by Tom Clancy
“Aren’t we?”
“We’ve only known each other for a few hours.”
“Is there some sort of minimum number of hours required for Polish friendship? Maybe a certificate I need to acquire?”
“How about lunch and we’ll discuss the details?”
“You read my mind.”
“Perfect. I know just the place.”
KRAKÓW, POLAND
Kuchnia u Doroty exuded both Old World charm and modern sensibility, with its exposed-brick walls, terrazzo tile floors, and white linen tablecloths. It was definitely a place for locals and served food family style.
The hostess greeted Liliana with a kiss and the two caught up on recent history in a flurry of words Jack couldn’t possibly follow even if he spoke Polish. Liliana introduced him to her friend and she greeted him with classroom-perfect English, but not without shooting a quick conspiratorial glance at her friend, which Liliana quickly dismissed with a curt shake of her head.
Women.
The hostess ushered them downstairs to a private table away from the other lunchtime guests and left menus with them.
“Hungry?” Liliana asked.
Jack picked up a menu. “Starved. I’m not really into airplane cookies.”
“Me neither. What a penny-pinching asshole.”
“Have I mentioned how good your English is?”
“Have you ever had Polish food before?”
“Besides pączki? No.”
“Then you’re in for a real treat. Do you mind if I order for you?”
“Please.”
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes later, plates of food began landing on the white linen tablecloth like F/A-18F Super Hornets on a carrier deck. They split each plate; Liliana narrated as Jack tucked in.
“Buraczki,” Liliana said, pointing at a plate of shredded beet salad. “A good place to start.”
Jack agreed. The salad was cold and refreshing, and not sweetly pickled after the American fashion.
“Next, gołąbki.” Liliana smiled as Jack dove into the cabbage rolls—rectangles, really—the leaves as thin and translucent as parchment paper, stuffed with minced chicken, pork, and rice, and topped with a tomato gravy.
“Unbelievable.” Jack took another sip of a strong local porter, smooth and potent at 9.8 percent alcohol content.
Outstanding.
The next plate arrived. “Bigos. Very traditional.” She explained it was a stew made with sauerkraut—“Not bitter, like the German kind”—and meat: sausage, pork, and bacon, all sautéed together with onions, garlic, paprika, and other spices.
She was right. The flavor of the sauerkraut was more tangy than sour, and paired perfectly with the protein. His only concern was that he was already starting to fill up.
“Now, for my favorite here. Placki ziemniaczane z gulaszem.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jack said, enjoying his porter. It was so good he seriously considered ordering a second one, but knew if he did that Liliana would have to fireman-carry him up the stairs and pour him into the backseat of her Audi.
Liliana pushed the plate toward him. “Potato pancakes and goulash, though not goulash the way the Hungarians do it.”
The fried potato pancakes were large and thick, and smothered in chunks of buttery-soft pork bathed in yet another rich tomato sauce and topped with a dollop of fresh sour cream. His stomach told him he was topping off, but his taste buds begged him to keep shoveling until the plate was clean.
His taste buds won the argument.
Another wash of dark porter almost emptied the glass and took up the last remaining centimeters of available space in his gullet. There was no more room at the inn.
Until the dessert arrived.
“Racuchy,” Liliana said. “Apple pancakes.” Thick and hearty and dusted with powdered sugar. Jack dipped each savory bite into a ramekin spilling over with raspberry-and-cream sauce.
Jack forked the last bite into his mouth and lifted his white napkin in surrender. He did a quick calculation. He would need to do approximately thirty thousand crunches to match the caloric content of this meal.
And it would be worth it.
“Check, please.”
* * *
—
How do you do it?” Jack asked, standing on the sidewalk of the narrow, tree-lined street outside the restaurant.
“Do what?”
“Eat what you eat and look like you do.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Jack felt the heat rush to his face. “I mean, you must have one heck of a metabolism.”
“The trick is to not eat like that every meal, like most Americans do. And exercise, of course.”
“I could use a gym right about now.”
“How about a walk instead? Two of Stapinsky’s properties are within twenty minutes of here.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Good. It will be a chance to show you some of the Old Town.”
* * *
—
Liliana led them north toward the center of Old Town. The air was damp and cool but pleasant. Jack was grateful to stretch his legs. He’d spent the better part of the last sixteen hours on his rear end.
“The part of the city you’re in now is called Kazimierz. It’s the old Jewish Quarter. King Kazimierz the Great reigned in the fourteenth century during another time in Europe when Jews were being persecuted. He offered them sanctuary in Poland, where they prospered for centuries, until the Second World War. Sadly, there are few Jews here now. In recent years, Kazimierz has revitalized. There are many art galleries, restaurants, craft beer brewers, and hipsters. It’s my favorite part of the city.”
