The Mazovia Legacy (36 page)

Delaney waited for some days after his Ottawa debriefings and after the funeral before he went. He made it clear to any who might be watching or listening that he was simply trying to get his affairs in order and return to his life as a journalist. He made the appropriate phone calls to editors, publishers, colleagues, contacts. He rested. He spent a lot of time alone. Anyone watching or listening would be convinced, Delaney hoped, that he was slowly easing himself back into his work after going through what he simply told people had been some serious personal troubles.

So he waited and he watched and eventually he made his way again to Saint-Sauveur. One day he rode the Montreal subway to a main transfer point, changed trains, changed again, and darted this way and that in crowds until he was sure he was not being followed. Then he took another subway train to the bus terminal and rode a Greyhound up the Laurentian Autoroute to Father Lessard's church.

Even there, Delaney had been careful. After the bus dropped him off he stood for a long time on rue Principale, studying traffic and pedestrians and parked cars until he was confident there were no watchers, nothing out of the ordinary. Then he walked quickly across the street and let himself into a side door of the church.

Father Lessard was in his yellow office at the back, where Delaney and Natalia had first spoken with him. When Delaney put his head in through the open door and knocked on the frame, the priest looked up from some papers and then stood up right away. He was wearing black trousers and a black shirt with a clerical collar.

“
Mon Dieu, seigneur,
” the priest said.

“Sorry to startle you, Father,” Delaney said. “We need to talk.”

“Yes, my friend, we do,” Father Lessard said. “But I didn't know if you would come.”

Father Lessard closed the door and motioned to Delaney to take a seat. They talked for a long time.

Delaney saw no reason now to hide very much at all from this old priest. But he was surprised at how much Father Lessard already seemed to know. He knew, for example, about Natalia's death. The police and young Father Carpentier and various other players had told him what happened in the woods that day; that there had been shooting, that Delaney had been taken away, that bodies had later been taken away.

The priest knew that Delaney and Natalia had gone into the cellar of the other church and that they had exited suddenly and left their car behind. He knew that there had been two men in the other church that day and that they had been gruff in their questioning of Father Carpentier. The old priest knew most of what had happened, but Delaney needed much more from him than that.

“Some men came here afterwards, with police,” Father Lessard said. “They all asked me what it was you wanted that day. They wanted to know who you both were and what I had told you.”

“What did you tell them?” Delaney asked.

“I told them the truth,” Father Lessard said. “I saw no reason not to. I told them about the Polish man from so long ago. I told them he had hidden something in the church as part of some secret wartime business with the government and with Duplessis. I told them I had told you where to find it because you had a password, because that had been my solemn task.”

“You told them,” Delaney said.

“Yes, my friend. I told them. But I did so because I knew more than they thought I knew.”

“What do you mean?”

“Father Carpentier told me that you and the young lady had been only a short while in the cellar of his church before you went out across the lake toward the village. He said you left your car behind and then there was that unfortunate business in the woods. So I knew that either you had not found what it was you were looking for or you had found it and it was still where it had been hidden.”

“How would you know that?” Delaney asked.

“Because on that day when I went with the Polish man in his truck it took him a very long time to unload whatever it was he was hiding. He said it was very heavy and he would need some time. You could not have taken it away so easily. And Father Carpentier has given me no indication that anything was taken away after you were there.”

“But he didn't know what it was,” Delaney said.

“No, he didn't,” Father Lessard said. “He still doesn't. And he has given me no indication since that day that he knows anything about the small room behind the armoire. He is a good priest. A young one, but good. He would have told me all he knew.”

“Do you think the things are still there?” Delaney asked.

“Yes, I do,” the priest said. “Father Carpentier would know if all those people with their questions had found something large and heavy and taken it away.”

And some of those people with their questions think that what we were after was stolen from us that day in any case,
Delaney thought.
Because that is what I have told them.

Delaney did not tell Father Lessard about the gold. The priest had never said he wanted to know exactly what was hidden and Delaney thought it best to keep that secret still. But he told him about the chalice. And he told him about who he thought had taken it and who he thought might have killed Natalia and others to get it. Whether under official orders or not.

Father Lessard did not seem perturbed by the thought that Vatican agents or former agents or rogue agents or anyone else might be willing to do such things. He had been a priest too long for that.

