by Mike Maden
“Interesting. I was led to understand that Poland was hostile to immigrants.”
“EU propaganda. In Poland, we believe that a man should not eat if he does not work. Far too many so-called refugees showed up in Poland only to find our welfare payments were too small. Most of them picked up and moved on to Germany, where the benefits are more generous and the work requirements quite relaxed, if nonexistent.
“Besides the fact that Ukrainians are fellow Slavs and our languages are similar, they have proven themselves to be eager workers—better workers than many Poles, as it turns out. So you see, Poland welcomes anybody who wants to integrate into our society, speak our language, and work instead of collecting government benefits.”
Must have touched a sore spot, Jack thought. Changing the subject, he said, “Real estate is a definite possibility,” jotting the note down. “We also like construction.”
“There are many construction possibilities in residential and commercial real estate, but also in manufacturing and both public and private infrastructure. Take your pick.”
“And then there’s the risk.”
“Not much risk in this booming economy.” Zbyszko smiled.
“Still, there’s always some risk. And we have found that one way to mitigate risk is to partner with other companies. We find that investing, like banking, is all about long-term relationships.”
Zbyszko stole another glance at the letter on his desk. The American dollar was extraordinarily strong against the Polish zloty these days.
“Our legal team can help you with partnership contracts, and we have a department that specializes in mergers and acquisitions.”
“Perfect. There is, in fact, one relationship we want to explore. There is a company by the name of Baltic General Services. Are you familiar with it?”
“I’m not certain.”
“Christopher Gage is one of the owners and the CEO.”
The manager’s eyes narrowed.
“Christopher Gage is the CEO of Gage Group International and he’s a senior vice president of Gage Capital Partners, a twenty-seven-billion-dollar equity firm.”
“Oh, yes. I do recall now. Baltic General Services is a fine, reputable company.”
“I believe they arranged for a sizable loan from your bank to purchase at least one other business here in Warsaw.”
“Which one?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m here. I’d like to know before I make any offers to partner with them. I’m not interested in their financials or any other privileged information. I’m only interested in the companies they’ve purchased or partnered with, and what financial condition those firms are in.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that will be possible. We take a great deal of pride in protecting our customers’ privacy.”
“You must have done due diligence before you agreed to loan Baltic General Services the money to make their purchases. What kind of company it is, where they do business, are they profitable, and so forth. Just generalities. That’s the only information I’m asking for.”
“Why don’t you contact Baltic General Services directly?”
“I would prefer that they not know we’re making inquiries. If they know my firm is interested in a partnership, they might decide to raise the cost of doing business with them. If I know their financial condition before I make an offer, I’m in a better negotiating position. I’m sure you understand.”
“I’m sorry, it just isn’t possible.”
“Can you at least provide me with the name of the company that BGS just acquired here in Warsaw?”
Zbyszko leaned back in his chair, tapping the tips of his fingers together, thinking. Finally, “Let me speak with the regional vice president. Would you excuse me for just a moment?”
“We’ll be in the lobby.”
Jack left his folio and pen on the chair, then stood with Liliana and left the office as Zbyszko reached for his phone.
* * *
—
Jack and Liliana sat on one of the two lobby couches, out of earshot of the receptionist. Jack was working on his phone. Without looking up, he asked Liliana, “How do you think it went?”
“Putting that ten-million-dollar letter of intent on his desk was like setting a hook in a fish’s mouth.” She stifled a laugh. “It hardly seemed fair.”
Jack tucked his phone into his coat pocket. “Let’s hope it set deep enough that he can’t swim away.”
Liliana’s phone buzzed in her purse.
“Excuse me, Jack. I need to check my messages.”
“Sure. Go for it.”
Jack decided to do the same, but nothing new pulled up. He saw the receptionist answer the phone. A moment later, he called them over.
“Excuse me, Mr. Ryan? Mr. Zbyszko would like to see you now.”
* * *
—
The manager came out from behind his desk before the two of them could sit down.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan, but I spoke with my vice president and I’m afraid we won’t be able to help you with your query regarding Baltic General Services’ financial statements. Trust and privacy are our two most important assets.”
“I understand.”
“However, I have been authorized to give you the name of the companies that Baltic General Services has invested in through our bank branches.”
“‘Companies’? More than one?”
“Yes. One here, in Warsaw, one in Kraków, and one in Gdańsk. I will e-mail their particulars to you within the hour.”
“That is very kind of you.”
“Not at all. It’s the sort of thing we do for our friends.”
Jack picked the folio up off the chair, along with his pen. He left the letter on Zbyszko’s desk as a reminder and handed him his own business card. “I’m looking forward to working together in the very near future.”
“As am I.” Zbyszko beamed. They shook hands vigorously. “The card I gave you earlier has my direct office line and also my personal cell phone. Please don’t hesitate to call me if I can be of service.”
“Thank you. I certainly will.”
“Ms. Pilecki,” Zbyszko said, shaking her hand. “A pleasure.”
