The Mazovia Legacy

by Michael E. Rose

  But Natalia had not, she said proudly, told them the password. She had made one up.

  “You haven’t told me the password either,” Delaney said as they sat one morning on a bench near the main ferry dock. “Or where you think the things are hidden.”

  “I know that.”

  “Why is that?”

  “At first it was because I was afraid to trust anyone fully with what I knew,” she said. “And then, almost right away after that, it was because I was worried that if you knew too you might be in more danger than you already were.”

  “And now? Do I get to know now?” Natalia waited a moment.

  “No,” she said. “Because I don’t want to put you in any more danger than you are now.”

  “People would kill me too, Natalia, even if they thought I didn’t know.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You’re wrong about that, Natalia. That’s not how these things work. Or not this one, anyway. Not anymore.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Francis,” she said. “It’s also that this is my task now, my secret. And my uncle’s.”

  “All right.That’s all fine. But I will need to know eventually.”

  “But then it will be OK. Don’t you see? Because by then we will be almost there. I’m sorry. I know it’s irrational.”

  “It is that.”

  Delaney in some ways, however, didn’t care at all. He was willing simply to go wherever this now led and didn’t need to know ahead of time anymore what that might mean.

  “What password did you tell them it was?” he asked.

  “Holy Virgin of Czestochowa.”

  “Lovely. That should have done the trick.”

  “It did. It made them stop. And it was a good one for my uncle, too, a long time ago. So that’s twice that password’s worked, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose. In a way. I hope the next one works as well.”

  Natalia said it was perfectly natural that they would be having such intense dreams at night.They shared some of them, but not all, over breakfast in the mornings. Two psyches in collision, she said. And some anxiety release.

  In his dream Delaney sees himself or an image of himself on a pocked and pitted brick wall somewhere in the world. It is larger than life; a prehistoric glyph, a cave painting, a secret sign. He sees a large perfectly circular hole or an image of a hole where his stomach and other digestive organs should be. He sees instead of food some small mysterious figurines and talismans and knives and forks and spoons absurdly jumbled into this cavity. Then the circular cavity moves up higher, to where his heart and lungs should be. These organs have been surgically removed. All that remains is a large, perfectly circular emptiness.

  When they were not dreaming, they slept soundly; entwined.

  Natalia dreams of blackness, the idea or archetype of blackness. She cannot find the right name for it. She struggles to name it but no words come. It does not require a name. It is simply there. The black mist hovers over Lake Como and drifts toward the hotel. Then it is over Lake Zurich, then Lac-Saint-Louis in Montreal. She is sitting on the old wide balcony on the second floor of the convent in Lachine. She is a nun, a veiled sister, rocking on a rocking chair in the chill air, looking out over the lake at the black mist. She sees figures walking on the ice, across the frozen lake. She is watching them and walking with them all at the same time. The mist is very thick and about to block out the scene completely. She is rocking, rocking, rocking. She dreams this over and over again.

  Delaney indulged in a bit of cloak-and-dagger eventually, the minimum possible under the circumstances. He sent a fax to Brian O’Keefe in Montreal, after typing it out carefully on an ancient Underwood in the hotel manager’s office. He watched as the fax machine slowly pulled the page in and pushed it out again. He thought of O’Keefe in Montreal, standing in his muddy boots in the old farmhouse kitchen, clearing a space for the incoming fax on the cluttered counter where his machine sat, and then reading it.

  The hotel manager, the elegantly rotund Mr. Salvatore, whose bulging striped waistcoat told the story of one too many excellent Como dinners, said proudly as they watched the fax machine primly hum and buzz: “Panasonic very good. Olivetti no good. You see?”

  The telephone in their room had not rung often in the days they were there. Hotel staff called with news of this and that; reservations made or unmade; responses to requests. But when it rang on the Thursday afternoon of their stay, Delaney had a sense this was to be the last of the vacation calls.

  “It is telephone for you from Rome, Signore Delaney,” the operator said. “Momento.” The connection was clear.

  “Hi, Francis,” Hilferty said. “How’s your love life?”

  Delaney could imagine Hilferty’s proud grin at the other end, as he stood in an overpriced hotel room somewhere, or in a Vatican office perhaps, proud that some textbook detective work had allowed him this small victory.

  Delaney looked over to where Natalia lounged happily in a large wicker chair on the balcony. She was playing with her papal rosary as if it were a set of worry beads.

  “I suppose,” Delaney said to Hilferty, “that if I asked you how you found us you would make some appropriately modest secret agent sounds and pretend it was nothing much at all — all in a day’s work, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “You got it,” Hilferty said. “It was nothing much at all, really. All in a day’s work. Etcetera.”

  “I see,” Delaney said.

  “Nothing the combined forces of goodness and light from various Western democracies, or near democracies, or near-Western democracies, as the case may be, and Interpol and a few other bands of stout-hearted men couldn’t handle. So good of the European hoteliers to insist on recording people’s passport numbers at check-in, don’t you think? Even if they do take their own sweet time sending them over to the local police.”

