Free The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner

outside. I told Jacek, “Sorry about the mess, Stanislaw. I didn’t mean to demolish your surgery, but I didn’t have much choice. Of course, I’ll pay for the damage.”
    “Oh yes?” His voice was immediately cheerful. When he sent me the repair bill, I’d likely be paying for plasterboard at mahogany prices.
    “One last thing,” I said to Jacek. “Do you know the combination to your doorman’s gun vault? I’d hate to leave without my pistols.”
    Jacek
did
know the combination . . . but that didn’t help much with the room pitch-black. To get light, we used the dashboard cigarette lighter in one of the SUVs to set fire to a waiting room magazine: a French-language copy of
Life,
dating back to the mideighties. I held the burning magazine as a torch while Jacek fumbled with the combination. The whole process took so long, I almost said, “Never mind, we don’t have time.” But when I felt the familiar weight of my VADS pistols resting in their holsters, a great weight lifted from my shoulders. Once again, I was ready for anything.
    “Let’s move,” I told Reuben. “The Warsaw police may treat this clinic with kid gloves, but they aren’t the ones who worry me.” I nudged him toward the door, then turned back to Jacek. “Sorry again, old man. Trouble seems to follow me around.”
    “Ach, Lara,” said Jacek with a shrug, “what’s to apologize? For real trouble, you should have been here
last
night.”

4
    ST. BERNWARD’S MONASTERY:
THE INFIRMARY
    We passed half a dozen police cars on our way out of town. They were all heading leisurely for Stare Miasto . . . but by the time they dawdled into Jacek’s, the mercenary corpses would be gone. The bodies and SUVs would turn up elsewhere—probably in some neighborhood noted for gang violence—and in due course, the authorities would write off the deaths as “drug-related killings.”
    Though our destination lay to the northeast, I headed northwest on the highway to Gdansk. I was, after all, driving an SUV commandeered from the mercenaries. If it contained a LoJack or some other tracking device, I didn’t want to give away our intended direction.
    We stopped at the first petrol station/coffee shop along the road. I made a phone call, then settled down to wait. Reuben had something to eat, while I bought road maps of every Polish province. I also took the chance to do a quick web search on St. Bernward using my mobile phone.
Born 960 A.D . in what is now northern Germany. Became Bishop of Hildescheim, 993. Famed for encouraging sacred art in churches, most notably the superbly decorated bronze gates of the cathedral at Hildesheim. Died 1022. Canonized 1193. Now the patron saint of metal workers, architects, and sculptors.
No mention of a monastery in Poland, but that didn’t mean much. The Roman Catholic Church has thousands of unpublicized retreats in odd corners of the world, most of them named after saints with no obvious connection to the site or its inhabitants. Whatever awaited us at St. Bernward’s Monastery, we’d have to find out for ourselves.
    Half an hour later, a man named Krzysztof with terrible teeth arrived to take our Explorer in exchange for an aging Honda Accord. The Accord had seen years of rough treatment, but that was what I wanted: its dents would be camouflage, helping it fit in with other vehicles in the cash-strapped backcountry where we’d be going. Krzysztof assured me the engine was still “strong like tiger” . . . and since he owed me his life (five years earlier, I’d pulled him out of a giant wasp’s nest in the sewers of Krakow—don’t ask), I was willing to trust him. The car proved peppy enough; not in the same class as a Lamborghini Diablo, but exactly what we needed to trundle through Polish farmland without attracting attention.
    Three hours passed uneventfully with Reuben asleep in the passenger seat. His breathing was troubled by gasps that never quite stirred him to consciousness. Once, as we passed