by Steve Berry
He could see the pain in the man’s eyes as he remembered.
“Shortages were a way of life. Sometimes they were real, just a scarcity of goods. But most times, and this is important, most times they were engineered by the government as a means of control. You could not buy anything without ration cards. And you could only get ration cards if you registered your identity with the government. Later on, the shortages were blamed on Solidarity and their strikes, as a way to turn the people against the movement. But by then, we all knew the truth.”
Which all had to have been horrible, and he sympathized. Still, “Why am I here?”
“An excellent question. Why are you here, in Kraków?”
“You know the answer.”
“That’s right, I do. You’ve come to gain your way into an auction, where you want to buy damaging information about me.”
As sleazy as that sounded, the man was right. But there was a little more to it. “I’m here to help a friend.”
Czajkowski appeared puzzled. “Who?”
“An old friend who’s in a tight situation.”
“Lucky for her she has you.”
“Did I say it was a her?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You’re well informed.”
“I try to be. And what of me, Mr. Malone? Do I pay the price for you helping your friend?”
“I suppose you would.”
He hated saying it.
Czajkowski paced a moment. “I told you about the toilet paper so you would know that my parents were loyal to the government. But it was not out of any love or support. My parents were loyal out of fear. They realized something vitally important to surviving in the Poland of their day. A simple maxim. The law is whatever the government says it is. Not what is written. Not what is known. But what they say it is. Period. No discussion. No appeal. Many of their friends, who never realized that truth, disappeared in the night. Taken by the government. Gone. It happened all the time.”
He could only imagine the horror that life had been.
“But I survived. And here I am, president of the nation.”
“Why am I here?” he asked again.
“I thought that was obvious. I don’t want you to complete your mission.”
“Which apparently has been severely compromised. I’m curious. How did you know where to find me?”
“That’s easy,” a new voice said.
He turned back toward the altar and saw a man enter the nave.
“I told him,” Tom Bunch said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jonty was troubled by the cell phone call, since it came from the one man he’d been hoping to avoid. With no choice, he’d left the castle with Vic, driving south to Košice, Slovakia’s second largest city.
The town was a gem. Its main street lined by colorful burgher houses and palaces, the cobbled square one of Slovakia’s most beautiful, dominated by the Cathedral of St. Elisabeth. The caller had requested a face-to-face meeting, instructing that they connect at a hotel just off the square.
He entered the building and headed for a small restaurant. Vic waited in the lobby to make sure that there were no more surprises. The man he sought sat at a table alone, the café a dim, inside room with no windows.
He stared at Augustus “Eli” Reinhardt V.
What a name. Sounded like a crown prince. He lived, of all places, in Liechtenstein, a tiny principality landlocked in Central Europe, squished between Switzerland and Austria. It had one of the highest gross domestic product per person ratios in the world, its claim to fame as a tax haven for rich people.
Like Reinhardt.
His competitor was in his early sixties but looked younger, an utterly punctilious individual with a clipped mustache and a knife-edge crease in his trousers. He wore a pressed blazer over a starched white shirt with no tie. Jonty’s well-trained nose caught the waft of expensive blue tobacco mixed with sweet cologne. A Montblanc pen rested in the shirt pocket, and he noticed the distinctive top. A 1998 Edgar Allan Poe Writers Edition. Midnight-blue marble resin base with gold-plated mountings and a gold nib. Eighteen karat, if he wasn’t mistaken. A collector’s piece, worth several thousand dollars. And this guy carried it around like a cheap ballpoint.
Reinhardt stood as he approached the table. They gazed at each other with open curiosity—gauging, judging, wondering—before each cautiously offered a hand to shake. They’d only actually come face-to-face about a dozen times over the past decade. None of those encounters particularly pleasant.
“So good of you to come, Jonty. And on such short notice.”
The tone was soft and polite.
“Was there an option?” he asked.
“Oh, let’s not look at it that way. That seems so coercive. Please, have a seat. Would you like anything to drink?”
He waved off the offer. “Get to the point, Eli.”
They both sat.
“I want in.”
Those were the three words he’d most dreaded.
There were, perhaps, half a dozen legitimate information brokers in the world, including himself and Reinhardt. If they were ranked, he liked to think of himself as the best, with Eli a distant second. Of course, the man sitting across from him would have a different opinion. Regardless, Reinhardt knew the business, and clearly possessed some excellent intel as to what was about to happen. But he decided to stay coy nonetheless.
“In on what?”
Reinhardt reached down to the floor and brought up a small leather case. He unzipped the top and removed a battered iron spike a few centimeters long. “I had this stolen from the Chapel of the Holy Nail in Bamberg Cathedral last night. The reliquary there is now empty. They are really quite careless in how it’s displayed. Just sitting out in the open, waiting for someone to take it. I believe they have closed the chapel for … renovations.”
