The Woman from Bratislava (16 page)

Then they were swallowed up by the city and the traffic grew heavier. There were a lot of new cars on the road and people on the street all looked well-dressed. The driver said not a word, but wove his way neatly and expertly around tramcars plastered in adverts. They drove past a skyscraper which Toftlund knew had been a gift from Stalin. He remembered it as having dominated the skyline with its monstrous bulk and social-realist lines. Now, though, it seemed almost hidden, surrounded as it was by modern tower blocks of glass and steel. Was he in Warsaw or Frankfurt? They turned a corner and drove past a park where people were beating their way forward, heads into the wind. Bare, exposed boughs covered with the tiny buds of April reached heavenwards as if praying for the speedy advent of spring. There were lots of people on the streets. Outside office buildings and shops sat beggars with dead eyes and outstretched hands. Two young women walked by, both talking on their mobile phones. The driver turned into a narrow side street and from there into a courtyard in which a couple of other Mercedes were already parked. The courtyard looked well-cared for. Toftlund noted the uniformed guard on the door, but there was no sign to indicate that these were the offices of at least a part of democratic Poland’s security service.

Without a word the driver got out of the car and opened the door for Toftlund. He handed him his small holdall and motioned with his head for Per to follow him. They passed through two doors. The flight of steps between them was broad and freshly painted. Beyond the inner door a woman was stationed beside a bank of telephones and a computer. Toftlund’s eye was also caught by a television monitor showing shots from surveillance cameras
covering
the various access routes to the building. The driver nodded to the woman, but she made no response. She was in her thirties, stout, with full, red-painted lips and drenched in heavy perfume. That, at least, had not changed. The habit so many women had of
being too heavy-handed with the make-up. As if a layer of rouge was the mark of femininity. They took the lift up to the eighth, and top, floor and stepped out into a hallway from which Toftlund could see rows of office doors running down two long corridors. The driver knocked on the closest one and they entered a
reception
area in which two young secretaries sat at their respective computers. Smartly, but informally dressed, they could have been receptionists in an advertising agency anywhere in the world.

‘Toftlund,’ the driver said, then continued in Polish. One of the secretaries got up, went over to a heavy door and knocked on it. A voice answered and the woman beckoned to Toftlund, who dipped at the knees to pick up the holdall which he had set down on the floor.

‘You can leave your bag here,’ the other secretary said in
excellent
English.

‘Mr Gelbart will see you now.’ She took the coat which he had slung over his arm, put it on a hanger from a coat stand in a corner. The driver nodded to Toftlund and said something else in Polish before slipping out of the office.

The door was opened and Toftlund was surprised by the man who came out to greet him with a big smile and firm handshake. He had been expecting a somewhat older man in a tatty grey suit and bland tie. But this man was about his own age. He had black, curly hair and a narrow mouth in a pale, almost feminine face. He wore a beige, open-necked shirt and blue designer jeans tucked into a pair of pointed cowboy boots.

‘Colonel Konstantin Gelbert at your service. It’s a pleasure to meet a colleague from Copenhagen,’ he said in flawless American English. ‘I was in Copenhagen only last month. I hope
Commissioner
Vuldom is well. She is a formidable woman, if you don’t mind my saying so. Please come in.’

‘Thank you,’ Toftlund said, shaking his hand. He felt rather
overdressed
in his grey trousers, tweed jacket and speckled tie. Gelbert bore little or no resemblance to a colonel in the secret police. He
looked more like a university lecturer, or possibly one of today’s computer wizards, the type who has made his first million before he is twenty-five.

His office was big and bright and dominated by a gleaming steel and glass desk. On one side of the room was a low table
surrounded
by a sofa and three armchairs whose tall, rigid backs indicated that this area was designed not for relaxation, but for conferences. The walls were painted white. On them hung three reproductions of paintings by the Danish painter Asger Jorn. The large windows looked onto a busy road, but the glass was so thick that not even the sound of the raindrops now battering off the windowpanes could be heard.

