Michael Usher sat in a rented Opel and sipped coffee. The embassy meeting had ended better than he had hoped. Everyone was still calling the missing castor train a GPS snafu.
The plan to recruit Fritzi Jordan as an agent was just plain harebrained. She was such an odd duck that even the ATTF’s über-recruiter, Ray Bliss, would have trouble working his usual magic. That would give Usher what he needed most, time to straighten things out.
He watched Jan Pawlowski eat breakfast at the sidewalk café across the street from where the Opel was parked. He wasn’t crazy enough to hijack a train full of recycled plutonium was he? No. He wouldn’t have been talking like that if he knew a castor train had actually gone missing. Look at how calm he was… holding his fancy china cup by the handle, pinky in the air, watching tourists stroll by. Would he be so calm, if he had just hijacked a train? That spy satellite intercept was nothing. It had merely caught him at his bullshitting best, trying to impress the local lowlife. But the NSA intercept confirmed that it was time to cut him loose.
First though, Usher had to make sure Pawlowski took the evidence of Meitner-Poland’s inadequate security to the press. Then everything else would fall into place, and whether or not Ray Bliss succeeded in recruiting Jordan wouldn’t matter.
The United States had messed up big time in not anticipating the economic collapse of the Soviet satellite states. The Fall of the Berlin Wall had tumbled socialist planned economies like a row of dominoes, and what had the world’s greatest economy done in response?
Nothing. The lack of foresight, the total lack of planning… a Marshall Plan for redeveloping all those failed economies should have been waiting in the wings.
Now, 30 years later, it was almost too late. Russia had rediscovered its natural resources and the power oil and gas wielded in an energy-starved world; and the western Europeans, especially the Germans, were buying up everything. America was being left out in the cold.
That fuck-up wasn’t going to continue on Usher’s watch.
The first step in stopping it was Jan Pawlowski. He had proved useful since Usher first sent him to buy the beer for the student intern party at Freedom Commons, the Washington, DC think tank for Eastern European Studies. Pawlowski had come far since then. He had a dodgy underside that proved useful and could be sent into a ticklish situation and trusted to keep his mouth shut.
But that stuff with the train. Even if it was all BS, that was going too far. And why was he insisting on this meeting? Come yourself, Mike. To Prague. It will be worth your while. I promise.
Usher didn’t like it. If an old National Security Agency contact hadn’t tipped him… the CIA, the FBI, even the ATTF could be tailing Pawlowski already.
Usher had one last job for Pawlowski. Then he would cut him loose for good.
He watched Pawlowski refold his Financial Times to the business section, trying to impress the locals with his English. He probably didn’t understand half of what he was reading with his two-bit MBA in Sports Management. Infuriating, how he acted like he had all morning, when their meet was in 30, no, Usher rechecked his watch, make that 27 minutes.
One more job. Pawlowski would make sure Meitner-Poland’s financing fell through, and Usher’s company, Blue Sky, would become the America’s Preferred Provider in Poland.
It was a good deal. Blue Sky would make great things happen for Poland. Thirty years after the 1989 revolutions and Polish air was still next to unbreathable, and practically no sewage was being treated. Rebuilding Poland’s infrastructure, landfilling its garbage, and building modern highways and toll collection systems would grow Blue Sky into a multinational to rival the likes of Halliburton and KBR, and that would drop a tidy bundle into Michael Usher’s own bank accounts.
A well-deserved bundle, as Pawlowski’s demonstration of Meitner’s inadequate security was about to show the world. Usher had arranged for him to discover low-level nuclear sludge from an atomic power reactor in Lithuania. It was only radioactive effluent, not the stuff that appealed to terrorists, but the point would be made. It had been lying in Meitner’s new landfill in western Poland for over a week now, and still no security alarms had been tripped.
How long could it take Pawlowski to photograph a bunch of barrels and go to the press? By now photos of Meitner’s ‘gross disregard for the Polish environment’ should be plastering the tabloids, but there had been nothing.