  “This will look good on a résumé, I would think,” Delaney said.

  “Oh yes,” Hilferty said. “A little well-deserved boost for a sagging career. Couldn’t come at a better time. You’ve made my superiors in Ottawa sit up and take notice of little Johnnie Hilferty, I can tell you. Thanks for all your help in making me look so good lately, by the way, Francis. But at least they haven’t taken away my gold Amex card yet. As of this afternoon, anyway.”

  “Don’t mention it, John.”

  “That will be the last time. I promise.”

  “Something I can do for you, John?” Delaney said.

  “Oh, just checking in. You know. To see how you’re getting on. I must say, that’s a nice little place you’ve chosen up there, Francis. Nice place for it. Romantic. A bit upmarket for you, I would have thought, but there you go. They tell me you’ve been eating rather well. Liking the local cuisine, are we? Da Angela’s I think it was last night.”

  “Now you’re showing off, John.”

  “Well, it’s my turn, don’t you think? After your little display down here? Hmm? Three shots each, all pretty well on the mark, from point blank range? That left a wee bit of a mess for us to take care of at this end, Francis. And no one to question, really. Dead men don’t tell. But we were all mightily impressed. I said all along that you were a natural. You see what a little time on the target range can do for a man. And aren’t those Brownings a lovely little item? Hammer nails all day with them and they’re still right on the money every time you fire. Wouldn’t your pals in the National Press Club be proud?”

  “And wouldn’t your pals in Ottawa have been proud if you had let a couple of Canadian citizens abroad know they were in grave danger of being kidnapped and interrogated by a couple of Polish thugs?” Delaney said.

  He knew anger would not be useful anymore, but the anger surfaced anyway.

  “That was a fuck-up, Francis. Out of my hands.”

  “So you’ll forgive me for taking the situation into my ha
nds then,” Delaney said. “You did that all right.”

  “So what was it? The Vatican says jump and the Dominion of Canada says how high? The Vatican says sit back and watch and shut up, and that’s what you do?”

  “Something like that. Not my operation, at that point.”

  “Was this ever your operation, John?”

  “Fuck you, Francis.”

  “You know, a paranoid type might wonder just who those Polish guys were actually working for,” Delaney said. “What country, that is. We have already concluded that it’s impossible to follow the Warsaw game without a program. But what about the Vatican game? They been recruiting abroad, or what? Among like-minded Poles, for example?”

  “That would be a trifle paranoid, Francis, yes.”

  “So that’s a denial.”

  “That’s a no comment. You know these East European types. They all look alike to me.”

  “That’s not how Natalia sees it. She would be able to tell you exactly what they looked like and what they did.”

  “They give her a very bad time?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “She OK?”

  “Probably,” Delaney said. “She’ll survive.” Natalia was looking over at him now as he talked too long on the telephone.

  “She tell them anything?” Hilferty asked. Delaney wondered if it might be more useful for Hilferty to think that the other side, or one of the various sides, now knew more than they probably did. He couldn’t decide.

  “As little as she could,” he said. “Considering the circumstances.”

  “I see,” Hilferty said. “Shall I put you down for a no comment, then?”

  “John, I really think you owe it to us to tell us who they were working for,” Delaney said, tiring as quickly of Hilferty as he usually did. “And who else is floating around.”

  “You’re really expecting that we will share anything at all with you at this stage?”

  “I was hoping you might.”

  “I am no stranger myself to dashed hopes on this operation, Francis. But try not to be too disappointed. I’m sorry your sweetheart had a rough time. You’ll forgive me, though, if I don’t reach for a hankie when I think about your predicament. As you decided that freelancing was your thing.”

  “I’m not in a predicament, John,” Delaney said.

  Not anymore.”

  “Oh yes you are, my friend.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes,” Hilferty said. “Here’s how we see it from our end anyway. You are sitting in a top-class hotel in lovely Lake Como, with two notches on your gun, my gun — still, I might add, and nowhere to go but home. They tell me you and the young lady have been thick as thieves over your fish suppers, so my well-honed powers of deduction say you’re going to make a move sooner or later for whatever it is you think you’re looking for. But we will be on you, all over you, don’t you see, just as I told you back in Paris. Except for this slightly embarrassing little hiatus. Which is now over.”

  No matter how hard he tried, Hilferty could never sound convincing when he tried for subtle menace.

  “I guess my line now is something like ‘Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Hilferty,’” Delaney said.

  “That would be a good line. And then I would say, ‘Well, Delaney, it’s your move now, hotshot.’ Something like that.”

  “And I would say, ‘Well, good luck, Hilferty. Better watch your ass on this one,’ and other malebonding-type things.”

  “Yes, we would probably say things like that. I would imagine,” Hilferty said.

  “Well, I guess it’s my move now, then, isn’t it,” Delaney said.

  “Yup.”

  “So, good luck, John. Better watch your ass on this one. There’s some bad people out there.”

  “Exactamento, Francis.”

  “Better watch both of our asses on this one, you and me.”

