We went down the dark stairs very quietly. Before we reached the ground floor I could hear the noise of passing cars—the entrance door was unhinged, leaning against a wall. We slipped into a long, dark corridor that led in the opposite direction, where Pan Tadeusz quickly unlocked a door. We crept into an unlit courtyard. There was light in a couple of the windows that faced us, the lamps behind the drawn curtains somehow ominous, like secrets about to be unveiled. We hurried toward a white Trabant, and they made me lie on the back seat. The car started, the engine vibrating, my cheek cool against the leather. Driving out of the courtyard, we flowed into the arteries of the city, inserting ourselves into its body like an unsuspected virus. From below, I watched the houses and monuments rush past, both familiar and new from that perspective. Police sirens howled in the distance, and then the Trabant stopped at the mouth of the blokowisko.

“Good night, Ludwik,” the man said, turning around to me. “Watch out for yourself. And don’t push your luck.”

Chapter 5

This morning, like every morning, I took the subway across to Manhattan. I sat at my desk and tried to work, but my mind was back home. I had a bad feeling. Some sort of intuition. As soon as midday struck, I left the office and walked a couple of blocks over to the telephone box on the corner of Third and East Forty-Third. No one is ever at that corner, and no one was there today. I called Jarek. He’s a fixer, a connector, knowing everything about everyone in the community. He works late shifts at a factory down in Queens, and I knew he’d be home.

“Did you hear?” he said with his smoker’s voice, almost immediately after picking up the phone. “The ZOMO killed nine miners in Katowice. They were protesting the martial law. Can you believe it? First they lock our people in our country, then they jail them, now they shoot them in the street. Sons of bitches. This time they’re gonna pay for it.”

A shiver ran down my back and across my lips. “Are you sure?”

He spat out his words like bullets. “Sure as fuck. This is serious.”