The Mazovia Legacy (15 page)

The concierge beamed in Pavlovian pleasure when he saw Delaney approaching him in the lobby. Could he possibly arrange, Delaney asked him, for a
Taxi Bleu
to be waiting out in the laneway behind the hotel in a few minutes' time? A little matter of a young lady, a family matter. One must be
très, très discret
in hotels these days,
n'est-ce pas?

The concierge protested only briefly before putting the first of this day's crop of banknotes into his waistcoat.

“A
pourboire
is really not necessary for this service,
monsieur,
” he said.

Delaney then went out on the street to the line of cabs waiting at the curbside. It was busy on the streets now, the beginning of a weekday in Paris, and a wan sunlight was shining on the bustle. He leaned over into one of the Peugeots and asked various inane tourist questions in English before straightening up and looking ostentatiously at his watch.Then he went back in to call Natalia from the house phone.

“The cabbie said it was about a two-minute drive from here,” he said. “There are a lot of them out front. You ready?”

“I'm ready,” Natalia said, as arranged. “I'll meet you out front.”

Delaney went back up to the fifteenth floor to pick up the battered old equipment bag that had been with him on so many assignments. It had carried many things over the years but never a Browning semi-automatic pistol. He wrapped the gun in a hotel facecloth and placed it under his reporter's notebook. Tools of the trade.

They got off the elevator not on the main floor but at the mezzanine level and walked quickly down a flight of service stairs into the banquet kitchen. Some of the chefs and underlings looked annoyed at the intrusion but Delaney and Natalia walked on through in the French way: never apologize, never explain. Out the delivery entrance at the back of the hotel and into a waiting Volvo station wagon. The driver had been smoking heavily and the car stank of
Gauloises.
He threw away his cigarette when they got in and told them that rue Julien Lacroix could be as much as half an hour away, depending on traffic, depending on where
les boutillages
might be.

“Go,” Delaney said.

No one seemed to be behind them.
A natural,
Delaney thought, as he settled in for the ride.

Zbigniew Tomaszewski lived in a somewhat disreputable building off rue de Belleville. It was an area of Paris Delaney didn't know well. The side of the building had a giant mural of a black face smoking acigarette in a pair of ruby-red lips. The street was so narrow that the taxi blocked traffic as they paid the fare. The sound of the car horns echoed off old brick walls and windows. Some African and Arab kids were noisily playing soccer in the small square under the giant smoker's gaze. They did not ease up their game even as Delaney and Natalia walked through it.

Natalia had the exterior security code for the building. The heavy door gave a small electric click after she punched the code into a small keypad outside, and the lock opened for them.The hallway was damp, dark, and not terribly clean. Bright green garbage bins were haphazardly pushed into a small alcove to their left. There didn't seem to be a concierge.They were a dying breed in the new Paris. But if there was still to be a concierge this would be the neighbourhood for it. She would be Portuguese, more than likely, with a tiny cluttered apartment at the back of the building and canaries in a cage.

The ground floor apartment behind Zbigniew's battered door, however, was a revelation. It was gigantic, by Paris standards, with magnificent gigantic furniture and it was blessed with its own garden courtyard. The apartment walls formed two sides of the garden, and the stone back wall and high fence of a small church the other two. The old man led them out there immediately and stood proudly while they admired the flowers and trees. He explained to them that he had bought this oasis many years ago before prices went skyward even in this unfashionable neighbourhood. It was something no retired lithographer could ever hope to afford these days, he told them, and he himself could barely keep up with the building charges and taxes anymore.

Zbigniew was well past seventy, with an intensely white thatch of thick hair and equally thick thatched eyebrows. He walked with a slight limp and his arms were thin, their skin loosening, but he looked reasonably robust for a man of his age. His face was well tanned, probably from hours spent out in the garden. Today Zbigniew was wearing an old tweed jacket, cravat, flannels, and a pair of deepblue velvet slippers with gold brocade. A pair of half-frame glasses hung on his chest from a gold chain. He offered them coffee.

“To think, Natalia, that we have never met but once before,” he said as he prepared espresso cups. He spoke English better than Delaney had expected. “You were one of those backpacks, backpackers, then.”

“Yes. But I'm no longer a backpacker of nineteen, I'm afraid.”

“Still lovely, however.”

“Thank-you.”

“And Mr. Delaney, you are a not a backpacker anymore either, I would assume.”

“No. I'm a writer,” Delaney said.

He did not wish to set off alarms with the word
journalist.
Natalia did that for him “A journalist,” she said.

Zbigniew looked at her for some sign as to why she would bring a journalist along with her.

