Another Man's Freedom Fighter

by Joseph Carter

  “Kurwa, I need to talk to Natalia. I need to know they’re safe,” Michał said.

  “I know. We tried to call your landline, her mobile, Facebook, Whatsapp, everything. No response. You can try logging in from your account, maybe she will respond to you.” Mark handed Michał his iPad.

  “No, we have a secret way of communicating. You know, I joined the Territorials precisely because I believed something fucked up like this war could happen. At the same time, Natalia and I made exfiltration plans for our family for such a case and this weird way to get in touch in case we got separated.” Michał looked at Mark and continued. “To you that may sound weird, exfiltration means running away,” he explained.

  “Okay, I see,” Mark faked an innocent ignorance. “What do you need to get in touch with her?” he asked.

  “A two-way radio,” Michał responded and handed back the iPad.

  “Like in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’?” Mark asked, again faking ignorance.

  “Kinda,” Michał answered.

  “We’ll find one. They’re kinda short range, right?”

  “Ach, Germans, always sticking to the rules instead of doing what’s possible,” Michał joked. “If you stick to the Citizen’s Band channels and wattage restrictions, yes. But you can use some tweaks to go worldwide on shortwave.”

  “Shortwave?” The word sparked Mark’s memory. “Hey, I might know where to find a shortwave radio. You’ll have to trade something with the owner, though.”

  “Whatever, I’ll give it to him,” Michał said.

  Mark called Vitus right away to ask about his old-timer coworker with the shortwave radio.

  “Yeah, I’ll ask,” Vitus answered. “Let me get back to you in a minute.”

  “If need be, offer an interview with a Territorials captain who has seen some action.” Mark made a hint at the merchandise he was willing to trade.

  “Great, he’ll love that,” Vitus said and ended the call.

  ✽✽✽

  “I’m not handing the country over to you, you hear me, Kedrov? I won’t legalize your theft, you skurwysyn,” President Berka shouted at the top of his lungs and banged his fists against the steel door.

  He had been manhandled to the embassy’s basement against his will less than twenty-four hours earlier. He couldn’t be sure about the time, that was a guess. They had taken his watch away. This room with only a cot and a bucket in it was by far less comfortable than the guest quarters on the first floor. He had not eaten nor slept during his time there, but he felt more determined than ever. He would resist the pressure, even if it were the last thing he ever did.

  “Hear that?” Kedrov whispered to the SVR rezydent at the far end of the unlit corridor. “The stubborn bastard still won’t play along.” Kedrov toyed with the president’s wrist watch, a Rolex, and looked at the engraving on the back. It read in English ‘Happy Birthday Mr. President, Your Kamila’. That wife of his is quite something. She must have been a real wild one as a young girl, Kedrov thought to himself.

  “I hear, khorosho, what else can we do to him to make him more compliant?” the younger man asked back. “If you think about the daughter, forget it. I won’t do that,” he added right away. “Plus, if she gets harmed in any way, he’ll go ape and then that’s the end of it.”

  ✽✽✽

  In the West Berlin district of Charlottenburg, Michał and Mark left the five-story house with the humongous antenna on the roof in a much better mood.

  “Kurwa, it’s so good to know my family is safe. I always thought her brother was a weirdo to play with the shortwave radio day and night,” Michał said while holding the door open for his friend.

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad Natalia and the kids are with her parents safe and sound. Smart woman to get going right on day one while your part of the city was still easy to get out of,” Mark recounted what he had learned from their conversation.

  “Thanks for making this possible, I’m speechless.”

  “No thanks necessary, it’s a beautiful coincidence in this ugly world,” Mark said.

  “Life is weird. The world dumped a ton of shit over us, and I came out smelling only like a little dog poop got stuck under my shoe,” Michał laughed. “This is great.”

  Mark had to laugh as well. He embraced his friend. “Damn right it is.”

