No Place for an Honest Woman

1

1 Warsaw, 1986I was so angry with the Marine corporal standing on my building’s front step, I could have slapped him. “You think I care the cops accused your new girl of being a spy?” I asked in a furious whisper.

Matt Barnes ran a hand over his blond stubble and inhaled a ragged breath. “Casey—”

I cut him off. “I can’t believe you brought her to me.”

He glanced across the street where the girl huddled in a doorway. The weak March sun had dropped below the apartment blocks but even in shadow her face glowed with that Titian-haired beauty men kill for. Maybe women, too. I’d wanted to kill her minutes after she started putting the moves on my boyfriend. Matt. Now, my ex-boyfriend.

He turned back to me, a plea in his voice. “She can’t go home.”

“That’s her problem.” I pushed on the heavy door.

Matt stopped it with his hand. “Please, Casey.”

I glanced at the girl again. So she wasn’t a Western au pair who lived with the Swedish consul. Forget that lie. She lived with her parents. Her Polish parents. And forget her name sounded like “Ava.” She’d spell it the Slavic way: E-W-A. My eyes flickered over the cream-colored walls inside my vestibule. I couldn’t see wires, but the American Embassy rented this converted townhouse from the Communist government of the Polish People’s Republic. The entry hall had to be bugged.

I nudged Matt. He was a couple of inches taller than my five-nine, with a solid, wrestler’s build. Yet, he backed off the step. I followed him outside. The evening air was chilly on my bare arms and I hugged myself as we crossed to the other side of the driveway, ten feet from the building.

I leaned close and whispered into Matt’s ear. “Tell me what the cops did when they came to Ewa’s house.”

“Showed her photos of us.” Red blotches spread over Matt’s cheeks. “First they said she was a prostitute. They made her admit I was an American soldier. That’s when they called her a spy.” His last words came out in a panicky rush. “They’re going to arrest her.”

“Tough for Ewa.” I folded my arms. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Maybe she could stay with you?”

“No way.”

“You have diplomatic immunity. The cops can’t follow her into your place.”

“Why should I get in the middle of this?”

“But you said—”

“I never said I’d do a thing for her.”

The red mark on Matt’s cheek was shaped like a hand, as if I had slapped him. “I can’t believe you’re that hard.” He stared at me for a moment. Ewa crossed the street to him, averting her eyes from me as though I were a leper.

I watched them clutch each other. “What’ll you do?”

Over the top of Ewa’s red head, Matt said, “I’ll go find my real friends.” He headed down the sidewalk, one arm around Ewa, half-dragging her toward the tram stop.

After they turned the corner I went back through the vestibule into my apartment, slamming the door. I stopped myself from glancing into the bedroom. I didn’t want to remember Matt lounging on my pale, blue sheets. Call up an image of his muscular young body. Remember one minute of our winter nights together.

I was twenty-seven years old and I’d been dating for half my life. I’d never had trouble holding onto my men. But less than a week after Ewa showed up at the Marine’s Friday night happy hour, Matt dumped me without a goodbye.

I didn’t have a drop of pity for him.

My heart ached for him.

I wanted to cut off his manhood with a dull knife.

I yearned to pull his head onto my shoulder and whisper Casey would make everything all right.

Who’d have guessed fooling around with a younger man would leave me feeling so maternal? I yanked open the refrigerator and grabbed a Tuborg.

Damn Ewa. She’d dragged Matt off before I was ready to let him go. She deserved trouble. I twisted the cap off my beer.

Ewa. What was her game, anyway? She’d lied about being Polish. Certainly told other lies. Maybe she was a prostitute. Or a spy.

I set the bottle on the counter. The nippy twilight breeze wafted through the open window. I smelled damp earth and the faintest scent of something green. I rubbed the moist heel of my hand across my forehead, shoving blonde strands to one side. Matt’d said the cops came to Ewa’s house. But they hadn’t taken her to jail. They’d shown her compromising photos. Why? The Milicja didn’t need evidence to arrest a Pole.

I’d been too outraged to see it. But snapshots of Matt and Ewa in bed? Not easy to arrange. Poland’s security service, the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, the SB, must have staged the whole scene.

The SB wouldn’t go to so much trouble to catch a Pole. But they’d do it to catch an American. And the East Bloc security services were expert at trapping lonely singles.

I jerked the kitchen window shut, went into the foyer, and picked up the phone. The SB’s scheme was up and running. At any moment, one of their agents would move in on Matt to close their trap. I had to get to him first. But where had he gone?

Not to the embassy I discovered when I reached the guard at Post One. He hadn’t seen Matt since breakfast. But he did know where I could find the rest of the off-duty Marines. A major drinking bout was underway and was likely to continue on through the Easter Monday holiday.

I flung off the sweatsuit I’d been living in for the past two days and hurried through the shower. It was eight o’clock when I nosed my Rabbit onto Raszynska Street, headed north. The walled filtration plant bulked on my right, the blood-red brick structure dark and mysterious with its strange towers and smokestacks. Filtration of what? Nobody seemed to know.

The smoggy darkness swallowed the feeble glow from my headlights. I squinted at the road, empty except for a pair of pedestrians scurrying toward the tram stop in front of the fish vendor. The glow from the lone street light reflected off the glass front of the darkened store, outlining the worn picture of a huge carp. It seemed to beckon from the window’s blackness like over-size bait.

