by Steve Berry
One he had no desire to repeat.
It was time to get his mind back on why he’d come to Bruges. He had a budget for the purchase of the three books, which should be more than enough. Their resale would entail at least a 25 percent markup, not a bad return on a few days’ work. He should be able to make the buys and be back in Copenhagen by tomorrow afternoon. He’d taken the train so his return could be flexible, but he definitely needed to be home by Friday. Cassiopeia was due in Denmark that evening for a few days.
Which he was looking forward to.
A crowd had gathered around the statues of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck. A butcher and weaver, two Flemish revolutionaries who led a 14th-century uprising against the French. He doubted any of the gawkers knew their historical significance. Bars and restaurants dominated the square’s perimeter, everything alive with hustle and bustle. He rounded the statues and was about to turn for the side street that led to his hotel when he caught sight of a woman, her long legs, lean figure, and blond hair distinctive. She wore jeans with boots and a silk blouse, and was moving away from a row of flagpoles toward another of the streets radiating from the square.
Sonia Draga.
She’d intentionally revealed herself back at the restaurant. Surely seeing him with Bunch and Stephanie had raised suspicions. Why wouldn’t it? But there’d been no opportunity for him to explain. Maybe now was the chance. He kept watching as she dissolved into the crowd. Then something else caught his attention. Two familiar faces. Two-thirds of the Three Amigos. Following Sonia.
Leave it alone.
Walk away.
Yeah, right.
He headed in her direction.
At the junction of the side street and the market square he caught sight of Sonia fifty yards ahead, the Two Amigos in pursuit. Buildings lined both sides, and there were enough people moving back and forth for no one to be noticed. But Sonia had to know she had company, as these guys weren’t making any secret about their presence.
She turned and disappeared into one of the buildings.
The Two Amigos followed.
Nothing about this seemed right, but he kept going until he came to a pedimented arch that led through one of the gabled houses, forming an alley about fifty feet long. No one was in sight. He walked through the covered passage into a courtyard flanked by more old houses. Wrought-iron lanterns suspended from the stone façades cast a dim glow. Another covered passage led out on the opposite side. Three doors dotted the exterior walls to his left and right, all closed. Where’d everybody go? He heard a click and turned to see the Two Amigos standing behind him, one of them armed with a gun.
“That way,” the guy said, motioning with the weapon at one of the closed doors.
No choice.
He turned.
The door opened and Sonia emerged.
She walked by him and gently stroked his cheek with her hand.
“Sorry, Cotton. It had to be done.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Czajkowski realized that he could not sit back and allow things to happen. His whole life was at stake. Perhaps even the entire country’s future. Someone named Jonty Olivier was out to destroy him. He’d long expected threats from the various political parties, hostile ministers in Parliament, opposition leaders, even the media—which was not always kind—but never had he thought a foreigner would become so dangerous.
It had been a long time since he’d thought of that day at Mokotów Prison. Many times he’d wondered what had happened to the math professor tied to the stool. The last he saw the man had been forced to crawl on hands and knees from the interrogation room back to his cell. How degrading. He’d been so young then. So afraid. Major Dilecki of the SB had brought him there to make a point.
Do as he was told or face the same consequences.
Countless people had been arrested and tortured. In addition to beatings and burnings, the most popular methods of “interrogation” had been to rip off fingernails, apply temple screws, clamp on tight handcuffs that caused the skin to burst and blood to flow, force prisoners to run up and down stairs, deprive them of sleep, make them stand at attention for hours, reduce their rations, pour buckets of cold water into cells, leave them in solitary confinement, anything and everything imaginable to break a person down. All of it had been applied in a harsh, premeditated manner, without remorse or discrimination. Those who fainted were revived with an adrenaline shot. Before some of the sessions, which could last for hours, many received booster injections to keep them alert. Torturers strictly followed the wishes of interrogating officers like Dilecki.
A damn disgrace.
And for what?
That brave man on the floor that day had been right. What the foreign force has taken from us, we shall with sabre retrieve. And that was precisely what had happened. The communists were finally driven away and Poland returned to its people.
But at what cost?
During martial law many had stayed in prison for years, until a general amnesty finally forgave everyone. Till today, he never knew what happened to Dilecki, but apparently the major had kept up with him, secreting documents that should have long ago been destroyed.
One day you might be a big somebody.
What a bastard.
Mokotów Prison still existed, now used by the government as a short-term holding facility. No one, though, had been abused there in a long time. A huge plaque now adorned one of the outer walls commemorating the victims. What happened inside those concrete cells, in unimaginable conditions, had been the subject of books and memoirs. Nobody really knew how many died there, and few paid for those atrocities. Unfortunately, justice back then seemed more like a leaf in the spring air, at the mercy of the twists from an unpredictable wind. Now here he was, decades later, still dealing with it.
How had things come to this?
