“Sources close to Mr. Walesa,” the item noted, “said a man had reported that he had been offered money to assassinate the Polish leader. This could not be independently confirmed.” But there were no follow-up items that Delaney could find, as if the story had fizzled, couldn’t be properly checked out, or was found to be false. Or had been planted, perhaps, in the international media by Walesa’s own people.
More good material, news agency copy again, from August 1994, under the headline “Former Polish Spy Resigns.”
“A former Communist master spy who was put in charge of Poland’s civil intelligence service last week,” the piece said, “resigned yesterday after complaints that his nomination could endanger the nation’s relations with the West. Mr. Marian Zacharski, who was given a life sentence by a U.S. court in 1981 for spying, and later released in a spy swap, said he was quitting because he did not want to enflame the situation. ...Some analysts suggest ed that Mr. Walesa, who technically is in charge of the Interior Ministry, first approved the nomination but then changed his mind after suggestions it was a sign the ruling left-wing parties were bringing back the old system. Walesa’s officials were not available to respond to the allegations yesterday.”
Vanguard had a good analysis piece in October 1994 about Walesa’s election chances.
“Mr. Walesa has never been very easy to understand,” the magazine said. “If he had been, then it’s a safe bet the Solidarity revolution would never have happened. But his offbeat behaviour has made many Poles doubt he can win a second time around in the 1995 presidential race. . . . His recent behaviour is probably designed to kick off his campaign and to enhance presidential authority just as Parliament starts to examine various drafts of a new constitution. The drafts — there are seven of them — differ mainly over the divisions of power between the president and Parliament.”
The Borowski articles were good too. PolishCanadian millionaire takes 25 percent of the vote in last presidential election. Rumours fly thick and fast in that period about who he really is, whom he represents, where he really wants to take Poland if he wins. Defamation charges, bail, and a post-election retreat to Toronto. Will he run again this time? No indication about that in the reporting. Something to check out.
Delaney wrote a note to himself on a yellow, lined legal pad. Double-check Borowski angle. Toronto.
Ottawa? Hilferty? But, again, where was the possibility of any connection to Stanislaw Janovski in Montreal?
The information on Poland’s gangsters was also good. Too many ex-security service people and secret police and army types and released prisoners and unemployables and malcontents now had dangerous amounts of time on their hands, with alarming results. Idle hands, as always, being the devil’s workshop. Protection rackets were thriving in Warsaw and in cities all over the country. Fraud, prostitution, drugs, construction kickbacks, whitecollar crime, insider trading. Things getting so bad there had even been a shopkeeper’s strike in Warsaw recently, demanding protection from racketeers and extortion gangs. The wild, wild East.
Delaney wrote on his yellow pad: Janovski somehow in rackets? Friends in rackets? Then he wrote: Natalia in rackets?? Just back from Europe. After a moment’s thought, however, he carefully crossed the last items out.
Delaney even went back to the 1950s and ’60s in his browsing, at great cost to his magazine. The notes he had made for himself after Natalia left on that first day in his apartment had underlinings in the section about Janovski’s World War II service, his connection to the government-in-exile and to the Polish art treasures story. A long shot where Janovski was concerned, maybe. But still the makings of a good feature item, if nothing else, and Delaney could not resist having a look.
There was not much at all in the Canadian databases about the treasures angle, however, because not much newspaper material from that era had been entered into the system. But the Montreal Tribune had a fair amount. The scribbles on Delaney’s legal pad multiplied.
The Tribune headline writers in the 1950s, Delaney decided, were not at peak form. “Poles Bid Canada Return Treasure.” “Warsaw Hankers for Kingly Sword.” “Canada to Yield Polish Treasure.” “Polish Treasures Leave Ottawa.” “Gutenberg Bible Off to Poland After Wartime Stay In Ottawa.”
