James Benn - Rag and Bone

“They’re all frightened,” I said to Sidorov, once we were alone.

“You must understand, Billy,” he said, leaning back to light a cigarette. “To get a posting to Great Britain is no simple matter. It is an honor. It shows that the motherland trusts you to sample the delights of London, knowing you will return to her bosom. They are afraid that they will be recalled simply because they are associated with questionable activities.”

“If London in wartime, with the bombs and rationing, is delightful, I’d hate to spend a month in Moscow.”

“In the winter, I would agree. But in the spring, Moscow is beautiful. However, not every Russian is from Moscow. Many of these men are from the country, and their homes may still have dirt floors. Not the ones who came here through Party connections, but the ones who really earned it.”

“I thought the Communist Party ran everything in Russia.”

“Oh, it does. But people are people, and will manipulate the system. Egorov was one such man. He was posted here because his father is on the Central Committee. No other reason.”

“How about you? What did you do to get your posting? Didn’t you say you were brought up in an orphanage?”

“The state was my parent,” Sidorov said, smiling. His lips moved, but his teeth were clenched. “How much more influence could you ask for? Now, it is getting late. We have three men attending a meeting of the local rugby club, and a social gathering at the Lord Nelson Inn. Captain Vatutin and I must make the rounds.”

“We’re staying at the Lord Nelson,” I said, not mentioning Kaz. “Maybe I’ll join you for a drink later.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Sidorov said as he left.

I sat alone, thinking about what a strange guy he was. Mysterious. Likable. Hard. Maybe cruel. He was keeping something back, but that was his job. But was it a state secret or a Sidorov secret? Or were they one and the same? I closed my eyes and tried to bring his face into focus, to recall his reaction when I’d asked about a valuable shipment. It was only in my peripheral vision, but I had seen the whites of his eyes grow large for a second. He knew something he wasn’t telling, something that had caught him by surprise. It had wiped that smile off his face for a moment, the smile that wasn’t a smile, any more than the clenched teeth of a skull wore a friendly grin.

“Get back to London,” I said to Big Mike as we walked out of the tunnels and into the fading late afternoon light. “Ask Harding to find out if there’s anything special being delivered to the Soviet Embassy. Not food or booze, something more valuable. Press Cosgrove on it if you can. I think he knows what’s up.”

“Why don’t I call Sam? They got secure telephones here.”

“No. If there’s anything to this, no one’s going to talk about it on the phone. Sidorov’s eyes lit up when I asked about something valuable coming through. He denied it, but he reacted to something. Put that together with Egorov being murdered, Osip Nikolaevich Blotski almost making it to the workers’ paradise, and I’ll bet there’s something on its way to that embassy worth killing for.”

“OK. I’ll call you as soon as I get anything,” Big Mike said.

“Don’t call the castle. Leave a vague message for me at the inn and then get back down here. We’ve got MI5 and MI6 mixed up in all this, and they’re both probably listening in on the Russians, as well as each other.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Probably drink too much vodka.”

“Damn!” Big Mike said, taking a corner hard enough to almost give me a tumble. He didn’t like missing a fun evening, but I thought I was doing him a favor. He let me off in front of the Lord Nelson, threading his way around the rubble that had spilled out into the street. Crews of workmen were raising clouds of dust cleaning and stacking bricks, while others piled charred timbers and shattered furniture onto a flatbed truck. Some were putting away their tools and cleaning up at the end of their shifts. Only one fellow was idle, leaning against a doorway that had lost its door. He wore a gray raincoat and a muffler wrapped around his neck, not exactly the duds for cleaning collapsed brickwork. He took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it in my direction, then pushed off without a look back. Scotland Yard? MI5? Local oddball? I thought about following him, but if it was either of the first two, he’d lose me in no time, and if it was the third, there was no percentage. Instead, I tramped up the three flights of narrow stairs, hoping the Germans across the channel wouldn’t shell the town while we were up here.

I found Kaz in his room, sitting by the window, staring at the destroyed building across the street. Newspapers were strewn on the bed and all across the floor. The Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express. A bottle of vodka was at his elbow, one quarter empty, and no glass in sight. I didn’t think the war was over, so I knew it wasn’t a celebration.

“German guilt,” Kaz said, in a harsh, snorting laugh.

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at the headlines. The report of the Soviet Special Commission on the Katyn Forest Massacre. The press is swallowing their fabrications whole. Look, the Times itself, it does nothing but quote the Russian report! German guilt, indeed. The Germans are guilty of so much, why not this, too? It is only the facts that stand in the way of that argument, Billy. But those facts are too inconvenient to appear in print.” He took a swig from the bottle and slammed it down on the table.

I picked up the paper and read. The article was headed “Report of Russian Commission,” with the words “German Guilt” quoted beneath it. Kaz was right-it was nothing but one long recitation of the Russian findings. It stated that the local populace confirmed that the Poles were shot by the Germans in 1941, after they were captured while working as POWs on construction projects. The fact that none of the local populace was available to be interviewed was not mentioned, nor the evidence that none of those Polish officers was alive after 1940. The emigre Poles in London were blamed for sowing discord among the Allies.

“Emigres,” Kaz said. “It makes us sound like traitors who left Poland of our own accord. But they refer to the Poles in Russia as the Union of Polish Patriots in the USSR. Why are they, too, not called emigres in the Times?”

I didn’t answer, but not because I didn’t know. The fix was in. Poland was taking another knife in the back. I flipped through the pages and found more bad news. The Russians were refusing to discuss the Polish border with their allies, the London Poles included. They planned on taking eastern Poland for themselves, setting the new border at the Curzon Line, which was roughly the same border they’d established with the Nazis when they both invaded Poland.

“You see that the Polish Government in Exile has asked for talks with the Soviets, with the Americans and British as intermediaries,” Kaz said. “The Soviets rejected the idea. The response from our Western allies is silence. Look through all these newspapers. All you will see is stories of the Russian offensives and General Eisenhower’s arrival in London. It’s all there; any fool can see it. Poland is too unimportant to come between these grand allies.”

“You’re not unimportant,” I said to Kaz, sitting next to him. I took a swig from the bottle and let it burn down my throat.

“But I am right,” he said.

“Maybe we can talk to Ike?”

“Billy, you are a good friend. But the general takes his orders from politicians. And you know how much he wishes to minimize casualties. Why would he alienate over six million Soviet troops fighting the Nazis right now? Eastern Poland will be taken over by the Soviet Union, and what land we have left will be ruled by Communist puppets. Ironic, isn’t it? The war will end as it started. Poland betrayed and overrun.”