Gelbert let him sit for a minute, then handed him yet another photograph.
‘One of my young officers found this – well, to be honest, filched it from Microsoft here in Poland, found it interesting, played about with it in his computer, and up she came.’
Toftlund studied the photograph which Gelbert had given him. It was a blow-up of the background in the Arkan picture. It showed a woman. The woman from the street-corner snap. She was wearing a beret, but the lovely mouth and Greek nose gave her away. The body, too, was the same. The straight shoulders and the full breasts under the camouflage jacket.
Toftlund glanced up at Gelbert, who nodded.
‘Yes, Chief Inspector. She has blood on her hands, our little friend. So if you should run into her, watch your back. I don’t know exactly what you want with her. Nor is it any of my business. But I’ve a feeling the people at the Hague might want to have a word with her after she has assisted you with your inquiries.’
‘What business would she have with a Danish university lecturer? Why would she make up a story about being his sister?’
Gelbert spread his arms wide.
‘What do I know? But as you and I are well aware, in our business it’s usually a matter of information and the sale of said information. The big question is, of course, what she wants to sell and for how much.’
‘And why?’
‘That too, Mr Toftlund. That too.’
10
PER TOFTLUND SPENT THE AFTERNOON with two of Gelbert’s men: young guys, both of whom spoke excellent English. Gelbert found a free room for them. It was sparsely furnished with a desk and phone, and a conference table on which coffee and water had been set out. Gelbert had kindly asked Toftlund if he would like to have dinner with him that evening and the Danish policeman had gratefully accepted. On the conference table lay the whole file on Maria Bujic. It was thick and appeared to be in perfect bureaucratic order, but then the Poles had learned their craft from the KGB. Once upon a time. Before these erstwhile allies had become adversaries. And now this erstwhile adversary was his ally. It was a historic fact, but Toftlund still found it a bit strange. It was not that many years since Denmark had been sending its agents into Poland; in one of his own first jobs as a newly fledged, inexperienced PET agent, Per had been charged with finding out which Danish citizens a particular Polish diplomat associated with outside normal office hours. Now, it seemed, the Poles would do anything to show, to prove, that they were friends and useful partners, doing their utmost to help a sister organisation in Denmark.
The Poles had had their eye on the woman for some years, but had not, of course, arrested her. They were more interested in discovering whom she met than in eventually deporting her. The woman, referred to by Toftlund and the two Polish agents for simplicity’s sake, as Maria, had been coming to Poland a couple of times every year since 1995, which was when they had first spotted her – a discovery which came as a side benefit of their surveillance of a Soviet cultural attachè whom Polish counter-espionage suspected of actually working for the large branch of Russian intelligence which occupied the old, screened-off floor in the big Russian embassy in Warsaw. The two had met in front of the eternal flame on Victory Square, opposite the Hotel Victoria, and on one occasion in the bar of the Hotel Victoria itself. It had not been possible to get close enough to actually tape their conversations. Maria had had meetings with several different people, some of them identified, others not. She had conducted herself like a real pro and only once had possibly detected that she was being followed. At any rate, on that occasion she had caught the first plane out without meeting anyone at all. It went without saying that she had probably been in the country at other times without the Poles being aware of it. Nowadays it was not particularly difficult to enter Polish territory by train or car. Two Polish citizens were still under surveillance, suspected of being agents for a foreign power or, possibly more likely today, involved in organised crime. Or both. The boundaries between Russian espionage and the Russian mafia had become somewhat blurred. It had not been possible to establish any direct link between Maria and any Danish citizens.
That was basically it, but Toftlund still had a hunch that there had to be a connection. Deep down he did not believe in chance connections, not in the world of espionage. He knew that coincidence often played a vital part in the unravelling of an intelligence operation, coincidence and luck. But you also had to follow every line of investigation, however tenuous. And if individuals figuring in such an investigation happened to be seen together, and when one was dealing with professionals it was no longer a coincidence, but a deliberate act. Of this he was firmly convinced, even if a pattern was not readily discernible.
