The Woman From Prague Read online

  “And what do you believe?” I ask.

  “That the world is a scary place,” Alesky says. “And sometimes we need reassurances that monsters can be defeated.”

  We approach a wall overlooking a bluff with the city stretched out beneath us, rooftops and trees heavy with snow, sparkling in the sun breaking through the cloud cover. The city looks every bit as magical as the stories make it sound. I wish there were more time to explore. My own fault for waiting until circumstances forced me here.

  Alesky leads us to an alcove, with a staircase leading down, fronted by a turnstile. He gives us a wave and says, “Enjoy your trip into the dragon’s lair.”

  Sam and I thank him and he walks away.

  “That was weird,” Sam says.

  “Are you kidding me? That was awesome.”

  “Of course you’re impressed, you nerd.”

  We make our way through the turnstile and down a set of narrow stone stairs, until we get to a cave that feels a little more like a movie set. It’s well-lit by pot lights. The rock is fake. Fiberglass maybe? No dragon, sadly. I start walking but Sam says, “Stop.” She leans against the wall and nods for me to lean next to her.

  “Two minutes,” she says. After a moment, she asks, “Can you tell me why?”

  I look around at the space. Back up the staircase. “Because if someone were following us, they’d have to come down this staircase. There’s no other way inside. And we’re down at ground level. Two minutes isn’t long enough for someone to get all the way around the complex to meet us on the other side.”

  “Very good,” she says.

  We stand there, watching the tourists taking pictures of fake stone walls.

  Finally, Sam says, “C’mon.”

  We make our way through the cave, checking into the various alcoves, none of which lead anywhere, until we get to the exit. We step outside and find the dragon. A stone sculpture that’s got to be fifteen feet, maybe twenty feet high. I look up at it as people take pictures, and after a few moments, it belches a bouquet of fire. I can feel the warmth of it on my skin.

  “Sam?”

  We both turn to find a nervous little black guy with large eyes and a young face. He could be fifteen or thirty. He’s wearing a red wool hat with a poof at the top. The collar of his heavy black overcoat is flipped up so that from the side you couldn’t make out his face.

  “Jeremiah?” Sam asks.

  The man nods but doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me like I’m a black bear reared up on its hind legs. Sam says, “Don’t worry, he’s cool. I mean, not cool, but he’s not going to mess things up for us.”

  “Okay,” he says, eyes darting back and forth between us. “We need to go.”

  He doesn’t say anything about my fucked-up face, which is nice. He turns and walks without making sure we’re following.

  We pass through narrow streets and small crowds of people, but otherwise, this town is quiet. Whenever we stop, so that Sam can look around and make sure we’re not being tailed, I stop and look at the buildings, and every time, I’m sad when we start walking again.

  Eventually, we reach a town square. This one is different from the Wawel Castle complex. No green space, but there’s a fountain and a big hall in the middle, ringed on the edges by restaurants that look like tourist traps.

  The square is filled with holiday booths. Getting close to Christmas now. As we cut through the thick crowd of shoppers, we pass vendors selling warmed wine from clay pots and pierogis from giant cast iron pans. And tons of colorful, handmade crafts. We pass a blacksmith in a white t-shirt stained with soot, standing over a fire where he’s heating horseshoes and hammering initials into them.

  As we reach the edge of the square, I find a booth that’s selling handmade Christmas ornaments. My mom has a thing for Christmas ornaments and if I’m not going to make it home for the holiday, I should at least have something to send her. I tell Sam and Jeremiah to stop. The two of them do and turn, like there might be something wrong. Both of them seem annoyed to find me picking through ornaments. It doesn’t take long to find something I think my mom will like. A bell shaped like a dragon, carved out of wood. It’s small and intricate and beautiful. There’s an old Polish woman behind the counter. I ask her how much and she says something in Polish.

