The Warsaw Protocol

by Steve Berry

  “You seem to have a problem,” he told Ivan.

  The big Russian shrugged. “I do my job. But Sonia not suppose to be here. Olivier is mine.”

  “I’m not telling any of you anything,” Olivier blurted out.

  Sonia stayed behind the arch but raised her weapon and pointed it at Olivier. “Where is the Spear of Maurice?”

  “Now, that I can tell you. It’s in a car, just beyond the courtyard, with the other relics, awaiting my departure.”

  She lowered her gun. “I came for that. That’s why I’m here.”

  Made sense. A national treasure had to be returned, especially one that she’d allowed to be stolen.

  Ivan shrugged. “You now have. Go.”

  Two shots tore the air and echoed through the hall.

  His head whipped to the right. Sonia had fired. But not upward. He looked left. Olivier stared in astonishment at the spreading red stain across his shirt that clutching fingers could not contain. Air gasped from his mouth, followed by more blood, then the eyes rolled skyward and the stout body thumped hard to the floor.

  “Now this is over,” Sonia called out. “There will be no missiles and nobody gets that information. It stays wherever it is.”

  He stared at her.

  “The Polish government had unfinished business with Jonty Olivier,” she said. “That matter is now resolved.”

  “Not good,” Ivan said. “This is a problem.”

  “Let it go,” she called out.

  “That may not be possible. I wanted Olivier. Alive.”

  “Cotton.”

  He turned toward Sonia.

  She slid a gun across the polished stone floor straight to him. He grabbed the weapon, checked the magazine, then chambered a round.

  Ready.

  “There’s two of us now,” he told Ivan. “You can walk out of here, or be carried out with a bullet in you. Take your pick.”

  Silence reigned.

  He risked a look and saw that the three men above him were looking at one another, Reinhardt surely waiting for Ivan to make a decision.

  “I didn’t come here to die,” Reinhardt finally made clear.

  “All right,” Ivan said. “We be done.”

  He watched as the three men withdrew from the railing and began to leave the second floor. He’d need to stay alert until they were gone from the building.

  He turned back toward where Sonia had been hidden.

  But she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Czajkowski felt the tension that entered the hotel room with his wife. He’d married her twenty-one years ago when they were both much younger and far less political. They’d since led public lives and, for a time, they’d been a team. Not anymore. They were now two separate entities. Intertwined only by ambition.

  “Please excuse us,” he said to Zima.

  The head of the BOR nodded and left the suite.

  “Make sure we’re not disturbed,” his wife added.

  This was not going to be good. “Why are you here, Anna?”

  “That was going to be my first question to you.”

  He wondered how much she knew. Or was this a fishing expedition?

  She settled herself onto the sofa. She’d dressed for the occasion in an expensive Chanel suit. Pearl gray. Little jewelry. Low heels. Perfect for the First Lady of the nation.

  “I’m told you’ve been here two days, after canceling appointments and clearing your schedule. Then I’m told your girlfriend stayed here last night.”

  No surprise she would know any of that. She had a BOR security detail, too, and those agents surely talked to one another.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” she said.

  “I’m dealing with the coming election.”

  She laughed. “And I’m the Virgin Mary. Come now, Janusz, I came for answers.” She paused. “Truthful answers. Something unusual is happening.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I know you.”

  Which was a problem. Hard to fool somebody who’s been there nearly half your life. So he decided not to even try. “The Warsaw Protocol has come back to haunt us.”

  He’d told her the truth a long time ago, back when they were more like husband and wife.

  “That sorry excuse for a human being, Dilecki, kept documents on me. How? Why? I have no idea. I only know that he did and they still exist.”

  “And your girlfriend is trying to retrieve them?”

  He nodded. “An effort is being made.”

  “How wonderful that you have her in this time of need.”

  He caught the sarcasm and wondered about jealousy. That emotion had long left them both. Part of their arrangement.

  “This has international implications,” he said. “The security of this nation is at risk. If a foreign government obtains that information, it could be used against me. I may be forced to resign or, worse, do what they want. I don’t want to do either of those.”

  She appraised him with a gaze he knew all too well. “It’s that bad?”

  He nodded. “You know what I did back then. You know what we all did.”

  “I know what you told me.”

  He was shocked at her reservations. “Am I to understand that you think I was an informant for the communists? That I sold out my fellow citizens? That I took their filthy money to help them keep us under their thumb? Do you really believe that?”

  Her pale-blue eyes cast one of her trademark stares. “You and I both know what you did, Janusz. How many died?”

  He’d thought about the past a lot lately. “Forty-six.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s how many of my recruits I know were killed.”

  She sat up. “Now, that’s new information. All these years and you never mentioned how many actually paid the price.”

  All were men and women who willingly took money from the SB in return for willingly providing information on their family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances to the Security Service. The worst possible traitors. No one forced them to do a thing. No one coerced them. They had not been beaten or forced to crawl across a prison floor.

  So what he and a few others had done was easy.

  Find active recruits of the SB who were not working willingly. Who had been forced to spy. Then turn them into double agents and feed the government controlled information. Just enough of a spark of truth to keep the informants out of trouble and the SB busy chasing shadows.

