“It is disturbing,” she said, still wary of the man.
He seemed to sense her discomfort. “My name is Aron Lesnik. I am from Krakow. That is in Poland,” he added.
“I know where Krakow is,” Katie said. “I’ve been there. What do you want with me?”
“I saw you talking to that police officer. I heard you say you are journalist. Is that true? Are you journalist?”
“Yes. So?”
Lesnik glanced once more at the building. When he turned back to her, his eyes were filled with tears. “I am so sorry for those people. They were good people and now they are dead.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve and looked at her pitifully.
“It was a real tragedy. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Katie wondered why she always seemed to attract the nutcases. The man’s next words made her forget that thought.
“I was in there. On that day.” He said this in a hoarse voice.
“What?” Katie couldn’t have heard the man right. “In where?”
Lesnik pointed to The Phoenix Group building. “In there,” he repeated, an agonizing pitch to his voice now.
“Where the murders happened?”
Lesnik nodded, his head bobbing up and down like a child making a confession.
“What were you doing in the building?”
“I was looking for work. A job. My English is not that good, but I am good with computers. I go there because I hear they need people who are good with computers. I have appointment. It is on that day. That… bad day.”
“Let me get this straight,” Katie said, trying but failing to hide her excitement. “You were in that building for an interview when the people were killed? While they were being killed?”
Lesnik nodded. “Yes.” His eyes filled with tears again.
“Then how come you’re not dead?” she said suspiciously.
“I hear the guns. I know about sounds of guns. I was young boy in Krakow when the Soviets would come with guns. So I hide.”
A bit of Katie’s suspicion drained away. She’d had to hide from men with guns when she’d been reporting overseas. “Where did you hide? I want precise details.”
“On the second floor there is machine in a little room they use to make copies of papers. It has doors in back. A little space to hold things. It was empty. I am not big. I crawl inside. I stay there until the shootings stop. Then I come out. I think they shoot me too when they find me. But they do not find me. I am lucky.”
Katie was nearly vibrating off the pavement. “Look, it’s probably not a great idea to talk about this here. Why don’t we go somewhere else?”
Lesnik immediately backed away. “No, I say enough. I come here every day. I come, because I can’t stay away. Those people, all dead. All dead except me. I should be dead too.”
“Don’t say that. It obviously wasn’t your time to go. Like you said, you were lucky. And besides it’ll be good to get it off your chest,” she urged.
“No. No! I only come up to you because I hear you are journalist. In Poland we have journalists who are heroes, heroes in Poland. They stand up to Soviets. My father, he is one of them. They kill him, but he is still hero,” he added proudly.
“I’m sure he is. But you can’t just not tell anyone. You have to go to the police.”
Lesnik took another step back. “No, no police. I do not like police.”
Katie looked at him warily. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Lesnik didn’t answer her. He simply glanced away. “No police. I must go now.”
She clutched his arm. “Wait a minute.” Katie thought quickly. “Look, if I promise not to reveal my source, can you at least tell me what you saw? I promise, I swear on a stack of Bibles I won’t ever tell who told me. After all, you came up to me. You must want me to help somehow.”
Lesnik looked unsure. “I don’t know why I come up to you.” He paused. “You… you can do that? Not tell?”
“Absolutely.” She looked over his anguished face, his small, childlike frame, and his shabby clothes. She could easily envision him hiding terrified inside a copier as gunfire erupted all around him. “How about I buy you something to eat and we can talk? Just talk. If you’re still uncomfortable, you can walk away.” She put out her hand. “Deal?”
He didn’t take her hand.
“I’m sure your father would want to see the truth come out. And to see murderers punished.”
He slowly slipped his fingers around hers. “Okay. I go with you.”
As they walked along Katie said the one question she’d been dying to ask.
“Did you see who did it?” She held her breath waiting for the answer.
He nodded. “And I hear them too. I hear them good. I know the language they speak very good.”
“Language? So they were foreigners?”
Lesnik stopped walking and stared at her. “They were Russians.”
“You’re sure? Absolutely certain?”
For the first time his face took on a confident expression. “I am Pole. From Krakow. I know Russian when I hear it.”
CHAPTER 54
“WE NAMED THE COMPANY after the Chinese phoenix, the Feng Huang,” Feng Hai said as they sat in an office off the main foyer. “In Chinese mythology the phoenix stands for virtue, power, and prosperity. It was also said that the bird represented power sent down to the empress from above. You might know that Feng means male phoenix.”
“And Feng is also your surname,” commented Shaw. Unlike the West the Chinese put their family name ahead of their given one. So Hai was the man’s first name.
Feng nodded. “That also gave me the idea, that is correct.”
“And the connection The Phoenix Group has to China?” Royce asked.
“It is simply a Chinese company doing business in London, like many others.”
“Your employees seemed to think a wealthy American from Arizona owned it,” Shaw noted.
Feng shrugged. “Rumors, obviously.”
Shaw said, “I think it was more than that. I think it was a deliberate cover.”
Royce sat forward while Feng glared at Shaw. “So it was basically a think tank that studied global issues funded by you and your partners? That was the business model?”
Feng nodded.
“And you set it up for what reason?” Royce asked.
“To find answers to complicated questions,” Feng said. “The Chinese too have an interest in such problems and solutions. We are not all heartless polluters and people who put lead in children’s toys, gentlemen,” he said, attempting a weak smile.
“Did The Phoenix Group make any money for you?” Shaw asked.
“We did not do it for money.”
Shaw looked around at the elaborately decorated interior of the office. “This building must be worth, what, thirty million pounds?”
“It has been a good investment. But as I said, money is not our chief concern. We, my partners and I, we are good businessmen. We make lots of money in other things. The Phoenix Group was our way of doing some good. Giving back, I think you say.”
“And you have no idea why anyone would have wanted to attack this place and kill everyone?” Royce asked, the skepticism in his voice unmistakable.
“None at all. I was most distressed when I heard. Most distressed. I… I could not believe that such a thing could happen. The people here were scholars, intellectuals. They work on issues of water usage rights, globalization of world economies, atmospheric warming due to carbon-based fuel use, energy consumption, matters of international financial assistance to third world countries, political dynamics. Benign intellectual subjects, gentlemen.”
“Anna Fischer wrote a book on police states,” Shaw pointed out. “That hardly qualifies as a benign intellectual matter.”
“Ms. Fischer was most excellent at her job.”
“You knew her?”
“I knew of her.”