Edge of Eternity (130 page)

The strikers said they preferred a monument.

The Director offered a commemorative plaque somewhere else in the shipyard.

They declined.

A worker said disgustedly into the microphone: ‘We’re haggling over dead heroes like beggars under a lamp post!’

The people outside applauded.

Another negotiator appealed directly to the crowd: Did they want a monument?

They roared their answer.

The Director retired to consult with his superiors.

There were now thousands of supporters outside the gates. People had been collecting donations of food for the strikers. Few Polish families could afford to give food away, but dozens of sacks of provisions were now passed through the gates for the men and women inside, and the strikers ate lunch.

The Director came back in the afternoon and announced that the highest authorities had approved the monument in principle.

Wałęsa declared that the strike would go on until all the demands had been met.

And then, almost as an afterthought, he added that the strikers also wanted to discuss the formation of free independent trade unions.

Now, Tania thought, this is getting
really
interesting.

*  *  *

On Friday after lunch, Cam Dewar drove to the old town of Warsaw.

He was followed there by Mario and Ollie.

Most of Warsaw had been flattened in the war. The town had been reconstructed with straight roads and sidewalks and modern buildings. Such a cityscape was not suitable for clandestine meetings and furtive exchanges. However, the planners had striven to recreate the original old town with its cobbled streets and little alleys and irregular houses. It was done a little too well: the straight edges and regular patterns and fresh colours looked too new, like a movie set. Nevertheless, it provided a more congenial environment for secret agents than did the rest of the city.

Cam parked and walked to a high town house. There on the first floor was the Warsaw equivalent of Silken Hands. Cam had been a regular customer until he met Lidka.

In the main room of the apartment, the girls were sitting around in lingerie, watching television and smoking. A voluptuous blonde stood up immediately, letting her robe fall open briefly to give him a glimpse of plump thighs and lacy underwear. ‘Hello, Crystek, we haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks!’

‘Hi, Pela.’ Cam went to the window and looked down at the street. As usual, Mario and Ollie were sitting outside the bar opposite, drinking beer and watching the girls go by in summer dresses. They would expect him to remain inside for at least half an hour, maybe an hour.

So far, so good.

Pela said: ‘What’s the matter, is your wife following you?’

The other girls laughed.

Cam took out his money and gave Pela the usual fee for a hand job. ‘I need a favour today,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I slip out the back door?’

‘Is your wife going to come up here and make a fuss?’

‘It’s not my wife,’ he said. ‘It’s my girlfriend’s husband. If he makes trouble, offer him a free blow job. I’ll pay.’

Pela shrugged.

Cam went down the back stairs and out through the yard, feeling good. He had shaken off his followers – and they did not realize it. He would be back in under an hour, and he would go out by the front door. They would never know he had left the apartment.

He hurried across the Old Town Square and along a street called Swiftojanska to the Cathedral of St John, a church devastated in the war and rebuilt since. The SB were no longer following him – but they might be following Stanislaw Pawlak.

The CIA station in Warsaw had held a long meeting to decide how to handle this contact. Every step had been planned.

Outside the church, Cam saw his boss, Keith Dorset. Today he had on a boxy grey suit from a Polish store, something he wore only for surveillance jobs. There was a cap stuffed into his jacket pocket. That was the all-clear. If he had been wearing the hat, it would have meant that the SB were inside the church and the rendezvous should be aborted.

Cam entered by the Gothic main door in the west front. The awesome architecture and the atmosphere of sanctity amplified his feeling of portent. He was about to make contact with an enemy informant. It was a crucial moment.

If this went well, he would be firmly set on his career as a CIA agent. If not, he would be back behind a desk in Langley in no time.

Cam was pretending that Staz would not meet anyone but him. The purpose of this lie was to make it difficult for Keith to send Cam home. Keith was making trouble about Lidka, even though investigation had revealed that she had no connection with the SB and was not even a member of the Communist Party. However, if Cam could succeed in recruiting a Polish colonel as a spy for the CIA, such a triumph would put him in a strong position to defy Keith.

