on the pavement, they fell into the first manhole they encountered.
‘Look, Rupert,’ I said slowly and pedantically. ‘George went to all kinds of trouble to fake a suicide, hide himself in a disused underground bunker, and God knows what else to avoid us finding him. What reason could he have?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you,’ said Rupert.
‘Because he thinks we are trying to locate him in order to kill him,’ I said.
‘My God!’ said Rupert. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Go and lie down in a darkened room with two aspirins, Rupert,’ I said. ‘Your mind is too pure for this kind of work.’
‘Perhaps you are right, Samson,’ he said, and was visibly shaken. ‘I know you’re a loner. But let me know if I can help you: cash, drops, motor car or help to catch a ship to England. You know the way it works.’ He flipped open his wallet and put on the seat a bundle of Polish money. Alongside it he placed a thick roll of American bills. Beside that he put a roll of plastic gummed parcel tape. And a zip-gun: two smooth steel tubes which could be screwed together to hold a single .22in round. The whole thing was not much larger than a big executive fountain-pen, and about as elegant. And about as lethal, at the range that I preferred to do business. I couldn’t help thinking that the money, the sticky tape and the zip-gun represented three methods of getting George out of the country. ‘I was told to bring you this,’ he said regretfully. ‘This’ was wrapped up in ancient newspaper, and turned out to be a VZ 61, a Czechoslovak submachine-gun which, despite its tiny 7.65mm rounds, limited accuracy and low muzzle velocity, has a good rate of fire, a very light weight and, stock folded, is less than twelve inches long.
‘Well, well,’ I said. It was a comforting accessory, and almost as useful as the dollar bills.
‘Bret said that would make your eyes light up,’ said Copper. ‘He said get you a Skorpion or an Uzi and I couldn’t get an Uzi. He said to remind you you had diplomatic cover and to only take the gun if there was an emergency. I can keep it for you.’
‘No. I’ll take it with me,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of an emergency later.’ A toy like that goes into a trenchcoat pocket. Copper got an extra magazine and a cardboard box containing fifty rounds from the glove box and gave it to me. I took the money and the tape too. I gave him the zip-gun back, in case he got mugged going home with his silver cigarette case.
At last Bret and Copper seemed to be getting the idea.
‘And Bret said I was to alert the Swede,’ said Copper.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Alert the Swede.’
13
Masuria, Poland.
‘Don’t do this to me, Bernard,’ said George.
I hadn’t done anything. We’d scarcely been through the hello-and-how-did-you-find-me routine. I suppose he knew everything I was about to say. Perhaps I should never have come. It might have been better for everyone if I had left everything the way he wanted to keep it.
‘I love her. Do you know, when she’s away I hear her voice every day,’ said George. ‘We don’t have to phone or write.’
‘Fi said more or less the same thing,’ I said. ‘I understand how you feel.’
‘You don’t understand how I feel. You’re a loner; you don’t need anyone. I’m different. Without Tessa m
y life is nothing.’
‘She loved you too,’ I said.
‘You think so? I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it a lot of course, but I’m not sure. No, the way I…’ He looked up and pinned me with his glaring eyes. ‘So why are they saying she’s safe?’
‘She’s dead, George. I was there. I saw it happen.’
George was wearing brightly coloured ski clothes. It was a salutary way of countering the cold, but such a fashionable figure was an anachronism in this gloomy timeworn interior. He went and sat down by the fireplace, almost disappearing into the gloom. His voice came from the darkness: ‘She’s coming next week, they said.’
‘She’s dead, George. Face it.’
‘You keep saying she’s dead.’
‘I keep saying it because I want you to get it into your head. You’ve got to carry on with life, and unless you face the truth you’ll not be able to think straight.’
‘John O’Hara… John O’Hara the writer, told about George Gershwin’s death, said – I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.’
‘Yes, well he was a writer, and they are all full of shit.’
‘Stefan is a writer.’
‘And he’s full of shit too. Yes.’
‘Perhaps I too am full of shit. I know people see me as a ridiculous little man – but Tessa never made me feel like that. Even when she was unfaithful to me I never felt really humiliated. Does that sound stupid?’
‘I can’t make it easier for you, George. I wish I could but I can’t.’
‘She thought jumping in and out of bed didn’t matter. She knew I’d give her anything she wanted – cars, apartments, jewels – so why not the freedom to sleep with men she fancied?’ He got to his feet and went to the window, which was patterned with fern-like patterns of frost. In that sombre region of the Great Masurian lakes, each winter day brings only a couple of hours of real daylight. Today there came news of the sun, a pale yellow egg-yolk faintly discerned behind the milky sky. ‘But all that is past, now I am home. It’s snowing again.’ It wasn’t snowing. The flurry of snowflakes fluttering past the window was loose snow dislodged from the roof by the wind. But George was distraught and tormented minds can’t think straight about anything.