The Day of the Lie

by William Brodrick

  Irina had approached him stealthily, like a cat, speaking assurances in a low whisper. She’d edged round the desk and put her hand round his, slowly drawing the barrel from between his teeth. It had been the first time she’d ever touched his skin and he’d been cold; simply cold and still, no clammy surface or shaking limbs; no fear or tension. He’d watched her from afar, letting her unpick his fingers from the handgrip. Irina, trembling violently, had stepped back and dropped the gun into her coat pocket.

  ‘I’ve still got it,’ she laughed, bitterly ‘I didn’t dare leave the thing behind so I brought it home and shoved it in a safe place.’ Her head made a tilt to some shelf out of her son’s reach. ‘To this day I don’t know why I did that … why I stopped him from killing himself. He meant nothing to me. He never once so much as asked if I was all right, or if my son was doing well. He just worked, fighting “the enemy” .Years later, when I realised that most doors in the free world were shut to me, I thought of him and everything he represented; I saw him at his desk, reading files by a lamp, biting his lip. And if I could have gone back into that room, I’d have taken the gun from him and pulled the trigger myself.’ Irina coloured at the admission. ‘I hate him … and as the years go by I hate him even more. Isn’t that an awful thing to say?’

  ‘Yes.” replied Anselm, simply, with the empathy of a doctor. They both knew that hate is the infection from an unhealed wound; that it’s difficult to treat properly.

  ‘I couldn’t find interesting work,’ she said, glancing towards the corridor and the battle of her son. ‘Every conversation, every memory, every story … they all led back to the ministry. I was part of it. I’d drawn my pay Like you said, I was one of them. People who’d never bothered to care when Brack was opening their next door neighbour’s mail became former activists. They’d all been underground. They’d all taken risks. They’d all fought the good fight, whereas me …’ Irina turned aside again, showing Anselm her profile, the fine nasal bone and the strong but delicate chin. Her tone was flat without a trace of self—pity: ‘I’ve paid the penalty for everything he represented. I’ve picked up the responsibility for everything he did … as if I’d fought for his ideas … as if his ideas were mine. I carry the virus. And what about him?’ For the first time she looked at Anselm directly, her eyes naked, the hate creeping quietly like a flame on the edge of some paper, invisible, but alive and black. ‘He’s paid nothing … I’m sure of it. And I saved his life. Do you know what he did afterwards? He didn’t say a word. He just opened a drawer, looked inside and then walked past me as if I wasn’t there.’

  Anselm sipped his tea, unsettled by her calm self-disgust, that secondary infection often found in good people who can’t see any road to forgiveness, especially for themselves, never mind the person who wounded them in the first place.

  ‘Why do you let Frenzel keep his hold on you?’ asked Anselm.’ wanting to find some way out for this cornered woman.

  ‘He offered me some money,’ she replied, not quite answering the question. ‘He said that some investigators were sniffing around Polana, that they might embarrass Brack … that I could play my part and line my pocket at the same time. He’s a very difficult man to turn down, Mr Frenzel —’ the strain appeared in the fine lines around her mouth; she looked inward, it seemed, her eyes glazed — ‘and anyway, I’d nothing to lose.’

  With slow deliberation her attention shifted towards the gunfire: she hated it; she hated the computer screen; she hated the game. But it’s what her son had wanted. She’d bought the lot with her cut from Frenzel (thought Anselm); she’d treated her son to an upmarket toy with adult specifications, the kind of indulgence he’d never received when he was so much younger, excluded from the other kids’ birthday parties.

  ‘He’s addicted to kompot,’ she said, abstracted. ‘It’s a drug made from poppy stalks … weaker than heroin or morphine, but harmful all the same. He steals from me …

  She stared at Anselm, begging him to ask no questions, to simply understand why she needed Marek Frenzel’s backhanders.

  ‘Irina,’ said Anselm, nodding understanding and pity, ‘I’m not here to embarrass Brack. I’m here in an attempt to bring him before a court.’

  ‘Oh really?’ She regarded him with polite but mocking disbelief. ‘For what? For crushing someone’s will to live?.’

