Underground

by Antanas Sileika

  Lukas spent the next eight days in an empty warehouse on the waterfront of Stockholm, writing reports about the political, economic and social conditions in Lithuania. Lozorius would take the papers he had written and disappear for hours, sometimes overnight, and then return with questions or requests for rewrites.

  “Why is this taking so long?” Lukas asked.

  “You arrived from terra incognita. They need to figure out the place you come from and what kind of animal you are and if they can trust you.”

  “Couldn’t you just vouch for me?”

  “It’s not so simple. They never trust anyone completely. And people change. The man you knew a year ago might be a different man today.”

  “I haven’t changed. I’m still the son of a farmer.”

  “Don’t pretend to be simpler than you are. You’re the one who took part in the seizure of Merkine. The one who shot down a whole tableful of dinner guests. The one who evaded capture for two years while others were dying or being taken prisoner, and then crossed the border successfully. You’re almost too good to be true.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that you’re quite a prize. You even make me look good. I was getting a little stale for them.”

  “Stale?”

  “I’ve been here for a long time now. I haven’t had much new news since Lithuania’s been closed up tight. Just the odd letter was coming out before you appeared, and I couldn’t find a way back in. You’ve given me a new lease on life.”

  The warehouse where Lukas lived was at least a hundred years old, all weathered red brick. He had a bed and a table in a corner of the vastness of the space. When he turned the light off, the interior was as dark as any bunker. He felt the vertiginous emptiness of the warehouse, whereas in the bunkers he had felt the oppressive closeness of the earth.

  A small door led out to the street, with a canal on the other side of the road. Lukas could walk around all he wanted, but the city was a confusing arrangement of bridges and islands, a metropolis that stymied him. Twice he had become lost for well over an hour, wandering deep into the suburbs. He could not make himself understood to the locals when he asked for directions. He asked Lozorius to write down the warehouse address, and he tried showing this paper to pedestrians whenever he was lost, but he could never understand their explanations. Finally he lost the scrap of paper and reconciled himself to going astray each time he went out.

  The city was old and unbombed, a novelty of preservation. Compared to Gdynia it was a museum, with charming old parks and cafés, picturesque in a storybook way. But it was also impenetrable. The people who walked the streets did not seem to have any problems, or at least no problems that showed on their faces. Lukas stared at them intently, as intently as he dared, but he could not see through their strangeness. On the fifth day he was caught staring at a young mother and she looked back at him angrily in a manner that made him understand he was the strange one, not they.

  He had no money. There was no lack of food or drink back at the warehouse, and he found a new suit of clothes and a fresh pair of shoes laid out for him one day on his bed when he returned from a walk. Yet it felt odd to be unable to buy the simplest things, a coffee or a newspaper. Was he being sent a message? The shoes and suit fit perfectly, which was both comforting and a little disturbing.

  On the eighth day he returned to find a man with steel-rimmed glasses and swept-back hair sitting at his table and smoking a cigarette. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties but could have been older. The man rose as soon as Lukas came in and extended his hand and addressed him in Lithuanian.

  “Hello. My name is Zoly. Just my nickname, really, short for Pranas Zolynas. I hope I can call you by your first name?”

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend of Lozorius. Yours too, I hope, in the long run. We’re on the same side. I worked with the Lithuanian embassy here before the war, and the Swedes took me in after it was all over.”

  “That was kind of them.”

  “In a way, yes, but the Swedes don’t waste their kindness. Let’s not forget, the Swedes immediately recognized the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union and gave our embassy to the Reds. That wasn’t so kind. They put me out of a job in the first place. Since that time I’ve tried to be useful to the Swedes in small ways, and they are useful to me in return.”

  “Where’s Lozorius?”

  “Not in Sweden at the moment, I’m afraid.”

  “What? He didn’t tell me he was going anywhere.” Lukas felt abandoned.

  “He does that all the time. One is always happy to see Lozorius, but one should never expect him to be around for long. Like the Holy Spirit, he moves in mysterious ways.”

  Zoly smiled and Lukas realized he had made a joke. Lukas was unaccustomed to this kind of playful talk except in the presence of women.

  “But Lozorius gave me the reports you wrote, and I have to say I’m very impressed. The Swedes are interested. The West needs shaking up and the news of all those partisans still fighting almost three years after the war is just the thing.”

  “Four years.”

  “For you, yes, but here they don’t count the war as ending until May of 1945. If the Red Army killed you before that time, you were a German collaborator. What did you say you had—forty thousand partisans?”

  “I said thirty thousand, and it was an estimate, and I don’t possess them personally.”

  “Even if you’re only half right, that’s inspiring.”

  “What’s going on? Why am I being held here?”

  “Nobody expected you, and the Swedes are trying to figure out just what kind of fish Lozorius reeled in. Your reports are being translated into Swedish. Don’t worry, you’re on the verge of being figured out. In the meantime, I’m here to help you.”

  “How?”

  “In any way you like. Do you want to see a ballet? Go out for a few drinks and some female company?”

  The offer sounded better than he cared to admit, but he didn’t dare to admit it, especially to himself.

