by Steve Berry
But his past stood in the way.
“How do you know Malone will still steal the spear?”
“Because of Stephanie Nelle. He’s loyal to her. He’ll do whatever is necessary to protect her. That’s his nature. Like he said, he’s here to help a friend.”
“You sound like you admire him.”
“I do. Men like that are a rarity.”
“Should I be insulted?”
“Not at all. You’re at the head of that rare list. Poland is fortunate to have you as its president. We need to keep you there.” She paused. “Whatever it takes.”
He smiled at her confidence. “What will you do?”
“Our Russian associates were forthcoming in Bruges to get my help with Cotton. But they’ve told me little since. They don’t want us anywhere near that auction.”
“But we need to be there.”
“And Cotton is our way in. So I’ll be there, tonight. Waiting for him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jonty could not decide if Eli was being serious or working him. His competitor had the resources to learn whatever he wanted, definitely comparable to his own, along with the nerve to explore dark corners where others might hesitate to tread. Eli being here, in Slovakia, was proof positive of that. But was this offer simply more drama?
“What are you talking about, Eli? What kind of gifts do you have?”
“The Spiżarnia. I learned about it from my friends in the German government. It was a precautionary measure, taken by Moscow, in the 1990s, when Soviet rule ended and the Polish republic reemerged.”
“A precautionary measure against what?”
“Hypocrisy, I’m told.”
An odd reply. But he could see that Eli was enjoying himself.
“Jonty, you have incriminating information on one man. The current president of Poland. Information that relates back to his time as a young Solidarity worker. It clearly has blackmail value. But imagine if you had that same kind of information on other people, many of whom, like Czajkowski, have risen to positions of influence. Some in government. Some in private industry. How much would the Americans pay for that? Or the Russians? How much would the people involved pay for it to stay secret? The Pantry offers us an opportunity to find out.”
Now he was curious. “What is it?”
“Not so fast. I came here to make a deal. And contrary to what you might think, I actually want to make a fair deal.”
He doubted that, but he was listening.
“You have something you want to auction,” Reinhardt said. “Do it. Keep whatever you derive from the sale. Then auction off what I have, and I keep whatever is derived from that. A two-in-one event, so to speak. I just want the opportunity for your buyers to bid on what I have.”
“I conduct both sales?”
“Absolutely. No need to interject any element of confusion. I’m sure you’ve invited ready, willing, and able buyers. All governments, I assume. Now you have an additional item to sell. Lucky for us, these buyers have unlimited resources.”
As much as he hated to admit it, the proposal sounded reasonable. But he still wanted to know “What is it you have?”
“Let’s be candid, Jonty. I could ruin your entire sale. The whole thing depends on secrecy. I wonder, were the Poles invited? I wouldn’t think so. I would not have, if I were in your shoes. So I wonder what a call to Warsaw would accomplish?”
He kept his face stoic. But the threat worked. “Okay, Eli. I understand. You can wreck the whole thing, and that potential gives your presence here value. So I’m listening.”
“And if you are thinking about secreting me away with Art Munoz, know that if I don’t call in every three hours, contact will be made to Warsaw by some associates I’ve employed.”
He doubted that was a bluff. A wise precaution. One he himself would have taken, if the roles were reversed. “Okay, we have a deal. What’s your gift?”
Reinhardt smiled at his success. “Toward the end of Soviet domination, around 1991 is the best guess, the Służba Bezpieczeństwa hid away a huge cache of documents. By then the SB had amassed thousands of informants, many of whom had risen to high positions within Solidarity and the emerging political parties of the time. Some of them volunteered to be spies, others did it for money, others were coerced or blackmailed. Many had no idea they’d been classified as informants—their information came to SB headquarters via a friend, colleague, or family member who’d turned collaborator and sold them out. As insurance, perhaps something to be used in the future, the SB hid away documents relative to those informants. The place where they are stored is called the Spiżarnia.”
His mind raced.
He knew that Poland had, for years, dealt with the lingering pain of both Nazi and communist rule. The Institute of National Remembrance and the Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes Against the Polish Nation had been around for decades, amassing a huge archive of information that had been used in prosecutions. Most of that happened in the 1990s, in the years right after the Soviet collapse. Never, though, had any great stash of Soviet-era documents been discovered. Most of the revelations trickled in from old government warehouses, offices, and private stashes. He’d managed to stumble onto a stack of 147 pages that dealt with a young Solidarity activist named Janusz Czajkowski. A former SB major had kept a trove of documents from his time in government. That man was long dead, but his son had recently tried to find a buyer. A friend, whom Jonty had done business with before, learned of the effort and five hundred thousand zlotys had completed the sale. He’d originally planned to hold on to the information and explore ways to maximize its value. Then the United States announced a renewed effort to locate missiles in Poland.
Perfect.
Exactly what he’d needed.
The barely meaningful became vitally important.
Now this. A partner.
Something new to the mix.