“Francis is my friend,” she said. “He's been a help to me in many ways since Stanislaw died.”

“But some stories are not to be written, Mr. Delaney. Not all stories are for the press, would you not agree?” Zbigniew said.

“Of course,” Delaney said. “I'm not working today.”

“But tomorrow perhaps.”

“I'm Natalia's friend.”

“I see,” Zbigniew said. “A friend and a journalist. An unusual combination.”

Delaney said nothing. He took his cup of excellent espresso and looked calmly at them both.
I will be asked to exit shortly,
he thought.

They drank coffee and they chatted about the apartment and the neighbourhood and about the changes in Paris since the war. Stanislaw's name was not raised again. Eventually, Zbigniew turned to Delaney; very formal, very Old World.

“I wonder, Mr. Delaney, if now, after our little coffees, you would mind if I had some time with my friend's niece alone,” he said.

Zbigniew did not consult Natalia about this. He would not have been in the habit of asking younger people permission for what he wanted to do.

“Please do not be offended,” Zbigniew said, “but there are some family matters that bring Natalia here to me as well. In addition to my abilities as a
raconteur.
”

It would have been impossible not to agree. Delaney had not anticipated this when he and Natalia were making their plan. He had expected, foolishly, as he now realized, that this old Polish gentleman would simply open up to them both, sharing quite possibly dark secrets of various sorts without hesitation, without giving a thought to the presence of a stranger, and a journalist at that. Delaney got to his feet. Natalia looked flustered but made no attempt to intervene on his behalf. It would be difficult to make any sort of new plan with her in this situation or to warn her to be careful, to be discreet, to look behind her as she left. Delaney felt annoyed, worried, and cornered. Not in control.

“I'll meet you back at the hotel, Francis,” Natalia said.

“I could come back to meet you here,” he said, looking at Zbigniew.

“It is difficult to say how long we might be,” the old man said. “I might even prepare Natalia some lunch. We have not seen each other for so many years.”

“All right,” Delaney said. “Thank-you for the coffee.”

“A pleasure,” Zbigniew said. “Enjoy your day.” He added, as he smoothed one of his unruly eyebrows with the back of an index finger: “What does a journalist do in Paris when he is not working, Mr. Delaney?”

It was a question Delaney would have at one time found difficult to answer.

N
atalia could see immediately why her uncle had loved his old comrade so much. After Delaney left, she and Zbigniew cried together a little in the silent old apartment about Stanislaw and about the way he had died, alone. They had told each other stories in Polish about Stanislaw and the family and the past, and had cried at some of them until they began to laugh at some of them, and suddenly it was a little easier.

Then Natalia told Zbigniew more about what the police in Montreal had said and about what Delaney had said and about what they now thought might be behind Stanislaw's murder. For she called it murder, and Zbigniew made no attempt to debate this with her.

“He told me there were things he wanted to talk about just before he died,” Natalia said finally. “He said there were things that I should know.” She felt the tears coming again. “But he said this on my answering machine, Zbigniew, a foolish, foolish machine, on a night when I was not there for him to talk to.”

“There are indeed some things you should know, Natalia,” Zbigniew said. “Very definitely. Now that Stanislaw is gone. And I think he would want me to tell them to you. It is good you have made the effort to come here.”

As he spoke, he got up to go to a massive mahogany sideboard that sat in the living room. He reached inside and pulled out a leather briefcase stuffed with what looked like letters and papers.The briefcase was so full it could not be closed and properly fastened. Zbigniew brought this over to where they sat.

“I have letters here from your uncle from twenty, thirty, forty years ago, my dear Natalia,” he said. “Letters, newspaper cuttings, and other papers he sent to me over the years. And I also know things that were best not written down. I will tell you what I know, and then you and I will decide together what is to be done. And who else should be allowed to know.”

Natalia felt a strong urge to check that the door to the apartment was locked, to draw the curtains, to indulge in what Francis liked to call “cloak-anddagger stuff.” She wished he had stayed to help her sort out what she would now discover — to take notes in his reporter's notebook. She looked toward the door.

“This can be done safely here, I think, Natalia,” Zbigniew said quietly. “There is nothing to fear in here.”

“All right,” she said. She thought, however:
This time my fear is not irrational.

Zbigniew began pulling papers and letters from his briefcase as he talked. The larger bundles of envelopes were carefully secured with string or elastic bands. Some had notes in tiny Polish script attached.

“I am the archivist, it would appear, Natalia,” he said with a small smile. “The keeper of a secret history.”

“So it seems.”

