For a while there was silence about his fate. Then the first ominous sign appeared. In one of the country’s official publications, a well-known Party hack published a cartoon showing J.P. as a hooded, trench-coated, saber-rattling spy, superimposed on a graph of military secrets, his weapon broken, his leg chained to a ball. The word was soon out that J.P. had refused to co-operate and play into the hands of his accusers.…
From various leaks and rumors, the following picture of J.P.’s interrogation had reached Western intelligence. J.P. had been seated in a chair in a large, stark room, the diplomat told Levanter, and had been grilled under glaring lights. After a long session of loaded questions clearly designed to wear him down, the fencer had pointed to his arm and shouted, “You can’t destroy what this arm stands for. It belongs to the people!”
The officer in charge got up from behind his desk and entered the circle of light to stand behind the fencer. “Is this the arm you speak of?” he asked calmly, tapping J.P.’s right shoulder.
J.P. swung around in his chair to face him. “Yes, Colonel, this is the arm,” he said, extending it with pride.
The officer looked at the outstretched arm. Swiftly he grabbed it with both hands and, putting all his weight on one leg, pushed the chair away with the other. Like a peasant breaking a twig in two, the colonel bent the fencer’s arm over the back of the chair, then pressed down. The elbow snapped with a loud crack, and the arm went limp. J.P. howled and tried to pull free, but the colonel twisted the broken arm sideways and brought the wrist down over the back of the chair. Now the wrist cracked, and the hand went as limp as the arm. Moaning, J.P. slid from the chair onto the floor. “So much for the arm of the people,” said the colonel, returning to his desk.
This horrific description, by an author who had won numerous international prizes, buttressed with inside information about Pawłowski’s career and arrest, was taken as authoritative: both the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine, among others, reported it as fact. It was totally fictitious; but the word circulating among the fencing community was that Pawłowski’s fencing arm had been broken.
The rumor mill had not finished grinding. Within weeks Der Spiegel reported that another Polish fencer, Witek Woyda, who had taken both the foil individual and team gold at the Munich Olympics, had fled to the West and that a third sportsman, a field athlete, Marek Bodynski, had been shot dead trying to escape.14 Neither story was true, although Woyda did leave Poland for Italy, finally settling in America. A final rumor had Pawłowski committing suicide: according to the officer who first interviewed him after his arrest, following the verdict, “he asked me when he’d be taken off to start his prison sentence, because, he said, he wanted to finish his life ‘honorably.’ Everyone understood he meant to take his own life, but then he turned up bang on time for his sentence.”15
The authorities were not content to throw their former hero into prison. Shortly after his arrival, two inmates, apparently put up to it by their guards, jumped Pawłowski; he had to fight them off. But over time his treatment improved. When Jacek Bierkowski took the individual silver at the Budapest world championships that summer, Pawłowski was allowed to send his protégé a congratulatory telegram.
Pawłowski’s arrest had immediate repercussions. A number of other officers were convicted with him and sentenced on similar charges. Some 120 Polish fencers were interrogated. Several senior officers were replaced, and even the head of the Polish navy was relieved of his post. A few weeks later the fifty-three-year-old admiral died suddenly, “in mysterious circumstances.”
Many unanswered questions remained. For example, to what secrets could a sportsman have access? Pawłowski knew several senior officers as friends and moved in exalted circles. One close associate told me that he had passed on radar codes for military aircraft. Pawłowski said he had simply compiled intelligence reports on various people he met, “character assessments,” but if that had been the full story it is unlikely his arrest would have caused such an upheaval.