“What does the Pantry contain?” he asked.
“My German friends speculate that the documents detail thousands of names of people who acted as Soviet informants. Probably reports, correspondence, affidavits, all sorts of information, stored away for safekeeping.”
“Has someone seen this cache?”
Eli shook his head. “The Germans never went after it, and it was largely forgotten until they received your invitation. Fortunately for me I was in the midst of another deal with them. Something of much greater importance, from their standpoint. So we modified the terms to include their invitation to your auction and this lost cache, both of which are now mine.”
A thousand questions raced through his brain. But one overcame all the others. “That was quite generous of them.”
“I assure you, what I provided to them was worth far more.”
That was saying a lot. Maybe even too much. “Are you sure this cache is real?”
Reinhardt sat back in his chair. “That’s the thing, Eli. I’m not. My friends in Berlin were clear. None of this has been verified.”
“You made a deal on something that might not even exist?”
Reinhardt smiled. “Your auction is real. I reasoned that, at a minimum, I could extract a payment from you not to interfere with that.”
He was cornered and did not like it.
“We need to find out if the Pantry is real,” Reinhardt said.
“What do you propose?”
“That we have a look.”
He hated that word we. This was his sale. His venture. But his choices seemed limited. Reinhardt could surely disrupt things. And why not? He had zero to lose. So he did what he did best and made a bargain. “I want a cut of whatever you receive on your portion of the deal.”
Reinhardt grinned. “How much?”
“Twenty percent.”
“That’s quite a cut.”
“I have expenses on the auction that you would need to contribute toward. A lot of money has been spent on privacy and security. Which raises a point. How did you find me?”
/> “Once the Germans showed me your invitation, I sent men out to track you down. I know your haunts, as you probably know mine. When Munoz disappeared, I assumed I’d found you.”
“And how did you know how to call me?”
Reinhardt smiled. “It wasn’t all that hard. Like you, I have friends with capabilities. You left a contact number with the agency that handles Sturney Castle. It’s the only fortress like it, available for rent, in Slovakia. Lots of privacy.”
He cursed himself for being so careless. If he’d made that big a mistake with Eli, what others had he made? Were some of the potential buyers closing in? Had the auction site been compromised? Thank goodness last night he’d taken those final precautions. Then a frightening thought occurred to him. “You followed me last night, didn’t you?”
Eli nodded again. “And when you drove north to Kraków, then to Wieliczka, my heart leaped.”
He waited.
“The Pantry is hidden away inside that salt mine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Cotton kept his mouth shut and his temper in check until he and Bunch were in a car, alone, driving away from the monastery, Bunch behind the wheel.
“That should buy you some time,” Bunch finally said. “The president himself told Czajkowski that we were backing off, that there’d be no American presence at the auction. Him hearing that directly should do the trick.”
“So Fox flat-out lied to a head of state?”
Bunch waved off the accusation. “He merely misdirected him. I simply reinforced that misdirection.”
He shook his head. “Both of you are idiots.”
“That’s the president of the United States you’re talking about.”
“Yeah. That’s the scary part.”
They were on a two-laned highway, paralleling the River Wisła, headed back toward Kraków.
“You should have a clear path to the spear now,” Bunch said.
“Tom. Can I call you Tom?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “I make it a point not to say things I might regret later. Especially to people who work for the White House. But with you, I’ll make an exception. How about you go f—”
Bunch pointed at his cell phone.
Odd.
It rested in the center console between their seats.
He’d already noticed it, but had not paid much attention. He lifted the unit and saw that it was on a live call, the setting to SPEAKER.
“Mr. President,” Bunch said. “Malone knows you’re listening.”
He shook his head. This was beyond belief.
“It’s good to know what you really think of me,” Fox said.
“I didn’t know that was a secret, given our first encounter. You apparently didn’t learn a thing from almost being blown up?”
“I actually did. I learned that I want my own people handling things. No more of Danny Daniels’ leftovers.”
“Your people are incompetent.”
“As am I?”
He had zero intention of backing down. “You’re at the head of the line.”
Bunch’s face carried a smug grin, clearly pleased with the disrespect being shown.
“Ordinarily, Cotton—I can call you that, right?” Fox said through the phone. “I’d just tell Tom to fire you, hang up, and move on. We can hire other people. But you’re there, on the ground, ready to go, and time is really short. We only have until midnight to steal that spear.”
“The only reason I might is so I can shove it—”
“Cotton,” Fox said, interrupting. “Just steal the spear. Then I want you and Tom to go to the auction and buy whatever information Jonty Olivier is selling.”
These two were bold SOBs. He’d give them that.
“I was elected president,” Fox said, “because I had the balls to go out and ask people to vote for me. I think big. The problem with most people is they don’t think big. They’re afraid to think big. So they latch on to people, like me, who think big. I’m not scared to win. I like to win. I do what I have to do in order to win.”
