The Warsaw Protocol

by Steve Berry

  Czajkowski had been playing Tom Bunch.

  The Poles knew he’d come.

  So make it look good.

  He ran ahead, heading back through the assortment of rooms on the castle’s north side, refinding the Senators’ Hall, then the two exhibition halls and the wooden door that led into the adjacent building, the one whose lock he’d picked.

  He stopped and heard voices.

  A quick glance around one of the glassed exhibit cases and he spotted two security guards examining his handiwork at breaking the wire seal. No way he could escape there without some carnage. He decided to backtrack and find another way out. But he had to avoid Sonia. Hopefully all the doors leading from the inner loggia were locked, and her search for a way in would give him time to bypass her.

  He hustled through the north wing.

  Windows lined both sides of the rooms, all mullioned with watered glass. No way to see through. A blurry shadow moved past them on the outside, from room to room, stalking him from the exterior.

  Sonia.

  Had to be.

  At some point they were going to come face-to-face, probably at a far exit point where she’d come up to this floor. The same exit he would need to leave. Perhaps she knew he was trapped and was simply biding her time, waiting for him to figure things out. He was still toting the heavy wooden box, which made the going a bit awkward.

  He reentered the Battle of Orsha Room.

  His mind wound through the possibilities, and only one made sense. On his trip through the north wing he’d noticed that the rooms were all roped off, keeping visitors from getting too close to the furnishings. The rope used was sturdy nylon, threaded through iron pedestals. He headed back and retrieved three lengths, obtaining a good hundred feet.

  He heard glass shatter.

  Apparently Sonia had grown impatient.

  He carried the rope and the box back to the small study that jutted off the Orsha Room and locked the door from the inside, engaging an iron latch. He headed back outside onto the loggia, laid the wooden box down, and tied the rope to one of the stone pillars. He tossed the rest over the side and saw that there was enough slack to make it to the grass below. He quickly reeled the rope back up and tied the end to the box, then maneuvered it to the ground.

  He heard the door back in the study being forced. Sonia or the guards were trying to make their way in. But the iron latch was holding. He wrapped the rope into a loop and stepped into it.

  He heard muted gunfire.

  They appeared to be trying to shoot their way past the door. He recalled that its wood was not all that thick, more just an interior door for privacy, not security.

  Go. Now.

  He hopped over the rail and began his descent, releasing the coil around his waist in short bursts and keeping his feet planted to the castle’s stone. He’d purposefully located the rope so he could use one of the buttresses as a path, avoiding the walls themselves as they were dotted with obstacles. He was also careful with the slack at the bottom, keeping plenty there so as to not jostle the wooden box.

  The descent was relatively easy and he was nearing the grass when he looked up and saw Sonia and two guards staring down at him. Her gun came up into view and she nestled the end of the barrel to the rope.

  And fired.

  His support severed, he fell the remaining twenty feet, pounding into the hard turf. Which hurt his nearly fifty-year-old body. He glanced back up and saw her aim the gun down toward him and fire, stitching the grass to his left with two rounds. He ignored the pain in his legs and snatched the box from the ground, lunging into an open arcade to his left, out of her line of fire. He had to leave the castle grounds, so he ditched the rope wrapped around him and freed the box, running ahead, down another covered arcade that led to a passage opening on the far side of the castle at the inner lawn, near where he’d first entered the administration building.

  No one was in sight.

  He assumed the guards themselves knew nothing about what was really happening. To them, this was real.

  So he had to avoid them.

  Exterior lights atop the buildings began to spring to life, dissolving the darkness and making him much more visible. He turned right and bolted back toward the main gate, passing the cathedral and the museum. Beyond the archway he found the same brick-lined passage that led down to street level. Lights burned here and there illuminating the path. At the end of the incline he saw that the heavy wooden gates were now closed. They were also tall, as were the surrounding walls. No way to scale either and no telling what type of lock secured the exit.

  He had to find another way out.

  And fast.