Instead Pawlowski was playing games. First the NSA intercept… hijacking a castor train, for crying out loud… then, ‘Come yourself, Mike. To Prague.’
The barrels had been in the landfill for eight days now. That was safe, wasn’t it?
Yes, yes. The engineer Usher had sent to plant the barrels had assured him that cooling ponds were overkill for sludge, not needed for the few days it took to alert the press.
Pawlowski drained his coffee, flicked euros onto the table, and stood.
At last.
Usher eased his car into traffic.
Pawlowski dodged brightly-dressed shoppers on Wenceslaus Square. Tourists. Czech women were too practical to wear whites and pastels, but that would change once Blue Sky rebuilt Prague’s antiquated water supply network and modern washers and dryers could be hooked up.
Pawlowski slowed next to sidewalk scaffolding and lit a cigarette. Masons balancing stucco trays on shoulders climbed past him to repair a crumbling third-story art nouveau façade.
He flicked his butt onto the sidewalk and entered an instrument shop.
Usher could see him through the window, peering into the f-holes of a shiny brown violin like a connoisseur. As if he had ever played anything except an MP3 player.
Outside again, Pawlowski flirted with a street vendor, bought a flower for his lapel, and entered a park shaded by yellow-leaved linden trees.
Usher drove into the parking lot and watched.
A mother and son sailed a radio-controlled boat across an artificial pond. Two teenagers played ping-pong at an outdoor table, and three old women loaded down with shopping bags gossiped next to the fountain. No one seemed interested in Pawlowski.
He got out of the car and followed the crushed brick path to the bench where Pawlowski leafed through his Times.
Cool, calm and collected now, Mike. Don’t underestimate him. He outsmarted a lot of sharp operators with his boxing and gambling scams. Everyone had their suspicions, but no one ever proved a thing, and now he’s in the Polish government, more or less legit.
Alerted by the crunch of shoes, Pawlowski spoke without lowering his paper. “Well, if it isn’t the Director.”
“Morning, Jan.”
“How’s things in Berlin?” He set the paper aside. Perfect white teeth shone up at Usher with a preternatural glow.
“Let’s walk,” Usher said, and headed for a grove of birch trees to confound any automatic microphone tracking devices.
“OK. It’s a bit chilly for sitting anyway. What’s up?” he asked, as they reached the trees.
“You, Jan. I’d say, you are up. You and your damned entrepreneurial spirit.”
“Entrepreneurial spirit?” The teeth grinned. “Hey, wait a minute. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Why would hard-line capitalist Michael Usher get in a snit about entrepreneurial spirit?”
“Do you know how many alarms you’ve tripped with your talk of hijacking a train?”
Pawlowski grinned. “So Edward Snowden’s tales about the Five Eyes, or I should say, the Five Ears, are true.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled. “You know us east Europeans, Mike. Full of big plans about how we’re going to make the world respect us. Tell your spy friends, relax. It’s all bullshit; a pep talk for the troops.” He leaned against a birch.
Usher felt relief. He had known it was meaningless chatter. Now, the tricky part. “I’m afraid you’ve gone too far this time, Jan. What you can’t know, because we’ve kept it out of the media, is that a castor train has actually gone missing. Worse, it disappeared in Poland.”
Pawlowski’s grin widened. “Probably
the GPS. It’s often unreliable.”
“Let me give you a friendly warning. Even if it is all bullshit, if you have anything to do with that train, I suggest the ‘GPS problem’ get solved. Half of NATO is flying over Poland and Belarus right now.”
Pawlowski grinned like the village idiot in a bad play.
“And after you leak news of the barrels to the press…” Usher hesitated, then dropped his bomb. “We’ll have to rethink our association.”
The grin widened.
What now? Hadn’t he understood? Slavs were usually quick to pop a cork, but he didn’t seem angry at all.
