out over that summer that he had been arrested "for crimes against the interests of the state". It leaked out that during 1974 a Nato spy had confessed that one of his five co-agents was "Pawel" – Pawlowski's principal nickname (although he had several others, including "Gracz", "The Card Player", because of his fondness for poker). Just before he was taken into custody, Pawlowski had been pronounced the most outstanding sportsman his country had produced in more than a decade. Time magazine called him "the undisputed sports hero of Poland". Thus, as Neue Zürcher Zeitung put it, "the news of his arrest shocked the Polish public, especially the army and young people, for whom he was almost a national idol". Almost immediately, influential figures in the government and in the army tried to cover up the affair, but the Russian representative to the Warsaw Pact High Command demanded the death penalty. Pawlowski was interrogated for two and a half months and eventually put on trial by a military tribunal, meeting in secret. It gave him a sentence that had no standing under Polish law – 25 years' imprisonment, for espionage "on behalf of an undesignated Nato country". There was talk that Pawlowski avoided death because he used to go shooting – he was a fine marksman – with Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish premier; but the court declared that he had been spared because he had admitted his crimes, revealed his contacts and provided a detailed account of his spying activities. Another of his friends, the acclaimed writer Jerzy Kosinski, introduced the affair into his 1977 novel Blind Date, which tells of "JP . . . the greatest fencer of all time", who is arrested and taken to a "military fortress", where he has his fencing arm broken by his interrogator. In the absence of official versions this totally fictitious description became accepted as an accurate account. Pawlowski's arrest had immediate repercussions. A number of other officers were tried and sentenced on similar charges. Some 120 Polish fencers were interrogated. Several senior officers were replaced, and even the head of the Polish navy was relieved of his post. As to what secrets a sportsman could have access, Pawlowski knew several senior officers as friends and moved in exalted circles; he was said to have passed on radar codes for military aircraft. His celebrity gave him little leverage in prison. According to