Egerton didn't know what it was but he knew it was there and he'd sent me to find it and blow it up.
'Is it morning?'
'No.'
'I don't want morning to come.'
She'd told me before in a different way, saying she didn't want the night to end, crying for a long time naked against me, the saltiness on my face, asking me to hurt her, as if the mind's hurt wasn't enough: guilt for the dead, the abandoned, her leanness quivering and her mouth avid but far from love. Later she forgot and the body was enough, her skin burning under my hands and her thighs alive: she made love as if time was running out. Later still she told me about herself, speaking in Polish and half to someone else: to the person who must one day find again and recognise these pieces of identity and try to make them whole.
'They wanted Jan and me to go with them but Israel was only a place on the map and we had all Poland, where we were born. They sent long letters at first, saying what a solid future there was for us if we'd go out there, and how kind the people were, and finally we got sick of reading their letters and just tore them up, still in the envelopes. To me it was a kind of — not disloyalty exactly — a rejection of all we'd been as a family; they'd turned their backs on everything we'd known and loved and grown up with, the music and the forests and the fires in winter, and our friends. But I missed them, so did Jan, and when I got married it was partly to make a new home for him, though I think I was in love for a time. But Michal' — she paused on the name, finding an odd-shaped piece that she knew would never fit — 'Michal started getting letters from my father, the same kind my brother and I used to get, and he said we were obviously missing a big chance, and tried to convince me, and couldn't. So he went out there to join them.'
Thus it is in events that thy tribe shall forever wander, finding in the shade of each tree a seeming haven till it be shewn that as the sun moves, the shadow moves, leaving thee unsheltered.
'He said that since the Russians had taken over our country a Pole couldn't be a Pole so he was going where at least a Jew could be a Jew. I think he was sure I'd follow him, but I threw his ring from the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge.'
Then for a time she slept and so did I, and when I woke towards dawn she'd moved away a little and leaned watching me in the grey light from the city, her face still stained from the tears that had dried, her eyes dark in thought as she asked me again who I was, who are you please.
'No one you'll remember.'
I left her warmth, breaking the thin filmof ice in the big copper pan. Putting my things into the airline bag I remembered thinking, somewhere in the night, that she'd have to stay here if she were to survive the next few days because the only friends she could go to were at. risk themselves.
'I need a contact in Czyn. Someone I can phone any time between now and Sroda. This is a safe place. You told me to let you know if I wanted any help.'
'You would like me to stay here?'
'Yes.'
'I will stay.'
'Have you got any money?'
'Some.'
'You'll have to buy a few things. Ask the man to get them for you. Take a walk when you need some air but don't go far.' I zipped the bag shut. 'I'll phone always at an even hour, eight ten twelve, so be here then. If I don't phone, don't worry, I'm not sure how things will go.'
I went to the bed and she raised herself, kneeling and twisting against me, biting gently at the pad of my hand. her black hair hiding her face from me till I left her and looked back once at her stillness, her arms crossed against her breasts and her hands clasping her shoulders, head on one side as she said:
'I shall see you again.'
'Yes.' The first lie of Sunday.
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.