by Jane Gorman
“You always want to do the right thing, but sometimes it’s not so easy to know what the right thing is, is it?”
“Shh.” Ray stepped forward, between Angela and Adam. “Sylvia, what are they saying now?”
Before Sylvia could respond, a shout drew their attention to an area farther along the public balcony.
Łukasz Kaminski stood, his back to a wooden chair lying awkwardly on its side, the victim of whatever struggle Łukasz was engaged in with the uniformed guard facing him.
As Adam watched, the guard lunged, grabbing at Łukasz. Łukasz took a step back, seamlessly avoiding the tipped chair. The guard fell forward, calling out as his knee struck the heavy wood.
Adam tried not to grin. This wasn’t a funny situation. “What’s going on, can you tell?”
He looked at Sylvia, but she said nothing, just watched the scene unfold. The presentation from the committee floor continued, though two or three faces turned up to see what was causing the commotion.
Łukasz spoke to the guard. From where he sat, Adam heard nothing more than an angry hiss, though he wouldn’t have understood the words even if he were closer.
As he spoke, Łukasz swung his satchel over his shoulder and turned his back on the guard, moving toward the door at the back of the balcony. But the guard had regained his balance. He was heading for Łukasz and the look in his eye made it clear he wasn’t giving up.
Two quick strides brought the guard up behind Łukasz’s back. He pushed hard and Łukasz stumbled toward the door. Just as he reached it, a second guard came through, catching Łukasz before he fell, then swinging him out into the hall. The entire confrontation had taken less than a minute.
Sylvia coughed gently, bringing the group’s attention back to her. “Perhaps it is time we leave now, too.”
Angela looked at her like she was crazy. “What? What’s going on over there? Aren’t you curious to know?”
“It is not our business. We should not be involved,” Sylvia responded. “Come, let us leave now. We have a little bit of time before our next engagement, we can enjoy one of the cafes around the Old Town Square.”
Sylvia directed the group out to the waiting van, explaining she needed to run back upstairs for a minute to let her boss know they were leaving. Following Sylvia’s directions, Ray and Jared left the room.
Angela looked at Adam, but he simply shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know any more than you do. But I admit I’m curious.”
* * *
Adam jumped as a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned but his retort was cut off by the sound of Łukasz’s voice.
“Cousin, there you are.”
Łukasz leaned into him, and over his shoulder Adam could see two burly guards moving in their direction.
“They want me to leave, cousin, but I told them I was waiting for someone. A stretch of the truth, perhaps, yet here you are, so perhaps I was telling the truth after all.”
Łukasz turned as he spoke, guiding Adam away from the building.
“What’s going on, Łukasz? Why do you need me?” Adam stopped walking and pointed toward the van waiting to whisk him off to the group’s next appointment. Chris had paused in the act of stepping into the van, turning to stare at Adam. “I have people I’m supposed to see.”
Łukasz glanced in the direction Adam had pointed, then turned to watch the guards who had stopped approaching but were still eyeing him cautiously.
“You must walk with me, Cousin Adam. We must walk away from this place, look casual.”
Adam paused for only a second. He saw Angela leaning out of the van and waving toward him. He thought about the meetings lined up for that afternoon. More politicians. More community groups. And less and less that he could contribute.
With a nod, he waved back at Angela and called out to her, “It’s okay, go ahead without me. I’ll meet up with you all later. I’m going to catch up a little bit with my cousin here.”
Łukasz turned, smiled and waved at Angela, then turned back to Adam with a grim face.
“We walk now.”
The two men walked down the drive away from the grand marble facade of the building, the guards watching them closely. They walked slowly, chatting about the weather and good places to visit in Warsaw.
Only once did Adam glance back. The guards had stepped back toward the building; one lit a cigarette. At Adam’s look, they both took a step toward them.
“He’s with me,” Adam called out, putting his arm across Łukasz’s shoulder and shaking his head. The guards stopped where they were, but did not step back.
As Adam turned away, his eye was caught by the movement of a curtain on the third floor of the building. The window was still now, but Adam was sure someone had dropped the curtain back into place when he or she stepped back from the window. Stepped back from watching him and Łukasz leave.
Was Sylvia concerned about him and keeping an eye on him? Or was someone else watching?
15
He let the curtain drop back into place, hiding the view of the journalist and the police officer leaving the grounds together. Nothing to worry about yet, he tried to convince himself.
Yet.
There was no point in taking chances, though.
Stepping back to his desk to pick up the phone, he shivered, though his office was warm and comfortable. He paused with the phone in his hand. How had it come to this?
But he knew the answer. He could picture the very moment when he had realized he was no longer in control of the situation. Or of his life.
When he thought of it, he could still hear the peal of the church bells. To this day, the bells still scared him.
He had joined a group of fellow university students heading out to the five o’clock mass, so many years ago. He blended in with the noisy cluster scurrying across the grounds of Warsaw University toward the seventeenth-century cathedral that beckoned just beyond the campus border.