“Our relationship has been mutually beneficial over the years,” Usher tossed him a bone. “But after this… what I’m trying to say… It’s over.”
“Have I given offense?” Pawlowski’s voice dripped insincerity.
“That stuff with the train, Jan. It’s… You’ve pissed in the wrong pond. You’re poison. For old times’ sake, I can hold them off two, maybe three days. After that, you’ll need to watch your own backside.
Impossibly, the grin grew wider. This was going nowhere. “For godsakes, man! What’s happening with the barrels? By now I should be reading about Meitner AG’s lax security in newspapers across the EU. Instead I’m dicking around with you here in Prague.”
No excuses. Just that idiot grin.
“Look, we can’t just let a German company receive funds the US has earmarked to clean up the Polish environment.”
“No. American taxpayers wouldn’t like that, would they?” The smile dimmed. “Perhaps I should remind you…In our country, the company goes by the name Meitner-Poland.” He traced a heart carved in the birch bark with his finger.
“A technicality. You know the company is German.”
“My, my. Such an old-fashioned attitude. Ours a global world, Mike. As long as the bonuses for bankers and consultants keep growing and stock prices keep rising, nobody cares what country a company is chartered in.”
Usher refused to get drawn into an off-topic discussion.
“Okay, say Meitner is German,” Pawlowski said. “What if this German company is better equipped to do the job? What if it has lower rates than Blue Sky? What if it does environmental remediation naturally, using the newest technologies without exposing Poles to more chemical hazards than those left behind by the communists?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyone can do the clean-up part. We’re talking garbage here, not building supercomputers.”
Pawlowski laughed.
“Look, I agree, in the main, it doesn’t much matter who does what, except you keep forgetting the one thing America does better than…”
Pawlowski cut him off before he could get the word ‘security’ out. “German companies are the greenest. They build wind farms; put solar shingles on their roofs. Ordinary Germans sell the electricity they make at home to the power companies. They’ve got houses that cost 80 euros a year to heat, and have you seen what they’re doing for North Africa? Give the Germans a fair shot at the bidding, and Poles will get a good return on those investment dollars. So will the American taxpayers footing the development grant. With a state-of-the-art infrastructure, Poland can even stop buying oil and gas from Russia.”
“But the Germans don’t provide security.” Usher fought to control his anger. Was he playing stupid on purpose? “You keep forgetting about security, Jan. We’re not just talking toxic waste, but radioactive materials. If we don’t get the right companies in place, nuclear waste will wind up in landfills where any criminal can stumble onto it and sell it to the terrorists. I know you get this. Wasn’t that what your ‘pep talk’ about hijacking a castor train was all about?”
The grin disappeared. “Why would they look in Poland when we’ve never built a single nuclear power plant? Russia is filled with radioactive stuff the communists left lying around.”
Usher fought to stay calm. “The sludge barrels, man? Why didn’t you go to the press? It’s what you were paid to do.”
“What if there’s another company?” Pawlowski asked with a coy smile.
Here it comes, Usher thought. Well, sometimes you just had to thump a thug into submission. “What? A two-bit startup up in East Bumfuck, Poland?”
Pawlowski leaned back against a birch, shut his smiling mouth, and lazily let the sun warm his face for long seconds. “Suppose another American-owned company wants to bid?”
“Forget it,” Usher told him. “No fucking way is the US government going to approve a contract with an unproven startup. You can’t even sell that to the Poles.”
A cloud passed in front of the sun.
“Now that’s where you’re wrong, Mike,” Pawlowski said. The idiot grin reappeared. Why was he enjoying this so much?
“Poles might talk about joining the North American Free Trade Zone,” he continued. “But that’s more like my…um…little indiscretion with the train. It’s just talk. When we think of all those investment dollars being eaten up by the exorbitant salaries that American bankers and corporate CEOs demand…Well, we Poles turn out to be as thrifty as our western European neighbour.”
