Gun in hand, Viktor stood in the Imperial Commissioner’s office looking down on Kanonia Square. There was no General Nikolai Novosiltsev to berate him now. He had vanished at the first scent of trouble —most likely from the capital, most likely from Poland. In making the slow, jarring climb to the top floor —his last climb—Viktor did not have to face being humiliated about his lameness, for every floor of the five-storied headquarters building seemed deserted. Viktor had just come up from the Third Department headquarters in the cellar where he had dismissed his men. He suggested that they find Konstantin’s forces and align themselves with the Grand Duke. This suggestion came easily off the tongue even though he could not be certain Konstantin was even alive. Had Józef—or some other cadet—killed him? He prayed so. The mystery would be answered in short order. He cursed himself now for not having waited at the Belweder for the outcome, but he had run the danger of being recognized by Konstantin or one of his men—or being challenged by other cadets. He could not hope to kill them all, as he had Józef’s roommate.
Kanonia Square below was aglow with torches borne by people streaming towards Długa Street. Events had moved fast, much faster than he had imagined. The people had joined the cadets’ insurgency with unexpected enthusiasm and resolve. Russians had always underrated the Poles, just as the Turks had at the Battle of Vienna. Here was more modern proof. He wondered if his men would find the Russian forces. Their chances of getting out of the city otherwise were dicey, indeed. Chances were that by morning the city would be in Polish control, run by a mob, and sealed up like a tomb.
Viktor turned from the window and caught his reflection in the tall wall mirror behind Novosiltsev’s massive desk. What am I to do? Whether the Grand Duke was dead or not, Viktor had not prepared himself for this. He could not stay in the city while it was under Polish rebel control. It would be too dangerous, for his position in the Secret Police had been found out. He should have killed Michał, but his brother-in-law had somehow already known about his occupation. How had that transpired? Had Józef known, too? How? Yes, he could have killed Michał, but if found out, any chance of holding on to Barbara and the boys would be destroyed.
He could spend no more time with conjectures and regrets. He must consider the options now. They were few, he realized. It would not be long before the insurgents—informed by some former captive or even one of his own spies turning coat to save himself—swarmed into the building to free the prisoners in the makeshift dungeon below, looking thoroughly, too, for their Russian captors and inquisitors.
Focus, he told himself. Focus! He had come up here to search for the file Novosiltsev kept on him. It was incriminating stuff and in the wrong hands would mean certain execution. He set the gun down on the desk and began rifling through the drawers looking for the folder he had seen one day in the Imperial Commissioner’s hands. He knew that it existed, and yet it was not here! At that moment he came across the folder on General Aleksander Rozniecki, and an idea began to form in his mind. It could be useful. Very useful. He held on to it.
Viktor expelled a sigh of frustration. Where the hell is my file? Was there time to restart his search? He had no choice. At that moment something caught his ear and his head jerked up, his every nerve on alert. A faint metallic noise pushed all thoughts away. Viktor stared—unblinking—at the office door. The doorknob was slowly turning. Viktor swallowed hard. There was no other exit to the room. He dropped the Rozniecki folder on the desk and retrieved his pistol. He leveled it at the door. He waited.
A long moment passed. The person entering was taking great care. In moments he became aware that the visitant was a woman in a red cloak and red hat. And then he realized it was Larissa, his one-time mistress. The woman who had come to Poland because of him. The woman he had abandoned after falling in love with Barbara.
She looked up, surprised to find someone in her superior’s office, and surprise transitioned quickly into alarm when she saw—in silhouette against the window—someone with a pistol aimed at her. She screamed.
“Quiet!” Viktor commanded.
“You!”
“I could say the same, Larissa.” He placed the pistol on the desk next to the Rozniecki file. “You didn’t go with Nikolai?”
Larissa stared at the desk a beat before returning her gaze to him. She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“He didn’t offer,” she spat out distastefully, “that’s why.”
“He thought only of himself?”
“He’s a man, no?”
“What brought you here at this hour?”
Larissa nodded toward the desk. “He keeps a wooden box in his top right hand drawer.”
