The Mazovia Legacy (12 page)

“Francis,” she said, “I think you may be angry about this, but I may have done a silly thing.”

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Sunday night, I called my uncle's friend in Paris. This Zbigniew I told you about when I first came to see you. The man who flew with Stanislaw in the war.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Well, I had already phoned him just after Stanislaw died, but of course he couldn't come to the funeral. He is too old, and he hasn't got much money. I just told him his old friend had died and that the funeral was on such and such a date and that I would be in touch afterward maybe to tell him how it all went. I was in a sort of dream state then anyway. He sent me a card soon after that, asking for news of how it went.”

“Did you tell him how your uncle died?”

“Yes, I told him he had drowned in the bath.”

“The first time you called?”

“Yes.”

“How did he react to that?”

“I don't really remember. Of course he was sad. It's a sad story.”

“Did he ask you for details?”

“Like what?”

“Did he seem to think it was an odd way for his friend to die?”

“It is an odd way for anyone to die, Francis.” Delaney could not debate that.

“But when I talked to him on Sunday night,” Natalia continued, “I asked him things. I asked him whether he knew why anyone would hate my uncle enough to do him some harm. I asked him if when Stanislaw had spoken to him last he had thought maybe something was wrong. I needed to know something, Francis. After we found out about the priest in Lachine.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

“No. Nothing. I was going to tell you anyway except I was distracted by the break-in. Zbigniew went very silent on the telephone and then, this is a little odd, he said what you have just now said. That maybe we'd best not talk about these things on the phone. He said perhaps a letter was best, seeing we lived so far apart and there was so much to tell and phone calls were so expensive and so on. And then he seemed to be upset. I thought because I had stirred memories about his friend, and so we hung up. I told him I would write to him.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him about the dead priest?”

“No.”

“What does he do over there?”

“He doesn't work anymore. He was a printer, after the war. Now he owns a little shop of some kind I think. For posters, antique posters, or something like that. Someone runs it for him now, I think. He was my uncle's navigator, in Scotland. His best friend.”

Silence was what they now needed for a few minutes. For pondering things. The snow crunched and squeaked under their boots as they continued their circuit around the lake. No more snow was falling, and the sun now scattered diamonds on the morning's fresh fall.They came eventually to a kiosk where an old man in a battered watchman's hat rented skates. He had also been assigned the neverending task of keeping the rink clear of snow.

“
Vous allez patiner, mes amis?
” the old man asked. “
C't'une belle journée maintenant pour ça
.” His hat said “
Moniteur – Parcs Montréal.
” He clearly thought they were lovers.

“
Oui,
” said Natalia, looking only briefly at Delaney. “
On va patiner.
”

Delaney somehow found it perfectly natural for people with their preoccupations to suddenly decide to rent skates and slide around Beaver Lake with ruddy-faced French kids in the middle of the day. They spent a long time fussing about the right fit and then signing little blue rental agreement cards. The
Ville de Montréal
wished to inform them that no responsibility could be taken for accident or injury while on the rink. They took the risk, and then added to it by both borrowing heavy socks from a wooden box of very suspect hosiery the watchman kept for the impulsive.

Their first glide out onto the ice was wobbly, but then, like all skaters young and not so young, they did their best to be elegant. They spoke very little. The smiles and the fine curved lines their skates etched behind them in the ice said what needed to be said. They hardly fell at all.

O
n Tuesday, February 21, 1995, sometime just before midnight, investigative journalist Francis Delaney sat at a desk in a silent apartment before a flickering screen of the type he used to record his most public thoughts. He scanned databases. Not inner, like Natalia's, but outer. Worldly databases, electronic libraries, endless repositories of news, analysis, opinion. All available instantly now, even at home, for the sleepless.

He had been searching for a long time. The online charges tonight to his magazine would be excessive, ridiculous, and he expected a stiff note to come eventually from an angry editorial comptroller with whom he had had much conflict in the past. But he did not log off just yet. He had been browsing through years of newspapers without, he thought happily, having to go into foul newsrooms and convince surly librarians and researchers to pull out old clipping files. There was not much reason, he thought with satisfaction, to go into foul newsrooms at all anymore.

In some ways, this was what he did best. Working alone and letting his journalist's mind wander through dozens of stories and thousands of words, making connections, making linkages, crosschecking, cross-referencing, following leads down information corridors. Some of these corridors, of course, would always be dead ends. Others, he knew from previous journalistic successes, could help earn someone who still cared for such things a reputation as a reporter who knew where to look and what to look for.

Tonight, however, he wasn't certain what to look for. The keywords
Janovski
and
Dérôme
turned up nothing, except the brief announcement in the Births and Deaths columns of the
Tribune
of Stanislaw Janovski's death.
Natalia couldn't have been absolutely overwhelmed if she was organized enough to put an announcement in the paper,
Delaney thought.
Or maybe that's how she deals with things like that. Just like I would.
Father Bernard's people, on the other hand, had wisely decided to let his death go unrecorded in the media, as far as Delaney could tell. The dead priest received no newspaper entry to mark his passing.

