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Many of the pages brought back memories of people and places. Of things that he’d done. Of fateful decisions that had consequences then and now. Would he do anything different?
Not a thing.
It all turned out as it should.
Poland was free.
He sat and watched the flames, enjoying a splash of whiskey, which seemed one of his more constant comforts of late.
The door to the room opened and Anna walked inside. He’d told the staff to send her this way as soon as she arrived. She’d stayed in the south all of yesterday, fulfilling obligations as the country’s First Lady. That was the thing about her. She performed her duties with grace and dignity. A credit to the nation. Sadly, they were not as dedicated to each other.
But at least they were friends.
She came inside and closed the door. Over her shoulder hung a cloth bag that appeared heavy.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She nodded and removed a thick pocket folder stuffed with paper. “I went through some of it. Lots of names, dates, places. Payments made. Bribes. Hacia seems to have played the game well with the communists. One list details people who worked directly with him. A lot of names. Yours is on that list, near the top. Proof positive.”
“Sadly, nobody would have cared. They would claim it all was a forgery, done to protect me.”
“But there are surely many still alive who were part of the protocol. They can be found for corroboration.”
“I doubt a one of them will want to talk about it. Like me, they prefer to leave it in the past.”
She pointed to the stack of paper on the table. “Is that what they were going to sell?”
He nodded. “And if any of it were true, it would be quite damaging.”
She sat in one of the high-backed chairs. He’d told her yesterday on a secure call about what happened in the mine, omitting only that he shot two people.
Better to leave that alone.
“What you did, Janusz, back then, was brave. I realized that while I was speaking with Hacia. You and he dealt with a horrendous situation that life had presented. Walesa and all the other Solidarity leaders had to work in the limelight. They were the face of the movement. But to be able to do that it was necessary that you, Hacia, and the others noted in that file work in the shadows. In secret. Doing what had to be done against an unrelenting enemy.”
He sipped more whiskey. “Together we changed the world. But we also ended people’s lives.”
They both sat in the quiet, listening to the crackle of the fire, deep in their own thoughts.
“No matter where we end up,” she finally said, “I’ll always love you. Maybe not as a wife should love her husband, but as a woman feels for a man she respects and admires.”
He smiled. “That’s about the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a long time.”
“I mean it. I truly do.” She pointed at the hearth. “No one asked why you wanted a fire started in June?”
“I received some looks, but I told them it calms me down.”
More silence passed between them.
“What of us, Janusz? What now?”
Her voice was low and soft.
“We run for reelection. If we win, we keep doing what we’re doing. Once this is over, in five years, we’ll end the marriage.”
“Seems so hypocritical on our part.”
He savored another short swallow of whiskey. “Maybe so but, as you say, we deal with what life gives us.”
“I’m glad she loves you.”
He’d not expected that. “She saved our asses.”
“Tell her thank you from me.”
He smiled at her graciousness. “You did good, too. And you searched Hacia’s room? That was bold.”
“I don’t think he saw that one coming. The good brother probably thought his monastery more than adequate protection.”
But he wondered. After his visit with Hacia, the Owl would have known that what he had was now in play, his room the first place anyone would look. So he should move whatever might be hidden there. No. Instead, he’d left it right there, ready to be found. Maybe his old friend had had a change of heart after their talk and used Anna’s visit as a way to make amends?
Who knew?
“And the missiles?” she asked. “Is that over, too?”
“I informed President Fox yesterday that under no circumstances would I agree to their deployment on Polish soil. I’ve prepared an address to Parliament where I will state my case, and that refusal will become a cornerstone of my reelection platform. So they’ll have to beat me at the polls to make it happen. My advisers tell me the issue will play well with the public, and a comfortable majority will agree with me.”
“It’s time the world learns that Poland is not their playground.”
He concurred. “Too bad it cost so many lives to make that point.”
He’d not told her anything about what had happened in Slovakia. That was a state secret, and would remain so. As would one other piece of information they’d learned. Apparently, Eli Reinhardt and Jonty Olivier had visited the salt mine together, had been taken down into the extreme lower recesses four days ago. Where? Nobody knew. Maybe it had to do with hiding away the documents for the auction? But if so, why had Olivier and his man DiGenti visited the mine the night before? Maybe there was something else down there? The matter had been referred to the Agencja Wywiadu, and Sonia would personally lead a search party to see if there was anything else to find.
He stared over at Anna. She was the perfect political wife. But his heart now belonged to another. He finished the whiskey and stood.
“Shall we?”
He lifted the stack of incriminating paper retrieved from the mine, and she grabbed the thick file. Together they approached the fire and fed both into the flames. The old paper smoldered, turned brown, then dissolved into the flames with a dull whoomph.
They watched as it all turned to ash.
“The Warsaw Protocol,” he said, “is finally over.”
* * *
Cotton sat with Cassiopeia at a window table in the Café Norden. It was a lovely Sunday evening in Copenhagen, the Højbro Plads cobblestones busy.