  I’m about to ask her again when Sam is standing over my shoulder, holding out a ten dollar złoty note. The woman takes it and smiles, wraps the ornaments very carefully in tissue paper, and places it in a small bag. My understanding is that Czech and Polish are kind of similar so I tell her, “Dekuji.”

  She smiles and nods.

  As we turn away, I tell Sam, “That was very nice of you.”

  “I’m not a monster,” she says.

  “Debatable,” I tell her.

  Jeremiah is hopping on his toes, looking around. “Maybe let’s go now, please?”

  He leads us to a pub on the other side of the square, walking quickly, making a beeline for a booth toward the back where we can’t be seen from the entrance. But there’s a mirror above us that gives us a view of who’s coming and going.

  We hang our coats on the hook on the wall and sit. The first thing I see on the menu is pierogis and I feel it would be stupid to come to Poland and not order some, so when the waiter comes over, I ask for a plate of them, plus a roasted pork knuckle. Sam orders a pork knuckle. Jeremiah orders bigos, a hunter stew. We get waters all around because it’s early and I don’t think any of us are in a drinking mood.

  When the waiter is gone and there’s no one within earshot, Jeremiah looks at me and says, “You were on the bridge.”

  “I was. Sorry about that.”

  “Why were you on the bridge?”

  Sam interjects. “It’s a long story and you don’t need to worry about it. It worked out in our favor because someone very dangerous was also on that bridge and if he hadn’t been there to get in the way, things could have ended very badly for both of us.”

  “Okay.” Jeremiah reaches under the table and pulls something out of his pocket. He puts his closed fist on the table and looks back and forth between us.

  He opens his fist and removes it, revealing a red plastic flash drive, which Sam quickly takes and puts in her pocket.

  “You know the risk I’m taking,” he says to Sam.

  “I know. Is it password protected?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the password?”

  “Back in Prague. Once you’re safely back there, I’ll tell you where it’s hidden.”

  “You can’t tell it to me?”

  “It’s an alphanumeric string that’s twenty-five characters long. Randomly generated and I purposely didn’t memorize it. Safety measure. You’ll want to move quickly. It won’t last long where it is.”

  The waiter comes back and puts our food down. Yup, tourist trap. Only tourist traps move food out this quickly. Still, it is incredible to look at. The pierogis are hot, but I pop one into my mouth. It’s warm and buttery and delicious. The other two don’t seem very interested in their food. I cram another into my mouth before I’m even done with the first.

  “Where should I start?” Jeremiah asks.

  “Explain it to me like I’m an idiot.” Sam smirks, cocks her thumb at me. “Better yet, explain it like you’re trying to explain it to him.”

  “Hey,” I tell her.

  Jeremiah ignores me. “Okay. So. Okay.” He looks around, lowers his voice. “Remember a few years ago, when gas was up over four dollars a gallon?”

  Sam nods.

  “In order to bring the price down, a bunch of banks invested in drilling projects. Expensive drilling projects. Tons and tons of money got invested in this. Ramp up production so that the world supply could be replenished, right? It worked. Gas is a lot cheaper. The problem is, it worked too well.”

  “The market isn’t flush, it’s flooded,” Sam says.

  “Exactly. Supply is far outstripping demand. A barrel is under thirty dollars right
now. Oil companies are going bankrupt.” He flares out his fingers. “Kaput. Tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs. Some banks are counting loses in the billions. That’s billions with a B. And it’s only going to get worse. Analysts predict it could be under twenty a barrel within the next six months. That’s a doomsday scenario. Investment bankers jumping out of windows scenario. Money that’ll never come back. You follow me so far?”

  Sam nods. I rip off a big piece of pork knuckle and stick it in my mouth. It’s so good I want to cry. The bartender comes over to check on us and we all smile at him until he walks away.

  “So,” Jeremiah says. “The only way people are getting their money back is if prices go back up. Way, way up. For prices to go back up, one of two things needs to happen: demand needs to outstrip supply, which probably isn’t going to happen any time soon because there’s so much, or something has to jam up the works so new oil isn’t being produced as quickly.”

