04 The Warsaw Document by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I took him into the buffet. Three men, four women, a kid with a red plastic guitar, his fur hat over his eyes. Steaming urns, a door to the street, telephone. I asked for czosnek soup.

‘What happened?’

He sat opposite me at the table, pulling his gloves off and blowing into his hands. ‘Someone tried to get asylum, just when I was leaving the Embassy.’ His eyes were in a stare behind the glasses, still bright with shock. ‘They followed him up the steps and tried to drag him away but he got free and came inside. There wasn’t anything I could do; none of us could help him. But he didn’t seem to believe it. We just had to - to kick him out.’ He fished the thing from his pocket and covered it as best he could with his cold long-fingered hands. ‘Excuse me.’

I gave him a minute because he wouldn’t even know what I was saying.

‘Listen, Merrick. They didn’t turn up.’

When I’d phoned him last evening on the way back from the Hotel Cracow it was to ask for three men, part of the original plan and still part of the new one. I still had to have them.

‘They didn’t?’ He frightened so easily.

‘I waited for another hour.’

‘They were properly briefed. I told them -‘

‘They’ve been picked up. That was the risk we took.’

‘I’ll recruit another three. The Ochota unit’s still -‘

‘No. There isn’t the time.’

Looking down at his hands he said numbly: ‘I did my best -‘

‘It wasn’t your fault.’ Because he was doing it again, with his numbed words and his raw schoolboy hands and his pathetic eagerness to please and his utter inability ever to manage it, uncovering something again that I thought had been long ago buried in me: a sense of compassion.

He looked up with a slow blink and stared at me as if I’d surprised him and maybe I had; I suppose it was the first civil thing I’d ever said to him.

‘What about the cypher-room staff, you got any leads?’

‘Not yet, but I -‘

‘Anything positive, anything negative? Come on.’

He drew back on his chair, tender as a sea-anemone. ‘I haven’t been given much time, and they’re making it very difficult. I think they’ve taken offence.’

Christ, the world was full of them.

Then he was pulling something else, out of his coat and I knew instinctively that he’d forgotten it until now and was hoping I wouldn’t realise.

‘This is from London.’

I didn’t open it straight away. ‘You told London to give you a hand?’

‘Well yes, you said I must.’

‘They given you any leads?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Because I’ve got to send signals and if you think the cypher-room’s monitoring your stuff then I’ll have to risk a direct line.’

Carefully he said ‘There’s nothing positive. That’s all I can tell you.’

I ripped the envelope.

It was fourth series with first-digit dupes. P.K.L. was instructed to furnish full interim report and itemise all info on opposition activities.

I read it twice.

It’s always useful and sometimes essential to control nervous reaction

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