Delaney's review of recent items out of Poland added important details to what he and Hilferty had talked about briefly the week before. Walesa was in deep trouble in Warsaw, behaving erratically, fearful he would lose the presidential elections at the end of the year. Lots of changes of government, prime ministers dismissed, forced out, resentful.

Some of the Warsaw newspaper correspondents had filed particularly good material about the small group of advisers Walesa had recently gathered around him. In particular, one Mieczylaw Wozniak, the director of the president's private office. A peasant, a small-time fixer from Gdansk, formerly Walesa's chauffeur and bag carrier, and now his right-hand man and gatekeeper. Brainless, vulgar, and powerful, by all accounts. A man who liked to help the president of Poland decide foreign and domestic policy over daily games of ping-pong. Impatient, like Walesa, with the intellectuals in Solidarity who helped topple the Communists in 1989. Impatient with the inconveniences of parliamentary democracy. Likes to play with army toys. Both he and Walesa spending a lot of time, apparently, with the crowd of old generals who used to order up the water cannons, and worse, against the Solidarity crowd in the bad old days.

Some good reporting also on the wave of exCommunists now filling the Sejm. And on this young Kwasniewski, the ex-Communist technocrat who looked very like he was going to beat out Walesa and become the next president. There was further good material on the infighting over how fast to reform the creaky Polish economy, how capitalist to make it, how much to kowtow to the International Monetary Fund. Over who should get hurt most by the reforms, and when. And there were reports about bitter conflict over toughened abortion laws in the country. The Polish Catholic Church and Walesa on one side in this, and a lot of others on the other. The Communists had made it too easy, apparently, for women to get abortions, and Walesa was determined to do something about that for his friends in the Vatican.

There was a lot of news indeed to be had about Poland. The crowd of reporters in Warsaw right now knew a good story when they saw one. It was all very interesting. But where was the connection with an old Polish flyer in Montreal?

A very small news agency item from April 1993 caught Delaney's eye. It was about the UOP foiling a plot, apparently, to kill Walesa.

“Sources close to Mr. Walesa,” the item noted, “said a man had reported that he had been offered money to assassinate the Polish leader. This could not be independently confirmed.” But there were no follow-up items that Delaney could find, as if the story had fizzled, couldn't be properly checked out, or was found to be false. Or had been planted, perhaps, in the international media by Walesa's own people.

More good material, news agency copy again, from August 1994, under the headline “Former Polish Spy Resigns.”

“A former Communist master spy who was put in charge of Poland's civil intelligence service last week,” the piece said, “resigned yesterday after complaints that his nomination could endanger the nation's relations with the West. Mr. Marian Zacharski, who was given a life sentence by a U.S. court in 1981 for spying, and later released in a spy swap, said he was quitting because he did not want to enflame the situation. ...Some analysts suggest ed that Mr. Walesa, who technically is in charge of the Interior Ministry, first approved the nomination but then changed his mind after suggestions it was a sign the ruling left-wing parties were bringing back the old system. Walesa's officials were not available to respond to the allegations yesterday.”

Vanguard
had a good analysis piece in October 1994 about Walesa's election chances.

“Mr. Walesa has never been very easy to understand,” the magazine said. “If he had been, then it's a safe bet the Solidarity revolution would never have happened. But his offbeat behaviour has made many Poles doubt he can win a second time around in the 1995 presidential race. . . . His recent behaviour is probably designed to kick off his campaign and to enhance presidential authority just as Parliament starts to examine various drafts of a new constitution. The drafts — there are seven of them — differ mainly over the divisions of power between the president and Parliament.”

The Borowski articles were good too. PolishCanadian millionaire takes 25 percent of the vote in last presidential election. Rumours fly thick and fast in that period about who he really is, whom he represents, where he really wants to take Poland if he wins. Defamation charges, bail, and a post-election retreat to Toronto. Will he run again this time? No indication about that in the reporting. Something to check out.

Delaney wrote a note to himself on a yellow, lined legal pad.
Double-check Borowski angle. Toronto.

Ottawa? Hilferty?
But, again, where was the possibility of any connection to Stanislaw Janovski in Montreal?

The information on Poland's gangsters was also good. Too many ex-security service people and secret police and army types and released prisoners and unemployables and malcontents now had dangerous amounts of time on their hands, with alarming results. Idle hands, as always, being the devil's workshop. Protection rackets were thriving in Warsaw and in cities all over the country. Fraud, prostitution, drugs, construction kickbacks, whitecollar crime, insider trading. Things getting so bad there had even been a shopkeeper's strike in Warsaw recently, demanding protection from racketeers and extortion gangs. The wild, wild East.

Delaney wrote on his yellow pad:
Janovski somehow in rackets? Friends in rackets?
Then he wrote:
Natalia in rackets?? Just back from Europe.
After a moment's thought, however, he carefully crossed the last items out
.