  “Okay…” Sam says.

  “And you know where many of the oil markets are?”

  “The Middle East. So… wait.” Sam’s face drops. “No.”

  The look on her face makes the food I ate roil in my gut.

  “Hemera Global is funding a terrorist group called Ansar al-Islam. They’re making a hard push into Iraq and Afghanistan in the hopes they’ll destabilize the market.”

  After he says this, you could about hear a pin drop between the three of us.

  I’ve stopped mid-chew with a wad of potato in my mouth. I forget it’s there long enough that I nearly choke, then have trouble swallowing because my mouth has run dry. I take a big swig of water to get it down.

  “Are you kidding me?” Sam asks.

  “I wish I were,” Jeremiah says. “I found it by accident. There was a fault in their security I was trying to fix and I stumbled across it. They know I have it. Everything you need to prove it is on that drive. The evidence is very explicit.”

  “This is… this is…”

  “I know,” Jeremiah says.

  He pulls his bowl toward him and takes a bite of the stew as Sam nibbles at a pierogi from my plate. I push my food away. I’m not hungry anymore.

  Sam and Jeremiah talk more. I sit and listen. There’s not much for me to contribute. Some of it is technical or refers to stuff I don’t understand. After a little while, I poke at my food, less out of hunger and more so I have something to do with my hands.

  After a few moments, Jeremiah says, “Please excuse me. I must use the restroom. As they say, no job is finished until the paperwork is done.” He gets up and heads toward the bathrooms.

  “Weird guy,” I tell Sam.

  “Yeah,” she says, not looking at me.

  That’s all we can muster at the moment.

  The idea is horrifying: a U.S. bank backing terrorists for financial gain. It’s also not terribly hard to believe. Banks have done some craven things. Just a few years ago they willfully wrecked the housing market and destroyed the livelihood of millions in pursuit of profit.

  It makes me upset and angry and confused and a whole lot of other emotions I don’t even know how to process.

  But it also makes me happy.

  Because I will gladly play a roll in exposing this.

  Whatever the risk.

  So much of the last few days has been about surviving. Sorting out who to trust. Wondering about the decisions I’ve made that led me to this point.

  And now I have a goal. Something worth fighting for.

  Bad guys who need stopping.

  That’s all I ever really need.

  “Ash?” Sam asks.

  I snap back to the table. “Yeah.”

  “We have to go.”

  I turn to Jeremiah and he’s hovering at the edge of the table. Sam and I stand and we get into our coats and Sam places down a wad of cash. She turns and shakes Jeremiah’s hand. “You did good. You’ll text me tomorrow with the information?”

  “Yes,” Jeremiah says. “Like I said, move quickly, okay? And after this, no contact, no nothing. I disappear.”

  “You’re doing a good thing.”

  “Don’t waste it.”

  He turns toward me, nods, and leaves the restaurant. We stand there for a moment, watching the door swing shut behind him, cutting off the white light from outside, until Sam says, “This is pretty fucked up.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I tell her.

  We exit the restaurant. The wind has picked up and it claws at us. Sam steps away, dials a number, and launches into a conversation in what I think is Polish. I huddle next to the building, away from the wind coming off the river, look longingly at the guy across the street smoking a cigarette.

  Sam hangs up the phone and steps toward me. “Got us on a train that’s leaving later tonight.”

  “So what do we do until then?”

  “I don’t know. I hate being out in the open like this. I’d rather be hunkered down somewhere. Maybe a bookstore, or a library?”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” I tell her. “Give me the phone.”

  She hesitates for a moment and hands it over. I go to dial the Crash Hop office, and remember it’s being monitored. Probably better to call Stanislav’s cell, and luckily, that one I remember.

  “Stanny?” I ask.

  “Mister Ashley,” he says. I can hear the smile in his voice. “How are you feeling?”

