The Lost Boy

by Kate Moira Ryan

  Then it dawned on Slim. This wasn’t a simple case of a boy lost in the chaotic aftermath of war. Someone did not want this boy found. Slim had to find out why.

  Chapter Six

  Warsaw — 1950

  “On the first day of the war, Okęcie Airport had been bombed by the Luftwaffe. The Germans had rebuilt it only to tear it down again when they retreated from the advancing Red Army. Like Poland, the airport has risen from the ashes. Its runways were accepting more and more international travelers, albeit with restrictions and red tape,” Pasha said as they landed in Warsaw.

  Pasha had secured them both visas from the American and British liaisons in Frankfurt.

  “I have a friend meeting us,” Pasha said.

  “Who is it?” Slim asked.

  “Prince Krzysztof Radziwill. We used to play together when we were small. My family had a hunting lodge near his estate in Spala.”

  “Won’t he blow your cover?” Slim whispered.

  Pasha shrugged. “My papers say I am a British citizen. They cannot touch me without creating an incident.”

  A man in his late forties rushed over to greet Pasha. His jet black showed strands of grey. Slim noticed a striking resemblance between the two of them. They could be brothers, twins almost.

  “Krzysztof, may I present my friend, Miss Slim Moran,” Pasha said formally.

  “Prince Krzysztof Radziwiłl,” he replied with a bow and kissed her right hand.

  “You two look like brothers,” Slim said, still amazed at the family resemblance.

  “We should. Our mothers were sisters.” Pasha laughed and continued in a mixture of Polish, French and intermittent English.

  “I will take you on a tour of the city, and then we will have a dinner you will not forget,” the Polish prince said jovially. Although he looked like Pasha, he seemed to be happier than his Russian counterpart. Outside, a limousine was parked. Slim was amazed. It was in pristine condition.

  “I see you like my Polski Fiat 508.” Prince Krzysztof smiled again. “It’s from 1932. I stored it in my underground bunker along with my art. It’s probably the one of the few pre-war automobiles with original wheels. Please, come.”

  He held open the door and Slim climbed into the backseat. Pasha climbed into the front seat, and Krzysztof started the car.

  “Now we will have a tour of Warsaw. You can see how it is being rebuilt after it was razed to the ground during the Uprising.” Krzysztof drove towards the city. “The incredible thing about Warsaw is that it’s a blank slate. We had to start from scratch, with everything from people to buildings. We aren’t as far along as other nations rebuilding, but we are doing it.”

  As they drove into the city proper Slim saw blocks of the city reduced to rubble, backhoes scooping up bricks into dump trucks, shells of buildings ready to be torn down and buildings going up on the cleared ground. Slim tried to imagine what the city looked like before the first German bombs fell.

  “Were you ever in Poland before the war, Miss Moran?” Prince Krzysztof asked over his shoulder as if reading her mind.

  “No, what was it like?” Slim asked.

  “I remember it as the city of music,” Pasha answered.

  “We had two decades of Polish sovereignty between the world wars. They were pretty tumultuous. Warsaw has been destroyed many times. We’ve had plagues, fires, war — even during the interbellum period, we had a battle. We have rebuilt before; we shall rebuild again.” He pulled onto a wide boulevard. “This is Aleje Jerozolimskie or Jerusalem Street. It is one of Warsaw’s most famous streets. It runs East-West through the city center, and it links the district of Wola by a bridge on the Vistula River to the district of Praga. Close your eyes for one minute. I will tell you when to open them.”

  Slim closed her eyes. She heard the engine of the car and the sounds of traffic. Then the car came to a stop.

  “Open your eyes, Miss Moran.”

  Slim did as she was told. She blinked and saw what Warsaw must have looked like before the war.

  “This is the only surviving block of the pre-war architecture. Come.” He climbed out of the car and Pasha jumped out to open the door for Slim. “Before you is the Hotel Polonia Palace.”

  Slim took in the Beaux-Arts palace. She was speechless. Next to it stood an apartment building also untouched by war.

