Fear of Strangers

  Dave Hutchinson

  First published July 31, 2002 in Sci Fiction, edited by Ellen Datlow.

  1

  It’s a two-hour drive from Zakopane to Kraków, and for at least half of it we were stuck behind one of the big lorries that wind their way through the mountains between Poland and Slovakia, but I still managed to do the journey in an hour and forty minutes and drop Elzbieta at the hospital five minutes before her shift was due to start.

  “If you ever drive like that with me in the car again, I’ll divorce you,” she told me.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” I said.

  “You’re a lunatic.”

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  She sighed. “All right. I’ll see you at home.” She leaned in through the open driver’s side window and kissed me on the top of the head. “Have a good day.”

  “Monday’s always a slow day,” I told her.

  “Go.” She straightened up and waved me away. “You’ll be late.”

  “Nobody will notice,” I said, putting the car into gear. “Nobody ever notices.”

  “And thank you. It was lovely.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  She looked very small and lonely in the rear-view mirror, standing in front of the hospital as I drove away.

  The traffic in town hadn’t improved since Friday evening. A lorry had shed its load of sewer pipes, necessitating a detour which took me almost entirely around the center of Kraków. Three days earlier, I would have been seething with rage at this, and any driver behind me who honked his horn would have done so at his own risk.

  This morning was different. It was a nice bright autumn morning, and a fresh breeze had blown away the worst of the caul of pollution that settles over Kraków on still days. At one point I found myself on the wrong side of the Vistula, having turned onto a bridge by mistake while trying to find my way back into the center of town, but I found that it didn’t matter very much. It was amazing how much difference two days could make. If this had happened to me on Friday I would probably have driven the car into the river out of pure spite.

  It was nine o’clock before I reached the Ministry. It was harder than usual to find a parking space because there seemed to be more cars than usual parked outside. Did this bother Tomasz? Not this morning. This morning nothing could bother Tomasz. I drove around the corner and parked on the pavement. I immobilized the car with the Krooklok my cousin Dariusz sent me from Darlington, removed the radio and the wipers, took our rucksacks and camping gear out of the boot along with the car’s toolbox, and thus loaded made my way into the building.

  “Morning, Mister Gombrowicz,” I said to old Marek as I went past the front desk in the foyer. “It was snowing in Zakopane when we left. Better wax up your skis.”

  Marek was somewhere between two hundred and a thousand years old, a bent, wizened, seamed old gentleman whose shoulders were always snowdrifts of dandruff and who always wore on the breast pocket of his black suit the medal General Sikorski pinned on him, when he was eleven years of age and sabotaging Panzers for the Home Army. He had always been at the front desk at the Ministry of Tourism; some said we had moved into the building and found him already there, waiting at his desk and smelling of laundry-soap.

  Some people were a little scared of him, but I liked him. Over the years we had evolved a little routine of banter which usually involved him commenting ruefully on my dress sense as I made my way to the lift, and me making some disparaging comment about the skiing championships he claimed to have won shortly after the War.

  This morning, however, he said, “You have to show me your identification, Mister Kosinski.”

  I stopped by the desk and looked around the pile of sleeping bags I was clasping to my chest. “My what?”

  Marek looked different. His shoulders had been cleared of dandruff; his suit looked newly-cleaned. The few remaining strands of hair he possessed were neatly combed and stuck to his freckled scalp with gel. He looked proud. He was standing as close to attention as his natural posture would allow.

  “Your identification, sir,” he said in a formal tone of voice.

  “You’ve never asked me for my identification,” I said. “Not even when I first started here.” I saw a look of alarm cross his face. “You never ask anyone for their identification.”

  Marek glanced nervously to my right, and from that direction I sensed an enormous displacement of air.

  “If you’ll just comply with the man’s request, sir…?” a voice pitched somewhere below the rumble of an earthquake said in English.

