Antanas Sileika - Underground

She took a piece of paper from her handbag and wrote out the address. Lukas looked at it carefully and made sure he understood it before folding the paper and putting it in his wallet beside his passport. He had barely finished doing that when she stood up on her toes and kissed him quickly, once on each cheek, in the French manner. He did not quite know how to respond, so he squeezed her hands and turned to go to the director’s office.

Zoly was waiting for him, smoking a cigarette while sitting alone at a table. He smiled warmly, set the cigarette in the ashtray and rose to shake Lukas’s hand.

“Congratulations,” said Zoly. “Everyone loves what you’re doing and the money to the émigré associations has been pouring in since you started these talks. And the spring seems right upon you here. Back in Stockholm, it’s still the dead of winter.”

“When did you get in?”

“Just now.”

“Staying long?”

“Not really. A very short time, actually. It all depends on you. Do you feel like going for a walk?”

“I just got back from one. I’ve been on the road for a couple of hours.”

“It makes me a bit nervous to talk here. Maybe we could walk in the street.”

Lukas went out with him, back into the town he had just passed through. He looked around for Monika but saw no sign of her.

“So what’s this all about?” he asked.

“Lozorius is going back into Lithuania and he wants to know if you’ll go with him.”

“When?”

“In two weeks. You’d need to come back with me in the car right now. There’s a little training you’ll need first.”

“This is all so sudden.”

“Yes, it is, but you’ve done everything you were supposed to, haven’t you? The letter to the Pope will do its work, or not, who knows, but you can’t speed that sort of thing along. Actually, the Vatican is still wondering what to do about Martin Luther, so I don’t think there’s any chance an answer will come soon.”

“What kind of support does Lozorius have?”

“What do you mean by support? Technical support? He’ll get transportation and radios and ciphers and all that sort of thing.”

“I meant long-term support. What are the British promising to give the partisans?”

“They make no promises, Lukas. They ask for the partisans to do a few things for them. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Lozorius would be in charge of the operation. He wanted me to tell you that unless you agreed to that, he would need to withdraw the offer to bring you along.”

“He can be in charge until we get into the country, but I have a certain position there. I report to my superior officer, Flint.”

“What’s his real name?”

“That’s an odd question, Zoly. Why would you want to know that?”

“Because Lozorius or some of the others might know him.”

“Others? What others?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“This is beginning to sound stranger and stranger. How soon would I have to go?”

“Immediately.”

“Then I think my answer will have to be no.”

They spoke briefly of other things as they walked. Lukas waited for Zoly to insist, but he did not do that. They returned to the camp so Lukas could write a letter to Flint to be taken in by Lozorius.

Zoly was pacing out in the hall, and Lukas found it hard to concentrate on the letter he was writing. There was so much to say in a very short time. Also, he needed to provide a general picture of the situation in the West without giving away any secrets. He needed to warn Flint that Lozorius was acting on his own, without the support of the émigré government and in the pocket of the British. He had to write everything in a manner that would take into account the danger of Lozorius’s being killed or the letter falling into the wrong hands.

And all of this he needed to do while wondering why Zoly had framed the offer in a way that forced Lukas to turn it down.

PARIS

MAY 1948

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, the plane trees along the Seine had just burst into full leaf, their green still fresh and vivid because the dust of the city had not yet descended on them. On a quiet Sunday such as this, Lukas felt as if he might be in the countryside rather than the city. Flashes of light came through the leaves, reflections from the barges that sailed silently by on the river.

Having paused in the delivery of his speech to a school auditorium full of émigrés, Lukas now looked back at the men and women before him. He had spoken in public often enough and he knew he held the audience in thrall with his stories of the resistance against murderous odds back home.

He had been a fighter transformed into an emissary, and now he had become a storyteller, a role he did not like to think about too much. He knew what he did was important, but it was so much less vital, somehow, than what he had been doing before. Yet what he did now was attractive too, holding the attention of a crowd, even though they were far more varied than the DP camp inhabitants of Germany.

There were émigrés who had come here before the war, sympathizers of the Front Populaire who had deplored the excesses of the Reds in Lithuania but could not quite bring themselves to denounce them. There were also French Foreign Legionnaires on leave from Indochina, young men who had wagered their lives for a few more years of fighting in the hope of gaining French citizenship. Many young women had joined convents in France before the war, and so there were at least thirty women in nuns’ habits. The remnants of the pre-war diplomatic corps were there too, including Monika’s uncle, a distinguished gentleman with close-cropped white hair and a ramrod-straight back, a man who had taken a special interest in Lukas during the reception beforehand. There were labourers from the Renault plant and students, adventurers down on their luck and former bureaucrats who now worked as doormen. They were the flotsam of the war, human wreckage cast up upon this shore, yet so much luckier than the ones they left behind. They did not get along with one another all that well in spite of their shared history, but they were kind to him and generous within their means.

After the talk was over, Lukas lunched with them at long tables in the basement of the school. He was peppered by questions all through the meal, often from halfway across the room. Once the lunch began to wind down, a few of the legionnaires took him away over the protestations of the others and marched him up the street for a few beers on the rue St-Antoine, just west of the Bastille.

On his way out with them, he looked at Monika, who had been helping to serve the meal and was now gathering up dishes. She had an apron over her Sunday blouse—there had been an early Mass before his talk—and wore a pale charcoal skirt that was very tight at the hips and went to mid-calf. He could not stop looking at her. She nodded understandingly when she saw him with the legionnaires, signalling that he should meet her back by the kitchen door in an hour.

Except that it was almost impossible to get away, as military courtesy dictated that a man should drink as long as drink was being offered. Lukas was honoured among the legionnaires for his experience in battle; they had seen a few battles of their own. They suggested he watch out for the Reds among the Paris Lithuanians, and if any of them should prove to be trouble, Lukas could expect a few legionnaires with machine pistols to help him out. All he had to do was say the word.

It was good to drink with these men, who were straightforward in the manner of the partisans back home. The soldiers discussed the virtues of their way of life in the foreign legion, an option, they suggested, for someone with his experience, someone who might be able to lead men if he polished up his French. There were careers to be made in French Indochina or Algeria if one could avoid getting killed.