Usher felt warm in spite of the brisk fall wind. He loosened his tie and fought to keep from shouting. “I won’t stand for this. I’ve worked too hard. Blue Sky is the only…”
“Meitner AG has agreed to sell its Polish operation to RGB Waste of New Jersey. That’s New Jersey in the USA. So you see, Mike, you’re worrying about nothing.”
Insolent bastard. How dare he? “So you’ve engineered a corporate takeover to milk American development aid, is that it?” Usher asked. “You must be proud…”
“Gee, Mike, ‘corporate takeover’ sounds so… so nasty… so cutthroat. Why don’t we say ‘merger’? It’s friendlier. Better for Polish-American relations. Your little side job helped me meet my new partner. Nothing’s final. But things are looking good for yours truly.”
“You wouldn’t even know what a landfill is, if I hadn’t sent you to Meitner.”
“You’re right. Without you, I would never have learned how much more profit there is in garbage than in sports. Athletes can be so unreliable, and garbage…well, it’s everywhere, isn’t it? I’ve decided to make a lateral move in my public service career, from the Sports Office over to the Environment Ministry.
“You can’t own a landfill company,” Usher tried. “That’s a conflict of interest.”
“In America perhaps.” Pawlowski peeled a piece of bark from a birch and held it up to the sun. “We Europeans are more pragmatic. Being invested in an industry can help you write the legislation governing it. Look at Berlusconi and his Italian media empire.”
Usher felt cold sweat trickle under his shirt.
“Go ahead. Complain to the WTO, Mike. Tell them about my ‘conflict of interest’. While you’re at it, why don’t you tell them also, how you know so much about internal affairs at Meitner and all those other companies daring to bid against Blue Sky.”
Pawlowski couldn’t know, Usher told himself, but the sweat ran down his back now. Had Jordan told him something? He didn’t think so. He had to be guessing.
“Go ahead, and I’ll tell everyone in your cushy little Commercial Service Office in Berlin exactly how you find out what goes on at Meitner AG.”
“I know it can’t handle the security. That’s enough.”
“Indeed.” The toothy smile returned. Frightening in its perfection.
“In two weeks, I will be Meitner in Poland, Mike. An American company, RGB Waste, will be my financial partner. We have a deal in the works to buy up all the Meitner subsidiaries in eastern Europe. As the deal broker, the one who brought a very lucrative deal to the right people at RGB, I stand to make a fortune. To think I owe it all to you.”
“What kind of underhanded…”
“Anything underhanded exists only in your sleazy imagination, Mike.” He peeled another layer of bark from the birch.
The man was a vandal. What was he doing to that tree
? In a park, for crying out loud.
“Relax. You’ll have a bona fide American company to distribute those funds to.” He peeled away the white top layer of birch and studied the pink under-layer. “But before you give Blue Sky taxpayer dollars to build water treatment plants in Mumbai or Nairobi, you should know a thing or two about them.”
He pulled a stack of photos from his jacket and handed them to Usher.
Usher pulled his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket with shaking hands and struggled to get them onto the bridge of his nose.
The first photograph showed a yellow nuclear waste barrel. Labels identified it as belonging to the nuclear energy plant in Ignalina, Lithuania. Exactly what Pawlowski was supposed to find. Heartened, Usher looked at the next photo. A stack of yellow barrels lying in a landfill pit, lined to prevent leachate from seeping into groundwater, but otherwise totally inadequate for the long-term storage of nuclear waste. The missing cooling pond would get environmentalists even more fired up against Meitner.
Usher looked up.
Pawlowski was peeling more bark from the round tree trunk. Round like a barrel.
With the next photo it fell into place.
A long strip of paint had been peeled away from the barrel. Underneath was the logo of Blue Sky’s atomic energy plant in Michigan.
Fuck. Usher’s thoughts were a mad scramble, as he went into damage control. “You can’t fall for this,” he tried. “Someone’s trying to frame Blue Sky.”