  I had to rearrange the bundle in my arms in order to turn my head and find the source of the vibration. Standing between me and the lift was a colossal black man dressed in the most beautifully-tailored suit I had ever seen.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “That isn’t important, sir,” he replied in almost-flawless Polish. His hair was cut very short and his head seemed to blend into his shoulders without the usual formality of a neck. He never took his eyes off me for a moment. “Just show us your identification.”

  “What’s going on, Mister Gombrowicz?” I said.

  Marek was growing more and more uncomfortable the longer this peculiar little pantomime went on. “It’s the Americans, Mister Kosinski.”

  “The what?”

  “They arrived an hour ago. Mister Pawluk says the Minister’s on his way as well.”

  I looked at the American. “My name is Tomasz Kosinski. I’m Second Assistant Director.”

  The black man was shaking his head. He had to move his entire upper body to do it, which made him look about to break into some peculiar dance. “ID, buddy, or you go no further.”

  I thought about it. Then I dropped my bundle to the worn marble of the floor and reached into the inside pocket of my jacket. The black man tensed up so abruptly I thought he was about to burst the seams of his suit. I took out my identity card and showed it to him. While I showed it to Marek, the black man spoke quietly into his jacket cuff, then touched his right ear.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “You pass. Clear up that stuff and get upstairs; they’re waiting for you.”

  I stood looking at him. “You’re very rude, aren’t you.”

  “That’s not at issue here, sir.”

  “I think it probably is,” I said. At some point, we had both started speaking English. “I am a ministerial official and I have shown you my identification. Now I would like to see your identification.”

  “That won’t be necessary, sir,” he said, and the way he said sir suggested that he would have been delighted to shoot me.

  “I might be wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and I might not have shaved since Friday morning, but I’m still a ministerial official,” I told him. I leaned slightly towards him. “I understand your President favors jeans and sweatshirts; would you give him any less respect because of it?”

  He sighed and took from his jacket pocket a little laminated card that identified him as a member of the United States Secret Service. The photograph on the card didn’t do him justice.

  “Thank you, Agent O’Hara,” I said. “You see how smooth life can be if one is prepared to be flexible?”

  O’Hara stared at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Good,” I said, starting to move towards the lift. “Now, if you’d help Mister Gombrowicz gather up my belongings and put them somewhere safe, I’d be most grateful. I would help, but apparently people are waiting to see me upstairs.” The lift doors opened when I pressed the button, which was unusual in itself; usually you had to wait a couple of minutes to get the lift’s attention. “Thank you.” I gave O’Hara and Marek one of my sunniest smiles, backed into the lift, and let the doors close on me.

  * * *

  Marek must have phoned ahead, because Zosia, my secretary, was waiting for me when the lift doors opened on the fifth floor.

  “They arrived at seven o’clock this morning,” she told me before I was even out of the lift. “Mister Pawluk got a message last night about it. We tried to get in touch with you but you didn’t leave a contact number.”

  “I’m a Second Assistant with the Ministry of Tourism,” I told her. “The only time I need to leave a contact number is when the England football team come to play in Chorzów, and even that’s not really my responsibility. What’s going on? There’s an American Secret Service man in the foyer.”

  “There are more of them.” Zosia was a delicately-gorgeous young woman who favored dowdy knitted dresses and thick tights and never wore make-up, which I always thought was a shame. “A party of fifteen, twelve of them bodyguards.”

  “And the other three?”

  “The American Ambassador and two aides. Mister Kaminski says the aides must be CIA.”

  We were halfway down the corridor to my office. “Zofia,” I said, “did you just tell me that the American Ambassador is here?”

  “It’s been a nightmare, Mister Kosinski. Marek has lost his mind. I had to show him my identification.”

  I stopped, trying to think.

  “Mister Pawluk was here yesterday,” said Zosia.

  The world really had been jolted off its bearings; the idea of work interrupting my boss’s weekend was unthinkable.