But Delaney noted with interest that old Max Cohen, who later became a respected columnist with the paper, was in the late 1950s paying his dues as a foreign correspondent in Warsaw and had covered the return of the so-called “Ottawa treasures.” Cohen had filed some very nice colour pieces. Trunks opened in an Ottawa bank vault and the Polish coronation sword, Chopin musical scores, a Gutenberg Bible, and some other priceless little baubles found safe and sound inside. Insured by nervous officials for US$100 million. A secret train shipment to the United States under cover of snow and winter dark. Worries that Duplessis might order his provincial police to seize the goods as they passed through Quebec. But they are safely loaded onto a Swedish vessel in New York, bound for Poland. Crowds in the streets to greet the arrival. Young Cohen was in fine form.
“Krakow, Feb. 16, 1959 — The joy here in Poland at the return of the treasures is matched by Canada’s relief at having been able to solve at least part of the problem. But officials say a lot more treasure still lies in a Quebec museum, including a priceless collection of ancient tapestries. They hope that negotiations to persuade the Quebec premier, Mr. Duplessis, to change his mind and release the booty still under his control will work out, and that they can further defuse this dramatic situation.”
There was another flurry of articles in the Tribune in 1961, after Duplessis had died and his successor finally agreed to send the Quebec treasures back to the Communist government in Poland. “Quebec Sends Back Poland’s Treasures.”
“Quebec Yielding Polish Treasure.”
“Poles Hail Return of National Relics.”
There had been more secret machinations to head off angry diehards from the government-inexile. A final deal signed just before the dead time of a New Year’s holiday. Heavy crates loaded onto a convoy of trucks for another secret winter journey under police guard, this time to Boston. Onto a Polish freighter, then special train cars are laid on from Gydnia docks to Warsaw. More cheering crowds, and lots of Communist officials cheering a small Cold War propaganda victory. Now all but forgotten.
“Warsaw, Jan. 18, 1961 — Polish art historians said today that the Wawel treasures returned from Quebec appeared to be in relatively good shape, miraculously good shape. The twenty-four crates were opened in the National Museum here yesterday for a preliminary examination.”
The only recent item on the art treasures that Delaney was able to track down in the late-night extravagance of his electronic roamings was a feature in the Toronto Herald from 1984, when Pope John Paul II — the Polish Pope, Delaney duly noted on his pad — made an official visit to Canada. The Herald’s Ben Kingson, whom Delaney had worked with when they were both Parliamentary correspondents in Ottawa, had had the dream assignment of following the Pope around Canada and filing colour pieces. Kingson had stumbled onto the Polish art treasures story, apparently, and thought it well worth telling again, if only because of the Catholic Church angle and the Pope’s Polish background.
Kingson ended his Herald piece on a conspiratorial note, as any good colour man would.
“No one can say for sure whether Pope John Paul II, then Father Karol Wojtyla of Krakow diocese, played any direct role in the treasures dispute. And no one is ever likely to know. But it’s hard for anyone to believe that he knew nothing at all about the story and even harder to believe that he wouldn’t have been aware of the controversy. In the mid1950s, Wojtyla was a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin when some staff and students started to put pressure on the government of Canada to send the goods back. And then in 1958, Wojtyla was an assistant bishop of Krakow, at the very time that his mentor, Cardinal Wyszynski, was pressing Catholic Church official
s in Canada to intervene and do all they could to get the treasures sent back to Poland.”
All, Delaney decided as he at last switched off his computer and modem, very, very interesting. Wartime Europe, Nazis, governments-in-exile, treasures, Catholic Church intrigue, secret passwords, Quebec politics, anti-Communism. Stir in a bit of Solidarity, a bit of revolution, an unstable post-Communist government, underemployed army generals, rumours of coups and assassination plots, hordes of former Communists back in Parliament, a paranoid and erratic Lech Walesa, cliques of shadowy advisers Walesa might not be able to keep under control, a shaky Polish economy, the IMF, the UOP, the RCMP, CSIS, maybe CIA, maybe former KGB. Add a band of gangsters terrorizing Warsaw, and a Polish-Canadian millionaire with designs on the presidency. Fold in church-state tensions, the abortion question, and a papal connection that might go back fifty years. Top it all with a couple of Polish agents operating in Canada. It was a very rich mixture indeed.