A lift of Viktor’s eyebrow posed the obvious question.
“Petty cash,” she replied, at once embarrassed and defiant.
“Ah, I see. And what are you clutching so tightly?”
“A satchel from my office—a few of my personal items along with paper, pens, and ink.” And then in a rush of words: “And you? What are you here for?”
“My file,” Viktor said. “I can’t find it. You must know where it is, Larissa, yes?”
“I’m not certain he kept one on you, Viktor, in keeping with your desire to be anonymous. Are you still being anonymous?” Larissa’s smile harbored a sneer. “What’s the matter—afraid of being fingered by the insurgents, Viktor?”
“It’s something you should think about, too.” Was she lying about the file? As the commissioner’s secretary wouldn’t she know about all the files? Larissa could be a cool liar.
“I expect I’ll manage. And you—your Polish wife will see that you are well protected, yes?”
Larissa’s comment cut him before he could muster a masked expression.
His pause raised a second suspicion. “What is it?” she asked, “something wrong with your wife? . . . Oh, my God, she doesn’t know about you, does she?” And then, in a near scream: “Does she?”
Viktor scoffed and pulled up from bedrock his deepest voice: “Of course, she does!”
“Liar! She does not. And now you’re in quite a pickle, yes? I imagine she probably comes from a household full of likely insurgents.”
The truth in her statement cut to the quick. Viktor angrily pulled open the desk drawer and withdrew the hand carved box from the Tatras. He held it out to Larissa. “Take it,” he said.
Larissa did not hesitate to move forward and take it from him. She fitted it into the arm that clutched the satchel, her eyes searching his. “An unlikely end, this. Isn’t it, Viktor?”
“It’s hardly an end, Larissa. Hardly that. The Poles are a lost race.”
“You don’t understand, do you? What is it with men? I meant us.”
“Oh,” Viktor said, although he had known exactly what she meant. “Take care, Larissa.”
“I will.” Larissa’s chin came up a bit. She paused, as if assessing him. “You don’t think you love her, do you?”
Viktor stared, too angry to speak.
Larissa waited two beats, turned, and moved toward the door. Suddenly, she halted and pivoted, facing him, her red lips a crooked line of contempt. “Viktor, you aren’t capable of loving someone.” She turned away again.
“Larissa,” Viktor called, even before he knew for certain what he was going to say or do next. He picked up the pistol, his finger pressing lightly against the trigger.
Larissa whirled around, a blur in red, her expression hard and questioning. Her steel gray eyes darted to the gun. A shadow passed over her face.
Viktor paused. He heard her take in a deep breath. It would take but seconds for him to lift it and take aim.
“Well?” She had sensed his temptation—and his indecisiveness.
“I’m sorry, Larissa.”
Larissa had not so much as blinked. “Don’t worry, Viktor. I’ll manage just fine. I hope you do, too.” She forced a smile, spun about and passed through the doorway.
Viktor forced her from his mind at once. She had been right: he was in a hell of a pickle. What was he to do? He could have killed her there and then, he thought, knowing Larissa might well relish telling Barbara about his position in the Third Department. But for tonight, at least, self-preservation was her main objective. Besides, Barbara’s brothers would probably beat her to the punch. How they would enjoy exposing him as a leader in the Third Department!
Focus! It was unlikely that Michał would have the chance to see his sister this night. Viktor knew that he should be the one to break the news himself. His stomach tightened. A simple apology would not wash with Barbara. He girded himself for a scene. A terrible scene.
Focus! If he was to stay in Warsaw and wait out this foolish—and no doubt ill-fated—insurrection, he knew he would have to do it in hiding.
He picked up General Rozniecki’s file. This would be his ticket to a short term underground existence. The folder held everything he needed to claim sanctuary with Rozniecki, the Polish Chief of Police—Chief of Spies!—who had been acting in collusion with Russia’s Third Department for years. Viktor had never liked Rozniecki, but what did that matter? He would be his ally—even if he had to coerce him with a file full of the most ghastly material.