The material on Maria consisted primarily of reports from the teams which had tailed her and a number of photographs taken with a telephoto lens. They had not managed to tap her phone, although they had tried – for this the two Polish agents apologised more than once.
It took time to go through the material. The two Polish officers patiently translated documents and did their best to answer his questions. There was one picture which stood out somewhat from the rest. It showed Maria sitting at a pavement café in the Old Town. It had to have been taken in late summer or a day in early autumn when Warsaw had been enjoying an Indian summer of sorts. The light was not altogether summery and although the other people around the table were in their shirtsleeves one could see their coats hanging over the backs of their chairs. As if they were afraid that the sun would suddenly disappear, giving way to showers and chill winds. Maria was sitting with three elderly men. Western in appearance, Toftlund thought, possibly Danish even. He could not have said exactly why he took them for Danes, it was something about the shape of their heads, their clothes, the fact that two of the men had beards. You could almost always tell a person’s nationality just by looking at them. It had become a bit more difficult, certainly, due to the influx of immigrants to Europe over the past twenty years, but every nation did still have its own small distinguishing features which marked it out from the rest.
Something about this picture was niggling at the back of his mind. He had to look at it for some time before he saw what it was. There were three shots of the same situation: one of Maria’s lovely, mature features, the doleful eyes under the high brow; one showing the three men and Maria huddled over the glasses of beer and her coffee cup in what looked like intimate conversation; and a third, a wide shot taking in the whole situation – probably the first snap the photographer had taken, to set the scene. Like a press photographer or a film cameraman.
‘Do you have a loupe?’ Toftlund asked.
He could tell from their faces that they did not understand the word ‘loupe’.
‘A magnifying glass,’ he said.
They smiled with relief, happy to be able to please the Danish visitor. Their new ally and friend. One of them went out and returned carrying an old-fashioned stamp-collector’s loupe. Toftlund pulled the photograph closer and examined it through the magnifying glass. The grainy picture dissolved into patterns of dots; the image was not very clear, but he could read the label on the bag sitting next to one of the table legs. The most striking feature of the label was what looked like a black circle surrounded by concentric white lines, but Toftlund had no trouble imagining that this circle was, in reality, blue. Because in its centre, in white, were the initials OB – for Odense Boldklub.
‘Do you have a report which ties in this picture?’ His voice was steady, despite the fact that his heart was beating faster, but they sensed the tension in him. At any rate, they both nodded and the report was unearthed from the pile of papers. Like the others it was dated and had been written on an old-style typewriter.
‘Could you read the whole thing, please,’ Toftlund asked.
‘October 3rd, 1998, time 14.43,’ translated the Pole whose name Per had not caught. ‘Subject leaves the Hotel Victoria in the Old Town, sits down at a café and orders coffee, reads the Internation
al Herald Tribune. After ten minutes Subject is joined by three men, foreigners, all of whom look to be in their early seventies. Well-dressed. They appear to ask Subject if they can sit at her table, even though there are other tables free. They speak a language which surveillance agent B, who has placed himself at the next table, does not understand. Thinks it might be Dutch or Flemish. Certainly not German, although it sounds rather like German. (B understands and speaks German.) On consideration B believes the language to be Danish. Subject and the three men strike up a conversation in English. B does not speak or understand English. In any case he cannot hear a word they say because at that point a street musician starts playing the violin not far from their table. So no report on the substance of their conversation. After about twenty minutes Subject gets up, leaves the table and returns to her hotel. Nothing else to report.’
‘That’s it?’ Toftlund said, unable to hide his disappointment.
‘Well, there is an addendum,’ the Pole said, and read: ‘Addendum to surveillance report no. 234/10/1998. Surveillance agent T …’
The Pole looked up from the paper:
‘I’m sorry. We only have an initial here. It’s standard procedure, but obviously I can find out which of our officers it was. If you would like?’
