The Warsaw Document

12: TRAP

The few people in the street wore black and bells tolled, hurrying them across the rutted snow to where a spire poked at the low grey sky. The wind had died in the night, leaving calm. I walked south-east towards the river.

I'd given him some money.

'Let her have my room. Her papers are in order and you can put her name in the register. Give her what's left of this when she leaves.' She wouldn't find work again until there was an amnesty.

Three patrols in two miles but they didn't stop me.

Karl Dollinger journalist born Stuttgart 1929. The immigration franking tallied with my actual arrival on L.O.T. 504 and they'd put in a slip showing booking-confirmation West Berlin January 6. Reason for visit to cover talks for Der Urheber, left-wing weekly. Various letters and memos, editorial recaps, Telex facilities, press-club card, so forth. nothing to fault

Security was important now but that wasn't why I was switching base: if I'd needed to stay on at the Alzacki I wouldn't have taken her there. A new cover required a new address and the hotel I wanted now was the big state-owned Kuznia, nearly opposite the Commissariat in the Praga district. That was where they'd been going yesterday morning: from the distance I'd seen the security van keep up speed towards the next traffic lights but the big black Moskwicz had pulled in again soon after dropping me, off. They'd gone into the building on the south side, Foster and the man from Irkutsk. I hadn't gone back because they could have slapped a tag on me but the map in the City Library showed what the building was. It might not be their base but if it wasn't I'd have to start my search from there.

I’d known yesterday what I’d got to do but I suppose I'd baulked it because it wasn't a thing you could do in a hurry and I'd have to hurry: we stood three days from Sroda and Sroda was the deadline for Czyn, for the opposition and for me. I knew now what Egerton wanted and his tacit signal was clear: define, infiltrate and destroy. And I couldn't do it by standing in the way of the programme they were running: I'd have to get inside and blow it up from there.

A hundred and fifty rooms, fifty with private bath and outside telephone connection via the desk. This one had two windows facing the Commissariat at something like thirty-five degrees oblique, good enough and close enough to observe without binoculars. There was a spillover from the other big hotels nearer the hall where the talks were going to be held but I managed to get a second-floor single and the timing estimate from the room to the street was fifteen seconds at a pace that wouldn't look hurried.

For three hours I drew blank. Some of the Commissariat staff showed up before noon and lights were switched on, so I began filling in the front-elevation sketch I'd made: records, general admin., public interview, M.O. liaison, so forth. Not many of the public went in, perhaps half a dozen, most of them lost-looking, one of them frightened; they were given an upright chair, fourth window left of central staircase, third floor, and a big fur-coated woman spoke to them without a pause and they didn't interrupt; her mouth was rectangular like a ventriloquist's dummy, opening and shutting at irregular intervals while they sat watching, sometimes giving a nod. There were two clerks in Records, both girls, one of them slightly lame; they plied between the desks and the filing cabinets, stopping sometimes to laugh together, their work routine and their thoughts on personal things. Six uniformed M.O.s reported to the second room right of staircase first floor, handing some papers to a civilian who sent them out with a messenger to a room at the back of the building. The work of these people, routine or not, was important enough to bring them here on a Sunday and it looked reasonably clear that the pressures driving towards Sroda had opened the doors of every Commissariat in the city.

I had the impression that if I could have persuaded the two girls to leave the room with the crowded shelves while I lobbed an incendiary bomb through the doorway a few hundred thousand citizens of Warsaw would be better off. It might even be worth doing once I was in there.

13:05 seventh M.O. reporting. 13:12 ninth interview. 13:24 lights out fourth right third floor and the corollary: two clerks down the steps. 13:30 guard on the entrance relieved. 13:41 Moskwicz.

It came in from the west, from across the Vistula. Foster and another man, not the man from Irkutsk but the political agent who'd conducted the interrogation in the Ochota precinct, his pale hands lifting and dropping on the arms of the chair. They got out and climbed the steps and this was very interesting because he must be high in echelon to travel with a top kick like Foster in his turd-shaped deluxe saloon. I couldn't think about it now because I had to see where they went and they went to the doubled-windowed room at the left end of the third floor, when I'd seen the lights go on I began thinking about it.

Findings: a routine M.O. patrol had picked up an unremarkable foreign visitor in the street and pulled him in for not having any papers but by the time he was inside the precinct bureau there was a high-echelon agent sitting-in to conduct the interrogation and by dawn the next day he was under discreet vetting by the K.G.B.

