The Night Watch

by Julian Dinsell

  *

  Wolski was up early that morning after a rare weekend of retreat from his own apartment. At the island tram stop in the middle of the street there was no shelter from the rain and he joined the sullen line of waiting people.

  Everyone was listening for the telltale metallic sound of the tram from round the bend in the road that would rescue them from the drenching rain. Nobody spoke. It was as if after the riots marking the fall of Communism, the tens of thousands who had shouted slogans in the street had run out of things to say. The dreary reality of daily life spoke for itself. Traffic sloshed by, throwing up sheets of dirty water. Rain dipped off the brim of Wolski’s hat. Using a trick learnt in childhood, he let his eyes focus on the droplets, reducing his vision of the street to a distant watery blur. It helped him think.

  A week previously, Golkov had made an offer of a car and driver. Now, in the merciless rain, Wolski wondered if he had made the wrong choice. He told himself that he had turned the offer down out of pride, which was true, but not the whole truth. More important was the fact that he didn’t want to give away information about his movements. A car and driver would make private meetings impossible. The insidious damp was seeping through his old overcoat before the ancient red and cream tramcar rounded the bend. He arrived at the Institute a little before seven thirty.

  As he neared the steps to the entrance of the East Wing, two mud-covered trucks splashed and thumped along the rutted road and through the gate that led to the central courtyard.

  Wolski hurried to his office. Draping his soaking overcoat across the tepid radiator beneath the window, he watched the vehicles being unloaded.

  First came cages of animals – rabbits in a motley collection of colours, agitated by the strangeness of the journey. Then came a succession of crates, boxes and six brightly coloured containers that Wolski recognised as housing mainframe computer drives. He went downstairs to the laboratory where the cages were being noisily stacked in the holding area. Seizing the opportunity to gather information, he approached the drivers. They were covered in mud. Instinct told Wolski it was important not to appear surprised.

  “Coffee and a shower, something to eat?” he asked affably.

  The larger of the two men answered for them both. “Coffee and vodka. No time for anything else, we are already late.”

  Wolski led them to the kitchenette behind the lab where he produced coffee and a half bottle of vodka from the supply that the lab technicians kept hidden in the equipment store.

  “How far behind schedule are you? Do you need to use the phone?” Wolski asked helpfully.

  “No, there’s no phone, we just have to get back.” The driver was beginning to sound nervous. “We should have been away more than three hours ago.”

  “Very well,” said Wolski. “You’ll find what you need in there.”

  He stepped into the outer room and, hidden from their line of sight, Wolski could hear them talking in low voices. Though he couldn’t catch the whole conversation, he heard an argument about the road to Bialystok and kilometre post one twenty or one twenty-five.

  Wolski opened the door again and the men stopped speaking.

  “I have to go now. Is there anything for me to sign?” he asked cheerfully.

  Back in his office, Wolski put the pieces together. It was an operation designed to eliminate any direct contact between the point where the cargo originated and its destination. The drivers were probably black market heavies recruited for just the one job. Since they arrived at seven thirty and were more than three hours late, they were obviously intended to be away long before any of the Institute staff arrived. It must have been the mud that delayed them, and that mud was probably somewhere near kilometre post one hundred or one hundred and twenty-five on the Bialystok road.

  The radiator showed no sign of heating up, and more in hope than expectation Wolski moved another part of his wet coat to the top of it. He tried to discipline his thoughts. If Golkov’s people had taken such precautions to avoid anyone finding out where the trucks were coming from, it was clearly dangerous to be seen asking questions. Fifty-four kilometres further down the Bialystok road lay the border with Belarus.

  Wolski still thought of it as the Soviet frontier and with justification. The Republic was notorious as the least reformed of all the former Soviet territories.

  Laboratory animals always made Wolski feel uncomfortable. Though he would witheringly dismiss sentimentality in others and not admit it in himself, years of constructing experiments and teaching students to carry them out had not hardened him to the emotions that the creatures showed. After the noise, darkness and strange movements of the journey they were terrified.

  Walking between the cages, he heard Golkov’s voice on the other side of the lab.

  “Professor, a word if you please.”

  Golkov had never before been seen in the storage area and it was unlikely that the animals were sufficiently important for him to check on their arrival personally. Wolski wondered about the other cargo the trucks had brought. They walked to the far corner of the loading bay to escape from the noise of the cages being dragged across the uneven concrete floor.

  “Time is getting short,” said Golkov.

  “Life is short,” replied Wolski. He was in a bitter mood.

  “Shorter for some than others,” Golkov said in an almost friendly way, before launching into a list of instructions. “There is a lot of work to do. The first trial is scheduled for Friday. You will need to analyse the data that has just arrived and report your detailed recommendations to me no later than Wednesday evening. You may have as much computer time as you require. The staff have been instructed to offer you every assistance.”

  Wolski nodded and began to move away, but Golkov wasn’t finished.

  “One more thing. You will see from the printouts that the data is divided into modules. You will have access only to those that concern experimentation, not formulation.” In a tone deliberately calculated to mock Wolski, he added, “Information is power, as comrade Stalin said.”

