The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(25)
He went on to serve in all aspects of government. First elected to Parliament when he was thirty, he served four terms before moving to the executive branch. He’d been an undersecretary of state, the vice minister of national defense, the general secretary of two political parties, then back to Parliament where he rose to vice speaker. He came from a solid, respected family with not a hint of scandal or shame. His grandfather fought with valor in the Polish–Soviet War, his father in World War II.
The Catholic Church meant everything to him.
He remembered vividly the night in May 1981 when word came that John Paul II had been shot. Their beloved favorite son lay fighting for his life. Czajkowski had been on his way to a Solidarity meeting. Instead, he’d wandered into a church where hundreds of people knelt in prayer and a priest said mass. Above the altar hung a dark painting of the crucifixion. He recalled thinking that once again Poles faced a calamity. The life of their pope was in peril. Their economy in shambles. Russian tanks were massing at the border. The country seemed on the rack. Yet before him was the strangely calming image of a man splayed by crucifixion. Not only a symbol of the nation’s turmoil but a promise of redemption, too. He recalled what someone once wrote. Poland is the Jesus Christ of nations.
How true.
And how ironic that the passions of Christ could now be part of his own undoing. He felt like he was about to be crucified, too.
Everyone had been so young back then. The head of the largest Solidarity branch in Warsaw a mere twenty-five. The leader of the Gdańsk Shipyard union barely twenty-one. Most of the high officers in Solidarity were all in their late twenties and early thirties. Lech Wa??sa at the helm had been the old man at thirty-seven. It had been young men and women who’d fought the battle against communism. Youth definitely came with fire and fury, but it also came with bad judgment and inexperience. No one had known where it all was going, or how it would end. Solidarity seemed many times as lost as the nation. The government-controlled media blamed the union for everything, including food shortages. Hearing it so often, people began to believe the lies.
A slogan resonated across the nation.
The government takes care of laws, the party takes care of politics, and Solidarity takes care of the people.
But many times he’d wondered if that was true.
Few had been able to articulate what the nation wanted. But everyone knew what they didn’t want.
A distant, arbitrary, central authority full of repression.
Decades of mismanagement and corruption finally caught up with the communists. The Red Bourgeoisie benefited, while everyone else paid the price. The fools overborrowed and overspent, in the end having only enough money left to service the interest on billions in foreign debt. Eventually the economy crumbled, consumer goods vanished, and food went scarce, which allowed a wave of angry young people to mobilize, ten million strong, and bring a government to its knees.
He’d been part of that revolution.
Now he was the head of state.
But for how much longer.
Socialist? Anti-socialist?
It was a question asked many times in the 1980s, but one that disappeared in the 1990s and now no longer mattered.
Poland was free.
Or was it?
The pain in his chest felt like his heart was encased in barbed wire. Not a coronary. Just the past rearing its ugly head and reminding him that it still existed. He had to fix this.
This had to end.
And whatever was required to make that happen— He would do.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cotton was led into the building and up a flight of stairs to a second-floor apartment full of nondescript furniture, the kind bought by cheap landlords who expect the worst from tenants. He caught a strong smell of mustiness and wondered if anyone lived there. A familiar face waited inside, one that ushered him in with a casual sweep of a big paw.
“Mr. Malone. Good see you again.”
The feeling was not mutual. “What’s it been, three years? Do people still call you Ivan? Or does that change by the assignment?”
“That is my name.”
The last time he’d dealt with this devil they’d talked within the shadow of the Round Tower in Copenhagen, then again in Amsterdam, the situation dire. But the rough English laced with a heavy Russian accent remained, as did the man’s Cossack appearance—short, heavy-chested, with grayish-black hair. A splotchy, reddened skink of a face was still dominated by a broad nose and shadowed by a day-old beard. No slave to fashion, Ivan wore an ill-fitting suit that bulged at the waist.
Cotton gestured over his shoulder at the Two Amigos standing behind him. “Your people stole the Holy Blood?”
“How is Cassiopeia?”
This guy had loved to ignore questions the first time they’d met, too.
“As I tell you back then, quite the woman,” Ivan said. “If I am younger, a hundred pounds lighter?” The Russian patted his belly. “Who knows? But I am dreaming.” Ivan paused. “I hope, like last time, you appreciate this problem, too.”
“It’s the only reason I’m still standing here.”
His unspoken message seemed to be received. Get to the point.
Ivan chuckled. “You say same thing last time. Like then, you can overpower me. I am still fat, out of shape. Stupid, too. All Russians are, right?”
He had a moment of déjà vu. To Amsterdam. Similar sarcasm. A similar implied threat. Since the two guys behind him then, and now, were not fat and out of shape.