“You are lucky to have been born in Canada,” he said. “And after the war. Old men like me and Stanislaw, we are like all the Poles of our generation. We lived with the entire burden of our history on our shoulders. Or so we thought.”

He seemed to have organized the papers to his satisfaction.

“You young ones can never imagine, no matter how much you read about it or hear about it from old men like me, just what it was like to have been in Warsaw or somewhere else in Poland in the First World War and, then, after that one, the second war,” he said. “It is unimaginable for young ones like you. The Nazis cannot be described. They simply cannot be adequately described.”

It seemed to Natalia as if he had waited a long time to be able to say this to someone who wanted to listen.

“We knew they would come in 1939, your uncle and I,” Zbigniew continued. “We were soldiers, Air Force officers, and we knew that when they came, they would be animals and try to destroy our country totally, to wipe it from the map. And when they came it was like that. Worse than that.”

He looked at her, as if wondering whether anyone young or old could ever know how to reply to a description of the events of 1939.

“Your uncle was one of the lucky ones, really. He became aide-de-camp to Raczkiewicz when Raczkiewicz was made president in Romania after their group escaped. Stanislaw had gotten out right away and then he got out of Romania right away too, into France with the government-in-exile. Some of us had to creep away and live like animals in the forest before we could get to France or Britain to regroup.” Zbigniew paused.

“Did he ever tell you about our squadron? The Mazovia Squadron in Scotland?” he asked.

“A little,” Natalia said. “He didn't really like to talk about the war.”

“A wise policy,” Zbigniew said. “But you knew about our squadron, how we flew Wellingtons together to bomb Berlin and Mannheim and Essen and Dortmund and other places many of us had been to, places we actually knew? Poles bombing their own Europe.”

“I knew some of it.”

“But did he ever tell you about his little secret, about how he was assigned before any of our adventures on Wellington bombers together to travel with the treasures of our country from Wawel Castle, to bring these to safety before the Nazis could steal them or destroy them? Did he tell you that Hitler was not just a madman with people, that he was a madman with art, that he wanted to destroy all of what he called decadent art in Europe and bring the rest back to Germany for his super museums, his
über
museums, in Berlin and Linz? Did he ever tell you, Natalia, about what the Nazis were trying to do to the art of Europe?”

Zbigniew did not wait for Natalia to reply because he had long ago decided there was no adequate reply.

“Your uncle was one of the lucky ones, Natalia. He was given the important task of trying to save our country's treasures before he was asked to try to destroy the Germans from an aircraft. He told me a great deal about his adventures with those art treasures, my dear, on the back roads of Romania in trucks, and on boats to Malta, and then France and then England and Canada. Your country now. He was entrusted with a great secret, Natalia, he and some others, and he, at least, never betrayed that trust. Even until he died. He was a soldier. I watched him in the fighting and he was not one who would give up or betray.”

Natalia said nothing. Today she would listen more than she would talk.

“We were betrayed, of course, Natalia,” Zbigniew continued. “All of us. And you and your generation of Poles, too, when you consider it. At Yalta, when the so-called great powers betrayed us all to the Communists and recognized their bad joke of a government, their outrage of an illegitimate government in Warsaw and withdrew recognition of the government-in-exile, it felt to all of us as though our fighting had been for nothing, that we had fought for years and still lost our beloved country to those who had been our enemies. And in the end it was through the betrayal of those who had been our friends. The Allies, so-called.

“So, you see, those trunks and crates hidden in Canada were worth more than gold and silver to us, Natalia. Those treasures were something we had snatched from the Nazis and then the Russians and, yes, even from Churchill and Roosevelt, and they were made safe in your country until we could win back our own country from those who took it from us.

“After the war, your uncle thought it was his duty to carry on looking after those precious things he had helped bring to Canada. So he went there to live and be close to the comrades he had worked with on that secret mission and to wait for the right moment.”

Zbigniew looked intently at Natalia now, waiting for some sign she was understanding the significance of all this.

“Why didn't you go to Canada as well, Zbigniew?” Natalia asked.

“Because I am a European, Natalia. Because I had no duty to go. Because I felt that it was too far, too new, too cold.” He laughed a little at this. “Paris was my choice, my dear. I love this city and I always felt that when things changed I could simply get on a train and go back to Warsaw. But of course I never did. And now, even though there is no impediment to my going back, I cannot. I have lost my Warsaw, Natalia, and I am at home here now. But for your uncle it was different.”

Zbigniew began to pull packets of letters apart and extract aging sheets from envelopes before continuing.

