by Jack July
Quincy moved him around the city to places where Bogus’ work would be profitable and he could conduct Quincy’s business. Bogus did not know exactly who he was working for or why, but he knew his mother and sister ate well and lived comfortably—at least better than they would have, otherwise. When money became tight, he always seemed to have just enough to get them through. Secreted behind a loose piece of trim in a hole in the wall behind his bed, his nest egg of savings grew. It would be while hustling shoe shines in a small park near the front entrance of the American Embassy that Bogus would face his biggest test yet, and would soon begin to understand the power and reach of those with whom he was dealing.
Bogus arrived to set up for the day, unfolding a chair for his customers and placing down the wooden box he had made to prop up their feet while he shined their shoes and clandestinely passed his messages. Looking up, he saw an older man arrive nearby and start laying out his own shoe-shine equipment. Indignant, Bogus proclaimed that was his spot and the man needed to leave. He was met with a punch in the mouth. Bogus fought back valiantly, but with no real skill he was unable to overcome the height, weight and experience of his older opponent. Stubbornly refusing to concede defeat, Bogus took a beating until he could no longer fight back. He painfully gathered his chair and shoe shine kit and left, dejected and disheartened.
Having witnessed the brawl from the shadows of a nearby tree, Quincy followed him deeper into the park where Bogus washed the blood from his face in a fountain. Quincy sat on the ledge of the fountain and said, “You gave him all he could handle.”
“I’m sorry, I failed you. I’m sorry.” If he could not even set up for business without being run off by a stronger competitor, Bogus was sure Mr. Q would no longer have any use for him.
“Walk with me,” said Quincy. They stood at an intersection down the street from where Bogus was supposed to set up. They watched Bogus’ attacker as he clumsily tried to hustle customers. A dark sedan screeched to a halt at the curb in front of him and two large men in suits got out and grabbed the man by the shoulders. Bogus gaped in wonder as one of them drove his fist into the man’s midsection, doubling him over. They quickly tossed him into the backseat and piled in after him. To the sound of slamming doors, the car’s tires chirped as it sped away, the whole episode having taken mere seconds.
“He is no longer your problem Bogus—you have friends. Take this,” Quincy handed him a hundred Zoltys, “go home, take care of yourself. I will see you here next week, same time?”
Bogus nodded his head and said, “Thank you.”
“No Bogus, thank you—you earned it,”
In the summer of Bogus’ 18th year, after he had graduated from school, Quincy had a surprise for him. Over the years, while working with Bogus, Quincy had discovered his real surname was Zielinski, and that he was indeed the son of the murdered labor activist. He not only had a deep feeling of nationalism but may also be a bit vengeful. He finally came clean with Bogus and offered him something very special. He offered the opportunity to train to be an agent, a very special agent that would be put in place at the right time to free his country. Bogus didn’t know what that meant. Quincy asked him if he read any James Bond novels. Bogus’ mother demanded that he be well read, so of course he had.
Mr. Q said, “It’s a little like that, only the bullets are real and the bad guys rarely miss.”
“What about my mother and my sister?” asked Bogus. “Who will provide for them?”
“You will be paid enough for your sister to go to university and enough for your mother to live without fear of homelessness or starvation,”
Bogus nodded, “Okay, when do I leave?”
“Tonight.”
The next two years went by quickly for Bogus. Six months at Warwick University in Great Britain taking compressed courses in English, Science and Chemistry. However, these classes were different. He was the only student.
The physical fitness regimen to which he was subjected was something he didn’t understand. Comprised of seemingly endless running and swimming, he was pushed to his very limits by a very strange little man who always dressed in khakis, almost as if he were in some type of uniform. His stern demeanor commanded respect and Bogus begrudgingly gave it to him. Bogus did not know why these things were happening but occasionally Quincy would visit and talk about how far he had come and that soon enough he would understand the bigger purpose.