  “Correct. And Natalia’s ass, if you’ll pardon the expression. There are plenty more like those two guys you took out down here, my man.”

  “I see. But whose side are they on, John?”

  “Very good, Francis. Gee, you almost tripped me up there. Almost got me to spill the beans. My, my. You are good. You slay me.”

  “So to speak.”

  “So to speak.”

  Natalia, it seemed, had been labouring under the delusion that they would be left on their own forever, that they would be able somehow to wander back into Quebec and carry on about their secret business unimpeded. Delaney had expected interference to come, but not that it would begin again in Europe. Natalia’s fears returned. Delaney’s, however, had never left.They made love some more in their sturdy wooden bed, but the vacation, they both knew, was over.

  Mr. Salvatore, for his part, seemed genuinely disappointed when he learned they would be leaving for Canada. But he brightened a little when Delaney asked if he could use the hotel’s typewriter and its excellent Panasonic fax machine one last time that evening. They watched again in the manager’s tiny office as the fax hummed and buzzed another digital message to O’Keefe in Montreal. Mr. Salvatore looked over and smiled proudly. Delaney smiled back. Conspirators.

  PART III

  Quebec — Late Winter 1995

  Chapter 15

  Hilferty had gotten himself a haircut since they last saw him, a severe one. Nononsense CIA-operative style. This, apparently, in an effort to show the world that this Canadian spy was firmly in control of the situation, or to provide himself and others with a comforting illusion. Stoufflet was with him, but the French agent had experienced no such anxiety about the semiotic implications of his appearance. His hair was still stylishly long. He reclined beside Hilferty in seat 3-B of the business-class section of the plane, ostentatiously reading Le Nouvel Observateur and sipping Air Canada’s pre-departure champagne.

  Hilferty nodded and smiled broadly to Delaney and Natalia as they came on board, unable as always to contain his adolescent pleasure at what he thought would take an adversary by surprise. Stoufflet affected a version of Gallic indifference. He apparently saw no need for menacing eye contact at this time. Delaney was not surprised to see either of them, nor was Natalia. He had warned her when they left Como to expect Hilferty, though not necessarily Stoufflet, to escort them back to Montreal. But of course the French would never render a service on their turf to another security agency without then expecting to be involved until the bitter end. Particularly after the nastiness at Zbigniew’s apartment.

  Delaney’s only mild surprise was that they had been left to travel unescorted from Como to Milan, and then from Milan to Paris, where they had now picked up this flight. Perhaps, in fact, they had been escorted, but if so, it had been far more discreetly than they were to be on this last leg home. Delaney could not tell if there were any other agents on board Air Canada Flight 961 with them today. For all he knew, and after all that had transpired, the entire business-class section of the plane could be teeming with agents: Canadian, French, Polish, Vatican, others. All with their own intense interest — national or otherwise — in something hidden for five decades somewhere in Quebec. Impossible, anymore, for Delaney to predict exactly who had taken an interest in this affair and now far too late to care.

  Not long after takeoff, Hilferty came back to where they were sitting, until now a sufficient number of rows behind him for a modicum of privacy. Delaney had expected an intrusion eventually.

  “Everything all right back here?” Hilferty asked. “Pillows? Blanket?”

  “Spare us, Hilferty,” Delaney said. Natalia was now tense, Delaney could see, perhaps even angry.

  “Sorry to spoil your little tête-à-tête. I thought we’d better talk over how we’ll play this thing when we land.”

  “We’re not going to play at all, John. That’s what I told you back in Como.”

  “You�
��re lucky you’re being allowed to play anymore at all, Francis,” Hilferty said. “You’re lucky the French are letting you leave here at all after what happened over in Belleville. We’ve had to call in a lot of markers on this so far, especially with the French.They are very pissed off. My people, for that matter, are very pissed off. So you’re going to have to play, I’m afraid.”

  “I think not, John,” Delaney said. Natalia’s anger flared.

  “I wonder if you could possibly leave us alone,” she said. “For the flight and from now on.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s going to be impossible, Ms. Janovski,” Hilferty said. “Terribly sorry. I know you’ve been through a lot.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. Are you feeling better now?” This was starting to get Delaney angry too.

  “Mr. Hilferty . . .” Natalia said.

  “Please call me John,” he said.

  “No. I think not,” Natalia said.“In my experience that would indicate some kind of familiarity or an opening for some kind of connection, and I am simply not interested in any connection with you whatsoever.”

  “I see.”

  Hilferty, despite his no-nonsense new haircut, was a little taken aback.

  “Let me say this to you, before you go back to your seat, Mr. Hilferty,” Natalia continued. “I’m a psychologist, as you’re already aware. In my professional work I quite often come up against manipulative personalities like yours, and I find it quite easy to deal with them in that sort of setting. Here, though, I see no reason to hide my disgust at what you are and what you do. So please leave us alone.”

  Delaney was impressed, but surprised at the intensity of Natalia’s outburst. He watched Hilferty digest what had been said.

  “What is it that you think I do, Ms. Janovski?” Hilferty said.