The Day of the Lie (26 page)

‘Please, this way,’ she
called from the kitchen at the end of the short corridor, her voice
embarrassed, already pleading for more understanding, already fearing another
kind of condemnation.

The room was small and
clean, the white enamel on the cooker chipped but shining. A small, polished
window looked on to the courtyard and a fragment of sky Anselm drew back a
chair by a small Formica table and said.’

‘Irina, it’s important
you know something: Frenzel doesn’t have your name. Certain things always
remain in our possession.’

Her back was against
him. She was arranging the flowers in a vase, jiggling the stems to get the
arrangement right. Without turning around, she said, ‘He didn’t take it,
Father. No one did.’

Still not facing Anselm,
and without prompting, she began to speak of August 1989 as if she’d forgotten
to mention it first time round and was now making up for the lapse. She’d been
called into work early Mr Frenzel had rung to say there was housework to be
done. The place needed cleaning from top to bottom. For the next three months
all the staff had worked like mad to tidy up the files.

‘It was non-stop
shredding.” she said, turning on the electric kettle. ‘In every room on every
floor the machines were whining and whirring. There were rows and rows of
garden sacks filled with all the sliced up paper. After a week others were
brought in, more people, more machines, more sacks. Department and Section
Heads sat at their desks, picking the files to be destroyed. It was one long
office party … with laughter and joking and larking around. Some of the
senior officers were maudlin, leafing through old folders. “Do you remember
that one?” “I wonder what became of him.” Others were frantic, knowing they
couldn’t pull all the weeds out of the garden.’

Irina broke her
recollection to pour the boiled water into two cups. She sliced lemon and
placed cubes of sugar on the saucers. Three harsh shots came from down the
corridor, followed by the crump of grenades and the cries of the Afghan dying.
The son had ambition. He was going to succeed where the Russians had failed.

‘That’s when Mr Frenzel
selected which documents to keep,’ sighed Irina, wiping some spillage with a
cloth. ‘He took them home every evening in his car. Told me to keep my mouth
shut if I ever wanted to work again. If my son was ever to get a job.’

At last she turned round
and travelled the great divide between them — just two short steps — her eyes
lowered, not wanting to meet Anselm’s gaze. She was wearing a McDonald’s
T—shirt and neat green trousers. Her expression was hard behind the frail wire
glasses.

‘The only person missing
was Colonel Brack,’ she said, sitting down. ‘He made his appearance on the last
day, after everyone else had gone. He came late at night … I only found him
because I’d left my keys behind.’

Anselm stirred his tea,
flipping over the slice of lemon. ‘He’d kept away from the party?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t he have any
files for the shredder?’

‘No. He wasn’t like the
others … he was a believer. He was
proud
of his work …
proud
of
the ministry; he wanted whoever came next to see what he’d done. His junior
officers saw things differently —they cleaned his cupboards to protect
themselves.’ She dropped a cube of sugar into her tea and began to break it
down with the teaspoon. ‘For him, there was nothing to celebrate. Quite the
opposite.

He wanted a funeral.
When I opened the door to his office, he was there, sitting bolt upright
holding a gun to his mouth:

Irina had approached him
stealthily, like a cat, speaking assurances in a low whisper. She’d edged round
the desk and put her hand round his, slowly drawing the barrel from between his
teeth. It had been the first time she’d ever touched his skin and he’d been
cold; simply cold and still, no clammy surface or shaking limbs; no fear or
tension. He’d watched her from afar, letting her unpick his fingers from the
handgrip. Irina, trembling violently, had stepped back and dropped the gun into
her coat pocket.

‘I’ve still got it,’ she
laughed, bitterly ‘I didn’t dare leave the thing behind so I brought it home
and shoved it in a safe place.’ Her head made a tilt to some shelf out of her
son’s reach. ‘To this day I don’t know why I did that … why I stopped him
from killing himself. He meant nothing to me. He never once so much as asked if
I was all right, or if my son was doing well. He just worked, fighting “the
enemy” .Years later, when I realised that most doors in the free world were
shut to me, I thought of him and everything he represented; I saw him at his
desk, reading files by a lamp, biting his lip. And if I could have gone back
into that room, I’d have taken the gun from him and pulled the trigger myself.’
Irina coloured at the admission. ‘I hate him … and as the years go by I hate
him even more. Isn’t that an awful thing to say?’

