The call came after John had been in Warsaw a couple of months. He said, ‘Call me the Dentist.’ He said he needed help. He said he wanted out. That’s how it all began: with a plea for help. He urged John to trust him, to understand how dangerous it was for him to speak to a British journalist. He didn’t trust his own organisation and he didn’t trust any in the West: ‘I need to find someone outside the system. Do you understand?’
Anselm shifted in his seat: this wasn’t the kind of call he’d expected Brack to make. Why would he want out? The point — Anselm had imagined — was to get John in.
‘The Dentist wanted me to vouch for him with a government minister, whom he’d later name, right over the head of MI6,’ John’s hand, flat on the table made a polishing motion. ‘He was flattering me; building up my self-importance. I was easy meat.’
John had two questions — and he asked them with all the aplomb of an experienced handler: first, what did the Dentist have to offer?
Second, why come to John? Warsaw was packed with foreign journalists.
‘He said he’d bring the entire SB battle order. He had lists of informers within Solidarity and the Church. Copies of correspondence between Moscow and Warsaw He knew the colour of Brezhnev’s underpants
… you name it, the Dentist had pulled it from some top drawer marked “Secret”, and it was mine to hand over. Part of the dowry that would secure my place in the annals of Cold War history — unread by all, save the major players on either side of the Wall.’
Anselm was cut loose. A dowry? How could a mock defection by Brack lead to John betraying Roza? Once more — and this time with complete finality — Anselm abandoned a convincing interpretation of the evidence. John might have been CONRAD but CONRAD was no willing spy… and Roza’s eyes were resting upon him; she hadn’t strayed once; she held on to his voice as if it were a handle. I’ve got everything wrong, except for this meeting; and even now, I don’t know why it’s right.
‘He was typical of many people I knew back then,’ said John — he’d become swift and fluid; his memory set in motion by the relief of letting go — ‘he was convinced that but for martial law the Russians would have invaded. They’d marched into Budapest in fifty-six, Prague in sixty-eight and Kabul in eighty. He thought they still might come to Warsaw, which was why he wanted out now, and fast.’
‘But why you?’ Celina’s tone was frail, like tearing paper. ‘Why did he pick you?’
Anselm involuntarily abridged Bogart’s gin-joint line — of all the food queues in Warsaw, why did you have to walk into mine? And he understood that she grieved, even now, at ever having met him.
‘Because I was a stranger,’ replied John, hearing — Anselm was sure — the same tone of regret. ‘Because he’d done some research. He knew a great deal about my family Far more than me; he’d guessed why I’d come to Warsaw.’
He knew John was the son of a diplomat; the son of a woman who’d committed suicide; the son of a tragedy He’d read his mother’s file. He’d calculated that John’s embarrassment went deep into his identity; that he carried a kind of transferred guilt.
‘Suicide?’ repeated Celina, softly.
The subject was too large for the moment — like Anselm with Irina on the unswerving ardour of monks — but Celina was simply reaching out to him from a new understanding. She knew there was more to be said… that might once have been said, if things had been simpler between them.
‘Yes,’ replied John. ‘I’ve come to see it very differently over the years. Once it was a betrayal. Now? I think she wanted to eternalise her regret. To say sorry for ever — to me, to my father. Brack smelled that, too.’
He’d been deeply sympathetic. The pressures of the time had been awful (Brack said) — ‘I was there, I know what it was like; I felt the heat’ — with friend pitted against friend to demonstrate their innocence. He’d only raised the matter because he felt that John, of all people, would understand why the Dentist wanted out; that John, of all people, might want to rectify the past — by helping him; by purging the mistake of his mother.
‘He didn’t use those words, but that’s what he meant.’ John’s hand had stopped moving. ‘And that was the trick. Within minutes of listening to him, the table had slowly turned. He was offering to help me. And you might find this difficult to believe, but I was grateful. Really grateful. Without the assistance of an insider, I’d never know what my mother had actually done. I thought a great chance had come my way.
The Dentist asked John to think about it because there were dangers on both sides. A week later the phone rang again. To prove his bona fides, he offered John copies of telegrams sent to the KGB dealing with Solidarity’s- ‘I didn’t want them. I told him I was prepared to take the risk.’ But the Dentist said that’s not how things worked. That trust was a kind of deal, a bargain, an exchange of services. And, if he was to help the Dentist, there were rules.
‘First, we were never to meet. I could only call him on a secure number, five-five-eight-seven-six. Second, names were dangerous, that’s why he was the Dentist, so I had to pick one. I went for Conrad. It was a joke. The Secret Agent… Heart of Darkness. But he didn’t get it. Third, I was to keep a journal recording all the leads he’d send my way each of which would focus on the fight for freedom of speech, accountability, democratic blah, blah — ’ John smoothed the table once more, moving quickly — ‘Fourth, I was to take this journal with me to the minister he’d later name as evidence of the Dentist’s values and commitment to political reform. This was the deaclass="underline" if I prepared his passage to the West, he’d help me understand my mother’s story. He’d bring her file.’
John couldn’t see any problem: he wasn’t giving anything to the Dentist. All the traffic would be coming the other way His only role was to be a messenger operating outside the system, his task to bring a request to someone at the heart of government.
The Dentist was true to his word. He gave John all manner of information, placing him one step ahead of every other Western journalist in Warsaw He placed John’s ear at the door of the Junta. Only John didn’t notice that all the ‘stuff sent his way’ would have made it into the public domain eventually; that he only received advanced notice; that he was only given two scoops of substance. The first was on underground printing.
‘He told me the publication most feared by the government was Freedom and Independence.’ He looked towards Roza, as if their eyes might meet. ‘It’s run by someone called the Shoemaker, he said; only turns up when times get really bad, and he’s turned up now This is the voice you should hear. It had last been heard during the Terror. Get his words into the Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph — ’ he threw imagined copies on the table — ‘get his message out of Warsaw’
The only known point of contact was a woman called Roza Mojeska, and he was trying to find her.
‘I got there first, Roza,’ he said, heavily He faltered, like a man stepping suddenly off the pavement. ‘In all that we spoke of, Roza, I never once lied. I just didn’t tell the truth of how I came to find you.