  He could not go back inside the castle grounds. The guards would be on the move. To his left a rough cobbled path ran along the base of the castle’s outer wall. Another smaller wall paralleled the outside, overlooking the river a hundred feet below. This had surely once been a path from which men and artillery could be shifted around the outer walls without risk. He ran down the path, visualizing in his mind the map of the castle’s grounds he’d seen earlier outside the administrative offices.

  There was another way down.

  A popular spot, too.

  The Dragon’s Den.

  He knew the story.

  King Krak had lived in a castle atop Wawel Hill. A village lay below, beside the river, on fertile lands, and would have been rich and prosperous if not for a fierce fire-breathing dragon that occupied a cavern below the castle. The dragon liked to roam the countryside, eating sheep, cattle, and people. It particularly delighted in the taste of virgin flesh, as what dragon didn’t. The beast devoured virgin after virgin, until only the king’s daughter was left. It was then that King Krak declared that the brave hero who could slay the dragon would receive half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage. Knight after knight tried to kill the dragon, and all were devoured. Then a poor young cobbler’s apprentice wanted to try his luck. A mere boy. No warrior. No armor or sword.

  But he had a brain.

  He took a dead sheep and stuffed it with sulfur, then sewed it back together and left it at the mouth of the cave. The dragon swallowed the stuffed animal whole and soon developed a dreadful bellyache. The suffering creature crept down to the River Wisła and began to drink. He drank so much water that he eventually burst into pieces.

  End of dragon.

  Earlier, back at the main gate, Cotton had noticed the three large bones hanging over the entrance, suspended on chains. For centuries these were believed to be the remains of the dragon. In reality, they belonged to a mammoth, a rhinoceros, and a whale. But the cave under the castle was real and, ahead, through the darkness, he spotted the narrow turret at the top of a brick tower that held a spiral staircase. An iron gate barred access, but when he approached he noticed that it was secured by a modern keyed lock.

  He glanced around and saw no one.

  He was now on the castle’s far west side, facing the river, which was over the wall to his right and a hundred feet down. He heard people below out walking the riverbank, enjoying the summer night. Lots of them. Just what he needed. He laid the wooden box down and picked the lock, quickly passing through the portal and relocking the gate behind him.

  He descended the iron rungs in a tight circle and finally found himself standing in a limestone cave, nothing but blackness ahead, the attraction closed for the night. An electrical box was attached to one wall, and using his phone for light he tripped the breakers. The rocks came alive with back glow, exposing the Dragon’s Den in all its shadowy detail. He hustled through the first chamber and into the next, the walls narrowing and heightening, the ceiling thirty feet high.

  He heard a noise from above.

  Voices.

  Most likely the exterior security cameras had revealed his presence. He kept going and headed into another chamber, this one with a stone vault supported by a set of brick pillars and decorated by rock projections, chimneys, and fissures, the ambience tryin
g to evoke thoughts of the mythical dragon that supposedly once lived here. The two-hundred-foot-long cave attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, a place where superstition had evolved into folklore.

  He spotted the exit.

  A pointed-arch portal with another iron gate blocking it. Beyond, on the street that faced the river, a sculpture of the dragon stood. People congregated around it. He approached the gate and saw another lock, which was easy to pick. He emerged at the foot of Wawel Hill, the castle towering high above. He dissolved into the crowd, box in hand. A host of stray constellations circled overhead. He recognized the tangled silver chain of the Pleiades.

  He kept walking.

  And resisted the urge to turn back and glance up at the outer walls, where Sonia Draga was surely watching.

  Mission accomplished.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Jonty walked over to Konrad, who was still staring at the salt wall.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “There’s something odd here.”

  He stared at the wall, too, comprising individual blocks mortared together, rising from the floor up five meters to the ceiling.

  “These were built by the miners to block off unused tunnels. It was a safety measure against fires.”

  He reached out and stroked the rough gray-green surface.