They took off their coats and fur hats and Foster sat down and the agent took a folder from a cupboard, dark green folder, cupboard not locked.

Working backwards: I'd realised I was being vetted in the Moskwicz and they hadn't tried to cover it. The new material now coming in and making me sweat concerned the events that had led up to that: at some time between being picked up as a routine measure by the M.O. patrol and my arrival at the Ochota precinct fifteen minutes later there'd been an alert situation. Someone had known, without seeing me, that I wasn't just one of the hundreds of foreign visitors in Warsaw on private business or with an interest in the forthcoming talks.

They'd known who I was.

The Moskwicz was still at the kerb and the driver and escort were still on board, black leather coats and civilian kepis. Note this. Note everything and think fast in the intervals.

They couldn't have known who I was.

And make corrections. The wire had burned out and I'd have to twist the ends together till it glowed again and the analogy came to mind because the mission was suddenly electrified and Egerton was close to me, Egerton and his bloody lies, everyone else has refused, I'm really most grateful to you for helping me out.

Foster. Christ, had he sent me to bring in Foster?

Turn the coin. Foster had been sent to bring me in.

Because he'd been flown from Moscow, part of the alert situation. That was why they'd kept me caged, to give him time to get here. He lived in Moscow, the Sundays said, 'a modest existence in a flat not far from the domes of the Kremlin, once an Old Etonian and now a hero of the Soviet Republic with an alloy medal somewhere in the top drawer with his handkerchiefs and cuff-links', a rumour about a Hungarian woman, 'a simple daughter of the proletariat content to share his uneventful life'.

Until less than forty-eight hours ago he'd been given the signal: Contact established Warsaw please proceed.

The fly had hit the web and the web trembled.

They hadn't needed full-face and profile blow-ups for the patrols. They'd known where to find me at any time. That was why they could afford to let me go.

Brain think. Stay on brain think because there's a lot coming up and it's got to be looked at and there's not much time left now.

Let him run and we'll see where he goes. It still stood up: it was based on mission-feel and mission-feel is never wrong. But I could extend the certainty now: they already knew where I was going to run because I was in Warsaw to find things out and the.only way to do it was to close in, get near them, as near as I was now, just across the street, observing and surveying and trying to work out how to

close the gap and get right inside, into the double-windowed room over there where they were quietly running their programme. Let him run and he'll run to us.

Into the trap.

I came away from the window. The light in the room was winter dim but there was nothing here I wanted to see the moves had to be made in the mind, the next in my own because they'd already made theirs and they were waiting.

It didn't matter that at this moment, at 14:05, my security was total. No one in Warsaw knew that a British agent from a non-existent bureau in London was at this tick of the clock holed up in Room 54 at the Hotel Kuznia under the cover of Karl Dollinger journalist born Stuttgart, 1929. No one. Not even the two men over there with the dark green folder on the desk between them. But it didn't matter because they weren't trying to find me; they were prepared to wait for me. They could have left me to rot m the Ochota precinct or thrown me into Grochow and left me to rot there instead or they could have put me under the lights and broken me open to see what was inside but the time hadn't been right.

They hadn't known enough. They wanted to know more.

In any capital where international talks are being convened there's always a fierce light focused on the central assembly of delegates and the plenipotentiaries and secretaries and interpreters and in the peripheral glow there are shadows and in the shadows there are always the nameless, the faceless, the eyes and ears of the intelligence networks whose job is to peel away the laminations of diplomacy and protocol and deceit and counter-deceit until they can form a picture of the realities beneath the maquillage and pass it back to Control for data-processing and onward transmission to the overt departments of government where policy is formed. There is nothing adventurous about this: it's an art becoming so fine that a great deal of what is said at the conference table is indirectly dictated by those unseen in the shadows; and in some countries the liaison between statesmanship and political intelligence is so closely linked that the first would fail operate without recourse to the second. This was exemplified in a coded cable from the Elysee to Whitehall during the Fourth Summit of 1970 and the decoded version is framed on the washroom wall at the Bureau. Spent an hour in private discussion last night with the Persian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Please let me know what he said.

Here in Warsaw the talks were to be staged between the two halves of a divided world and the spotlights were thus blinding and the shadows, by contrast, darker. The area, by this situation rendered highly sensitive, was charged with the explosive element of Polish dissension. In these circumstances Moscow had been driven to devise two programmes aimed at the protection of its own interests and of the talks themselves. One of these programmes was already running: the streets were being cleared and the trains were moving east. The other was also under way.