‘That’s okay. Just read me the rest.’
The Pole continued:
‘Surveillance agent T reports that a parallel investigation has confirmed that the three men whom the Subject met are of no relevance to this case. They were members of a Danish hunting party. There is no record of any of them being involved in any criminal or espionage activities. The immigration police inform us that they had come to Poland to hunt. Due to our good relations with Denmark and according to the rules protecting citizens from illegal registration their names have therefore been deleted.’
‘Does it give a date?’ Toftlund asked.
‘October 14th, 1998.’
‘So we don’t have those names?’
‘Not in the report.’
‘Can we get hold of them?’
The Pole hesitated, and looked at his colleague, who nodded.
‘Maybe. But it will take time. For people like us, democracy is not always conducive to an efficient investigation. Naturally, though, we have to respect the law. And people’s legal rights. Some things were, no doubt, simpler in the old days. So my older colleagues tell me, anyway. We don’t have the names, but we can ask the immigration authorities. If these men have not broken the law in Poland then we will no longer have them on file. It’s a long time since Danes needed a visa to visit our country. If they’ve been coming here regularly we might still have something on them from years back, under the old regime, but I doubt it. We’ve done a lot of clearing up.’
‘Could you give it a shot anyway?’ Toftlund asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Could I have copies of those documents which have a bearing on my own investigation?’
‘Of course. I gather you will be having dinner with Mr Gelbert this evening. He’ll bring them with him.’
The rest of the material was of no interest to Toftlund. The dour driver took him back to the large, modern Hotel Victoria. It was still raining, but the air seemed milder. There were crowds of people on the street, moving through the twilight like damp shadows. Most were laden with shopping bags. The trams were jam-packed, their windows fogging up as the heat of so many bodies collided with the cold air outside. The hotel overlooked a grand, broad square, bounded on three sides by socialist-style concrete blocks. On the fourth side of the square two soldiers stood guard next to a memorial on which a gas flame wavered in the wind. Behind it lay a park with its paths and bare trees.
Toftlund checked in and had a shower. He thought briefly of calling Lise, but before he could do so Konstantin Gelbert called from the lobby. Toftlund was famished. He had not eaten since breakfast in Copenhagen, which suddenly seemed a very long time ago.
Gelbert had put on a tie, but was otherwise still dressed in the same casual attire. Toftlund stepped out of the lift to find him waiting in the large, high-ceilinged lobby with a beige raincoat over his arm. He shook Per’s hand formally.
‘I hope my men were able to help you.’
‘Yes, thank you very much. They were a great help.’
‘Good. Later this evening one of my people will deliver the copies you asked for. By hand. There’s no point in having them lying about in your hotel.’
‘Fine.’
Gelbert took him gently by the arm and suggested that they walk down to the Old Town. It was no more than a fifteen-minute stroll. The rain had stopped and the evening was quite warm for the time of year. Toftlund would much rather have driven there in a patrol car with the siren blaring and lights flashing, to get to the restaurant as quickly as possible, but he nodded politely.
He did not regret it. On their stroll across Victory Square and down to the Old Town Gelbert proved to be an interesting and entertaining raconteur. The streets were black with rain, they could hear the sound of car tyres swishing through puddles and even though there was an edge to the wind when they turned a corner, Toftlund undid the top button of his coat. Gelbert strode out smartly, almost marching, with short steps and arms swinging, while he related the history of the city in the American accented English which sounded somehow wrong coming from him, but at the same time right. They reached the Castle Square, with the rebuilt Royal Castle on the right-hand side. Toftlund was more intrigued, though, by the Danish hot-dog stall with Tulip sausage signs sitting next to the massive castle.
‘The old and the new,’ he remarked.
Gelbert trilled his falsetto laugh:
‘Appearances can be deceptive, my friend,’ he said. ‘Everything around here is new. In 1945 this place was nothing but a pile of rubble. The whole lot was in ruins. But we rebuilt it brick by brick. Like a phoenix the Old Town rose from the ashes, although it is not, in fact, old at all. It is a symbol of our history. Time and again we have been overthrown, occupied, divided up by the Germans or the Russians. They have tried to seize our soul and our history, to wipe it out. But they have never succeeded. Each time we have risen from the ashes again.’
