The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(74)

“Please excuse us,” he said to Zima.

The head of the BOR nodded and left the suite.

“Make sure we’re not disturbed,” his wife added.

This was not going to be good. “Why are you here, Anna?”

“That was going to be my first question to you.”

He wondered how much she knew. Or was this a fishing expedition?

She settled herself onto the sofa. She’d dressed for the occasion in an expensive Chanel suit. Pearl gray. Little jewelry. Low heels. Perfect for the First Lady of the nation.

“I’m told you’ve been here two days, after canceling appointments and clearing your schedule. Then I’m told your girlfriend stayed here last night.”

No surprise she would know any of that. She had a BOR security detail, too, and those agents surely talked to one another.

“I want to know what’s going on,” she said.

“I’m dealing with the coming election.”

She laughed. “And I’m the Virgin Mary. Come now, Janusz, I came for answers.” She paused. “Truthful answers. Something unusual is happening.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I know you.”

Which was a problem. Hard to fool somebody who’s been there nearly half your life. So he decided not to even try. “The Warsaw Protocol has come back to haunt us.”

He’d told her the truth a long time ago, back when they were more like husband and wife.

“That sorry excuse for a human being, Dilecki, kept documents on me. How? Why? I have no idea. I only know that he did and they still exist.”

“And your girlfriend is trying to retrieve them?”

He nodded. “An effort is being made.”

“How wonderful that you have her in this time of need.”

He caught the sarcasm and wondered about jealousy. That emotion had long left them both. Part of their arrangement.

“This has international implications,” he said. “The security of this nation is at risk. If a foreign government obtains that information, it could be used against me. I may be forced to resign or, worse, do what they want. I don’t want to do either of those.”

She appraised him with a gaze he knew all too well. “It’s that bad?”

He nodded. “You know what I did back then. You know what we all did.”

“I know what you told me.”

He was shocked at her reservations. “Am I to understand that you think I was an informant for the communists? That I sold out my fellow citizens? That I took their filthy money to help them keep us under their thumb? Do you really believe that?”

Her pale-blue eyes cast one of her trademark stares. “You and I both know what you did, Janusz. How many died?”

He’d thought about the past a lot lately. “Forty-six.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s how many of my recruits I know were killed.”

She sat up. “Now, that’s new information. All these years and you never mentioned how many actually paid the price.”

All were men and women who willingly took money from the SB in return for willingly providing information on their family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances to the Security Service. The worst possible traitors. No one forced them to do a thing. No one coerced them. They had not been beaten or forced to crawl across a prison floor.

So what he and a few others had done was easy.

Find active recruits of the SB who were not working willingly. Who had been forced to spy. Then turn them into double agents and feed the government controlled information. Just enough of a spark of truth to keep the informants out of trouble and the SB busy chasing shadows.

And it worked.

Big time.

Eventually, they took it to the next level. Feeding more strategic and damaging information, designed to totally discredit some of those willing informants and make the SB question their loyalty. Enough that, in some cases, the SB permanently eliminated those informants.

Forty-six, that he knew about.

“Every one of those people deserved their fates,” he said. “They sold us all out for greed. I don’t regret a single one of those deaths.”

“I doubt the Polish electorate will see it the same way,” Anna noted. “Hence the reason you’re here, right?”

“Precisely. Of course, no one who matters will acknowledge the Warsaw Protocol ever existed, much less the good it did. The end result will be that I will be branded a traitor. A spy for the communists. I will take the fall for everyone.”

“Father Hacia was not cooperative?”

“Not at all. And you are well informed.”

“I learned a long time ago to stay at least one step ahead of you, Janusz. Two, preferably.”

He’d once loved this woman, and a small part of him still did. She understood him like no one else, not even Sonia. He’d decided to come to Kraków on an impulse, with only the vaguest idea of what he expected to accomplish. He’d flown south from Warsaw in a cold sweat, chewing at his lip, all thoughts frozen in the past. He’d hoped that, once here, he might figure it all out. A futile hope, for sure, as he remained in a deep turmoil. But he imagined his wife found herself in a similar quandary.

“This is the most serious threat we’ve ever faced. My political career could be over.” He pointed. “Your career will be over.”