The Mazovia Legacy

by Michael E. Rose

  “As I live and breathe, it is Francis Delaney,” Keating said, coughing briefly as he stubbed out his cigarette in the sardine tin he used for an ashtray.

  The No Smoking sign in the newsroom was there for appearances only, apparently. The newsroom generally was in a much more disreputable state than Delaney remembered it. Scripts and carbon paper were scattered everywhere. Small reels of quarter-inch tape had been hurled onto tables and into cardboard boxes. There were far too many desks, chairs, and journalists for the space available. Only a few of the reporters there actually seemed to be working, however. Most smoked cigarettes and chatted to each other, or read French and British newspapers at their desks.

  “Hello, Lawrence,” Delaney said. “Got time for a coffee?”

  “Always. There is always time for coffee and a cigarette,” Keating said.

  He called over to a haggard young man hammering away at a grubby typewriter nearby.

  “Denton, my lad, I’m off for a fag with my old mate Delaney here,” he said. “Not off with a fag, mind. For a fag. You’ve twelve minutes to news time, boyo, so no rush whatsoever. Look after things for me, would you?”

  Keating always affected a thick Irish brogue, overladen with the standard ironic tone of a certain kind of homosexual. He did not wait for an answer from his colleague, but simply picked up his cigarettes and matches and led Delaney out.

  “Young Denton is yet another fucking Brit waiting for his turn at the BBC,” Keating said as they waited for the elevator to the staff canteen on the top floor. “Straight as an arrow, the poor dear. He’s still pretending that rewriting the Agence-FrancePresse wire and beaming it out across the world to the impoverished millions is his own and only sacred short-wave calling and God’s gift to French foreign policy.”

  They ordered small strong coffees when they got to the canteen. Delaney listened while Keating explained who among the current staff of English Service was gay, who was not, and who could not truly say.

  Delaney was prepared for the tart mix of gossip, vitriol, and information Keating would, as always, provide. But he knew that on arcane matters of European Union business, Keating was a force to be reckoned with. Delaney also knew that he was an old East Europe hand who had been many times to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, before and after their Communist regimes fell. Delaney needed an informed, dispassionate, journalist’s view of what was going on in Warsaw, and Keating could provide it. And so he did, without asking Delaney why such a briefing might be required.

  “That little prick Walesa’s ruining the whole damned country, you know,” Keating said as he smoked. “No democrat he. Solidarity be damned. Continual war at the top, that’s me boyo’s motto.”

  Keating’s skin was a bad colour and his face around the eyes was deeply lined. Delaney wondered how long before he would be brought down by AIDS.

  “If they don’t sew up a new constitution for that place quick smart, Walesa’s going to take over everything for himself,” Keating said. “He’s now just about finished pushing out another prime minister, Pawlak this time, from the Peasant Party, and it looks like it’ll be Oleksy to replace him. A bald little moon-faced prick who’s been Speaker for a while. One of the old-line Communists who got into Parliament in that wave in ’93. SLD Party, he is, Democratic Left, or so they call themselves now.”

  “He any improvement?” Delaney asked.

  “Over who? Pawlak or Walesa?”

  “Either.”

  “Oleksy has a bunch of bad friends, dear Francis. Or so they say. Likes to go hunting and drinking with highly suspect Russians. At lodges in the deep dark woods.”

  “You sure? He’s KGB?” Delaney asked.

  “FSB now actually. They’ve changed their name now, as a man such as yourself must certainly know. We realize that KGB is a name from the bad old days, don’t we Francis? Of course we do. Well, everybody may be reinventing themselves at the moment over there, but it’s the same old shitfight. Oleksy does run with KGB people or FSB people, or used to, that’s sure no matter what name you call them. Now of course you yourself run with faggots, don’t you now, and that doesn’t mean you’re queer. But this one stinks, Francis. Oleksy stinks, the whole fucking lot of them stink over in Warsaw at the moment, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Walesa’s people too, of course.”

  “Of course. The whole lot. Everyone after the main chance at present. Walesa, can you believe this one, now being pursued by what passes for a tax office over there for non-payment of tax on the sum of one million dollars, one million U.S. he got in advance from some Hollywood producer with shit for brains who wants to make a movie about his life. A million dollars, my friend. For the little electrician from Gdansk. Spent most of it already, probably.”

  “What on? What’s for sale in Warsaw these days?”

  “God only knows. Everything’s for sale. But he’s told the tax office he’s broke, our Lechie has. Maybe he spent it all on altar boys, or altar girls in his case, as he doesn’t seem to be gay. Or some nice new fax machines or ping-pong tables or tanks maybe, or maybe some dirty tricks to get re-elected. God only knows what he might spend his money on. But he’s going to go down in November no matter what he spends.”

  “No chance at all?”

  “Oh, a small one maybe. If they keep digging up dirt on the Communists. There’s a couple of groups formed over there now to embarrass the other side when they can — the Three Quarter Initiative, socalled, can’t remember three-quarters of what. And the Committee of One Hundred. Right wing, centre rights, Christ knows what. A couple of others. God knows where their funding comes from. Vatican probably. Or CIA. Keeping Poland out of the hands of the Communists and safe for Lech and his band of pals.”