The square was dominated by a huge statue set atop a tall column. Gelbert pointed:
‘Our great king, Sigismund the Third. The Russians hated that statue. He watches over Warsaw, but they did not realise until it was too late that we had positioned him with his sword pointing to the East instead of towards the capitalists in the West. We made the right choice. Then and now. Today the Germans are our allies. In all of its history, Poland has never been more secure. But the future, my friend – we Poles have learned never to take that for granted.’
Toftlund stood quietly for a moment, taking in the sight of the beautifully restored buildings, the people strolling past, the teenagers in their jeans and trendy down jackets, with their eternally beeping mobile phones, three clattering horse-drawn carriages, each carrying a couple of frozen tourists, and the drone of heavy traffic in the background. The wet cobbles glistened and despite the cars on the road running alongside the river the air was strangely hushed.
‘But it’s so quiet and peaceful here,’ he said. ‘Russia is weak. What could the Russians possibly do now? They can hardly feed themselves. They got their asses kicked in Chechnya. Their military is rusting up. They couldn’t prevent the expansion of NATO. They couldn’t stop NATO from going to war against Yugoslavia. It’s the Upper Volta with nuclear missiles. Yeltsin is both blind and deaf. And anyway, they have to behave themselves. They can’t afford to do anything else.’
‘You’re forgetting history, Mr Toftlund,’ Gelbert said. ‘It’s always a mistake to forget history in this part of the world. It is always with us. I can smell the bodies of my countrymen in the Jewish ghetto. There are hardly any of us left …’
‘But that was the Nazis.’
‘Correct! But who was sitting only a few kilometres away, on the other side of the Vistula?
Sukov and his mighty army. And did he come to their aid? No, he let the Nazis do the dirty work, and then he moved in. He let the Nazis destroy the Polish resistance and wipe out the Jewish ghetto. It was surrounded, fired upon, gassed and finally burned to the ground. Not far from here my Jewish kinsmen died in their millions in Auschwitz. All Jewish culture disappeared for ever from Central Europe. A great, rich and ancient culture. Lost for all time.’
Gelbert’s speech had grown more impassioned. Toftlund did not like being lectured. This was all water under the bridge. And anyway, his stomach was rumbling. Nonetheless he asked:
‘So what are you today, Colonel Gelbert? Jewish or Polish?’
‘A Polish Jew who remembers his history,’ Gelbert replied. ‘Come on. You must be hungry. I’m a bad host.’
He strode out briskly again, Toftlund keeping pace with him.
‘You mentioned that both the Russians and the Poles carry their history around with them. Like an old coat they can’t bring themselves to throw out. What did you mean by that?’
‘Our mistrust of one another runs deep. It does not fade simply because we are now free and Russia is struggling to shape a democracy.’ He laughed again and went on: ‘It may sound banal, but it is no less a fact. The Russians remember how the Poles occupied Moscow and the Kremlin in the seventeenth century, when we were a major power. The Russians remember how in 1920 the Polish army beat the Red Army when it was marching on Warsaw. Poland was opposed to the revolution. We Poles remember that for the greater part of the last two hundred years our country was occupied by the Russians. An occupation which did not end until 1989. A bloody occupation. We remember how Russian troops slaughtered fifteen thousand Polish officers at Katyn and blamed the Germans for it. For most of my life it was forbidden to talk about this massacre. Although we knew about it, of course. Everyone in Poland knew that the regime was lying when it denied that it had ever happened. History lives on here. Obviously we have to improve our relations with Russia. We have to live with the bear, but we don’t need to trust it. Especially not if it starts to get hungry again. It is dangerous to underestimate Russian nationalism.’
The Woman from Bratislava Page 16