  “Tomasz,” a voice called down the corridor. Bartek Kaminski was bustling towards us at a very fast walk, his shoes squeaking on the uneven lino. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Zakopane,” I said. “Elzbieta and I went to Zakopane for the weekend. What’s going on? Zosia says the American Ambassador’s here.”

  He finally reached us. “And two CIA men, and a dozen bodyguards. They’re in Pawluk’s office.”

  “All of them?”

  “Just the Ambassador and the CIA. The Secret Service men are all over the building.” He took off his spectacles and polished them on the hem of his sweater. “It’s an invasion.”

  “What are they doing here?” I asked, mystified. “Do they need tourist information? Are they lost?”

  The door to Pawluk’s office opened, and he looked out into the corridor. “Kaminski,” he snapped. “Kosinski. In here, now.”

  “What about me?” said Zosia.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said.

  There were only three chairs in Pawluk’s office. The one behind his desk was occupied by a little bald man who was almost engulfed by an immense cashmere overcoat. On the other two chairs, the hard uncomfortable ones Pawluk forced his visitors to sit on, were two nearly-identical bland-faced young men with expensive haircuts and beautifully-shined shoes. The little man was looking out of the window at the view of Wawel Hill and the Cathedral and Castle. The young men were chatting to each other in low, conspiratorial voices. All three looked up as Bartek and I stepped into the office. None of them, it has to be said, looked terribly impressed by what they saw.

  “Gentlemen,” Pawluk said in his shaky English, “these are the men I told you about.”

  The little man stood up behind the desk and held out his hand. “Andrew Bright,” he said in absolutely flawless Polish. “These gentlemen are Mister Hopkinson and Mister Ramius.”

  Bartek looked at the young men while I shook the Ambassador’s hand. “Ramius,” he said in English. “That’s a Latvian name.”

  “It’s a Wisconsin name,” said one of the young men defensively.

  “You’ve caused quite a commotion here, Mister Ambassador,” I told Bright.

  He nodded and sat down again, gathering the skirts of his coat around him. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s unavoidable. We didn’t have a lot of time.”

  “For what?” I inquired as politely as my curiosity would allow.

  Bright glanced at Hopkinson, who got up, let himself out of the office, and closed the door behind him. “Mister Hopkinson and Mister Ramius are consular officials at our Embassy in Warsaw,” Bright told us.

  “CIA,” said Bartek.

  “Kaminski,” Pawluk warned.

  “No.” Bright smiled and raised a hand. “You’re quite right, Mister Kaminski. CIA.” He took a maroon leather case, about the size and shape of a paperback book, from his overcoat pocket and pulled gently on either end. It came apart in the middle, revealing a row of cigars. “This is a very delicate matter.” He selected a cigar and dipped into his pocket again for a silver cutter.

  I sat down on the chair vacated by Mister Hopkinson. “An American tourist has done something awful in Kraków,” I said. It was the only possible explanation I could think of for his presence here. If something awful had been done to an American tourist, a lesser official would have been sent to tidy things up.

  Bright never took his eyes off me while he cut the end off his cigar and lit it. It was an impressive maneuver; I would have cut the end off my finger if I had tried it.

  Finally, he said, “You will, of course, have heard of the Lacertans?”

  For a fraction of a second, I contemplated the possibility that the American Ambassador to the Polish Republic had chosen to visit Kraków and have a mental breakdown in my superior’s office.

  “They have,” he continued, “expressed a desire to visit Poland.”

  “Jesus Maria,” I heard Bartek murmur.

  2

  “Kaminski and Kosinski,” Hopkinson whispered to Ramius in English loudly enough for Bartek and me to hear him. “Wasn’t that an old vaudeville act?”

  Ramius chuckled. “Still working the Catskills, I heard.”

  “Hold me back,” Bartek told me in Polish. “I’m about to cause an international incident.”

