The Day of the Lie (17 page)

With that sense of
solemn engagement.’ Anselm sat down and removed the lid from the box. Inside
were two files, one thick and orange, the other thin and green. He took the
first and untied its bow with a quick tug. Opening the cover, he paused.

The text had not been
translated. Glancing down the three short paragraphs, Anselm gleaned two names:
one in lower case.’ Róża Mojeska, the second capitalised.’ OLEK. Beneath
this document Anselm found two prison photographs, the first of a girl with
wavy hair, the second of a haggard woman, someone so absent that Anselm thought
she’d just risen from an autopsy table. They were each marked ‘MPB WARSZAWA’
and dated 1951 and 1953 respectively Then he realised they were one and the
same individual. This was Róża Mojeska.’ before and after. The rest of the
file held page after page of meticulous pencil-written notes — these presumably
being a contemporaneous record of Róża’s various interrogations. This was
the neatness of that most frightening of individuals, the bureaucrat and
torturer, whose violence is a kind of humdrum administrative activity Anselm
moved them to one side, grateful that he couldn’t understand the questions and
answers. Reaching into the box he withdrew the file with the green cover. It
was so flimsy it might have been empty This, presumably was the
Polana
material
from the joint Stasi-SB archive.

Anselm was right. Inside
were two letters in German. The first was dated 17th June 1982, reference
MW/MfS/XV1/1982. It had been sent by a Stasi major in Warsaw to a general in
East Berlin. A single paragraph was relevant to Anselm’s purpose:

Contrary
to the protocol of December 1978, Colonel Brack declines to share key
intelligence. Day to day running of
Polana
is left to his deputy,
Lieutenant Frenzel who keeps matters firmly in the SB camp. We know, for
example, that an agent named FELIKS has been reactivated but to date we have
not been told who that might be.

The second letter was
dated three weeks later. It came from Colonel Brack to the general, copied to
the major, reference IO/ SB/XVI/1982. Again one element spoke to Anselm:

As
you know, agent running is a delicate task resting upon the absolute trust of
the informer with their handler. Their contract is with the SB, not the Stasi.
To disclose their names at this stage is neither necessary nor desirable. That
said, at the completion of the operation I am sure some accommodation can be
found.

That was it. John had
assumed the file would contain everything that had been compiled to catch Róża,
which would include the name of the informer. But there was nothing of the
sort. The bulk of the contents had evidently been removed. Anselm pushed back
his chair to seek the woman in white. He found her ticking boxes in another
office some distance down the corridor. Behind her stood a man in a dark suit
examining a photocopier as if it were a lethal gadget made by Q.

‘Excuse me,’ said
Anselm, hesitating at the door. ‘The file is incomplete.’

The nurse’s signals
suggested he might like to try again but the conversation did not improve until
the man prodding the paper tray tuned in. Shaking Anselm’s hand he said, in
assured English, ‘Nothing’s missing. They’ve been destroyed:

Sebastian Voight had read law at Warsaw and
then pursued postgraduate studies in London and Washington. He’d specialised
in criminal procedure, with an eye to war crimes and the problems of
transitional justice, thinking originally of a career at the Hague. However he’d
been knocked off course — or on course, depending on your perspective — by the
offer of a job at the IPN. Amongst the many investigations he’d instituted into
what were now called ‘communist crimes’, few had been as important or urgent as
that of Otto Brack.

‘Important because his
case links crimes of the Stalinist Terror to those of the martial law years; it’s
the beginning and end of Communism. Róża’s story symbolises the entire
epoch. A trial of Otto Brack would be a trial of post-war authoritarian
ideology and its murderous consequences.’ Sebastian’s office, it transpired,
faced that allocated to Anselm. The order was in surprising contrast to a
rather appealing anarchy in his clothing. He was smart, but something rebelled.
The stiff shirt collar refused to stay inside the jacket. His soul was in a
pair of trainers. ‘And it’s important regardless of any inherent symbolic
qualities, because we’re dealing with a double killing.’

The orange file
contained not only Róża’s interrogations from the early fifties but a
secret report referring to the interrogation and execution of two men believed
to be part of the Shoemaker organisation: Pavel Mojeska and Stefan Binkowski.