  ‘No, for murder,’ supplied Anselm.

  Irina’s glasses flashed.

  ‘Yes, Irina. Maybe you got paid. Maybe you didn’t have much of a choice. But you’ve helped to bring Otto Brack closer to justice. You’ve made a step towards finding your name.

  She smiled reluctantly, as if Anselm had produced more flowers.

  ‘It goes right back to the beginning.” explained Anselm, ‘to the building of the system and the institutions that you’re now ashamed of … which you wish you’d never served: He leaned over the table slightly, giving emphasis to the trust he was about to impart: the confidence one only shares with upright, decent people. ‘Róża Mojeska witnessed the execution of her husband and another man in nineteen fifty-one. Otto Brack pulled the trigger. Róża.’ like you, has been trapped — but not by shame or regret. Polana wasn’t all about finding the Shoemaker. Brack wanted to confront Róża … to tell her the name of the man who’d betrayed her from the outset; to tell her that she couldn’t condemn Brack in the future without exposing someone at the centre of the Shoemaker’s organisation and intimately connected with his reputation, not to mention that of the Church. Out of esteem for them both Róża kept a long, long silence. But now she’s changed her mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The time is right. The fact is, whatever your motives, whatever your past, she’ll be grateful to you.

  Irina had asked the question in a disconnected way, as if her curiosity was a yard behind her memory and understanding. In a searching, faraway voice, she said, ‘Polana, Róża … it all makes sense.’ I suppose. No other operation meant more to him; no other woman so unsettled him.’ She glanced at a wall clock as if it was time for work. ‘My son asked for a pizza. Will you stay for something to eat? We have a speciality here.’ pierogi … they’re difficult to describe, but I’ve got some in the fridge.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Irina took some persuading, but Anselm insisted that pizzas all round was by the far the simplest option. He didn’t want to say that the national dish now reminded him of Frenzel. The son ate in the sitting room, presumably still hiding from the mujahedeen behind that plumped up cushion. During the break in offensive operations, a homely quiet occupied the small and tidy flat. Stray, dying sunlight stole through the kitchen window. The large plastic clock ticked like a soft pulse. Irina had laid the table precisely, with gleaming cutlery and well—pressed napkins.

  ‘You said Róża had unsettled Brack,’ said Anselm, inviting more. The phrase had snagged his interest.

  ‘I’d always thought it strange.” said Irina.’ elbow on the table, her face resting against her hand. She was relaxed. Anselm wondered if he was the first guest; first because he’d come uninvited. ‘At one point he ran over six hundred operations aimed at specific publications in Warsaw, but the one that mattered most was Freedom and Independence, even though there were other papers with a far wider circulation. Polana is the only file that stands out in my memory … even though I knew nothing about what was happening on the ground. And that’s because right at the beginning he called her Róża … just once, by accident, but it was enough to tell me this was no ordinary case; and she wasn’t just another woman.’

  On her first day of work in 1982 Colonel Brack had sent Irina to the main SB archive to obtain a file on one Róża Mojeska. A meeting had been planned for the afternoon with the Stasi and they’d asked to see any existing intelligence. All he brought along to the conference room were her interrogation papers from 1951.

  The reports of FELIKS — which ran from ‘52 until ‘69 — were left on his desk. He was only going to show them the bare minimu
m, with nothing up to date, and nothing that might put them on to her present whereabouts.

  ‘The point of the meeting was to discuss how to track down the Shoemaker,’ said Irina. ‘Colonel Brack and Mr Frenzel represented the SB and there were two officers from the Stasi … I can’t remember their names. Anyway, Colonel Brack explained that Freedom and Independence first appeared at the dawn of time and so on, but that the paper wasn’t that important and hardly worth the effort of a joint operation. He said the only known link to the Shoemaker was a woman who’d vanished into thin air. There was a lot of back and forth, and then the name just came out … he said, “Even if we catch her, Róża won’t tell us anything.” There was a pause and then Mr Frenzel looked up, all innocence and light, and asked.’ “Would that be Mojeska, Sir?” Colonel Brack was beside himself … he went red in the face with embarrassment and rage. He never forgave Mr Frenzel for that.’