‘I’m a big fan of Scandinavian design,’ Colonel Gelbart said. ‘I’m a big fan of Scandinavian art. Hence Jorn. I like your
democratic
system and your common sense. Your way of sitting around a table and thrashing out a compromise – rather like tribesmen, really. Compromise is essential if a democracy is to function well. The communists abhorred the art of compromise. They didn’t understand anything but orders.’

Toftlund looked down at the street below. The traffic seemed to have come to a standstill. Cars were stuck in long queues. He guessed they were all tooting impatiently, but no sound penetrated what had to be bullet-proof glass.

‘Ten years this autumn since democracy was introduced. Who would have imagined that in the spring of 1989,’ Toftlund remarked.

Gelbert laughed. He had a reedy, high-pitched laugh. It did not sound altogether sincere. He had his hands stuck in his pockets. He could have been taken for a young student, but Toftlund saw now that he was older than he had first thought. Possibly
mid-forties
. The skin of his face was smooth but there were creases around the keen brown eyes.

‘No,’ Gelbert said. ‘I took part in the so-called Round Table talks ten years ago. One of my opponents in the negotiations was
our current president. He was representing the communists. In those days, in Solidarity we would have been happy just to be a legal organisation and maybe be able to publish a newspaper. Take it one little step at a time. But with Gorbachev in Moscow, the economic crisis here and the complete moral collapse of the Communist Party a window of opportunity suddenly opened up. For a country with such a troubled history as mine it was a miracle. I’ll never forget the election night. We won. By a huge majority. But it was almost as if even we didn’t believe what had happened.’

‘And there was no way back?’

‘No, not here in Poland. This isn’t Russia. No one here dreams of the old days. Because the truth is that life was pretty much unbearable for all of us. There’s no doubt, though, Chief Inspector Toftlund, if you were to ask an unemployed miner whether he was happy with his life he’d probably kick you from here to kingdom come. Ask me or a successful businessman or a writer who is free to write what he wants how things are for us ten years on, and you’ll receive a very different answer. The whole debate regarding democracy and the market economy has become a cliché.
Everybody
is in favour of both. The truth is, Mr Toftlund, that we have our problems. But they are the same problems as those faced by other democratic, capitalist countries. The only difference is that we also have to contend with the legacy of Soviet lunacy, because ours is a post-communist society and will remain so for another generation. I am, however, optimistic. Won’t you sit down?’

Toftlund took a seat across from Gelbert, who settled himself in his high-backed office chair. On the desk in front of him lay a manila folder. One of the secretaries came in with coffee, sugar and cream.

‘What is your background?’ Toftlund asked, while the secretary poured coffee and handed round the cream and sugar.

‘I was at the university. Teaching English and American
literature
. I was one of the lucky ones, I got to study at Stanford for a
couple of years when I was younger. That’s maybe one of the few advantages of being Jewish. The Jewish community in the US has a lot of clout and I suppose the regime here needed to drum up a bit of goodwill as well as some funding. In any case, my parents and siblings remained here: as hostages, to make sure that I came back. I came back – and joined Solidarity. Martial law put a stop to that. I was interned for some months, like so many others. After that I did various odd jobs – street-sweeping, window-cleaning – this was in the eighties.’ He smiled and stirred sugar into his tea. ‘The standard career progression for a Central European
intellectual
who refuses to toe the party line. After 1989 I edited a Jewish magazine until Solidarity came into government and I was called in to do this job.’

‘How does your rank figure in all this?’

He laughed his high, clear laugh again:

‘The president felt it was a good thing to have a military rank. Some of the old habits die hard. “What would you like to be?” he asked me. “How about a colonel?” I said. And so I became a colonel.’

‘I don’t suppose the career policemen were too happy about you being promoted over their heads?’

‘Possibly not. My main task is to clean up the service, weed out the sinners of the past, appoint democratically minded
individuals
. In short: to normalise the service, bring it into line with NATO and EU regulations. Democratise it, in such a way that its officers understand that we serve the people as well as the state. And that we are subject to parliamentary control and have to account for both our budgets and our actions.’