“Monsieur Delaney,” Father Lessard said quietly, “I don't know if you are correct in this. I can tell you nothing about who murdered your friend or who murdered the others. Or who may have taken the chalice away. I am sorry those things happened. But I can also tell you that nothing in the human heart surprises me anymore, and nothing in the Catholic Church, I am sorry to say, surprises me anymore. It is a very worldly church. I will not try to deceive you in this.”

“So you'll help me keep the other things hidden?” Delaney asked. “You'll help make sure the right thing gets done?”

“I have been trying to do that in this matter since 1959, Monsieur Delaney,” Father Lessard said. “I gave my word.”

Delaney told the priest a little more about Stanislaw Janovski and his wish that what was hidden in the church would one day be returned to the appropriate people and used for the right purposes in Poland. Delaney told him that he wanted to find out who those people might be and decide what Stanislaw, and now Natalia, would have wanted done.

Delaney told him these things partly because he felt the old priest deserved to know at least a little more about what he had become involved in. But also because he needed someone else to know the story, or most of it, in case something happened to him and he failed to see it through. Father Lessard was his only possible ally now and could well end up the last person in the world to know these secrets. Father Lessard was a priest clearly accustomed to such burdens.

When all that business was done, they talked for a long time about other things: loss and grief and guilt and rage and the desire for revenge. This was a priest accustomed to such burdens as well. Father Lessard had been the one to steer the conversation in that direction and Delaney had not resisted very much. But it surprised Delaney, once they began, how very much he needed something like this. Confession, if not absolution.

Afterward, Father Lessard saw him out. They walked through the empty echoing church together, saying nothing. There were no other sinners seeking assistance that day. Delaney shook the old priest's hand at the door.

“Thank-you, Father,” he said.

“Thank-you for telling me about these things,” Father Lessard said.

“I'll have to come back again,” Delaney said. “At least one more time. I'll have to get back into the other church eventually.”

“I understand that,” the priest said.

“It may be a while,” Delaney said.

“Yes,” Father Lessard said. “It will not be an easy thing for you to decide who are the deserving ones in this.”

“I know that,” Delaney said. “But I have to try.”

“Yes,” the priest said. “You will have to try.”

Before leaving for Poland, Francis Delaney dreamed this:

He is with Natalia. They are in an apartment together. It is his apartment and her apartment at the same time. Each place has taken on some characteristics from the other and they have become one new living space. It is spare and spartan like his former home, and full and mysterious like hers, all at the same time. Some of his things are on shelves and walls, and some of hers. He feels safe and comfortable there.

He and Natalia exchange gifts. He gives her a small silver vial. It contains his tears — now a powerful elixir. She gives him a handsome volume of bound blank pages, embossed on the cover with mandalas and stars. “Yours now,” Natalia says. He knows he will fill it. He knows this is a good thing.

Delaney stood alone in his quiet apartment, looking appreciatively around as he always did before leaving on a long trip or a new assignment. It was still his personal style of meditation. But there were differences now.

In the past he had used this place as a sanctuary removed from complexity and entanglements. In the past he had ventured out from here to make his journalist's observations, to observe the actions of others. It would still be a sanctuary, but this time he would venture out to observe and then to make choices, take sides, become involved in a story in ways he had never done before.

He knew, as he had always known, that action is a most dangerous thing. He knew that he now had many crowded hours ahead of him in distant cities. But this time any action he took would be for love and memory and responsibility — for Natalia — and that would make it different.

He was still not absolutely sure how he would proceed. He would start by flying to Warsaw and using all his skills and experience to try to make sense of what was happening there and who might be deserving. He had an intuition that in the end no decision might be possible, no immediate resolution possible. The time, he realized, might still not be right. To finally resolve Stanislaw Janovski's dilemma, he realized he too might simply have to wait.

He did not know Poland well, so he would be on unfamiliar ground. He knew he would be watched by the various sides if they found out he was in the country. As he would be in Rome, when he eventually travelled there. He would have to tread very carefully indeed. In this, as in so much of what he had done in the past, his biggest risk as well as his best weapon would be the fear among the players of a journalist telling all. But what his adversaries could not know was that Delaney very much doubted he would ever write a story about any of this. That sort of thing didn't matter to him anymore. Because for once, for the first time, this story had become his own story.

