The Warsaw Document

by Adam Hall

  ‘London wants a report.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’ll be lucky to get it. Don’t they know we’ve enough to do? Don’t worry about the Czyn people I asked for.’ There was a clinking sound: perhaps the woman washing a cup.

  ‘I can try -‘

  ‘Won’t you ever bloody well listen? I said don’t worry about it. They were to give me support while I tried to break out of Warsaw but there’s no need now.’

  ‘I see.’

  Foster turned round with a drink in his hand.

  ‘Switch that thing off, there’s a good chap.’

  Merrick reached for the tape recorder and the voices stopped. He wouldn’t look at me: he sat hunched in the armchair, just as he’d sat on the bench at the station. I felt sorry for him: he thought I was only just finding out that he’d used audio surveillance in the buffet while we’d sat with our bowls of soup.

  That was all right: it was what I wanted them to think. ‘You put a mike across me, did you?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘You know how it is, old boy.’ Foster tilted his glass and drank. ‘We like to have things on record.’

  He’d been much more than upset when they’d told him I’d slipped them. It wasn’t coincidence that the tape had been playing when I got here: he must have run it a dozen times since he’d got the bad news from Warsaw Central, listening for clues as to what kind of op I’d got lined up, clues to where I’d gone.

  ‘Well I hope it was worth listening to.’

  ‘So-so.’

  Most of the tape could be dangerous but it was too late to worry about that. It was safe - even valuable to me - from the point where Merrick had exposed himself, because from then onwards I’d suspected a mike and used it for my own purposes. It was the point where he’d given me the signal he said was from London.

  In that instant he was blown.

  There’d been three things wrong. (1) The code was fourth series with first-digit dupes. (2) P.K.L. was instructed to furnish a fully detailed interim report. (3) These instructions were sent during the final phase of the mission.

  Fourth series was Merrick’s code, not mine, and London would have used my own code or if for any reason they’d changed it to a different series they’d have put a prefix to indicate express intention and there wasn’t a prefix.

  They would have sent the signal to K.D. for Karl Dollinger and not to P.K.L. for P. K. Longstreet because Longstreet had ceased to exist when they’d given me the new cover.

  They wouldn’t have asked for a fully detailed report during the final phase of the mission because they know that at this stage of a mission you’re lucky if you can hit the Telex or the short-wave, let alone draft a ten-page coverage with itemised refs and carbons. They knew I was in the final phase because Sroda was the deadline for all of us.

  Merrick had been given the signal by Foster’s group because they too knew the deadline was close and they wanted all available info from me before Sroda broke and the confusion gave me a chance of getting out of Warsaw. So the poor little tick had blown himself but my immediate decision was not to scare him by telling him I knew. Maybe I could have tried saving him, at that moment, by breathing on the bit of compassion he’d managed to find in me, giving it warmth: tell him to get out and hole up and pray. But I could use him now, and anyway I think he would have walked out of the buffet and across the platform and under the next train.

  He’d been usable because of the mike. Foster knew I’d asked for three Czyn people because Merrick had told him, so I’d let Foster know why I wanted them, direct on the tape. I told him two important things: that they were to help me leave Warsaw, and that I no longer needed them.

  These were things he could accept. The first gave him a plausible reason for my asking Czyn for support: to get me out of the city, not to mount an offensive operation. The second gave strength to what I knew I’d be telling him later, here in this room: that I no longer needed them because I’d been in direct touch with London and had orders to work with Foster and not against him and would therefore expect him to let me out of Warsaw as a temporary ally.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been no mike: the gist of it would have been passed on to Foster as routine info; but the tape gave it substance. I wasn’t in fact sure there was a mike: it was just that Merrick had been sitting unnaturally still at the table and I’d put it down to chest pains, the asthma, until he gave me the duff signal. Then I knew it could be because he was trying not to fuzz up a mike with background noise, the friction of his clothes when he moved.

