The Day of the Lie

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Anselm took the Metro Line 1, south bound. Clutching his old duffle bag he sat with his head against the window, feeling the jolt ride down his spine. His thoughts drifted to Roza’s statement. John’s mother had died. He’d never told him and yet he’d listened to Anselm’s disclosure, glancing when he could at the drama on a cricket square. He’d come to Warsaw with a personal story which even now Anselm did not know Anselm let the matter drop. Apprehension stirred deep in his guts: someone on the train was probably watching him.

Fifteen minutes later, after a short walk in the rain, a spectacled manager, hunched and kind, asked for Anselm’s passport and credit card details.

‘You’re very welcome, Father,’ he said in English, handing him the key to room 43. ‘Turn right at Saint John.’

At the top of a gentle ramp Anselm passed a large statue proper to a cathedral. He slowed, knowing that this was Frenzel’s joke. He’d picked this place on purpose, knowing the decor, knowing the manager’s public devotion. His contempt seemed to echo down the corridor.’ all the way to the locked door.

The room had a single bed with a deep blue cover. An old television on a wall bracket had been angled like a spotlight towards two chairs and a table. White gleaming floor tiles ran from wall to wall. The lights were low and yellow Abstract paintings hung slightly askew There were no saints on the lookout. He put his duffle bag in the bathroom. What on earth am I doing here? Frenzel’s taken a decent man’s hotel and made it into an expensive brothel for the sale of cheap information. And here am I, a punter with money in his back pocket.

After five minutes a knock sounded.

Riding a surge of agitation, Anselm slowly turned the door handle.

Standing outside like a janitor on his day off was a podgy man in his late twenties dressed in a tracksuit. Gloved fingers gripped a shopping trolley filled with bulging refuse sacks. His face was red and flabby, still wet from the rain. Anselm couldn’t imagine him doing anything more athletic than opening the fridge door. He waved him in, thinking this was the first act in some TV prank. Instantly, as if attached to the man by a thread, a hooded woman appeared, brushing past into the room. When Anselm turned, the man was squatting on the edge of the bed, his arm resting on the parked trolley The woman, hood removed.’ was standing beneath the television, arms tightly folded. She was fifty or so. As if following his cue, Anselm took a chair.

‘You have the money?’ she said in German.

She’d seen his habit and it had unsettled her. Why hadn’t Frenzel told her? To keep her on the leash in case she had misgivings?

‘Yes.’

She seemed unable to ask for it. A glance begged Anselm to cut short her embarrassment. But he didn’t move. So, Sebastian thought Anselm didn’t have it in him? He thought a monk was too self-righteous to take lessons from Frenzel? He’d show him how fast he could learn. The first lesson was already under his belt: snatch the advantage from the weak.

‘Show me the file,’ he ordered.

Her hair was greying and frizzy, her facial bones fine. Wire glasses flashed as she opened her shapeless damp coat to reach the brown envelope held to her side. Anselm didn’t move. Lesson Two: wait for them to come to you. After hesitating, she walked over, holding out the packet. Her jaw was incongruously strong, without undermining an essential delicacy Her eyes were blue, the lips dry and full. She wouldn’t look at him. Lesson Three: show no gratitude.

The envelope contained four sets of documents, held at the corner by tags of green string. Swinging to his side, he placed them on the small table and started reading, whipping through the pages one after the other. He had a few questions to ask. He spoke while reading.

‘Is there nothing else?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I took them in the first place.’

Anselm looked up, unsmiling, clouding his face with judgment and disapproval. He’d done that in the Old Bailey with the more intractable witnesses. The jury had loved it. Not caring, Anselm noticed that this was probably Frenzel’s Lesson Four.

‘Tell me how the archive was structured,’ said Anselm. ‘Why is all the material in German?’

‘That’s how Colonel Brack worked.” she replied. ‘It meant he could control what the Stasi knew He decided what got translated and put into the files… and it wasn’t much. He kept the rest to himself… with Polana.’ Anyway. The last thing he wanted was interference from the Stasi so he kept them in the dark.’