The streets became more crowded with pedestrians and especially tourists the closer they got to old city center. When they finally reached the Main Square, one of the largest medieval squares in Europe, the place was packed with milling tourists admiring the soaring steeple of St. Mary’s Basilica dominating the center, and across from it, the Cloth Hall, a hub of international trade since the time of the Renaissance, Liliana informed him.
“Promise me you’ll hire a local guide next time you’re here, Jack—Wawel Castle is a short distance away, but it is the heart of Poland, our Westminster Cathedral, where our great kings and queens are buried.”
Colorful horse-drawn carriages stood in line, waiting for passengers near the cathedral, and the cafés and coffeehouses surrounding the square were packed with gawking tourists, many of them Chinese, judging by the conversations Jack heard walking past them.
Ten minutes later, they stood on a narrow side street north of the Main Square, facing a small two-story building. The first floor was gray and was occupied by a grocery store; the second floor was beige.
“Stapinsky owns the entire building, according to the property tax records. He collects rent from two residential units on the second level, and from the grocery on the first, according to his income tax statements.”
“He doesn’t own the grocery?”
“No.”
“Is the rent money substantial?”
“Decent.”
“Enough to buy a brand-new six-figure Mercedes? That G-class still had paper plates on the bumper.”
“Perhaps he is frugal in other areas of his life.”
“Like coffee and dessert?”
Liliana snorted. “You are too funny.”
Jack stepped inside the modest grocery. Its plain white tile floors, bare fluorescent bulbs, and two cash registers didn’t impress. It was minuscule by American standards. A few aisles, a half-dozen patrons. The two long walls were well stocked with a wide variety of local and imported beers and wine, as well as vodkas and whiskeys.
“Anything else you need to see, Jack?”
�
��No. Let’s check out the next place.”
39
From the grocery store, Jack and Liliana headed east on foot, crossing through a narrow band of urban park and walkways that circled most of the Old Town. They headed south down a busy four-lane street, Westerplatte, passing, among other things, a Dominican convent. They eventually arrived in front of a formal neoclassical four-story residential building on a very quiet and pleasant tree-lined street. An electronic passkey was required to gain entrance, but an elderly couple exited and took no notice of Jack and Liliana passing through the half-open door.
The building was quiet, save for the sound of an energetic but well-played violin on one of the top floors and the happy laughter of small children behind the nearest of two doors on the first floor. The names on the mailboxes were all Polish; the ancient marble floors were clean, the dark wood doors and fixtures polished, and the air tobacco-free.
“Four floors, two apartments each. Stapinsky owns the entire building,” Liliana offered in a soft voice.
“Doesn’t look like a drug den or a terrorist training camp, does it?”
“Is that what you’re looking for?”
“Not exactly.”
Liliana frowned. “Are you sure you’re a financial analyst?”
“I wouldn’t want my investors to get caught up in anything illegal.”
“Of course not. Anything else to see here?”
“No.”
A fifteen-minute walk led back to Liliana’s Audi. She drove them to the last two stops.
The first was a cubbyhole of a liquor store—“Alkohole,” the sign read—not much bigger than a phone booth, attached to a chain grocery store ten minutes from the apartment building. There was barely room for Jack to poke his head in and look around, trying to avoid the hard stare of the disheveled man behind the tiny glass counter. Every nook and cranny was crammed with hard liquors and spirits, especially flavored vodkas, and Irish and American whiskeys, and most of those in bottles small enough to fit in a pocket or purse.
The last stop was equally unremarkable, Kraków Kandy, a small shop offering a wide variety of boxed and packaged candies, imported and domestic.
“Stapinsky owns the shop. My guess is that he would make more money renting the place out, judging by the net income he declared,” Liliana said.
“Now what?” Liliana said as she unlocked the car.
“Back to Warsaw.”
“Any place in particular?”
“Drop me off at my hotel, if you don’t mind. I’ll try and pull something together tonight and we’ll hit it again tomorrow.”
“As you wish.”
* * *
—
They headed back north toward Warsaw on the S7, the way they had arrived. The sky darkened about the time they left the city limits, and twenty minutes later rain spattered the windshield, the wipers completely out of sync with the Dave Brubeck album Liliana had pulled up on her audio system.
Jack stifled his third yawn in as many miles.
“I have a hard time with jet lag, too,” Liliana said. “Grab a nap if you want.”
“Thanks, but I’ll push through it. Otherwise, I’ll be fighting it the whole time.” The traffic had thinned out quite a bit heading in this direction.
“How long do you think you’ll be in Poland?”
“A week. A month. No telling.”
“So, what do you think of my country?”
“So far, I’m impressed. Your economy is doing much better than I realized.”
“It is. We’re trying to grow in every area, especially manufactured goods, and trying to expand our exports.”
“What do you think about the Belt and Road Initiative?”
Liliana shook her head. “I’m worried about it. The idea sounds good on paper—opening trade routes between China and Europe should benefit everyone. But in reality, what we see is a lot of Chinese manufactured goods being dumped into our markets, and what we’re mostly exporting to them is pork and dairy products.”