He left Warwick and they drove to a place called Sennybridge in the Beacon Beacons, the training facility for Britain’s Special Air Service, the famed SAS. The physical training commenced at a brutal pace and quickly intensified from there. Bogus now understood the reason for the emphasis on physical fitness at Warwick University. To his chagrin, he was reintroduced to that same little man who had run him endless miles through the countryside of Warwickshire—Paddy Stirling, a Company Sergeant Major in the SAS. Quincy had told Bogus when the training was at its most difficult he was to look at his chest and see his family name, his fathers name, and think about what that meant. Training as a paratrooper in the SAS was the most difficult thing Bogus had ever undertaken, and he pushed himself far beyond what he thought were his physical and mental limits. Refusing to accept the possibility of failure, he more than once chose to die trying over quitting. Unfortunately for Bogus, Stirling wasn’t about to let him die or quit.
On arrival Bogus had to first complete a Personal Fitness Test (PFT). Entering the “hill phase,” of the SAS selection course, Bogus and his fellow candidates marched cross-country against the clock, increasing the distances covered each day, culminating in what is known as Endurance, a 40-mile march with full equipment, which included scaling and descending Pen Y Fan, a 2,907 foot nearly-sheer cliff, in 20 hours. By the end of the hill phase, candidates must be able to run 4 miles in 30 minutes and swim two miles in 90 minutes.
Following the hill phase is the jungle phase, taking place in the wilds of Brunei. Bogus was taught navigation, patrol formation, movement, and jungle survival skills. Having grown up up in the cities of Poland, the jungle was a terrifying place. He more than once wanted to run away, but there was no place to run. He kept telling himself, “Others have done this, so can you.”
Candidates returning to Hereford finish training in battle plans and foreign weapons and take part in combat survival exercises, the final one being the week long escape and evasion. Candidates are formed into patrols and, carrying nothing more than a tin can filled with survival equipment, are dressed in old Second World War uniforms and told to head for a point by first light. It was then that Bogus discovered he deserved to be there. He was decisive with leadership qualities he did not know he had. He found others looking to him for guidance and direction. As his confidence grew, so did his abilities.
The final selection test is arguably the most grueling, resistance to interrogation, lasting for 36 hours. He expected to be beat up, threatened and there was some of that, but Bogus thought the head games were fascinating. Bland featureless interrogation rooms with no distractions. Trying not to make eye contact, don’t be too weak or too tough and never utter yes or no, for those words can be used in all kinds of propaganda. Games of good cop - bad cop, and stripped naked and humiliated with pointless tasks. Then there was a different kind of pain. Being placed in a stress position for hours while muscles burned cramped then failed. He slipped and made mistakes. They all did, that’s why they were there.
Two hundred men started the training and at the end only twenty-eight remained. Bogus left SAS training a very hard and disciplined young man. MI6 spent the next year polishing and refining the skills he had learned under Paddy Stirling and teaching him spy craft. Afterwards came the meeting.
Sixteen Polish men and women, some trained by MI6, and others by the CIA, would be reinserted into Poland to prepare the transition to a freely elected government. They were called the “Lions w Polsce”. The Soviets were losing control of P
oland, and their increasingly heavy-handed attempts at suppressing the people had backfired badly. The Poles seemed to be the heartiest and most combative in the Eastern Bloc. Bogus and the Lions w Polsce returned in 1985 with specific missions to disrupt and undermine the communist party through sabotage or assassination. By working undercover inside the communist party he disrupted plots to assassinate Lech Walesa and foiled the plan of a lone Swiss Guardsman to assassinate Pope John Paul II. There were over a hundred communist foreign agents assigned to the destruction of the life and reputation of would-be president Walesa, and protecting him was no small task. Bogus and the Lions were indeed successful and he found himself inside Walesa’s inner circle.
By 1989 there were only eleven Lions left. Soviet agents had killed four Lions while one of the three women had died in a questionable auto accident. The last eleven were to become the nucleus of a new Polish intelligence service designed to root out communists.