On June 11, 1985, after serving a little over ten years of his sentence, Pawłowski was exchanged for three East European spies arrested in Belgium. He was taken to the Glienicker Bridge between East and West Berlin and given back his passport; extraordinarily, he was not stripped of his citizenship. At this he turned around and asked to be driven back to Warsaw: “I am a Polish patriot.” According to Roman Zajkowski of Polish counterintelligence, “To the last minute we didn’t know what he was going to do. Throughout the plane journey there I sat next to his wife Iwonka, but he didn’t say a word.” Later Pawłowski did somewhat let down his mask: “It was a strange feeling, being in my mid fifties, watching those who went across while I stayed. I knew I was disappointing the Americans, but I have never regretted not going to the West. If I’d gone I’d have given the Communists ammunition for showing me in a negative light. By staying I shut them up.”16
Soon after, Pawłowski went to one of the main Warsaw clubs, Marymont, where his old teammate Ryszard Parulski, now president of Polish fencing, was happy to let him practice. He took on most of the young bloods there and won nearly every fight. A few weeks later he entered a classification tournament, just missing the final. Janek Koniusz, who would win silver at the 1989 world championships, recalls that “his legs had gone, and he couldn’t concentrate on any subject for any length of time, but his hand was as fast as ever.” There was much talk as to how he would fare in the Polish national championships, but this time Parulski did not allow him to take part; parents of young fencers had told him that they did not want their sons shaking hands with a traitor. It was the last time Pawłowski attempted to fence in competition.
So what had made him a spy? Pawłowski had fame, unlimited travel privileges, and a pampered life in Poland. He was a zloty billionaire, owning a sheep farm just outside Warsaw and a share of a restaurant (both farm and restaurant were confiscated on his conviction), and all agreed he was a patriot. So why?
“My heart is Polish, my mind American,” Pawłowski has said; but East European friends at the New York Athletic Club, where I now fence, laugh at the notion that his motive was ideological. “With Jerzy it was always money,” they say. At the end of August 2000 I spent several days in Warsaw, including a day and a half with Pawłowski. We talked both afternoons at his favorite ice-cream parlor, where he was warmly welcomed, at his home, and in the house of his longtime friend and rival, Wojciech Zabłocki. My first meeting was with Zabłocki, who had his own view of matters: “Jurek [as he calls him] always liked to take risks. Gambling made life more interesting—made the adrenaline flow—and if that could be combined with getting more money and hurting the Russians, so much the better. But taking risks was at the heart of it: it’s what made him such a good fencer.” It also gave him a secret life, I reflected, making him different from those around him. I recalled the British spies of the 1930s and 1940s, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Anthony Blunt, homosexuals when homosexuality was illegal, living two secret lives at once; and thought about how fencing depends on deception, on suggesting the opposite of one’s real intentions …
Zabłocki described how Pawłowski loved to negotiate deals during trips abroad, selling equipment he had been given and using the currency to buy foreign goods, which he would then resell, often openly cheating his teammates, even telling them what he had done afterwards. Once, in the late 1950s, he told Zabłocki, after selling him a watch, that he had paid considerably less for it, expecting his friend to be affronted. Zabłocki had been through this too often to take the bait. Pawłowski pressed on: “So, you know, I cheated you on that exchange.” Zabłocki did eventually reply, “Yes, I know,” but without displaying any anger or resentment. Pawłowski never cheated him again.
At least, not on currency matters. But there was one fencing encounter that Zabłocki has never forgotten. Unlike the Hungarians and the Italians, the Poles did not fix bouts among themselves—Pawłowski and Zabłocki were so competitive that they always fenced for victory—
and in 1959 they tied for first place in a big international tournament in Italy, having to fight off to determine who would be champion.
The great Eduardo Mangiarotti was asked to referee the fight. Though primarily an épéeist and foilist, he fancied himself a saber referee, yet again and again he gave doubtful hits in Pawłowski’s favor, until Zabłocki was defeated. Afterwards an exultant Pawłowski explained to his teammate that before the bout he had sought out Mangiarotti to urge that he put himself forward as referee. “You are easily the best person here. You never make mistakes; it would be quite wrong for them to ask anyone but you.” Mangiarotti needed no second bidding and richly repaid Pawłowski’s initiative.