  “They cut the blocks themselves,” Konrad said. “The mortar is salt mixed with water. It makes a good cement. The thicker the mortar lines, the newer the wall. The oldest used little to no mortar. But they were strong. I know of walls that are still standing after four hundred years. This one is different.”

  The others walked over.

  “How so?” Eli asked.

  “The blocks are too perfect, and the mortar is thin.”

  Jonty waited for more.

  “The miners used anything and everything to build the walls. Trash, lumber, even horse manure. When they chipped the salt blocks into rough rectangles, no two were ever the same. They built fast, with little regard for craftsmanship. The idea was to get it up and done. So the mortar lines would be wavy, the layers all different. Nobody but them was ever going to see it, so it didn’t matter what it looked like.”

  Jonty began to notice what Konrad was saying. The individual rectangles here were all remarkably similar, many of the edges impeccably straight. The mortar joints varied in width, but still crisscrossed in a defined pattern. “The mortar is thin, which would mean this is old. But the blocks are too perfect to be old?”

  Konrad nodded.

  “What are you saying?” Eli asked.

  Konrad drew closer to the wall. “Vic, could you go back out to the main tunnel and get some of the iron pieces we saw lying around.”

  Jonty caught his acolyte’s attention and nodded yes. Do it.

  Vic left the chamber.

  “You think there’s something on the other side?” Jonty asked Konrad.

  “I’ve seen it before where chambers were walled up. It’s not unusual. But whoever did this wasn’t in a hurry. They cut the blocks from the salt and made sure they were all close to the same. If we’re assuming this is the Warsaw Chamber you are looking for, then there could be more to it on the other side.”

  Vic returned with several pieces of rusted iron. Konrad grabbed one of the bars and started to work the thin mortar in one of the side joints, where the blocks met the main salt wall.

  “This isn’t mortar. It’s just part of the wall collapsed into the block. They definitely built this in front of an opening.”

  Konrad kept scratching the joint away, using the thin edge of the iron as a chisel. Salt dust sprayed away as a crease began to form. He then used the bar as a fulcrum and forced the iron farther into the seam, angling it away from the block, trying to pry it free.

  Then he stopped.

  “What?” Jonty asked.

  “It moved.”

  Was that a problem? Did it mean danger?

  Everything was illuminated by the motion of their headlights, but Konrad settled his beam down and used it to trace a path about two meters up the block wall. A meter-long crack had formed. Konrad used the iron to deepen it into a valley. Vic worked with another piece to clear away more mortar from the crack to the floor, revealing the crude outline of a doorway.

  “Can we get through?” Eli asked.

  “We shall see,” Konrad said.

  * * *

  Jonty watched as the doorway was finally cleared. Vic and Konrad had used the iron bars to strip away the mortar, then extract the blocks, one by one. He’d cautioned them to be careful, because the blocks might need to be replaced. They left the last two rows at the bottom, as they could be stepped over. Beyond was a short tunnel that ended at a wooden door.

  They all approached.

  No lock. Only a rope handle. The salt wall had apparently been deemed enough protection.

  Vic opened the door, which had been hung on wooden dowels. Beyond was another chamber. Racks of wooden shelves stood in five lines like a warehouse. None of the lumber was nailed. More dowels. The shelves were packed with black plastic bins, each container sealed at the top with heavy black tape.

  “Somebody has a sense of humor,” Eli said. “The Pantry. That’s what this is, tucked safely within walls of salt. You see, Jonty. It is real.”

  That it was.

  He noticed the floor. A layer of crystallized salt, wall-to-wall, that had not been disturbed in a long time.

  He pointed it out.

  “That was done to help with moisture,” Konrad said. “The miners would crush the salt and spread it out on the floor to absorb humidity.”

  For someone who dealt in information, the value of a cache like this could be immeasurable. True, the vast majority was probably unimportant and meaningless. But somewhere amid all this information there was surely something of value.

  They stepped inside.