‘Yes.” replied Anselm,
simply, with the empathy of a doctor. They both knew that hate is the infection
from an unhealed wound; that it’s difficult to treat properly.

‘I couldn’t find
interesting work,’ she said, glancing towards the corridor and the battle of
her son. ‘Every conversation, every memory, every story … they all led back
to the ministry. I was part of it. I’d drawn my pay Like you said, I was one of
them.
People who’d never bothered to care when Brack was opening their
next door neighbour’s mail became former activists. They’d all been
underground. They’d all taken risks. They’d all fought the good fight, whereas
me …’ Irina turned aside again, showing Anselm her profile, the fine nasal
bone and the strong but delicate chin. Her tone was flat without a trace of
self—pity: ‘I’ve paid the penalty for everything he represented. I’ve picked up
the responsibility for everything he did … as if I’d fought for his ideas …
as if his ideas were mine. I carry the virus. And what about him?’ For the
first time she looked at Anselm directly, her eyes naked, the hate creeping
quietly like a flame on the edge of some paper, invisible, but alive and black.
‘He’s paid nothing … I’m sure of it. And I saved his life. Do you know what
he did afterwards? He didn’t say a word. He just opened a drawer, looked inside
and then walked past me as if I wasn’t there.’

Anselm sipped his tea,
unsettled by her calm self-disgust, that secondary infection often found in
good people who can’t see any road to forgiveness, especially for themselves,
never mind the person who wounded them in the first place.

‘Why do you let Frenzel
keep his hold on you?’ asked Anselm.’ wanting to find some way out for this
cornered woman.

‘He offered me some
money,’ she replied, not quite answering the question. ‘He said that some
investigators were sniffing around
Polana,
that they might embarrass
Brack … that I could play my part and line my pocket at the same time. He’s a
very difficult man to turn down, Mr Frenzel —’ the strain appeared in the fine
lines around her mouth; she looked inward, it seemed, her eyes glazed — ‘and
anyway, I’d nothing to lose.’

With slow deliberation
her attention shifted towards the gunfire: she hated it; she hated the computer
screen; she hated the game. But it’s what her son had wanted. She’d bought the
lot with her cut from Frenzel (thought Anselm); she’d treated her son to an
upmarket toy with adult specifications, the kind of indulgence he’d never
received when he was so much younger, excluded from the other kids’ birthday
parties.

‘He’s addicted to
kompot,’
she said, abstracted. ‘It’s a drug made from poppy stalks … weaker than
heroin or morphine, but harmful all the same. He steals from me …

She stared at Anselm,
begging him to ask no questions, to simply understand why she needed Marek
Frenzel’s backhanders.

‘Irina,’ said Anselm,
nodding understanding and pity, ‘I’m not here to embarrass Brack. I’m here in
an attempt to bring him before a court.’

‘Oh really?’ She
regarded him with polite but mocking disbelief. ‘For what? For crushing someone’s
will to live?.’

‘No, for murder,’
supplied Anselm.

Irina’s glasses flashed.

‘Yes, Irina. Maybe you
got paid. Maybe you didn’t have much of a choice. But you’ve helped to bring
Otto Brack closer to justice. You’ve made a step towards finding your name.

She smiled reluctantly,
as if Anselm had produced more flowers.

‘It goes right back to
the beginning.” explained Anselm, ‘to the building of the system and the
institutions that you’re now ashamed of … which you wish you’d never served:
He leaned over the table slightly, giving emphasis to the trust he was about to
impart: the confidence one only shares with upright, decent people. ‘Róża
Mojeska witnessed the execution of her husband and another man in nineteen
fifty-one. Otto Brack pulled the trigger. Róża.’ like you, has been
trapped — but not by shame or regret.
Polana
wasn’t all about finding
the Shoemaker. Brack wanted to confront Róża … to tell her the name of
the man who’d betrayed her from the outset; to tell her that she couldn’t
condemn Brack in the future without exposing someone at the centre of the
Shoemaker’s organisation and intimately connected with his reputation, not to
mention that of the Church. Out of esteem for them both Róża kept a long,
long silence. But now she’s changed her mind.’

‘Why?’