  And it worked.

  Big time.

  Eventually, they took it to the next level. Feeding more strategic and damaging information, designed to totally discredit some of those willing informants and make the SB question their loyalty. Enough that, in some cases, the SB permanently eliminated those informants.

  Forty-six, that he knew about.

  “Every one of those people deserved their fates,” he said. “They sold us all out for greed. I don’t regret a single one of those deaths.”

  “I doubt the Polish electorate will see it the same way,” Anna noted. “Hence the reason you’re here, right?”

  “Precisely. Of course, no one who matters will acknowledge the Warsaw Protocol ever existed, much less the good it did. The end result will be that I will be branded a traitor. A spy for the communists. I will take the fall for everyone.”

  “Father Hacia was not cooperative?”

  “Not at all. And you are well informed.”

  “I learned a long time ago to stay at least one step ahead of you, Janusz. Two, preferably.”

  He’d once loved this woman, and a small part of him still did. She understood him like no one else, not even Sonia. He’d decided to come to Kraków on an impulse, with only the vaguest idea of what he expected to accomplish. He’d flown south from Warsaw in a cold sweat, chewing at his lip, all thoughts frozen in the past. He’d hoped that, once here, he might figure it all out. A futile hope, for sure, as he remained in a deep turmoil. But he imagined his wife found h
erself in a similar quandary.

  “This is the most serious threat we’ve ever faced. My political career could be over.” He pointed. “Your career will be over.”

  She shrugged. “It seems we constantly face one challenge after another. Why should this be any different?”

  “Because it is different. The Americans and Russians are involved. A lot is at stake.”

  “Does she love you?”

  The question caught him off guard. Never had they discussed their mutual diversions.

  “She does.”

  “That’s good. You may not believe this, but I want you to be happy.”

  “As I do for you. I have no desire to harm you in any way.”

  She was still his friend, and always would be.

  “I was there, Janusz. I was born into that horrible communist society. I know its mind-set. You don’t have to convince me that times were tough. Survival depended on following the rules and avoiding attention. I remember it all, quite clearly. And I agree, I shed no tears for those traitors. So I’ve come to help. But I have to know what we’re facing. I need the truth.”

  So he told her everything that had happened over the past few days.

  “I understand,” she said when he finished. “We cannot allow foreigners to dictate how this country is governed. Never again.”

  She might be an estranged spouse, but she was first and foremost a Pole.

  And a proud one at that.

  “You and I do not see eye to eye on many things,” she said. “But on this issue we’re united. Why are you waiting here?”

  “For Sonia to report in. The last thing I heard was gunfire.”

  “Should you send people south to that castle?”

  He’d been considering just that, but he’d promised Sonia not to interfere and let her handle it. “I can’t. Not at the moment.”

  She seemed to understand why and said, “What would it hurt to get your men close, ready to move at a moment’s notice?”

  Not a thing.

  He stepped to the door and summoned Zima back inside, telling him what he wanted to happen. “Stay back a few kilometers, but close enough to move quickly, if needed. How fast can you have people there?”

  “I have six already at the Slovakian border. I was hoping you’d give this order.”

  He smiled. “Take care of it.”

  Zima left.

  Anna stood from the sofa. “I have a mission, too.”

  He was curious. “Can I ask what?”

  “It’s time I pay a visit to Jasna Góra. Father Hacia and I need to have a talk.”

  “You might find that a bit one-sided.”

  She shook her head. “Come now, Janusz. You know how persuasive I can be.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Cotton stepped away from the arch, surrounded by carnage. Sonia had executed Jonty Olivier in cold blood. What better way to protect both Poland and Czajkowski than by eliminating the source of the problem. Clearly, she hadn’t known the location of the auction. The Russians had shared no intel with her. And why would they? The last thing they wanted was Olivier dead. So she’d set the trap with the spear and allowed him to spring it. That way Olivier, the Russians, or whoever might be watching would not be spooked, and she’d get a clear shot.

  He was still concerned about Ivan and Eli Reinhardt. They could be lying in wait. So he carefully made his way toward the front of the castle, finding a room from which he could gaze down at the courtyard. There he watched as Ivan, Reinhardt, and Munoz left in a black sedan. He then saw Sonia as she calmly walked across the cobblestones and out the main gate, with the boxed spear in her grasp.

  There was still the matter of Eli Reinhardt. Something wasn’t right there. He wished he knew more about the man. Why was he involved? Why would he agree to take the risk of participating in the murder of government representatives, several of which were anything but friendly? And make a deal with the Russians? Olivier’s comments only confirmed that he and Reinhardt had been somewhat working together, Olivier lamenting how foolish he’d been to trust the man. A double cross? Maybe. And when Sonia gunned Olivier down, Reinhardt had seemed far more relieved than shocked.

  Was this over?

  Was the information truly gone?

  Sonia apparently had been unconcerned with Reinhardt, leaving without giving him another thought. Satisfied the situation had been contained.

  Had she made a mistake?

  The castle loomed cemetery-quiet.