This was the one that Egerton wanted me to destroy and I hoped to God he knew what he was doing because the talks were as vital to the West as to the East.

Not my concern. Discount the shivering fit of the nerves, the gooseflesh fear that somewhere I'd wandered into a minefield that even the Bureau didn't know was there. Discount every consideration that had nothing to do with the mission itself, to do with the implicit instructions: define, infiltrate and destroy. Do what you're bloody well told.

Or at least try.

They didn't know enough about me but they'd know enough to damn me, to kill me, once I'd found my way inside. All they'd need to know was that I was trying to blow up their programme, the second one, the silent one. Then they'd knock me off. They'd set the trap and that was all they'd had to do: they knew, as I knew now, that I'd have to spring it myself, and hope to survive.

The main line station was three blocks from the hotel and I walked there. I'd had to get free of the claustrophobic confines of Room 54 and I'd had to take a first step towards their base and this was it.

He was a thin quick-eyed boy with a lot on his nerves and I'd have preferred an older man but there was only one rank and his beaten-up two-door Wolga stood at the head of it and I didn't want to waste any time.

'Hotel Kuznia.'

The smell of burnt clutch linings filtered through the ripped carpet. After two blocks I told him to pull in.

'This isn't the Kuznia. It's farther on.'

He watched me in the cracked mirror.

'You can leave your engine running.' We spoke in Polish and I let my accent show. 'How much would it cost to hire you for the rest of the day?' It didn't matter how much it would cost because that bloody woman was going to pay the bill anyway but I didn't want him to think I was a madman. Only a madman would commit himself too this kind of expense without asking how many noughts there were: that would be his point of view because he was half starved and I wanted to keep him with me.

'I'm on the station run. You'll have to get one from Orbis.'

'They're shut today.'

It was still there so we were all right.

'I can't help that.'

'Five hundred zlotys. That's fair.'

'I haven't got a licence, only for station runs.'

'You can check in at intervals. Your friends'll cover you.'

He twisted in the seat and looked at me. 'There's rules and I'm not breaking them.'

'You'll be breaking a few on Wednesday.'

His young mouth tightened. We listened to the ragged beat of the engine. He didn't look away. I said: 'Put it this way: if you'll keep your car at my disposal you'll be helping things along, firing the first shot. You shouldn't miss a chance like that.'

'I don't know what you're talking about'

'You see that big Moskwicz over there? I want you to keep it in sight when it leaves the Commissariat. I want to know where it goes, that's all. You're lucky, you know, got a chance of being a hero of the revolution. But you'll have to do what I tell you. Go on past the Kuznia and make a turn before the bridge and come back and stop when I say the word.'

He licked his thin lips, looking away, looking back at me. 'Show me your papers.'

They didn't mean anything except that I wasn't a Russian but that was enough. He took his time, just for the look of the thing, and I knew he was hooked. They were dreaming of Sroda, those who were left, and I was bringing it closer for him.

I put my passport away. 'When you can do it without anyone seeing, break another hole in the front of your driving-seat and put the gun in there. If you leave it where it is now they'll find it without even trying, and you haven't got a licence for that either.'

He stuffed the yellow duster on top of the bulge in the side-pocket and his quick eyes flicked to the mirror. 'You don't miss much.'

'You're up against people a lot smarter than I am so you'd better watch it, that's all.'

The smell of the clutch rose again. There weren't any chains on but we wouldn't need any. The filthy snow was permanently rutted now along the major streets and the trick was to settle into them and find traction on the bare tarmac in the troughs. He turned at the bridge and came back.

'Pull in here.'

We waited nearly an hour. They came down the steps together, Foster empty-handed, the agent with a full briefcase. I couldn't see the guard at the entrance from here but I knew all I needed to know about him: he was civil police, not military, revolver, not rifle, and his post was inside the main doors on the left-hand side going up. There wouldn't be any trouble with him because when I went in there I wouldn't be alone

At this time, 15:40, I didn't have an alternative operation worked out but there'd have to be one because the thing was so sticky with risks.

'Not yet. Give them a minute.'

It really was the most disgusting design, the rear windows like nostrils and domed hubcaps protruding like warts.

'Now.'

East and north at the first lights and then left again, back towards the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge. There was more traffic than usual towards the city centre: a lot of the people here for the talks were using their first Sunday for sightseeing in taxis and Orbis cars.