Lesson Five: pretend you haven’t heard and that you’re not that interested anyway.

Lesson Six: let ‘em stew when you’ve got ‘em hanging in the air.

Anselm slowly examined the first batch of papers. It was a series of interviews carried out with known associates of Roza Mojeska (RM). Few had anything worthwhile to say One said she worked, another said she prayed. A third, while keen to co-operate, was judged half mad. She’d taught her parrot to scream, ‘I’m free’.

Anselm turned to the second bundle.

The weekly bulletins from FELIKS made pitiful reading. He’d grovelled and scraped. He’d scoured Warsaw looking for RM. He’d followed his wife. He’d finally come up with a good idea. But they’d have to let his son out first. No, he wasn’t making a threat, he just thought that RM would do anything for the boy End of the trail. There were no more reports.

Anselm glanced up. The squat man was eyeing the television, as if wondering what his mother might say if he asked to put it on. His designer shaved head was wet from the rain. He had his mother’s fine nose. One foot tapped the ground. The trainers were squeaky new and white, like the floor.

‘The reports from FELIKS aren’t complete.” said Anselm, his voice smooth but accusing.

‘That was Colonel Brack,’ said the woman, wringing her hands. ‘I’ve already told you, he ran the operation himself, he picked what went to the Stasi. He wanted to keep them in the dark. We were all in the dark. That’s what he was like, especially with Polana.’ it was his baby, he-’

Anselm shut her down with a raised finger, settling his attention on the third set of papers.

Error, Frenzel seemed to say, with a hitch to his trousers. You went too far. You should have listened to what she was about to tell you. You’re interested in Brack aren’t you? Lesson Seven: don’t enjoy yourself too much. Keep your eye on the ball. When they start blathering, let them hang themselves. That’s fun, too; they do all the work… Anselm had listened enough. He made a mental dash away from the tutorial; he raced over the operational detail for a planned arrest of RM on the 1st November 1982. A well-placed agent had reported that she would be making an appearance at the monument to Prus. Brack would deal with the matter personally, assisted by Lieutenant Frenzel… Anselm skipped to the end, looking for a name, and then.’ finding nothing, threw it aside. He opened the fourth and final bundle.

In his hands was the missing correspondence between the Stasi and the SB. Anselm, still running, went straight to the back page. Brack had originally refused to disclose the names of any agents, indicating that an accommodation might be found at the termination of the operation. That accommodation, it seemed, had been found.

A cough sounded. It was his own, though it seemed to come from someone else.

Staring at the letter signed by Frenzel.’ he’d come to a standstill. It couldn’t be.’ he thought. His head was shaking a ‘No’. He couldn’t believe it was possible.

‘It was him.” said the woman. She seemed to share his shock and dismay, only she’d got used to it. She seemed vaguely apologetic. ‘He worked for Colonel Brack.’

Anselm was still shaking his head.

‘He was well paid, thank you,’ she said, growing confident; wanting to get her own back. She’d been stung by Anselm’s manner. ‘Signed for every instalment.’

Anselm put the papers back in the envelope and went to the bathroom. In a daze he counted out two thousand five hundred Euros and came back to the woman and her son.

‘Here,’ he said, holding out the notes. He was like an automaton. ‘This is a one-off. You don’t have to sign for anything.’

She took the money hurriedly and said, ‘There’s more, if you’re interested.’

Anselm’s eyes came into focus. She was trying to fit the envelope into an inside pocket of her coat.

‘Sorry?’

‘That lot, she said, nodding towards the bed. ‘That’s everything he gave them… for over thirty years.’

‘ Them?’ Anselm looked from the woman to the bin liners and back again. ‘You’re one of them.’

