by Mike Maden
“Przepraszam”—sorry—Jack offered over the rushing sink water, hoping that Google hadn’t let him down. He added, “One second.”
A moment later he unlocked the door and pulled it open. A short young woman with bright maroon hair and John Lennon glasses stood at the door. Her frown bled into a wry smile at the sight of the handsome young American.
“Dzień dobry,” Jack said as he slipped past her.
“Dzień dobry.”
Jack saw a small plate standing on the counter right next to the bathroom door littered with one- and two-zloty coins. He suddenly remembered it was common throughout Europe to pay for bathroom services, usually collected by the attendant who kept the facilities sparkling clean. He flashed a memory of an elderly lady with an apron and broom wandering past him doing his business in a line of occupied public urinals at the Berlin Zoo train station years ago.
He tipped her pretty well, as he recalled.
The bathroom door locked behind him as Jack reached into his pocket, but he didn’t have any Polish coins—he chastised himself for not exchanging money while they were at the bank earlier. Two zlotys—about fifty cents—was a good bathroom tip, from what he’d read earlier. Unfortunately, all he had was an American dollar in his wallet, so he dropped that onto the plate. He probably looked like an idiot doing it, but not tipping was even worse.
Jack searched the boisterous room for Liliana. He spotted her in the far corner. She saw him and waved him over with a smile.
* * *
—
How did you like your pączki?” Liliana said, taking a sip of hot tea.
Jack swallowed the last bite and washed it down with strong black coffee. “Best jelly doughnut I ever had. Especially the jelly. It’s not too sweet and a little tangy.”
“In English it’s called rose hip. It’s the most traditional flavor, but you can get pączki stuffed with just about anything.”
“I couldn’t believe all of the stuff I saw at the counter.”
“Polish pastries are the best in the world—as good as anything you’d ever find in a French patisserie. Are you still hungry?”
Jack’s sweet tooth was screaming, and a sugar rush wouldn’t hurt his jet lag. But he knew how many miles per pączki he’d have to run to work them back off.
“I’m fine, thanks. You come here a lot?”
“Yes, but there’s no shortage of great places to eat in Warsaw. Trust me, we Poles know how to eat. Our cuisine is a unique blend of Austrian, German, Russian, and even Turkish traditions, but all with a unique polski twist.”
“I can’t wait to try it.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out. The translated text stood on the screen.
Gavin Biery, you magnificent bastard, Jack thought as he glanced at the document. The program was smart enough to differentiate between the manager and the vice president, designated A and B, respectively, by the pauses between each speech. The good news was that the manager had inquired about Baltic General Services after all. The bad news was that even though the high-gain microphone was able to pick up pieces of the vice president’s conversation—he was practically shouting on the other end—the translation had suffered as a result.
Jack frowned as he read. The sentences weren’t making a ton of sense. But at least the program was able to pick out the most important reference: Christopher Gage.
“Is that Zbyszko’s e-mail?”
Jack kept reading. “Huh? Uh, no. It’s a message from work.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“It seems to me there is more to your investigation than you are telling me.”
Jack glanced up at her. Bright woman, Jack thought. It won’t be easy keeping her in the dark. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m a federal agent currently working two different active criminal cases, but for some reason my job for the next week is to drive you around Poland in order to help you and your firm to make an investment decision. That makes no sense to me.”
“What did your boss say?”
“You don’t speak any Polish, so you need me for translation and, if necessary, personal protection.”
“Sounds about right.”
“My uncle in Chicago always used to say, ‘Never kid a kidder.’”
“My dad says the same thing, only he uses a different word than ‘kid.’ So here’s the straight dope: Mr. Gage might be weaving a very tangled financial web. I’m just trying to figure out how big and bad that web is. Okay?”
“Okay.”
They sat in silence for a moment, finishing their tea and coffee, retreating to neutral corners.
Jack watched a Polish nun march past the plate-glass window beneath a bright umbrella. She couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. He’d seen several young nuns and priests already. Not at all like home.
Just then, the e-mail from Zbyszko they’d been waiting for slid across his screen.
“Speak of the devil. Zbyszko’s e-mail just arrived. I’ll send it to you.” Jack forwarded it to her phone.
She opened it. “With traffic, this location is twenty, maybe thirty, minutes from here.”
“I’d like to check it out.” Jack pocketed his phone. “Are we good?”
Liliana’s eyes narrowed. He could see the wheels turning behind them.
“Yes, we’re good.” She added, “For now.”
“Then how about we go find this place?”
33
Jack tracked their progress on his smartphone. He liked to know where he was and where he was headed at all times, not just out of his abundant natural curiosity, but for tactical reasons. He could still hear Clark’s voice hammering in his head from training early on: “Kid, the best way I know to avoid eating a shit sandwich with all the fixins is to avoid the shit sandwich shop altogether.”
The morning rush-hour traffic had thinned but not entirely ended. They were heading in the opposite direction, out of the city center and back toward Warsaw Chopin Airport, south and west of the city proper.