The crazy grin returned. “I’m not twenty-five anymore, Mike. Know what I mean?
“This proves nothing.”
“The sports-betting was a profitable sideline. So was working for you. But all good things have to end. It’s been fun being a bandido, but there’s not much future in it. We all have to grow up. Go legit. You’re right about one thing, though. Time for us to end our association.”
“You ungrateful…”
“Not at all. I owe you a lot, it’s just…Life as a bad boy…My god, the company you have to keep.”
“Meitner is playing dirty tricks.”
“You’re right about dirty tricks, but I wonder who’s playing them? Whoever planted the barrels removed the GPS tags, but the data matrices were so small, they were easy to overlook. Every single barrel is still tagged with a Blue Sky data matrix chip. Do you know how hard it is to forge data matrices? They are on file with the government. That’s the US government.”
Usher felt like he was underwater. Gennady Filshin, the man he had sent to plant the barrels, flooded his brain. The Russian engineer’s lackadaisical dress. His sloppy, slouching walk. His ‘don’t worry so much, Boss, Russian ingenuity will be solving. Russians aren’t having money, so we are forced to be relying on brains, and they are growing accordingly. Survival of the fittest, like the biziness-man is saying.’ What had amused Usher in the past, now threatened to destroy him.
Pawlowski continued in a quiet voice. “You, Mike, will make sure those contracts get awarded to my new company, RGB International, the EU branch of RGB Waste of Newark, New Jersey. That’s in the US of A, Mike, and every bit as American as Blue Sky.”
What had possessed Filshin? Getting real Ignalina barrels had to be easier than shipping Blue Sky barrels in from the States.
Pawlowski seemed disappointed by Usher’s silence. “What do you think the WTO, or the American news media will do with these photos?”
Suddenly his hands burned. He held the photos out to Pawlowski.
“Keep them. I have duplicates tucked away.”
“There’s got to be an explanation,” Usher tried. “A Meitner worker out for revenge after losing that contract to Blue Sky in the Georgian Republic.”
“Right. And that Meitner employee just slipped into the US where every single German tourist gets photographed and fingerprinted on arrival at the airport, in case he decides to turn terrorist while on vacation, and snagged some nuclear waste in Michigan. American security is so lax these days.” Pawlowski’s voice dripped sarcasm. “And Homeland Security claims America is a fortress.”
Usher fought to take charge. “Blue Sky probably contracted Meitner to dispose of those barrels. We’ve caught Meitner at this kind of thing before. In Naples.”
The smile turned sympathetic. “Nice try, except for one thing. I’ve seen Meitner’s books. There was no deal with Blue Sky.”
“The paperwork got lost. You’ll see.”
Mock concern drifted onto Pawlowski’s face. “It would be a shame to destroy a company’s reputation over an honest mistake.”
“Blue Sky grew out of the defense industry. It exists to stop this kind of thing. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
“I’m waiting to hear it.”
“Me? What makes you think I know anything?”
“Come now…You are Blue Sky’s biggest cheerleader.”
How could this be happening? “Blue Sky is generous,” he tried. “You could sell them your new company. Retire.”
“I’m too young to retire. Besides, I like working.”
“You’re not listening. They’ll pay you to walk out of the deal. You could buy a fucking Caribbean island, man.” Usher felt the sweat roll down his cheeks.
“I should just hand over everything to Blue Sky when they’ve never so much as dirtied their hands at an academic conference on the Polish environment? I don’t think so.”
“Cash up front, Jan. The US government will deal only with Blue Sky. Your two-bit, rinky-dink outfit will never see any of those development dollars. Nothing can change that.”
“The only thing Blue Sky has going for it is Michael Fucking Usher and a bunch of lobbyists back in Washington.”
Pawlowski stepped so close, Usher felt the warmth of his body crowding him, mocking his Anglo-Saxon need for personal space. Don’t react. He closed his eyes and reclaimed his privacy by expanding his inner space.