  “Still a little run down, but coming along. Listen, I have something I need to tell you…”

  He sighs. “You are leaving me. I know this is coming…”

  “Now, wait, that’s not it. I mean, yeah, I’m sorry to say that I am. I think it’s time to move on…”

  “It is fine,” he says. “I can give you more work if you like. Or else you can come by and pick up the last of your pay. I will take you out to a restaurant I know. It is a very good restaurant. You were a good worker. My way of saying thank you.”

  “I would like that,” I tell him. “But first, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Anything,” he says.

  “So, funny story. I met a girl…”

  At this, Sam rolls her eyes.

  “And let me guess,” Stanislav says. “You are looking for someplace with a little… privacy.”

  “Yes, but there’s a wrinkle,” I tell him. “We’re in Kraków.”

  “Kraków! When did this happen?”

  “Spur of the moment decision. She wanted pierogis so we got on the train last night. We’re coming back today. But now we’re both a little wiped out and, truthfully, need a place to warm up for a little bit.”

  “Say no more,” he says. “We have a few apartments there. Let me check.” Computer keys clack through the phone. After a moment, he says, “We have one open right now. It is on Rzeszowska, off of Starowiślna. That is in Kazimierz, the Jewish district. North of the river. Building number five, top floor.”

  I repeat all of that out loud the best that I can, gumming the words. Sam nods to indicate that she got it.

  “Great, will my key work here?” I ask.

  “It should,” Stanislav says, his voice dropping. “We had an… issue with another apartment. Police investigation. For safety’s sake, we changed the relay on the master keys. They should all be reset by now. Yours should work. If it does not, call me.”

  I guess they found Fuller.

  “Thanks for the hookup, Stanislav.”

  “Promise me that you will come see me before you go,” he says.

  “I promise.”

  “And make sure to change the sheets if, you know…”

  “Got it.”

  Click.

  Sam takes the phone from my hand and taps at the screen. After a moment, she says, “Found it. Not far.”

  The building is a five-story walkup without an elevator. We climb to the top, each landing dirtier than the one below it. On the final floor there’s a steel door and a dusty rainbow couch outside. I hold the fob up to the door and it clicks open.

  The apartment is
sparse and clean, though the shape of it is odd. The ceiling is peaked, and so low at either end I would have to stoop down to keep from hitting my head. There’s a room in the corner behind a sliding glass door with a skylight and some lawn furniture. It looks like a balcony but is actually enclosed.

  Off to the left is a bedroom with two beds. There’s no couch, just a table and some chairs near the stove. It looks like new and not terribly mindful construction. Probably added on to the building recently. That said, it’s warm and cozy and nice enough to keep us occupied until we have to hit the train station.

  We drop our coats on the chair closest to the door. Sam disappears into the bathroom. The door is frosted glass, which seems a little ridiculous in terms of privacy. I can see the vague outline of her as she sits on the toilet.

  I take the opportunity to peek at the phone in my pocket.

  It’s nearly dead.

  That’s not good.

  Also not good: I left the charger back in Prague.

  It made sense at the time. A low-tech phone like this will usually hold a charge for a few days. Must have been the train. It probably wore itself down searching for a signal as we dropped in and out of range of cell towers.

  Sam is still on the toilet. I step to the galley kitchen, which runs along the far wall of the apartment. Checking drawers. There’s an unofficial rule at Crash Hop that if you find a charger, you chuck it in a drawer. The person who left it will come back for it, but more likely, the next guest in line will find a use for it.

  Most of the drawers are empty, or full of a hodge-podge of silverware. Nothing matches. Blunt, dull items scavenged from who knows where.

  By the fifth drawer I am getting very worried.

  Because only two more to go, and I can hear the clank of the toilet seat, the spinning of the toilet paper roll.

  In the sixth drawer I find a tangle of chargers. A half dozen, all wrapped up around each other and impossible to sort without a lot of time and patience. Neither of which I have. The inputs are all different. I flip through them and try to find a connecter that’ll fit the phone, my hands slipping, plastic scratching against plastic as everything seems a little too big or too small.