The Warsaw Sisters by Amanda Barratt

Author:Amanda Barratt [Barratt, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction;World War;1939–1945—Poland—Fiction;Sisters—Fiction;Historical fiction;Novels;FIC042030;FIC014050;FIC044000
Published: 2023-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

20

HELENA

AUGUST 2, 1943

Don’t ask, don’t repeat.

The first maxim of a liaison girl for the Armia Krajowa.

If you don’t ask, you won’t be told. What you aren’t told, you can’t repeat to a Gestapo officer on the other side of a desk at Szucha 25. You quickly grew used to not asking—at least, you did after an innocent remark to a superior earned you a sharp look and even sharper words about following orders and the role of a liaison, the risk of even the simplest information and what happened at Szucha Avenue. Just like you grew used to not knowing, to being a single cog in a machinery of undisclosed breadth.

And the second maxim of a liaison?

Accustom yourself to walking.

Because you will be doing it every day, for hours. Certainly you can take a tram, but it’s more difficult to escape a łapanka on a tram than on foot, and trams are often subject to searches by the police and you will be carrying things, a great deal of them, that must under no circumstances be discovered.

I supposed the third maxim of a liaison must be: Become skilled in concealing and transporting.

There were several ways this could be done. Some were simple. A handbag or shopping bag could become a receptacle for all sorts of papers or small parcels. Who would guess a young woman would be carrying anything less innocuous than a handkerchief? Hiding places could be designed within these items: a false bottom in a shopping bag, a hidden compartment in the lining of a handbag. We dealt in weapons too, the risk of their transportation perhaps greater than the rest, though a liaison soon learned the fruitlessness of tallying danger. A pistol could be wrapped like a parcel from a shop, ammunition or explosives bound in grease paper to resemble foodstuffs. If a policeman looked inside a woman’s basket and noticed such a package, he’d assume she’d just come from the butcher’s or the market. The worst he’d suspect her of was smuggling.

Other times we carried the material on our person. Tiny pockets stitched into a brassiere proved excellent for concealing bits of cigarette paper on which messages had been written. We had only to ask our male colleagues to turn their backs before we could deliver whatever we’d brought. One morning, I came into the bedroom and found Jasia binding strips of cloth around her torso. At first I’d been alarmed, thinking she’d been injured, but she’d cheerfully shown me the packets of banknotes and documents secured inside the binding. I helped her finish wrapping herself like a mummy, making certain not a single bulge could be detected, before she put on a loose-fitting dress and coat and set off on the day’s deliveries.

I’d grown up in Warsaw, knew its thoroughfares and bystreets, the districts encompassing its sprawling patchwork, but it could be said I didn’t truly know the city of my birth until I became a liaison. We needed to learn its streets thoroughly, carry

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