Department 18 [02] Night Souls

by Maynard Sims

  Adamczyk swallowed the last of his rapidly cooling tea. “Anything you can do…” he said, before lapsing into a depressed silence.

  “Do you have a photograph of Karolina?”

  Adamczyk nodded. From the inside pocket of his jacket, he produced a six-by-four-inch glossy color photo and handed it to Jacek.

  Jacek stared at it for a long moment. The girl who’d been captured by the camera’s lens was pretty: honey-colored almond-shaped eyes; shoulder-length black hair cut into an indifferent, unflattering style; and a generous mouth set in a shy smile.

  It was a heart-wrenching moment for him. One day he’d have to tell Cyril Adamczyk that it was very unlikely he would ever see his daughter again; never see her honey eyes or her full-lipped smile.

  The box files sitting on the couch next to Adamczyk were filled to overflowing with similar photographs and similar stories. So far only a small percentage of those missing had been reunited with their parents, but there was every reason to believe that Karolina Adamczyk would never be found. In more than half of the cases he had so far documented, the name Wladyslaw Kaminski had been mentioned in circumstances almost identical to the Adamczyk’s. It was becoming a depressingly familiar scenario.

  He swallowed the last of his vodka and poured himself another. His hand shook slightly as it tilted the bottle. Perhaps he should just get it over with now; kill the hope before it had time to flourish. He looked at Adamczyk bleakly. “Mr. Adamczyk…Cyril…”

  Adamczyk seemed to sense what might be coming and reared up in his seat. “No! No! I refuse to give up. If it’s a question of money…Well, I have money. Enough to pay for your time and your expenses.”

  “It’s not a question of money. It’s a question of probability. I doubt Karolina’s even in Poland now. She’ll be in the United States, Britain, or even Scandinavia, that’s if she’s still alive.”

  “NO!” The word seemed to be dredged up from Adamczyk’s very soul. It was a wail, a primal scream. “You must help me! You must…” The words trailed off into a whimper, and suddenly he was sobbing, hands clasped over his face, shoulders heaving.

  Jacek let him cry himself out. “I’ll do what I can,” he said wearily, slumping in his seat. “But I make no promises.”

  A glimmer of hope appeared in Adamczyk’s red-rimmed eyes. “Pike told me you were a good man. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” He dabbed at his eyes with a white linen handkerchief.

  “Two more questions,” Jacek said.

  “Anything.”

  “Why did you follow me into the building instead of approaching me when I got out of my car?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I understand. I didn’t follow you. I got off the bus and came straight here. I didn’t see you until you opened the door to me.” The look of incomprehension in Adamczyk’s eyes was genuine enough.

  Jacek shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You said two questions.”

  “Who is Jason Pike?”

  “He came to see Olga and me a week ago. He’d heard about Karolina and said he wanted to help. He listened while we told him what we knew, and then he gave me a card with your name and address printed on it. He said to come and see you, that you had experience in these matters.”

  “Describe him,” Jacek said.

  “Very tall, black. As I said, possibly American…the accent certainly was. A big, powerful-looking man. Oh, and his face…he had tribal markings, vivid scars on his cheeks.”

  “Scars? Scarification?”

  “Yes, in certain parts of Africa they still use tribal markings as a distinction. Many do it as a rite of passage into adulthood, and some believe doing it on newborn children helps prevents illness. Olga seemed quite scared of him at first, but gradually, as he spoke to us, she realized that he had great compassion. Olga kissed him when he went, and I assure you, Mr. Czerwinski, my wife is not prone to displays of affection with total strangers.”

  “Okay,” Jacek said. “That will be all for now.” He walked to the door and opened it. “I’ve got to get on,” he said. “Write your telephone number on the back of the photograph and leave it with me. I’ll be in touch when I have any news.”

  “And your fee?” Cyril Adamczyk said as he scribbled his number down.

  “Only payable if I get a positive result.”

  Adamczyk nodded, handed Jacek the photograph and shook his hand. “I’ll wait to hear from you,” he said, the hope still chiming in his voice like a bell.

  The door closed, and Jacek listened to the receding footfalls along the hall. Then he opened one of the box files, dropped the photograph on top of the bulging folders, and closed the lid.

  The bottle of vodka was nearly empty. He put it to his lips and drained it, questions tumbling over and over in his mind. Who had broken into his apartment and trashed it? Who the hell was Jason Pike and why had he told Adamczyk to bring his problems here? And, if it wasn’t Adamczyk following him earlier, who was it?

  He slid open the door to the small balcony and breathed in the morning air. There was a hint of jasmine on the warm breeze that drifted across from the gardens overlooked by the apartment building. It reminded him of his childhood, time spent at his grandmother’s in a small village just outside Gdansk. Happier times.

  He pushed the memories to the back of his mind. He had no time for nostalgia. Life for him was the here and now, and a progression toward a brighter future. If he allowed himself to dwell on the past, he’d go mad.

