ADAM HALL - The Warsaw Document

Two station officials on the far side of the barriers, an M.O. patrol and a man in plain clothes: I stared at them and turned away and stood with my back to them, looking to the left and to the right, swinging again on my heel and pacing to the north end of the platform.

'And what patrols are there beyond this point?'

'You would have to ask my Captain?'

'There should be patrols out there. Or is it that you're afraid of the cold?'

The Muscovite elite is not afraid of the cold and I moved past them and down the slope to the drifts that in the last hour had covered the tarred pebbles. The rails made dark skeins through the snow. I came back.

'You have another hour here. Don't relax your vigilance. Pay particular attention when a train comes in.'

I paced away from them, slowly now, turning my head to demonstrate that the demands of efficient observation are unremitting: one must never be still, one must look here, look there, one's eyes must be everywhere. I stopped halfway to the barriers and stood sideways on, my head still turning, my gaze sweeping along the flank areas.

Thirst was increasing because the combat had dehydrated the system and there hadn't been time for more than a few gulps in the washroom. Blood from burst capillaries was filling the lacerated tissue along the forearms and the muscles were still half numbed. I didn't know if there was facial bruising because I hadn't looked at the mirror but I would need to check on that.

Movement left.

I looked along the platform and saw someone on this side of the barriers, a man in plain clothes, one of the Policia Ubespieczenia patrols I'd stared at just now when I'd gone down there. He stood facing towards me. He would want to know who I was or he believed I was Rashidov in the brown leather coat but wanted to know what I was doing here when recently I'd been in a different area, so I signalled him, a brief movement of my hand, yes I am Rashidov, and turned away without seeing if he acknowledged.

The pulse, quickening, made the throbbing worse in my head. Instant availability of adrenalin but I had no use for it, I couldn't run. In ten seconds I turned my back to him, finding something under. the sole of my shoe and fretting at it, chewing gum, rubbing my shoe across the edge of the platform to scrape it away, walking back towards the north end of the platform, deep breaths, deep regular breathing, prana the answer to most ills, the answer to panic.

The two M.O. patrols were watching me. They had been standing, the whole time, with their backs to the snow. They would have seen the man down there by the barriers. When I was within a dozen feet of them I turned again and saw he was still there, standing quite still, facing in this direction.

I signalled again, more emphatically, jabbing a finger towards one of the flank exits. He turned his head but could see nothing of interest, and looked back at me, not making any sign. I shrugged, he didn't understand, he was a fool.

They declined to look at me when I turned and walked slowly past them. They looked pointedly away from me, in detestation.

The. slope was gentle under my feet and I walked as far as the end, where the drifts had begun covering the tarred pebbles. The snow whirled from the open sky mesmerically, some of the flakes touching my face as I lifted it.

I would hear them if they moved and they hadn't moved.

Then I walked on through the deeper drifts, slowly at first and then making my way more quickly over the rough terrain when I knew that the screen had thickened behind me and I was obliterated. It was malowniczy, the snow in Warsaw, very picturesque, did I not find it so?

It smelt of mothballs.

From where I stood I could see the door and I didn't look away from it.

'When?'

'In an hour.'

'All right.'

'Do it by phone. I don't want you to go out.'

She said it might be dangerous to use the phone.

'Less dangerous than going into the streets.'

I felt surprised that it worried me so much but I suppose it was because the whole thing was entering its final stages and it'd be a shame if they caught her as late as this. Once they'd thrown her into a train she'd be lost for years among the camps but if she stayed in the city until after Sroda she'd have a chance: a general amnesty was certain because of the talks, as witness to the bountiful mercy of the Mother State.

It was black astrakhan, a hat to match and a cheap wristwatch, seventy zlotys plus the brown leather one plus the hat, the last of Piotr Rashidov hanging flat on a hook in the corner with the macs and duffle-jackets near the door where cooking smells came. Because when they found him they'd know who it was who'd walked out into the snow.

'Don't leave where you are. Give me your word.'

'Very well.'

'You can tell when a line's bugged?'

'Yes.'

'Then there's no risk.'

Before I hung up she asked if she were going to see me again and I said yes and this time it wasn't a lie.

The rendezvous was for 16:30 a hundred yards north of the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge along the west bank, three Czyn people, if possible trained in unarmed combat. This time I'd get them because this time I wasn't asking Merrick.

But they didn't turn up.

I waited thirty minutes and by that time my scalp was creeping because it had been bloody Merrick who'd exposed every one of my moves and I hadn't known it and now I knew it and he couldn't do it any more. Neither he nor Foster could possibly know the moves I was making now: every patrol of every branch of the civil and secret police was in the hunt and if they found me they'd slam me straight into a cell. There was no chance that Foster was giving me rope again, letting me run.

And the line hadn't been bugged: when you make an rdv in a city where there's a dragnet out you take damned good care of that.

At 17:15 I went into the bar at the corner of Mostowa and got through again.

'They weren't there.'

'Are you sure?'

I was listening to her voice, the tone of her voice, because I was right in the middle of a red sector and pushing my luck and it was just about as safe as taking the pin out and hoping it wouldn't go off.

'Quite sure.'

'I don't know what happened'

Her tone was quiet with worry.

'They got picked up.'

She said: 'It must be that.'

A black Moskwicz was pulling up outside, with big M.O. letters on it. I watched it through the window.

'Get me three more.'

The receiver was beginning to feel slippery. 'Yes.'

'Tell them to take care.'

The hours were running towards midnight and anyone could be picked up, they were busting whole units.

'I'll tell them.'

No one was getting out. There were four of them and they sat with their heads turned, watching the bar.

'In half an hour. The same place.'

I trusted her because it was logical. They would have caught me there, otherwise, at 16:30 on the west bank.

'All right.'

The Moskwicz was moving off and I remembered there were traffic lights at the corner. They'd stopped for the lights. I'd forgotten they were there. I mustn't forget things.

'Will it be long enough? Half an hour?'

The coffee machine roared and I lost what she said.

'What was that?'

'I will do all I can. Remember that, please.'

The thought came after I'd paid for the call. You grow sensitive at this stage of a mission. She'd said it with slow emphasis and it could have carried the undertone of a classic alert-phrase: all I can, am under duress. Stomach-think. Discount. This time they should be there.

They didn't come.

An hour ago the wind from the north had changed and it had stopped snowing. Beyond the balustrade the Vistula was a desert of white, untouched by the soot that would later darken it. Along the Wybrzeze Gdanskie the traffic was still running, its sound deadened by the new fall. Ashen light flowed from the lamps above my head, triplicating my shadow.