  He could never do anything right, tripping on things and dropping things, cocking things up. Even when he used a mike on me it kicked back and he didn’t know.

  ‘I believe you’ve already met Voskarev.’ The man in the other chair got up.

  ‘Yes.’

  He was the man with pale hands and thyroid eyes who’d directed my interrogation at the Ochota precinct after they’d ordered Merrick to have me pulled in. He lowered his head in a token bow but his eyes stayed on me, round and staring, the eyes of a fish. He didn’t sit down again but turned slightly away and stood gazing into the middle distance as if listening for something.

  But I wasn’t ready yet. I had to wait for Foster. I needed a cue from him and it had to be the right one because it depended on his next words whether I had to kill off the whole operation or kick it into gear.

  ‘How’s London?’

  Kick it.

  ‘I’ve just had my orders confirmed.’

  London was the key. He believed what I’d told him on the phone, or believed some of it, enough of it to test me for slips. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been replaying the tape, wouldn’t have been interested, would have told the man at the door here to put me in a cell and make damned sure this time I didn’t get out.

  ‘That’s good.’ His tone was sleepy. ‘Been on to them direct?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘Not from the Hotel Kuznia.’ His tone hadn’t changed.

  ‘There was too much delay.’

  ‘Oh yes of course, they told me.’ He took a sip of Scotch. ‘So you’re still on our side, that it?’

  ‘What’s it look like, Foster? You think I’d have come here under my own steam, otherwise?’

  I had to work up some anger. The whole thing had to sound exactly right and a show of anger would do that.

  ‘I suppose not. On the other hand you gave those chaps a lot of trouble, not very sporting. I mean if you’re meant to be on our side - ‘

  ‘Christ, haven’t you got the picture yet? I told you I’d got a lot to do before I could come here and hand you the full works and I couldn’t do it with a bunch of thick-eared clods treading all over my heels the whole time. You put them there because you were shit-scared I’d go off on some lunatic suicide mission and do some damage, right? I don’t expect you to trust me but I expect you to trust your own judgement and see the sense in what I was telling you on the phone. Does this man understand English? If not, I’ll say it again in Russian because I want the whole of your outfit to know that if you start blocking me again you’ll cost yourselves a good deal of valuable help and God knows you need it.’ I looked at Voskarev but he was staring at the wall. ‘Better still, tell him yourself, your Russian’s a bit more fluent than mine, part of your contract.’

  Foster was looking into his tumbler. In a moment he said idly: ‘They found a man this afternoon. In a lavatory.’ He looked at me and I saw that a certain shine had come to his eyes under their puffy lids. He didn’t like what I’d said about his contract and he didn’t like his people being found like that. My anger was counterfeit but his was the real thing and I was going to keep working on it because in anger the judgement suffers.

  ‘That was your own fault - I told you not to let them get in my way. You’re slipping, you know that? What are you by this time, a bottle-a-day man? They all go like that once they’re blown.’ I went close to him and he didn’t look away. ‘T
he trouble with you Slavs is that you can’t stand back far enough to get a world view. The Bonn proposals have opened up the chance of an East-West détente that could wipe out a lot of the mutual fear that’s keeping both camps with one hand on the hot-line telephone and the other on the nuclear trigger and all you can worry about is a thug found dead in a lavatory.’

  I could hear movement behind me. Voskarev, getting restless. It was a fair bet he understood English and didn’t like what he heard because Comrade Colonel Foster was their blue-eyed boy and I didn’t sound too impressed.

  They can’t stand heresy.

  Foster was perfect. Give him that. He took a sip of whisky and savoured it and said mildly: ‘All I mean is, old boy, that you must have been rather keen to go off on your own, which makes it difficult for us to believe you’ve nothing to hide from us. Why did you have to -‘

  ‘Listen, Foster.’ I turned away and moved about so that I could keep them all in sight: it wasn’t the time for anyone to do something silly. ‘I told you there are one or two Czyn units still intact and I had to go and talk to them and I didn’t intend exposing them to your people so that you could give orders to have them wiped out. They trust me and that might be a new idea to a man like you but it’s a fact of life. If you’ve any more stupid bloody questions I don’t want to hear them now because Warsaw’s going to blow up if we don’t do something to stop it and we haven’t got long.’