He looked around, scanning for secret policemen, but all he saw were tourists, worshippers and priests.

He walked up the north aisle until he came to the chapel containing the famous sixteenth-century crucifix. The handsome Polish officer was standing in front of it, staring at the expression on the face of Christ. Cam stood beside him. They were alone.

Cam spoke in Russian. ‘This is the last time we’ll talk.’

Stanislaw replied in the same language. ‘Why?’

‘Too dangerous.’

‘For you?’

‘No, for you.’

‘How will we communicate? Through Tania?’

‘No. In fact, from now on, please don’t tell her anything about your relationship with me. Cut her out of the loop. You can still sleep with her, if that’s what you’re doing.’

‘Thank you,’ Stanislaw said ironically.

Cam ignored that. ‘What kind of car do you drive?’

‘A green 1975 Saab 99.’ He recited the licence plate number.

Cameron memorized it. ‘Where do you keep the car at night?’

‘On Jana Olbrachta Street, near the apartment block where I live.’

‘When you park it, leave the window open a crack. We will slip an envelope through.’

‘Dangerous. What if someone else reads the note?’

‘Don’t worry. The envelope will contain a typed advertisement from someone who offers to wash your car at a low price. But when you pass a warm iron over the paper, a message will be revealed. It will tell you when and where to meet us. If you’re not able to make the rendezvous, for any reason, it doesn’t matter: we’ll just send you another envelope.’

‘What will happen at these meetings?’

‘I’ll get to that.’ Cam had a list of things to say, agreed by his colleagues at the planning meeting, and he needed to get through them as fast as possible. ‘About your group of friends.’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t form a conspiracy.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ll be found out. Conspirators always are. You have to wait until the last minute.’

‘So what can we do?’

‘Two things. One, get ready. Make a list in your head of people you trust. Decide exactly how each one will turn against the Soviets if war breaks out. Make yourself known to dissident leaders such as Lech Wałȩsa, but give them no hint of what you’re up to. Reconnoitre the television station and plan how you’ll take it over. But keep everything in your head.’

‘And the second thing?’

‘Give us information.’ Cam tried not to show how tense he felt. This was the big ask, the one Stanislaw might refuse. ‘The order of battle of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact armies: numbers of men, tanks, aircraft—’

‘I know what is meant by order of battle.’

‘And their war plans in the event of a crisis.’

There was a long pause, then at last Stanislaw said: ‘I can get those.’

‘Good,’ Cam said with feeling.

‘And what do I get in return?’

‘I’m going to give you a phone number and a code word. You must use it only in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. When you call the number, you will be answered by a senior commander in the Pentagon who speaks Polish. He will treat you as the representative of the Polish resistance to the Soviet invasion. You will be, for all practical purposes, the leader of free Poland.’

Stanislaw nodded thoughtfully, but Cam could tell he was attracted by the offer. After a few moments he said: ‘If I agree to this, I will be placing my life in your hands.’

‘You already have,’ said Cam.

*  *  *

The Gdansk Shipyard strikers were careful to keep the international media fully briefed on their activities. Ironically, this was the best way to communicate with the Polish people. The Polish media were censored, but Western newspaper reports were picked up by the American-funded Radio Free Europe and broadcast right back into Poland. It was the main way Poles learned the truth about what was happening in their country.

Lili Franck followed events in Poland on the West German television news, which everyone in East Berlin could watch if they angled their aerials the right way.

The strike spread, to Lili’s delight, despite all the government’s efforts. The Gdynia Shipyard came out, and public transport workers struck in sympathy. They formed an Interfactory Strike Committee, MKS, with its headquarters in the Lenin Shipyard. Its number one demand was the right to form free trade unions.

Like many others in East Germany, the Franck family discussed all this avidly, sitting in the upstairs drawing room of the town house in Berlin-Mitte, in front of their Franck television set. A rent was showing in the Iron Curtain, and they speculated eagerly about what it might lead to. If Poles could rebel, perhaps Germans could too.