He was fifty-six years old, a respected citizen of Poland, one who’d managed to attain the highest elected office in the land. His mother had wanted him to become a priest, because back then the clearest path to an education came from the church. All children were taught in school to be subservient to the state and obedient workers to the collective. No mention of individuality ever came. People were helpless in directing their own lives. But he managed to obtain a university degree, eventually heading up, during the time of martial law, a branch of the Independent Students’ Union, the junior arm of Solidarity. That position had been what caught Dilecki’s attention, along with his operation of an underground publishing house. He’d been quite the radical. But everyone was back then. The country was changing. The world was changing. And he’d wanted to be part of that change.
He went on to serve in all aspects of government. First elected to Parliament when he was thirty, he served four terms before moving to the executive branch. He’d been an undersecretary of state, the vice minister of national defense, the general secretary of two political parties, then back to Parliament where he rose to vice speaker. He came from a solid, respected family with not a hint of scandal or shame. His grandfather fought with valor in the Polish–Soviet War, his father in World War II.
The Catholic Church meant everything to him.
He remembered vividly the night in May 1981 when word came that John Paul II had been shot. Their beloved favorite son lay fighting for his life. Czajkowski had been on his way to a Solidarity meeting. Instead, he’d wandered into a church where hundreds of people knelt in prayer and a priest said mass. Above the altar hung a dark painting of the crucifixion. He recalled thinking that once again Poles faced a calamity. The life of their pope was in peril. Their economy in shambles. Russian tanks were massing at the border. The country seemed on the rack. Yet before him was the strangely calming image of a man splayed by crucifixion. Not only a symbol of the nation’s turmoil but a promise of redemption, too. He recalled what someone once wrote. Poland is the Jesus Christ of nations.
How true.
And how ironic that the passions of Christ could n
ow be part of his own undoing. He felt like he was about to be crucified, too.
Everyone had been so young back then. The head of the largest Solidarity branch in Warsaw a mere twenty-five. The leader of the Gdańsk Shipyard union barely twenty-one. Most of the high officers in Solidarity were all in their late twenties and early thirties. Lech Wałęsa at the helm had been the old man at thirty-seven. It had been young men and women who’d fought the battle against communism. Youth definitely came with fire and fury, but it also came with bad judgment and inexperience. No one had known where it all was going, or how it would end. Solidarity seemed many times as lost as the nation. The government-controlled media blamed the union for everything, including food shortages. Hearing it so often, people began to believe the lies.
A slogan resonated across the nation.
The government takes care of laws, the party takes care of politics, and Solidarity takes care of the people.
But many times he’d wondered if that was true.
Few had been able to articulate what the nation wanted. But everyone knew what they didn’t want.
A distant, arbitrary, central authority full of repression.
Decades of mismanagement and corruption finally caught up with the communists. The Red Bourgeoisie benefited, while everyone else paid the price. The fools overborrowed and overspent, in the end having only enough money left to service the interest on billions in foreign debt. Eventually the economy crumbled, consumer goods vanished, and food went scarce, which allowed a wave of angry young people to mobilize, ten million strong, and bring a government to its knees.
He’d been part of that revolution.
Now he was the head of state.
But for how much longer.
Socialist? Anti-socialist?
It was a question asked many times in the 1980s, but one that disappeared in the 1990s and now no longer mattered.
Poland was free.
Or was it?
The pain in his chest felt like his heart was encased in barbed wire. Not a coronary. Just the past rearing its ugly head and reminding him that it still existed. He had to fix this.
This had to end.
And whatever was required to make that happen—
He would do.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cotton was led into the building and up a flight of stairs to a second-floor apartment full of nondescript furniture, the kind bought by cheap landlords who expect the worst from tenants. He caught a strong smell of mustiness and wondered if anyone lived there. A familiar face waited inside, one that ushered him in with a casual sweep of a big paw.
“Mr. Malone. Good see you again.”
The feeling was not mutual. “What’s it been, three years? Do people still call you Ivan? Or does that change by the assignment?”
“That is my name.”
The last time he’d dealt with this devil they’d talked within the shadow of the Round Tower in Copenhagen, then again in Amsterdam, the situation dire. But the rough English laced with a heavy Russian accent remained, as did the man’s Cossack appearance—short, heavy-chested, with grayish-black hair. A splotchy, reddened skink of a face was still dominated by a broad nose and shadowed by a day-old beard. No slave to fashion, Ivan wore an ill-fitting suit that bulged at the waist.
Cotton gestured over his shoulder at the Two Amigos standing behind him. “Your people stole the Holy Blood?”
“How is Cassiopeia?”
This guy had loved to ignore questions the first time they’d met, too.
“As I tell you back then, quite the woman,” Ivan said. “If I am younger, a hundred pounds lighter?” The Russian patted his belly. “Who knows? But I am dreaming.” Ivan paused. “I hope, like last time, you appreciate this problem, too.”
“It’s the only reason I’m still standing here.”
His unspoken message seemed to be received. Get to the point.
Ivan chuckled. “You say same thing last time. Like then, you can overpower me. I am still fat, out of shape. Stupid, too. All Russians are, right?”