GDANSK, March 6, 1996 (Newswire) – Polish officials were still baffled on Wednesday by the arrival at a Gdansk customs warehouse of four small wooden crates containing 48 gold bars worth an estimated US$8 million.

The sturdy, purpose-built crates arrived in Gdansk early Monday on a container ship from Canada, accompanied by documents indicating they contained “personal effects” destined for the museum at historic Wawel Castle in Krakow, in southern Poland.

The Curator of the State Art Collection at Wawel Castle, Tadeusz Cygnarowski, travelled to Gdansk yesterday from Krakow after receiving word from Polish customs officials that the crates had arrived and gold bars had been discovered inside. Cygnarowski said he had in recent days received documents in the mail concerning the mysterious shipment, including bills of lading and an unsigned letter, but until being contacted by Polish customs authorities on Monday had thought they were a hoax.

Cygnarowski said the bills of lading indicated the crates had been shipped from Montreal in late January by someone acting “on behalf of” one Stanislaw Janovski.

The unsigned letter indicated that Janovski was one of the Polish officials who had been in charge of the famous shipment of Polish art treasures sent to Canada for safekeeping at the outbreak of World War II. It was thought all the art treasures had been returned to Poland in two lots in 1959 and 1961 and that the major players in the saga were now dead.

“The letter said Mr. Janovski had died last year in Canada and it was his wish that the gold in these crates be returned to Wawel Castle,” Cygnarowski told reporters at an impromptu news conference at Gdansk docks.

“Mr. Janovski apparently wished for the proceeds of the disposal of this gold to be used to locate and retrieve any pieces from the State Art Collection that were lost or stolen during the war, so they can be returned to the collection,” Cygnarowski said. “He also wished that the money be used for the permanent upkeep of the national art treasures, to improve security and exhibition arrangements at Wawel Castle if required, and possibly to expand the collection in future.”

“The letter indicated that Janovski did not want the money to be used for so-called ‘political purposes,'” Cygnarowski said.

Adding to the mystery, Cygnarowski told reporters that the unsigned letter also indicated that he, as Curator, should “as a matter of urgency” attempt to locate a precious gold chalice, inlaid with pearls and possibly dating from the 16th Century, which was part of the original shipment to Canada and subsequently lost.

“The letter indicated that the missing chalice might now be sitting unclaimed in an unexhibited collection at the Vatican Museum in Rome,” Cygnarowski said.

“We have no record of such a chalice being part of the original shipment of goods to Canada,” Cygnarowski said, “but they were very chaotic times and I cannot rule out the possibility that my predecessors at Wawel Castle might have failed to include such an item on bills of lading in 1939.”

He said he would make inquiries immediately among Vatican curatorial officials about the missing item.

Asked if the 48 bars of gold formed part of the original shipment to Canada, Cygnarowski said: “There is no doubt in my mind that this gold is the rightful property of the State Art Collection at Wawel. It is my firm intention to use it as the last custodian intended it to be used.”

For the moment, the gold is to remain impounded at the Gdansk docks, customs officials said.

Cygnarowski said he had “no idea whatsoever” who might have sent the gold to Poland on behalf of Stanislaw Janovski some 35 years after the last shipment of treasures back from Canada.

A spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw, who did not wish to be identified, said the Canadian government would make inquiries in Canada about Stanislaw Janovski if officially requested to do so by Polish authorities.

“No request has been made at this time,” the embassy spokesman said.

Shipments by sea of small lots of personal effects are not normally subject to customs inspection before leaving Canada, the embassy spokesman said. It is the responsibility of customs officials in the country to which the goods are being shipped to inspect the contents when they arrive and that is what happened in this case, he said.

Political observers and Western diplomats here, who did not wish to be identified, said that they expected the gold would likely be allowed to remain in the possession of Wawel Castle museum. The political situation in Poland is still in flux after the narrow defeat in the November 1995 presidential elections of Lech Walesa by the candidate of the former Communists, Aleksander Kwasniewski.

There was no immediate comment from President Kwasniewski's office, or former president Walesa, on the mysterious gold shipment. The Vatican press office in Warsaw did not return reporters' telephone calls on Wednesday afternoon.