by Adam Hall
Relax and bring him closer. Get the breathing right or it’s no go. Relax.
But I was a torch, a body burning, my own light blinding. His blows poured pain into me and the flames burst brighter. There was no time. Then let it be done without time. Now.
Twist. But he was ready and I had to try again and it didn’t work but his aim was shifted and I moved the other way and felt purchase available as we rolled with my knee rising hard but not hard enough: it baulked his strikes but he went for a neck lock and I had to stop it because it was a musubi and we are frightened of that one, all of us. Lock and counter-lock and we lay still, the muscles alone engaged, contraction without kinetics, the hiss of our breathing the only sign of life. Then I felt purchase again: my foot had come into contact with the wall of the subway and when I used it he was surprised and the lock went slack and I had time and forced him over and we lay still again but the position was changed and I saw that there was a blow I could use if I worked very quickly.
But I hesitated. Morality came into this and the awareness of what I was going to do was holding me back. This was the jungle but even in the jungle there are laws: a male wolf, in combat with another and sensing mortal defeat, will pause and expose its neck and the jugular vein, tokening submission; and the victor will leave it.
Here the law didn’t apply: a vulnerable point had been exposed by chance and morality was out of place because the organism was shouting it down, squealing for survival, and I put the last of my strength into the blow. It wasn’t very hard because I was weakened now, but it was effective because it struck the point that Kimura had told us about.
Then I got up and leaned with my back to the wall, dragging air into my lungs while the nerve-light went on flashing in my head. A sound was somewhere, a rumbling, and I remembered where I was, in the railway station of a modern city where men could speak, and write with pens. It seemed a long time since I was here before: an act so primitive had brought a time shift and the past few minutes had been measured in millennia.
The rumbling became thunder overhead and its rhythm slowed: a train was stopping. I would have liked to rest but there’d soon be people here.
In the washroom I took his coat and kepi, putting them on. He was Piotr Rashidov, attached to the 4th Division of the Polish State Information Services on temporary duty, and his credentials carried the facsimile of the Communist Party seal. I sat him in the end cubicle where the hinges were still intact, locking the door and climbing over the partition, dropping and checking that his feet looked as they should.
Then I bathed my face, turning away from the mirror when I dried it. There’s always the feeling of personal failure because it’s an easy thing to do, and even when there’s no choice it still has the look of a cheap trick.
There were more than I’d expected.
The train had pulled out and no one was in the middle platforms except for station staff and the M.O. patrols. Two of them were posted at the north end and that was the way I had to go because there were no ticket-barriers.
I walked steadily in the brown leather coat and kepi. My legs were all right. the punishment had been taken by the arms because his technique had forced me to shield. Head still throbbing and the throat raw though I’d drunk some water at the basin.
I looked at my watch. The glass was smashed and the dial twisted and the hands torn away and when I took it off there was its shape imprinted on my wrist, a purple weal. The clock over the main hall barriers showed 14:20 and it was no longer a question of hurrying but of cutting down the whole schedule and running it closer and hoping not to wreck it.
The two M.O. patrols weren’t moving. They stood facing towards me, dark figures against the screen of drifting snow at the station’s mouth. They were fifty feet away and there was no one between us along this stretch of platform. The snow looked easeful, whirling on the wind, and I felt a longing to walk in it and be lost in it. This place was a trap.
They’d want a report at the Bureau, was it necessary, what were the possible alternatives, was the person armed, so forth, and the sweat came on me again because they wanted too bloody much, they wanted you to go in and do the job and come out with your tie straight and your hair brushed and your hands clean, it was rather embarrassing for them, this kind of thing, and you had to be careful not to shout at them, yes I had to do it because I was losing consciousness and it was the last chance I’d get and it was his bad luck that the point he’d exposed was that one, not my fault, can happen to the best of us, what do you think things are like when a couple of ferrets go at it tooth and claw in a tunnel under the ground? Quite put them off their tea.
I was walking faster because of the anger and the distance had closed to thirty feet and when I’d gone another five I began calling out to them in Russian, pointing behind me - ‘Who’s meant to be manning the barriers down there, is it you?’
They didn’t bloody well understand so I said it again in Polish, keeping the vowels flat and rounding the r’s, and one of them came towards me with his paces circumspect.
‘The two barriers this side of the hall - you think you can survey them at this distance without a pair of binoculars?’
He stood with his bright eyes hating me but all he could legitimately do was ask for identification, showing that just for a moment he had the upper hand by virtue of his uniform. I would even expect it of him: it was said that Dabrowski himself couldn’t enter his own official residence without showing his papers.
‘I must ask to see your credentials.’
Piotr Rashidov. The red seal was sufficient - and I didn’t give him time to study the photograph.
‘Answer my question.’
‘Our orders are to guard this end of the platform.’
‘And leave the barriers uncontrolled? Who is your officer?’
‘There is a patrol on the other side of the barriers.’
‘We shall see.’