“And you.”
Jack and Liliana headed for the elevator under Zbyszko’s watchful eye.
31
KLATOVY DISTRICT, PLZEŇ REGION, CZECHIA (FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE CZECH REPUBLIC)
The hunting lodge stood on the banks of the lake on a few hundred privately owned acres of the Šumava, called the Böhmerwald by those living just over the border in Germany, and known by most other foreigners as the Bohemian Forest.
The fall air was already chill, but the leaves had yet to turn their full brilliant colors. “Still a good day for a stroll, eh, Rexi?” the old man said, patting his favorite hunting dog on the head, a bearded wirehaired Bohemian pointer.
The old man was tall and gaunt, his skin yellowed like parchment from decades of smoking dark, unfiltered Turkish tobaccos. Despite his age and near cadaverous appearance, his strong back remained ramrod straight and his grip like a blacksmith’s vise. He stood in the dark wooden hallway in a pair of well-worn leather hiking boots, oiled and soft, pulling on a heavy woolen hunting coat and felted Tyrolean hat.
His real name, Petr Hašek, was lost to history when he burned his own secret files as the last head of the assassination bureau of the ŠtB—State Security—of Communist Czechoslovakia. His mother was a Sudeten German, killed in the ethnic cleansing following the war, a fact hidden from the world by his Slavic father, an ardent Communist functionary, to protect his son.
Hašek was now known simply as The Czech, the head of the world’s most dangerous and influential criminal organization, the Iron Syndicate. Formed by himself and several other comrades from other security services of forme
r Soviet republics after the fall of the Iron Curtain, they transformed their skill sets in killing, intimidation, and intelligence into a vast criminal network spanning the globe. Among their number, they now also included many Western colleagues in active service.
Global crime was big business, and no criminal organization was bigger than the Iron Syndicate. Translated to GDP—gross domestic product—organized transnational crime would be the ninth-largest economy on the planet. Illicit drugs comprised nearly one-fifth of that total.
If the Iron Syndicate were a legitimate corporation—as many of its operations were—it would have been listed on the Fortune Global 500 somewhere between General Electric and the Bank of China. Its illicit operations centered primarily on the dirty business of heroin and methamphetamine production and distribution, as well as the cleaner and faster-growing area of cybercrimes, including cybertheft and cyberespionage.
The Czech was in a fine spirit this morning. The news from Berlin was excellent. The BKA had few resources to combat all of the European and Slavic Mafias, global terror networks, and industrial espionage operations targeting Germany, the richest country in Europe. The recent death of the BKA’s only undercover agent on the case against his organization in an apparent robbery would set the BKA’s investigation back for months if not indefinitely.
More important than the intel was its source, and the promise of virtually unlimited access to more.
But only under CHIBI’s terms. The Czech did not like being dictated to. His own technical department failed to locate this CHIBI fellow or determine his identity. He was invisible. But he was also omniscient, or so it seemed. It would be worth the price to acquire what he was selling, whatever that price might be. The Czech decided to send a representative to the London auction, as per CHIBI’s demands.
The Czech snatched up his favorite bird gun from its rack, a Merkel 303-E Luxus 12-gauge shotgun. Manufactured in the East German city of Suhl throughout the Cold War, the finely crafted weapon was highly sought after, even in the West, for its outstanding qualities as a firearm. This particular shotgun was also a piece of art, featuring deep-chiseled hunting scenes engraved on all of the metalwork and a finely checkered European walnut stock inlaid with ivory oak leaves and acorns.
The gun dog whined with anticipation at the sight of the Merkel, wagging its short, docked tail.
“Now, now. Patience, old friend.” The Czech laughed until the cell phone in his pants pocket vibrated. Frowning, he leaned his gun against the wall and pulled out his phone. He read the text:
Priority Target Alert: Subject #11281961
The Czech tapped the hyperlink. It took him to a series of CCTV surveillance videos of Jack Ryan, Jr., at Warsaw Chopin Airport and later in a silver Audi sedan as it navigated through Warsaw city streets. Each video was date- and time-stamped.
The Czech swore under his breath.
The Iron Syndicate tapped into government surveillance cameras all over the world, but it also maintained its own vast network of them. All images were captured, stored, and run through dedicated Iron Syndicate servers featuring facial-recognition software that was vastly superior to any commercially available system and rivaled those of the major security services. The Iron Syndicate deployed the ubiquitous surveillance capabilities as a means of gathering intelligence on potential targets and competitors and, more important, tracking threats to its criminal operations.
Threats such as Jack Ryan, Jr.
The Czech speed-dialed his number three, the director of operations. A Cambridge accent answered.
“Sir?”
“I just received your text. Why wasn’t I notified earlier?” The first time stamp was just over two hours old.
“The subject is difficult to identify.”