‘Sounds like a tall order,’ Per commented wryly.

‘Like others, we have learned that a democracy, too, has its secrets, and that one does not have to give everything away. I’ve taken on quite a few people from the university, from the
provinces
and from the media – all people I trust. But I have, of course, also had to retain some of the old professional agents. What they
now have to learn is that NATO is no longer the enemy and that, if there is an enemy then it’s in the east they should look for it.’

‘Russia?’

‘It’s not nice to say it out loud, but yes, the Russians are extremely active here in Poland and in the Czech state, and in Hungary, for that matter. They still look upon us as their province and now, as a member of NATO, as a legitimate target. And I have to admit, Mr Toftlund, that it has probably been easier for them to build up a network among their old subjects in Poland than it would in Denmark. They have friends and acquaintances here from the old days whose services they can call on. The situation was
complicated
, obviously, by the fact that only twelve days after officially joining NATO we were at war with a sovereign nation. Yugoslavia. One of Moscow’s friends.’

‘Everything has its price.’

‘Banal, but true, of course. The price was, however, perhaps a little higher than we had expected. Not that we don’t support this so-called humanitarian intervention, but we were never
consulted
about it. It does not have the backing of the Polish people. And Moscow is furious with us. We can actually see how they have stepped up their intelligence gathering activities here. Only the other week we very discreetly expelled two Russian cultural attachés. They have a network here, that’s for sure. But I’m going to destroy it, you’ll see.’

‘And another one will spring up.’

‘Ah, but isn’t that what the game is all about?’ Gelbert said. ‘Playing cat and mouse?’

‘The great game. There’s no end to it.’

‘No, and it gets into your blood.’

Toftlund nodded.

‘It certainly does,’ he said. ‘So you’ve given up the academic life?’

‘For the time being, yes. Come election time, if there’s a change of government it’ll probably be back to the university or the
newspaper
world for me.’

‘But until then …’

‘Until then I’ll serve my country and do my best to defend it against its enemies.’

He drained his coffee cup, leaned forward and opened the folder in front of him. Inside were a number of closely-written A4 pages and some black-and-white photographs.

‘Enemies like our mutual friend here, for instance.’

Gerbert handed him one of the photos. The woman in the picture was tall and slim. Her age was hard to gauge. Anywhere between forty and fifty, possibly older, but she looked good. She appeared to be standing on a street corner. Possibly waiting for a taxi to come along. The photograph had been taken in
summertime
. She wore a skirt and a light-coloured blouse. The wind was ruffling her hair. The face behind the black sunglasses was blank.’

‘Maria Bujic,’ Toftlund said.

‘Oh, right – that’s your name for her,’ Gelbert said. ‘We know her as Svetlana Ivanova – Russian citizen, representative for a company importing perfume. Russian women love perfume. We also know her, of course, as Katrine Ulfbjorg. My predecessor kept an eye on her too, but not until February of this year did we
discover
her true identity.’

‘She’s Croatian, I understand.’

‘Possibly, but if our information is correct then her name is Ina Cukic. And she is one of Slobodan Milosevic’s top agents.’

‘A Serbian spy?’ Toftlund said in surprise.

Gelbert sat back in his chair. He was a little like an actor, or a lecturer, Toftlund thought. Or Vuldom when she was in that frame of mind. They both had a fondness for delivering their points as if they were punchlines.

‘Maybe more than that. Look at this.’

Gelbert handed Toftlund another photo. This too in
black-and-white
. Per recognised the man in the picture, dressed in
camouflage
fatigues with an AK-47 held across his chest and a big grin on his face. Behind him was what looked liked a pile of upturned
earth. The man in the photograph was Arkan, leader of the
notorious
Serbian militia. Also discernible in the background were some other men in army uniform, but he could not make out their faces.

‘Arkan?’ Toftlund said.

‘The man himself. Taken in Srebrenica. Need I say more? A name synonymous with bloodshed and evil. Pictured at the site of one of the biggest massacres on European soil since the Second World War.’