As for his own file, he had no choice but to abandon the quest. He turned to exit the office, pausing now a moment to check the status of the square below. There were fewer people now moving through the square and toward a torch-lit Długa Street, where some major gathering was taking place. Leaving the building should pose no problem. As he started to turn away, a flash of red below caught his eye. Larissa’s full-length red cloak and red bonnet stood out like bloodstains on the square, even amidst the activity. She was not moving. She had stopped to speak—in a very animated manner—to a small group of Polish cadets. They listened intently as she spoke, gesticulating now toward the building that housed the Office of the Imperial Commissioner. This building! She kept pointing down and Viktor knew at once she was telling the Poles of the prisoners that awaited delivery from the cellar dungeon.
“Damn her,” Viktor cursed. “God damn her to hell!”
And suddenly he could see her face upturned, her hand moving up, too, finger extended, as she pointed at the very windows of General Nikolai Novosiltsev’s office. The cadets glanced up now. Viktor felt as if her finger had sent a bolt to his heart. Here was a woman who held a grudge and knew how to bide her time before venting it. He backed away from the window and into the wall so suddenly that he dislodged the huge mirror which fell forward onto the desk, crashing and breaking into hundreds of shards and fragments.
Viktor took in a deep breath. He knew instinctively that momentarily the cadets—and perhaps some citizens, too—would be rushing into the ground level. And Larissa would be walking slowly away, a smug look on her face. Perhaps across the square she would find a vantage point from which to watch his arrest. That is, if he wasn’t executed on the spot.
Clutching the file and the pistol, Viktor limped from the room. Logically, the cadets would be using the stairway at the front. He made his way through a series of rooms now, praying that she had failed to mention there was a rear servant’s stairwell that dated back to when the building was a single residence for the priests of Saint Jan’s Cathedral.
Damn, Viktor cursed as he painfully made his way down the stairs. My first impulse was the correct one. Apology be damned. I should have shot her!
As Michał and Jerzy approached Długa Street, the city seemed to have become abnormally quiet. Michał began to wonder if someone or some thing had sent the citizens back to their homes. And what of the soldiers, Polish or Russian? Then he heard a single voice, Polish, strong and strident, and as they turned into the upper end of the street, they saw the multitudes of soldiers and citizens listening raptly.
A white-haired general was detailing military details as he knew them. The city had been taken, he assured the masses, all but for a small section in the southern part of the city where fighting with Russian soldiers still went on. Intent on finding Józef, Michał pushed on through the crowd, choosing the small pockets where he observed cadet uniforms. Jerzy followed, occasionally pulling at Michał’s sleeve to point out some blond cadet who fit Józef’s description. Michał would look, shake his head, and they would move on.
Michał noticed that the citizens were well armed. No doubt the city’s arsenal had fallen. The general began talking about how certain Polish officers had seemed to know little of the cadets’ plans and had sided with the Russians, thus forfeiting their own lives. A young man then took over as speaker, tearfully telling of how he had witnessed prisoners freed from the Franciscan prison. A prisoner himself who had been freed from the Carmelite prison spoke, too, and so it went, with speakers changing every few minutes. That holy places had been taken over by the Russians recently for such evil purposes incensed Michał, but another realization was slowly forming in his mind: that no one speaker seemed to have taken control of the occasion, this historic insurrection. That—and the apparent ignorance of good Polish officers regarding the plot—spawned worry that this insurrection had not been fully thought out. Not carefully enough, at least.
Praying he was wrong, he put off such thoughts and concentrated on finding Józef. They came to the far edge of the crowd without a sighting of his brother.
“Look,” Jerzy said suddenly, “across the way! It’s Iza and Zofia.”
Michał’s eyes followed the direction of Jerzy’s finger. Iza and Zofia stood some twenty yards away, their eyes sweeping the crowd. And then he saw, a little behind them, his parents. His heart dropped within his chest. What was he to tell his parents about Józef? His father was pale but he seemed caught up in the speaker’s plan to wrest from Praga the contents of the arsenal there. He saw now that his mother’s eyes were constantly moving, searching, like those of an eagle watching for the return of her fledglings.
