The Day of the Lie

by William Brodrick

  You owe it to the children you might have had.

  What a devastating phrase.

  Speak to the informer.

  How could she?

  You might as well, because one day someone else will do just that … someone cleverer than me.

  Sebastian’s throwaway remark had nearly knocked Róża off her feet. He was right. The informer’s days of quiet obscurity were coming to an end. It was only a matter of time. Others would come to pore over the archives. And that changed everything for Róża. Why wait until the informer was shattered by exposure? She could get there beforehand and …

  Give them another reason for living.

  Róża clung to herself, feeling cold and lonely All around stray lights flickered like scared moths trapped in a jar. A breeze unsettled the trees. Throughout, Sebastian’s voice repeated that final beguiling command. After a while Róża ceased to follow the words. She held her breath. She was staring at a troubled ghost. He was there, clothed in shadows before her eyes, offering to help while pleading his innocence.

  Róża could barely sleep. An overwhelming sense of urgency came crashing into the night hours, sweeping aside the decades of submission, the patient acceptance of defeat. With each passing minute her imagination grew bolder, her resolve all the more firm. By the time dawn light filtered through the worn bedroom curtains she’d devised a simple plan to bring Otto Brack to court. Ironically, it involved handing over all the names she’d refused to disclose when in Mokotów But that time had come. They were all safe, now The epoch of fear and secrets was almost over.

  For three days she paced round Warsaw, waiting for the transcript of her narrative to arrive from the IPN. When the post came, on the fourth day, she set to work. First, she carefully checked that the text presented a balanced picture of her life between 1951 and 1982. Second, with a red pen, she inserted all the names she’d left out while making the recording. Third, with a black pen, she deleted convoluted expressions, repetitions and digressions. The result was a crafted manuscript that suited her newfound purpose — something the Shoemaker would have been proud of. Every word had its place. They presented a kind of landscape ordered by signposts, only the most important indicator was missing, its absence serving to point without pointing, identifying the informer without a trace of condemnation. When she’d finished she went straight to the IPN and gave it to Sebastian.

  ‘I’ve changed my testimony,’ she said quickly standing in the entrance hall. ‘Could you type it up, please?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Now, while I’m waiting.’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  Róża stepped outside to pace some more, refusing the offer of coffee, tea or Bison Grass. After what seemed an age, Sebastian returned with a clean copy in a brown envelope.

  ‘Changed your mind, as well?’ he quipped, seriously.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  A phrase of the Shoemaker’s came to mind. ‘Raise the dead and shatter the illusions of many’

  ‘Okay sounds reasonably apocalyptic. That’s fine. And in the meantime, what do you expect from me?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not fine. Tell me what you’re up to.’

  She shook her head with approbation. ‘You’d never have survived the fifties. You ask far too many questions.’

  With that judgement, she left him bewildered by the leaning tree. On returning home she rang her old friend Magda Samovitz in England, a woman who’d survived the Nazi holocaust only to be hounded out of Warsaw by a Communist pogrom in 1969. Magda had bought a ticket to a new life. For years she’d been sending Róża postcards of Trafalgar Square which bore one simple message: ‘Come and feed the pigeons’. That time, too, had finally arrived.

  By the evening of the next day Róża had bought her flight and packed her bags. There was no need for a phrase book. She’d been learning English since 1989. It had been a hobby of sorts. Twenty-four hours later Róża was in the upstairs box bedroom of Magda’s Georgian house in Stockwell, south London, lamenting the absence of a phrase book that would have helped an elderly dissident cope with a different kind of Underground. Once again she couldn’t sleep. Her mind whirred like the air vent back in Warsaw.

  Sebastian had been right about something else. He’d seen something obvious to which Róża had been blind; blind because, as a matter of principle, she’d excluded the possibility from the outset. The last thing that Brack expected was that Róża would arrange to meet the informer. That she’d sit down at their table. That the betrayer and the betrayed would somehow find the courage to talk together, deeply of all that lay hidden. That Róża would open up the possibility — for the informer — of another, more authentic existence, a public and private identity based on the truth. This was the landscape that lay beyond Brack’s imagination: that his informer would stomach disclosure of the past and face the dread of an uncharted future. And that defined Róża’s task: to persuade the informer that even now after all these years, the pain of a life in the open was preferable to a numbed existence in the dark.

  There was, however, one remaining catch. A relatively large one, too.

  There could be no forced entry. The door had to be left unlocked from the inside. Róża would have it no other way. She needed an invitation to enter and sit down, her host knowing full well that the unexpected guest intended to talk about their mutual relationship with Otto Brack. It was a great gamble with great risks … but if this, Róża’s stratagem, worked, Brack would be left defenceless. Once the informer accepted exposure, Róża would be free to accuse her husband’s killer.

  Róża switched off her bedroom light, her thoughts and prayers resting with a man she’d first met in 1982. He’d found her through the distribution chain of Freedom and Independence. She’d thought of him looking at the monument to Prus — they’d met there countless times. He’d been a romantic. An outsider. An Englishman of ancient courtesies. He’d been kicked out of the country for getting too close to the fire. His name was John Fielding, a British journalist who’d longed to find the Shoemaker.