  “While we’re here, the embassy is not too far away, right?” Michał asked. “They should be operating 24/7 at the moment, I’d like to go.”

  Mark pulled out his iPhone and searched in the Google Maps app. “Yeah, not far at all. Let’s go.”

  ✽✽✽

  Ofelia turned on the TV, the Fire TV to be more precise, and chose the Tagesschau app from the menu. It was eight p.m. and the live stream of the news show started with the familiar gong. Up first on the digital wall behind the blonde anchor was an updated map of Poland. She gave a quick overview on the state of the war as far it could be determined from outside. NATO headquarters, she said, would monitor the situation very closely while the heads of state negotiated a response to the Russian aggression.

  “‘Russian aggression’, finally, you’re calling it what it is,” Ofelia snarled at the TV.

  Xandi was crawling around on a blanket spread out on the thick carpet at Ofelia’s feet. “Da,” he babbled while pulling himself up by her shins.

  “Daddy will be home, soon, honey,” she said and pulled him up to her. She looked at the map. The whole north-western part of Poland was covered red. Also the North-East, Gdańsk, Gdynia, Bialystok, and Warsaw. There was a thin red line between Frankfurt-on-Oder, Poznań, and Warsaw. South of that line, the map was not colored. According to a NATO analyst, the Russian forces would next consolidate their land gains after these swift advances.

  The anchor went on to the next story. In Moscow, the Russian president gave an interview in which he ‘advocated for peace’, her words exactly. A short part of the interview was interspersed into the report with a German voice-over.

  In Berlin, the German chancellor also gave a short statement to the press. She advocated for a diplomatic solution of the crisis, while she also said that the NATO heads of state were still conferring to find an ‘adequate military response’, her words exactly.

  Ofelia turned off the TV.

  Xandi started to get restless, he sensed his mother’s angry frustration.

  She took a deep breath, looked at her boy, and kissed him on the forehead. “Everything’s gonna be alright,” she whispered into his hair.

  ✽✽✽

  The sun was just setting behind the Polish embassy when Michał came running back to Mark’s car. Sanders had been waiting for about three hours. At first, he had curiously looked at the rag-tag bunch of mostly men standing outside the beautiful two-story, eclectic-style villa. Then he had realized being parked only half a block away he could easily be seen by the men. It would not be good at all if someone recognized him and made a commotion. So, he had pulled out an old newspaper and hidden behind it.

  Michał got in the passenger seat. “Hey, thanks for waiting. Sorry it took so long,” he started. “I put my name on a list, and they said that TDF officers should stand by here and await orders.”

  “Okay, any idea what’s going to happen?” Mark asked.

  “Not really, but I hope, we get orders to redeploy to the free Poland and take our fatherland back.” Michał leaned over and hugged his friend as tight as the middle console allowed. “You go home, get rest, and I’ll call you as soon as I know more. Thanks for the burner, by the way.”

  “Sure thing. Wait, I’ll give you fifty euros and some change. It would be great if you came back to sleep at our house. It’s easy to find and to get to with public transport. Just ring the bell,” Mark instructed his friend.

  The two friends hugged again and said goodbye.

  Twenty-Five

  “Preparations for tomorrow’s Russia Day, the national holiday, are in full swing,” the CNN host explained while on the screen Russian flags were
draped across a grandstand.

  “Przygotowania do jutrzejszego Dnia Rosyjskiego idą pełną parą,” Ofelia translated for a group of men and women sitting in the corner of the high school gymnasium on Wichertstraße in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg.

  For over a week already, the Sanders family was helping in the church-run refugee shelter. An old woman reminding Ofelia of her grandmother had asked her to sit down for a few minutes. She had offered tea and begged to have a bit of the news translated.

  Polish TV channels were still unavailable and the German state-run Deutsche Welle had not been able to provide their Polish-language service over the air or cable, yet. Mark had offered to sponsor an internet connection to stream DW’s Polish service, but the landline had not yet been installed. Good things take time in Germany.

