beneath the table. He stood, she rose, he took her hand, she presented her veil for a brush of his lips, said a parting word behind the back of her hand, walked quickly to her trasuri and was gone, leaving a cloud of lilac scent. “God go with you, Captain,” was what she’d said.
The gentleman on the terrace touched the pocket of his jacket, making sure of the money she’d passed to him, then strolled slowly across the square, past the policemen, uniformed and not, and their helpers, past old women sweeping the cobblestones with twig brooms, past a flock of pigeons that rose into the air with beating wings.
Captain de Milja left that night. He’d had enough of Bucharest: the rooming house, the police, and the assorted ghosts and wolves who lived in the cafés. And more than enough of Romania. The country, under German diplomatic pressure, had started to intern Polish army units crossing the border—as they had interned most of the senior ministers of the Polish government. Time to go.
He traveled under a cover he’d created for himself, using a blank identity card they’d left in his dossier the night he went to work for Vyborg. Name: Jan Boden. That made him a Silesian Pole—like his father—with a good knowledge of German and likely some German blood. Profession: Buyer of wood for coffins. That made it normal for him to travel, yet wasn’t a profession that the Germans would want to draft—not, for example, like an expert machinist—for labor in Germany. He wore a leather coat so he wouldn’t freeze, and carried a VIS, the Polish army automatic pistol, so he wouldn’t be taken prisoner. If he had to drop it quickly somewhere, he could always get another. After six years of war, 1914–1918, then the 1920–1921 campaign against the Red Army, Poland was an armory. Every barn, every cellar, every attic had its weapons and ammunition. And the Poles were not Russian peasants; they cleaned and oiled and maintained, because they liked things that worked.
He had some time to spare—the message that the courier delivered along with the money was
Room 9 at Saint Stanislaus Hospital on Grodny Street by 23 October—
and that probably saved his life. He took a train from Bucharest up to Sighisoara in the Transylvanian Alps, then another, going west, that crossed into Hungary near Arad. Changed again, this time going north to Kisvarda, in the Carpathians. As it grew dark, he caught a ride on a truck into a border village by a stream that fed into the Tisza, close to one of several passes over the mountains.
He entered the local tavern, ordered beer and sausage, and was approached by the local
passeurs—
smugglers—within the hour. He said he wished to be guided into Poland, a price was set, everybody spit on their palms and shook hands.
But soon after they started out, he realized that, contractual spits notwithstanding, they meant to kill him and take his money. It was black dark. The two
passeurs,
reeking of taverns, goats, and rancid fat, squatted on either side of him. They whispered, and touched his arms. Too much, as though familiarizing themselves with his physical capacity, and dissipating his protective magic. One of them had a knife in his belt—a dull, rusty thing, the idea of being stabbed with it gave de Milja a chill.
“I have to go behind a tree,” he said in Polish. Then he faded away in the darkness and just kept going. He found what he believed to be the south bank of the Tisza, then a dirt track that someone might have intended as a road, then a bridge, where he could hear the unmistakable sounds of Russian soldiers getting drunk: singing, then arguing, then fighting, then weeping, then snoring. As one of the Ostrow uncles used to say, “Here is something a man can depend on—never mind some silly ball rolling down an inclined plane.”
De Milja crossed the bridge a little after two in the morning; he was then in Soviet-occupied Poland. He walked another hour, winter cold numbing his
The gentleman on the terrace touched the pocket of his jacket, making sure of the money she’d passed to him, then strolled slowly across the square, past the policemen, uniformed and not, and their helpers, past old women sweeping the cobblestones with twig brooms, past a flock of pigeons that rose into the air with beating wings.
Captain de Milja left that night. He’d had enough of Bucharest: the rooming house, the police, and the assorted ghosts and wolves who lived in the cafés. And more than enough of Romania. The country, under German diplomatic pressure, had started to intern Polish army units crossing the border—as they had interned most of the senior ministers of the Polish government. Time to go.
He traveled under a cover he’d created for himself, using a blank identity card they’d left in his dossier the night he went to work for Vyborg. Name: Jan Boden. That made him a Silesian Pole—like his father—with a good knowledge of German and likely some German blood. Profession: Buyer of wood for coffins. That made it normal for him to travel, yet wasn’t a profession that the Germans would want to draft—not, for example, like an expert machinist—for labor in Germany. He wore a leather coat so he wouldn’t freeze, and carried a VIS, the Polish army automatic pistol, so he wouldn’t be taken prisoner. If he had to drop it quickly somewhere, he could always get another. After six years of war, 1914–1918, then the 1920–1921 campaign against the Red Army, Poland was an armory. Every barn, every cellar, every attic had its weapons and ammunition. And the Poles were not Russian peasants; they cleaned and oiled and maintained, because they liked things that worked.
He had some time to spare—the message that the courier delivered along with the money was
Room 9 at Saint Stanislaus Hospital on Grodny Street by 23 October—
and that probably saved his life. He took a train from Bucharest up to Sighisoara in the Transylvanian Alps, then another, going west, that crossed into Hungary near Arad. Changed again, this time going north to Kisvarda, in the Carpathians. As it grew dark, he caught a ride on a truck into a border village by a stream that fed into the Tisza, close to one of several passes over the mountains.
He entered the local tavern, ordered beer and sausage, and was approached by the local
passeurs—
smugglers—within the hour. He said he wished to be guided into Poland, a price was set, everybody spit on their palms and shook hands.
But soon after they started out, he realized that, contractual spits notwithstanding, they meant to kill him and take his money. It was black dark. The two
passeurs,
reeking of taverns, goats, and rancid fat, squatted on either side of him. They whispered, and touched his arms. Too much, as though familiarizing themselves with his physical capacity, and dissipating his protective magic. One of them had a knife in his belt—a dull, rusty thing, the idea of being stabbed with it gave de Milja a chill.
“I have to go behind a tree,” he said in Polish. Then he faded away in the darkness and just kept going. He found what he believed to be the south bank of the Tisza, then a dirt track that someone might have intended as a road, then a bridge, where he could hear the unmistakable sounds of Russian soldiers getting drunk: singing, then arguing, then fighting, then weeping, then snoring. As one of the Ostrow uncles used to say, “Here is something a man can depend on—never mind some silly ball rolling down an inclined plane.”
De Milja crossed the bridge a little after two in the morning; he was then in Soviet-occupied Poland. He walked another hour, winter cold numbing his
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