by Adam Hall
'Ah, yes.' I found my wallet.
'You are prepared to pay?'
'But yes of course.'
He nodded, a stocky man with his peaked cap set conservatively straight, a man without imagination but with a sense of responsibility, too old now to be stirred by the rumours of a fight for freedom in tomorrow's streets, a stolid man prepared to weather the strictures of a regime he'd come to accept since middle youth, a man to whom I couldn't say the police are looking for me, let me through quickly in the cause of Sroda.
'I must see your papers.'
'Here they are.'
He opened my passport at the first page, his thumb misshapen by an old accident, the nail split and clogged with the grime of years, of trains.
'How much is the fare?'
'We shall see.'
I listened to the footsteps. They had started hurrying: the people who walk all the way to the rear of a train are people who like a compartment to themselves. They hurried past me, behind me.
'You must pay one hundred and thirty zlotys.' He stood over his fares schedule, reluctant to close it and put it away, a priest devoted to his bible. 'The single fare is one hundred and twenty zlotys, and there is the obligatory supplement of ten zlotys for failing to purchase a ticket at the — ‘
'Here are one hundred and forty. Please keep the change.'
I lifted the bag.
'I cannot do that. I am an official of the Polish State Railways.' He turned towards his booth. 'Besides, you will require a receipt.'
'I do not wish for one. I am in a hurry.'
'Just the same, I have to make out a receipt.'
If I pushed past him through the gate he probably wouldn't shout after me because he'd be too surprised. The notes lay on his fare schedule so there was no question of failure to pay, but I'd still be committing a breach of the rules and he would try to stop me, raising his voice. It couldn't be risked. They were behind me now, directly behind or to the right or left, concentrating on the train, searching for a man in hiding. They mustn't be distracted. I put the bag down. He had found his receipt pad.
'Point of departure, Bydgoszcz. That's what you said?'
'Yes'
They would make a thorough search, delaying the train until they were satisfied. They could take their time because they were certain I couldn't leave the station: a call would have gone out not later than a minute after I'd made the break and the station police would have been told to phone for M.O. assistance and a net would already be extending around the area.
'And your reason for not purchasing a ticket was because you had no time?'
'Yes.'
It was an oblong form with eight or nine blanks, Point of Departure, Time of Departure, Intended Destination, Particulars of Personal Identification, Amount Paid (Fare), Amount Paid (Supplement), Total Amount Paid, Remarks. I watched him write, the ball-point pen sloping at an odd angle because of his thumb.
'I must see your passport again.'
I gave it to him.
They knew I would never get through the net. It would remain in place until the reinforcements of civil police had searched the station and questioned everyone in it. They would be ordered particularly to look for a man who might try to pass a barrier without a ticket.
'This name here, is it "Stuttgart"?’
'Yes.'
'The writing isn't very clear.'
Foster's men wouldn't check the barriers: they'd be deployed in the immediate area of the Bydgoszcz-Warsaw-Rzeszbw express, covering the north end of the station where I might be expected to run if I left cover. The M.O. contingents would see to the barriers and one of their men would be on his way here now. He would question the ticket collector, who would report a passenger without a ticket, and from that moment the search would focus on the subway area.
These were the limits I'd have to work in and rd known that, but the time-factor was tightening and I began noting the aural character of the footsteps to the left side of the barrier: the patrol would approach from that direction, from the main hall. It was difficult because they'd started getting some of the baggage off the train and there was the rattling of trolley-wheels.
'One hundred and forty.' He counted the notes and opened his cashbox. 'So the change will be ten zlotys.'
A sound-rhythm was coming in, gradually dominating the background. It was to the left and there were two of them, two men walking in step, their heels metal-tipped.
'Ten zlotys.'
'Thank you.'
I picked up the bag.
'Wait a minute.' He tore the form at the perforation. 'You'll want your receipt'
Close now, walking in step.
'Thank you.'
I took the receipt.
'Enjoy your stay in Warsaw.'
'Yes I will.'
I didn't think there was time but it had to be tried and I went through the gate and one of them called out when I was on the fourth or fifth stair down so I swung the bag forward and back and let go and heard the shout break to a grunt as the bag struck. and then I dived with my weight taking me clear across the rest of the stairs and sending me on to the subway floor in a feet-first slide that was stopped by the wall with one shoulder taking the stock and my shoes finding a grip again and pitching me forward into a very fast run.
Police whistles.
The coat was a nuisance, flapping.
From the main hall I’d seen that the subway had five double staircases giving access to the eight platforms and that the one blind spot was made by a central waiting room shared by Platforms 4 and 5 but now that I was actually working the area it didn't seem safe to rely on the blind spot because at this stage I didn't know the observation vectors on this side of the train: the train gave me high-wall cover from only three of the platforms so that the blind-spot value of the waiting room was nil except for a five-yard stretch of the train itself.
I would have to stay below ground.
