Edge of Eternity (107 page)

Odo said: “I'm Odo, Karolin's husband. I'm very glad to meet you at last.”

Something flashed across Walli's face. It was gone in a split second, but Lili knew that Walli had seen and understood something about Odo that had shocked him, and had then covered up his shock instantly. The two men shook hands amiably.

Karolin said: “And this is Alice.”

“Alice?” said Walli. He looked dazedly at the tall sixteen-year-old girl with long fair hair draping her face like curtains. “I wrote a song about you,” he said. “When you were little.”

“I know,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

Odo said: “Alice knows her history. We told her everything, as soon as she was old enough to understand.”

Lili wondered whether Walli heard the note of righteousness in Odo's voice. Or was she being oversensitive?

Walli said to Alice: “I love you, but Odo raised you. I'll never forget that, and I'm sure you won't either.”

For a minute he choked up. Then he regained control and said: “Everybody, let's sit down and eat. This is a happy day.” Lili realized that Walli had probably paid for everything.

They all sat around the table. For a few moments they were like strangers, feeling awkward, trying to think of something to say. Then several people spoke at once, all asking Walli questions. Everyone laughed. “One at a time!” Walli said, and they all relaxed.

Walli told them he had a penthouse in Hamburg. He was not married, though he had a girlfriend. About every eighteen months or two years he went to California, moved into Dave Williams's farmhouse for four months, and made a new album with Plum Nellie. “I'm an addict,” he said. “But I've been clean for seven years, eight come September. When I do a gig with the band, I have a guard outside my dressing room to search people for drugs.” He shrugged. “It seems extreme, I know, but there it is.”

Walli had questions, too, especially for Alice. While she was answering them, Lili looked around the table. This was her family: her parents, her sister, her brother, her niece, and her oldest friend and singing partner. How lucky she was to have them all together in the same room, eating and talking and drinking wine.

The thought occurred to her that some families did this every week, and took it for granted.

Karolin was sitting next to Walli, and Lili watched them together. They were having a good time. They still made one another laugh, she noticed. If things had been different—if the Berlin Wall had fallen—might their romance have been rekindled? They were still young: Walli was thirty-three, Karolin thirty-five. Lili pushed the thought away: it was an idle speculation, a foolish fantasy.

Walli retold the story of his escape from Berlin for Alice's benefit. When he got to the part where he sat all night waiting for Karolin, who did not show up, she interrupted him. “I was frightened,” she said. “Frightened for myself, and for the baby inside me.”

“I don't blame you,” Walli said. “You did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. The only wrong was the Wall.”

He described how he had driven through the checkpoint, busting the barrier. “I'll never forget that man I killed,” he said.

Carla said: “It wasn't your fault—he was shooting at you!”

“I know,” Walli said, and Lili knew from his tone of voice that at last he was at peace about this. “I feel sorry, but I don't feel guilty. I wasn't wrong to escape; he wasn't wrong to shoot at me.”

“Like you said,” Lili put in, “the only wrong is the Wall.”

C
am Dewar's boss, Keith Dorset, was a podgy man with sandy hair. Like a lot of CIA men, he dressed badly. Today he wore a brown tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, a white shirt with brown pencil stripes, and a dull green tie. Seeing him walking down the street, the eye would slide over him while the brain dismissed him as a person of no account. Perhaps this was the effect he sought, Cameron thought. Or perhaps he just had bad taste.

“About your girlfriend, Lidka,” Keith said, sitting behind a large desk in the American embassy.

Cam was pretty sure Lidka was free of any sinister associations, but he looked forward to having this confirmed.

Keith said: “Your request is denied.”

Cam was astonished. “What are you talking about?”

“Your request is denied. Which of those four words are you having trouble understanding?”

CIA men sometimes behaved as if they were in the army, and able to bark orders at everyone below them in rank. But Cam was not that easily intimidated. He had worked at the White House. “Denied for what reason?” he said.

“I don't have to give reasons.”

At the age of thirty-four, Cam had his first real girlfriend. After twenty years of rejection he was sleeping with a woman who seemed to want nothing but to make him happy. Panic at the prospect of losing her made him foolhardy. “You don't
have
to be an asshole, either,” he snapped.

“Don't you dare speak to me like that. One more smart-ass remark and you're on a plane home.”

Cam did not want to be sent home. He backed off. “I apologize. But I'd still like to know the reasons for your denial, if I may.”

“You have what we call ‘close and continuing contact' with her, don't you?”

“Of course. I told you that myself. Why is it a problem?”

“Statistics. Most of the traitors we catch spying against the United States turn out to have relatives or close friends who are foreigners.”

Cam had suspected something like this. “I'm not willing to give her up for statistical reasons. Do you have anything specific against her?”

“What makes you think you have the right to cross-examine me?”

“I'll take that as a no.”

