The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(76)
He noticed a laptop hot-wired from the wall. Surely the means whereby the high bid would have been authenticated and a wire transfer verified. He assumed that Reinhardt had killed DiGenti first, giving his co-conspirators an open run to everyone else. All of the staff had apparently been ordered from the premises, leaving everything overly vulnerable. Foolishness on Olivier’s part, but just add that to the list of improbable chances the man had taken.
He wondered, had Reinhardt come here first and found something? Olivier had said that only he knew the location. During the auction he’d also said DiGenti would lead the highest bidder to the information. Which made sense. A man like Olivier did not seem the type to do the heavy lifting. No. He’d pay for that service, and what other person besides the one man Olivier had specifically inquired about with Reinhardt.
Had this guy known the location?
Of course, he was speculating. Like the lawyer he used to be.
But it all seemed reasonable.
He opened DiGenti’s cell phone but it was password-protected, so he tossed it back on the body and decided to search the remainder of the castle to find Olivier’s room, which he did farther down the hall. It was elegantly furnished with a heavy wooden table, a four-poster bed, a carved chest, and a dark wood wardrobe filled with clothes that were clearly Olivier’s size. It all smelled of polish, soap, and fresh flowers. The afternoon sun threw in a reddish glow, exposing patches of dust on the furniture. Save for some toiletries and a couple of novels, there was nothing else. He left there and the second floor, exploring the ground level, eventually finding what had once been the castle’s library.
No books lined the shelves. A large piano occupied one corner, a few choice lithographs adorned the walls, a rug lay underfoot. French doors opened to a stone terrace. He searched for anything that may have been compromised. Curiously, there was a vacuum-seal machine, the kind used to preserve food, sitting on a small table. Not much littered the top of the Victorian-style desk except for three cell phones, all password-blocked. He wasn’t going to learn anything fast from those, so he walked back to the great hall.
How long would it be before the respective governments of the dead learned what had happened? Not long. A matter of hours. The response? That would be a challenge, considering the illegality of the entire venture.
He approached the big-screen television. Olivier lay nearby. He recalled the documents that had been displayed and glanced behind, notic ing a laptop connected to the screen. He scrolled through the five images displayed on the left side, which Olivier had shown the assemblage. Nothing else was loaded on the machine.
Then he noticed something.
Resting beneath the machine on a wooden shelf was a large manila envelope, like the ones that had been used during the auction. He slipped it free and tested its weight. Heavy. He tore off the flap and opened it to find an oversized coffee-table book.
Miasto w Soli: The City in Salt.
He only knew that since there was both English and Polish on the cover. Inside was the same, the text in both languages, all of the glossy colored images of the underground salt mine at Wieliczka. He thumbed through the pages and admired the extraordinary pictures.
On the end page was writing.
In blue ink.
9 Bobola
He thumbed back through the book to see if there was any more writing, but found none. On page 145 one of the full-page images caught his eye. Yellow-white crystals clung to a gaping fissure in the mine shaft wall. No caption identified the photo, but he found a legend at the end, the book’s author stating, Lower level IX. A fragment of roof of the upper grotto covered with large halite crystals. He found the piece in his pocket that Olivier had been carrying and compared it with the photo.
Identical.
He brought it to his lips and cautiously tested the outer surface with his tongue.
Salty.
The tantalizing fragments of a pattern formed in his brain and the math was anything but fuzzy.
This two plus two had to equal four.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Eli was glad to be away from the Russians. He and Munoz had ridden north with Ivan, back into Poland, with their mouths shut. His deal with them had worked out perfectly. They’d paid him five million euros to work his way into the auction, direct them to the location, then facilitate the elimination of the participants. The Russians wanted every delegate dead. They also wanted Olivier alive. But that had not worked out. The Poles had intervened. Malone had survived. Luckily, Ivan did not hold either of those unexpected occurrences against him.
Ivan deposited them near the main square in Kraków, surely on his way to the nearby Russian consulate and home soil. He wondered how long it would take for the carnage at Sturney Castle to be discovered. Surely the staff had returned by now. But perhaps the Poles had cleaned up the mess and disposed of the bodies. That would make more sense. The last thing they would want was public attention.
The time was approaching 3:00 P.M. and he was hungry.
But he also needed information.
He knew that Jonty had visited the nearby Wieliczka Salt Mine twice in the past forty-eight hours. Once to find the Pantry, but the other visit, the first one, had been all Olivier’s call. Munoz had told him about the torture with the electrical wire down the throat and how he’d finally coughed up a name. Ordinarily he’d be upset with such weakness. But here it told him that Jonty had returned to the mine after learning that a competitor was watching.