Get Lenin (5 page)

In Warsaw, one afternoon in Księgarnia Polska bookstore, she ran into Dariusz. Between the aisles of antique books and prints he walked straight up to her. It took her a split second to recognise him. He smiled, but without the usual bonhomie. His eyes had a more serious heavy-lidded appearance. His beloved trilby looked reconditioned and, to her shock, where his left arm should have been, the sleeve was pinned to the coat.

He looked down at the empty sleeve with a rueful smile. ‘Lost it in Barcelona - shrapnel,’ he shrugged.

Eva touched her old friend’s cheek tenderly.

‘
Please let me buy you lunch, how are you?’

Dariusz Szpilman took a light from Eva and exhaled, his right hand tapping the ash lightly. Since losing his left arm, she noted, his right cheek had developed a tic. Some of the ash missed the ashtray and blew away on the draught from the caf
é
’s door. He brushed some of it off his coat, his first impulse being to use his left hand. The inability to do this simple act depressed him further.

The lunchtime rush hour had abated and they were alone, apart from a bored looking waitress staring out through the window. His shoulders were a little rounded for a young man and he was more slumped in the chair.

To him, Eva looked even more beautiful than he remembered her being, even at the beach near Nice where he had seen her golden body in a bathing suit. In the trenches of Catalonia at times it was her shimmering image that kept him going. It sustained him through the rain, blistering heat and make-shift hospital where he was rushed after the explosion. The Russian surgeon, exhausted by his day’s workload, had more hacked off his arm than cut it. Dariusz had been conscious throughout, pinned down by the shoulders and legs, brandy poured down his throat to numb him. He hallucinated for days after the amputation, imagining Eva coming to him as an angel to mop his fevered brow. Flying above him with the elegant wings of a swan, she seemed to lift him by the hand, holding his head close to her breasts.

As he was convalescing from his injuries, he was approached to join the Polish secret service. His cameras had been shipped back to Warsaw and some of the images became intelligence documents. Once fully recovered and back in Warsaw, Dariusz set out to assemble a team of operatives. Eva was an ideal choice because of her language skills. He had located her through the Krakow University attendance registers.

Travelling to the university, he had spotted her. His heart began to race as she strode across the campus. There was a maturity about her, and knowing her habits from their days in Paris, he rightly guessed which bookstore in Warsaw she would visit.

He had followed her from a distance, boarding the same train as she had, staying a carriage back, occasionally walking through, ensuring she didn’t get off at any stop. He watched her as she made her way through the station, her hips swaying beneath her recognisable blue raincoat. She was sourcing some titles for the library and he caught his breath at the sound of her voice again as she spoke to the sales clerk.

Pretending to browse for a title, with a weight in his throat, he approached her and eventually gathered his courage to speak to her. He was deflated that she didn’t recognise him straightaway, her eyes trying to recall his face, a smile indifferently fixed in place.

Seated in the caf
é
, he asked after Theo, but Eva shrugged nonchalantly. After the initial small talk, Dariusz lowered his voice and got to the point. ‘Eva, how would you feel about working for our government? We need someone to go to London on our behalf, someone with fluent English.’ He reached into his coat and placed an envelope onto the table. Eva opened it. Inside was a new Dutch passport requiring a photograph, a Dutch press pass, Dutch travel documents and airline tickets.

‘
Our friends the British have helped us with the journalist card.’

Eva was taken aback at his sudden change from friend to something quite remote and distant. Something was cold behind his eyes. It was a pain she could recognise. It was warping him and she idly wondered if his eyes were a mirror to her own soul. She could almost see the same darkness touching the corneas of his eyes.

He glanced around the caf
é
.
T
he bored waitress had gone back into the kitchen leaving them alone. He stared into her eyes:
T
hey were grey yet capable of projecting warmth, her auburn hair long again and fashioned into a ponytail. Her mouth mesmerised him:
He
had
heard her voice almost every night in his dreams. He wanted to blurt out that he loved her, had loved her since the day they met in the university bar, introduced by the louche artiste Theo. But the moment passed and he tried to focus.

From the depths of his side coat pocket he produced a photograph. He paused. He felt an awful pang of regret for his next words even before they were uttered.

It had taken time, a lot of digging into the bureaucratic static that existed between Poland and Germany. It wasn't lost on him that he was probably the only one-armed Polish spy in Europe, but he had to see Eva just one more time in the flesh, to hear her voice and catch the faintest whiff of her perfume. Then he would disappear, slip into the shadows and become a section chief, sending the likes of Eva to certain death.

'You might remember this man here,' he said, pushing the photograph toward her, ‘Jurgen Locher.’

She shrugged, no.

'Arrested in Berlin in 1933, was released after six months in prison for assaulting a Herr Jan Gruber, a highly regarded German theatre director and the possible assault of an unknown Polish student at a Berlin University. Locher's father is a high-ranking member of the Nazi party and got him out with a pardon if he served in Spain with the Fascists.'

Eva sucked her breath involuntarily and looked away, blinking sudden scalding tears. Daruisz reached out and touched her hand tenderly. She snapped it away. She remembered the leer of her assailants' faces. She had played over and over in her head various scenarios about what would have happened had she remained with Jonas that night that made her shudder. She wanted revenge. She wanted Locher stone cold dead.