‘There was no trial,’
said Sebastian, leaning on the edge of his desk. ‘They were simply killed. At
the time Róża was in the same prison. I’m sure she knows what happened. As
things stand there is no evidential link between the murders and Otto Brack.’

‘How do you know there
is one?’

‘Intuition. I could feel
it when I met Róża. She was there. I
know
she was there.’

Anselm glanced at the
wall planner, marked with red dots for pending actions. There were no blue ones
for the holidays. Along one wall was a rack of shelves packed with box files.
Presiding over the lot, in a central gap, was a photograph of an elderly woman
standing behind a wheelchair.

‘You said urgent,’
resumed Anselm, legs crossed, remembering the savage energy generated by papers
organised for a trial.

‘Róża is the last
and only witness,’ replied Sebastian. ‘The known guards are dead. And if they
weren’t I doubt if they’d talk. It all hangs on Róża. But she’s trapped by
her own decency Brack threatened to bring a plague on an informer’s house if
she ever opened her mouth. She’s worried they’d take a running jump.’

Anselm sipped a glass of
fizzy water, picked up from a machine in the corridor outside. ‘Well, she was
present all right.’

‘Where?’

‘In the prison when her
husband and Stefan Binkowski were shot.’

‘Shot? How do you know?’

‘She flew all the way to
London to tell John Fielding, a friend of mine. She asked him to walk through
fire to find the informer who betrayed her in nineteen eighty-two. She’ll only
meet them if they’re willing to talk honestly If they won’t, she’ll let them
go. If they will, she hopes to persuade them that Brack’s worst isn’t that bad
after all.’

‘Well, well, well,’
murmured Sebastian, dragging a hand through his black hair. ‘She really did
change her mind:

He spun off the desk’s
edge to open a front drawer.

‘I’d been chasing Róża
for weeks but she wouldn’t talk to me. He took out a folder and opened its
flap. ‘Eventually.’ I persuaded her to come here and see the SB files. I
tricked her, and she knew it. I’d set up recording equipment, right there in
front of the shelves. I’d put up some pictures showing the chaos of her life
and times. I’d made it difficult to walk away’

He’d asked her to talk
about the period between 1951 and 1982, saying it was for a voice archive,
Which was true.’ only what he really wanted was a list of all the people she’d
known. The informer had to be among them.

‘I knew what I was
looking for. There are only two types of candidate that would explain Róża’s
willingness to leave Brack unaccused. First, someone intimately connected to
the Shoemaker operation with a high enough profile to make public disclosure
almost unthinkable. Second, someone to whom she felt indebted … someone to
whom she owed far more than she ever stood to gain by seeing Brack banged up
for life.’

‘Either way.” said
Anselm.’ commending the classification, ‘someone who might choose the Vistula
if exposed.’

Sebastian gave a nod. ‘But
Róża saw the ruse: she gave no names. After she’d finished, I thought I’d
never see her again.’

But a week or so later
she’d come back with a revised statement.’ identifying every person of
significance in her life.

‘She, too, was
transformed,’ explained Sebastian. ‘She’d worked out a plan of some kind, but
she wouldn’t elaborate. All she’d say was that she intended to wake the dead
and shatter the illusions of many And now you’ve turned up.’

Anselm rather liked the
ring to that declaration. He took off his glasses to shine the lenses,
baulking, suddenly, as Róża’s expectations came into focus.

‘She brought that
statement to London,’ said Anselm, blinking uncertainly ‘In effect, she called
it a tool to help find the informer. Thing is, she never gave it to John.’

‘Why not?’

‘When they met, she saw
he was blind.’

‘And?’

‘She left. Devastated.
Not knowing that John would come to me, and that I would come here, in his
stead, without that statement.’

The two lawyers
appraised each other, both of them — Anselm was sure — reviewing the law of
agency for unless Anselm could be described as Róża’s representative, the
IPN couldn’t disclose a copy of her statement.

‘The words “authorised”,
“express” and “implied” spring to mind,’ purred Anselm. ‘I’ve forgotten the
rest but I think we can frame an argument to the effect that I’m Róża’s
sub-agent, with John as the absent principal.’

‘Agreed,’ replied
Sebastian.’ taking a document from the folder.