  “And incomplete information is dangerous,” Wolski replied sharply. He wanted to hide the value of what was being handed to him.

  Almost without interruption, for four days and most of four nights, Wolski worked in the inner lab. With a kind of reverence, the staff watched from a distance. Only Nina would occasionally venture inside with a cup of coffee and the offer of something to eat, which was usually refused. Even Golkov stayed away, keeping in touch with progress through Petrovitch, the leader of the Physical Experimentation Team. Eventually, Wolski gave in. He took his notes and printouts up to his attic room, laid them on the narrow bed and began to assemble them into a logical order. It was a task he couldn’t complete. Fully clothed, he collapsed on top of the papers.

  When he awoke, he didn’t know what time it was or how long he had slept. A great weight of fatigue still bore heavily upon him, and he was only half-conscious when there was a knock on the door. It was Nina.

  “Professor, Doctor Golkov wants to see you.” There was no answer. “Now, without delay,” she said cautiously, unsure how far Golkov’s delegated authority should take her.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Wolski hauled himself off the bed, turned on the tap at the small hand basin and splashed cold water onto his face. The world slowly came into focus as he tried to gather the thoughts that had forced their way into his exhausted sleep. Nina hammered on the door again.

  “Coming,” he said, and picked up the papers from the bed.

  They were compressed where he had lain, and still warm with damp body heat. It seemed absurd that they could contain something of so much importance.

  In Golkov’s office, Wolski handed over the documents.

  “Give these to Petrovitch, they’re what he needs to start the trials. The discs are in the computer room; the cross-references are all listed. He should have no difficulty.” With that, he turned away without waiting for an answer. Though his mind was st
ill crying out for sleep, he was desperate to get out of the building.

  *

  In the street, the recent rain had washed the atmosphere clean of the pollution that usually overlaid the city. Not far from the Institute, he came to a small park that had become a gathering place for market gardeners who met there before venturing further into the city to sell their produce. In the far corner was the more permanent population of the garden, the raw vodka drinkers who had begun to appear on the streets in ever-larger numbers. Wolski lay down on a bench in the unaccustomed sunshine.

  He fell into a half-sleep among a comforting babble of voices talking about the onion crop and the prices that their tomatoes and celery would fetch. Like a corpse rising from a coffin, a prostrate drunk clutching an empty bottle sprang half upright.

  “God save Walesa,” he shouted, and fell back into a horizontal stupor, but nobody noticed.

  When Wolski finally woke, his mind was full of disconnected images, words and ideas. The park was empty and the only trace of the drunk was the empty vodka bottle. Wolski picked it up and dropped it onto the mound of rubbish overflowing from the bin near the gate. When Wolski got back to the Institute, there was intense activity. Petrovitch was behaving like a Beach Marshal at an invasion, giving orders for equipment and cages to be moved into a new configuration in the main lab.

  “Today,” Petrovitch pronounced, “today we begin.”

  Everyone stopped to listen. There was a shining enthusiasm about the man that, despite his Slavic features, put Wolski in mind of the triumphant young Storm Troopers, whose faces were among his most vivid memories of early childhood. Perhaps that’s what these people are, he thought, the Storm Troopers of a new age.

  The first experiment began in an atmosphere of tension. Despite having given strict instructions for everyone to be on time, Golkov was himself nearly twenty minutes late. Wolski guessed that he had been on the phone to whoever it was that was waiting for the results. He guessed accurately.

  “Time is pressing. I have undertaken that we shall produce the first observations by the end of today,” Golkov said. “Mr Petrovitch…”

  Petrovitch stepped forward to address the little group. He spoke like a sergeant major and Wolski had the absurd notion that he was wearing medals and regimental insignia on his stiff white lab coat.

  “These are the first live tests of CORTEXEAN. The formulations that we will now test are those constructed by Professor Wolski, according to the computer models. Each of them has a predicted effect profile. The purpose of these tests is to verify the accuracy of the computer predictions of behaviour, before we move on to the next phase of tests on larger mammals.”

  Wolski was a silent spectator as the first group of rabbits was prepared for the tests. The technicians set the instruments, and the video and audio recorders were started.

  “Each specimen will be injected within a timeframe of one minute.”

  This was a moment that Wolski had hated since he was a student. The trusting creatures were about to be betrayed by their masters. The first injections were given and the time clock started. Nothing happened and nobody spoke. The animals seemed completely unaffected. Five minutes passed, then ten. After half an hour, Nina appeared with bitter black coffee and a few biscuits. There was a jar of American coffee whitener on the tray, but nobody took any.

  Wolski broke the silence. “The test suggests an error in the computer model. The prediction is for noticeable effect in less than five minutes.”

  “You mean you have made a mistake, Professor?” Golkov asked coldly.

  “Perhaps, but I don’t believe so. It is much more likely to be in the original data on which the predictions were made.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “We must check the data,” Wolski said.

  “How long will that take?” Golkov asked.

