Page 436 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

The cops strode in, shoving him out of the way.

Tanya ran down the stairs. "You can't do this!" she yelled. "You have to identify yourselves!"

Two big policemen came out of the apartment dragging Danuta, her abundant hair in disarray, wearing a nightdress and a white candlewick dressing gown.

Tanya stood in front of them, blocking the staircase. She held up her press card. "I am a Soviet reporter!" she shouted.

"Then get the fuck out of the way," one replied. He lashed out at her with a crowbar he held in his left hand. It was not a calculated blow, for he was striving to control the struggling Danuta with the other hand, but the iron bar caught Tanya across the face. She felt a blaze of pain and staggered back. The two police pushed past her and hauled Danuta down the stairs.

Tanya had blood in her right eye but she could see with her left. Another cop emerged from the apartment carrying a typewriter and a telephone answering device.

Danuta's husband reappeared with a child in his arms. "Where are you taking her?" he shouted. The police did not reply.

Tanya said to him: "I'm going to call the army right now and find out." Holding one hand to her injured face, she went back up the stairs.

She glanced in the hall mirror. She had a gash on her forehead and her cheek was red and already swelling with a bruise, but she thought the blow had not broken any bones.

She picked up the phone to call Staz.

It was dead.

She turned on the television and the radio. The TV was blank, the radio silent.

This was not just about Danuta, then.

A neighbor followed her in. "Let me call a doctor," the woman said.

"I don't have time." Tanya stepped into her little bathroom, held a towel under the tap, and washed her face gingerly. Then she returned to her bedroom and dressed quickly in thermal underwear, jeans and a heavy sweater, and a big thick coat with a fur lining.

She ran down the stairs and got into her car. Snow was falling again but the main roads were

clear, and she soon saw why. Tanks and army trucks were everywhere. With a growing apprehension of doom she realized that the arrest of Danuta was just a small part of something ominously massive.

The troops swarming into the center of Warsaw were not Russians, however. This was not like Prague in 1968. The vehicles had Polish army markings and the soldiers wore Polish uniforms. The Poles had invaded their own capital.

They were setting up roadblocks, but they had only just started, and for the moment it was possible to circumvent them. Tanya drove her Mercedes fast, pushing her luck on slippery bends, to Jana Olbrachta Street, in the west of the city. She parked outside Staz's building. She knew the address but she had never been here before: he always said it was little better than a barracks.

She ran inside. It took her a couple of minutes to find the right apartment. She banged on the door, praying he would be in, though she feared the overwhelming likelihood was that he was out on the streets with the rest of the army.

The door was opened by a woman.

Tanya was shocked into silence. Did Staz have another girlfriend?

The woman was blond and pleasant-looking, wearing a pink nylon nightdress. She stared at Tanya's face in consternation. "You've been hurt!" she said in Polish.

Tanya noticed, in the hallway behind the woman, a small red tricycle. This woman was not his girlfriend, she was his wife, and they had a child.

Tanya felt a jolt of guilt like an electric shock. She had been taking Staz away from his family. And he had been lying to her.

With an effort, she wrenched her mind back to the present emergency. "I need to speak to Colonel Pawlak," she said. "It's urgent."

The woman heard her Russian accent, and her attitude changed in an instant. She glared angrily at Tanya. "So you're the Russian whore," she said.

Evidently Staz had not succeeded in keeping his love affair entirely secret from his wife. Tanya wanted to explain that she had not known he was married, but this was not the moment. "There's no time for that!" she said desperately. "They're taking over the city! Where is he?"

"He's not here."

"Will you help me find him?"

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