She took the photograph, dabbing tears from her eyes. It was him, the one with the small eyes. Instinctively she touched the part of her head where he had ripped the hair out.

‘
Locher is now an Obersturmbanführer serving as a special advisor to Franco in Spain. He has been entrusted with a delivery of gold bullion from Spain's gold reserves to Berlin to pay for German weapons and armaments. We must alert the British that it may affect their position in the Mediterranean.’

‘
Why not a diplomat?’ she asked, beginning to regain her composure,

‘
We lost a courier a few days ago. We need someone who isn’t on a Gestapo list.’ He studied her expression before leaning in and stating in earnest. ‘We can’t have another Fascist dictator strutting around Europe spreading their poison from the Atlantic to the Baltic Eva.’

‘
What about another Stalin, Dariusz?’ she countered.

Dariusz gave a smile. It was as cold as a morgue. ‘If you are successful on this occasion, we may have more work for you.’

Eva thought for a moment. Her lust for revenge was setting her on a course that would alter her life entirely. Maybe she had no choice now as Europe was being set alight and everyone was being gradually sucked into the flames. Seeing Dariusz again brought back many happy memories despite the embittered ending with Theo.

She could see a fervour coming back into Dariusz's deadened eyes when he mentioned Spain. Maybe she could make a difference somehow; maybe her actions would end Locher and his ilk, maybe stop another girl mourning a dead lover before it was too late.

She didn’t trust Dariusz, but made her mind up anyway. ‘Ok, I’ll do it. But I want Locher’s address in Spain.’

‘
The man you are to contact is a Henry Chainbridge. The document in question was delivered to your room in the university, folded into today’s London Times.’ As an afterthought he added, 'By the way, Eva, can you use a gun?'

The newspaper, as Dariusz had said, was under her door. She felt a faint sense of violation that Dariusz knew where she was living. Leafing through it, she came across the crossword. The solution had been filled in with numbers and symbols in pen. Beneath the solution was an address in London in the same hand-writing that had filled out the crossword. The bullion shipment would be happening within a month which gave her adequate time to prepare, Dariusz had said as he handed her the money to pay for the trip in the various denominations.

After dinner Eva rooted out maps and atlases from her bookshelves, a habit she had picked up from her father. Every one of her weekend cycling trips was carefully plotted out and she got a sense of sheer enjoyment of completing a journey that she had meticulously planned.

The following day, she went to the university library and took out more maps and travel guides, and through the university switchboard made enquiries with the German National bus service. Also through the university she sent a telegram to Madame Yvette, signing it off as ‘Hannah Du Trop’, a character Dariusz had devised for one of his 8mm shorts in Paris. It would stick in Yvette’s mind as they had performed their lines strapped to high-backed chairs. Eva assumed he’d be tracking her movements and this is a character he too would remember. There was enough money supplied by Dariusz, but as a precaution she withdrew double the amount in case of unforeseen problems.

She spent the evening poring over the books and maps and with both Polish and German bus timetables, devising a circuitous route that would take three days to complete, ending in Paris. She assumed the Gestapo would be watching every railway station and airport; on a bus she could blend into a group or get off at the first sign of danger .With this in mind, she picked the earliest and latest departure times. The nagging thought was that she could either be bait or a diversion for another courier with the real intelligence, however deciding that she was going to do this and do it well, she resigned herself to the task. She took her knapsack down from her wardrobe, rolled her blue raincoat up and fixed it to the straps. Then she folded and packed the maps with the relevant time tables written out on their margins. From her touring days in the theatre she packed clothing for three days' travel – every item black.

After a good breakfast, she put on a heavy jumper and an old coat she was planning to jettison, eschewing her make-up bag. Madame Yvette would have ample amounts of that for her to use when she got there. Finally for the journey, she selected a novel and a flannel cloth for her face so as to be able to freshen up in the station toilets.

She set out on her bicycle for the main bus station and, as she pedalled, felt a sudden surge of excitement. It felt a bit like acting, dressing up for the part. She smoked a quick cigarette before her departure, sensing that it would be a long time before she saw this city again.

Three days later she was at the establishment of Madame Yvette, who welcomed her with a radiant smile. ‘Well...?’

Eva sat on the edge of the immense bath in her private quarters. She marvelled at how delicious a bath was after a long journey. Again she dipped below the surface, relishing its heat. Yvette had disposed of the old coat, had a new wardrobe waiting for her and fresh make-up, and had set up a spare bed in her room away from the working girls where Eva would spend the night.

‘
I had one problem on the border with a policeman, though once he saw my journalist card and note books, he believed I was a travel writer.’

‘
They’ll believe anything from a pretty mouth,’ exhaled Yvette, her cigarette smoke seeming to linger around her, her lush tresses falling down around her face, framing her classic profile. Eva hadn’t noticed before what a beautiful woman she was without make-up.

Yvette procured at Eva’s request maps and timetables for the train to the Calais ferry and over dinner they reviewed the best options. Yvette handed Eva a sheet with a crudely drawn map of England with place names underlined and relevant ferry, bus and rail departure times jotted in. Eva had joked about using a gun and Yvette, with a twinkle in her eye, went out of the bathroom and returned with her prized stiletto. ‘Please take this. I have another one here. Remember, Eva, always aim at the heart or the balls.’

From the Gare du Nord she took the early morning train and overnight ferry to the south of England, again using early morning and late evening timetables.