  “Ten days, perhaps as little as a week. We have massive computing power here,” Wolski said optimistically.

  “Totally impossible; we must proceed with what we have,” Golkov said dismissively.

  “No. We can’t do that. It would be like depending on figures when you don’t know if someone has added in the date.”

  Golkov ignored Wolski’s protest. “Mr Petrovitch, we shall continue. Double the dose.”

  But Wolski would not be so easily silenced. “You must realise that it could be dangerous. Quite literally, we don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “You may not know what you’re doing, Professor. I know exactly what I’m doing,” Golkov snapped.

  Wolski drew breath to protest further.

  “Enough,” Golkov said, like a teacher short of patience. “Unless you remain silent, I shall have you removed.”

  Wolski said nothing. His first impulse was to walk out, but like Golkov, though for different reasons, he needed to see the results. The second group of animals was injected and the recorders started. A mood of anti-climax had descended on the watchers; they expected nothing. Then it happened. The results were almost instantaneous. It was in the animals’ features that the change was first noticeable; a look of ferocity possessed them. The log showed that it was at one minute and twenty seconds that the killing began. The rabbits tore into each other. Blood, fur and cries of pain were mixed in a convulsing heap. After less than three minutes a single animal remained alive. Its entrails were exposed and it died while tearing at the carcasses of its mates.

  “We have it, we have it,” Golkov shouted.

  Wolski dashed to the kitchen and vomited into the sink, which was full of Nina’s coffee grounds.

  Chapter 12 - Hamburg

  When Sunday came, Wolski sat alone in Café Mozart at a corner table overshadowed by trees. He should have asked Jakob what ‘lunchtime’ meant. He felt exposed and tried hard to control his anxiety. It was one forty-five and he had been waiting since twelve thirty. Twice he had held off an impatient waiter with orders of Pilsner. Just before two, they appeared. An unlikely pair, he was squat, dark and Central European, she tall with long, fair hair and the severe, elegant looks of the far North. Jakob was in a generous mood and made no mention of their late arrival. They sat down opposite Wolski.

  “My dear Josef, here is my beloved daughter Anya. We grew up together. She, as you see, to womanhood and me to equanimity.”

  Wolski became even more certain that he had made a serious mistake. He was about to accept help from a man who was at best an eccentric, and his daughter who was of such striking appearance that, if questioned, anyone, man or woman, was certain to remember her. The waiter appeared, anxious at last to get an order. Jakob waved aside the offer of a menu and without consultation ordered for them all: Rhamschnitzel with noodles and rotkhol and a bottle of Bull’s Blood, a dark Hungarian red wine.

  When the waiter was out of earshot he spoke again. “I have a plan,” Jakob announced with conspiratorial pride.

  The declaration made Wolski try to think of some polite form of rejection, but it was Anya who spoke next.

  “You are a remarkable man, Mr Wolski; you have brought my father back to life.”

  Jakob corrected her. “Professor, my dear, he is Professor Wolski.” He continued with rising excitement. “What my daughter means is that I had begun to think my existence was at an end, at least as far as doing anything significant was concerned. Now you offer me a renaissance of the soul,” he said with a large, expansive gesture.

  It was exactly the kind of emotional entanglement that Wolski dreaded, and all his life had struggled to avoid.

  “It may be that I am offering you death,” Wolski said.

  Jakob looked at him with the steady penetrating gaze that was slowly becoming familiar. Very deliberately he said, “Sometimes life and death are the same thing.”

  Wolski surrendered. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

  Jakob was eager to oblige. “First we must recognise that we are amateurs. This means that though we lack experience, we have the advantage of surprise. Anyone we approach wi
ll not know who we are. This Thornhill, Jack Thornhill, the person of whom I spoke – contacting him at the Hamburg office could be dangerous. But I remember he told me he sometimes had business in the St Pauli district, usually a couple of times a month. I didn’t want to listen then; I didn’t want to become involved.”

  Anya interrupted. “Why should this be so difficult? Why not simply telephone the Embassy from a phone booth?”

  Jakob answered. “Because we must not act like helpless supplicants. We must appear to have substantial abilities, so that our target will believe that we are his equal. If we want him to act to our advantage, it is essential that he should put a high value on what we say to him. Only in that way can we retain control of what happens. The contact must be a mystery. It must intrigue him, and to do that we need to capture his imagination not just professionally, but personally. If we can manage that, we shall have his undivided attention.”

  The logic, Wolski thought, was sound, but Jakob spoiled its effect by what came next.

  “And besides, I like mysteries,” he said with his odd, disturbing laugh.

  Wolski’s doubts grew firmer. The food arrived and immediately Jakob began to eat ferociously.

  Anya looked embarrassed and Wolski poured the wine. Jakob looked up.

  “If in your life you had ever been truly hungry you would know that it forever changes your attitude to food.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wolski said quietly. “I didn’t realise–”

  Jakob cut him short. There was more than a hint of anger in his voice. “There is much you don’t yet realise, old friend.”

  Wolski lowered the tension. He lifted his glass. “To understanding,” he said.