  “I’m on a mission to the West, not a pleasure trip.”

  “Very serious, I see. Commendable. But you say ‘the West’ as if it were some kind of monolith. There is no such thing. There are the Swedes, the French, the English and the Americans, and they often don’t agree on matters among themselves.”

  “So who should I be speaking to?”

  “Well, the Swedes first, obviously, since that’s where you are.”

  “And what’s taking them so long?”

  “Long? You call this long? You haven’t been around government very much, my boy. They’re moving with lightning speed. With any luck you’ll be summoned sometime soon.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know. Ask me something else.”

  Lukas had many questions. Were there any émigrés in Sweden that Lukas might know, people he could talk to? Some, it turned out, but Lukas should not mix with them yet. How big was Lozorius’s information bureau and how tightly was it connected to the Swedes? By the look of Zoly, very tightly indeed. What steps should he take to make his case to the Swedes? Follow Zoly’s instructions and wait.

  But it was hard to wait. Where would he make the most impact? These were the sorts of questions one asked of people one trusted, and while Lukas did not distrust Lozorius or Zoly, he did not wholly have faith in them either. Lukas missed, for a moment, the clarity of life in the underground back home, where a friend was a friend and an enemy was an enemy.

  Zoly offered him a cigarette, which he turned down, but he did ask for a map of Stockholm, which Zoly did not have. Instead, Zoly gave him a detailed verbal description of the city. It did not help. When Lukas went out for a walk that afternoon, he became lost again. As he wandered, he looked to see if the men who must be following him could be identified on the street, but they knew their craft too well. Lukas could not find a recognizable face, and wandered about for an hour and a half bef
ore he found his way back home to the warehouse.

  After two more days, Zoly came in one morning and asked if Lukas would mind meeting someone from “very high up” for lunch.

  “Very high up where?” Lukas asked.

  “Among the Swedes, where else?”

  “What part of the Swedish government?”

  “He’s the deputy director of intelligence, and he’d like to lunch with you.”

  “Here?”

  “No, at his apartment. It’s a great honour.”

  Oskar Ramel lived in a flat on the island suburb of Lidingo, a few minutes from Stockholm’s city centre. The three-storey building was twenties modernist, all the space calculated squarely and rationally, without waste. Ramel’s flat was in the southwest corner on the second floor with a view over the water. The sky was low and overcast, but there were large windows on both the south and west walls and the place was filled with cool winter light.

  Ramel had been a commodore in the Swedish navy, an attaché in Buenos Aires before the war. He was tall and straight of back, middle-aged and elegant. He spoke several languages, and they chose English at first to test Lukas’s command, and then German in deference to Zoly, who was clearly going to sit through the meeting with them. One end of the dining room table was set with open-faced meat and fish sandwiches, and Ramel mixed up aquavit cocktails for them while recounting his experiences in Argentina during the war.

  Having eaten a couple of sandwiches, Ramel brushed the crumbs off his fingers with a napkin and got down to business. “I’ve read your reports and I’m intrigued. Are you really the one who shot all those Reds during the so-called engagement party?”

  Lukas shifted uneasily. It seemed barbaric to hear the words out here, in Ramel’s mouth. He felt like a murderer. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Still, very remarkable. What happened to the woman who worked with you in that operation?”

  “She was killed.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Were you close to her?”

  “She was my wife.”

  An awkward silence ensued. Ramel sighed, proposed a toast in her memory, and they finished their drinks. He rose, mixed fresh cocktails in the glass shaker and refilled their glasses.

  Then he asked many questions, cross-checking what Lukas had written in his reports, sometimes asking for information that Lukas did not have. Lukas had no idea how many military bases the Red Army had in Lithuania. He had no idea about any rocket installations. He did not know the state of East Prussia beyond what he had seen when he crossed it to get to Poland.

  They had been talking for a few hours and the pale grey light in the apartment was growing weaker, although it was still only mid-afternoon. They were on their third cocktail by the time Ramel finished asking questions. He had been thorough and courteous without committing himself. Either he was masking his heart or he did not have one.

  “There’s no doubt that the Allies made mistakes during the war,” he said. “We all did.” As a former supplier to the Nazis of war materiel, there was no way to avoid accepting some of the blame for Sweden’s actions. “But Roosevelt made too many concessions to the Soviets. As a result, the whole of Europe has been thrown off balance and the fate of small nations is at risk. A country like Sweden has no option but to manoeuvre between the great powers. It’s true that we have recognized the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union. That was regrettable, but necessary for us. However, we are still your friends.”

  “You let the Reds have us. How can I think of the Swedes as my friends?”

  He had not intended to be so rude, but he was slightly drunk now and getting exasperated. He felt as if he had come to say his child had fallen into a well and his neighbour was giving him a dissertation about the high cost of rope.

  “I need you to understand realpolitik,” said Ramel, unperturbed. “There’s no need for me to meet with you at all. We could stop talking this moment and I could find a spot for you at a displaced per-sons’camp.”

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer. But first let me hear what else you have to say.”

  “We’re democrats in Sweden. We think you should have the same rights too. Emotionally we’re on your side, but the Soviet Union is very close to us here, just across the sea.

