Antanas Sileika - Underground

A small door led out to the street, with a canal on the other side of the road. Lukas could walk around all he wanted, but the city was a confusing arrangement of bridges and islands, a metropolis that stymied him. Twice he had become lost for well over an hour, wandering deep into the suburbs. He could not make himself understood to the locals when he asked for directions. He asked Lozorius to write down the warehouse address, and he tried showing this paper to pedestrians whenever he was lost, but he could never understand their explanations. Finally he lost the scrap of paper and reconciled himself to going astray each time he went out.

The city was old and unbombed, a novelty of preservation. Compared to Gdynia it was a museum, with charming old parks and cafés, picturesque in a storybook way. But it was also impenetrable. The people who walked the streets did not seem to have any problems, or at least no problems that showed on their faces. Lukas stared at them intently, as intently as he dared, but he could not see through their strangeness. On the fifth day he was caught staring at a young mother and she looked back at him angrily in a manner that made him understand he was the strange one, not they.

He had no money. There was no lack of food or drink back at the warehouse, and he found a new suit of clothes and a fresh pair of shoes laid out for him one day on his bed when he returned from a walk. Yet it felt odd to be unable to buy the simplest things, a coffee or a newspaper. Was he being sent a message? The shoes and suit fit perfectly, which was both comforting and a little disturbing.

On the eighth day he returned to find a man with steel-rimmed glasses and swept-back hair sitting at his table and smoking a cigarette. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties but could have been older. The man rose as soon as Lukas came in and extended his hand and addressed him in Lithuanian.

“Hello. My name is Zoly. Just my nickname, really, short for Pranas Zolynas. I hope I can call you by your first name?”

“Who are you?”

“A friend of Lozorius. Yours too, I hope, in the long run. We’re on the same side. I worked with the Lithuanian embassy here before the war, and the Swedes took me in after it was all over.”

“That was kind of them.”

“In a way, yes, but the Swedes don’t waste their kindness. Let’s not forget, the Swedes immediately recognized the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union and gave our embassy to the Reds. That wasn’t so kind. They put me out of a job in the first place. Since that time I’ve tried to be useful to the Swedes in small ways, and they are useful to me in return.”

“Where’s Lozorius?”

“Not in Sweden at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“What? He didn’t tell me he was going anywhere.” Lukas felt abandoned.

“He does that all the time. One is always happy to see Lozorius, but one should never expect him to be around for long. Like the Holy Spirit, he moves in mysterious ways.”

Zoly smiled and Lukas realized he had made a joke. Lukas was unaccustomed to this kind of playful talk except in the presence of women.

“But Lozorius gave me the reports you wrote, and I have to say I’m very impressed. The Swedes are interested. The West needs shaking up and the news of all those partisans still fighting almost three years after the war is just the thing.”

“Four years.”

“For you, yes, but here they don’t count the war as ending until May of 1945. If the Red Army killed you before that time, you were a German collaborator. What did you say you had—forty thousand partisans?”

“I said thirty thousand, and it was an estimate, and I don’t possess them personally.”

“Even if you’re only half right, that’s inspiring.”

“What’s going on? Why am I being held here?”

“Nobody expected you, and the Swedes are trying to figure out just what kind of fish Lozorius reeled in. Your reports are being translated into Swedish. Don’t worry, you’re on the verge of being figured out. In the meantime, I’m here to help you.”

“How?”

“In any way you like. Do you want to see a ballet? Go out for a few drinks and some female company?”

The offer sounded better than he cared to admit, but he didn’t dare to admit it, especially to himself.

“I’m on a mission to the West, not a pleasure trip.”

“Very serious, I see. Commendable. But you say ‘the West’ as if it were some kind of monolith. There is no such thing. There are the Swedes, the French, the English and the Americans, and they often don’t agree on matters among themselves.”

“So who should I be speaking to?”

“Well, the Swedes first, obviously, since that’s where you are.”

“And what’s taking them so long?”

“Long? You call this long? You haven’t been around government very much, my boy. They’re moving with lightning speed. With any luck you’ll be summoned sometime soon.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t know. Ask me something else.”

Lukas had many questions. Were there any émigrés in Sweden that Lukas might know, people he could talk to? Some, it turned out, but Lukas should not mix with them yet. How big was Lozorius’s information bureau and how tightly was it connected to the Swedes? By the look of Zoly, very tightly indeed. What steps should he take to make his case to the Swedes? Follow Zoly’s instructions and wait.

But it was hard to wait. Where would he make the most impact? These were the sorts of questions one asked of people one trusted, and while Lukas did not distrust Lozorius or Zoly, he did not wholly have faith in them either. Lukas missed, for a moment, the clarity of life in the underground back home, where a friend was a friend and an enemy was an enemy.

Zoly offered him a cigarette, which he turned down, but he did ask for a map of Stockholm, which Zoly did not have. Instead, Zoly gave him a detailed verbal description of the city. It did not help. When Lukas went out for a walk that afternoon, he became lost again. As he wandered, he looked to see if the men who must be following him could be identified on the street, but they knew their craft too well. Lukas could not find a recognizable face, and wandered about for an hour and a half before he found his way back home to the warehouse.

After two more days, Zoly came in one morning and asked if Lukas would mind meeting someone from “very high up” for lunch.

“Very high up where?” Lukas asked.

“Among the Swedes, where else?”

“What part of the Swedish government?”

“He’s the deputy director of intelligence, and he’d like to lunch with you.”

“Here?”

“No, at his apartment. It’s a great honour.”

Oskar Ramel lived in a flat on the island suburb of Lidingo, a few minutes from Stockholm’s city centre. The three-storey building was twenties modernist, all the space calculated squarely and rationally, without waste. Ramel’s flat was in the southwest corner on the second floor with a view over the water. The sky was low and overcast, but there were large windows on both the south and west walls and the place was filled with cool winter light.

Ramel had been a commodore in the Swedish navy, an attaché in Buenos Aires before the war. He was tall and straight of back, middle-aged and elegant. He spoke several languages, and they chose English at first to test Lukas’s command, and then German in deference to Zoly, who was clearly going to sit through the meeting with them. One end of the dining room table was set with open-faced meat and fish sandwiches, and Ramel mixed up aquavit cocktails for them while recounting his experiences in Argentina during the war.

Having eaten a couple of sandwiches, Ramel brushed the crumbs off his fingers with a napkin and got down to business. “I’ve read your reports and I’m intrigued. Are you really the one who shot all those Reds during the so-called engagement party?”