He raised his colourless eyes from the card and let them play on my face and I remembered a thousand frontiers and a thousand men with eyes like these and this was the dangers: that my own would show the indifference to scrutiny that will indicate our trade as clearly as the nails of a mechanic will tell of his. So I looked uneasy, as sometimes a tourist does when despite the comfort of his guide book and Instamatic and Diners' Club card he senses how suddenly close he is to a world he'd rather not consider, where the iron force of alien authority is vested in a single man with eyes like these and where only the conformity of his papers can give him immunity against the nightmare fates that have overtaken other and less invulnerable voyagers, brought namelessly to mind by images of dark windowed saloons slowing along dawn streets, of barbed wire and a silhouetted guard.
I looked at the younger one, the Pole. 'May I have my letters back?'
He tucked them circumspectly into the envelope. The heavy man took the envelope and pulled them out again, comparing the signatures with the one on my passport. Looking at no one he said in Russian:
'Ask him why he flew via East Berlin.’
'Why did you fly via East Berlin?’
'Because the flight was routed that way.' Looking quickly around I lowered my tone, tapping the letters in the big square hand. 'The Lewinski Collection has only just come on to the private market, and of course Mr Hrynkiewicz would prefer to make a deal in dollars, so he told me to hurry and get in first — you can read what he says.'
'Put them back in the envelope,' he told the Pole and looked past me to the next one in the queue.
Going through Customs I remembered the flash of anger in the young eyes of the Pole as he'd folded the letters for the second time. Merrick hadn't been fooling: there were no tanks in this city yet but it already had the brackish smell of occupation. There was a quietness here, voices and other sounds muffled as if by snow, and everyone — passengers, airport staff and security officials — did their business with each other deftly, ready neither to give nor make trouble in case somewhere a spark were struck to send the whole lot up.
Waiting for clearance I had time to vet the people off the T.U. 104 and picked out a minimum of six 'tourists' straight in from the Soviet State Security Service, getting their luggage chalked at the blink of an eye.
My bag came through, the leather panel at one end flapping from the ragged stitches. They won't bother looking for a hollow bottom when the top's obviously having a job to stay on.
'To jest wszystko co mam,' I told him. 'Nie mam nic do oclenia.'
'Jak to sie nazywa po polsku?'
'Stanley Gibbons,' I said with a shrug. You can't put that into Polish. He passed it but dropped the Mail smartly into the receptacle for seditious literature. I'd never thought Kirby much cop but the rest didn't seem that bad. There were three K.G.B. men just inside the barrier but they didn't look at me when I went through: their eyes work at a distance while you're having your shirts picked over and they've seen all they want to see before you get anywhere near them.
Outside the building the cold hit like a wave and froze on the face. The queue for taxis had already built up but one or two private cars were nosing in and I took a beat-up Syrena: the owner asked eighteen zlotys, three times the taxi fare and worth it because you didn't have to freeze to death in the queue, just part of the black market service. He asked which hotel and I said I didn't want a hotel, I wanted a woman.
There was an open stove burning split wooden road blocks with a galvanised pipe running up through a blanked off window pane. The room smelt of tar and sweat and Russian tobacco; a half finished bowl of chiodnik had been pushed under the fringe of red velvet that hung from one of the shelves, the spoon still in it. Her hands began moving.
'Don't do that,' I said, 'I'm not staying.'
Still young and with carbon black ringlets above the sharp dark eyes, a leopard skin coat and knee boots, where was the whip, her forebears on the distaff side a-whoring for the Goths. 'Come near the stove,' she said with little white smiling teeth, 'it will warm you.'
'What's your name?' I switched to German because I wanted her to get it clear.
'Marie.' A lot of them use names like that the world over, perhaps to bring into their dingy rooms a touch of the splendid plush and bronze and mirrored ceilings of La Belle Epoque. In German: 'Come near the stove.'
She began again and I said again that I wasn't staying and the black eyes sparked: when you don't want the only thing they've got it hurts their pride. She'd said a hundred and fifty zlotys and I put three fifties on the bottom shelf and her head turned to watch, quick as a bird's. 'Jan Ludwiczak,' I told her, 'got arrested a couple of days ago. I want to know his address and where the U.B. are holding him. Then you make as much again.'
Who are you and what gives you the idea I'd know a thing like that, so forth. She added in the Warsaw vernacular and tones like a sabre being sharpened that the U.B. were the original illegitimate sons of putrefaction incarnate and that she had no dealings with them.
'You get the other hundred and fifty if you can find out by ten o'clock tomorrow morning.'
Her pride stopped being hurt but she thought up a lot of objections in order to raise the price, trilling the low German is and throwing out the genders, but I kept on at her because I'd come here knowing she'd have a few of the Policia Ubespieczenia among her clients: anywhere east of the Curtain the lower ranks of the secret police can get it for nothing or a girl won't stay in business.
'Finish your stew.'
She reached for the bowl and banged it on top of the stove. 'It is not enough for so difficult a thing.'
It was all she'd get: that bloody woman in Accounts was going to question this anyway when it went in as general expenses and even if I put 1 tart, unused against please specify she'd only put unjustified as soon as she'd come out of the vapours.
'Where do you pick up, Marie? What bar?'
'I tell you it is — '
'Oh come on, the Komiwojazer?' We'd passed it in the Syrena, the nearest corner from here. 'I'll phone there tomorrow before ten and if you've got what I want I'll tell them to give you the one-fifty.'
Sulkily she said: 'I may be lucky this time. Are there other things you will want to know about?' She poked at the chiodnik.
'Possibly. But not if you don't get it right this time. Not if you bitch me.'
It was their reaction that was interesting.
He'd got as far as the airport: perhaps he'd booked on a plane out and they knew that or just suspected it or someone like Marie had sold him out while a U.B. man's trousers were still slung over the chair. Anyway they got him. A Scandinavian Airlines flight had just come in but most of the people in the main hall were Polish, friends or associates or people with reservations on the S.A.S. plane, and their reaction was interesting because they didn't just stand watching as most crowds do: there was a distinct movement forward as if they wanted to help, then hesitation.
The Moskwicz hadn't got a heater so I'd screwed Accounts for a Fiat 1300 because there'd be some surveillance to do and that meant sitting around at anything down to twenty-five below zero. I'd left it in the car park and the Wolga had come up very fast, two of them piling out as it slewed in alongside the Departure doors just when I was going through. He was ahead of me and they'd seen him because he'd turned his face to look back, perhaps sensing the danger or hearing the way the car had pulled up. Apparently he was recognisable to them because they seemed perfectly sure and broke their run and walked in step towards him while he stood there with the dead fixed look of a rabbit in the headlights.