The garlicky odor of Pawlowski’s skin invaded his nostrils.
A bead of sweat rolled into his mouth. Concentrate. He has photos, but he doesn’t know who did this, or who ordered it.
Pawlowski’s breathing warmed the skin of his left ear, and God help him, if images of sex with Emma didn’t flood his mind. Emma, naked and sweaty.
“This could cause an international incident,” Pawlowski taunted, his voice a whisper. “It could make Poland a very unfriendly place for American multinationals.”
Focus. He knows nothing. This was bad, but he could find a way out, if he kept his cool. Pawlowski probably faked the photos. Doctored them on his computer.
He reopened his eyes.
Pawlowski’s leer hovered, disembodied, too close. “CIA’s not doing industrial espionage these days, is it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Usher turned his back and walked away.
“Does seem farfetched.” He stayed on his Usher’s tail. “Do you know what Germans do to polluters, Mike?” he asked. “Hope you like Berlin.”
Usher increased his stride.
Pawlowski’s voice got louder. “We’re talking serious jail time. Five years in Moabit Prison. Long enough for your lovely Emma to find herself another man, for your kids to find a new father, and for your mother to sew you a matching bedspread and curtains to homey up your cell. Think of it, five years in a cell the size of a New York City bathroom.”
Usher reached his car, unlocked the door, and climbed in. Odious little creep was power mad. He had nothing to connect him to the barrels. Only a note from a library computer telling him to look around Meitner’s Red Eagle Landfill.
“No cable TV. Only broadcast,” Pawlowski kept the car door open. “Your German will get very, very good before they decide you’ve been rehabilitated.” He slammed the door shut.
Wheels screamed, as Usher whipped out of parking spot.
Pawlowski sprang out of the way and laughed. “Hey, what’s your hurry? They’ve got great restaurants here in the Czech Republic. Let me buy you lunch, as thanks for the consulting. I co
uldn’t have done it without you, Mike. Bread dumplings sound good?”
Usher found first gear but popped the clutch. He recranked the ignition.
“Hey, you all have a safe trip back to Berlin, won’t you? “ The leer returned. “And say ‘hi’ to the Mrs. from me.” He laughed a hyena laugh and pounded the car’s roof with his fists.
Damn that Filshin. No wonder no one wanted to do business with the Russians. They couldn’t do anything right.
He patted the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. No. He wouldn’t let the little turd get to him. He reached for the nicotine gum in the ashtray instead.
He would clean up this mess, but first he had to cover his trail. What if Pawlowski tipped the police, or worse, the FBI, before he got back to Berlin?
Think, Michael, think. There was nothing on the office computer, was there? No, his executive assistant needed access. He had encryption at home, black market, from a kid in Norway. NSA could crack it, but the FBI couldn’t have a look-see without permission. Could documents there connect him to Filshin? Something from the job they met on, the decontamination of a Russian army base in Georgia? Maybe. But so what? So they worked together. Filshin wasn’t stupid enough to go to the police. Not with a wife and four kids.
He would ride this out. Poland was a temporary setback. The big, blue, globalized world was filled with opportunities. But first he would deal with Pawlowski. That snake wouldn’t get away with this. Meitner-Poland, or RGB International, or whoever the hell he was working with, should have known better than to do business with that worm.
Pawlowski’s perfect sparkling white teeth menaced him through the growing dark and rain all the way back to Berlin. Every time he drove under a street lamp on that long, long journey he saw those teeth reflected in the windshield. Brilliant. Glowing whitely. Gnashing. Like a nightmare from that nutso Czech writer. What was his name? Kafka. Yeah, that was it. Usher wished he had punched in those beautiful white teeth while he had the chance.
That missing castor train was turning into a stroke of luck. If Pawlowski was involved, and the police arrested him… no one would believe a word he said.
4 Berlin