The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(63)
“And those sacrifices have not been forgotten. We celebrate them every September 27. The Day of the Polish Underground State. The Nazis and the Soviets are gone, Mirek. The enemies today are much different. Many times they are your friends. The world has changed. I’ll say it again. I need your help.”
“I want to show you something.”
Mirek rose and approached the shelves, removing one of the tall leather cases, from which he freed an old tome.
“This is the first volume of the Miraculorum Beate Virginia Monasterii Czestochoviensis, a record of 498 miracles attributed to Our Lady from 1402 to 1642.”
He was amazed. “They actually kept records?”
“Oh, yes. The Pauline monks were quite meticulous. They handwrote and documented each one of the miracles with facts about how it occurred, along with witnesses to the event. Two handwritten and five printed registries still exist that inventory the miracles over a four-hundred-year period. Whether those accounts are true is impossible to determine. All we know is that they exist.”
“I assume there’s a point to this.”
Mirek smiled. “Definitely. I, too, have a record.”
He waited.
“Of the Warsaw Protocol.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Cotton stared at the big screen, which displayed an image of a handwritten document, the page filled with a heavy masculine script, all in Polish. At the bottom was a signature, a bit smeared but readable.
Janusz Czajkowski.
Along with a date.
August 9, 1982.
“As you can see, in the lower left corner is a seal, one used by the S?u?ba Bezpieczeństwa from the 1970s until 1989 to certify its records. There are hundreds of thousands of these SB documents in existence with the same seal. Many are archived at the Institute of National Remembrance. The documents at issue today were kept by a former SB major, a man named Aleksy Dilecki, who recruited a young Solidarity activist, Janusz Czajkowski, as a government informant. You have a copy of this document in the stack of papers before you. Please take a closer look.”
Bunch was already reaching for the sheet.
“Do you read Polish?” he asked Bunch.
“Hell, no. If it’s not English, it’s not important to me.”
Why was he not surprised.
Languages were easy for him, thanks to an eidetic memory he inherited from his father’s side of the family. Unfortunately, Polish was not in his repertoire.
“For those of you not proficient,” Olivier said, “I have provided a translation in your native tongues on the next sheet.”
Cotton reached for that page ahead of Bunch.
Together they read the English.
Olivier pointed at the screen. “This document states that Janusz Czajkowski agrees to work as an informant and provide good and valuable information to the SB. You might ask, why was such a record created? Why not just keep everything informal? It was done to ensure the absolute loyalty of the informant. At the time, to be an informant was perhaps the worst thing a Pole could do. Releasing the signed document to the public would have been a way to disgrace the signer. Informants were terrified of being exposed, as there would be repercussions from both sides. So informants did what was expected of them, mostly as a way not to be exposed.” Olivier paused. “You can also see that Czajkowski was given a code name to be used in the future. And not all that flattering either. Baran. Sheep.”
Cotton studied the handwriting on the Polish copy.
“The signature has been authenticated,” Olivier said. “I employed three world-renowned experts who reviewed comparative material in the form of 142 documents that were either drafted or signed by Janusz Czajkowski in the time frame from 1987 to last year. These included, among others, his former identity card, driver’s license, proof of vehicle registration, documents from his time serving in Parliament, documents related to his purchase of land and a home, personnel files from two employers, pages stored in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland for the last five years, and passport files, all of which I obtained. The handwriting experts’ findings will be provided to you. They all agree, with no reservation, that the documents at issue here are all in Czajkowski’s hand.”
“And what if they are wrong,” one of the French called out. “And these are fakes.”
“I assure you, I have no intention of selling fakes. Or a pig in a poke, as Mr. Bunch put it earlier. If any of them are deemed a forgery or fake within fourteen days of this sale, I will return your money. After that, they are yours with no reservations. That should provide you plenty of time to authenticate. How much more of a guarantee do you want?”
“But you will already have our money?” one of the Iranians said.
“True. But all of you can hunt me down in a matter of hours. I recognize that fact and have given it the respect it is due.”
Smart play, Cotton thought. Address the issue of credibility up front and acknowledge that the bidders were in a superior possession. Everyone in the room seemed satisfied with both the concession and the condition.
“In the stack before you are more examples of the writings that will be for sale today. I will give you a few moments to study them. There is also an inventory sheet in your stack that provides an overview of all of what you will be buying.”
Cotton studied the list.