“Your uncle used to write to me, of course. He was a great writer of letters, your uncle. Perhaps too many letters. Perhaps, as it turns out, some letters to the wrong people, telling them too much.”

Zbigniew selected a letter from a small pile he had assembled. He handed it to Natalia. It was on old, drying, flimsy paper. It was headed “Montreal, September 1945” and written in Polish. Natalia could immediately recognize her uncle's spidery handwriting:

“My dear Zbigniew:

I am so sorry for the delay in writing to you, my friend, but I have been busy these days trying to get the treasures into a safer place. The Communists are coming, my friend. They have named a new man for the embassy in Ottawa, Florkiewicz, and Krukowska is out. But Krukowska has ordered that Zdunek and Kozlowski move the goods from the Experimental Farm to somewhere safer, before they can be stolen from us.

What a ridiculous place to have hidden them anyway, Zbigniew. A ridiculous farm in the suburbs, with no decent locks and dozens of scientists and civil servants in and out every day. I was the driver, the pilot, once again, and now we think the goods are safe. But we needed you for a navigator that night, Zbigniew, I can tell you. Two trunks, with some of the most rare items, are in the Bank of Montreal in Ottawa, in their vault. Only Zdunek and Kozlowski can sign jointly to have them removed from there. And the rest, many cases, are in a convent in Ottawa and another in Quebec, at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. Thank goodness for the Quebec Catholics.They are on our side in this fight, you may be sure of that. And passwords, Zbigniew. We have passwords . . .”

Natalia looked up, enthralled by what she had read.

“He sounds like an excited schoolboy,” she said.

“He was, what, perhaps thirty-two then, Natalia. Not a schoolboy, a soldier, and a bomber pilot, who knew his duty to Poland.” Zbigniew handed her another letter.

“Montreal 23

August 1946

My dear friend:

Oh the intrigue, Zbigniew. The intrigue. It is like Romania in 1939 all over again. I hardly know where to begin. Zdunek has been co-opted by the Communists, the swine. He will tell them where we have hidden things, if he has not already. So again I was the driver. Kozlowski and Krukowska and I rented a large truck and went to the convents brandishing our little receipts and mouthing passwords, and the treasures are still ours.

‘The Holy Virgin of Czestochowa' — that is all the nuns needed to hear, my friend, and they would have given us the Pope's ring if they had it. When you come, and you must come to visit me here one day, I will take you to these places and tell you the story properly. The Ottawa Convent of the Precious Blood, Zbigniew — only the French Canadians still have convent names like that — then a long night drive to Quebec City, to the Redemptorist Fathers at Sainte-Anne-deBeaupré. The password was magic for them as well, and now the crates are well hidden once again.

Zdunek can never know where they are again. Perhaps it is best if I do not tell you either, my friend. Perhaps best for you not to know. But thank God for the Quebec Catholics, Zbigniew. And for Duplessis. He doesn't want the Communists to get them any more than we do.

Our major problem now is that it is still only Zdunek and Kozlowski who together can get the other two trunks from the bank in Ottawa.They will clearly not be able to agree on a course of action anymore . . .”

Zbigniew handed Natalia a small sheaf of clippings from Ottawa and Montreal newspapers that Stanislaw had obviously sent his friend over the years. The articles reported that the movement of the treasures was being called theft by the new Polish ambassador to Canada. He and his colleagues had arrived only hours later than Stanislaw and his co-conspirators, and found the crates removed. They had spent hours combing the back roads of Quebec looking for the rented truck, one newspaper account said. Florkiewicz was demanding action: from the Canadian government, the Quebec government, the Catholic Church, the RCMP, from anyone who would listen.

The Canadian prime minister, however, clearly did not wish to be pulled into a diplomatic battle between the Communists in Warsaw and the Polish government-in-exile in London. Even less, the reports said, did he want to take on Premier Maurice Duplessis in Quebec in what could be another major jurisdictional battle. It was a matter for the courts to decide, the prime minister said, but he would as a courtesy allow the RCMP to try to trace the missing crates, if this would be of any assistance to the embassy of Poland.

Zbigniew had lit a dark Sobranie cigarette, and smoked quietly as Natalia read.

“Your uncle was in the thick of it in those years, my dear,” he said.

Natalia suspected that Zbigniew knew every one of the letters by heart and every twist and turn of the story his old comrade had told him in such detail. It would have been a duty to his old friend to know and remember this story in case he was ever needed.

“The Communists would have killed him, and the others, if they dared do so in Canada,” Zbigniew said.

“But of course they couldn't until they knew where the treasures were as well,” Natalia said.