  He left the front room and headed back to the great hall. Bullet holes scarred the walls and floor, while pools of blood framed out the casualties. He walked to Olivier’s body, the face a waxen mask, the eyes closed but distended. He searched the pockets, finding nothing except a small chunk of yellow-white rock crystal. Odd that Olivier would be carrying it. He wondered about its significance. He pocketed the chunk and recalled Olivier asking about an associate—a man named Vic—and decided the second floor would be a good place to look. So he found the stairs and climbed, passing the two dead Russians, then searching rooms until he located a bedchamber that had been converted into a command post. Another body lay on the floor with bullet holes. He was about to search that corpse when he noticed the right-hand pants pocket.

  Turned inside out.

  As if somebody had already been looking.

  He searched anyway and found only a wallet, a set of car keys, and a cell phone. A British driver’s license identified Victor DiGenti. Vic. The video monitors were still working, displaying images of the outer walls and the forest beyond, especially the road near the main gate. All quiet. One of the split-screen images was of a vehicle parked inside the walls, probably down one of the alleys he’d noticed when he’d exited the car that had brought him earlier. The one Olivier had mentioned. Ready for his exit. Harboring the Arma Christi.

  He noticed a laptop hot-wired from the wall. Surely the means whereby the high bid would have been authenticated and a wire transfer verified. He assumed that Reinhardt had killed DiGenti first, giving his co-conspirators an open run to everyone else. All of the staff had apparently been ordered from the premises, leaving everything overly vulnerable. Foolishness on Olivier’s part, but just add that to the list of improbable chances the man had taken.

  He wondered, had Reinhardt come here first and found something? Olivier had said that only he knew the location. During the auction he’d also said DiGenti would lead the highest bidder to the information. Which made sense. A man like Olivier did not seem the type to do the heavy lifting. No. He’d pay for that service, and what other person besides the one man Olivier had specifically inquired about with Reinhardt.

  Had this guy known the location?

  Of course, he was speculating. Like the lawyer he used to be.

  But it all seemed reasonable.

  He opened DiGenti’s cell phone but it was password-protected, so he tossed it back on the body and decided to search the remainder of the castle to find Olivier’s room, which he did farther down the hall. It was elegantly furnished with a heavy wooden table, a four-poster bed, a carved chest, and a dark wood wardrobe filled with clothes that were clearly Olivier’s size. It all smelled of polish, soap, and fresh flowers. The afternoon sun threw in a reddish glow, exposing patches of dust on the furniture. Save for some toiletries and a couple of novels, there was nothing else. He left there and the second floor, exploring the ground level, eventually finding what had once been the castle’s library.

  No books lined the shelves. A large piano occupied one corner, a few choice lithographs adorned the walls, a rug lay underfoot. French doors opened to a stone terrace. He searched for anything that may have been compromised. Curiously, there was a vacuum-seal machine, the kind used to preserve food, sitting on a small table. Not much littered the top of the Victorian-style desk except for three cell phones, all password-blocked. He wasn’t going to learn anything fast from those, so he walked back to the great hall.

  How long would it be before the r
espective governments of the dead learned what had happened? Not long. A matter of hours. The response? That would be a challenge, considering the illegality of the entire venture.

  He approached the big-screen television. Olivier lay nearby. He recalled the documents that had been displayed and glanced behind, noticing a laptop connected to the screen. He scrolled through the five images displayed on the left side, which Olivier had shown the assemblage. Nothing else was loaded on the machine.

  Then he noticed something.

  Resting beneath the machine on a wooden shelf was a large manila envelope, like the ones that had been used during the auction. He slipped it free and tested its weight. Heavy. He tore off the flap and opened it to find an oversized coffee-table book.

  Miasto w Soli: The City in Salt.

  He only knew that since there was both English and Polish on the cover. Inside was the same, the text in both languages, all of the glossy colored images of the underground salt mine at Wieliczka. He thumbed through the pages and admired the extraordinary pictures.

  On the end page was writing.

  In blue ink.

  9 Bobola

  He thumbed back through the book to see if there was any more writing, but found none. On page 145 one of the full-page images caught his eye. Yellow-white crystals clung to a gaping fissure in the mine shaft wall. No caption identified the photo, but he found a legend at the end, the book’s author stating, Lower level IX. A fragment of roof of the upper grotto covered with large halite crystals. He found the piece in his pocket that Olivier had been carrying and compared it with the photo.

  Identical.

  He brought it to his lips and cautiously tested the outer surface with his tongue.

  Salty.

  The tantalizing fragments of a pattern formed in his brain and the math was anything but fuzzy.

  This two plus two had to equal four.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Eli was glad to be away from the Russians. He and Munoz had ridden north with Ivan, back into Poland, with their mouths shut. His deal with them had worked out perfectly. They’d paid him five million euros to work his way into the auction, direct them to the location, then facilitate the elimination of the participants. The Russians wanted every delegate dead. They also wanted Olivier alive. But that had not worked out. The Poles had intervened. Malone had survived. Luckily, Ivan did not hold either of those unexpected occurrences against him.