This had been allowed for: the Toaleta signs had been visible from the hall and their arrows pointed downwards. That was why I had turned to the right. There were two smaller signs just beyond the centre staircases and the washroom had a wide entrance with no doors, the line of handbasins facing it below mirrors There was a key on the outside of the cleaner's cupboard and I took it in with me and locked the door.
They were young or sketchily trained or too used to working in pairs because they both came into the subway instead of splitting up, one following me and the other staying on the platform to watch the subway exits. Or they thought I might be difficult. Their boots were ringing and making echoes along the glazed-ceramic walls so that it sounded as if more than two were there. Soon there would actually be more than two because of the whistles.
The cupboard was very small and I was standing on one end of a broomhead, gripping the handle to make sure it didn't tap the wall or the door if I shifted my position. Acrid fumes of carbolic and hypochlorite and the smell of a damp rag.
They were splitting up now: both had checked the staircases I'd passed just before the Toaleta signs but one of them had been quicker and he was here now, clattering about and kicking open the cubicle doors. Then the handle within a few inches of my sleeve was rattled but he didn't persist because he knew I couldn't have got through a locked door.
He went away, joining his partner, and the echoes grew faint. I unlocked the door and went to the line of handbasins, drinking from my cupped hands and splashing my face. Time was 12:53, eight minutes from when I'd made the break. It wasn't possible to know how long they'd keep up the search but the moment would come when the officer in charge would call it off, leaving a skeleton cadre manning key points while he extended the hunt city-wide.
I buttoned my coat: running would be easier and the image was no longer useful. There would be slight confusion when the reports went in because Foster's K.G.B. men were looking for someone with normal build and no luggage and the M.O. section had gone after a fat man with a bag he'd thrown at them but they'd ch
eck and find Karl Dollinger on the carbon copy of the receipt at the ticket barrier and that was the name they'd found in the register at the Hotel Kuznia, Room 54.
I tore up the receipt and dropped it into a pan and flushed it and waited and flushed it again because one of the pieces was still floating. Principle: don't carry items of identification even if they tally with your passport. As a mental exercise I could have worked out more than one situation involving a search of the person in circumstances where it would be acceptable to be Karl Dollinger but not to someone who'd passed through Warsaw Central between noon and one o'clock today.
The mirror showed the eyes still flickering a bit from. the reaction, otherwise fresh. The fur kepi had come off when I'd cleared the stairs and they would have found it and reported the new image. I'd have to get another one because on this day in this city there wouldn't be a single man bare-headed.
The ballcock was shutting off and there was quiet here. The train hadn't moved: I would have heard it rumbling. I would give them an hour, an hour and a half at the most; then I'd have to get clear because there was a lot of work to do before I called on Foster this evening.
A freight went through at 13:20 on the line directly overhead and the vibration set up noise from the handle of the metal bucket. Two other trains had come in and when the passengers had filled the subway I went into a cubicle and shut the door and waited until there was quiet again. The risk-pattern was formal: the cleaner must arrive and it could happen at any time and if he found the cupboard locked and the key gone from the outside of the door he would report it at once, knowing the police were looking for someone. Therefore I had to be in a cubicle, not the cupboard, when he came. But the second wave of the search must also arrive and similarly it could happen at any time and I would have to be in the cupboard with the door locked and the key on the inside, because they would search the cubicles.
But I couldn't distinguish between the footsteps of the cleaner and the footsteps of a single police patrol and a decision would have to be made: cubicle or cupboard. There was nothing to be done about this until the time came. The low-risk periods were when a train arrived and the passengers came through the subway: the police wouldn't make a search for one man with the field confused.
I had spent a fair amount of thought on Merrick. Some of it was constructive: at a convenient moment, before the normal life of the city was disturbed, by action in the streets, I would have to deal with him. Some of it was retrospective, the hindsight clarification of points that had foxed me before I'd known what he was; but despite the attitudes I'd learned and come to recognise as valid I couldn't think about him impersonally as just another component of the East-West Intelligence machine: his face kept coming in front of me, pale, nervy, vulnerable, his eyes incapable of hiding the misery that was breaking him down.
Double agents don't last long: the strain is killing. The exceptions are people like Sorge, Foster, Obermann, but the strain on them is no less killing: it's just that they're harder to kill. For a boy like Merrick to go double was simply an elaborate attempt at suicide.
It was irrelevant that he'd tried to take me with him.
Other thoughts: intensive attempt to work out how to get the maximum amount of information into Egerton's hands before the possibility of my non-survival. Foster wanted me alive but captive and the risk lay in the actions I'd have to take to remain free. Intensive thinking on this too. Intervals of free-ranging images, disjointed, unimportant.
Cannot locate references in mission report to actual train journey Bydgoszcz-Warsaw therefore question amount of 130 zlotys paid at Dworzec Warszawa Glowna 12:50 hours Tuesday 19. Silly bitch.
I heard them coming.