  I went over to the trolley and found some soda and hit the tit and drank a glassful. It was very quiet in the room.

  ‘You’d better be more specific.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’ I turned back to him. ‘Did you bring in Ludwiczak for me?’

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  ‘But I told you to fly him in and that was thirty hours ago!’

  ‘It’s not really the problem of transport. There are always formalities.’

  ‘How long’s he going to be kept hanging around while they’re filling in forms? He’s our key man and we can’t do much without him. Can’t you phone someone?’

  He spoke to Voskarev in Russian and he stopped staring at the wall and picked up the telephone. Merrick had left his chair and stood with his back to us and I heard the atomiser pumping. The guard was still by the door.

  I had to do it now and the sweat was coming out because if it didn’t work first time it wouldn’t ever work at all and I watched Voskarev at the phone as if it was important that Ludwiczak was here.

  He spoke to Foster, not to me.

  ‘They are bringing him through the airport.’

  Foster nodded and looked at me to see if I understood.

  ‘We can’t wait for him,’ I said. ‘You’d better leave orders that he’s to be brought here and kept under close guard till we get back.’

  The pain in my head was starting again and the bruises along my arms felt like muscular fever.

  ‘We’re not,’ Foster said gently, ‘going anywhere.’ I shrugged, looking at my watch.

  ‘Do it your way, I’m easy, but the Praga Commissariat’s due to go up in an hour from now. I make it 21:05 hours, that about right?’

  ‘To go up?’

  His tone was extra sleepy and that was all right: he was absorbing reaction.

  ‘It’s detonated for 22:00 hours.’

  He glanced at the gilt sunburst clock. ‘Oh is it?’

  I saw Voskarev transferring his stare to Foster. He understood English all right.

  Foster drained his tumbler and took it across to the trolley, his steps short and with a slight spring to them. He nodded as Voskarev went to the telephone, then turned back to me.

  ‘What sort of detonators are they?’

  ‘Ludwiczak could tell us that. I’d imagine they’re radio-controlled like the ones at the Tamka power-station. I suppose the police found that stuff there, did they?’

  ‘They did, yes.’

  He watched me attentively, no smile now, the eyes less sleepy.

  ‘Fair enough. Tamka was for midnight.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, they told us. Nobody told us about the Commissariat.’

  ‘Then you’re lucky.’

  Voskarev was speaking in Polish, quite fast and with a lot of authority. When he’d put the phone down he got his coat and the heavy black briefcase that had been resting against the chair.

  Foster hesitated and I knew why. The Praga Commissariat was his base and he’d got to get in there and out again while the walls were still standing.

  Then he got his coat.

  ‘I want you to come with us. I want to talk to you on the way.’

  ‘I thought maybe you would.’

  The courtyard was cobbled and the big saloon drifted a bit on the snow in spite of its chains.

  Foster took the occasional seat and sat hanging on to the looped strap as we turned east towards Praga. He spoke more quickly than usual and his eyes were alert.

  ‘You weren’t actually sent from London to take any kind of action against Czyn?’

  ‘I told you what had come up.’

  ‘Yes, but keep on filling me in, will you?’

  ‘There’s nothing new except that my people have started panicking at the last minute because the F.O.‘s putting pressure on them. First they told me to explore and report on the Czyn situation and then they began chucking fully urgent signals for me to assist and advise the U.B. and now I’m apparently expected to keep the lid on Warsaw single-handed, their usual bloody style. I opted to co-operate with you off my own bat, why should I skin my nose on the grindstone while you sit on your arse?’