  But Mr Frenzel had stumbled on to something. Throughout the following months, this so-called unimportant paper showed itself as Colonel Brack’s obsession. It was the only operation he cared about. And Mr Frenzel.’ sniggering and suspicious, knowing it had to be personal, made the case his own priority He had right of access to all the intelligence … and he went off and interviewed FELIKS before Colonel Brack could think of stopping him. In the end, the Colonel had no choice but to work with him.

  ‘Even so, he found a way of side-stepping Mr Frenzel,’ said Irina, serving Anselm some salad. It was crisp and fresh. ‘I only found out by chance and he asked me not to say anything … and I never have done, until now’

  A second phone appeared on Colonel Brack’s desk: one day it wasn’t there; the next it was. She was never to answer it. He’d obviously installed a secure line — evidently part of some covert operation. In itself that wasn’t out of the ordinary, so Irina didn’t give it a second thought, not until the day she dropped an earring. Irina’s office was part of Colonel Brack’s, a small area separated by an arch without a door. She was on her knees behind her desk patting the carpet when she heard Colonel Brack enter his side of the room. Moments later a phone rang …

  ‘He let it ring for a long time and for some reason I couldn’t move.” said Irina. ‘I just knew he was looking into my corner, checking if I was there … and then he finally picked up the receiver and said, “This is the Dentist.”‘

  ‘The Dentist?’ repeated Anselm, with a light cough.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Irina. ‘He said, “I’ll come immediately” And that’s when I stood up. He swung round and looked at me as if I had a gun in my hand. I’d never seen him look so smart. Normally he wore his uniform or a limp suit, but this time he was well turned out, as if he was off to a wedding.’

  ‘When was this, Irina?’

  ‘Towards the end of the Polana operation, November nineteen eighty-two. The whole thing was wound up the same week. The phone vanished overnight.’

  ‘How do you know he was side-stepping Frenzel?’

  ‘Because he asked me not to tell him about the Dentist. He said it was an operation unrelated to the joint SB/Stasi mandate … then he was off … presumably to meet whoever it was that had just been on the line.’

  Anselm couldn’t order his thoughts properly. The caller had almost certainly been John; Brack had been John’s legitimate contact, a voice on the end of a telephone line. Anselm couldn’t get the measure of the surprise because Irina had returned to something they’d touched on earlier: Frenzel’s intuition that Brack had met Róża in the past.

  ‘Mr Frenzel is not a nice man,’ she said, without apparent understatement, ‘but he’s clever. He has a nose for things. And he’d sniffed something out of Brack’s past. After that slip where he’d used her first name, Mr Frenzel was always making smutty allusions, insinuating that there’d been some lost love in Brack’s life before he’d joined the service. I won’t repeat the kind of disgusting things he used to say.

  ‘You don’t need to. I can well imagine.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I stopped him shooting himself,’ said Irina, as if finding a new angle on to her own behaviour. ‘I suppose I felt sorry for him. Don’t misunderstand me, but he was like a monk —early to work, ascetic, dedicated, diligent, one thing on his mind …’

  Anselm didn’t quite nod in recognition, but he coughed again, trying to wave on the epithets, wondering whether to let slip a few details about life at Larkwood. He opted for mute submission; the subject was just too big.

  ‘… self-sacrificing, unswerving … but for all that he was hollow His emotions had been poured out somewhere … that’s why I found him such a frightening man. He was all ideas, simple ideas.’ without feeling … cold … hard … terribly, terribly sure about everything … about what he was doing and why But as far as I could see, he felt nothing. He used to look straight through me. I was there for a purpose, not as a person. He was like that with everyone … they had a function rather than any value. For that reason I couldn’t imagine anyone loving him. The stuff that love latches on to just wasn’t there, he was like a ladder without rungs; somehow he stayed together without falling apart, but I had no idea what kept him upright.’

  She paused to clear the plates and Anselm made a flap, trying to help, but there wasn’t much to be done. Irina’s back was towards him again. She’d switched on the kettle and was spooning out coffee.