I turned my back to him and began walking again the way I had come, looking to my left and to my right, watching for signs of inefficiency among the uniformed patrols at the flank exits.
My shoulders were stiffening and the glare of the lamps went through my eyes and ached inside my head. Walking in this direction, back into the trap and away from the healing and liberating snow, was retrogressive and irked me and to an increasing extent worried me because he’d be expected back at his post or back in the area he was controlling, say in five minutes, ten at the most.
Two station officials on the far side of the barriers, an M.O. patrol and a man in plain clothes: I stared at them and turned away and stood with my back to them, looking to the left and to the right, swinging again on my heel and pacing to the north end of the platform.
‘And what patrols are there beyond this point?’
‘You would have to ask my Captain?’
‘There should be patrols out there. Or is it that you’re afraid of the cold?’
The Muscovite elite is not afraid of the cold and I moved past them and down the slope to the drifts that in the last hour had covered the tarred pebbles. The rails made dark skeins through the snow. I came back.
‘You have another hour here. Don’t relax your vigilance. Pay particular attention when a train comes in.’
I paced away from them, slowly now, turning my head to demonstrate that the demands of efficient observation are unremitting: one must never be still, one must look here, look there, one’s eyes must be everywhere. I stopped halfway to the barriers and stood sideways on, my head still turning, my gaze sweeping along the flank areas.
Thirst was increasing because the combat had dehydrated the system and there hadn’t been time for more than a few gulps in the washroom. Blood from burst capillaries was filling the lacerated tissue along the forearms and the muscles were still half numbed. I didn’t know if there was facial bruising because I hadn’t looked at the mirror but I would need to check on that.
Movement left.
I looked along the platform an
d saw someone on this side of the barriers, a man in plain clothes, one of the Policia Ubespieczenia patrols I’d stared at just now when I’d gone down there. He stood facing towards me. He would want to know who I was or he believed I was Rashidov in the brown leather coat but wanted to know what I was doing here when recently I’d been in a different area, so I signalled him, a brief movement of my hand, yes I am Rashidov, and turned away without seeing if he acknowledged.
The pulse, quickening, made the throbbing worse in my head. Instant availability of adrenalin but I had no use for it, I couldn’t run. In ten seconds I turned my back to him, finding something under. the sole of my shoe and fretting at it, chewing gum, rubbing my shoe across the edge of the platform to scrape it away, walking back towards the north end of the platform, deep breaths, deep regular breathing, prana the answer to most ills, the answer to panic.
The two M.O. patrols were watching me. They had been standing, the whole time, with their backs to the snow. They would have seen the man down there by the barriers. When I was within a dozen feet of them I turned again and saw he was still there, standing quite still, facing in this direction.
I signalled again, more emphatically, jabbing a finger towards one of the flank exits. He turned his head but could see nothing of interest, and looked back at me, not making any sign. I shrugged, he didn’t understand, he was a fool.
They declined to look at me when I turned and walked slowly past them. They looked pointedly away from me, in detestation.
The. slope was gentle under my feet and I walked as far as the end, where the drifts had begun covering the tarred pebbles. The snow whirled from the open sky mesmerically, some of the flakes touching my face as I lifted it.
I would hear them if they moved and they hadn’t moved.
Then I walked on through the deeper drifts, slowly at first and then making my way more quickly over the rough terrain when I knew that the screen had thickened behind me and I was obliterated. It was malowniczy, the snow in Warsaw, very picturesque, did I not find it so?
Chapter 18
CRACOW
It smelt of mothballs.
From where I stood I could see the door and I didn’t look away from it.
‘When?’
‘In an hour.’
‘All right.’
‘Do it by phone. I don’t want you to go out.’
She said it might be dangerous to use the phone.
‘Less dangerous than going into the streets.’
I felt surprised that it worried me so much but I suppose it was because the whole thing was entering its final stages and it’d be a shame if they caught her as late as this. Once they’d thrown her into a train she’d be lost for years among the camps but if she stayed in the city until after Sroda she’d have a chance: a general amnesty was certain because of the talks, as witness to the bountiful mercy of the Mother State.
It was black astrakhan, a hat to match and a cheap wristwatch, seventy zlotys plus the brown leather one plus the hat, the last of Piotr Rashidov hanging flat on a hook in the corner with the macs and duffle-jackets near the door where cooking smells came. Because when they found him they’d know who it was who’d walked out into the snow.
‘Don’t leave where you are. Give me your word.’
‘Very well.’
‘You can tell when a line’s bugged?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then there’s no risk.’
Before I hung up she asked if she were going to see me again and I said yes and this time it wasn’t a lie.
The rendezvous was for 16:30 a hundred yards north of the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge along the west bank, three Czyn people, if possible trained in unarmed combat. This time I’d get them because this time I wasn’t asking Merrick.
But they didn’t turn up.
