Wałesa organized the election of a strike committee. The limousine returned with Anna, who was greeted by a storm of applause. She was a small woman with hair as short as a man’s. She had round glasses and wore a blouse with bold horizontal stripes.

The strike committee and the director went in the Health and Safety Center to negotiate. Tanya was tempted to try to insinuate herself in there with them, but she decided not to push her luck: she was fortunate to have got inside the gates. The workers were welcoming the Western media, but Tanya’s press card showed that she was a Soviet reporter for TASS, and if the strikers discovered that they would throw her out.

However, the negotiators must have had microphones on their tables, for their entire discussion was broadcast over loudspeakers to the crowd outside—which struck Tanya as democratic in the extreme. The strikers could instantly express their feelings about what was said by booing or cheering.

She figured out that the strikers now had several demands in addition to the reinstatement of Anna, including security from reprisals. The one that the director could not accept, surprisingly, was for a monument outside the factory gates to commemorate the massacre by police of shipyard workers protesting against food price rises in 1970.

Tanya wondered whether this strike would also end in a massacre. If it did, she realized with a chill, she was right in the firing line.

Gniech explained that the area in front of the gates had been designated for a hospital.

The strikers said they preferred a monument.

The director offered a commemorative plaque somewhere else in the shipyard.

They declined.

A worker said disgustedly into the microphone: “We’re haggling over dead heroes like beggars under a lamppost!”

The people outside applauded.

Another negotiator appealed directly to the crowd: Did they want a monument?

They roared their answer.

The director retired to consult with his superiors.

There were now thousands of supporters outside the gates. People had been collecting donations of food for the strikers. Few Polish families could afford to give food away, but dozens of sacks of provisions were now passed through the gates for the men and women inside, and the strikers ate lunch.

The director came back in the afternoon and announced that the highest authorities had approved the monument in principle.

Wałesa declared that the strike would go on until all the demands had been met.

And then, almost as an afterthought, he added that the strikers also wanted to discuss the formation of free independent trade unions.

Now, Tanya thought, this is getting really interesting.

• • •

On Friday after lunch Cam Dewar drove to the Old Town of Warsaw.

He was followed there by Mario and Ollie.

Most of Warsaw had been flattened in the war. The town had been reconstructed with straight roads and sidewalks and modern buildings. Such a cityscape was not suitable for clandestine meetings and furtive exchanges. However, the planners had striven to re-create the original Old Town with its cobbled streets and little alleys and irregular houses. It was done a little too well: the straight edges and regular patterns and fresh colors looked too new, like a movie set. Nevertheless, it provided a more congenial environment for secret agents than did the rest of the city.