At first one man, and I listened for clues: the cleaner might be a woman, her steps lighter, but this was a man; the cleaner would be older, possibly, than an M.O. officer, thus might shuffle, could detect no shuffle. Then suddenly there were the others and within a minute the confines were sharp with echoes: they came from all directions, down the double staircases and from each end of the subway in a blanket operation designed to remove the risk inherent in a simple wave motion: a wave coverage moving from one end of the subway to the other could drive the quarry in front of it and allow him a chance of finding an exit.
All the exits were simultaneously blocked.
They were civil police in uniform, their boots metalled and their pace regular. None of them spoke. Their sound filled the passage.
I had to be quick getting into the cupboard because some of them were coming down the twin staircases close to the washroom and they would be here in a few seconds. The metal bucket was a hazard, its sound alien to the background, and I was careful. The locking of the door gave no trouble since the tumblers came within the same aural range as footsteps on stonework.
The earlier patrol had smashed the hinges of three cubicle doors in kicking them open but I'd left the other five closed so that these people would find something to do that would take their attention from the cupboard. The mind of one policeman becomes much like another's: they're trained to work as a group and their imagination is corporate. The earlier patrol had gone for the obvious — the cubicles — and had given the cupboard only token attention. It was possible that these would do the same.
Two of them came into the washroom. The others went past.
One began on the cubicles, his boot crashing at the doors. He would be standing back as he kicked, his gun out of its holster and prepared to shoot and to shoot first. The aim would be low: Foster would have given orders that I was to be taken alive. The other had noticed the cupboard.
He wrenched three times at the handle. I felt its movement against my sleeve. Then he crossed to the cubicles and used his boot. The noise of the doors crashing open was very loud, overwhelming the sounds coming from the subway. The smell of the cleansing fluid had become stronger because my sense of sight was frustrated and the others were compensating, stimulated by a crisis situation.
They finished with the cubicles and turned and came past the cupboard on their way out.
'What about that?'
'I've tried it.'
'Is it locked?'
'Yes'
The handle moved again.
'We'll have to make sure.'
The explosion made me think he was firing at the lock but it was his boot against the panels.
'That's no good, it opens outwards, look.'
'Have to force it, then.'
'What with?'
'We'll have to find something.!
'Shoot round it?'
'Round what?'
'The lock.'
'We'd bring the others.’
'What about it?'
'They'll think we've got him. Finish up looking silly.'
'How can anyone be in there if the door's locked?'
'We've got to make sure. You know what the Captain said, turn every stone.'
'Ask someone where the key is, then.'
'Take all day. You stay here and I'll fetch an axe or something.'
The sound of his boots faded.
So there was only one of them but the conditions were zero because the instant I turned the key he'd hear it and get ready and I'd run into close-range shots.
He crossed to the far side and urinated at the stalls.
The main groups were leaving the subway and when the last of the echoes died they left total silence. He moved again, passing the cupboard, his feet idling, going through the entrance and then halting, looking along the subway.
I had already raised my palm upwards and with the fingertips leading, and touched nothing. Now I felt for the damp rag and found it and folded it into an oblong and draped it across the end of the broomhandle and began raising it by degrees. The risk was high because there was so little room to work in: I'd removed the key after locking the door but the handle and the metal bucket remained dangerous; in total darkness I had to steer the broomhead past them both and touch neither, keeping my elbow clear
of the doorhandle as the arm was extended.
I had to work quickly and it was impossible, discount need for speed and concentrate on need for silence.
Sweat had begun creeping close to my eyes. Heartbeat audible, the pulse fast. Another inch, raise it another inch. The end of the rag brushed across my face, clammy and smelling of mould. Another inch.
He kicked at something, perhaps a cigarette end, flicking it with the toe of his boot, taking a pace, stopping.
The broomhead passed my face. I lifted it higher
The sound was loud and came from below me and I froze all movement and stood with the nerves reacting. It was certain that he'd heard and would turn and come back into the washroom and stand listening but he didn't do that and it took a full second for the forebrain to bring logic to bear. The rag was half-saturated and the moisture had started draining towards the ends and the first drip had hit the bucket and the sound was magnified by the funnel acoustics and to my ears it had been startling but to his it had been a strictly normal sound associated with plumbing and cisterns.
Raising the broom I tilted it, bringing the rag directly over my head, because any sound, however closely associated with the environs, would increase his alertness. Silence, lacking aural stimulus, is an overall sense-depressant in non-crisis conditions. For him there was no crisis.
He moved again, coming back into the washroom and pacing there, turning, halting. Possibly he was looking at himself in the mirror as sometimes we do when we are alone, seeking a reaffirmation of our identity. He had begun whistling through his teeth.
The broom was as high as I could raise it. I began bringing it down.,
The second drip fell, hitting my shoulder.
It would take time, lowering the broom: it would take as long as it had taken to raise it because the hazards were the same. I had made progress: was nearer, by a broom's length, to completing the mission; but that didn't allow me to hurry. I couldn't know how many more minutes I had left. Three or with luck five, but not more than that because they'd be as quick about this as they could: their group-sense would be disturbing them since the others had gone ahead and left them isolated.