‘There are forty-two files,’ she said, ignoring the jibe. ‘All his reports. They’re from the main SB archive. Mr Frenzel thought you might be interested. He says they’re special. If you want them it’s going to-’

‘What?’ snapped Anselm, exhausted by this wrangling in a cesspool. ‘Cost the earth? The skin off my back? Or yours?’ He looked at her with a sudden savage pity. She was still fumbling with the first wedge of profit, trying to get it past the pocket lining. Mouth open, the son was lost. Languages weren’t his thing. ‘How much did Frenzel tell you to go for? Five? I bet it was five. Well.’ I’ll give you three.’

Anselm didn’t wait for the woman to work out what she’d say to Frenzel. He went back to the bathroom, counted out the notes and then returned, throwing them on the bedroom floor. Sinking into his chair, he paled with loathing as she brushed them together and made a pile, watched stupidly by her son with an arm around the refuse bags. Housework wasn’t his thing.

‘How much does Frenzel take?’ asked Anselm, quietly, His anger had gone like a popped balloon. His ears were ringing. ‘Half?’

She didn’t reply. Her problem was trying to find a pocket big enough for the cash.

‘He checks out the punters, he sends them to you, he gets his cut?’ Anselm angled his neck, trying to look up into her face. ‘If need be he’ll break a bone or two?’

He’s the pimp. And you? You’re the poor woman who takes all the risks. If anyone’s going to get busted, it’s you. Mr Frenzel just looks after the house and its contents. Anselm kept the thought to himself.

He was calm now, with the shuddering stillness that follows an accident; when the shock of seeing mutilated bodies has lost its primal power; when one’s mind turns to how anyone will live normally once the wreckage has been towed away.

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ said the woman, tying the belt on her coat. She pointed at her son. There wasn’t much affection in her look, just indebtedness and resentment. ‘You didn’t grow up getting beaten up for what your mother did during the communist years. You could walk safely down the street. You had friends, you had birthday parties… you had good times. No one turned their back on you.’

Anselm nodded. Her eyes were clear behind her flimsy glasses. She came closer, lowering her voice, just in case a saint was listening.

‘I just took a job, you know,’ she said, one hand pressed against a bulging pocket. ‘I knew two languages, I could type. I had a child. I needed money. That’s all. I wasn’t for them, I wasn’t against them. I just wanted a job. All I did was type up what other people had said. I never gave an opinion; I never shopped on my neighbours. I just wanted some security… for him, for me.’ She appealed to Anselm with open hands as if she were begging at the door to some church. ‘I’ll always be an outcast. And all because I spoke two…’ Languages, thought Anselm. And you could type. And you were neither for nor against. She didn’t say it in her defence but she could have done: how many people did no worse than her?

The woman was at the door. The son was already outside, idly running the zip of his fleece up and down. Looking at her straight back Anselm wanted to say sorry, but his mouth wouldn’t open. But he meant it: he was sorry for what had happened to her; and sorry for his behaviour. He’d forsworn the power of kindness and courtesy — and all because he wanted to tell Sebastian he could hold his own with Frenzel.

‘Madam, you do have a name,’ said Anselm, at last. ‘He can’t take that from you.

The woman didn’t even turn around. She closed the door with a trailing hand.

Anselm didn’t move for a long time. He sat facing the television and the shopping trolley with the sacks. He thought of the agent whose codename was SABINA and his long, dedicated service to the secret police. He thought of the woman who’d just left, Irina Orlosky, Brack’s bilingual personal assistant, thankful that he’d resisted the temptation to use her name; glad that by so doing he’d cut back on her due quota of humiliation.

Anselm pushed the trolley to the reception desk. The manager was troubled. He ran a clean establishment. His eyes lingered on the sacks while Anselm paid for the room he wouldn’t be needing after all. There were no farewell wishes.’ Father; no bon voyage. Turning to leave, Anselm noticed a crucifix above the entrance. And he knew with a cold certainty, that Frenzel was somewhere near, perhaps in a car outside sucking a remembered shell. He stayed up late to watch the fun. The joke was far too good to be missed.