Jack’s only concern at the moment was the tension filling the car. Liliana’s suspicions had clearly been raised. He almost wondered if it would be better to ditch her and try to figure this all out by himself. He couldn’t afford to have her find out what he was really up to. But then again, she was proving to be a real asset.
She was also darn easy on the eyes.
He needed to break the ice.
“On the ride to the hotel you said you went to Loyola Chicago. That’s a big Jesuit school.”
“Yes, it is. But, of course, I’m Catholic.”
“Poland is the most Catholic country in Europe, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “Are you Catholic?”
“Yes, I am,” though he didn’t say it with much conviction. It wasn’t like he was practicing much these days, but it was still part of his heritage, just like the guilt he now felt for falling short in that area of his life. “My whole family.”
“Then you will understand the constant references to Pope John Paul the Second you will find here. Especially in Kraków. We are very proud of him and what he did for our country and the whole world.”
“I was just a toddler when he was around, but my folks talked about him all the time. He was a great man. One of the brightest lights of the twentieth century.”
“Yes, he was. The first Polish pope. He helped end Communism in Europe by supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland, where the first free elections behind the Iron Curtain were held. It wasn’t long after until the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union finally collapsed.”
“We could use a few more like him.”
“I was told to keep our conversations to a minimum, but I just wanted to say I greatly appreciate your President trying to establish a perma
nent American base in Poland.”
“Too bad Congress dropped the ball.” He wanted to say “Dixon dropped the ball,” but he didn’t want to tip his hand.
“Yes. It seems only your President understands Poland’s strategic significance.” She slowed the car, hit the turn signal, and pulled into a parking lot fronting a large, gray concrete warehouse. Chain-link fence separated the front of the property from the side where the loading docks stood—at least twelve by Jack’s count, with trucks parked at each.
“We’re here,” she said as she yanked on the parking brake.
* * *
—
The single-wide glass door read STAPINSKY TRANSPORTOWE in small white sticker letters, faded but uniform. Liliana pushed through, followed by Jack.
They stood in front of a modest desk. A middle-aged woman with badly bleached hair sat behind it, staring at a computer screen, a pair of thick glasses perched on the end of her bulbous nose. The air smelled of stale cigarettes.
“Dzień dobry,” Liliana said with a musical lilt.
“Dzień dobry,” the woman replied halfheartedly, glancing over the top of her glasses with the sad, brown eyes of a basset hound.
Liliana launched into a cheerful but pointed discussion Jack couldn’t exactly follow, but the meaning was clear enough. He heard his name mentioned along with a few cognates, including “investor,” so he knew she was introducing him as they had arranged previously at the bank.
Finally, the woman pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose, but the wide lenses only served to magnify her already enormous eyes. She turned in her rolling chair with a squeak and leaned in to a microphone, depressing the call button.
“Pan Kierownik!”—Mr. Manager!—thundered over the loudspeakers in the small waiting area and beyond.
The woman returned to her work on the computer and Liliana turned to Jack. “It shouldn’t be long.”
She’d hardly finished speaking when a steel door flung open and an older broad-shouldered man stormed into the room. His neck was too thick for the cheap, wide necktie and polyester shirt he wore, and his gut looked as hard as a beer barrel. Jack could tell by the way he moved that the man knew how to handle himself in a fight, which explained the large, veiny nose, clearly broken at least once before. He even stood like a boxer, leaning slightly forward, legs bent, ready to take a swing at whatever life might throw at him.
The man barked at the woman behind the desk, who only pointed a nicotine-stained finger in Liliana’s direction and muttered something without looking up. The man turned his steely blue eyes toward Liliana and barked another question.
She didn’t flinch, but in the same smiling, soft-spoken way, largely repeated what she had already explained to the woman behind the desk.
The manager turned toward Jack. His thickly accented voice sounded like he gargled with vinegar and steel wool.
“We don’t need no investors, so thank you and good-bye.”
Jack stepped toward the older, heavier man and extended his hand to shake. The manager stiffened at Jack’s first step, his eyes narrowing as he sized up the big American.
“My name is Jack Ryan. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Jack’s display of respect softened the man, and he reluctantly took Jack’s hand. Poles were, if nothing else, ferociously polite and respectful of others, especially those they considered to be of a higher social status, which Jack clearly was, being both an obviously rich investor and an American.
The thick, callused hand closed around Jack’s. Mutual respect in a firm, solid grip.
“Are you Mr. Stapinsky?” Jack asked.
“No. My name is Wilczek. Pavel Wilczek. I am the manager here. Mr. Stapinsky is the owner. What is it you want, exactly?”
“As my assistant, Ms. Pilecki, suggested, I work for a financial firm that—”
“Pilecki, did you say?” He turned toward Liliana. “Any relation to—”
“My great-uncle.”
The man’s broad shoulders slumped as if in surrender. Jack swore he saw the hint of a smile creep across the leathery face. He raised a thick arm and pointed a catcher’s mitt–sized hand toward the steel door.
“Please, won’t you both step into my office?”