The Czech knew this to be true. All facial-recognition software was based on comparing existing facial records against new captures. Ryan’s image had been carefully scrubbed from social media by the American government, no doubt to protect the son of the President. Few photos of Ryan were publicly available, and the ones that were came from years past, when he was clean-shaven, thinner, and younger.
“Is the target still in Warsaw?”
“He is, indeed. However, I noticed on his file that he is a priority target but there is no kill or capture order. How would you like me to proceed?”
“Continue camera surveillance until otherwise notified. Understood?”
“Sir.”
The Czech rang off. Ryan’s sudden appearance on the Continent was troublesome. Because of young Ryan, The Czech had the unpleasant experience of meeting John Clark in the early morning a year prior, waking up in his own bed to the cold steel of Clark’s pistol barrel sticking into his ear. The Iron Syndicate had put out a hit on Jack Junior in order to satisfy the vengeance of the Iron Syndicate’s previous boss, Vladimir Vasilev. Young Ryan had killed Vasilev’s nephew, and Vasilev wanted his head in exchange.
Literally.
Clark offered him a deal. In exchange for Clark taking out Vasilev, The Czech would cancel the hit on Jack. “Not only will it make you the head honcho,” Clark had said, “you can avoid the .45-caliber headache waiting for you on the other end of my pistol.”
The Czech agreed.
But Clark further warned that if any harm ever came to Jack, he’d be back, and there would be hell to pay. The Czech had known of Clark’s reputation prior to meeting him that fateful morning—the former Navy SEAL and CIA operator was well known in Soviet bloc intelligence circles.
To his credit, Clark had lived up to his end of their bargain.
But loyalty was a virtue. The Czech prized it above all things, save his own self-preservation. Vasilev had been his boss, but also a brother-in-arms from the old days. Egomaniacal and murderous at the end, Vasilev’s death was necessary for the health of the Syndicate and personally advantageous for Hašek. But the idea that an American cowboy like Clark could murder a Syndicate colleague and escape without punishment was galling in the extreme.
So The Czech held to his bargain with Clark, at least for now. He wanted to keep track of Ryan because Clark would never be far behind him. Killing young Ryan would satisfy his old friend’s last wishes, and killing Clark would be scratching an itch that never left his mind. For now, tracking Ryan would be enough. In time, he was certain an opportunity to kill both men would present itself.
And The Czech was, if nothing else, a patient man.
He pushed his simmering rage out of his mind and turned his thoughts to the day ahead. He broke open a fresh box of shotgun shells and pocketed them, then retrieved his shotgun.
Nothing brightened his mood like the prospect of a good kill.
32
WARSAW, POLAND
Now where?” Liliana asked as she pressed the Audi’s start button.
Jack yawned like a hippo. “I could use a cup of coffee while we wait for Zbyszko’s e-mail.”
“I know just the place. It isn’t far from here. Fantastic coffee. And maybe you’d like a pączki or two.”
“If it’s sweet, I’m in.”
* * *
—
They entered the small, crowded café on the first floor of a remodeled building, shaking the rain off. The air smelled of roasted coffee and sweet baking bread. Jack’s mouth watered.
He noticed mostly young people, fashionably dressed and professional, much like Liliana. Bright laughter and animated Polish voices bounced off the tiled floors. A very social scene. The rain spattered the big picture window as new patrons came in behind them, shaking out their raincoats and umbrellas as they entered the tiny foyer.
“There’s a table,” Liliana said, threading her way across the jam-packed floor.
Jack pointed at a door near the front counter. “I gotta make a pit stop.” He pulled a credit card out of his wallet. “Go ahead and order for us.”
L
iliana waved off the card with a friendly grimace. “It’s on me. You’re my guest.”
“The next one’s mine, or else.”
“Or else what?”
“A crisis in Polish–American relations,” Jack said with a wink.
Liliana set her things down at the table, then headed for the counter, while Jack hit the door with a circle and a triangle.
Inside the unisex bathroom was a single toilet, brand-new, along with the sink, tiles, and everything else. Very clean and tidy. But Jack wasn’t here for a remodeling tour.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a short cable with a lightning connector on one end and a 3.5-millimeter audio jack on the other. He fetched out his smartphone and his ballpoint pen and connected them via the cable, then tapped on the audio software app on his phone. Written by Gavin Biery, Hendley Associates’ IT director and The Campus’s electronics hacker wizard, the audio program instantly detected the file stored on the digital recorder pen he’d used in Zbyszko’s office and began downloading it.
The progress bar reported five minutes remaining. After the audio file downloaded, the program would automatically run through a voice-to-text program and then, if a language other than English was detected, the document would be automatically translated.
The whole setup was Gavin’s idea, and he told Jack in the office just before he left for the airport, “Sometimes old-school is best.” But the tech guru smiled, handing him some other equipment. “On the other hand, the new stuff is pretty cool, too.”
A sharp knock on the door told him his alone time was up.
Jack pocketed everything and let Gavin’s magic do its stuff automatically. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands with the minty soap just to keep the ruse up.