The Polish government tried to negotiate factory by factory, offering generous raises to strikers who split from MKS and settled. The tactic failed.

Within a week, three hundred striking enterprises had joined the MKS.

The tottering Polish economy could not stand many days of this. The government at last accepted reality. The deputy prime minister was sent to Gdansk.

A week later, a deal was agreed. The strikers were given the right to form free trade unions. It was a triumph that astonished the world.

If the Poles could win freedom, would the Germans be next?

*  *  *

Keith said to Cam: ‘You’re still seeing that Polish girl.’

Cam said nothing. Of course he was still seeing her. He was as happy as a kid in a candy store. Lidka was eager to have sex with him whenever he wanted it. Until now, few girls had wanted to have sex with him at all. ‘Do you like this?’ she would say as she caressed him; and if he admitted he did, she would say: ‘But do you like it a little bit, do you like it a lot, or do you like it so much you want to die?’

Keith said: ‘I’ve told you that your request has been denied.’

‘But you haven’t said why.’

Keith looked angry. ‘I’ve made a decision.’

‘But is it the right decision?’

‘Are you challenging my authority?’

‘No, you’re challenging my girlfriend.’

Keith became angrier. ‘You think you have me over a barrel because Stanislaw won’t speak to anyone else.’

That was exactly what Cam thought, but he denied it. ‘It has nothing to do with Staz. I’m not willing to give her up for no reason.’

‘I may have to fire you.’

‘I still won’t give her up. In fact –’ Cam hesitated. The words that came into his mind were not what he had planned. But he said them anyway. ‘In fact, I’m hoping to marry her.’

Keith changed his tone. ‘Cam,’ he said, ‘she may not be an agent of the SB, but she could still have an ulterior motive for sleeping with you.’

Cam bristled. ‘If it’s nothing to do with intelligence, it’s nothing to do with you.’

Keith persisted, speaking gently, as if trying not to hurt Cam’s feelings. ‘A lot of Polish girls would like to go to America, you know that.’

Cam did know that. The thought had occurred to him long ago. He felt embarrassed and humiliated that Keith should say it. He kept his face wooden. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘Forgive me for saying it, but she could be deceiving you for that reason,’ Keith said. ‘Have you considered that possibility?’

‘Yes, I’ve considered it,’ said Cam. ‘And I don’t care.’

*  *  *

In Moscow, the big question was whether to invade Poland.

The day before the Politburo debate, Dimka and Natalya clashed with Yevgeny Filipov at a preparatory meeting in the Nina Onilova Room. Filipov said: ‘Our Polish comrades require military assistance urgently, to resist the attacks of traitors in the employ of the capitalist-imperialist powers.’

Natalya said: ‘You want an invasion, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956.’

Filipov did not deny it. ‘The Soviet Union has the right to invade any country when the interests of Communism are under threat. That’s the Brezhnev Doctrine.’

Dimka said: ‘I’m against military action.’

‘There’s a surprise,’ said Filipov sarcastically.

Dimka ignored that. ‘In both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the counter-revolution was led by revisionist elements within the Communist Party ruling cadres,’ he said. ‘It was therefore possible to remove them, like chopping the head off a chicken. They had little popular support.’

‘Why should this crisis be different?’

‘Because in Poland the counter-revolutionaries are working-class leaders with working-class backing. Lech Wałȩsa is an electrician. Anna Walentynowicz is a crane driver. And hundreds of factories are on strike. We’re dealing with a mass movement.’

‘We have to crush it all the same. Are you seriously suggesting that we abandon Polish Communism?’

‘There’s another problem,’ Natalya put in. ‘Money. Back in 1968, the Soviet bloc did not owe billions of dollars in foreign debt. Today we are totally dependent on loans from the West. You heard what President Carter said in Warsaw. Credit from the West is linked to human rights.’

‘So . . . ?’

‘If we send the tanks into Poland, they will withdraw our line of credit. So, Comrade Filipov, your invasion will ruin the economy of the entire Soviet bloc.’

There was a silence in the room.

Dimka said: ‘Does anyone have any other suggestions?’