  ‘You know, I met his wife, once,’ she said, still following the stream of her previous reflections.

  ‘Brack was married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘I only met her once. There’d been a final party after all the shredding and this overweight brunette on the other side of the room kept giggling at someone’s jokes, shoving his shoulder and spilling her drink. All I knew was that she was married to some top brass who was a son of even higher brass. Then Mr Frenzel came over and whispered that she’d once been Mrs Brack.

  ‘Couldn’t take him any more, he’d said, laughing. Who could? She’d divorced him for … get a hold of this — Kyrie eleison — a go-getting careerist higher up the SB ladder. The best part: the new hubby’s father had been stumping Brack’s promotions ever since the second wedding. Does it get any better than that?

  ‘Mr Frenzel had done his homework,’ said Irina, her face soured by the reproduction of his voice and manners. She came to the table and laid the cups of coffee between them. ‘But he didn’t know everything and that bothered him. He hadn’t found out why Polana was so important to Colonel Brack, or why Róża appeared to be significant. It frustrated him. He liked to know things, to have information on people, no matter how insignificant, but especially about their mistakes. He used to say that mistakes were currency for the future —’ she slowed a fraction, and Anselm instantly realised that this was part of Frenzel’s continued hold on her; he had something jingling, deep in his pocket: her past — ‘that mistakes never go away and their value always goes up … and he knew that Polana wasn’t what it seemed. That’s why he cleaned the file himself. He reckoned Colonel Brack had made some big mistake.’

  In August 1989 the Stasi, unhappy about the scale of shredding, had arrived with a truck to collect all the joint operations material — a concession made by some high-ups who hadn’t cared where it all went anyway Sensing an opportunity Frenzel had let them take Róża’s interrogations, which should, by rights, have been returned to the main SB archive. ‘Your right hand shouldn’t know what your left is doing, isn’t that how it goes?’ he’d said with a smile, holding up most of the contents lifted from the Polana file. ‘Everything comes down to give and take, doesn’t it, my girl?’ Frenzel might not have known everything about Colonel Brack’s past but he knew enough to make an investment.

  ‘When I found Colonel Brack at his desk with that gun in his mouth,’ said Irina, ‘I think he’d just found out that Róża’s file had gone missing. Now I understand what must have been going through his mind. He’d glimpsed the future … that someone, someday w
ould uncover those executions, that they’d go to Róża with questions, that all he’d have to rely on was her willingness to protect an informer.’ She looked up suddenly at Anselm, smiling broadly with amusement in her eyes. ‘To think … I saved his life so he could stand on trial.’

  The plastic clock ticked, slicing up the quiet between them. It was dark outside now Anselm noticed that there’d been no gunfire. The Afghans had either called it a day or their nemesis was planning a surprise attack. There hadn’t been a sound from the living room, and no used plate had been brought back into the kitchen. It was as though Anselm and Irina were completely alone. The sensation prompted him to push the boat out.

  ‘Irina, did you ever read Róża’s file?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  She leaned her cheek on the back of her hand, eyes cast down. One finger drew a circle on the Formica table, going round and round. ‘She was a woman, like me. I wondered why we were so different … what it was I lacked.’

  ‘Did you read each and every page?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even the blue one?.’

  Irina’s finger stopped dead. She slowly straightened her back, appraising Anselm with a surprising but unmistakable coldness.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘even the blue one.’

  ‘But it was blank. There was nothing to read. But that didn’t render it meaningless, did it?’

  The clock’s ticking seemed to grow louder.

  ‘I’m not Marek Frenzel,’ said Anselm. ‘Information isn’t my kind of money Usually, people give me secrets for nothing. They know I won’t spend them. But in this case I came across one by accident. Róża removed that piece of paper from the file — no one knows, except me and you. I’ve said nothing to the powers that be. But I suspect that it’s important … only I don’t know how’

  Irina chewed her bottom lip, wondering what to do. Keeping a secret was part of her dignity, the last vestige of self respect: the woman who’d sold out to work amongst the information gatherers had discovered something by herself and she’d kept schtum. To give her a gentle push.’ Anselm said ‘Can’t you tell me about the infirmary?’