34
Jack, Liliana, and Wilczek sat in his cramped office, the shelves of the steel bookcases stuffed with decades’ worth of transportation and shipping records. His desk was littered with stacks of stained manila folders, shipping reports, and a hubcap-turned-ashtray overstuffed with butts. Wilczek clasped his thick hands across his wide, stiff belly as he leaned back in his chair behind the battered steel desk.
“I have no idea, Mr. Ryan. I never heard of this Christopher Gage person. Perhaps the owner, but not me.”
“Can you at least tell me what the relationship is with Baltic General Services? What do you do for them?”
The big man shrugged. “What do we do for them? Nothing that I know of. But they have done a lot for us. A small pay raise for my employees, a new computer system that Mrs. Lewandowska is still trying to learn. A new soda machine in the break room.”
“And how is business?” Jack asked. “I noticed trucks in all the docking bays when we pulled up.”
“Business is good. Very good. But I don’t keep the financial records. That is information that only Mr. Stapinsky has.”
“Is he available to speak with?”
“Mr. Stapinsky lives in Kraków. His family is from that area. He owns businesses down there, and property.”
“Regarding business here, are there more trucks coming in? More shipments?”
Wilczek scratched the top of his head, thinking. “Yes. More trucks, more shipments. But different than before.”
“Different how?”
The springs in his chair squeaked like a rusted hinge as he stood. He snatched an industrial-sized folding box cutter from off his cluttered desk.
Jack imagined Wilczek lunging at him with that blade, a great slashing arc with his gorilla-length arm aimed right at his throat.
It was how Jack’s brain worked these days—or, more precisely, how it was trained by Ding and Clark. Always anticipate. Wilczek wouldn’t be an easy man to take down in any case, but with a blade he knew how to use? It would be hard to do without getting hurt.
Or, more likely, killed.
“Follow me, Mr. Ryan.”
* * *
—
The warehouse floor was stacked with pallets, neat and orderly, aligned with the loading bays. Forklifts ran in and out of the long trailers, carefully stacking the pallets. Other dockworkers rolled hand trucks filled with unpalletized boxes. The air stank of natural gas from the forklift engines and burnt hard rubber from their tires. The big steel forks rattled and clanged as they sped, empty, out of the trailers.
“You see?” Wilczek said, casting a wide arm at the floor. “All we get now is cheap Chinese crap. It is all part of this ‘New Silk Road’ business they keep talking about.”
Wilczek slashed away the plastic wrapping from a pallet with his razor-sharp box cutter, pulled off one of the boxes marked as radios and cut the tape on it, then pulled out a boxed radio. He pointed at the radio box with his razor blade. “See? Made in China. All of it. All of it!”
Wilczek barked an order to one of his men to repackage the radio, then led Jack and Liliana over to one of the open pallets close to the nearest door. The boxes were marked in combinations of English and Chinese, and sometimes Polish, French, or German. Two young men were stacking boxes from it onto heavy-duty hand trucks. They seemed to move a little faster as Wilczek approached. He growled something at them and the taller one answered back in a deferential tone as the other one sped off with his loaded hand truck toward the open maw of the forty-plus-foot-long trailer. The tall one loaded the last of his boxes onto his hand truck and sp
ed away after his friend.
When they were out of earshot, Wilczek chuckled. “Ukrainians. Good boys. Hard workers.” He winked at Jack. “But you can’t tell them that or they won’t work as hard, eh?”
Jack glanced around the warehouse floor. He couldn’t read Chinese, but in English he read the contents: stacks of boom boxes, children’s bicycles, glassware, women’s shoes, hand tools, roofing nails.
A phone rang over the loudspeakers attached to the ceiling, and a moment later the receptionist’s voice barked over the warehouse speakers. Jack caught only the words Pan Kierownik!
“Excuse me, please. I must take a call. But please stop by my office on your way out.”
“We will,” Jack said.
As soon as Wilczek disappeared behind his office door, Jack said to Liliana, “You’re awfully quiet.”
“Are you finding what you’re looking for?”
Jack nodded toward one of the pallets still wrapped in plastic. “If I needed two hundred cordless jigsaws, then yeah, I’ve found it. Other than that? I’m confused.”
The two young Ukrainians were grunting and chatting as they stacked boxes in the back of the truck.
“I’m going to look around a little more,” Jack said.
“I’ll talk to the boys when they come back.”
Jack approached the back of the half-full trailer as the last boxes were stacked. The Ukrainians sped past him with their empty hand trucks, the hard rubber wheels rattling on the steel loading gate.
Jack stepped deeper into the trailer to the neatly stacked boxes that ran from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Near as he could tell, the boys were doing a good job of putting the heavy stuff such as floor jacks and roofing nails on the bottom, and lighter stuff toward the top. He didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to.
He headed back out of the trailer and dropped down to the bottom of the loading bay. The trailer itself was of Chinese manufacture, and so was the big red JAC tractor that hauled it. A quick glance down the loading dock revealed several more Chinese-made tractor-trailer rigs, mixed in with a few Volvos and Mercedes.