  Chapter Ten

  30 St. Mary Axe, London, England

  The couple pushed through the heavy glass doors of the Gherkin and walked briskly across the marble floor of the lobby to the reception desk. “My name is John Holly,” the man said. “This is Alice Spur. We’re here to see Mr. Goldberg.”

  The receptionist looked up at them and smiled, picked up a clipboard from the desk and checked their name against those listed there. He looked up at them again, nodded, and slid the clipboard across the desk. “Sign and print your names please, Mr. Holly,” he said, then reached into the desk drawer and took out two laminated visitor passes, pushing those across the desk as well. “Kindly wear those at all times while you’re in the building, sir,” he said. “Room 319. Third floor. The elevators are over there.”

  Holly took the passes and handed one to Alice, who clipped it to the lapel of her jacket. He thanked the receptionist and, taking Alice’s arm, steered her toward the elevator.

  The building was a marvel of marble, glass, and tubular steel; the elevators, simple glass bubbles that rose from the ground floor to the atrium above. Alice was unimpressed. To her the place had all the appeal of a laboratory, and she had seen enough of those to last a lifetime.

  The elevator rose to the third floor. The doors slid open silently, and they stepped out into a plush, brightly lit corridor. Light was obviously a design conceit; it was like being trapped inside a two hundred-watt bulb.

  30 St. Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin and the Swiss Re Building, is a skyscraper in the financial district of central London with an extremely distinctive design. The building is on the site of the former Baltic Exchange building. On April 10, 1992, the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Exchange, severely damaging the historic Exchange building and neighboring structures. The new building was built in December 2003 and opened on April 28, 2004. Five hundred ninety-one feet tall, with forty floors. Despite its overall curved glass shape, there is only one piece of curved glass on the building—the lens-shaped cap at the very top.

  Room 319 was two-thirds along, a simple brown wood door with the numbers picked out in chrome. At the side of the door was an intercom and above the doorframe a discreet camera. Holly pressed the button on the intercom and stared up into the lens.

  A crackly voice said, “Yes?”

  “It’s John Holly.”

  Silence was followed by an electronic buzz and the door opened an inch. Holly pushed it wider and they found themselves in a small, pl
ain anteroom with another door leading off from it. The anteroom was decorated with pictures of diamonds and precious stones. Taking up half a wall was a poster advertising the Tucson Gem Fair 1998, depicting a huge topaz crystal surrounded by half a dozen exquisitely cut stones. Diamond and precious stone dealing was how Saul Goldberg made his legitimate money. If his clients only knew the truth. Holly smiled and closed the main door and, as it clicked shut, the secondary door opened.

  The office they entered was small and cramped. A floor-to-ceiling safe, three filing cabinets, and a large oak desk took up most of the floor space. On the desk was a phone, a blotter, and a set of futuristic-looking weighing scales. Behind the desk sat a very old man, almost swallowed by a brown leather chair. As Holly opened the door, the man looked up and stared at them through the thick half-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his hooked nose. As they took a step into the room, he reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver. He pointed it at them.

  “Is that really necessary, Saul?” Holly said.

  The old man cleared his throat. It sounded like a crocodile breathing. “I’m eighty-three years old,” he said in the same crackly voice they’d heard through the intercom. “I’ve lived this long by taking precautions. This”—he gestured to the gun with his free hand—“is a precaution.”

  They sat down on the two tubular steel-and-leather chairs on their side of the desk. The gun followed their movements, shaking a little but never letting them out of its sight.

  “I didn’t come here to harm you, Saul,” Holly said.

  “So you say,” Goldberg said, something like amusement in his eyes.

  “Lower the gun. Firearms make me nervous.”

  “Ha!” It was a laugh of sorts. “You and your kind make me nervous. Say what you’ve come here to say, then get out.”

  Alice took a breath; she’d never been held at gunpoint before and she found the experience terrifying, especially the way Goldberg’s palsied hand shook. She wondered how sensitive the trigger was. Holly had warned her that Saul Goldberg could be a cantankerous old bastard. Now she believed him. She glanced round at John, whose face betrayed nothing. If anything, there was a slight smile on his lips.

  “Okay,” Holly said. “I’m concerned about the supply line. We were due a shipment last month, which never materialized, and the shipment before that was fifty percent down.”

  Saul Goldberg shrugged. “So?”

  “I thought we had an agreement. We have a lot of angry customers demanding to know what’s going on. Our restaurants are half empty and we’re running out of product. I calculate another month and our stocks will be so depleted our customers will be looking elsewhere for satisfaction, and we both know what that means.”

  “Tell me anyway,” Goldberg said.

  Alice watched Holly’s back stiffen slightly as the muscles bunched. The old man was playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse, trying to humiliate Holly in front of her. She hoped he would live to regret it.

  “The whole idea of bringing untraceables into the country was to avoid the situation we are now facing,” Holly continued smoothly, not a sign of the irritation he must have been feeling evident in his voice. “If our patrons are forced to look elsewhere for sustenance, it will create havoc.”

  “You’re worried that they will have to go out onto the streets and start hunting again.”

  “I’m concerned that might be the outcome. And you know as well as I do that it will inevitably lead to discovery.”