  He gave a brief smile but the nerves still showed through it. ‘I’ve hardly been doing that. I think. We’ve quite a big problem here, and I don’t expect you to understand its proportions. These urgent signals,’ he said with polite interest, ‘didn’t reach you through the British Embassy, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I said and we both laughed.

  It was a private joke: we were two seasoned professionals and shared the understanding of our trade and our trade was deception so I knew what he was doing: he was testing his own agent, Merrick. ‘Of course they didn’t. He would have passed you the dupes.’

  ‘I just wondered.!

  ‘Give the little bastard his due: he did a first-class op. for you and if London hadn’t sent me new orders it would have been chop-chop and no flowers, you know that. Surely that’s worth at least a lance-corporalship in the Red Army?’

  He laughed again but it didn’t have quite the same sound because he knew I was guying his colonelcy.

  I wiped the steam off the window and looked out at the people along the pavements. The reaction was starting to set in, the delayed shock of what had happened in the station buffet. One minute I was watching Merrick and feeling glad that he’d soon be back in London and safety and the next minute I was trying to absorb the realisation that his job in Warsaw had been to cut me down and trap me for the K.G.B.

  I hadn’t thought about it since it had happened because there hadn’t been time: it had floated in my head like a nightmare you can’t remember in detail but can remember having had. I was thinking of Egerton now, rather than Merrick. Egerton with his chilblains and his prim confidence in what he was doing: he’s been fully screened, of course, I’ve no intention of saddling you with a potential risk.

  If I had the luck to see London again I’d have Egerton out on his neck: the least we expect of Control is that they don’t recruit an agent already recruited by Moscow and then tell us to hold his hand.

  I couldn’t do it by signals. My only communications were through Merrick and the Embassy because direct contact had been banned since Coleman had used a phone in Amsterdam and didn’t hear the bugs.

  The saloon gave a lurch and Foster hung on to his strap: a fire-service vehicle had been klaxoning for gangway and its amber rotating lamp went past as we tucked in to let it through. I think we hit the kerb with a rear wheel before we pulled straight again, the kerb or a drift of packed ice.
/>
  Foster was looking at me rather sharply.

  ‘We’d have heard it,’ I said, ‘from this distance.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The basement’s crammed with the stuff.’

  He looked away.

  Nervous and physical courage don’t always come in the same package. For twenty years this man had run the most sensitive type of operation known to the trade, watching his words and weighing them whenever he spoke, wherever he was, cold sober in his Whitehall office or half-drunk in a woman’s flat, fabricating his lies and testing them, detecting flaws and repairing them and listening all the time for, a false note in the speech of others that would tell him of danger, carrying for twenty years a bomb that ticked in his pocket.

  But he’d no stomach for the real thing, for trinitrotoluene.

  ‘There are other places?’

  ‘According to the Czyn people I spoke to.’

  ‘Which places?’

  ‘You’re not thinking straight, Foster. If I knew which places I’d tell you. The only one I’m certain about is the Praga Commissariat and I told you as soon as I could. My orders are to help you keep the peace in this fair city, try getting it into your head.’

  ‘The Records Office,’ he said reflectively, ‘would be another place.’

  ‘I’d say so. What price an amnesty when you can blow up the evidence?’ The Records Office stocked secret information on every single citizen. ‘It’s your own fault there’s not much time left: you’ve wiped out most of Czyn and the die-hard survivors are going to make sure there’s some action before they join the rest. Praga was rigged for midnight originally, the same as Tamka. You’d have had more time.’

  He shut up for a bit. I think he was working out the odds: he was still a top-line professional and he had a big operation running and he could only save it by going into his base and pulling the documentation out in time. On the other hand, he didn’t like thinking about his skin plastered all over what was left of the ceiling.

  Voskarev hadn’t spoken since we’d got into the car. I watched his reflection on the glass of the division between the dark shapes of the driver and escort.