This had become a regular routine for him. As they passed through the arch that marked the main entrance to the campus, he let himself fall behind. Slowing his pace until he no longer walked within view of the group, he made a sharp right turn.
The rest of the students rushed forward to hopes of salvation. He headed in the opposite direction, almost jogging as he moved deeper into the darkening alley. He kept his eyes peeled for witnesses, turning occasionally to look behind him.
No one followed. He picked up his pace.
A few minutes’ walk past gray stone buildings brought him to a small storefront. Like other buildings he had passed, its walls were plastered with Soviet propaganda. They were simply a facade. Torn remnants of Solidarity signs still remained, words visible under the propaganda. The bulk of the rebellious signs had been torn down by the police, but at this point in the movement, even martial law hadn’t stopped the signs from reappearing.
Grimy windows exposed little of the building’s interior, though the smell of cooked cabbage permeated the air around it. The door of the establishment opened to release a customer. Waiting only for the cloud of smoke that escaped with the patron to subside, the student stepped inside.
Wading through air thick with smoke and dill-scented steam, he crossed the room and slid into a vacant seat. Wilenek looked up from his tea.
Dark eyes stared out from below cropped hair. A faint scar knitted the skin across one cheek and a crooked nose hinted at a violent past. Wilenek’s eyes seemed ageless, though the student knew the man was only a few years older than him.
Wilenek’s expression was as still as ever, giving nothing away, but he knew enough to be nervous. He shifted in his chair. Wilenek nodded and grunted out a few words.
Though brief, Wilenek’s words scared him into speaking, opening the floodgates of his memory, his observations. Wilenek lit a cigarette as he nodded, listening to the torrent of words. After twenty minutes of talking, Wilenek put up a hand. At the signal, he stopped talking.
In a fluid movement, Wilenek stood. Cross
ing the table on his way to the food counter, Wilenek patted him on the shoulder. It could have been the gesture of an older brother. The student cringed and ducked his head. Wilenek grunted again as he walked on. The man was short and stocky, but he was youthful and moved with the stealth and grace of a lion. Or a hunter.
On his return, Wilenek dropped an envelope onto the table as he put down his tray laden with soup, bread and kielbasa.
The student glanced up, then swept the envelope off the table and tucked it into his coat pocket. Keeping his hand on his pocket, he asked the question that had been burning within him for days. “What will you do with this information?”
The other man barely glanced up from his soup. “That’s none of your concern.” Wilenek’s accent was thick, Russian.
The student leaned forward, prepared to stand, but held his chair. “I’ve heard the rumors. People getting hurt because of this. Jakub was taken during the night, and no one’s heard from him. I didn’t bargain for that.”
Now the other man looked directly at him, and he shifted back in his seat. Wilenek spoke slowly, enunciating each word.
“That’s none of your concern.”
He had made his decision then. The side of angels or the side of devils.
He feared Wilenek — feared the man, feared what he stood for, who he worked with. He knew that lining up on the side of Wilenek and his kind would be a choice he could never back away from.
But he feared even more what would happen to him if he walked away from this connection. Away from the secret police. Away from the financial support they were guaranteeing him. Away from the thrill of power he felt when he shared a confidence, shared secret knowledge.
The thought of what would happen to his life if he gave it up, slinked back into anonymity, scared him almost as much as the man sitting across from him. If he had to choose between protecting his own life and helping others, so be it. It wasn’t really a choice at all.
He would do whatever he had to do to protect himself and his interests.
He said no more to Wilenek, simply nodded. Grabbing his satchel, he stumbled out of the dining room, back into the now fully dark street. Turning to his left, he headed toward the campus where the evening mass was drawing to a close.
Up on the crowded main street, he’d tucked his head into his collar and blended into the crowd of students streaming through the cold night, the sound of church bells reminding him of what waited for him once this life had ended.
16
Pedestrians bundled against the chill of the evening brushed past them, moving quickly to reach the warmth of their next destination. Businessmen and students rushed home after a long day’s work. Women, some still in their business suits, stopped in at narrow markets lined with shelves of canned goods, boxed juices and root vegetables to pick up a last few items for the evening’s meal.
At this time of the afternoon, the sun was too low in the sky to provide sufficient light, and street lamps lit the wide sidewalks of the Aleje.
Adam and Łukasz picked up their pace as they walked and talked, blending into the moving crowd. Only a few blocks away from the Sejm, they walked north up Aleje Ujazdowksie, passing quickly out of the diplomatic quarter toward the elegant shops on Ulica Nowy Świat and the historic Old Town Square.
As they walked, they talked of nothing more significant than the stores they were passing, how the weather had been recently, and stories Adam and Łukasz remembered about their grandfathers’ time together in Poland. Adam pulled a few funny tales from his memory, stories he’d overheard his father telling his friends.
Łukasz smiled at the memories, though his own stories carried a hint of sadness, even regret, that Adam couldn’t understand.
Adam waited patiently, knowing Łukasz would talk to him when he was ready. It wasn’t until they had been walking for over twenty minutes that Łukasz’s voice deepened and his words slowed.
