04 The Warsaw Document by The Warsaw Document (epub)

Author:The Warsaw Document (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

12 : TRAP

The few people in the street wore black and bells tolled, hurrying them across the rutted snow to where a spire poked at the low grey sky. The wind had died in the night, leaving calm. I walked south-east towards the river.

I’d given him some money.

‘Let her have my room. Her papers are in order and you can put her name in the register. Give her what’s left of this when she leaves.’ She wouldn’t find work again until there was an amnesty.

Three patrols in two miles but they didn’t stop me.

Karl Dollinger journalist born Stuttgart 1929. The immigration franking tallied with my actual arrival on L.O.T. 504 and they’d put in a slip showing booking-confirmation West Berlin January 6. Reason for visit to cover talks for Der Urheber, left-wing weekly. Various letters and memos, editorial recaps, Telex facilities, press-club card, so forth. nothing to fault

Security was important now but that wasn’t why I was switching base: if I’d needed to stay on at the Alzacki I wouldn’t have taken her there. A new cover required a new address and the hotel I wanted now was the big state-owned Kuznia, nearly opposite the Commissariat in the Praga district. That was where they’d been going yesterday morning: from the distance I’d seen the security van keep up speed towards the next traffic lights but the big black Moskwicz had pulled in again soon after dropping me, off. They’d gone into the building on the south side, Foster and the man from Irkutsk. I hadn’t gone back because they could have slapped a tag on me but the map in the City Library showed what the building was. It might not be their base but if it wasn’t I’d have to start my search from there.

I’d known yesterday what I’d got to do but I suppose I’d baulked it because it wasn’t a thing you could do in a hurry and I’d have to hurry: we stood three days from Sroda and Sroda was the deadline for Czyn, for the opposition and for me. I knew now what Egerton wanted and his tacit signal was clear: define, infiltrate and destroy. And I couldn’t do it by standing in the way of the programme they were running: I’d have to get inside and blow it up from there.

A hundred and fifty rooms, fifty with private bath and outside telephone connection via the desk. This one had two windows facing the Commissariat at something like thirty-five degrees oblique, good enough and close enough to observe without binoculars. There was a spillover from the other big hotels nearer the hall where the talks were going to be held but I managed to get a second-floor single and the timing estimate from the room to the street was fifteen seconds at a pace that wouldn’t look hurried.

For three hours I drew blank. Some of the Commissariat staff showed up before noon and lights were switched on, so I began filling in the front-elevation sketch I’d made: records, general admin.

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