There were difficult decisions ahead for the Lions to make. After his election to president in 1990, Walesa unexpectedly did not take a hard line against the remaining communists. Even so, he was disappointed that some of his comrades in arms were satisfied to govern with them in Parliament. The Lions, on the other hand, were being pressured by the CIA and the MI6 to continue the sabotage and assassinations of communists. In a group decision, the Lions decided to honor the wishes of their country’s first freely-elected president, while at the same time keeping their Western handlers apprised of the communists’ activities.
In 1993, Bogus saw and heard things that deeply disturbed him. For the last half-century, the communist party had controlled all of Poland’s industries. If the country was to ever make a transition to a free market economy, those industries would have to be privatized. But, Bogus stood and watched in mute anger as President Walesa accepted the intervention of foreign investors into Poland, effectively shutting out Polish businessmen. Several of those Polish businessmen had been recruited by Bogus to take control of the nation’s heavy industries, such as mining. The list of foreign investors read like a “Who’s Who” of the richest men in the world. From his contacts in the intelligence community, Bogus knew that a few of these men were not all they appeared to be.
Joe Kinston, the American billionaire, routinely wined and dined members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, only to trade the inside information garnered from his contacts to the Russians for mineral and oil rights.
A few were honorable, like Atkatsuki Honda, the Japanese industrialist. Honorable or not, they all gathered at the Le Royal Meridian Bristol Hotel united in purpose—to divide Poland’s industries amongst themselves. Bogus would not let that happen. After a lifetime spent chafing under Soviet rule, he was not about to see his country’s future sold to the highest bidder. He put himself in charge of security for this meeting and made certain the hotel hired known communist sympathizers to staff it. He needed someone to blame.
The conference room in which the meeting was held was secure and all doors were secured and monitored from the outside. The floor the meeting was held on was secured and locked down tight, no one in or out. That’s when the chlorine gas began to seep from the compressed air canister that was placed in the air handling system. A cloud quickly enveloped the conference room as the men violently succumbed to the poisonous gas. In ten minutes, some of the richest men in the world lay dead.
Bogus helped to round up dozens of communist sympathizers and put them on trial for the murders. Evidence staged and found made the convictions easy and quick. None of the intelligence services of the world bought the show trials, especially the CIA. It was all just a little too neat and easy.
Years went by and politicians pressured by the murdered billionaire’s family made sure they never quit looking for Joe Kinston’s killers. Bogus, on the other hand, kept his cabal of Polish business partners together, buying up industry and sealing deals, keeping the ownership of steel refining, manufacturing, mining, chemical and petroleum plants in Polish hands. With a little help from Bogus, his college-educated chemist sister Cyla became president of Nalco, one of Poland’s oldest chemical companies. His investments in private companies and fees for brokering deals began to make Bogus a very wealthy man. Investing in western technology stocks made him a multi-millionaire in a very short period of time. But returning home late one night, his past would make a visit and finally catch up with him.
After pulling up to his circa-1870, lovingly reconditioned 27-room mansion in Opole Opolskie, he walked in the front door and up the stairs to his favorite room, his large library/study, to relax for the evening. A special young lady would be visiting in a few hours and he could not have been happier. He walked into his study and yelled for his friend Manchin. Looking to his right, he found his friend lying bound and unconscious on the floor. Leaning against a bookcase, holding a silenced pistol was a tall raven-haired woman with a dark complexion and cold dead black eyes. Then she spoke, “Mr. Zielinski, I am T. I don’t really do soliloquies but,” she sighed, “it was requested, so here goes: You are going to die for the murder of Joe Kinston. Did you really think you’d get away with it, and oh, blah, blah, blah…”
Tatiana shook her head. “I’m not doing all this—it’s beneath me.”
She raised the pistol and began to squeeze the trigger when Bogus quickly said, “Kinston was working with the KGB against the United States. I can prove it.”