“I warned you about wisecracks.”

They were interrupted by another agent, Tony Savino, who approached with a sheet of paper in his hand. “I'm just looking at the acceptance list for this morning's press conference,” he said. “Tanya Dvorkin is coming for TASS.” He looked at Cam. “She's the woman who spoke to you at the Egyptian embassy, isn't she?”

“She sure is,” Cam said.

Keith said: “What's the subject of the press conference?”

“The launch of a new, streamlined protocol for Polish and American museums to loan each other works of art, it says here.” Tony looked up from the paper. “Not the kind of thing to attract TASS's star writer, is it?”

Cam said: “She must be coming to see me.”

•   •   •

Tanya spotted Cam Dewar as soon as she walked into the briefing room at the American embassy. A tall, thin figure, he was standing at the back like a lamppost. If he had not been here, she would have sought him out after the press conference, but this was better, less noticeable.

However, she did not want to look too purposeful when she approached him, so she decided to listen to the announcement first. She sat next to a Polish journalist whom she liked: Danuta Gorski, a feisty brunette with a big toothy grin. Danuta was a member of a semi-underground movement called the Defense Committee that produced pamphlets about workers' grievances and human rights violations.
These illegal publications were called
bibula.
Danuta lived in the same building as Tanya.

While the American press officer was reading out the announcement he had already given them in printed form, Danuta murmured to Tanya: “You might want to take a trip to Gdansk.”

“Why?”

“There's going to be a strike at the Lenin Shipyard.”

“There are strikes everywhere.” Workers were demanding pay rises to compensate for a massive government increase in food prices. Tanya reported these as “work stoppages,” for strikes happened only in capitalist countries.

“Believe me,” said Danuta, “this one could be different.”

The Polish government was dealing with each strike swiftly, granting pay rises and other concessions on a local basis, keen to shut down protests before they could spread like stains on a cloth. The nightmare of the ruling elite—and the dream of dissidents—was that the stains would join up until the cloth was entirely a new color.

“Different how?”

“They fired a crane operator who is a member of our committee—but they picked the wrong person to victimize. Anna Walentynowicz is a woman, a widow, and fifty-one years old.”

“So she attracts a lot of sympathy from chivalrous Polish men.”

“And she's a popular figure. They call her Pani Ania, Mrs. Annie.”

“I might take a look.” Dimka wanted to hear about any protest that promised to become serious, in case he might need to discourage a Kremlin crackdown.

As the press conference was breaking up, Tanya passed Cam Dewar and spoke to him quietly in Russian. “Go to the Cathedral of St. John on Friday at two and look at the Baryczkowski Crucifix.”

“That's not a good place,” the young man hissed.

“Take it or leave it,” Tanya said.

“You have to tell me what this is about,” Cam said firmly.

Tanya realized she had to risk talking to him for another minute. “A line of communication in case the Soviet Union should invade Western Europe,” she said. “The possibility of forming a group of Polish officers who would switch sides.”

The American's jaw dropped. “Oh . . . Oh . . . ,” he stuttered. “Right, yes.”

She smiled at him. “Satisfied?”

“What's his name?”

Tanya hesitated.

Cam said: “He knows mine.”

Tanya decided she had to trust this man. She had already placed her own life in his hands. “Stanislaw Pawlak,” she said. “Known as Staz.”

“Tell Staz that for security reasons he should never speak to anyone here at the embassy except me.”

“Okay.” Tanya walked quickly out of the building.

She gave Staz the message that evening. Next day she kissed him good-bye and drove two hundred miles north to the Baltic Sea. She had an old but reliable Mercedes-Benz 280S with vertically aligned twin headlamps. In the late afternoon she checked into a hotel in the old town of Gdansk, directly across the river from the wharves and dry docks of the shipyard, which was on Ostrow Island.

On the following day it was one week exactly since the firing of Anna Walentynowicz.

Tanya got up early, put on canvas overalls, crossed the bridge to the island, reached the shipyard gate before sunrise, and strolled in with a group of young workers.

It was her lucky day.

The shipyard was plastered with newly pasted posters calling for Pani Ania to be given her job back. Small groups were gathering around the posters. A few people were handing out leaflets. Tanya took one and deciphered the Polish.

Anna Walentynowicz became an embarrassment
because her example motivated others. She became an embarrassment because
she stood up for others and was able to organize
her coworkers. The authorities always try to isolate those who
have leadership qualities. If we do not fight against this,
then we will have no one to stand up for
us when they raise work quotas, when health and safety
regulations are broken, or when we are forced to work
overtime.

Tanya was struck by that. This was not about more pay or shorter hours: it was about the right of Polish workers to organize for themselves, independently of the Communist hierarchy. She had a feeling this was a significant development. It started a small glow of hope in her belly.