So much for hoping this was all a bluff.
“You were counting on the Germans stealing this spike, then responding to your invitation. That won’t be happening. They opted not to participate in your auction and graciously allowed me the opportunity to take their place.”
“And why would they do that?”
“Because I supplied them with some information that they desperately wanted. In return, they provided me with information on your auction.”
“They don’t want to participate?”
Reinhardt replaced the Nail into the leather bag. “They have greater interests, at the moment. So they were more than willing to offer their spot to me.”
“Proxies aren’t allowed.”
“I’m not a proxy. I’m taking their place.”
“This is my deal, Eli. Not yours. Leave it alone.”
“It was your deal. Now it’s our deal.”
This couldn’t be happening.
Everything he’d planned depended on motivations. He’d chosen the seven participants with great care, intent on playing one off the other. The U.S. and Russia were simple. Opposite sides to the same coin. Iran was with Russia, since they would be the target of any missiles. China and North Korea had been included since each wanted leverage on both Russia and the United States. That left Germany and France. Both had previously opposed any missiles in Europe and both were now engaged in open political conflict with the United States. The new American president had gone out of his way to antagonize them. Relations among the three nations had turned frosty, with a trade war looming. He assumed that having something to bargain with would be a good thing for either government, enough that they’d be willing to pay. Not as much as the others, but enough to help drive the price higher.
“How is this now our deal?” he asked.
“We’ll get to that. First, I sent a man to check on you. His name is Art Munoz. He disappeared. Do you, by chance, have him?”
“I do.”
Reinhardt pointed. “You’re a clever one, Jonty. As is Vic DiGenti. I told Munoz to be careful. I assumed you took him. That’s why I decided to co
me in person.”
“Please, Eli. I’m asking as a colleague that you leave this alone. It’s my deal and mine alone.”
Reinhardt had interfered before, undercutting his arrangements with potential clients, selling information cheaper, even sabotaging three deals that he knew about. Given the clandestine nature of their business, a certain amount of aggressive competition was to be expected, but Reinhardt had a habit of taking it to an extreme. Jonty had tolerated the prior interference since there was plenty for everyone. But this was different.
“I’ll admit, when I first heard of your auction, I was jealous,” Reinhardt said. “Quite a thing you managed to orchestrate. Bold. Unique. The potential for an enormous profit. But it’s shortsighted, Jonty.”
“How so?”
Reinhardt sat back in his chair. “My German friends alerted me to something you apparently do not know.”
Now he was intrigued.
“Ever heard of the Spiżarnia? It’s Polish for ‘the pantry.’”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Then today is a good day for you, Jonty. Like Christmas in June.” Augustus “Eli” Reinhardt V’s lips broke into a big smile. “I’ve come bearing gifts, my friend. Gifts that will make us both quite wealthy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Cotton held his temper as Tom Bunch marched down the center aisle, as if headed for a coronation.
“You set me up?”
The annoying little creature shrugged. “It had to be done.”
He’d deal with this imbecile later. Right now he had the president of Poland to contend with.
“A short while ago I spoke with President Fox,” Czajkowski said. “I explained to him I do not want American missiles based here. I told him I would never approve such a measure. I asked him politely not to force the issue. Do you know what he said to me?”
He could only imagine.
“He told me that he fully understood my reservations and that he would not pressure me.”
A surprising comment, considering what had been said by Bunch in Bruges.
“President Fox also informed me that you were headed to Kraków and told me the rendezvous point.”
“Which I provided to President Fox,” Bunch added.
“That’s how we knew to be in the cloth market at booth 135,” Czajkowski said. “I told President Fox that we would deal with you. He had no problem with that, and his personal envoy has been of great assistance.”
Bunch pointed. “Poland has been informed that you are working independently, for a division within the Justice Department that has no authority to be here. That division, the Magellan Billet, has embarrassed the United States with its unauthorized actions relative to any supposed auction of information. The White House was unaware of all this, until today. Once we learned of the situation, we intervened to stop what’s happening.”
He sucked a few deep breaths and kept his cool at Bunch’s lie.
“And the auction?” he calmly asked.
“America will not be participating,” Bunch said. “That’s not the way we do things. Of course, the people who sent you think differently. But we’ll deal with them shortly.”
Doubt and suspicion surrounded him like an aura.
Everybody here was lying to one another.
“Are you satisfied with those assurances?” he asked Czajkowski.