Jerzy started to forge a path through the crowd when Michał’s hand gripped Jerzy’s upper arm. “Come, Jerzy. Let’s go.” The two retreated in the direction they had come.
When they were clearly out of range, Michał turned back to Jerzy. “Please help me search further. There was fighting in Bankowa Square. Let’s try there. I can’t face my mother without news of Józef. Even if it’s bad news.”
“But I don’t understand, Viktor,” Barbara said. “What is it you’re doing?”
Viktor had his back to his wife, who stood in the open doorway of the bedchamber. He was rifling through drawers and tossing things helter-skelter into a valise. He paused momentarily, drew in a long breath, attempting patience. He would not raise his voice. The last thing he needed was for the twins to wake up. “I explained to you, Barbara Anna, that there’s a little revolution going on out there and it’s gotten out of hand, more than anyone expected.”
“I knew that before you arrived. There was fighting just below on the street. But why must you leave? This I don’t understand.”
Viktor placed his extra pistol on top of the clothing and snapped closed the bag. Turning, he approached Barbara. “It’s very likely that the Grand Duke has been assassinated and that will incite the Poles to more violence. It’s already dangerous for me. Truly dangerous.”
“Why is that? Your job at the Imperial
Commissioner’s?”
“Exactly. Most likely Novosiltsev is already close to Russian soil.”
“So? Surely you cannot be blamed for your work on his accounts, can you?”
Viktor’s eyes met Barbara’s, transmitting a truth he had not intended.
“What is it, Viktor?” Barbara pressed. “You’re more than an accountant, is that it?”
“It matters little now.”
“What is your position that makes things dangerous for you? I’ve wondered how we could afford an apartment such as this. You must be quite high up, yes? Tell me. I demand to know.”
“The less you know, the better. There will be men looking for me. If you have no information, you can’t tell them anything.”
“Oh, but they’ll tell me something about you, won’t they? What will they say? Have you swindled money? Is that it?”
Viktor set down his valise. Of course, she was right. It would be cowardly not to say something himself. “They will tell you . . .”
“What, Viktor? What?”
“They will tell that I have worked for the Secret Police.” There—the long hidden truth was out.
Barbara took several seconds for his statement to register. “You’re not one of them, are you?” She smiled oddly, as if at a humorless joke, for the thought was too ridiculous. However, her face reflected a mind quick enough to assemble a hundred hints from their past life together that lent it credence. She was taking in his face, too, and his intensely serious expression made for the coup de grace. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, my God in Heaven!”
“Don’t go off on one of your ravings. Not now. It’s my job and it’s put food on your table and provided nice things for you and the boys.”
“But the Secret Police—my God! How they have tortured us Poles! How many have they sent to dungeons or to die in the cold North? How many have they killed outright? And you, Viktor, you are part of this?”
“I am not like that,” Viktor said.
“What are you like, then? You are not the husband I thought you were, the one who would hold me in the mornings. My God, who are you?”
“I’m your husband, Barbara Anna and father to our children. I love you and the boys, you know that.”
“And yet you leave each morning and go about persecuting my neighbors, my countrymen? How can this be?”
He shrugged. “I must go, Barbara. There is a good deal of money in the top drawer of the dresser.”
“Money! What do I care for money when I find that my life has been a sham!”
“Nevertheless, you will need it. I’ll send more when I can. This little revolution will be short-lived. I will return when order is restored.” Viktor picked up his valise and moved past Barbara and out of the bedroom.
“What makes you think we will still be here?” Barbara called.
Viktor paused and turned about. “Ah, actually, I think it would be best if you take the boys and stay with your parents at the Gronska town house.”
“I’ll go where I like and take the boys with me.”
Viktor was at the door. “Keep them safe, Basia.”
“Ha! Oh, and don’t worry about the safety of your precious Grand Duke!”
Viktor turned about. “What do you mean? Why did you say that?”