I waited thirty minutes and by that time my scalp was creeping because it had been bloody Merrick who’d exposed every one of my moves and I hadn’t known it and now I knew it and he couldn’t do it anymore. Neither he nor Foster could possibly know the moves I was making now: every patrol of every branch of the civil and secret police was in the hunt and if they found me they’d slam me straight into a cell. There was no chance that Foster was giving me rope again, letting me run.
And the line hadn’t been bugged: when you make an rdv in a city where there’s a dragnet out you take damned good care of that.
At 17:15 I went into the bar at the corner of Mostowa and got through again.
‘They weren’t there.’
‘Are you sure?’
I was listening to her voice, the tone of her voice, because I was right in the middle of a red sector and pushing my luck and it was just about as safe as taking the pin out and hoping it wouldn’t go off.
‘Quite sure.’
‘I don’t know what happened’
Her tone was quiet with worry.
‘They got picked up.’
She said: ‘It must be that.’
A black Moskwicz was pulling up outside, with big M.O. letters on it. I watched it through the window.
‘Get me three more.’
The receiver was beginning to feel slippery. ‘Yes.’
‘Tell them to take care.’
The hours were running towards midnight and anyone could be picked up, they were busting whole units.
‘I’ll tell them.’
No one was getting out. There were four of them and they sat with their heads turned, watching the bar.
‘In half an hour. The same place.’
I trusted her because it was logical. They would have caught me there, otherwise, at 16:30 on the west bank.
‘All right.’
The Moskwicz was moving off and I remembered there were traffic lights at the corner. They’d stopped for the lights. I’d forgotten they were there. I mustn’t forget things.
‘Will it be long enough? Half an hour?’
The coffee machine roared and I lost what she said.
‘What was that?’
‘I will do all I can. Remember that, please.’
The thought came after I’d paid for the call. You grow sensitive at this stage of a mission. She’d said it with slow emphasis and it could have carried the undertone of a classic alert-phrase: all I can, am under duress. Stomach-think. Discount. This time they should be there.
They didn’t come.
An hour ago the wind from the north had changed and it had stopped snowing. Beyond the balustrade the Vistula was a desert of white, untouched by the soot that would later darken it. Along the Wybrzeze Gdanskie the traffic was still running, its sound deadened by the new fall. Ashen light flowed from the lamps above my head, triplicating my shadow.
I had asked Merrick for them and he’d blocked me. Now I had asked Alinka. All I can.
Patrol car, and I went down the steps again into shadow. The steps were a hundred yards from the bridge and that was why I’d made the rendezvous here. There was no time now to phone and make another one. This was where time ran out.
There was no usable alternative project: this was already the alternative to the one that had been blown up when they’d doubled the guards on the Praga Commissariat. I could switch and go in alone and do damage but it wouldn’t be enough and the risk was prohibitive: not only to me but to the Bureau. The risk to myself was acceptable because of professional vanity: we know that one day there’ll be a mission we shan’t complete and that the chances are that we shall go in ignominy, a slack shape spreadeagled below the window of an empty room, something afloat in a river, and that it will have been for nothing; and sometimes we think of how it could be otherwise, of how we might play the odds and go out winning and be remembered for it, be granted at least an epitaph: Hunter? He was Bucharest, ‘65. Went down with the ship but Christ, what an operation. We all remembered Hunter.
Discount considerations of stinking pride: there’d be a risk to the Bureau, to the Sacred Bull.
The chains crumped rhythmically through the sn
ow and from the city centre came the moan of trams.
If it had been a deliberate alert-phrase meaning she was under duress I would have to go along there and do something about it, at least do that.
I expected him to go past but he stopped and stood with his back to me, to the steps, looking both ways, taking a pace and coming back, watching the traffic.
Decoy.
You get too sensitive. I was behind him before he heard me when I spoke he swung round with his hands whipping into the guard posture.
‘Where are the other two?’
He relaxed.
‘With the car.’
‘Where?’
‘Along there. We didn’t want to -‘
‘Come on, we’re late.’
The Hotel Cracow was busier than yesterday because there’d been a couple of flights in and the foyer was crowded: most of the atmosphere-coverage journalists were hemming in the dip. corps people, free vodkas, and I recognised Maitland of the Sunday Post, one of the brightest of the I-Was-There boys.
I showed my credentials at the desk and they said they hoped there was to be no trouble and I said none at all, I just wanted to visit one of their guests, and they gave me the number of the suite.
‘Don’t announce me.’
It was on the first floor and I pressed the buzzer. There were voices somewhere, speaking in English.
He was a short square man with his jacket pulled permanently out of shape by the holster. I told him my name and he came back in less than five seconds and opened the door wider for me.
This was the sitting-room and there were four people here.
With typical courtesy he left his armchair and came towards me. ‘Hello, old boy, come along in.’
Chapter 19
KICK
Foster went across to the trolley.
‘I hope you’ll have a drink?’
‘There isn’t time.’
‘There’s always time, old boy.’ His laugh wasn’t quite in key but he was doing pretty well because he must have been upset when they told him I’d slipped their surveillance: I was his personal responsibility.