‘This is the text. To
sharpen the focus, I’ve cut out the material where no names are mentioned. I’ll
get it translated now I’ve traced the addresses and telephone numbers of all
the people mentioned. You’ll find them listed at the back.’

It was an East meets West triumph: a sort
of indigenous Pizza Express, only they sold dumplings.
Pierogi.
Anselm
wouldn’t have thought it possible, but these fast serving mono—thematic
eateries were all the rage. They’d sprung up all over the city Could a dumpling
seriously vie with a pizza? Anselm was privately awed. Out loud, over a shot of
Śliwowica Paschalna
(‘… just fermented plums. Nothing added. Not
even water …’) he wondered if Sebastian had given any thought to FELIKS.

‘Oh yes. I looked him up
in one of the SB agent registers. And sure enough, he’s there in Róża’s
statement all the way from the fifties to the eighties. For the first time I
got a glimpse of her predicament fleshed out. FELIKS is a friend. FELIKS is
part of a family FELIKS is surrounded by people who’ve no idea he’s a swine who
got his swill. People Róża doesn’t want to harm.’

Anselm took a sip.

‘The second type of
informer.” he whispered, eyes watering.

‘Yes. She owed him her
life:

Assuming FELIKS is our
man (continued Sebastian, after draining his glass) the circumstances showed up
the moral perversion of Brack’s actions. Sure, he’d used her goodness against
herself, but he’d also gambled on a lack of honesty among the very people she
sought to protect.

‘Not everyone wants to
hear the truth.” he avowed with a knowing wink to the waiter at the bar. ‘They
wouldn’t want to know that Daddy was an informer and they wouldn’t thank Róża
for telling them. She’d have known the score immediately: if she wanted to keep
popping round for dinner and watch the telly then she’d better keep her mouth
shut.’

Anselm nodded, thinking
— curiously — of John. Given the choice.’ he’d preferred the lie of a happy
family to the truth of his mother’s betrayal. He wasn’t grateful for the
enlightenment, even now. He hadn’t wanted the pain. Neither had his father or
Melanie. They’d all been playing Misery ever since, trying to get back to the
good times. All of which demonstrated the complexity of Róża’s position
and the risks involved in persuading someone to step centre-stage.

One arm behind his back,
the waiter refilled Sebastian’s tiny glass, aping shock when Anselm declined a
top-up.

‘But, of course, FELIKS
may not be our man.” said Anselm, wetting his bottom lip.

‘No. I spotted that,
too.’

Colonel Brack’s letter
to the general, copied to the major, referred to ‘agents’. Plural. There were
other ears at Róża’s door. But only one of them really mattered.

‘I’ve got to find the
informer that led Brack to the Powązki Cemetery in nineteen eighty—two.”
said Anselm. ‘The rest are just bit-players.’

How to proceed, then?
Anselm could hardly go through an SB agent registry like one of those
telephone-based salesmen, asking if the householder would like to change their
heating system. He needed to know for sure that he’d found Brack’s main actor,
so he could plan his approach, plan that ‘better story’ mentioned by the Prior
that would persuade them to meet Róża.

Sebastian.’ it
transpired, had already tried to narrow down the pool of candidates.
Cross-referring the IO/SB/XVI/1982 reference with SB employment records, he’d
identified Irina Orlosky as Brack’s bilingual personal assistant. The revenue
people had traced her address but, like Róża, she’d refused to talk.
Unlike Róża she’d been hard and brittle; hysterical when pushed. And while
neither of them had a choice but to co—operate with an IPN investigation,
Sebastian recognised he couldn’t hope to mount a successful prosecution without
willing witnesses.

Anselm stared at his
glass and then swallowed fire in one swift movement.

‘Odd, really that the
Polana
file isn’t completely empty.” he said, after a long burning pause. ‘The
letters left behind are more like adverts. A hint of what’s on offer. I was
reminded of a mail order catalogue.’

‘Catalogue?’

‘Yes. You know, bargain
sales. Basement level.’

Sebastian didn’t follow
so Anselm explained.

‘We need the papers that
are missing from the
Polana
file. The one name left on view to anyone
who opens the cover is Brack’s deputy.’ Lieutenant Frenzel. I find that an
intriguing state of affairs. I think it was deliberate. I think he wouldn’t be
surprised if we gave him a call. I think the man is open for business: