The Whole Truth

CHAPTER 62

“I CHECKED ON YOUR STORY about Krakow and about your father,” Katie said. She and Aron Lesnik were sitting in his tiny room at the hostel near the Thames in a far less fashionable part of London than The Phoenix Group digs. She’d brought him food and coffee, which he was devouring as she spoke.

“You check?” he said between mouthfuls of ham sandwich and crisps.

“Of course I checked. Journalists just assume everyone is lying to them.”

“I not lie to you!” Lesnik exclaimed and then took a gulp of coffee.

She looked at her notes. “Your father was Elisaz Lesnik, editor of a daily newspaper in Krakow. He was killed in 1989.”

“The Soviets murdered him. Poland was fighting for freedom then. We had Lech Walesa, the liberator, fighting for us. But my father he writes the truth and the Soviets they do not like that. They come one night when I am little boy and then he is dead.”

“That was never proven,” she pointed out.

“I do not need proof! I know!” Lesnik pounded his fist against the wall.

“So you have quite the grudge against the Russians?”

He gaped at her. “You do not believe me? You think I make this up because I hate Russians? I see people dead. I see blood everywhere. You ask me questions, I tell you truth.” He stared at her defiantly and took a vicious bite of his sandwich.

“So why are you afraid to go to the police?”

“I go to police and they think I have something to do with it. To them, Pole is like Russian. And then they tell people and killers come after me. I see what they do to my father. I no want to die like that.”

“You say you’re good with computers; mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Ask.”

She fired off some highly technical questions that she didn’t understand at all, but that a techno-friend had given her along with the answers. Lesnik responded to each of them correctly.

“Do you have computer you want me to fix, if you still not convinced?” he said crossly.

“Can’t blame a girl for checking,” she said sweetly. “Now about this Harris fellow? Tell me about him.” She’d gotten a description of Harris and wanted to see if it jibed with what Lesnik said.

“He is okay guy. Old. White hair, smells like cigar. We talk about job. He likes me, I think. He say it is good place to work, this Phoenix place. I drink some water and then I go to bathroom down the hall. Coming back is when I hear shots downstairs. I hide. Like I say already to you.”

Katie was writing all of this down. “Okay, now talk to me about-”

She didn’t finish because the door had been kicked open and he was standing there.

“Shaw! How did you know…?” She glared at him. “You followed me!”

He didn’t bother to respond. Shaw only had eyes for Lesnik, who’d shrunk back in the corner, his half-eaten ham sandwich forgotten, his coffee spilled on the floor.

He marched toward the small man, who pressed back until the wall stopped him from going anywhere else. Lesnik cried out, “Don’t let him hurt me. Don’t let him. Please!”

“Shaw, you’re scaring him.”

Shaw took a fistful of Lesnik’s shirt in his good hand. “He should be scared.”

“You say no one else know!” screamed Lesnik as he looked pitifully at Katie.

“Shaw, let him go.”

“You’re going to tell me everything you saw and heard that day. And you better not leave one damn apostrophe out! I just heard the part about you going to the john and hiding, now pick it up from there.”

Lesnik looked ready to faint, his knees buckled.

“Shaw!”

Katie grabbed at his good shoulder to try and pull him off, which was akin to a gnat harassing an elephant.

“Don’t get in the way, Katie,” Shaw said menacingly as he glanced at her.

Lesnik, however, used this moment of distraction to pluck up his courage and nail Shaw with his fist directly on the man’s bandaged arm.

“Damn it!” Shaw doubled over in pain.

The Pole leapt past him, pushed Katie down, and sprinted through the door. Shaw recovered and, holding his arm, ran after him, Katie right on his heels. They clattered down the steps, Shaw moving as fast as he could with his bad wing, but the much smaller Lesnik was seemingly jet-propelled. He hit the door to the street and was through it while Shaw and Katie were still a flight above.

Shaw smashed the door open and skidded to a stop to survey the street. Katie bumped into him. She grabbed his jacket.

“Have you lost your damn mind!” she screamed.

He suddenly saw Lesnik across the street, on the Thames side. He bolted across the road, car horns blaring, taxis swerving to avoid him as Katie followed in his wake yelling at him to stop before he killed himself.

Shaw shouted at Lesnik, who was running down the sidewalk. The Pole turned around for an instant, his face full of fear.

The shot struck him right between the eyes. He stood there for a moment, seemingly unaware his life had just ended. Then he pitched backward and over the railing. A few seconds later his body hit the flat surface of the river. A few moments after that Lesnik disappeared under the dull-colored Thames, the water briefly turning a murky crimson.

At the sound of the shot, Shaw had immediately hunched down. As Katie started to run past him yelling for Lesnik, he reached out his good arm and snagged her leg, wrenched her down, and then pulled her over behind a parked car for cover.

“Stay down!” he urged. “That was a long-range rifle round.” He edged his head above the car’s fender and took a look around, checking for an optics signature from the sniper gun but seeing none.

He looked back at Katie and his expression softened. She was shaking.

“It’s okay now.” He put an arm around her.

“No, it is not okay,” she snapped, ripping his arm off her. “You had to come here. You had to butt in. And now an innocent man is dead! Because of you!’

“Neither one of us knows how is innocent he really is,” Shaw said calmly. “But right now we need to get out of here. The police-”

“You can run. I want to talk to the police. It’ll be good background for the story.”

“You’re still going to write it?” he said incredulously.

“You bet I am. And you want to know something funny? Until you bulled your way into this whole thing I’d decided to table it, at least for a while. But now?” She looked in the direction of where Lesnik lay dead. “Now, I changed my mind.”

“Katie, listen to me-”

She cut him off again. “No, you listen to me, Shaw. I know the woman you loved got killed. I know you’re hurting. I know your life is even shittier than mine right now, but you crossed the line back there. No, you obliterated it. And I will never trust you again.”

The sound of a siren reached them. Shaw glanced away and then looked back at her.

“You better get going. The police won’t be your best friend right now.”

“Katie, I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”

“What I’m getting into, you sorry-ass son of a bitch, is the truth. Now get the hell out of here.”

Shaw’s eyes flashed at her for an instant, but they seemed to have lost their effect on the woman.

“Now!” she screamed at him.

As he rose to go, she said, “Don’t worry, I won’t mention you in the story. Consider it a parting gift.”