Road sand spattered against the underside of my car as I crossed the General Zygmunt Berling Bridge over the Vistula River. On the far side, I put my lights on high-beam to negotiate the labyrinth of streets around the Ten-Year Stadium. The twisting roadways on the east side of the river were a sharp contrast to the modern thoroughfares in Warsaw’s city center. In 1944, the Russian Army had stopped its westward advance at the Vistula. They’d waited on this side while Hitler’s forces in downtown Warsaw destroyed ninety percent of the buildings and slaughtered those Poles still alive. The well-preserved eastern suburbs were a permanent memorial to the quality of Soviet-Polish friendship.

I located the address minutes before nine o’clock. A good ninety seconds after I rang the bell of the townhouse, a short woman with a wildly disheveled bleached-blond Afro opened the door. Her husband was a guard at the Australian Embassy and they were both regulars on the Marines’ party circuit. “Casey love,” my hostess screeched over the loud music, “get your bum inside.”

I followed her into the foyer. “Matt shown up?”

“Not yet,” she said. “But he’s on his way. Enjoy a beer while you wait.”

I found the kitchen, helped myself to a Foster’s, and headed back toward the front door. As I passed through the living room, a cuckoo clock began to signal the hour of nine. Another chimed in, plus a third beside it, and yet another at the far end of the room. Carved wooden clocks covered the four walls, and judging from the distant sound of bird calls, the rest of the house held more.

“Aren’t they great?” My hostess was back beside me. “A Pole gets them for me.” She lowered her voice. “Pay him in dollars, get our change in zloties—ends up costing us nothing.”

It was a convoluted form of currency exchange, illegal under Polish law and forbidden by the security regulations. Some Westerners couldn’t resist getting something for nothing. But the smart ones didn’t advertise it.

I’d wanted to cover my ears as all the nine o’clock cuckoos shrieked. More than two hours had passed since I’d seen Matt. Had the SB intercepted him? I waited in the foyer. The bell rang six times over the next hour. At each ring, I opened the door. Matt didn’t show. My tense muscles began to ache.

He and Ewa arrived at five minutes past ten o’clock. I grabbed my parka and crowded onto the top step with them. “I have to talk to you,” I said to Matt.

“So talk.” He pulled Ewa closer.

“She can wait inside. This is personal.”

“Go on in,” Matt told her. “I’ll handle this.”

She raised her chin and stepped regally through the doorway, her silky red mane swaying behind her.

I led Matt far enough away from the townhouse and the parked cars so no transmitters would pick up our words.

His eyes were brighter, his voice hopeful. “You change your mind?”

“No. But you better. This thing is a setup.”

“What do you mean?”

“They threaten Ewa. You get worried. Someone gives you a chance to save her. He guarantees Ewa’ll be cleared. Only first, you have to do a favor for him.”

He frowned. “Ewa’s not in trouble?”

“Those men at her house weren’t cops. They were SB agents. And they’re after you. Ewa’s part of it.”

“No—”

I cut him off. “She set you up for the camera.”

The boyish softness of his face seemed to thin, the planes to become more angular. As though he were aging in front of me. “Why would they want pictures?”

“Proof you violated the cardinal rule of service in the East Bloc. You got involved with a local.” I moved my lips closer to his ear. “You have to report this right away.”

“Turn myself in?” His voice was a low moan.

“If the SB can’t buy your cooperation, they’ll blackmail you. They’ll threaten to send those pictures to the Commandant.”

“You’ve got to help me.”

“What can I do? I’m only the budget officer.”

“You’re up for that big job. You must know somebody who can fix this.”

Matt knew I’d bid on a position working with the Secretary’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism. “A bottom-rung slot,” I corrected. “And I don’t have it yet. I have no connections. I can do nothing.”

“Nothing?” His voice grew louder.

I lowered mine. “The Poles won’t drop this. Your only option is to tell everything to the security officer.”

“I won’t.” He backed away from me. “You’re wrong. Ewa’s not in on it.” He turned, strode toward the townhouse, and hurried up the steps. The door opened before he touched it. In the shaft of light, I saw Ewa’s face. She pulled Matt inside. The door thumped shut.

I stared at it. Impenetrable. Like Matt’s head.

A match rasped against a matchbook. I peered in the direction of the sound. A male figure stood in a recess between two buildings on the far side of the street, thirty feet from me. He held the flame to the end of a cigarette. I got the impression of a bony face and deep-set eyes. The match waved out. The cigarette end glowed in the darkness.

I hurried to my car and unlocked it without looking back. Before I pulled the door shut, I smelled an acrid whiff of French tobacco.

I didn’t sleep well, trying to think of a way to help Matt. I came up with nothing. I had to report his security violation. If I didn’t, I risked my own future. By eight o’clock the next morning, I’d resolved to find Bella Hinton, the Regional Security Officer. I pulled on my parka and unbolted my apartment door. Mentally rehearsing what I’d tell her, I stepped into the vestibule.

I collided with a tall man, his hand raised as though to knock on my door. My Polish instructor.

I stepped back and muttered, “Przepraszam.” I winced. Whenever I attempted the Polish word for “excuse me,” I sounded like Donald Duck.

My instructor said, “Bardzo dobrze.” Very good.

But it wasn’t very good. What was a Pole doing inside my building? I sucked in air. And picked up the faint scent of French tobacco. I moved a step back and stared.

Stefan Krajewski was six-and-a-half feet tall and wore the uniform of the down-at-the-heels European intelligentsia—faded corduroy pants and a cracked leather jacket. But he was in better shape than most language teachers, and this close, I couldn’t miss the superb muscle definition under his tight turtleneck. During duller lessons I’d done the usual bored student thing, diverting myself by imagining him naked.

But never imagining him doing this.