But what, exactly, do you get? Somehow you get a dead Polish bomber pilot in Montreal and a dead Quebecois priest.
Delaney wondered what consulting psychologist Natalia Janovski would make of all these conspiracy theories, of all these conspirator figures.
What projections of inner psychic content would she blame this on? Delaney thought wearily. What would she find archetypal about all of this?
*
Delaney at the shooting range. Club de Tir de Laval, Inc. Weapon transported, as per instructions and regulations, in trunk of car. Said weapon, nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol, Browning brand, now held tightly in right hand, at end of outstretched right arm. Left hand bracing right wrist. Orange safety goggles, provided by club management, to protect eyes. Ear covers, provided by club management, to protect hearing. Box of bullets on small table.
Target some distance away.The familiar semiotic target in concentric circles of red and white. No human silhouettes here. This is not America, this is Canada, where targets are in the abstract, not in the shape of human beings. Canada, where targets are concentric circles of red and white, not enemies in the shapes of men.
The sound of rapid gunfire close by, loud even through the ear covers. Other club members practising their aim. What brings them here? Are Polish agents killing uncles of their friends too? What secrets, what secret fear, brings them to Club de Tir de Laval, Inc. to aim and shoot at red-and-white circles some distance away?
Delaney, in jeans, sweatshirt, ball cap; fires, fires, fires. No stranger to weapons he. But, until now, an observer of weapons. Not always from afar. A taker of notes, a notetaker of weapon types, brands, calibres, numbers. Reporter, colour man, describer of conflict and carnage, of armed commitments he has not himself been forced to make. Now, however, he fires, fires, fires.
A clever system brings the targets whizzing on wires back down the range to shooters for perusal. The little holes Delaney’s bullets have made form no particular pattern around the centre. Some are far from it, some closer. No shooting champion he. But he has not completely missed the target this session. There is improvement.
A few minutes of instruction from young JeanYves Pelletier, club coach, two-time Quebec and one-time Canadian rapid-fire pistol-shooting champion, explains again the theory and practice of shooting pistols. The champion shooter fires, fires, fires. The competition badges on his windbreaker quiver slightly with each shot. Target whizzes back to the two men. They peer at it together. Indoor warriors, in baseball caps.
The holes this time are soldier-close, crowded around the all-important centre. More words of instruction, encouragement. Then Delaney’s turn again.
His right arm jumps up slightly with each shot, left hand steadying. This is the opposite of observation. Stand many metres away, pull a trigger, and a target is transformed. Something has actually happened; something is changed. A shell empties itself of its bullet, right arm jumps up, left hand steadies, a hole appears in a cardboard target. Ears ring, nostrils sniff explosive smells.
Delaney fires, fires, fires. This is the ultimate projection, the ultimate interaction of subject and object. This has it all: perception, implication, decision, action, consequence, change. Squint down the barrel, look for the clever little sight, fix target in said sight: fire, fire, fire. And target is changed. Holes appear in cardboard. Elsewhere, in other circumstances, something may fall over. Man-shaped cardboard silhouette. Man.
A target can be changed by this action. By action.
A target can be something sought, desired, or something hated, feared. A target can be sought, aimed at, because it is where one wants to be, what one wants to be, or it can be destroyed because it is a threat. In Canada, at Club de Tir de Laval, Inc., targets are sought, not feared and destruction is, mostly, s ymbolic.
Delaney will not write about his target practice, will not report. There is no story here. Only targets, desired or feared. Changed through desire; destroyed through fear.
