The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(38)

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 Wis?a, 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?”