She walked around the yard as the daylight strengthened. The sheer scale of shipbuilding was awesome: the thousands of workers, the kilotons of steel, the millions of rivets. The high sides of half-built ships rose far above her head, their mountainous weight perilously balanced by spiderweb scaffolding. Immense cranes bowed their heads over each ship, like adoring Magi around a giant manger.

Everywhere she went, workers were downing tools to read the leaflet and discuss the case.

A few men started a march, and Tanya followed them. They went in procession around the yard, carrying makeshift placards, handing out leaflets, calling on others to join them, growing in numbers. Eventually they came to the main gate, where they began telling arriving workers that they were on strike.

They closed the factory gate, sounded the siren, and flew the Polish national flag from the nearest building.

Then they elected a strike committee.

While that was going on they were interrupted. A man in a suit clambered up on an excavator and began to shout at the crowd. Tanya could not understand everything he said, but he seemed to be arguing against the formation of a strike committee—and the workers were listening to him. Tanya asked the nearest man who he was. “Klemens Gniech, the director of the shipyard,” she was told. “Not a bad guy.”

Tanya was aghast. How weak people were!

Gniech was offering negotiations if the strikers would first go back to work. To Tanya this seemed a transparent trick. Many people booed and jeered Gniech, but others nodded agreement, and a few drifted away, apparently headed for their workplaces. Surely it could not fall apart so fast?

Then someone jumped up on the excavator and tapped the director on the shoulder. The newcomer was a small, square-shouldered man with a bushy mustache. Although he seemed to Tanya an unimpressive
figure, the crowd recognized him and cheered. They evidently knew who he was. “Remember me?” he yelled at the director in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “I worked here for ten years—then you fired me!”

“Who's that?” Tanya asked her neighbor.

“Lech Wałesa. He's only an electrician, but everyone knows him.”

The director tried to argue with Wałesa in front of the crowd, but the little man with the big mustache gave him no leeway. “I declare an occupation strike!” he roared, and the crowd shouted their agreement.

Both the director and Wałesa stepped down from the excavator. Wałesa took command, something everyone seemed to accept without question. When he ordered the director's chauffeur to drive in his limousine and fetch Anna Walentynowicz, the chauffeur did as he was told and, even more astonishing, the director made no objection.

Wałesa organized the election of a strike committee. The limousine returned with Anna, who was greeted by a storm of applause. She was a small woman with hair as short as a man's. She had round glasses and wore a blouse with bold horizontal stripes.

The strike committee and the director went in the Health and Safety Center to negotiate. Tanya was tempted to try to insinuate herself in there with them, but she decided not to push her luck: she was fortunate to have got inside the gates. The workers were welcoming the Western media, but Tanya's press card showed that she was a Soviet reporter for TASS, and if the strikers discovered that they would throw her out.

However, the negotiators must have had microphones on their tables, for their entire discussion was broadcast over loudspeakers to the crowd outside—which struck Tanya as democratic in the extreme. The strikers could instantly express their feelings about what was said by booing or cheering.

She figured out that the strikers now had several demands in addition to the reinstatement of Anna, including security from reprisals. The one that the director could not accept, surprisingly, was for a monument outside the factory gates to commemorate the massacre by police of shipyard workers protesting against food price rises in 1970.

Tanya wondered whether this strike would also end in a massacre. If it did, she realized with a chill, she was right in the firing line.

Gniech explained that the area in front of the gates had been designated for a hospital.

The strikers said they preferred a monument.

The director offered a commemorative plaque somewhere else in the shipyard.

They declined.

A worker said disgustedly into the microphone: “We're haggling over dead heroes like beggars under a lamppost!”

The people outside applauded.

Another negotiator appealed directly to the crowd: Did they want a monument?

They roared their answer.

The director retired to consult with his superiors.

There were now thousands of supporters outside the gates. People had been collecting donations of food for the strikers. Few Polish families could afford to give food away, but dozens of sacks of provisions were now passed through the gates for the men and women inside, and the strikers ate lunch.

The director came back in the afternoon and announced that the highest authorities had approved the monument in principle.

Wałesa declared that the strike would go on until all the demands had been met.

And then, almost as an afterthought, he added that the strikers also wanted to discuss the formation of free independent trade unions.

Now, Tanya thought, this is getting
really
interesting.

•   •   •

On Friday after lunch Cam Dewar drove to the Old Town of Warsaw.

He was followed there by Mario and Ollie.

Most of Warsaw had been flattened in the war. The town had been reconstructed with straight roads and sidewalks and modern buildings. Such a cityscape was not suitable for clandestine meetings and furtive exchanges. However, the planners had striven to re-create the original Old Town with its cobbled streets and little alleys and irregular houses. It was done a little too well: the straight edges and regular patterns and fresh colors looked too new, like a movie set. Nevertheless, it provided
a more congenial environment for secret agents than did the rest of the city.