As Sawyer descended the stairs, Keeton walked over to the station of tables where Ollie—he had quickly warmed to the playfully deceptive nickname—had opened a wooden case containing small instruments of stainless steel and another that held an electric testing meter. She had laid the Mark XI out on the table, facedown, and was huddled over it.
“What do you have, Ollie?” he asked as he sidled up to her.
“The black light is on the next table,” she said without looking up. “And there’s a box of filters just behind it since I assume you need to see the message your friend left you on that card in the bag.”
“Just so,” he answered flatly at the rebuff. He stepped over to the mechanism, a microscope equipped with an ultraviolet light source. He switched it on and then dug the card from the orange bag and slid it on to the rectangular stage beneath the instrument. In flowing script the card simply read,
TO MR. TOBY LODGE WITH DEEP APPRECIATION
The box on the table near him contained a dozen or so opaque disks apparently made of glass. In reality, the materials of those lenses would allow only a very narrow range of wavelengths of light to pass through. He chose a disk with a tiny “3” etched on it and pushed it through a slot on the microscope’s tubular center. Then he looked through the eyepiece and began to dial in the focus until the hidden message on the card was legible, in neat handwritten block letters.
WOODED PARK CORNER OF JANA DLUGOSZ AND PLAC SERKOWSKIEGO. MAIN PATH TO BENCH BETWEEN FLOWER GARDENS. 1X1 STONE WITH STAR EMBLEM.
“There we have it,” Keeton said aloud. “Ollie, I suppose you know how this black-light writing works.”
“Of course,” she answered as she continued to study and tinker with the watch. “The ink used to write the message contains a compound that is fluorescent, meaning that when exposed to light of the correct wavelength it glows, so to speak, in another wavelength. In the case of the writing on that card, the black light is the correct source, and the message glows dimly enough that you need the filter to see it. Different inks require different filter disks.”
“Just what I would’ve said,” Keeton replied dryly.
“And I suppose you know how the electrons absorb quanta and move to an excited state?” she asked.
“Well, about the excited state, I—”
“Don’t even say it,” she interrupted. “Honestly!”
“Oh, come now, Ollie,” Keeton answered jovially. “You set yourself up for that one. Even your fiancé, the footballer, would’ve teased you about it.”
“What? How did you know…? Uncle Chester’s been talking, hasn’t he?” Ollie had stood upright when Keeton mentioned the other fellow, and she now glared at him with a small magnifying loupe squeezed into one eye socket.
Keeton laughed spontaneously at her appearance. “Ollie, you know what they say about girls and glasses—now I’m only going to be able to make half a pass at you.”
She dropped the loupe into one hand and put her other hand on her hips, akimbo. “Is that your idea of charm, Mr. Lodge? And of course, I well know that’s not your real name.”
Keeton stepped back over to her, close enough that she shifted and dropped her arms to her side and slumped a bit, as if lowering all of her defenses to him at once. He wanted to kiss her, even in front of all of those other CIA men. How many of them had wanted to do the same thing? And why not? But then the ring on Ollie’s left hand winked at him with a bit of reflected light, and he remembered those last few moments with Lynette, of her admission of a lover named Ivan just before she was killed.
“You’re right, Ollie,” he finally said. “My name’s Andrew. Tell me about the watch.”
Ollie flashed a frown of confusion for a moment, then took a tiny step backward. “Oh…oh, of course. Well, first of all I suspect you’d want to know if it contained a tracking device or a bug. It doesn’t.”
“That is good news, isn’t it?” Keeton answered, leaning against the table.
“I suppose, if you don’t trust our British friends, that is,” she answered rather seriously and noted Keeton’s look back at her. “Is that it?”
“Things are complicated,” Keeton said noncommittally. “Anything else?”
“I managed to take a look inside,” she said. “There’s something going on here if I can just figure it out.”
“I thought you MIT grads were the best and brightest,” Keeton said lightly, then saw another surprised look from her. “Uncle Chester has a big mouth.”