“I am. President Fox was emphatic and apologetic. He told me he will be withdrawing his missile proposal within the next forty-eight hours. He asked for a little time to deal with his military, who want those weapons here. I understood that reservation and agreed to that time.”
Forty-eight hours? Past the auction. Just enough time to rock this man to sleep.
“Where’s Stephanie?” he asked Bunch.
“On her way back to the United States. She’ll be fired tomorrow, since she’s the one who sent you here, unauthorized. We’ve given President Czajkowski our personal assurance that she will no longer be a part of the American intelligence community, in any way whatsoever.”
Two birds with one stone? Absolutely. Not only were they lying to a head of state, but they were going to sacrifice Stephanie to prove the point. That way Fox got everything he’d wanted on Inauguration Day. No Stephanie. No Magellan Billet.
“That auction will go on, with or without the United States,” Cotton said.
“That’s true, and we will deal with that,” Czajkowski said. “It is a Polish matter, for our resolution. But thankfully, the value of the information being offered for sale will be greatly diminished with America’s withdrawal. I’m grateful to Mr. Bunch and to President Fox for making that happen.”
He knew little to nothing about Czajkowski. But anyone who managed to win a national election, especially one in volatile Poland, could not be as naïve as Bunch and Fox thought him to be. Especially with someone as smart as Sonia Draga working for him. Cotton realized that Czajkowski might be playing along in this game, his acquiescence all a façade. But Tom Bunch’s face and squinty eyes telegraphed that he believed the Poles had been placated.
“What now?” he asked.
“You’re going back to Denmark,” Bunch said. “I’ll personally escort you. Hopefully, our friends here in Poland will forgive this transgression and we all will move on.”
“I have assured President Fox,” Czajkowski said, “that all will be forgiven. I appreciate his candor and discretion in this matter of the auction, and his decision to not pressure Poland on the missiles.”
“He’s a great guy,” Cotton said, his sarcasm evident. “What a pal.”
Bunch frowned. “I apologize, Mr. President. This man does not know his place, or how to show proper respect. We’ll leave you now, with the United States’ sincere thanks for your understanding.”
* * *
Czajkowski stood in the church and watched as Tom Bunch and Cotton Malone disappeared out the main doors, which one of the robed brothers closed as he left, too.
“What do you think?” he called out.
“I think Bunch is a terrible liar,” Sonia said.
She’d been secluded inside one of the confessionals, out of sight, but able to hear everything.
She stepped out.
“As is the president of the United States,” Czajkowski said. “No better than the damn communists.”
“Cotton is being used. He won’t like that. It’s not his nature.”
He was curious. “How well do you know Malone?”
She grinned, her teeth like a row of pearls. “Are you jealous?”
“Should I be?”
“It was a long time ago. Before you.”
He stepped close and took her into his arms, kissing her softly on the lips. “I just might be a little jealous.”
“That’s something new from you. I like it.”
“I need you on this,” he whispered to her. “You’re the only one I can trust.”
“I’m the only one you have.”
That was true. His wife would be the last person he’d involve. And there was no way he would recruit Michał Zima and the BOR, beyond what he’d already had them do. Too many people to trust with too much that could go wrong.
He and Sonia had carried on a private relationship for over a year, one that had grown increasingly close. He loved her flashing wit, quick apprehension, and genuine affection. She was a smart, dynamic woman who challenged him in every way. He understood he had no right to demand anything from her, given he was still married, but she’d knowingly offered her love and emotions. She was regarded as the AW’s best operative, her abilities and discretion never in question. Nor was her loyalty. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she loved him.
“What will they do?” he asked, still holding her.
“Bunch thinks you’re satisfied. A personal assurance from the president of the United States is enough to calm your fears. So he’ll have Cotton go after the relic tonight.”
There was only one relic left to clai
m. With Malone in Kraków, America’s ticket into the auction had to be the Spear of Saint Maurice.
“The Russians still don’t know the auction location,” she said. “It will take place tomorrow and their two representatives are en route. But it appears to be a roundabout method. A stopgap location. They’re headed for Bratislava, told they’ll be transported elsewhere tomorrow. If America is going to get in, Cotton has to move fast.”
Czajkowski had known from the start that his options were limited. The Polish constitution provided no directly elected presidential line of succession. If the president died or resigned, then the marshal of Parliament became acting president for sixty days until elections were called. The current marshal was a weak and ineffective man, the type of leader Poland spawned all too often, ones who sought far too much outside help to make themselves strong. That had never worked before, and would not now. If a resignation was forced, his immediate successor would do exactly what Fox wanted, no question. Once done, it would be hard to undo. So anyone who came after that might continue to placate Washington. That meant he had to deal with the problem here and now.