  Part Two

  Lives Lived in Secret

  Chapter Six

  Anselm cut the engine dead. The wipers swung home with a soft thud. Outside autumn rain fell quietly in the darkness, the drizzle lit a strange yellow by the distant street lamps. A mist had drifted east off the river Cam smudging the clean-lined portico of Cambridge station. It was the same back at Larkwood: an afternoon of intense sunshine had brought a fog off the Lark to hide the fields and smooth the tangled roofs and walls of the monastery. An apple wood fire blazed in the calefactory and Anselm was keen to get back to the hearth and warm his hands.

  ‘I need a lawyer,’ quoted Anselm, pensively tapping the steering wheel.

  Those had been John’s exact words. Not, it seemed, a monk.

  ‘I’d better explain in person. You know I don’t like the phone.’

  ‘When do you want to come?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  Anselm had put down the receiver and shuffled off to the woodshed. There, musing and recollected, he’d split some green logs and sized them for a decent fire.

  John Fielding was Anselm’s oldest friend. They’d been to the same boarding school where, following a walk around the cricket square, they’d become allies in mutual understanding, a hallowed state that was later sealed over a bottle of purloined altar wine. While at university — John at Exeter, Anselm at Durham — they’d skilfully negotiated the transition from boyhood to manhood, that time of awkward flowering when, in making momentous decisions, many who were once close find themselves subtly apart. John, a linguist, had chosen journalism. Anselm, drawn by the thrilling mix of courtesy high theatre and linguistic violence, had opted for the Bar. Both noted, with satisfaction, that the distance between Fleet Street and Gray’s Inn was negligible.

  While Anselm had forged a career defending the washed and unwashed alike, John had secured a position as fo
reign correspondent, serving first in East Berlin with Reuters and then landing a prized BBC posting to Warsaw in early 1982. He’d arrived just after the Communist Junta put its troops on the streets in their doomed fight against Solidarity. He’d covered the scrap meticulously until, much to the surprise of his employer, he’d been shown the door. More accurately he’d been tossed on to a plane bound for Heathrow Following which he’d told Anselm that he needed a lawyer.

  Only there’d been a short interlude; a brief time when John was something of a reluctant hero in the pubs scattered around Gray’s Inn and the watering holes favoured by writing hacks at the bottom end of Chancery Lane. John had clout. He’d been a friend of Lech. And everyone wanted to know what had happened out there in the cold. John parried questions from all quarters, only disclosing — with reluctance — the barest of details. He’d gone to a graveyard for a clandestine meeting with an underground activist (a remark that pulled a few laughs) but no sooner had he arrived at the chosen spot when agents of the security service appeared, arresting both John and his contact. Three days later his accreditation had been withdrawn. No amount of coaxing or flattery from the audience would persuade John to add anything further, either about the activist, or the candidates for betrayal — the person close to home who’d sold him down the river. The troubled disinclination to elaborate simply buffed up John’s unwanted glamour and increased the aura of mystery surrounding his narrative.

  Alone with Anselm, however, he’d been a fraction more informative, not so much about the events that had led to his arrest as to the nature of his work, its risks and obligations. But Anselm had sensed a link between the two, as if John were examining the chain of causation that had led to his expulsion.

  Investigative journalism (he’d said, without preamble, while they were playing chess) involves talking to anyone with insight and authority, regardless of their standing or the provenance of their information. It’s about the search for truth, and sometimes you had to put your hand into the sewer. One of his sources had been a disaffected official with access to the darker corners of the government’s mind. He’d phoned John cold. He’d called himself ‘The Dentist’ .

  ‘As in teeth and fillings?’

  ‘Is there another kind?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Anselm was distracted, considering a dramatic sacrifice late in the game. His queen for a pawn. Something unheard of in the annals of their many confrontations. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, he was just a voice at the end of the line, feeding me inside stories … he remained hidden … until, one day I met him.’

  ‘Really? He dropped his guard?’ All sacrifice involves a gamble, thought Anselm coldly He made his move.

  ‘Yes,’ replied John, his voice light with surprise. ‘He came to see me just before I left Warsaw’

  Anselm looked up.

  ‘You know —’ John hesitated, his brown eyes alight with subdued anxiety — ‘I think I might have reached too far.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Into the sewer.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was a hood. The stories had been jam. Something sweet to get me on side.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I don’t know … and it doesn’t matter any more. Because they kicked me out.’

  Even as he spoke, John withdrew into himself. He looked at the board in confusion and, three moves later, trapped Anselm’s king with vicious intellectual satisfaction, the brutality — Anselm was sure — having nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with the lingering memory of that ‘Dentist’ .

  Anselm wondered if there was some connection between this shady individual and John’s arrest in the graveyard, an intuition that acquired sudden weight when Anselm raised the matter, delicately and John brushed it away with the same gesture one might use to slam a door. The conversation, he seemed to say, was over.

