The Warsaw Protocol: A Novel(85)

A call had come a few moments ago to Sonia’s phone telling her that the car ferrying Cotton Malone and Stephanie Nelle was now parked in a lot adjacent to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. A strange place for two American intelligence officers to head. They were not tourists. He’d been down in the mine several times over the years for concerts and ceremonies. The whole place cast a surreal air, like being inside a shopping mall a hundred meters below earth. Still, the tourist areas were but a tiny part of the massive complex. He wondered if there was more hidden down there than new salt deposits.

“Why are they there?” he muttered.

Sonia drove the car she’d been using all day. He sat in the passenger seat, his tie and suit jacket gone, the collar to his white shirt open, his sleeves rolled up.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It is peculiar.”

“It has to relate to the Russians. What Fox said. The information is still in play, and somehow Malone got ahead of them.”

“Or maybe just even with them.”

She kept speeding down the highway, headed toward the salt mine. He imagined himself no longer president, his second term over, free of all political and personal entanglements, able to do as he pleased.

That would be a first.

His entire life had been one responsibility after another, working his way up until he achieved the pinnacle of Polish success. He recognized that the presidency was in many ways more ceremonial than practical, but there were areas where he possessed true power. One of those was in approving agreements with foreign governments.

This would be so much more difficult if Parliament had the final say. Good luck getting them to agree on anything. Not much had changed in the three centuries since the liberum veto was finally abolished. True, everything no longer had to be unanimous, but achieving a simple majority vote could prove equally vexing.

I freely forbid.

Poles took that declaration to heart—both then and now.

Thankfully, the decision to place missiles on Polish soil was his alone. There would be a great many within Parliament who would look favorably on an increased American presence, as was evident years ago when the first effort was abandoned. But there were others who would resent any and all foreign interference. He suspected they would be in the majority, though not by much. The missiles would be viewed as a slap to Moscow—there was no other way to view it—and that had never been taken kindly by Poland’s neighbor to the east. He doubted anyone in Europe or America would ever go to war to protect an independent Poland. NATO or no NATO. Poland had always been expendable.

And would remain so.

“This all rests in our hands,” he said in barely a whisper. “We can’t allow the Russians to get that information.”

“I won’t,” Sonia declared.

Her phone vibrated and she answered the call, which lasted only a few seconds before she ended it. “They’re headed into the mine. We need to delay them.”

He found his own cell phone and called Zima, explaining what he wanted. “Delay, but don’t stop them. We need another fifteen minutes.”

No surprise that Zima said he could handle it.

“What are we going to do, once there?” he asked her, after ending the call.

“Try to stay close without them noticing.”

He glanced down at his left hand and the ring he’d worn for decades, fashioned by a long-dead Warsaw jeweler. Not gold, as that was a rare commodity in Soviet-controlled Poland and remained so in the years thereafter. Instead pewter had sufficed in a simple statement of patriotism.



Back in the 10th century, Boles?aw the Brave had been the first to use the white, single-headed eagle as the symbol of the king. He was also the first to call the area Polona, after a local tribe that had occupied the land for a millennium. The display of the eagle was now mandated by the Polish Constitution in precise terms. White, upon a red field. The crown, eagle’s beak and talons, gold. The wings and legs outstretched, its head angled to the right.

He’d worn the ring every day for the past thirty years.

A reminder of his life’s dedication.

But for the first time in a long while he was afraid. Not since that day in Mokotów Prison had he felt so helpless. Only after, when he first met Mirek Hacia and realized that he actually had a choice, had his anxiety waned.

Here was the same.

There were choices.

But none seemed good.





CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE


Cotton zipped up the green coveralls that he’d donned over his clothes. He and Stephanie were inside a locker room, part of a building that accommodated one of the shafts used only by the miners. The tourist shaft was in another building, still busy ferrying visitors up and down. Another set of elevators was located farther away, where special groups for a miner’s experience made their way below. Their guide had avoided those hot spots and led them to this employees-only area. The gun from the castle was now safely tucked at his waist beneath the coveralls. He assumed bringing weapons into the mine was not allowed, so he’d kept its presence to himself. But after what happened on the road, he was not about to leave it up here.

“Not much in the way of fashion,” he said to Stephanie. “But functional.”

She donned her helmet with light. “We look like the Mario Brothers.”

He grinned.

That they did.