Services after all. The bad news was that even though the high-gain microphone was able to pick up pieces of the vice president’s conversation—he was practically shouting on the other end—the translation had suffered as a result.
Jack frowned as he read. The sentences weren’t making a ton of sense. But at least the program was able to pick out the most important reference: Christopher Gage.
“Is that Zbyszko’s e-mail?”
Jack kept reading. “Huh? Uh, no. It’s a message from work.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“It seems to me there is more to your investigation than you are telling me.”
Jack glanced up at her. Bright woman, Jack thought. It won’t be easy keeping her in the dark. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m a federal agent currently working two different active criminal cases, but for some reason my job for the next week is to drive you around Poland in order to help you and your firm to make an investment decision. That makes no sense to me.”
“What did your boss say?”
“You don’t speak any Polish, so you need me for translation and, if necessary, personal protection.”
“Sounds about right.”
“My uncle in Chicago always used to say, ‘Never kid a kidder.’”
“My dad says the same thing, only he uses a different word than ‘kid.’ So here’s the straight dope: Mr. Gage might be weaving a very tangled financial web. I’m just trying to figure out how big and bad that web is. Okay?”
“Okay.”
They sat in silence for a moment, finishing their tea and coffee, retreating to neutral corners.
Jack watched a Polish nun march past the plate-glass window beneath a bright umbrella. She couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. He’d seen several young nuns and priests already. Not at all like home.
Just then, the e-mail from Zbyszko they’d been waiting for slid across his screen.
“Speak of the devil. Zbyszko’s e-mail just arrived. I’ll send it to you.” Jack forwarded it to her phone.
She opened it. “With traffic, this location is twenty, maybe thirty, minutes from here.”
“I’d like to check it out.” Jack pocketed his phone. “Are we good?”
Liliana’s eyes narrowed. He could see the wheels turning behind them.
“Yes, we’re good.” She added, “For now.”
“Then how about we go find this place?”
33
Jack tracked their progress on his smartphone. He liked to know where he was and where he was headed at all times, not just out of his abundant natural curiosity, but for tactical reasons. He could still hear Clark’s voice hammering in his head from training early on: “Kid, the best way I know to avoid eating a shit sandwich with all the fixins is to avoid the shit sandwich shop altogether.”
The morning rush-hour traffic had thinned but not entirely ended. They were heading in the opposite direction, out of the city center and back toward Warsaw Chopin Airport, south and west of the city proper.
Jack’s only concern at the moment was the tension filling the car. Liliana’s suspicions had clearly been raised. He almost wondered if it would be better to ditch her and try to figure this all out by himself. He couldn’t afford to have her find out what he was really up to. But then again, she was proving to be a real asset.
She was also darn easy on the eyes.
He needed to break the ice.
“On the ride to the hotel you said you went to Loyola Chicago. That’s a big Jesuit school.”
“Yes, it is. But, of course, I’m Catholic.”
“Poland is the most Catholic country in Europe, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “Are you Catholic?”
“Yes, I am,” though he didn’t say it with much conviction. It wasn’t like he was practicing much these days, but it was still part of his heritage, just like the guilt he now felt for falling short in that area of his life. “My whole family.”
“Then you will understand the constant references to Pope John Paul the Second you will find here. Especially in Kraków. We are very proud of him and what he did for our country and the whole world.”
“I was just a toddler when he was around, but my folks talked about him all the time. He was a great man. One of the brightest lights of the twentieth century.”
“Yes, he was. The first Polish pope. He helped end Communism in Europe by supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland, where the first free elections behind the Iron Curtain were held. It wasn’t long after until the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union finally collapsed.”