  Keating paused to watch a thin young man in a ribbed pullover sweater walk by them with a tray of food. Smiles were exchanged.

  “He’s cute,” Keating said. “A technician. I must seduce him at his earliest possible convenience.”

  Delaney waited for the briefing to continue at Keating’s idiosyncratic pace.

  “The Vatican is upset, by the way, Francis, very seriously upset these days that the Commies would like to soften up the abortion laws again over there,” Keating said. “And that the Commie Parliament won’t pass a new Concordat for them, if you can imagine that. What a medieval notion that is. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, a Concordat, so-called, to spell out relations between Church and State. We are talking here about the fucking Dark Ages all over again, Francis.”

  Keating’s face reddened and he coughed and spat into a tissue before lighting yet another cigarette.

  “Before you know it, they’ll have it all shipshape again over there, Lech and the Pope will, just like fucking Ireland,” he said. “Burn queers at the stake. After Communists, abortionists, and Canadians.”

  Keating didn’t mind if Delaney sat for a while afterward at a terminal in the newsroom to scan the news agency wires for the latest out of Warsaw and Canada. Nor did he did mind letting Delaney send a fax to O’Keefe in Montreal and make some transatlantic calls for his messages. Keating didn’t care anymore, if he had ever cared, what anyone did in that cramped airless newsroom.

  Delaney then called the Méridien to see if Natalia was back. She wasn’t, but he felt a small secret pleasure, after so long, at calling somewhere, anywhere, to see if a woman might have left him a message. Keating’s eyes twinkled from across his desk as Delaney hung up.

  “Getting any, Francis?” he asked.

  “Your mind is in the gutter, Keating.”

  “Yes. Oh yes.”

  Delaney was about to order his third Heineken at the Méridien’s little ground-floor bar when he finally saw Natalia rush in. The hotel lobby was crammed with new arrivals, departures, doormen, bellboys, and concierges. He stepped out into the milling throng and pulled her into the bar. She looked flushed and worried. Delaney did not tell he
r he, too, had been worried: about her, about the growing complexity of the situation, about what she might have discovered that afternoon. “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “The traffic is just unbelievable. It’s taken me forever to get back here.” She sat down at the bar with him.

  “I’ve had quite a session with Zbigniew, Francis,” she said. “It was exhausting. Fascinating, but really exhausting. But I’m mostly worried right now about your friend from Canada, this civil servant. He was waiting outside the apartment when I left. With that Frenchman who was with him yesterday. But today he was a little more forthcoming about his job, Francis. He said he was with the Canadian Security Service or whatever it’s called.”

  “Security Intelligence Service. He told you that?” Delaney knew this meant the rules of the game were changing, that Hilferty was in a hurry now to move things along, or was angry, or both.

  “Yes. But you knew that all along, didn’t you?” Natalia looked intently at him, psychologist with client, looking for deceptions.

  “Yes. I suppose I did,” Delaney said, leaving it at that.

  “He wanted me to ride back here with him,” Natalia said. “I told him no.”

  “Well, he won’t be far behind you. Let’s go somewhere else and talk things over.”

  They went quickly to the mezzanine level, then down stairs and through the kitchen to the back street as they had that morning. There was a small bistro just at the corner, jammed with after-work drinkers of coffee and coloured liqueurs. They lost themselves at a small copper-covered table near the back. Coffees came, and their conversation was drowned by the Gallic hubbub all around them.

  Natalia told Delaney what he needed to know. It took her a long time, but he was impressed at her reporting skills, her attention to detail. He couldn’t help thinking, as he listened, about what a superb story this all was, what it could become in the hands of a sharp feature writer. But today he did not have the luxury of journalistic interest. He was a participant in a story breaking fast.

  “And you think you know where this stuff is hidden?” he asked her again.

  They had ordered some plates of food and were picking at it as they talked. Natalia was now on to her second glass of Côtes du Rhône.

  “Yes, Francis. I do.”

  She did not fill the pause that followed with passwords or place-names. Delaney decided not to press her on it. He didn’t try to imagine why she would choose not to tell him. Do I really need to know this now? he thought. Yes. Probably.

  “And you want to go ahead and locate this, this whatever-it-is?” he said. “Yes,” she said firmly.

  “I see.” He did not have to ask why.

  “Do you?” she asked. Again the psychologist’s look.

  “I suppose I do, yes,” Delaney said. “Now, after all of this.”

  “Why would you?” she asked. “Who knows what we will find, what’s going to happen. It could get really dangerous now. Why would you bother with this?”

  He knew she would ask him something like that. But he was not in the mood, in this crowded Paris bistro, to start baring his soul. “I said I would help you.”

  “You’ve already helped me,” she said.

  “I like to finish things.”

  “Why else?”

  “What are you trying to get me to say, Natalia? I’m not used to reading from other people’s scripts.”

  Delaney felt suddenly annoyed, or unnerved. She looked down into her glass of wine. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You’re really going to need some help on this thing now,” Delaney said. “This could get very wild about now.”

  “I know that,” she said. “Zbigniew said as much this afternoon.”