  The subject appeared to have died a friendless death until, one morning, it gave John a sudden kick, demonstrating that it was very much alive — for others if not for him. A short article appeared on the third page of a national broadsheet intimating a more involved explanation for the sudden ejection of John Fielding from Warsaw Its substance, fleeced of insinuation, lay beneath the headlines of two major tabloids.

  ‘They’re saying I was moonlighting for MI6,’ seethed John. ‘That I’d been using journalistic cover to gather intelligence.’

  And so much more: that he was a key player on the ground with access to dissidents in hiding and liberals in the government. A spy.

  ‘How do you hide a “dead drop” in a graveyard?’ asked Anselm, not displaying the supreme tact advertised by his clerk.

  ‘Don’t you realise what this means for me?’ barked John. ‘For my career?’

  They were sitting in the upstairs bar of the Bricklayers’ Arms in Gresse Street, near Soho, lodged deep in soft armchairs near a low-lit corner. Perhaps it was the clinking and raised voices — the sense of festival away from the office — that had nudged Anselm’s sensibilities off course. He apologised profusely but John wasn’t listening.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ His deep brown eyes were anguished. ‘If I leave the accusation unchallenged, I’m finished. No media outlet will employ me. It means I’m tainted. I can’t be trusted.’

  ‘What do you mean by unchallenged?’ Anselm was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You’re not squaring up for a fight, are you?’

  ‘Not personally It’s your round,’ said John, pointing at his empty glass.

  John wouldn’t listen — either that night, the following day, or during the tense weeks after the writ of libel had been served. He’d resolved to sue the most powerful news corporations in the United Kingdom. No warning or cautionary tale from Anselm would deter him. He remortgaged his flat in Hampstead to pay his solicitors’ costs. He duly begged Anselm to handle the trial, despite compelling evidence that his old friend’s speciality was bread and butter crime, cut from the rough end of the loaf at that, and served with margarine. In the end, worn down, Anselm agreed, insisting on a CD of Johnny Hodges in lieu of payment.

  Then relations between the two friends became strained. John wouldn’t give any detailed instructions about his arrest in 1982. No information was forthcoming beyond what he’d revealed to his recently disbanded fan club.

  ‘I’m protecting a contact,’ he said, blinking like a mule.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The person I went to meet in the graveyard.’

  ‘Tell me about him or her.’

  ‘I can’t. I made a promise.’

  ‘To whom?’ Anselm was twirling a pencil, conscious that it wasn’t going to be used.

  ‘The contact.’

  ‘Promising?’

  ‘To do and say nothing.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I’m not falling for that one.’

  ‘John, I need an account. I need an explanation stronger than theirs.’

  ‘Forget it. Put them to proof.’

  Anselm bit the pencil, watching John sat cross-legged in the chair facing his desk. He was a worried man — one knee bobbing, a moist hand constantly smoothing back his combed sandy hair — but he wouldn’t help himself. He was the worst kind of client.

  ‘What about the Dentist?’

  ‘He was a legitimate source.

  ‘This is like pulling teeth,’ sighed Anselm. He leaned back and pulled a little harder. ‘He was — I use your words — a hood.’

  ‘But our dealings were purely journalistic. He was channelling information into the western media. I was just the conduit. Like I said, he gave me jam. It never got to the point where he asked for anything from me.

  Anselm came from another angle.

  ‘Did you keep any private papers when you were in Warsaw?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘A diary, taped or written.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which kind.’

  ‘Written.’

  ‘Did it cont
ain material germane to the matter in hand?’

  ‘Decidedly’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I burned it.’

  ‘You didn’t. Tell me it’s a joke. Okay it’s not a joke. Tell me why?’

  ‘Pique. I’d hoped to use it later for a book. Cold War memoirs.’

  ‘Why pique?’

  ‘Because a handful of British newspapers accused me of spying and the substance of my experiences — rich, varied and well worth recounting — would, if printed, be interpreted from that perspective.’

  ‘You shouldn’t tell me you destroyed evidence.’

  ‘You should be careful what you ask.’

  ‘I’ll have to tell the other side.’

  ‘Go right ahead. Tell them I burned it after they burned my career.

  Anselm chewed his pencil. The mule with the bobbing leg wasn’t going to budge.

  ‘Character witnesses,’ he said, hopefully ‘Do you know anyone who was close to the ground in Warsaw who can vouch for your professional integrity?’

  ‘No.’

  Anselm was getting nowhere. He decided to bring the conference to an end.

  ‘Forget the cemetery and your burned journal and the friends you might have had. While in Warsaw, or anywhere else for that matter, did you have any form of contact — be that written, oral, signs, numbers, sounds — with any individual or organisation or their representatives which was inconsistent with your status as a foreign correspondent or any other capacity that you might have held or assumed, given the limitations conferred by your visa?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Anselm dropped his pencil and closed his empty pad. ‘It’s a fight, then.’

  The defendants had pleaded justification, implying that hard evidence would be forthcoming, presumably from credible persons with knowledge about John and the work of the intelligence community. However nothing was disclosed. Like John, they claimed to be protecting their source. Which, while admirable, was not a recognised defence to libel. They’d thought the little man wouldn’t stand his ground. Negotiations began at the court door.