He had a moment of déjà vu. To Amsterdam. Similar sarcasm. A similar implied threat. Since the two guys behind him then, and now, were not fat and out of shape.
“I hope you still smart,” Ivan said. “Years off job have not changed you? Last time, you did good.”
That matter involved China, with Russia his reluctant ally. “I seem to be busier in retirement than when I was working for the government.”
“That bad thing?”
He shrugged. “Depends. How do you know Sonia Draga?”
“We work together few times. She make good bait.”
That she did. He’d willingly taken that bait, though sensing the risk.
“Why am I in the middle of this?” he asked.
Ivan pointed. “That your fault. You go after my men today. Not your business. Or was it?”
Now he understood the curiosity. An ex–American agent in the basilica, at just the right moment, who gave chase, then ended up talking with Stephanie Nelle and Mr. Deputy National Security. That two and two, at least in Ivan’s mind, added up to a big fat four. So he decided, Why not? Play along.
“You get an invitation to the auction?”
“Me? No. People at Kremlin. They get invite and reply. We told to steal Holy Blood. What they tell you steal?”
“The—”
“Wait,” Ivan said, then he motioned at the Amigos. “Leave.” The two men withdrew and closed the door. Apparently their clearance level wasn’t high enough for that information.
“Go ahead,” Ivan said.
“We were told to steal the Nail at Bamberg.”
A lie, but hopefully this man had no way of knowing the truth. Time to see if this information route was a two-way street. “Tell me what’s up for auction?”
“They not give you taste?”
“I’m curious as to your sample.”
Ivan laughed. “President of Poland has many secrets. Ones we were not even aware he had. Bad secrets. Unfortunate for him. Sadly, many of our records are gone. Perestroika. Glasnost. Thieves. Between them we don’t have much left.”
“What kind of bad secrets?”
“The kind he do not want people to ever know.”
“That bad?”
Ivan rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger, as if easing his sinuses. “Plenty bad.”
He got it. Depending on who possessed the information they could get the Polish president to do whatever they wanted, either to place missiles in Poland or not. Certainly Russia was in the NO category, the United States in the YES. That was five of the seven possibilities.
“You know who else was invited?” he asked.
Ivan pointed. “Just you. Rest is mystery.”
“You went to a lot of trouble to get me here.”
“I want message delivered to your people. One they will understand.”
“Sonia can’t be your errand girl? I’m retired and have nothing to do with any of this.”
“You funny man. For once, Sonia and I find ourselves on same side. We want same thing.”
“No missiles in Poland?”
Ivan gestured with his outstretched hands. “Seems like good idea.”
And he agreed. But his patience had reached an end. “Look, I just told you I have nothing to do with this. Yes, I was in the basilica today and stuck my nose where it didn’t belong. But that was me being the Lone Ranger. The White House just tried to recruit me and I said no. This is not my problem.”
“Yet you are here.”
Good point. “Okay. What’s your message?”
“Moscow not happy. They will not allow missiles in Poland. Whatever that takes. No missiles. Not ever.”
The tone had changed. No more frivolity. The mouth twisted into a sour line. This guy meant every word.
“We do whatever necessary to make sure that not happen. Winning auction? Might work. Killing? Might work, too. Tell your people we do whatever necessary. We no
t start this. Your president start. But we shall finish. I have full authority to do that.”
Normally, he’d shake his head and leave. The U.S. government could handle things without his help. And who liked being an errand boy? But Stephanie was riding point on this one, and Bunch had already made clear that she was expendable.
“We not know where auction will occur. But when we do, we will act,” Ivan said. “Tell Stephanie Nelle that I do not bluff.”
He did not like the sound of that. He’d had enough. “I’m leaving now.”
Ivan shrugged, then his hard face split into a toothy smile as he reached beneath his jacket, drew a gun, and fired.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jonty followed Vic and Konrad down a black tunnel, the floor a succession of wooden planks, the walls strengthened by a thick timber lining. He understood the liberal use of wood. Plentiful in supply, it flexed with the earth’s pressure and never corroded.
The slow elevator ride down the shaft had taken forty seconds, popping his ears. They were now 130 meters into the earth, on one of the mine’s lower routes, far past the busy tourist areas higher up on Levels I and II. Up there was a small city with three kilometers of tunnels that accommodated conference facilities, restaurants, bars, chapels, shops, even a sanatorium for chronic allergies, every chamber cut from the surrounding salt. Though not a working mine any longer, the whole place remained full of life. He’d visited all the public areas, but here in the dark solitude the grayish-green salt, more like unpolished granite, seemed far more ancient, the surroundings a warren of tunnels and dangerous pitfalls.
Konrad stopped and faced him and Vic, removing something from his pocket. A piece of paper that he unfolded.
“This is a map for this level.”
They were dressed in coveralls. Each wore a carbon dioxide absorber. The only light on the map came from their helmet lamps, which collectively illuminated a printed maze of tunnels and chambers. The routes twisted, curved, and intersected like spaghetti. With so many chambers it would be impossible to keep any of it straight if not for the fact that the vast majority were named.