Ollie smiled and motioned him over. “Take a look. Something about the winding stem—it operates the normal works but also looks like it’s connected to another post at right angles to it.”
“I see it,” Keeton said, taking the loupe from her hand and using it to peer down into the mechanism. The stem was fitted so that it could also turn a long perpendicular post, which ended in a point oriented toward the twelve o’clock position. “But how does it work, and what’s it for?”
“I think I’ve got it,” Ollie said suddenly, taking up the Mark XI. “I turn the crown this way, the reverse of the direction you’d wind it.” As she did this, the internal, pointed end of the post Keeton had noted began to rotate and move, until it penetrated the top of the case through a tiny hole hidden from normal view by the beveling at the edge. Once the sharpened tip protruded several millimeters outside the case, the stem could not be turned any farther.
“Careful!” Keeton warned suddenly. “That could be poisoned.”
“Let me take a look through the scope,” she said. “Take the filter out, please.”
Keeton slid the “3” disk out of the microscope and returned it to its place in the box. Ollie then positioned the watch on the stage and focused it in at a magnification of ten, then fifty.
“I don’t see any kind of residue on the tip,” she told him. “But…wait, I’ll go to two hundred X. There. Now I see.”
“What is it?”
She looked up from the microscope. “Diamond-coated. This thing is a glass cutter.”
“That’s it?” he asked with a hint of anticlimax.
“I think it’s quite clever,” she answered. “Were you expecting a built-in grenade or something?”
He shrugged. “I suppose it would work on someone’s neck at that.”
“What an awful idea that is,” she said with a slight shudder that Keeton found endearing. “I’ll get this thing put back together.”
“You think that diamond edge is any worse than a knife or a bullet?” Keeton asked as she worked.
“As if you would know what it’s like to be both stabbed and shot,” she commented. When Keeton didn’t answer she looked up at him and saw the sardonic stare. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said with a smile. “Hazards of the job. My advice to you is stick to footballers.”
“Here you go,” she said, handing him the Mark XI restored to condition.
“Just a minute, Ollie,” Keeton said, unbuckling the watch he was already wearing. He put on the Mark XI and handed her his own Longines, a model he had kept from one of his affluent French covers. “Keep this for me, if you don’t mind.”
“Me? Well, I don’t know, Andrew…”
“Sure,” Keeton said. “You have a keepsake box at home, don’t you? Just throw it in there next to your confirmation cross and your class ring.”
“I think you’re serious about this,” she said.
“Very serious,” he replied softly. “Will you do this for me?”
“Well…yes, of course,” she said as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Thank you, Olivia,” Keeton said. Then he bent down and kissed her forehead and left her standing near the microscope, surprised into inaction. At the stairs, he stopped and turned to her. “And, if I don’t make it back, you can give that to Mr. Football as a wedding present, compliments of Toby Lodge.”
His face broke out into a big, sarcastic grin. Her hands shot back to her hips, but before she could utter a
response he had disappeared.
***
Keeton had stopped in to see Chet Sawyer before leaving Station 4, to check final arrangements for the flight into Poland the next morning. Sawyer had told him that a teletype arrived to confirm that Romain Roy and Jimmy Morel—under cover as French tourists—would be twenty-four hours behind him in arriving in Warsaw. Keeton would be going on to Krakow by train. He had declined the dinner invitation, resisting the temptation of perhaps seeing Ollie again.
Now he sat in the corner of the luxury restaurant inside the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, having stopped at his own hotel for a shower, a shave, and a change of clothes. He wore a light-gray suit with midnight-blue tie and a dark-gray fedora. The Smith & Wesson automatic was nestled inside the coat under his left arm in a soft leather holster. He sipped his pint and read the Times, of Harold Wilson and Liverpool’s Roger Hunt and of the ongoing investigation of the recent mine explosion at Cambrian Collier. The simple dinner of steak, steamed vegetables, and warm bread and butter, combined with the strong beer, relaxed him. The healthy slice of fresh strawberry rhubarb pie with champagne was the fitting end to the day of beautiful weather, a beautiful woman, and the start of a new mission.