  Delaney looked at his watch and then looked around the bistro. There was no reason to expect Hilferty’s face to appear, but luck, bad luck, often played a part in such situations.

  “In fact, Natalia, I think before we do anything else we’d better get back over to Zbigniew’s place and figure out what to do with those papers,” Delaney said. “I don’t think it’s a good plan to leave them with him anymore. We’ve been in here much too long as it is.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he’ll want to let them go, Francis.”

  “He’d better think that one over again. Let’s see what he says.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t come,” Natalia said. “He doesn’t trust journalists.”

  “Well, I don’t trust spies. And some of them know where he lives. So let’s go see what he says. I don’t need to tell you that this could get ugly for him now, too. Not just for us.”

  He could see she had already addressed that issue.

  “All right,” she said.

  They used the back entrance of the hotel again. There was still no sign of Hilferty. This worried Delaney more than a confrontation. Still, Hilferty would only delay them now and Delaney was worried about the papers and about the old man, not necessarily in that order. He went up to his room to get his equipment bag with the Browning in it. There was a Méridien envelope pushed under his door. Natalia watched as he read the note inside.

  It said: “We’re going to have to have a little chat, Francis.The minute you get back. You are really and truly starting to piss a lot of people off.”

  Hilferty hadn’t bothered to sign it. Either he was too angry or too rushed or too sure Delaney would know who had sent it.

  “Hilferty,” Delaney said. “Not very happy at the moment. He wants to know what’s going on. Badly.”

  “Let’s go,” Natalia said, realizing now the urgency.

  They did not risk going through the lobby. By now the kitchen staff appeared used to the two foreigners rushing in and out. A chef in a ridiculously tall white hat tossed flaming bits of this and that in a blackened pan.

  It was hard to get a taxi at the back. They had to walk to a cross street and wait some minutes before flagging an empty one. Then there was the Paris traffic. So it was only some considerable time later that they rolled up to the police barricades that had been set up at the bottom of rue de Belleville.

  They both knew it would be bad news, the worst of news, as they climbed out of the cab to rush up the street to rue Julien Lacroix. The fire trucks and Police Nationale trucks and the marked and unmarked police cars had absolutely blocked the streets. Radio reporters sat on motorcycles sending stories by cellular phone back to their newsrooms, and crowds of passersby and café types craned their necks to see.

  “Qu’est-ce qui ce passe?” Delaney asked a woman holding a small nervous dog.

  “Incendie, monsieur. Rue Julien Lacroix. Quelques morts. Un pompier, quelqu’un d’autre.”

  She was marvellously concise and well informed. A policeman with a crackling walkie-talkie confirmed the woman’s version for them when Delaney showed his international press pass. Two dead, including a fireman. Shot apparently, not hurt in the fire. Someone else injured. Très compliqué.

  A young radio reporter sporting a leather bomber jacket and impossibly tiny wire spectacles told them a bit more. Robbery, apparently, and then a small fire. Or something like that. An old man, living alone. Bandits who shot their way out. Très cool, très professionnelle.

  Delaney knew it would be useless to try to get more information there that night and unwise to indicate any involvement. The French police always panicked when one of their own got killed and usually arrested everyone in sight. And there was the small matter of the gun in his equipment bag. Natalia did not see the logic of this at first, however, and the crowd watched with interest as she wept quietly on the street and insisted that they should try to go in. They were far too late for that. Eventually, reason prevailed.

  Chapter 11

  They should have been on an Air Canada shuttle back to Montreal, in the company of Quebecois tourists and businessmen and arts types who’d made their
various pilgrimages to Paris. Instead, they were on Alitalia Flight 18, non-stop Paris to Rome, surrounded by stylish Italians and young French travellers on other sorts of pilgrimages.

  Natalia sat quietly beside Delaney in the business-class section, reading the in-flight magazine. She was still not talking much, still deep and dark as she had been in the few days since Zbigniew was killed. She didn’t bother with post-takeoff drinks or the lunch or the headphones. She didn’t seem to want to bother with very much at all. At least, as far as Delaney was able to make out, she no longer seemed afraid.

  Things were moving very fast now, even for a journalist of Delaney’s experience. A day earlier, Hilferty had been extremely terse with him on the phone at the Méridien.

  “Look Francis, this is getting very hot now,” Hilferty had said. “The fucking Vatican’s coming in on this and I don’t want any fucking around. They want you and Natalia in Rome. Like right now.”

  “The Vatican,” Delaney said.

  “You got it, baby. The Pope’s own regiment. They’ve got wind of this now, and they’re in.”

  They met in the hotel bar, neither wanting to say more on the phone.

  “What’s the deal?” Delaney asked.

  “Look, the way you’ve been jerking us around I wouldn’t tell you another goddamn thing if I didn’t have to,” Hilferty said. “But I’m fucked on this thing now and haven’t got much of a choice. Our friends in the Holy See would like to have a polite discussion with you and your lady friend about what the hell you’ve been up to. A matter of some Church property? Something you can give them a hand with? Not that we’d know anything where you’re concerned. So my betters in Ottawa think we should afford the Vatican every respect and courtesy and help them along on this. Or you should. Tomorrow.”