ADAM HALL - The Warsaw Document

A sound-rhythm was coming in, gradually dominating the background. It was to the left and there were two of them, two men walking in step, their heels metal-tipped.

'Ten zlotys.'

'Thank you.'

I picked up the bag.

'Wait a minute.' He tore the form at the perforation. 'You'll want your receipt'

Close now, walking in step.

'Thank you.'

I took the receipt.

'Enjoy your stay in Warsaw.'

'Yes I will.'

I didn't think there was time but it had to be tried and I went through the gate and one of them called out when I was on the fourth or fifth stair down so I swung the bag forward and back and let go and heard the shout break to a grunt as the bag struck. and then I dived with my weight taking me clear across the rest of the stairs and sending me on to the subway floor in a feet-first slide that was stopped by the wall with one shoulder taking the stock and my shoes finding a grip again and pitching me forward into a very fast run.

Police whistles.

The coat was a nuisance, flapping.

From the main hall I’d seen that the subway had five double staircases giving access to the eight platforms and that the one blind spot was made by a central waiting room shared by Platforms 4 and 5 but now that I was actually working the area it didn't seem safe to rely on the blind spot because at this stage I didn't know the observation vectors on this side of the train: the train gave me high-wall cover from only three of the platforms so that the blind-spot value of the waiting room was nil except for a five-yard stretch of the train itself.

I would have to stay below ground.

This had been allowed for: the Toaleta signs had been visible from the hall and their arrows pointed downwards. That was why I had turned to the right. There were two smaller signs just beyond the centre staircases and the washroom had a wide entrance with no doors, the line of handbasins facing it below mirrors There was a key on the outside of the cleaner's cupboard and I took it in with me and locked the door.

They were young or sketchily trained or too used to working in pairs because they both came into the subway instead of splitting up, one following me and the other staying on the platform to watch the subway exits. Or they thought I might be difficult. Their boots were ringing and making echoes along the glazed-ceramic walls so that it sounded as if more than two were there. Soon there would actually be more than two because of the whistles.

The cupboard was very small and I was standing on one end of a broomhead, gripping the handle to make sure it didn't tap the wall or the door if I shifted my position. Acrid fumes of carbolic and hypochlorite and the smell of a damp rag.

They were splitting up now: both had checked the staircases I'd passed just before the Toaleta signs but one of them had been quicker and he was here now, clattering about and kicking open the cubicle doors. Then the handle within a few inches of my sleeve was rattled but he didn't persist because he knew I couldn't have got through a locked door.

He went away, joining his partner, and the echoes grew faint. I unlocked the door and went to the line of handbasins, drinking from my cupped hands and splashing my face. Time was 12:53, eight minutes from when I'd made the break. It wasn't possible to know how long they'd keep up the search but the moment would come when the officer in charge would call it off, leaving a skeleton cadre manning key points while he extended the hunt city-wide.

I buttoned my coat: running would be easier and the image was no longer useful. There would be slight confusion when the reports went in because Foster's K.G.B. men were looking for someone with normal build and no luggage and the M.O. section had gone after a fat man with a bag he'd thrown at them but they'd check and find Karl Dollinger on the carbon copy of the receipt at the ticket barrier and that was the name they'd found in the register at the Hotel Kuznia, Room 54.

I tore up the receipt and dropped it into a pan and flushed it and waited and flushed it again because one of the pieces was still floating. Principle: don't carry items of identification even if they tally with your passport. As a mental exercise I could have worked out more than one situation involving a search of the person in circumstances where it would be acceptable to be Karl Dollinger but not to someone who'd passed through Warsaw Central between noon and one o'clock today.

The mirror showed the eyes still flickering a bit from. the reaction, otherwise fresh. The fur kepi had come off when I'd cleared the stairs and they would have found it and reported the new image. I'd have to get another one because on this day in this city there wouldn't be a single man bare-headed.

The ballcock was shutting off and there was quiet here. The train hadn't moved: I would have heard it rumbling. I would give them an hour, an hour and a half at the most; then I'd have to get clear because there was a lot of work to do before I called on Foster this evening.

A freight went through at 13:20 on the line directly overhead and the vibration set up noise from the handle of the metal bucket. Two other trains had come in and when the passengers had filled the subway I went into a cubicle and shut the door and waited until there was quiet again. The risk-pattern was formal: the cleaner must arrive and it could happen at any time and if he found the cupboard locked and the key gone from the outside of the door he would report it at once, knowing the police were looking for someone. Therefore I had to be in a cubicle, not the cupboard, when he came. But the second wave of the search must also arrive and similarly it could happen at any time and I would have to be in the cupboard with the door locked and the key on the inside, because they would search the cubicles.

But I couldn't distinguish between the footsteps of the cleaner and the footsteps of a single police patrol and a decision would have to be made: cubicle or cupboard. There was nothing to be done about this until the time came. The low-risk periods were when a train arrived and the passengers came through the subway: the police wouldn't make a search for one man with the field confused.

I had spent a fair amount of thought on Merrick. Some of it was constructive: at a convenient moment, before the normal life of the city was disturbed, by action in the streets, I would have to deal with him. Some of it was retrospective, the hindsight clarification of points that had foxed me before I'd known what he was; but despite the attitudes I'd learned and come to recognise as valid I couldn't think about him impersonally as just another component of the East-West Intelligence machine: his face kept coming in front of me, pale, nervy, vulnerable, his eyes incapable of hiding the misery that was breaking him down.

Double agents don't last long: the strain is killing. The exceptions are people like Sorge, Foster, Obermann, but the strain on them is no less killing: it's just that they're harder to kill. For a boy like Merrick to go double was simply an elaborate attempt at suicide.

It was irrelevant that he'd tried to take me with him.

Other thoughts: intensive attempt to work out how to get the maximum amount of information into Egerton's hands before the possibility of my non-survival. Foster wanted me alive but captive and the risk lay in the actions I'd have to take to remain free. Intensive thinking on this too. Intervals of free-ranging images, disjointed, unimportant.

Cannot locate references in mission report to actual train journey Bydgoszcz-Warsaw therefore question amount of 130 zlotys paid at Dworzec Warszawa Glowna 12:50 hours Tuesday 19. Silly bitch.

I heard them coming.

At first one man, and I listened for clues: the cleaner might be a woman, her steps lighter, but this was a man; the cleaner would be older, possibly, than an M.O. officer, thus might shuffle, could detect no shuffle. Then suddenly there were the others and within a minute the confines were sharp with echoes: they came from all directions, down the double staircases and from each end of the subway in a blanket operation designed to remove the risk inherent in a simple wave motion: a wave coverage moving from one end of the subway to the other could drive the quarry in front of it and allow him a chance of finding an exit.