The attack on Hoffmann in G2

The attack on Hoffmann in G2 is the moment Piet Hoffmann’s carefully constructed prison identity collapses into an immediate struggle for survival. When prisoners who had helped him seize control of the drug market turn against him, he escapes the assault by reaching the guards’ room and insisting on voluntary isolation. The transfer removes him from their reach for the moment, but confirms that his cover has failed and that the prison’s informal loyalties can no longer protect him.

Entry into Aspsås and the constructed identity

Hoffmann had never previously been inside Aspsås Prison. Before his arrival, he had studied its buildings from the church tower and, while on remand, used Erik Wilson’s help to learn about the prisoners and staff in Block G. This preparation gave him knowledge of the institution, but not experience of living within it. On entry, leg irons constrained his movement; guards took him through a security entrance, searched him, issued him new clothes, and placed him in a sterile waiting room. The procedure marked the difference between mapping a prison from outside and becoming subject to its routines.

Ten days later, his daily life was organized around confinement: for twenty-three hours he remained in a five-square-meter cell behind a metal door, without visitors or access to newspapers, television, or radio. When he was shown the unit, a principal officer explained its rules, including where he could use the toilet and the fixed lock-in time. Hoffmann then used the hours before the other prisoners returned to stage his arrival. He sat in the television corner where everyone would see him, took a seat and marked cards associated with someone else, and began playing solitaire without asking permission. These calculated breaches of etiquette were meant to make the new inmate look unafraid and already entitled to space.

Building status, then losing protection

Hoffmann had studied the backgrounds of the fifteen other prisoners and was watching in particular for Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki. Both were members of Wojtek serving long sentences at Aspsås. They had helped Hoffmann eliminate competitors and take control of the prison drug market; if he were exposed as Paula, they could also become his executioners. Their support was therefore useful but conditional, resting on the same criminal hierarchy that made his position dangerous.

At supper, two older prisoners challenged Hoffmann to show his papers. Stefan and Karol Tomasz moved to intervene, but Hoffmann let the questioning continue, treating it as an opportunity to establish respect. The two men had already prepared the ground: for several days they had discussed his arrival, his alleged offense, his associates, and his standing with an Eastern European mafia. Through Stefan’s lawyer they had obtained copies of his criminal-record, intelligence, and prison files, as well as his latest judgment. The apparent solidity of this documentary identity helped him enter the unit, but it could not guarantee that others would continue to believe in it.

Before the attack, Hoffmann relied on a small, temporary safeguard: a pillow and sweatshirt arranged under the covers, with a chair and sock positioned by the door. The arrangement gave him only a brief interval to react if someone attacked when guards could not see or hear. By then, he had already taken an important step in his plan, using forty-two grams of manufactured amphetamine, at 30 percent purity, to bring down the prison’s three principal dealers. Reports had reached Warsaw and a deputy chief executive, who had marked the next stage of the operation. His gains in the prison market increased his standing, but they did not secure his safety.

The assault and escape to the guards’ room

The attack begins after a fourteen-minute delay. A chair is knocked aside as Stefan approaches with a screwdriver; the assault is not limited to him. Hoffmann recognizes the familiar pattern: one or more attackers entering with improvised weapons, others following to help, and additional men positioned in the corridor as lookouts. His prepared decoy has been discovered, and the narrow margin of time it was meant to provide is gone.

Hoffmann has room for one decisive move. He strikes Stefan at the side of the neck, and Stefan falls, obstructing the doorway as Karol Tomasz swings a piece of metal to keep his balance. Hoffmann squeezes through the opening and runs past the men on guard toward the security office. He reaches the guards’ room and asks to be placed in isolation. When the officers do not respond at first, he repeats his demand, invoking a P18 placement, and raises his voice until they act. The turn is practical rather than triumphant: he has escaped the immediate assault, but now has to persuade the institution to protect him.

Exposure and transfer to voluntary isolation

Hoffmann shouts at the guards and then sits on the floor. Eventually, one guard locks the door from the inside and watches the men gathering in the corridor through the glass, while another requests assistance from the prison riot squad to escort a prisoner to an isolation cell after a reported threat. Hoffmann moves to a chair, partly screened from the people circling outside. The response gives him a route away from the attackers, but it does not restore secrecy or trust.

The riot squad arrives in helmets and shields, with ten officers dividing their duties: six remain to discourage further violence, while four escort Hoffmann down through Block G and into the voluntary isolation unit in Block C. There, prisoners from other units cannot freely encounter him; the unit has its own staff room, television corner, showers, kitchen, and table-tennis table. The transfer therefore changes both his location and the people he can meet. It is a formal refuge within the prison, not an exit from the prison or from the danger created by his exposure.

In isolation, Karol Tomasz points toward his mouth and repeatedly forms the word used to brand Hoffmann as an informer. Hoffmann understands that Paula, the identity he had performed inside Wojtek, no longer exists for these prisoners. He also concludes that one of the four men involved in the attack had betrayed him. The assault thus reverses his position: the allies who helped him take the market are no longer dependable protection, and his immediate objective is no longer expansion but survival. His escape to Block C buys distance from the attackers while leaving him inside the same closed system that has learned to treat him as a rat.