'Don't get too close.'

'I don't want to lose it.'

'You won't lose it. It's like a bloody elephant.'

Orbis was no use to me. You'd got to present your papers and let them record the details and that was how I'd blown the Longstreet cover. Blow the Dollinger and there wouldn't be time to get another one before Sroda and Sroda was the deadline, three days from now. Fast driving didn't figure in the operation I was now setting up but if something came unstuck and I had to do some it would have to be in a private banger, whatever I could pinch.

The Bureau wouldn't like that. You were aware of the. strict standing orders that in all circumstances the property of private citizens must be considered inviolable.

Memo to Control: Since the private citizens of Warsaw were filling the detention cells at the rate of a hundred per day a fair percentage of motor vehicles parked in the streets were going to stay there until their blocks froze so I respectfully suggest you go and commit a nuisance.

'Hotel Cracow.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Go on past.'

It was an old building in the grand style not far from the river and the Moskwicz had turned through massive gates into a courtyard. As we came abreast I took a look and told him to pull in.

After the fumes inside the Wolga the air was fresh. The gates hadn't been shut for a long time: the traffic going through had gradually spread the tarmac to the sides and against their rusted bolts. Half a dozen cars in the courtyard, one of them abandoned, the marks of birds' feet across the thick snow on its roof and bonnet, the block presumably frozen. No one about, no one on foot. The hotel took up one entire wing of the building, mullioned lattices and a hewn portico, griffons rampant, part of the fifteen per cent of the city that didn't have to be rebuilt after the bomb doors had closed again.

Foster and the agent were going up the steps and the driver and escort were sitting behind the windscreen with nothing to do but watch people and in a routine situation I would have spent an hour doing this, hanging about for cover and using the rules, but there wasn't enough time and I had to rely on risky premises: that the driver and escort were a relief shift or if they were the two who had driven me across the Slasko-Dabrowski yesterday morning that they hadn't got a good look at me. They were taking a good look at me now but they could have seen me actually coming through the gates and that had been the point beyond which I couldn't have turned and gone back so I kept on and made for the entrance with the image rearranged, shoulders a little hunched and the pace shortened, head down in thought, one of the habitual clientele with no more interest in the aspect of the place.

They were going into one of the lifts and I turned to stamp the snow off my shoes and then went to the desk.

'Would you have a private suite for one week beginning next Wednesday? For two people.'

A quick glance down. It didn't matter how well trained they were: mention that day and there was a reaction. He was wondering how I'd manage to reach here through the barricades.

Reading upside down is a fraction easier than mirror-reading because you don't have to dissociate from the familiar and the brain recognises that if you turn through a hundred and eighty degrees you'll be out of the wood, whereas mirror-writing remains gibberish until you've done a mental switch. All I could see was that his name wasn't among the thirty or so on the one and a half filled pages of the register unless of course he was now A. Voshyov or K. Voskarev, the two possibles among the several Russian entries. He was on one of these open pages if he'd booked in officially because they went back to January 14 and he'd been flown in to vet me on a night flight of the 15th.

'On the third floor, sir, overlooking the court.' He added without any expression: 'It will be quieter there.'

It wasn't important: I hadn't come to look at the register; it’s just that the eye of a seasoned ferret notes the lie of every grassroot on its way through the warren. Voshyov or Voskarev could be the agent and Foster's base somewhere else. The important thing was to expose as much data as possible in the short time left and my real concern was the obscene-looking Moskwicz outside: the courtyard was the area we could possibly work in, facts needed collecting.

He hit the bell but I told him I didn't want to see the rooms now: I would return and confirm.

The pivotal fact was that when the Moskwicz dropped its passengers at the Commissariat and at this hotel the driver and escort remained on board. They were there when I walked down the steps, backed up to the wall between the end window and one of the griffons, the engine shut off and the louvres closed and their faces watching me from behind the reflected light on the windscreen.

On the way back to the Hotel Kuznia I stopped the taxi at a telephone kiosk and spoke to Merrick.

By nightfall I'd gone over the whole thing again and it looked all right: risky but all right. Most of it stood up so well that the one critically weak point seemed less of a hazard. It was to do with the guard. There was a single police guard on the Commissariat but today was Niedziela, Sunday. and it could be that on weekdays when every department was functioning and there were more visitors it carried the normal double guard I'd seen on other official buildings. If tomorrow they doubled the guard it'd be no go.