*
Before departure, Francis Delaney dreamed this:
He is moving through dense rainforest undergrowth in an unknown troubled country with some local guides and translators and soldiers. Their mission is to find a foreign hostage who is being held by rebel forces somewhere in the hills. They know that the task is a dangerous one. His companions are in battle fatigues and heavily armed, but he himself carries no weapon — only a notebook in his breast pocket. He is to cover the ambush for a newspaper in a far-off place. He feels absurdly vulnerable to sniper fire, to any attack. The birdsong is intense, as is the screech and click and flutter of insects.The sun and the salt from his own sweat burn his eyes and it becomes increasingly difficult to see.Then, for some absurd reason, he finds himself pushing a battered old baby carriage along the narrow, ill-defined mud track, as a refugee might. He realizes as he looks inside the carriage that the baby is missing, that it has been dropped somehow along the way and is now surely dead. He knows that his wife will be angry, but then remembers that he no longer has a wife. Then the scene shifts suddenly to Europe and he is both in the jungle and in a major city at the same time, in the impossible logic of dreams. His sense of disorientation and impending doom increases. Then snow begins to fall heavily on all that is before him.Then the realization presents itself to him as clearly as anything he has ever known that he will never be able to find the hostage, because the hostage is himself.
Before departure, Natalia Janovski dreamed this:
She is in the company of familiar, welcoming women. The meeting is in Emma Jung’s house. They have been invited to help Mrs. Jung complete her famous researches into the legend of the Holy Grail. Natalia is guest of honour at this gathering. They are on the shores of Lake Zurich. Jung himself is not there. He defers to his wife on Grail research; he always has. Natalia gives a brilliant paper about her latest work on the Grail legend. Emma Jung is delighted. There is polite, though enthusiastic, applause. Natalia is given an important new research assignment. The party then lunches on the most delicious foods imaginable, gathered from the far reaches of the globe. They move outside into the brilliant Swiss winter sunshine. The lake is frozen solid but the ice is black, not white. It looks like a chill expanse of black marble. Everyone skates elegantly, their skate blades describing mysterious arcs and symbols on the ice. Then Natalia is skating alone, ever alert for the Grail. It is somewhere close; she knows this in her dreaming heart. Then she begins to skate figure eights, over and over and over again. The inscriptions on the marble ice are exquisitely chiselled.Then the figures of eight become symbols of eternity, the numerals turned on their sides. Natalia skates and skates eternity signs, chiselling them deeper and deeper into the lake’s hard surface. The ice is finally pierced by her sharp blades and she sinks elegantly in. Below the surface, though, is not water but ash, the blackest ash. She disappears without a trace.
*
Delaney stood alone in his quiet apartment, looking appreciatively around, as he always did before leaving on a long tr
ip or a new assignment. It was his personal style of meditation. He noted with small private pleasure the order, the neatness, the cleanliness of it all. Books and papers stacked properly in their places, pens and pencils ranged in rows. Paintings and photographs straightened. On the kitchen counter a polished drinking glass upturned on a fresh, folded dishcloth, so as to leave no ring on the shiny surface. No chaos here.
Delaney stood in the quiet of his own space, knowing too well its stark contrast with the world outside, the world he knew almost against his will of teeming cities, mazes of streets, taxis jostling for position, airports, customs officers, baggage, hotels, strangers. The world, sometimes, of risk, violence, sudden change. This space he called his home, however, his own and only space, with its austere order, was one of the few things that never changed, never posed a threat, never betrayed him. And to which, therefore, his commitment never wavered.
PART II
Europe — Late Winter 1995
Chapter 8
It seemed perfectly natural for them to be in Paris together. Delaney had been there many times before, of course: on assignment, or en route to various ex-colonies of France in Africa, or with exlovers, ex-wives. One ex-wife. Long ago, there had been holidays here, and in Provence, but that was another lifetime. Paris was still a city Delaney liked very much, however. He was comfortable there and it was just seven hours from Montreal so it never seemed like a major journey.
Natalia had been there often as well, or so she told him on the way over in the droning stillness of the night flight. As a student, as a backpacker, on holidays, as a pilgrim en route to her Zurich mecca. He did not ask her if she, too, had been to Paris with a lover. He knew that she would simply smile her wry psychologist’s smile and be thinking of the subtext of a question like that. So he did not ask it and she did not volunteer any information on the subject.
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