  He motioned and Vic lowered one of the plastic containers to the floor, peeled away its tape, and snapped off the top to reveal stacks of paper. Some bound together with string, most loose. Hundreds of pages. All in excellent condition thanks to the climate in the mine, ideal for pulp preservation. He and Eli each grabbed a handful of the pages and examined them, most written in Polish, many in Russian. Polish he was okay with, but Russian was not part of his repertoire.

  “These are surveillance reports,” Eli said, motioning with the stack he held. “From the Służba Bezpieczeństwa.”

  He saw that Eli was right. Some documents were statements from SB field agents and informants, most of them originals. Others were carbon copies of reports filed up the chain of command. Lots of names, dates, and places. Where people went. Who they met with. What they said. What they saw and heard. If this one box was representative, there were tens of thousands of documents in this archive.

  “The possibilities could be endless,” Eli said.

  “Or useless,” he added. “All of this is from a long time ago.”

  “That’s probably what someone else thought, too, and look what happened there.”

  He knew exactly who Eli was referring to. Czajkowski. Good point.

  Eli started to speak again, but Jonty cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Let’s you and I walk back to the other side of the wall and speak in private.”

  He caught Vic’s glance and indicated that he wanted Konrad occupied and kept out of hearing range.

  He and Eli left the chamber and retreated far enough away that they could speak in private.

  “Keep your voice down,” he cautioned.

  “Don’t trust your guide?”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course not. I appreciate your precautions. But come now, Jonty. You and I both know the odds—somewhere in all that old paper is information that people in positions of power and influence today would not want revealed. There’s value here. I can feel it. Look at what happened with Lech Wałęsa. He had a past that he did not want revealed. He tried hard to deny and dis
claim it, but it stuck to him like a rash. There could be others just like him. And those people may be willing to pay to keep their secrets.”

  From preparing for the auction he knew that the SB had utilized tens of thousands of informants. What they reported had to be documented, since the Soviets loved to write everything down. Also, somebody went to a lot of trouble to conceal this cache, and that could not have been for nothing. And Eli had a point about both Czajkowski and Wałęsa. But going through all this would take time.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Eli said. “Let’s not offer this for sale tomorrow. Let’s hold it and study what’s here, finding the ones that are actively negotiable today. I know of at least one buyer who would pay to have it all, intact.”

  He did, too.

  Poland.

  “We either need to come back here ourselves, or hire people to do it for us,” Eli said. “Those containers have to be searched.”

  “That could take years, and this is not a public place.”

  “We’ll do it slowly. No rush. It’s not going anywhere. And you have access through your guide in there. I realize you don’t trust him. But keep that relationship viable and we can study this at our leisure.”

  Everything he was hearing made sense. “You’re cutting me in on this cache?”

  “Absolutely. We made a deal. And this is too big for either of us. But together we can handle it. I also need your man to gain access. Sure, I could cultivate my own, but why start over when you already have everything in place? Less people to worry about. Let’s do this. You pay me what we agreed for my silence on tomorrow’s auction, and we’ll split what we make from this, fifty–fifty.”

  He was instantly suspicious. “Why so generous?”

  Eli smiled. “What choice does either of us have? I can ruin your auction tomorrow and you can ruin this for me. Why don’t we be reasonable and both profit? There’s plenty here.”

  He loved a good deal. Nothing better.

  “All right, Eli. That’s what we’ll do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Czajkowski stood in his suite at the Sheraton and stared at Wawel Castle. The ancient edifice was lit to the night in all its glory, five hundred meters away, high above the River Wisła. Crowds gathered at its base along the wide walkways that paralleled the river, enjoying another magnificent June night. He felt a pride knowing that, as president, he was the natural successor to the many kings who’d ruled Poland from that castle. Men like Bolesław the Brave, Casimir the Restorer, Sigismund the Old. What names. What legends. Their right to the throne was first acquired by conquest, then retained through heredity. Eventually, though, it evolved into something uniquely Polish.