  “Help yourself,” I said, staring out of the window at the scarred expanse of concrete beyond. “I might even join in.”

  Bartek turned to Ramius and smiled. “Your mother fucks dogs,” he told the American in Polish, still smiling.

  Ramius smiled right back. “Great day, isn’t it?”

  Bartek sighed and joined me at the window. “Well, either he has astounding impulse-control, or he doesn’t speak a word of Polish,” he said.

  “Or his mother really does fuck dogs.”

  Bartek glanced over his shoulder at the CIA men for a few moments. Then he shook his head.

  The little VIP lounge at Kraków’s airport was full of people. There were anonymously-suited representatives of the EU, NATO, the United Nations and the Polish and American governments, and what appeared to be their entire families: wives, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and probably, somewhere, a number of family pets. Everyone wanted a chance to see the Lacertans, and, despite loud complaints from the Secret Service man, everyone was going to get that chance. There was a group of NASA scientists in jeans and polo-shirts and windbreakers, who had arrived forty minutes earlier aboard a little executive jet that was the cleanest aircraft I had ever seen. The President and Prime Minister of Poland were in attendance, but because they couldn’t stand the sight of each other they and their respective entourages had retired to separate side-rooms.

  Outside, a platoon of soldiers was standing to attention in the bitter wind while their Colonel inspected them for the fiftieth or sixtieth time. A few hundred meters off to one side, the ranked cameras of the world’s press filmed the desolate scene from within a hurriedly-constructed enclosure which looked for all the world like an overcrowded cattle-pen. I looked at my watch. The flight was late.

  “It would be ironic if they came all this way and then died in a plane crash, wouldn’t it,” said Bartek.

  “Yes, it certainly would.”

  Bartek made a little tsking sound. “You’re getting wound up.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “You’re becoming snappy. You always become snappy when you get wound up.”

  I glared at him. He was wearing his best suit and shoes and had had his hair cut for the occasion, but he still looked as if he had just got out of bed after spending the previous night at a wedding reception. “You’re a disgrace,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said. “Shall I smoke?”

  We had all been told that, in deference to the sensitivities of the Americans, we were not to smoke in the lounge. Poles have never been very good at taking orders, and telling them not to smoke was like telling Americans they weren’t allowed to carry guns. I’d already established, by discreet observation, that both Ramius and Hopkinson were armed, and I presumed they weren’t the only ones.

  There was a little commotion in the far corner of the lounge, and a general movement of bodies towards the windows. I looked out, and saw a tiny dark speck against the rushing clouds.

  Elzbieta returned from the ladies’. “Have I missed anything?”

  I pointed at the rapidly-expanding speck.

  “There was some woman in there saying they won’t be able to land,” she told us. “She said the runway wasn’t long enough.”

  Bartek chuckled. I felt a wave of panic rise around me.

  “That’s not true, is it?” Elzbieta asked. The hospital had given her a day off to join her husband on his heroic mission, although it would have taken an act of absurd bravery to try and stop her. She looked at Bartek, then at me, and a concerned expression crossed her face. “They must know how much runway they need,” she said to us. “They wouldn’t even try to land otherwise. Would they?”

  “A team of US Air Force engineers has been checking the runway every day for the past week,” I told her. Bartek made a rude noise and I elbowed him in the ribs. “They even brought in their own air traffic controller to handle the final approach. Everything is going to be fine.”

  We all looked out of the window again. The dark speck had resolved itself into the shape of a dark-grey aircraft, growing larger and larger all the time. Even from so far away, we could tell it was huge. I watched it descend gracefully towards us from the southwest, and thought again about the itinerary I had been shown when I arrived at the airport this morning. I had been wondering why so much responsibility for the Lacertans’ visit had been put on my shoulders, but when I saw the itinerary everything became very clear. The Lacertans had not, it turned out, expressed an interest in visiting Poland. They had expressed an interest in visiting just one particular town in Poland.

 

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