T stopped squeezing and said, “Okay, you have ten seconds—prove it.”
“His best friend was Senator Hollis of the Intelligence Committee. He got classified information from him and traded it to the Soviets for oil and mineral rights. I have documents and recordings of his communications with Andropov while they were trying to divide up Poland amongst themselves. I could not allow that,” said Bogus.
“I would like these recordings and documents,” said T calmly.
“Yes, well—I would like to trade them for my life,” said Bogus with a wry smile and stoic demeanor that did not match the fear he felt roiling in his chest.
“Where is your weapon, Mr. Zielinski?”
“I left it in my car, or you would be dead.”
T laughed darkly and said, “I like you Zielinski—I hope I don’t have to kill you.”
“Someone as beautiful as you can call me Bogus.”
Rolling her eyes, Tatiana said, “Thanks, but you’re not my type. I like my men a little less…well, feminine.”
“Ouch. I would rather you shot me instead of saying something so cruel.”
“Depending on the outcome of this phone call, you may get your wish.”
Tatiana dialed the phone on Bogus’ desk without looking. She never took her eyes or weapon off him. After a quick, hushed conversation, she hung up.
“Well Bogus, I guess you live. We will be expecting that package at the American Embassy in two hours. If not, I’ll be back to put a bullet in your head while you sleep. Good day.”
Bogus smiled back his best come-hither smile and said, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stay for a drink?”
“Another time, perhaps.” Then T walked away, leaving by the front door, and quickly disappeared into the countryside.
Tatiana and Bogus eventually did meet for that drink. A relationship based on mutual respect grew and soon Tatiana came to rely on Bogus for intelligence, support, and sometimes backup whenever she found herself operating in Europe. Tatiana reciprocated, sharing with Bogus the fruits of her intelligence gathered while operating in his backyard, and on occasion, lent him her lethal skills when he needed certain problems solved that required deniability. As their friendship grew, there was little Bogus could ask of Tatiana that she would not do, with one exception: she would not tolerate any attempt by Bogus to court Elle. She made clear that not only would she not support him in his efforts, she would actively hinder them—with force, if necessary.
CHAPTER 29
Nine helicopters bearing T, Elle and the forty-four Delta Force operators, landed on the flight deck of the USS Nimitz to refuel and pick up supplies. Earlier, twenty additional Delta shooters had made a HALO night jump just outside of Rosa’s compound, located thirty miles south of the Port of Tuxpan Mexico, on the Gulf of Mexico. Splitting into five teams of four men each, they quickly proceeded to eliminate Rosa’s perimeter security force. On the outer edge of the compound, they stormed the house where Reyes was living, subduing him and taking him into custody. The sea bordered the compound on two sides. Rosa had a yacht and a few speedboats in a small marina, all of which were left disabled as the teams swept through the boat slips. Once the team leader confirmed the security of the perimeter they had established, the helicopters were called in for the assault on the main compound.
Five MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, bearing six operators each, landed and linked up with the unit already on the ground. Three MH-60L Blackhawk Direct Action Penetrator gunships provided aerial cover. The invasion was swift, violent and almost entirely one-sided. When the shooting was over, forty of Rosa’s security force had been killed, with only one Delta member wounded. Elle, Tatiana and the command-and-control personnel, along with a small medical staff, landed in the large courtyard in an MH-47E Chinook once the compound was secure. Elle and T walked out of the back of the Chinook and followed two Delta operators into the large house.
Elle recognized the familiar smell of cordite mixed with the metallic scent of blood. As she walked along the marble floor, she noticed that the bodies had been dragged to the sides of the rooms to provide a clear path. However, her boots still slipped and splashed in the puddles of blood. They ascended a marble staircase and into a huge bedroom decorated in Early American Brothel. Lined up against the wall were four naked teenaged boys, and sitting up propped against several pillows in a large round bed, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, was Emile Rosa.