PROLOGUE
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1982
WARSAW, POLAND
3:45 P.M.
Janusz Czajkowski wanted to look away from the gruesome scene before him, but he knew that would be worse.
He’d been brought here to Mokotów Prison for the express purpose of watching. This place had a long and storied history. The Russians built it in the early 20th century. The Nazis used it extensively, as did the communists after the war. Since 1945 this was where the Polish political underground, the intelligentsia, and anyone else considered a threat to the Soviet-controlled government was held, tortured, and executed. Its heyday had come during Stalin’s time, when thousands had been held at Rakowiecka Street Prison, which was how most Poles referred to it then. Sometimes, though, they spat out the German label: Nacht und Nebel. Night and Fog. A place of no return. Many were murdered in the basement boiler room. Officially, such atrocities had ended with Stalin. But that was not actually the case. Dissidents for decades after had continued to be rounded up and brought here for “interrogation.”
Like the man before him.
Middle-aged, naked, his body bent over a tall stool, his wrists and ankles tied to the bloodstained wooden legs. A guard stood over him with legs spread across the prisoner’s head, beating the man on his back and bare ass. Incredibly, the prisoner did not make a sound. The guard stopped the assault and slipped off the bound man, planting the sole of his boot into the side of the man’s head.
Spittle and blood spewed out.
But still, not a sound.
“It’s easy to manufacture fear,” the tall man standing next to Janusz said. “But it’s even easier to fake it.”
The tall man wore the dour uniform of a major in the Polish army. The hair was razor-cut in military style, a black mustache tight and manicured. He was older, of medium build, but muscular, with the arrogant entitled personality he’d seen all too often in the Red Bourgeoisie. The eyes were dark points, diamond-shaped, signaling nothing. Eyes like that would always hide much more than they would reveal, and he wondered how difficult maintaining such a lie must be. A name tag read DILECKI. He knew nothing about this major, other than having been arrested by him.
“To manufacture fear,” Dilecki said, “you have to mobilize a large portion of the people to accept it exists. That takes work. You have to create situations people can see and feel. Blood must be shed. Terrorism, if you will. But to counterfeit fear? That’s much easier. All you have to do is silence those who call fear into question. Like this poor soul.”
The guard resumed beating the naked man with what looked like a riding crop, a metal bearing hanging from its tip. Welts had formed, which were now bleeding. Three more guards joined the assault, each delivering more blows.
“If you notice,” Dilecki said, “they are careful. Just enough force to inflict pain and agony, but not enough to kill. We do not want this man to die. Quite the contrary. We want this man to talk.”
The prisoner clearly was suffering, but he seemed unwilling to allow his captors the satisfaction of knowing that fact.
“You’ve forgotten the kidneys,” Dilecki called out.
One of the guards nodded and began to concentrate his blows to that area of the body.
“Those organs are particularly fragile,” Dilecki noted. “With just the right blow, there’s no need to even bind or gag people. They cannot move or utter a sound. It’s excruciating.”
Not a hint of emotion laced the shrill voice, and he wondered what it took for someone to become so inhuman. Dilecki was a Pole. The guards were Poles. The man being tortured was a Pole.
Madness.
The whole country was being held together by force and propaganda. Solidarity had risen from nothing and tried to eliminate the Soviets, but eight months ago Moscow finally had enough of concessions and ordered a crackdown. Overnight tens of thousands had been jailed without charges. Many more were seized, then bused out of the country. People simply vanished. All pro-democracy movements were banned, their leaders, including the famed Lech Wałęsa, jailed. The military takeover had been quick and coordinated. Soldiers now patrolled the streets of every major city. A curfew had been imposed, the national borders sealed, airports closed, road access to main cities restricted. Telephone lines were either disconnected or tapped, mail subjected to censorship, and classes in schools and universities suspended.
Some had even died.
No one knew the exact count.
A six-day workweek had been ordered. The media, public services, health care, utilities, coal mines, ports, railroads, and most key factories were placed under military management. Part of the crackdown involved a process that examined everyone’s attitude toward the regime. A new loyalty test included a document that pledged the signer would cease all activity the government even thought might be a threat. Which was how many had been netted, including himself. Apparently his answers had not been satisfactory, though he’d lied as best he could.
The beating stopped for a moment.
He forced his brain into action and asked, “Who is he?”
“A professor of mathematics. He was arrested leaving a Solidarity meeting. That makes him, by definition, not innocent.”
“Does he know anything?”
“That is the thing about interrogation,” Dilecki said. “Many times it is merely a search for useful information. So what he knows remains to be seen.”
A pause hung in the air.
“Interrogation also has other purposes. It can frighten those not being tortured, allowing us to break down their resistance and rebuild them in more … pliable ways.”
Now he understood why he was here.
Dilecki’s eyes narrowed as his gaze focused. “You hate me, don’t you.”
No sense lying. “Absolutely.”
“I don’t care. But I do want you to fear me.”
His legs began to tremble.
Dilecki turned his attention back to the prisoner and motioned. One of the guards kicked the stool over, tumbling the beaten man hard to the concrete floor. The wrists and ankles were untied, and the man’s bleeding body folded in pain. Still, though, he’d neither cried out nor said a word.
Which was impressive.
More so, in fact, than Dilecki’s counterfeit fear.
So he drew off that courage and asked, “What do you want with me?”
“I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and tell me what you see, what you hear. I want you to report all that you know. I want to know about our friends and our enemies. We are facing a great crisis and need the help of people like you.”
“I’m nobody.”
“Which makes you the perfect spy.” Dilecki laughed. “But who knows? One day you might be a big somebody.”
He’d heard what the instigators and supporters of martial law liked to say. Poland was surrounded by the USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Belarus, all Soviet-controlled. Martial law had been implemented to rescue Poland from a possible military intervention by those Warsaw Pact countries. Like what happened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Soviets crushed all opposition. But no one seriously believed such nonsense. This was about those in power keeping power.
Communism’s entire existence depended on coercion.
Polish communism seemed an odd mixture of socialism and fascism, where a small group controlled everyone else, along with all of the resources, while the vast majority lived in hunger and poverty.