“Because he escaped the assassination attempt, that’s why. His bodyguards paraded him right down this street and he’s no doubt out of the city by now. Good news for you, yes, that your fellow Russian scoundrel lives?”
Viktor closed the door behind him without a final goodbye.
Fear was a new emotion for Viktor and he didn’t like it. As long as he was on the street, he ran the risk of being confronted by cadets or any of the populace that had been roused to take up arms. He moved as quickly as he dared without appearing suspicious. At last he came to the correct avenue.
Limping, Viktor lugged his valise through a street dark as pitch and made his way up the front stairs of General Rozniecki’s city mansion, lifted the brass knocker and brought it down hard against the oak door several times so that the sound reverberated within. He waited, knocked again. He put his ear to the door. He could hear someone moving about. He pounded now at the heavy oak. He heard a faint metallic sound and suddenly became aware of a glint of light at a peephole in the door. An eyeball.
He stood back from the door so that he might be seen. “I am Viktor Baklanov,” he shouted. “I demand that you open at once.”
A long pause ensued. At last he heard the sounds of bolts being unloosed. The door opened slightly and a face appeared. Viktor pushed open the door and entered, forcefully knocking aside the man who had opened it. A single candle at a nearby side table did little to light the interior. The place looked and resonated like a vault.
“Where’s General Rozniecki?”
“Gone,” the man said, closing the door, but not without a wary glance at the street.
“Gone where?”
The man turned to Viktor, who recognized him as Bartosz, the general’s most trusted servant. It was Bartosz, a Pole and the go-between who supplied the payroll for Viktor and his men. He was a tall, sturdy man in his forties. The forehead of his roundish face had suffered a wound that extended up into the balding front of his head. “He escaped.”
“Escaped?”
Bartosz nodded. “From a gang of hoodlums—soldiers and students mostly. They came in knocking things about and looking for the general.”
It made sense, Viktor thought. The man was anything but discreet about his darker dealings as Chief of Police. Pole or not, he would be a prime target. “How did he manage to get away? I see that you did not.”
“He took to his hiding place and when they left, he commandeered a coach and bribed the driver to allow him to drive. As far as I know he escaped wearing the coachman’s cloak.—Has the whole city been given over to the young revolutionaries?”
“Much of it has. But some of those fools rising up are old fools. At any rate, it should not last long. The Grand Duke has escaped and he will no doubt rally his forces to suppress it.”
“I see.”
The comment showed no bias and Viktor could only wonder whether Bartosz might sympathize with the rising. “You didn’t run?”
“No, I would have nowhere to go.”
“I don’t intend to run, either. Tell me, Bartosz , where is this hiding place the general had?”
Viktor was led to a small room at the east end of the sprawling mansion. As Bartosz lighted several tapers, Viktor took note of a large desk with a cushioned leather chair behind it and a considerably simpler and less comfortable wooden chair in front. The only other thing of consequence was a very large tapestry of peacocks in a garden setting. It was framed in gold-painted bamboo and took up much of the wall that in most rooms would have housed the fireplace. Viktor recognized General Rozniecki’s utilitarian purposes here. He had no doubt that this room was where the general received reports from his own spies and interviewed suspicious characters. It was best to keep them in a cold place and on a hard chair. And no doubt the oversized peacocks—with the eye-shaped markings on their feathers reminiscent of the evil eye—lent an unsettling aura to the room.
Bartosz approached the tapestry, knelt, and adjusted something at the bottom of the bamboo frame. Viktor heard a faint click and watched as the frame moved forward on vertical hinges. Behind the frame the gray stucco wall seemed quite ordinary—until another adjustment beneath a floorboard and a gentle push from Bartosz caused a stuccoed door to push open, revealing another room. The servant took two tapers, handed one to Viktor and led the way. Stooping to make his way through the doorway, Viktor followed, passing through the brick fittings of what had once been the fireplace for the office. Inside he stood to his full height, took stock, and whistled as he perused the amenities. Although it was windowless, the large room housed a bed, several chairs, a table with silver candelabras, and a well-stocked bookcase situated near a wine cupboard, equally well-stocked.