  “They are celebrating,” the eighty-year-old said incredulously. “We are sitting here with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and they are celebrating.” She shook her head.

  “Także w Warszawie, also in Warsaw,” Ofelia continued her translation with similar disbelief in her voice.

  “No, no, that’s impossible,” the woman now screamed at the TV.

  Ofelia shushed her which was not at all like her usual self. But she wanted to hear this.

  Indeed, the Russian troops had planned a Russia Day celebration for June 12th to take place in front of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. As the camera zoomed out, it became clear that the grandstand being decorated was the granite grandstand built by the Stalinists in the very center of the city.

  Ofelia waved Mark to come to her. “Look, honey, these assholes have the bad taste to celebrate their holiday on Plac Defilad. Of all places, they have to do it there. There will be a military parade and the Russian defense minister will decorate soldiers.”

  “Unbelievable. These guys really want to be Stalin’s grandkids, huh?” Mark shook his head.

  ✽✽✽

  Sebastian Berka had stopped shouting and banging at the door rather quickly. At some point, the exhaustion had overcome him again. Down here, deprived of daylight, his time was divided by phases of sleep and phases of being awake. He had absolutely no idea how long he had been in this basement room. Possibly a week, possibly less.

  At first, he had believed the meals they gave him could help him track time, but they came irregularly. When he had gotten two breakfasts in a row without sleep in between, his whole pattern fell apart. With irregular meals his bowel movements, too, lost their regularity. What he produced for the bucket in the corner came in apparently irregular intervals and was everything but solid. He felt sicker than ever in his whole life, physically and psychologically.

  “Nie, Sebastian, musisz być silny! No, you must be strong,” he said out loud. Actually, he spoke more and more each day since they had put him in this hole. He discussed with himself about a lot of things. He told himself to be strong, of course, but he also discussed his life choices with an imaginary second self. For example, he kept asking the other Berka, why he had wanted to become president in the first place. Would it not have been better to keep his law practice instead, or teach, or just sit and drink all day?

  ✽✽✽

  “You see, he’s losing it,” Kedrov told his president and the minister for foreign affairs over the video-conferencing system. Together, they had watched a ‘Best of Berka’ video for a few minutes.

  “Yes, isolation works wonders,” his superior, the minister, said.

  The Russian president only nodded, he was still not satisfied as long as he could not present a clear victory.

  “We will do our best to soften him up enough, so that tomorrow we can present the draft peace treaty to the world,” Kedrov said in a highly nervous tone. Actually, his deadline for achieving this had passed ten days ago.

  “The Polish forces have pulled together, but they are unable to do anything to our troops. The war is basically won.” The ambassador was clearly fishing for a little understanding.

  The two men on the other side said nothing. The screen went black.

  Kedrov grunted and started rubbing his temples. He looked at Berka’s watch that was now on his wrist and decided that it was time for a drink.

  ✽✽✽

  The television channels in Poland went back on air during the evening of June 11th with a rotation of an hour-long video.

  It started with an interview of a displaced person purportedly from Luhansk. The forty-something woman looked extremely stressed, two children were clinging to her skirt seam. She explained how she had lost everything when the Polish soldiers came. Her house, where her husband and a few other freedom fighters had sat over dinner, had been blown to bits by mortar fire. She was a widow now, and homeless, too.

  The next segment showed the school where the fourteen second-graders died. Mothers and grandmothers wept in front of the flower heap that was still there. Teddy bears, pictures, candles, small toys as gifts for the dead lay on the now-defunct school’s steps.

  Pictures from villages and towns in Luhansk oblast were shown, mostly stills. There were small churches, burnt out with only the outer walls and the steel beams that once had supported a roof still standing. There were houses with holes of various sizes in their walls, some as small as a quarter, some as big as a pizza plate. Some had caved-in roofs, some were almost completely razed to the ground. They also showed communist blocks, public housing from the 1970s, that had their façades blown off by artillery fire. The accompanying music was languid.

