With that sense of solemn engagement.’ Anselm sat down and removed the lid from the box. Inside were two files, one thick and orange, the other thin and green. He took the first and untied its bow with a quick tug. Opening the cover, he paused.
The text had not been translated. Glancing down the three short paragraphs, Anselm gleaned two names: one in lower case.’ Roza Mojeska, the second capitalised.’ OLEK. Beneath this document Anselm found two prison photographs, the first of a girl with wavy hair, the second of a haggard woman, someone so absent that Anselm thought she’d just risen from an autopsy table. They were each marked ‘MPB WARSZAWA’ and dated 1951 and 1953 respectively Then he realised they were one and the same individual. This was Roza Mojeska.’ before and after. The rest of the file held page after page of meticulous pencil-written notes — these presumably being a contemporaneous record of Roza’s various interrogations. This was the neatness of that most frightening of individuals, the bureaucrat and torturer, whose violence is a kind of humdrum administrative activity Anselm moved them to one side, grateful that he couldn’t understand the questions and answers. Reaching into the box he withdrew the file with the green cover. It was so flimsy it might have been empty This, presumably was the Polana material from the joint Stasi-SB archive.
Anselm was right. Inside were two letters in German. The first was dated 17th June 1982, reference MW/MfS/XV1/1982. It had been sent by a Stasi major in Warsaw to a general in East Berlin. A single paragraph was relevant to Anselm’s purpose:
Contrary to the protocol of December 1978, Colonel Brack declines to share key intelligence. Day to day running of Polana is left to his deputy, Lieutenant Frenzel who keeps matters firmly in the SB camp. We know, for example, that an agent named FELIKS has been reactivated but to date we have not been told who that might be.
The second letter was dated three weeks later. It came from Colonel Brack to the general, copied to the major, reference IO/ SB/XVI/1982. Again one element spoke to Anselm:
As you know, agent running is a delicate task resting upon the absolute trust of the informer with their handler. Their contract is with the SB, not the Stasi. To disclose their names at this stage is neither necessary nor desirable. That said, at the completion of the operation I am sure some accommodation can be found.
That was it. John had assumed the file would contain everything that had been compiled to catch Roza, which would include the name of the informer. But there was nothing of the sort. The bulk of the contents had evidently been removed. Anselm pushed back his chair to seek the woman in white. He found her ticking boxes in another office some distance down the corridor. Behind her stood a man in a dark suit examining a photocopier as if it were a lethal gadget made by Q.
‘Excuse me,’ said Anselm, hesitating at the door. ‘The file is incomplete.’
The nurse’s signals suggested he might like to try again but the conversation did not improve until the man prodding the paper tray tuned in. Shaking Anselm’s hand he said, in assured English, ‘Nothing’s missing. They’ve been destroyed:
Sebastian Voight had read law at Warsaw and then pursued postgraduate studies in London and Washington. He’d specialised in criminal procedure, with an eye to war crimes and the problems of transitional justice, thinking originally of a career at the Hague. However he’d been knocked off course — or on course, depending on your perspective — by the offer of a job at the IPN. Amongst the many investigations he’d instituted into what were now called ‘communist crimes’, few had been as important or urgent as that of Otto Brack.
‘Important because his case links crimes of the Stalinist Terror to those of the martial law years; it’s the beginning and end of Communism. Roza’s story symbolises the entire epoch. A trial of Otto Brack would be a trial of post-war authoritarian ideology and its murderous consequences.’ Sebastian’s office, it transpired, faced that allocated to Anselm. The order was in surprising contrast to a rather appealing anarchy in his clothing. He was smart, but something rebelled. The stiff shirt collar refused to stay inside the jacket. His soul was in a pair of trainers. ‘And it’s important regardless of any inherent symbolic qualities, because we’re dealing with a double killing.’
The orange file contained not only Roza’s interrogations from the early fifties but a secret report referring to the interrogation and execution of two men believed to be part of the Shoemaker organisation: Pavel Mojeska and Stefan Binkowski.
‘There was no trial,’ said Sebastian, leaning on the edge of his desk. ‘They were simply killed. At the time Roza was in the same prison. I’m sure she knows what happened. As things stand there is no evidential link between the murders and Otto Brack.’
‘How do you know there is one?’
‘Intuition. I could feel it when I met Roza. She was there. I know she was there.’
Anselm glanced at the wall planner, marked with red dots for pending actions. There were no blue ones for the holidays. Along one wall was a rack of shelves packed with box files. Presiding over the lot, in a central gap, was a photograph of an elderly woman standing behind a wheelchair.
‘You said urgent,’ resumed Anselm, legs crossed, remembering the savage energy generated by papers organised for a trial.
‘Roza is the last and only witness,’ replied Sebastian. ‘The known guards are dead. And if they weren’t I doubt if they’d talk. It all hangs on Roza. But she’s trapped by her own decency Brack threatened to bring a plague on an informer’s house if she ever opened her mouth. She’s worried they’d take a running jump.’
Anselm sipped a glass of fizzy water, picked up from a machine in the corridor outside. ‘Well, she was present all right.’
‘Where?’
‘In the prison when her husband and Stefan Binkowski were shot.’
‘Shot? How do you know?’
‘She flew all the way to London to tell John Fielding, a friend of mine. She asked him to walk through fire to find the informer who betrayed her in nineteen eighty-two. She’ll only meet them if they’re willing to talk honestly If they won’t, she’ll let them go. If they will, she hopes to persuade them that Brack’s worst isn’t that bad after all.’
‘Well, well, well,’ murmured Sebastian, dragging a hand through his black hair. ‘She really did change her mind:
He spun off the desk’s edge to open a front drawer.
‘I’d been chasing Roza for weeks but she wouldn’t talk to me. He took out a folder and opened its flap. ‘Eventually.’ I persuaded her to come here and see the SB files. I tricked her, and she knew it. I’d set up recording equipment, right there in front of the shelves. I’d put up some pictures showing the chaos of her life and times. I’d made it difficult to walk away’
He’d asked her to talk about the period between 1951 and 1982, saying it was for a voice archive, Which was true.’ only what he really wanted was a list of all the people she’d known. The informer had to be among them.
‘I knew what I was looking for. There are only two types of candidate that would explain Roza’s willingness to leave Brack unaccused. First, someone intimately connected to the Shoemaker operation with a high enough profile to make public disclosure almost unthinkable. Second, someone to whom she felt indebted… someone to whom she owed far more than she ever stood to gain by seeing Brack banged up for life.’
‘Either way.” said Anselm.’ commending the classification, ‘someone who might choose the Vistula if exposed.’
Sebastian gave a nod. ‘But Roza saw the ruse: she gave no names. After she’d finished, I thought I’d never see her again.’