‘The time is right. The
fact is, whatever your motives, whatever your past, she’ll be grateful to you.

Irina had asked the
question in a disconnected way, as if her curiosity was a yard behind her
memory and understanding. In a searching, faraway voice, she said, ‘
Polana,
Róża
… it all makes sense.’ I suppose. No other operation meant more to him; no
other woman so unsettled him.’ She glanced at a wall clock as if it was time
for work. ‘My son asked for a pizza. Will you stay for something to eat? We
have a speciality here.’
pierogi
… they’re difficult to describe, but
I’ve got some in the fridge.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

Irina took some persuading, but Anselm
insisted that pizzas all round was by the far the simplest option. He didn’t
want to say that the national dish now reminded him of Frenzel. The son ate in
the sitting room, presumably still hiding from the mujahedeen behind that
plumped up cushion. During the break in offensive operations, a homely quiet
occupied the small and tidy flat. Stray, dying sunlight stole through the
kitchen window. The large plastic clock ticked like a soft pulse. Irina had
laid the table precisely, with gleaming cutlery and well—pressed napkins.

‘You said Róża had
unsettled Brack,’ said Anselm, inviting more. The phrase had snagged his
interest.

‘I’d always thought it
strange.” said Irina.’ elbow on the table, her face resting against her hand.
She was relaxed. Anselm wondered if he was the first guest; first because he’d
come uninvited. ‘At one point he ran over six hundred operations aimed at
specific publications in Warsaw, but the one that mattered most was
Freedom
and Independence,
even though there were other papers with a far wider
circulation.
Polana
is the only file that stands out in my memory …
even though I knew nothing about what was happening on the ground. And that’s
because right at the beginning he called her Róża … just once, by
accident, but it was enough to tell me this was no ordinary case; and she wasn’t
just another woman.’

On her first day of work
in 1982 Colonel Brack had sent Irina to the main SB archive to obtain a file on
one Róża Mojeska. A meeting had been planned for the afternoon with the
Stasi and they’d asked to see any existing intelligence. All he brought along
to the conference room were her interrogation papers from 1951.

The reports of FELIKS —
which ran from ‘52 until ‘69 — were left on his desk. He was only going to show
them the bare minimum, with nothing up to date, and nothing that might put them
on to her present whereabouts.

‘The point of the
meeting was to discuss how to track down the Shoemaker,’ said Irina. ‘Colonel
Brack and Mr Frenzel represented the SB and there were two officers from the
Stasi … I can’t remember their names. Anyway, Colonel Brack explained that
Freedom
and Independence
first appeared at the dawn of time and so on, but that the
paper wasn’t that important and hardly worth the effort of a joint operation.
He said the only known link to the Shoemaker was a woman who’d vanished into
thin air. There was a lot of back and forth, and then the name just came out
… he said, “Even if we catch her, Róża won’t tell us anything.” There
was a pause and then Mr Frenzel looked up, all innocence and light, and asked.’
“Would that be Mojeska, Sir?” Colonel Brack was beside himself … he went red
in the face with embarrassment and rage. He never forgave Mr Frenzel for that.’

But Mr Frenzel had
stumbled on to something. Throughout the following months, this so-called
unimportant paper showed itself as Colonel Brack’s obsession. It was the only
operation he cared about. And Mr Frenzel.’ sniggering and suspicious, knowing
it had to be personal, made the case his own priority He had right of access to
all the intelligence … and he went off and interviewed FELIKS before Colonel
Brack could think of stopping him. In the end, the Colonel had no choice but to
work with him.

‘Even so, he found a way
of side-stepping Mr Frenzel,’ said Irina, serving Anselm some salad. It was
crisp and fresh. ‘I only found out by chance and he asked me not to say
anything … and I never have done, until now’

A second phone appeared
on Colonel Brack’s desk: one day it wasn’t there; the next it was. She was
never to answer it. He’d obviously installed a secure line — evidently part of
some covert operation. In itself that wasn’t out of the ordinary, so Irina didn’t
give it a second thought, not until the day she dropped an earring. Irina’s office
was part of Colonel Brack’s, a small area separated by an arch without a door.
She was on her knees behind her desk patting the carpet when she heard Colonel
Brack enter his side of the room. Moments later a phone rang …