  “That’s the Hoserów townhouse apartment building, and inside it is the Warsaw Fotoplastikon stereoscopic theatre which opened in 1905. It’s the oldest one in Europe.”

  “If you stand here, you can imagine what Warsaw must have looked like before 1939,” Krzysztof said.

  “How did the Polonia Palace Hotel get saved and everything else destroyed?” Slim asked.

  “During the war, it was the headquarters for the Wehrmacht, and the Russians somehow managed not to pillage it.” Krzysztof laughed.

  “Before the invasion, this was the place to be seen. All the famous artists and writers came to the Polonia. What fun we had, dear cousin.” Pasha smacked his doppelganger on the back.

  “I can close my eyes and remember listening to the great Julian Tuwim play his newest song, or the actress Mieczyslawa Ćwiklińska berate Kornel Makuszyński for his latest review of her work. Whatever happened to that theater director, Leon Schiller?” Pasha asked.

  “His sister bribed someone to get him out of Auschwitz, and he’s involved in The Polish United Workers' Party,” Krzysztof said.

  “And you, what party are you involved in?” Slim asked naively trying to figure out how a prince could survive in Soviet-occupied Poland.

  “Let’s just say; there’s a reason my relatives call me the ‘Red Prince.’”

  Pasha looked away and shook his head.

  “Cousin, should I abandon my people?” Krzysztof asked.

  “How can you be part of the Soviet regime?” Pasha countered.

  “Once I realized the Potsdam Agreement was not going to be honored by the Soviets and free elections were not going to happen, I had to make a choice. I could help rebuild Poland or I could leave like most of my family did. Our lives were so very different twenty years ago, cousin. We were the privileged few who had not a care in the world. Now look at us: we work for a living.”

  “On opposite sides. I will never accept what the Soviets have done to my country or to yours,” Pasha said.

  “Look, Pasha, let’s agree on one thing: we both lead more interesting and productive lives now.”

  “Complicated lives.”

  “A complicated life is an interesting life,” Prince Krzysztof said with a flourish. “I understand, Miss Moran, you are working on a missing person case…”

  “A missing Polish child,” Slim interjected.

  “Our most valuable treasure. The first place you might want to start is the Polish Red Cross on Mokotowski Street.”

  They checked into the hotel. Slim collapsed on her bed and thought of Tiny. Was she having her afternoon nap? Josie seemed a kind, competent nurse and Gran would undoubtedly oversee just about every facet of Tiny’s day, but still, she missed her daughter. ‘Her daughter.’ What an odd thing. I have a daughter now, Slim thought. I am a mother of a daughter. Daniel was the father of a daughter. Where was he? Slim wondered if he was alive for the fiftieth time that day as she tugged on her wedding ring. There was a knock on the door. Slim got up. Pasha came in with a champagne bucket and two glasses. He handed her a note which said ‘Our rooms are bugged. Call me Sir Robert and don’t ask me any questions about my work.’

  Slim smiled as Pasha popped open the bottle which looked the worse for wear.

  “How old is this?”

  “1919 was a great vintage.”

  Slim took a sip of the champagne; the fizz stung her tongue.

  “I hope you’re not trying to seduce me, Sir Robert.”

  “Miss Moran, I would not think of such a thing.” Pasha bent over and kissed Slim softly on the lips.

  Slim began to cry. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m still in lov
e with Daniel, and I miss Tiny.”

  Pasha drew her close. “Of course you are, and of course you do. Listen, Slim Moran; my shoulder is here for you to cry on. It may not be much of a shoulder, but it’s all yours.”

  Slim fell asleep on Pasha’s shoulder. When she woke up alone it was morning, and she felt like a new person. The dense cloud she had been living under since Daniel’s disappearance and Tiny’s birth was beginning to lift. She pushed open the heavy brocade curtain and looked out the window. The electrical sparks from a tram flew up as it went by full of people going to work. She looked further to the other side of the boulevard and saw a tree.

  For Slim, trees had always seemed like God’s witnesses. At one point, families must have strolled by it —perhaps on a Sunday — or maybe a parade of the proud Polish Cavalry. Then the bombing started and the Nazis came. All that was left was this hotel, the apartment building next to it and that tree. The tree had survived; it had witnessed both joy and atrocity, and now it was to live through the Soviet occupation.