I can still remember fencing Pawłowski at the Vienna world championships in 1971. It soon became clear that the final place among those who would be promoted in an early round rested between myself and an American, Al Morales, who then beat me 5–2. My last fight in the pool was against Pawłowski, who had not lost any of his other bouts, and I knew I could win promotion only by beating him. There were several classes of ability between us, but I knew that Pawłowski rarely tried his hardest against weaker opponents, and that although he loved to win he would fall back on certain set moves. I reckoned that I knew what these moves would be and managed to take the bout 5–1.
As we walked off the strip I mumbled something apologetic to Pawłowski, who said, with a wave of his hand, “My present to you.” At the time I thought this gracious, but afterward I reflected that I had earned that victory; it wasn’t my fault if he didn’t want to put himself out against me. I had chosen the right moves—why couldn’t he admit as much? Or maybe he hadn’t been trying at all.… Years later I learned that Morales, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was rumored to have been working for the CIA. Rivalry among spies? And there was the simple fencing explanation: two years before, in Poland, Morales had beaten Pawłowski in a competition the Pole had expected to win. So what had really been going on that morning in Vienna?
The desperate last-hit flèche by Walter Köestner to defeat Pawłowski during their match for the final at the 1964 Olympics. Pawłowski later claimed he had stopped fencing and was trying to help the German up. (illustration credit 18.5)
Pawłowski made fencing look so easy that it was hard to know when he was totally engaged and when he was coasting. At the Tokyo Games in 1964, he had been the firm favorite, the reigning world champion and in top form.† In the last sixteen he was drawn against the German Walter Köestner: the first to land ten hits. He rapidly drew ahead 7–2, then started to toy with his opponent. The score went 7–3, 7–4, and on, until the two men found themselves at 9–all. At this moment Köestner launched himself in a desperate horizontal flèche, throwing his whole body forward, both feet off the floor. The attack landed on Pawłowski’s arm: the world champion had been eliminated. I spoke to Köestner about the fight, and he remembered the last hit in detail. Pawłowski had a different version: he had seen the German stumble and stopped, holding out an arm to help him. As he did so Köestner’s cut had landed. The last hit was an accident.
But I too remembered the hit—an extraordinarily dramatic picture had appeared in The Times the next day, making the German’s all-out attack clear. Pawłowski could not admit the truth. But to his credit he did say that some time after his prison sentence was announced Walter Köestner had been among a group of German fencers who approached the Polish government offering half a million DM for Pawłowski’s release. The deal was turned down flat.17
Zabłocki arranged for me to visit Ryszard Parulski, Pawłowski’s teammate back in early 1960s, now in charge of the campaign to get the Olympics to Poland in 2012. I was invited to his office, reached through two sets of locked iron gates and furnished with plush black leather sofas and chairs. Parulski was dressed in similar style: black leather pants, a black open-necked shirt, and white silk scarf. He has drifted far to the right since his Solidarity days and is seen as Pawłowski’s fiercest critic among Polish fencers. I told him Zabłocki’s view of their famous contemporary. “Liberal nonsense,” he snapped. “Pawłowski joined the army, then signed up as a Party member. He didn’t have to do either—I didn’t. He’s trying to remake himself as a hero against communism, but he was always interested in money.” He looked at me hard. “He took advantage of everyone; you never betray your country for money.”
Afterward, Zabłocki picked me up and took me back to his house for lunch. I told him what Parulski had said, and he thought for a bit. When Pawłowski first got out of prison, he said, he had tried to clear his name—or at least win back his reputation—and planned to confront General Kiszczak, the minister who had been in charge of investigating him, to show that the accusations were unjustified. For a while the government did nothing, but after Pawłowski started proclaiming his innocence in public his trial transcripts were released, and in 1991, with a post-communist government, a leading magazine, Prawo i Zycia (Truth and Life), revealed that it had come out during the trial that Pawłowski had been spying for the Polish State Security services since August 1955—on his own teammates.18 In the early 1960s he had even sent in three reports about his friend Witek Woyda, saying the foilist was selling his furniture in anticipation of fleeing the country. Soon other papers were commenting on the trial transcripts. They revealed that Pawłowski’s job had been to tell the security services which athletes were planning to defect, who supported Israel, and who might be open to approaches. His spying ceased abruptly in March 1962, when it was judged that he was using his position “for personal gain.”