  “Furthermore, the political situation is unstable. We might stay as we are for some time or Europe might go back to the borders of 1939. On the other hand, the Soviets might sweep right across Europe and end up ruling us all. We don’t look forward to this sort of tyrannical orientalism.

  “However things turn out in the end, the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian states and their partisans are important players in the future of Europe. I’m honoured to pay my respects to the movement through you. Lozorius, the old rascal, has been filling my ears as well.

  “Here is what I’ve been authorized to do. I can help you get in contact with the wider world. Sweden can take no direct action, but we might be able to put you in touch with people who can. I should remind you that we helped you during the Nazi era, even though we were supposed to be neutral then.”

  Ramel stopped at this point and it seemed polite to thank the Swedes through him, so Lukas did so, although it was hard to be diplomatic. His friends were dying and Ramel was talking about measured action.

  It was almost dark outside now, but no lights had been turned on inside the apartment. Although all their glasses were empty, Ramel made no move to mix fresh cocktails. The business was nearing its end.

  “You know, there is no way you could carry on any clandestine activity here without our knowledge. Do you have any ties with other agencies? Say, the French or the Americans?”

  “You’re only the third person I’ve met in this country,” said Lukas. “The fourth if you count my driver from Trelleborg.”

  Ramel nodded vaguely. “Well, I feel better now. At least we understand each other.”

  Zoly was rising from his chair. Lukas did the same.

  “It’s been delightful speaking with you,” said Ramel.

  “Maybe we’ll have a chance to speak some more another time.”

  “Perhaps.”

  A car was waiting for them when they reached the street.

  Neither he nor Zoly spoke until the driver pulled up to the warehouse. Lukas got out of the car and Zoly stepped outside too.

  “Well?” Zoly asked.

  “He’s a cold fish,” said Lukas. “These Swedes are calculating. Look at this beautiful city, a living monument to their neutrality. If you’re neutral, your heart never catches fire, you don’t believe in anything. God, how do these people even procreate?”

  “I’m sure he’s passionate about other things besides the fate of the Lithuanians. Do you expect others to risk their security for you?”

  “I think I do. Or let me put it another way. I don’t care all that much about their security, which gives them the right to live in beautiful cities like this. Am I supposed to worry about their not wanting to provoke the Reds? What does that get me, except the right to be annihilated?”

  “I think you have to find a place where your interests coincide.”

  “I don’t see where that place is. He didn’t offer anything.”

  “Not exactly, no, but he didn’t close the door either. I think you were being assessed, and I think you passed your exam with flying colours, including being a little abrupt with him.”

  “That wasn’t calculated.”

  “Then you should think of calculating a little more often.”

  “I just want someone on our side.”

  “Be patient,” said Zoly.

  Lukas looked at him in exasperation. He half liked Zoly, but he also had a deep desire to take him by the shoulders and shake him very hard until the diplomatic veneer shattered and revealed the real man beneath.

  THIRTEEN

  STOCKHOLM

  FEBRUARY 1948

  TWO DAYS LATER, Lukas heard Zoly’s characteristic knock, a discreet, slight
ly less than obsequious tap tap tap on the warehouse door. The man might have been a concierge, both invasive and ingratiating.

  “Hello, hello!” Zoly let himself in and waved from the doorway to Lukas at his desk beside the bed. The warehouse was in cavernous darkness except for the two lights, the one over the door where Zoly stood and the other on Lukas’s desk.

  “How would you like to come out for a walk?” Zoly asked.

  “I’m in the middle of writing something now. Can it wait?”

  “Maybe not.”

  Lukas put on his coat, not intending to take his scarf and gloves, but Zoly insisted. They might be away for some time.

  They stepped outside onto the street and began to walk along the sidewalk under the grey February sky.

  “Where are we going?” asked Lukas.

  “It’s all fairly complex, you see. Ramel had to look you over. After all, you’re in Sweden and he has responsibility for what goes on in this country. And it’s true the Swedes are on our side, in a way, but their range of activity is limited because of their neutrality during the war and their caution about the Reds. They can’t actually do anything, so they’re passing you over to someone who can.”

  “The Americans?”

  “No. The Americans could do something, but they don’t seem ready. We’re going to meet the Brits. Their power isn’t what it once was, but the Baltic used to be a British lake, so they’re familiar with the territory. The British managerial class go back for generations here.

  “Just a word to the wise. You have to be a little bit careful about the British because they make distinctions among themselves. The man we’re going to see was born in Moscow, and his father was born in Archangel, but if you call him an Englishman he’ll be insulted. You’d be better off calling him Estonian than English. He ran a timber business in Tallinn before the war. But he considers himself a Scot. They’re a very proud people.”

  “Meanwhile, most Brits cannot distinguish a Latvian from a Lithuanian.”

  “Foreigners always seem so silly, don’t they?”

  “What happened to this Scotsman’s business?”

  “All swept away when the Reds came to Estonia the first time, back in ’40. He fled to Finland with his Estonian wife, and then to Sweden. I think he must hate the Reds more than you do.”