He asked for the bill and a taxi, left a tip, and made an early night of it.
At ten thirty the next morning, the BEA stewardess welcomed Toby Lodge onto the De Havilland Comet 4 from the air stair at the aft of the plane and into his first-class seat. A half hour later Lodge and forty-seven other humans rode the aluminum tube into the skies of London, on their way to crossing an imaginary line on the map known as the Iron Curtain.
Chapter 4. Welcome to Poland
Situated between West and East, Poland is a jewel of both strategic and cultural import that tribes and empires have regarded with envious eyes for more than a thousand years. For half of that millennium of time Krakow was its capital. Even once the governing seat was moved to Warsaw in the late sixteenth century, the “second city” has sustained its reign as Poland’s artistic and intellectual center. It was no wonder, then, that Adolf Hitler decided to spare Krakow and turn it into a monument to Third Reich dominance.
The Nazis called the program Sonderaktion Krakau—“Special Action Krakow”—a plan to wipe out the city’s intelligentsia to pave the way for full and forced conversion to a solely German culture. They began by rounding up the professors of the famous Jagiellonian University and deporting them first to prisons, then to the concentration camps that would become part of the brutal lore of Nazi atrocities. Some of those who were eventually released would form a clandestine academia, defiantly teaching an equally courageous group of students under the Nazis’ noses.
One of those underground university students was Kazimierz Paszek.
The bishop of Krakow sighed heavily and rose from his knees. It often happened that a few minutes of his morning prayer was spent recalling those dark and dangerous days. So many good friends had been lost to the patrols, to the false trials, and to the trains from which they never returned. He was not unaware of his dual reputation in present-day Poland as holy firebrand and traitorous gadfly, depending on which side one might be on. The danger to his life continued, he understood, just as must his work to inspire his people to keep forging ahead without fear.
Paszek straightened his cassock and headed from his small private chamber and into the main quarters of the episcopal mansion. The building had been the home of Krakow’s Catholic leaders for six centuries. Nevertheless, Paszek tended to eschew the more elaborate trappings of his office although he admitted that a valet and a secretary were indispensable.
“Good morning, Excellency,” the man who filled the latter position said respectfully. He was younger than Paszek but only by a decade, having himself been ordained as a priest before being recently appointed to the bishop’s spartan staff.
“Stanislaw, please,” Paszek said with mock exasperation. “Even the parishioners, the college students—even the little children call me Baca.”
Stanislaw Dziedzic smiled and held out his arms in helplessness. Both his hands were full of the bishop’s correspondence and daily itineraries. “Perhaps I was trained too well, Excellency.”
Baca laughed. “A double compliment so early? You must be softening me for bad news this morning.”
“Well, you already know about this afternoon’s meeting with Comrade Sitko,” Dziedzic answered. “Everything else for today is happier.”
Paszek’s smile remained, but his eyes narrowed and dimmed briefly at the name. “Of course. I suppose it will be the old story.”
“I believe so, Excellency,” Dziedzic said. “Your intention for a church in Nowa Huta.”
Paszek shrugged. “Comrade Sitko won’t be surprised when we sneak more crosses onto the site, nor will I be surprised when the authorities tear them down. One side will eventually tire and stop, and I’ll wager there are more of us than them!”
“Of course, Excellency,” Dziedzic said. “It’s simply that there is talk of a growing danger to you of being so…”
“…intransigent?” Paszek finished the sentence with a hard look.
“Courageous,” Dziedzic replied gently.
“Courage is the easy part,” Paszek said. “We really have no choice. Be a hero—what else is there?”
“Nonetheless, prudence, Excellency,” Dziedzic said as he turned to begin arranging and filing the daily paperwork onto Paszek’s desk. The two men had an understanding about what forces they were up against together. Paszek had heard of the elder Dziedzic hiding Jews from the Nazis in the floor boards of their house when Stanislaw was a teenager.
“All right, I will be cautiously heroic,” the bishop said with the gleam having returned to his eye. “I promise. By the way, what is the time? I should think it’s nearly six thirty.”