“Your master is a cautious man, it seems, Bartosz. Clever and cautious. So the room finally served its purpose.”
“Oh, it’s been doing that for years,” Bartosz muttered.
“What do you mean?” Looking around now, the room and its contents—a mussed bed, empty bottles, dirty plates, open books—did appear to have been used often.
Bartosz cast his dark eyes on Viktor, his expression indicative that he may have said too much. But he thought for a moment, gave a little shrug as if to allay his second thoughts, and moved back to the door, motioning Viktor forward. He pulled closed the framed tapestry, then pushed the door closed. He opened now a small hinged window in the door. Viktor had failed to notice it before. Bartosz pulled a nearby chair over. “If you take a seat, you will understand, my lord.”
Viktor sat. He looked through the window and realized he could see into the other room through two peepholes.
“You are looking through the center eyes of two of the peacock feathers.”
Another whistle. He shot a questioning glance at Bartosz.
“One can also hear fairly well what goes on in that room,” Bartosz said. “The general had Macrot, his secretary of spies, sit exactly where you are sitting. He would transcribe the conversations that were carried on in the other room.”
“Ah, so walls do have ears. And if someone incriminated himself, it became a matter of record.”
Bartosz began to pile the dirty plates on the table. “While that no doubt happened, my lord, the primary use of this little arrangement was to cheat his own spies. You see, when his mercenary spies came to him with information, he would have Macrot here record the content of the reports. Then, when the spy would be led to another room for libation, the secretary would emerge from behind the tapestry and provide the general with the document, one that he had predated, of course.”
Viktor looked at Bartosz with undisguised astonishment. “Then the general would use that to prove to the spy that the information was old news—stale and worthless, yes?”
“Exactly. I believe he took great enjoyment in cheating his own spies.”
Viktor remembered several instances when his men had come back to him with just such a story of Rozniecki and his mysterious spies. An intense—but impotent—anger simmered inside him.
Bartosz took notice. “No honor among thieves, as they say, my lord.”
“Or among spies apparently, my friend. What’s become of Macrot?”
Bartosz stood with a pile of dishes. “When the rebel patrol came in to find the general and take his personal papers and files, Macrot and several of his satellites fired upon them. It was a stupid thing to do and they paid for it. Shot dead they were.”
Viktor noted the off-handedness of the remark and could make nothing of it. Did Bartosz harbor some sense of allegiance to the Polish cause? He moved to a more comfortable chair and sat thinking after Bartosz had carried the dishes out of the hidden chamber.
General Aleksander Rozniecki, as Chief of Police, had been his superior, of course, but Viktor had considered himself lucky to report directly to the Imperial Commissioner, General Nikolai Novosiltsev. As despicable as Novosiltsev was, at least he had not turned coat on his own country. Rozniecki had served in the Polish army forty years, even commanding a brigade under Napoleon—supposedly with honor—but under the imposed Russian government of recent years he had been corrupted into a tool of tyranny, one who became known for swindles, bribery, extortion. Those who dared oppose him found themselves in prison. Viktor recalled an accusation of poisoning, but the proceedings were somehow obviated. No little wonder there. After all, the general was a close friend of Grand Duke Konstantin.
Viktor took in his surroundings. This will do, he thought. This will have to do. After all, the little cadet insurrection could not last long. A few days? A week? Sooner than would have been the case had the Grand Duke been killed, for the news would have to reach the tsar before retaliation could take place. With Konstantin alive, he would no doubt move swiftly with his Russian soldiers and those Polish soldiers who knew their own interest and stayed true to him. In the meantime, he would be safe here.
He thought about Barbara and the boys. He hoped she had the good sense to get them to Zofia’s. He sighed heavily at the thought that they were to be separated, however long it might be. Somehow, he would win back her heart and have his family again.
He could hear Bartosz returning now. He could manipulate the servant, make him provide his meals, discourage any would-be intruders. He would bully him if need be.
Viktor watched Bartosz closely as he stepped into the hidden chamber. The question was, could he trust this Pole?