  Saul Goldberg leaned back in his seat, the revolver poised. “I made that agreement with your father a long, long time ago. When Abe died, the deal died with him. But let me reassure you, your fears of discovery are groundless.”

  “Then why has the supply stopped?”

  Goldberg grinned. He was enjoying this. “It hasn’t. In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s increased. We have now established a base in South Africa, and as such have access to the entire African continent. A limitless supply.”

  Holly frowned. “I don’t understand, Saul. If you’re still bringing in untraceables, what’s happening to them? Where are they goi—” And suddenly understanding dawned on him. “You’re supplying someone else?” he said, disbelief in his voice.

  Saul Goldberg inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “Who?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say. What I will say, though, is this: I always thought that your father was a man of honor. Unfortunately, I was proved to be mistaken in that belief. The research he embarked upon in his later years—the research I believe you are continuing—will change things. I have it on very good authority that this research, if successful, is going to upset the status quo. It will put me out of business. And this is not just my concern. There are others who, unlike you, are not looking for change, others who like things just the way they are. I’m just one of them.”

  Holly looked at him steadily. “Then there’s no way I’m going to get you to change your mind, is there?”

  “No. No there isn’t.”

  “Then there’s only one thing left to do,” he said, getting to his feet.

  The next movement he made was faster than Saul Goldberg’s arthritic trigger finger. The gun was swept from the old man’s grasp and went clattering across the desk, landing with a metallic thud on the vinyl-tiled floor. Holly bent and picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. “I don’t like being threatened, Saul, especially by a treacherous little maggot like you. The question is, what am I going to do? I should really make an example of you, to dissuade others from following your lead.”

  Goldberg sat like a startled rabbit, staring up myopically at Holly. The color had drained from his face, and he was shaking. His eyes met Alice’s. There was a plea for help there.

  “John. Leave it,” she said.

  Holly glanced at her, something close to contempt in his eyes.

  Goldberg’s hand was inching along under the desk, reaching for the button that, when pushed, would bring the floor’s security detail running. They had pass keys for the doors. They could liberate him within seconds. His finger found the button and pressed it.

  “So what would you like me to do with him?” Holly said to Alice.

  “Let’s just go,” she said.

  Holly shook his head slightly, and then took a step toward the door. “Very well,” he said. “Come on.” He turned to Goldberg and leaned in close. In something approaching a whisper he said, “You’ll be hearing from me.” Then as almost an afterthought, “Sooner than you think.”

  “What does that mean?” Goldberg said.

  Holly gave him a harsh smile. “Use your imagination,” he said and slipped from the office, Alice half a step behind him. They were three paces along the corridor when two uniformed men ran past them and started unlocking the door to room 319. The elevator doors opened as soon as Holly touched the button.

  Alice stepped inside, but Holly hung back. He reached into his pocket and produced his car keys, handing them to her. “Go back to the car and wait for me,” he said,

  Panic flared in her eyes. “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “Go back to the car,” Holly said firmly. “I’ll join you shortly.”

  The doors were closing. “John…” she said, and then the doors closed. She leaned against the wall of the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor. There was nothing she could do. John was too stubborn, too strong.

  Within two minutes she was out of the Gherkin building and walking along Cheapside toward Gresham Street, where John Holly had parked the car.

  Chapter Eleven

  The nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating.

  —Proverb

  Department 18 Headquarters, Whitehall, London, England

  Simon Crozier sat at his desk drinking his fifth cup of coffee of the day. The caffeine was making him twitchy, but he needed the hit; he’d been awake for much of the previous night. There was a
knock on his door, and Martin Impey came into his office and dropped a file onto the table.

  For a Georgian building in the center of London’s Whitehall area, the office was loudly modern. There was the ambiance of a newly opened and longing to be fashionable restaurant about it. Though discreetly set on the desk was all the apparatus of a high-powered executive. Which in many ways was exactly what Crozier was. Few chief executives could boast an intellect to equal Crozier’s sharp and well-ordered mind.

  “That’s everything I’ve been able to find on the Hollys so far,” Martin said. “Quite a family.”

  Crozier pulled the file toward him, flipped it open, and started leafing through it. “How comprehensive is this?” he said, not looking up.

  Martin pulled up a chair and sat down opposite his boss. “As far as I can see, it contains everything written about them that’s available to the public. Of course, I’ve edited it down to get rid of duplications, but it’s as complete as we can get, given the time you’ve allowed us to compile it.” There was an edge to his voice. Simon Crozier expected miracles sometimes, and this was no exception. A summons to Crozier’s office as soon he arrived this morning and a barked request.

  Martin was thirty-nine and had been with the department for the best part of ten years. He was a small, energetic man who reminded people of a Jack Russell terrier. Fiercely intelligent and possessed of a cutting wit that more than compensated for his lack of physical stature, he was one of the most popular members of the department. His brown eyes always seemed to be smiling, as if he had looked at the world and decided it was one huge joke, but today he seemed unusually tired. His wife had recently given birth to their first child and midnight feeds and disrupted sleep patterns were taking their toll.