Delaney even went back to the 1950s and '60s in his browsing, at great cost to his magazine. The notes he had made for himself after Natalia left on that first day in his apartment had underlinings in the section about Janovski's World War II service, his connection to the government-in-exile and to the Polish art treasures story. A long shot where Janovski was concerned, maybe. But still the makings of a good feature item, if nothing else, and Delaney could not resist having a look.

There was not much at all in the Canadian databases about the treasures angle, however, because not much newspaper material from that era had been entered into the system. But the
Montreal Tribune
had a fair amount. The scribbles on Delaney's legal pad multiplied.

The
Tribune
headline writers in the 1950s, Delaney decided, were not at peak form. “Poles Bid Canada Return Treasure.” “Warsaw Hankers for Kingly Sword.” “Canada to Yield Polish Treasure.” “Polish Treasures Leave Ottawa.” “Gutenberg Bible Off to Poland After Wartime Stay In Ottawa.”

But Delaney noted with interest that old Max Cohen, who later became a respected columnist with the paper, was in the late 1950s paying his dues as a foreign correspondent in Warsaw and had covered the return of the so-called “Ottawa treasures.” Cohen had filed some very nice colour pieces. Trunks opened in an Ottawa bank vault and the Polish coronation sword, Chopin musical scores, a Gutenberg Bible, and some other priceless little baubles found safe and sound inside. Insured by nervous officials for US$100 million. A secret train shipment to the United States under cover of snow and winter dark. Worries that Duplessis might order his provincial police to seize the goods as they passed through Quebec. But they are safely loaded onto a Swedish vessel in New York, bound for Poland. Crowds in the streets to greet the arrival. Young Cohen was in fine form.

“Krakow, Feb. 16, 1959 — The joy here in Poland at the return of the treasures is matched by Canada's relief at having been able to solve at least part of the problem. But officials say a lot more treasure still lies in a Quebec museum, including a priceless collection of ancient tapestries. They hope that negotiations to persuade the Quebec premier, Mr. Duplessis, to change his mind and release the booty still under his control will work out, and that they can further defuse this dramatic situation.”

There was another flurry of articles in the
Tribune
in 1961, after Duplessis had died and his successor finally agreed to send the Quebec treasures back to the Communist government in Poland. “Quebec Sends Back Poland's Treasures.”

“Quebec Yielding Polish Treasure.”

“Poles Hail Return of National Relics.”

There had been more secret machinations to head off angry diehards from the government-inexile. A final deal signed just before the dead time of a New Year's holiday. Heavy crates loaded onto a convoy of trucks for another secret winter journey under police guard, this time to Boston. Onto a Polish freighter, then special train cars are laid on from Gydnia docks to Warsaw. More cheering crowds, and lots of Communist officials cheering a small Cold War propaganda victory. Now all but forgotten.

“Warsaw, Jan. 18, 1961 — Polish art historians said today that the Wawel treasures returned from Quebec appeared to be in relatively good shape, miraculously good shape. The twenty-four crates were opened in the National Museum here yesterday for a preliminary examination.”

The only recent item on the art treasures that Delaney was able to track down in the late-night extravagance of his electronic roamings was a feature in the
Toronto Herald
from 1984, when Pope John Paul II — the Polish Pope, Delaney duly noted on his pad — made an official visit to Canada. The
Herald's
Ben Kingson, whom Delaney had worked with when they were both Parliamentary correspondents in Ottawa, had had the dream assignment of following the Pope around Canada and filing colour pieces. Kingson had stumbled onto the Polish art treasures story, apparently, and thought it well worth telling again, if only because of the Catholic Church angle and the Pope's Polish background.

Kingson ended his
Herald
piece on a conspiratorial note, as any good colour man would.

“No one can say for sure whether Pope John Paul II, then Father Karol Wojtyla of Krakow diocese, played any direct role in the treasures dispute. And no one is ever likely to know. But it's hard for anyone to believe that he knew nothing at all about the story and even harder to believe that he wouldn't have been aware of the controversy. In the mid1950s, Wojtyla was a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin when some staff and students started to put pressure on the government of Canada to send the goods back. And then in 1958, Wojtyla was an assistant bishop of Krakow, at the very time that his mentor, Cardinal Wyszynski, was pressing Catholic Church officials in Canada to intervene and do all they could to get the treasures sent back to Poland.”

All, Delaney decided as he at last switched off his computer and modem, very, very interesting. Wartime Europe, Nazis, governments-in-exile, treasures, Catholic Church intrigue, secret passwords, Quebec politics, anti-Communism. Stir in a bit of Solidarity, a bit of revolution, an unstable post-Communist government, underemployed army generals, rumours of coups and assassination plots, hordes of former Communists back in Parliament, a paranoid and erratic Lech Walesa, cliques of shadowy advisers Walesa might not be able to keep under control, a shaky Polish economy, the IMF, the UOP, the RCMP, CSIS, maybe CIA, maybe former KGB. Add a band of gangsters terrorizing Warsaw, and a Polish-Canadian millionaire with designs on the presidency. Fold in church-state tensions, the abortion question, and a papal connection that might go back fifty years. Top it all with a couple of Polish agents operating in Canada. It was a very rich mixture indeed.