Dziedzic pulled out a small silver pocket watch—the ordination gift from his widowed mother. “Just that. Breakfast will be ready at eight ten, Excellency, directly after morning Mass and in time for your walk back from the cathedral.”
“Thank you, Stanislaw,” Paszek said over his shoulder as he began toward the door leading out.
A block away, another man waited for the bishop to emerge from the mansion and take the walk to the Wawel Cathedral. This man, the KGB agent known as Jakub, smiled in wonderment that the SB could not be bothered to surveil the target before breakfast. It was yet another indication that the Polish government would ultimately not be able to handle the bishop. Jakub knew about the meeting later that day between Paszek and the Polish official Sitko. If the Nowa Huta situation did not improve, Jakub was confident that his proposed plan to deal with the insolent church in the Polish People’s Republic would gain favor in Moscow. If necessary, he was prepared to tilt the odds of this happening in his favor.
***
Luiza Rolek’s hand shook as her pen scraped across the paper. Some of the printed words were nearly illegible, and out of pride she considered starting over more than once. Each time, however, she relented to the sloppiness with the knowledge that it might make the letter, if it should fall into SB hands, more difficult to trace back to her. After all, she thought, I’m committing treason.
As a professor of history at Krakow’s famous Jagiellonian University, she was well aware of the struggles of the Polish people through the ages, and the motivations one might have to conduct such acts. She also knew the accounts of the heroes of old were often sanitized to remove their baser instincts from the record. One could be a lover of freedom, but the final nudge to put your life in danger was just as likely to be provided by political ambition, or the sting of a jilting, or simply for a mercenary’s payday. As for Luiza, it was not for broken romance or money that she was penning, in English, this third report to the American embassy regarding Bishop Paszek’s predicament. It was not even for belief since she considered herself an agnostic in this most Catholic of European nations. In fact, even as she finished the brief description of her latest observat
ions and sealed the paper in an envelope that she intentionally left unaddressed, she let the elusive compulsion lead her, satisfied that what she was doing was simply right.
To: American Government
From: Concerned Citizen
I have written to you before, but, of course, I do not know if my letter reached anyone. As I stated in my second letter, my friend is no longer willing to risk passing my information to the embassy in Warsaw. So, I will do this myself. I will look for the signal and will place future information in the place I wrote about.
Bishop Paszek is in danger. The man Anatol Kozlow told me that it might be best for the bishop to die as a martyr to help the church in Poland. He appears to be with two minds about the bishop. I think perhaps he is being influenced by the SB officer who follows Paszek, but I am not sure. Anatol is not stable, I think. I have been able to find out the SB man is named Borys. He calls his SB boss Slaski.
I do not know if Americans care about Poland or about the church or about the bishop. Shedding blood is more common here, I think. We have already had our share of martyrs. If there is a way to protect Baca—I do not know what this is—but please help.
Dziekuje!
She carefully pushed the envelope deep into her leather purse, then gathered up the small light-blue suitcase that contained her toiletries and a change of clothes. The Polish–English dictionary that she had smuggled from the university’s library went into the overfilled bookcase that dominated the apartment’s single living room. She thought grimly that if her activities were discovered while she was away, it would not matter that she had not returned the book yet. Nothing would matter, in fact, for her.
The Krakow train station was a solid twenty-minute walk from her apartment. Although she could have afforded and enjoyed the taxi ride on this warm day, a touch of sentiment convinced her to make the trip to the station on foot—through the ring of gardens and trees that encircled the old town, past the university buildings and the town square and the Cloth Hall, and through the ring again to the east. Her steps were quick and determined, driven by the dark reality of the secret mission that she had set herself upon. By the time she passed the university, even the small matter of the dictionary weighed on her conscience. Emerging into the town square, she had resolved to avoid her favorite coffeehouse and press on to the train to Warsaw, for fear of giving in to the danger and turning around for home. Then events began to lift her spirits.
The Schoolboy (Agent Orange Book 2) Page 7