He let the curtain drop back into place, hiding the view of the journalist and the police officer leaving the grounds together. Nothing to worry about yet, he tried to convince himself.
Yet.
There was no point in taking chances, though.
Stepping back to his desk to pick up the phone, he shivered, though his office was warm and comfortable. He paused with the phone in his hand. How had it come to this?
But he knew the answer. He could picture the very moment when he had realized he was no longer in control of the situation. Or of his life.
When he thought of it, he could still hear the peal of the church bells. To this day, the bells still scared him.
He had joined a group of fellow university students heading out to the five o’clock mass, so many years ago. He blended in with the noisy cluster scurrying across the grounds of Warsaw University toward the seventeenth-century cathedral that beckoned just beyond the campus border.
This had become a regular routine for him. As they passed through the arch that marked the main entrance to the campus, he let himself fall behind. Slowing his pace until he no longer walked within view of the group, he made a sharp right turn.
The rest of the students rushed forward to hopes of salvation. He headed in the opposite direction, almost jogging as he moved deeper into the darkening alley. He kept his eyes peeled for witnesses, turning occasionally to look behind him.
No one followed. He picked up his pace.
A few minutes’ walk past gray stone buildings brought him to a small storefront. Like other buildings he had passed, its walls were plastered with Soviet propaganda. They were simply a facade. Torn remnants of Solidarity signs still remained, words visible under the propaganda. The bulk of the rebellious signs had been torn down by the police, but at this point in the movement, even martial law hadn’t stopped the signs from reappearing.
Grimy windows exposed little of the building’s interior, though the smell of cooked cabbage permeated the air around it. The door of the establishment opened to release a customer. Waiting only for the cloud of smoke that escaped with the patron to subside, the student stepped inside.
Wading through air thick with smoke and dill-scented steam, he crossed the room and slid into a vacant seat. Wilenek looked up from his tea.
Dark eyes stared out from below cropped hair. A faint scar knitted the skin across one cheek and a crooked nose hinted at a violent past. Wilenek’s eyes seemed ageless, though the student knew the man was only a few years older than him.
Wilenek’s expression was as still as ever, giving nothing away, but he knew enough to be nervous. He shifted in his chair. Wilenek nodded and grunted out a few words.
Though brief, Wilenek’s words scared him into speaking, opening the floodgates of his memory, his observations. Wilenek lit a cigarette as he nodded, listening to the torrent of words. After twenty minutes of talking, Wilenek put up a hand. At the signal, he stopped talking.
In a fluid movement, Wilenek stood. Crossing the table on his way to the food counter, Wilenek patted him on the shoulder. It could have been the gesture of an older brother. The student cringed and ducked his head. Wilenek grunted again as he walked on. The man was short and stocky, but he was youthful and moved with the stealth and grace of a lion. Or a hunter.
On his return, Wilenek dropped an envelope onto the table as he put down his tray laden with soup, bread and kielbasa.
The student glanced up, then swept the envelope off the table and tucked it into his coat pocket. Keeping his hand on his pocket, he asked the question that had been burning within him for days. “What will you do with this information?”
The other man barely glanced up from his soup. “That’s none of your concern.” Wilenek’s accent was thick, Russian.
The student leaned forward, prepared to stand, but held his chair. “I’ve heard the rumors. People getting hurt because of this. Jakub was taken during the night, and no one’s heard from him. I didn’t bargain for that.”
Now the other man looked directly at him, and he shifted back in his seat. Wilenek spoke slowly, enunciating each word.
“That’s none of your concern.”
He had made his decision then. The side of angels or the side of devils.
He feared Wilenek — feared the man, feared what he stood for, who he worked with. He knew that lining up on the side of Wilenek and his kind would be a choice he could never back away from.
But he feared even more what would happen to him if he walked away from this connection. Away from the secret police. Away from the financial support they were guaranteeing him. Away from the thrill of power he felt when he shared a confidence, shared secret knowledge.
The thought of what would happen to his life if he gave it up, slinked back into anonymity, scared him almost as much as the man sitting across from him. If he had to choose between protecting his own life and helping others, so be it. It wasn’t really a choice at all.
He would do whatever he had to do to protect himself and his interests.
He said no more to Wilenek, simply nodded. Grabbing his satchel, he stumbled out of the dining room, back into the now fully dark street. Turning to his left, he headed toward the campus where the evening mass was drawing to a close.
Up on the crowded main street, he’d tucked his head into his collar and blended into the crowd of students streaming through the cold night, the sound of church bells reminding him of what waited for him once this life had ended.