“And the Chinese don’t exactly play fair, do they?”
“You should know. Look at the massive trade deficits your country runs with them.”
“I’m surprised you follow international trade patterns.”
“Why? Because I’m in law enforcement? Trust me, we talk about these things all the time in our department.”
“Why?”
“Have you kept up with the news? There are riots and demonstrations all over Europe these days. Youth unemployment is over forty percent in Greece, more than thirty percent in Italy and Spain, and nearly twenty percent in Portugal. Their manufacturing sectors were crushed in the last recession and they’ve never fully recovered, and they won’t, if Chinese imports keep flooding in.”
“You’re saying that subsidized Chinese imports are contributing to European instability?”
“Absolutely. Without jobs, what will young people do? What kind of a future will they have? And look at how Europe is dividing right now. The countries with the worst youth unemployment—Greece, Spain, and Portugal—have radical socialist governments. That’s the wrong direction for Europe to take.”
“So how do you feel about foreign investment in your country?”
“You mean like Hendley Associates?” Liliana smiled.
“To name one outstanding financial firm, yes.”
“Investments that grow my economy I can support. Anything that creates jobs and wealth in Poland is good for Poland. But the purpose of so-called free trade seems to be to make a few individuals and corporations rich at the expense of the rest of the country. Importing cheap foreign goods means exporting Polish jobs, and that isn’t sustainable in the long run.”
“I agree. But the world is running in the opposite direction. Globalism is the trend.”
“Yes, it is. But we are at a critical crossroads, don’t you think?”
“How so?”
“Ironically, in the name of free trade, government power is becoming more centralized in order to erase borders and eliminate national sovereignty. But if we lose our national identity, what good does it do to belong to the European Union?”
“If Polish people become more prosperous, wouldn’t it be worth it?”
“But will they? What happens when power is centralized? Do you think the largest German and French corporations will allow Brussels to let Polish corporations grow at their expense? Or do you think it will be the other way around? Not in theory—tell me, you studied history. What happens when big corporations partner with big government?”
“The rich get richer, and the politicians get more power.”
“Fascism and socialism are the same things.” Liliana cursed herself under her breath. “I’m sorry to keep talking this way. It’s not polite.”
“I don’t mind, really. It’s fascinating.”
“You must remember, my country disappeared from the map for one hundred and twenty-three years. Occupiers wouldn’t allow Polish to be taught in our schools, or for our children to learn their own history. Same with the Nazis. We had to fight to keep our identity and our culture and our language. We don’t want to give it all away for the sake of cheap toaster ovens and Chinese takeout, even though I happen to love kung pao chicken.”
Jack pointed at a pair of flashing lights on the road up ahead. An elderly woman stood in the rain without an umbrella, trying—and failing—to pull out a spare tire from her trunk.
“Poor thing. I’ll call for help,” Liliana said.
“Pull over. I can handle it.”
“But it’s raining.”
“What if nobody shows up?”
“Okay.”
Liliana pulled in behind the woman’s rusted sedan, a Volkswagen Jetta. She turned around, squinting against the thick drops pelting her concerned face.
Lili
ana and Jack jumped out and dashed over to the woman. Liliana identified herself as an agent of the Polish government and that Jack was her American friend—or so Jack assumed. He didn’t wait around for the formalities. He was getting soaked, too.
The old woman insisted on showing Jack what to do, and Liliana kept trying to wrestle her under the mini umbrella she had. She finally convinced the woman to come sit in the Audi while Jack finished the job. Fifteen minutes after they’d pulled over, the woman’s spare tire was attached and Jack was soaked from head to foot, slathered in mud but satisfied with his work.
The rain had stopped. The old woman thanked Jack profusely in a spate of Polish that Liliana hastily translated, then climbed back into her car. She stomped the gas and sped away, throwing a rooster tail of mud that splattered all over the two of them.
All they could do was laugh.
Liliana opened the trunk of the Audi and fished out an emergency blanket. The two of them toweled off as best they could, climbed back into the Audi, and headed for Warsaw. Liliana cranked up the heat. Twenty minutes later, Jack was sound asleep, snoring his head off.
40
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Watson put her desk phone on speaker as it rang. Four rings in, Elias Dahm finally picked up.
“Hello, Amanda. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I was checking my calendar and I saw that I hadn’t received the text for your speech yet so I can review it.” The sound of gusting wind battered the phone speaker.
“My speech?”
“The TechWorld conference, remember? It’s two weeks away.”
“Oh, yes. Sure. Sorry. My mind is somewhere else.”
“By the sound of it, so is your body. Where are you?”
“I’m standing in front of the Wickenburg Chamber of Commerce building. It’s quite charming. The whole town is charming. Straight out of an episode of Lassie. Do you know what I’m looking at?”
“Wickenburg where?”
“Wickenburg, Arizona. So can you guess what I’m looking at?”