  It seemed a metaphor for the human spirit. Yes, Slim had probably lost Daniel forever, but she had Tiny and her work. With both, she had a reason to continue. Now, she had to figure out how to be happy. She knew how to misbehave and how to be sad, but to be silly and happy was something in which she did not excel. Perhaps Tiny, and maybe Pasha, could teach her a little something about happiness.

  There was a knock on the door. Slim walked over and opened it. Pasha stood there, dressed and ready for the day.

  “You’re not ready! We have so much to do!” he said boisterously. It seemed Pasha’s mood had improved as well. Slim smiled.

  “Off you go. I need to get dressed.” Although Slim had been naked in front of Pasha during their brief love affair the previous year, she felt self-conscious about her post-baby body.

  “I’ll give you ten minutes. The Red Cross opens at nine.”

  “It’s only seven, Pasha. We have plenty of time,” Slim said, annoyed. The nuns had taught her to be a punctual person, but she hated to be rushed when there wasn’t a reason.

  “The line has already started forming. I did call and get an appointment, but we won’t know until we get there what it will be like.”

  “How are we getting there?” Slim asked.

  “It’s a straight walk down Jerusalem Avenue. It will take about twenty minutes. So please hurry,” Pasha said as Slim pushed him out the door.

  She quickly dressed and was down in the lobby in ten minutes. Pasha sized her up in her gray Jeanne Lanvin suit.

  “I thought Christian Dior was all the rage with his new look,” Pasha noted.

  “His women’s suits fit like corsets. It isn’t the 1890s, and I’ve just had a baby. Plus, I’d rather a woman design for me,” Slim said, pulling on her gloves and adjusting her hat.

  They arrived at the Red Cross to find a line stretching around the block. Slim saw old women holding framed photos of lost family and younger women with children playing tag around their skirts. Pasha walked up to a teenage boy with a sheath of papers and asked something in Polish.

  “He said if you have an appointment, we can go straight up, but no one can get an appointment,” Pasha said as he grabbed Slim’s gloved hand and led her towards the door. They walked through the gray building and up to a crowded counter where people were filling out forms for the missing.

  Pasha explained who they were to the woman behind the desk. She motioned for them to follow her down the hall into a room with a banged up table and a three metal chairs. Outside, Slim heard the sound of typewriters and phones ringing. The woman pointed to the chairs and began.

  “She wants to know who you are looking for and when was the last time someone saw the person,” Pasha translated.

  Slim explained and then pulled out three photos: one of Karol with Lena, one of a boy in a prison uniform from Auschwitz and one of a boy on a repatriation card. “Please tell her that I am searching for this boy. He is from the town of Zwierzyniec and was separated from his mother in 1942. The International Tracing Service gave me these two pictures. Both have the same name on them. Both look like Karol, the boy who is missing.”

  The woman pulled open her desk drawer, took out a form and pointed to it while handing Pasha a pencil. She then spoke a couple of words and got up without ceremony.

  “She wants us to fill out the form and she will see what she can do,” Pasha said.

  “That’s it? She is going to leave?” Slim asked, surprised. “Please ask her if there’s anything else she can do to help.”

  Pasha asked again. This time he took out a wad of zloty from his wallet. The woman gave him a look, then spoke to him harshly. Slim slapped Pasha’s hand and he quickly put the money back in his pocket.

  “Tell her I have less than four weeks to find this boy. After that, his mother will leave for America. His mother just wants to know if the boy is dead or alive. If he’s here, he can stay in Poland.” Slim knew this was a lie. If she found the boy in Poland, she’d have to get him out somehow. The woman shrugged and then turned to leave.

  “Tell her that I took on this case because I am also a mother and I cannot imagine what I would do if someone took my child,” Slim said desperately.

  The woman looked at her, took out another piece of paper and began to write. She spoke slowly to Pasha.