  Next came a few takes from the interview with the Russian president. The original was voiced-over in Polish language by a firm bass voice, “We, the Russian people, want peace more than anything else in the world. During the last one hundred years, we have been attacked by fascists and extremists multiple times.” After some more on how the war was good for no one, the president turned directly toward the camera and tried to make a friendly and consoling face. “I personally gave our troops the orders to spare civilian lives and keep the infrastructure intact. The disciplined men and women in our service did just that. I encourage you to leave your homes, go to Warsaw and look around. Go to Kiev and look around. You will see, not much has changed. Houses are intact, infrastructure also, life goes on for the normal people. And that is exactly what the people of Poland and Ukraine should do now, go on with their lives while we work on a political solution. The firing has ceased even at the front lines.”

  “Did you arrange for a cease-fire, Gospodin Prezident?” The anchor asked. The translation overlapped with the original.

  “Not quite, it seems the Polish forces are incapable of expanding their zone of influence, so they consolidated south of a line roughly Dresden-Wrocław-Lublin. We have equally stopped advancing further south as we already control the vital cities, the main areas of economic and political activity.” The president lectured the beautiful anchor but quickly tried to get back to the message he actually wanted to convey. “We never aimed at the submission of the Polish people, this is Russophobic propaganda by the West. Our sole aim in this campaign was to remove the threat, the Polish and Ukrainian regimes pose to the region’s security.”

  The brunette nodded attentively.

  “And that simply requires a proper peace treaty which we are drafting as of now and which will be signed very soon by the Polish president and the Ukrainian president, respectively.” The president continued to talk about going back to work was what the people of Poland should do.

  Agnieszka kept the TV on while she washed her face in the bathroom.

  When she came back to the room, the screen showed pictures of Warsaw with a date at the bottom, June 11th. There were trams rolling down ulica Marszałkowska, a few girls came out of the Galeria Centralna shopping mall with small bags in their hands, a handful of cars drove around the rondo Dmowskiego roundabout. Similar pictures were interspersed from Szczecin, Poznań, and Gdańsk. People were sitting in cafés, enjoying the sun, and drinking beer or coffee.

  The scene chan
ged to a car factory, the caption read Volkswagen Works Poznań. Small utility vehicles came slowly off the line in the clean white building. Men and women in blue coveralls went about their work, the date also read June 11th.

  On the Świecko border crossing, the Autobahn crossing just south of Słubice, forty-ton trucks with German, Polish, and French writing on the sides crawled through the maze of makeshift border controls set up by Russian soldiers. The video’s caption read ‘Normalization on the border crossings to the west, import of foodstuffs fully restored, June 11th’.

  The Terespol border crossing, normally a pretty sorry affair with a lot of foot traffic and only a few vehicles passing through, was bustling with activity. Trucks coming from the Belarusian side were waved through by Russian soldiers. The caption read ‘Humanitarian aid for Polish families transported via Belarus, June 11th’.

  At the end of the hour, a still picture of waving Russian and Polish flags was accompanied by quiet music and the bass voice invited the viewers to join Russia Day celebrations in all larger cities.

  “Dirty cocksuckers,” Agnieszka mumbled to herself when she turned off the TV in her embassy guest room. She had been treated alright, especially since Lyuba had arrived. She knew she was a Russian government agent even though she claimed to come from Minsk in Belarus.

  The woman was just a year or two older, very pretty but not at all vain about it. She had something warm about her, like a psychotherapist or a new age coach. She spoke Polish with an accent like many of the Ukrainian immigrants do, the refugees who had come to Warsaw from Luhansk and other parts.

  Lyuba regularly took Agnieszka out for walks in the embassy’s sizeable private park, and they got along just fine. They spoke of important matters for their generation, education, health, ecology, and fair markets.