The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(2)
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 Wa??sa, 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.
The prisoner on the floor stirred, his frail body twisted as if gripped by a terrible arthritis. One of the guards kicked him in the midsection. Vomit erupted from the man’s mouth. One part of Janusz desperately wanted to help the man. The other just wanted to flee, doing, saying whatever was necessary to make that happen. Dilecki, like an exacting schoolmaster, was challenging every conclusion, every statement, keeping him in confusion. With no choice, he said what was expected, “All right. I’ll do as you ask.”
Dilecki stood, hands lightly clasped, the shrewd eyes steady. “I want you to remember that if you lie to me, or try to trick me, or hide from me, you will end up tied to a stool, too.” The thin lips curled into the faintest of smiles. “But enough threats. You have done right, comrade. As the song proclaims. Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live.”
“And what … the foreign force … has taken … from us, we shall … with sabre … retrieve.”