  “She says there is a photographer, a Pole, who was a member of the Polish Resistance. He was caught by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. There he was assigned to take pictures of Poles the Nazis deemed unworthy. He took thousands of photos, so he will probably not remember this child, but there is a chance he might. He lives in the town of Zywiec. His pictures were used as evidence during the Nuremberg Trials. His name is Wilhelm Brasse.” The woman underlined Brasse’s name. Then she looked at the photo of Lena with the Karol.

  “She says if Brasse says this is not the boy you are looking for, then you should go to Zamosc County. The Nazis put the children they weren’t taking in an internment camp in the middle of the town. Countess Zamoyska was able to free some of the children. If this boy grew up in Zwierzyniec, the Countess would know who he is and what happened to him.”

  The woman examined the identity repatriation card and looked at the photo again. Something caught her eye; she touched the picture and then peered closely at it.

  “Ask her what’s the matter with the card.”

  Pasha asked, and the woman shrugged. “She said the card states that after the war the boy arrived in Katowice, where there was a repatriation camp for the kidnapped children.”

  “And?” Slim asked.

  As if understanding Slim, the woman began to babble.

  “If the Auschwitz photo is not of your lost boy, you should stop in Katowice and show them this card. If they do not have a record of this boy, go to Zwierzyniec and talk to Countess Zamoyska.”

  The woman sighed and then stammered, “I was Mother too.” She held up her hand and motioned for them to wait.

  Pasha grinned at Slim. “Well, the mother thing worked.”

  “She said she was a mother, Pasha. It doesn’t mean her child is still alive.”

  Two minutes later the woman came back with a ripped sheet of paper and said, “Adres dla fotografa w Auschwitz.”

  They thanked her and left the building. Pasha took out a cigarette and lit one. He handed it to Slim, who shook her head no.

  “How are we going to get there?”

  “My cousin will drive us.”

  “But, isn’t he working for the Soviets?” Slim asked, confused.

  “Yes, but our mothers were sisters. He will make sure that no one kills me.”

  “I am an American citizen,” Slim said, almost indignantly.

  “And I am an exiled Prince of Russia. The Soviets know I am here. They know because my cousin told them.”

  “Then why haven’t they arrested you?”

  “I am a British citizen, and Krzysztof is going to try and turn me into a double agent.” Pasha took
a deep inhalation of his cigarette.

  “And will he succeed?” Slim asked.

  “No, because by the end of our trip he will be working for the British government.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Slim asked, growing increasingly nervous by this game of espionage.

  “I used to play chess with my cousin, blindfolded.”

  “You played without seeing the board? How is that possible?”

  “The moves were called out to me in algebraic notation.” Pasha smiled.

  “You’re that good at math?” Slim asked.

  “No, I am that good at judging human behavior and predictability. It’s what makes me such a good spy.”

  Chapter Seven

  That afternoon, they found themselves en route with Krzysztof in his Polski Fiat 508. Slim was in the front seat this time.

  “Did you have luck with the Polish Red Cross?” Krzysztof asked.

  “A little bit. The woman gave us the name of the photographer at Auschwitz, but that’s about it,” Slim replied.

  “It’s a shame that the Soviets arrested the director, Maria Boztnowska. She was the head of the Polish Information Bureau at the Red Cross. She probably could have really helped you. She helped get a lot of children repatriated.”

  “Why was she arrested?” Slim asked.

  “The Polish Communist Party said she collaborated with the Germans,” Krzysztof replied.

  “And why was she really arrested?” Pasha asked wryly.

  Krzysztof said something harsh to Pasha in Polish and they began to argue vehemently. Finally Slim interrupted. “Enough! Why was she arrested?”

  “Tell her,” Pasha goaded his cousin.

  Krzysztof sighed. “Let me preface by saying I don’t agree with a lot of what the Polish Communists are doing. But, if I want to have a say in the new Poland, I have to play the game.”

  “They are arresting and killing anyone who was in the Polish Resistance. Boztnowska was arrested because she kept a record of the officers who were massacred at Katyn by the Soviet Army, and she passed this information onto the Polish Home Army,” Pasha said.

  “What was the massacre of Katyn?”