“I don’t really give a crap,” Cotton said to the phone. “I don’t have a dog in this fight.”
“Except for the $150,000 Stephanie Nelle promised you.”
“I can live without it.”
Fox chuckled. “I’m sure you can. But I want those missiles in Poland and if you don’t help me out, I’m going to do what I told President Czajkowski I would do. I’ll fire Stephanie Nelle and the Magellan Billet will be disbanded. All of the American intelligence divisions will be told not to hire her. She will be persona non grata. If anyone in the private sector wants to hire her, she won’t receive any positive references from this administration. Quite the contrary, in fact. Her career choices will be limited to going to work for one of my enemies.”
He hated bullies. And that’s exactly what he was dealing with. And the best way to handle bullies was to get right in their face because, at their core, they were cowards. Right now, though, he had little to nothing to bargain with.
But if he had the spear?
They were beginning to enter Kraków’s outer suburbs, coming in from the west, and ahead across the river he spotted Wawel Castle. Its tawny defensive walls rose nearly a hundred feet above the water, at once massive and slender, topped by domes and towers. The seat of Polish kings for more than a millennium, though now only their tombs remained. It was both a museum storing precious objects and a work of art itself.
The symbol of Poland.
And where the Spear of St. Maurice waited.
His best bargaining chip.
“Did you hear me, Malone?” President Fox said.
“You really are a prick.”
“Like I care what you think. If I wanted a conscience, I’d buy one. What I want is those missiles in Poland. More important, I want Russia to know that the days of rolling over the United States are through.”
“I think Danny Daniels might disagree with your assessment of his eight years in office.”
“I’m sure he would, but I’m going to do what it takes to get the job done.”
“When you mess with Stephanie, you’ll be messing with Daniels.”
“I doubt the junior senator from Tennessee could do much to harm me.”
No sense arguing with a fool who clearly underestimated his opponents.
“Just steal the spear, Malone, and win that auction.”
“And if I do, what happens to Stephanie?”
“Not a thing.”
“You do know that you’re not the most trustworthy person.”
“I’m all you have. Take it or leave it.”
Normally, he’d leave it. But two factors urged otherwise. One, he did not want Stephanie to experience the misery Fox would enjoy heaping on her. And two? Janusz Czajkowski was not the fool he wanted people to think he was. The U.S. announces a missile initiative then, because Poland simply doesn’t want it, they reverse course? That might happen, as it did years ago, when a bunch of time had passed so everyone could save face. But not this quick. Not by a long shot. Czajkowski was up to something, too, in playing along. And he suspected what that might be. But neither the moron driving the car nor the one on the phone had a clue.
Which almost made him smile.
“Do you have any assistance from American intelligence on this operation?” he asked Fox.
“Only the great Stephanie Nelle and her wonderful Magellan Billet.”
“Besides that.”
“That’s all. This is a White House–based initiative, everything held close.”
As he suspected.
Which clinched the deal.
“I’ll get the spear,” he said.
* * *
He was driven back near the cloth market, Bunch leaving and providing a cell phone number for contact. He walked to where his own vehicle was parked and called Stephanie, reporting all that had happened.
“I should resign,” she said. “I can’t work for these people.”
“I ha
te that I’m even about to say this, since it’s not my problem. But if we walk away, America could be in real trouble. The Russians are heavy into this, along with the Poles, and they’re not fooling around. This could take a bad bounce.”
“I agree. I’ve had an awful feeling from the start. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when they told me you were in Bruges.”
That was about as close to warm and fuzzy as she would ever get, and he appreciated the sentiment.
“I’ll get the spear,” he said. “Then we’ll decide what’s next for both you and the country.”
“I’m in Warsaw, at the embassy. But I’m headed south for the consulate in Kraków. I’ll be there in a few hours.”
He’d assumed she hadn’t left, or had even been ordered away. “I’m going to do a little recon, then handle things tonight. The info you’ve already provided was helpful.”
“You think the Poles will be waiting for you?”
He’d told her his hunch. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“Then why go?”
“Because they need me to do it, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jonty arrived back at the castle, still shaken by the meeting. He could not decide if Reinhardt was being truthful or merely posturing, trying to edge his way into a deal that he had no part in making. Prior to obtaining the evidence on Janusz Czajkowski he’d done some extensive research, all designed to ascertain if what he’d been offered was real.
That was where he’d come across what happened to Lech Wałęsa.
An electrician in the Gdańsk Shipyard, working long hours for little pay like everyone else, Wałęsa became a trade union advocate and one of the co-founders of Solidarity. Images of his mustachioed face, being borne aloft by workers, became an inspiration for anti-communist movements across the Soviet bloc. He was arrested many times and imprisoned, but eventually led the charge to end communist rule, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But he did not travel to Stockholm to get it, fearing he would not be allowed back in the country. He was the first to be elected to the renewed position of president of Poland. But his popularity waned, and he was defeated for reelection in 1995 after only one term.