The trial papers also revealed the results of a personality profile that the security services had run on Pawłowski, judging him to be egocentric, independent, able to predict an opponent’s intentions, blessed with amazing reflexes, arrogant, lacking in self-criticism, presumptuous, respectful of those stronger than himself, suffering from an inferiority complex, and given to flattery. At Pawłowski’s trial, a judge went further, describing him as “a traitor to his country, a careerist, and quite devoid of any noble feelings.”
These reports were even more damaging to Pawłowski’s reputation than the original charges. Typically, however, he has recently proclaimed that he was wrongfully, indeed fraudulently, indicted. He was enraged with two Polish journalists in particular, and was considering legal action. Zabłocki has urged him to lie low, as he knows the government has yet further accusations to make—that he had agreed while in jail to spy against Solidarity prisoners.
As Zabłocki and I were finishing lunch, Pawłowski arrived to pick me up. I spent the rest of the day with him and all the next day, until he and his wife of thirty-seven years, Iwonka (“Yvonne”), drove me to the airport. Pawłowski is tubby now and almost bald, but, though close to seventy and having recently survived a bout with cancer, still moves with deft assurance. “I am as strong as an ox.” His house, a large, open-plan building he designed himself, is about twenty minutes from the city center. He was gracious and friendly throughout—except for one moment of startling anger, when he shouted at one of his three wolfhounds to behave. He seemed willing to talk about everything, showing me his large cellar with a sophisticated do-it-yourself kit, his paintings and mementos, but on almost every topic where he might be open to criticism he gave only vague replies.
Had he spied on his teammates, as the trial transcripts asserted? Pawłowski’s face took on a crafty look, and he said simply that no one knew just when he had started to spy for the CIA—it was certainly before 1968. How much long before? 1952? He couldn’t say more—it would incriminate people still alive. Furthermore, I shouldn’t believe anything Parulski told me—“it was he who took on the task of getting rid of me from fencing.” He then handed me a copy of his second book, Najdluzszy pojedynek (My Longest Duel) (1994),19 an account, plain and simple, of his days as a spy. Unlike the first book, it is written in a sparse, dynamic style, colloquial and opinionated: a Polish friend of mine called it a “turn-pager.” Throughout the Russians are the vil
lains and Pawłowski the hero: “I will show those sons of bitches. We will see who will win in the end.”
The book relates how he was approached during a trip to Padua—date unspecified—by an American named Joe Baker. From the first, Pawłowski writes, he insisted there be no payment; he was acting out of patriotism and a determination to exact revenge for what had been done to his country—the Katyn massacre of 1940, the torture and murder of members of the Polish Underground Army up to 1956, the Russians’ betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944, when they had deliberately stopped their advance, leaving the Germans to crush the rebellion. As a twelve-year-old he had been part of the uprising, and that desire for freedom motivated him still. Throughout his days with the Agency he had accepted only one gift: a holiday in Nice.
On the espionage itself he was extremely reticent: he had been involved with the army general staff, and one of his contacts had been “Jan Kowalski”—the Polish equivalent of John Smith. He insisted he had been doctrinally anti-Communist since the Games in Helsinki, when he had seen what life was like in the West. When I asked again about his ostensible collaboration with the Polish secret police, he went off on a tangent, replying that his longevity as a CIA agent could be evidenced by the KGB’s many attempts to kill him. His book details two of their more extreme “countermeasures,” when his car was sabotaged, once in Poland and once in Belgium—“I was a well-known figure; it was easier than charging me as a spy”—but each time he had escaped. His eventual trial was, he claimed, a victory for Communist propaganda: “See, we try our heroes.”
In 1990 a German lawyer and ex-fencer, Wolfgang Lange, was empowered by Pawłowski to write to Der Spiegel to see if the magazine would commission an article about his life. Lange’s letter reads in part:
By the Sword Page 55