“It was no accident, Adam.” He glanced in Adam’s direction.
Adam nodded, but kept his eyes on the facade of the National Museum across the street to their right. Its walls seemed to glow golden behind the high fence that surrounded it, giant carved statues of Soviet-era heroes standing guard from niches in the walls.
“When you were attacked, you mean?” he finally responded.
“Yes. I am sure of it.”
“Does that mean you remember more now?”
Łukasz inhaled sharply. “No!”
He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was once again low and calm. “I still cannot remember the attack. I was attacked, of that I am sure. And I know why.”
The two men paused their conversation as they crossed the busy Aleje Jerozolimskie, sidestepping cars whose drivers preferred not to follow the suggestions of the traffic lights. Large, boxy Mercedes hogged the roads. Tiny Fiats swerved by, looking as if they could bounce off the pedestrians without causing any harm.
The orange stones used to construct the grand buildings that lined the street carried over into the fabric of the sidewalk, merging everything into a blur of orange below brown wool and fur-wrapped people.
“I was working on a story, you see,” Łukasz continued, but Adam could tell he was struggling with the words. “About my daughter. She was killed.”
Adam turned his attention from the street and looked at Łukasz. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“I do not know for sure. But I am sure she was killed.” Łukasz turned his face away from Adam as he spoke. “They say it was suicide. It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. Basia would not have killed herself. I know this.”
Adam nodded, remembering the image of the body floating in the river. The loss of a young life to the currents of the Wisła river. “I’m so sorry, Łukasz. I read about her death in the papers. I wasn’t sure until now she was your daughter. That’s a terrible thing to go through. But what does it have to do with the story you’re writing?”
Łukasz looked at Adam in surprise. “I intend to find out who killed her and expose him. To write the truth the police refuse to see.”
“Łukasz,” Adam cautioned, “you should let the police do their job. I’ve had some experience with journalists trying to get involved in police work, and it never turns out well.”
“Hah.” Łukasz looked cynical. “Yes, the police. Your colleagues, I understand. You must understand that the police here are doing nothing. They do not care to investigate.”
Adam took a deep breath, brushed his hand across his eyes, attempting to keep control of his memory. It didn’t work.
Handfuls of dirt landed on a coffin in Adam’s mind, his view of the Warsaw street blocked by the image of a woman kneeling on the ground, her face twisted in grief. He was overcome again by his own feeling of helplessness as he watched, knowing he had been responsible for providing protection. For keeping those children safe. And that he had failed.
“I don’t believe that.” The denial sounded weak, even to him. He took another breath, inhaling the smell of diesel fumes, the scent of perfume as a woman crossed his path. He felt his hands relax, his clenched fists opening.
Too engrossed in his own grief, Łukasz hadn’t noticed Adam’s silence. He put his hand out and patted Łukasz’s shoulder, the contact bringing him fully back to the present. “They wouldn’t simply ignore it.”
“They are. In fact, they believe they must.” Łukasz paused before continuing, his internal struggle deepening the lines already encircling his eyes and mouth. “It was made to look like suicide, as I said. It was done very well. The police, they believe what they see. They have no reason to investigate further. But I know… I know.”
“Why do you think she was killed?”
“My little Basia.” Łukasz smiled at his memories. “She was so young, so full of life. She had just started a new position — in her last year of university — and she had such dreams for it. Dreams she would share with me. She wanted to be president of Poland one day! But she was happy starting where she
was. She was very lucky to get a position as staff for Minister Novosad. Well, not lucky perhaps, she earned that position. She worked very hard for it.”
“She worked at the Sejm, in Minister Novosad’s office? I met with him just this afternoon with my group.” Adam pictured the grave, composed gentleman they had met earlier. “Do you think something at her job is what got her killed?”
Łukasz shrugged. “I think it’s possible. But I do not know. I know that I had been pursuing that line of inquiry when I was attacked. I just can’t remember exactly what I was working on, what I had found. And all of my notes, they were destroyed that same night.”
“What do you mean? At your office?” Adam tucked his hands into his pockets as the fading light encouraged the cold night air.
“No, from my home. Someone broke into my apartment that night. They took my computer, even my backup drives. I reported the theft to the police, but what can they do? They took a report. And my notes… they were all gone.”
“Do you always keep your notes at home, and does anyone else know where you keep them?” Adam asked, the policeman in him coming through.
“No, you see, this was different,” Łukasz explained, stepping around a group of students gathering on the sidewalk. “I typically keep my notes in the office of the newspaper where I work. It is safer there, at least I thought so. But as I was working on this story, gathering information from the archives, from informants, from my contacts involved in the government, my editor… well, I didn’t trust him.”
“Why not?” Adam pressed, “What did he do, exactly?”
“It seems so innocuous, you may not believe me.”
“Try me, you’d be surprised what I believe.”
“He assigned me other stories. High-profile stories, stories that would sell and do well for me. He even offered me a promotion, to assistant editor.”
“Uh-huh… I can see why that doesn’t build a good case for accusing him of stopping you.”
