The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(49)

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 S?u?ba 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 Wa??sa. He had a past that he did not want revealed. He tried hard to deny and disclaim 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 Wa??sa. 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.”