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their status as sworn officers of the Biuro Bezpieczeństwa i Prawdy, the Bureau of Security and Truth, meant they had responsibilities to Justyna Pokriefke, who headed that bureau. Responsibilities which sometimes—more often than Zieliński would have preferred, really—bore precious little resemblance to the official description of their duties.
    He finished placing his order and looked up from the menu’s display, trained eyes circling the dining room, picking up the other DOP agents strategically stationed to cover every entry and exit. There’d been a time when that sort of security would have been considered overkill. Zieliński remembered watching Włodzimierz Ziomkowski waving back his personal bodyguards—all three or four of them—so that he could wade straight into huge, wildly enthusiastic crowds to shake hands, slap backs, kiss babies, and bend over to present a private ear to some party member with a private message or request.
    He missed those days.
    “Status check,” he murmured, and nodded ever so slightly in approval as the responses came back over his earbug.
    He didn’t really think there were any active plots to assassinate Przewodniczący Ziomkowski, but he was nowhere as certain of that as he’d like to be, and that incident with the airbus might have some nasty repercussions down the road. A tour airbus loaded with school students wasn’t supposed to be shot down in a midair explosion by a military sting ship. Over eighty dead—that was the final death toll, but whatever the official ’faxes might have to say, and whatever open chatter there might be on the electronic channels, he knew there were rumors the government was actually understating the casualties. He didn’t think they were; surely no one could’ve gotten more than eighty or ninety, max, onto an airbus. But the truth was that he wasn’t certain the official number was accurate, and those rumors were taking on an ugly tone. One that was actually directed at Ziomkowski himself for a change.
    So, yes, it was possible that this time all the elaborate security might find itself necessary.
    He watched the Chairman and his guest’s appetizers arrive, then glanced up as another server reached across his shoulder to set his own plate in front of him. He murmured his thanks and reached for his napkin-wrapped silverware.
    “Better dig in,” he advised Małakowski. “If Mister Szponder makes his schedule and the Przewodniczący decides to walk him out to the garage again, you don’t have long.”
    “I know.”
    Małakowski reached for his own fork, and Zieliński’s eyes drifted back to the brown-haired, square-faced man sitting across the table from Ziomkowski.
    Tomasz Szponder was a good twelve or thirteen centimeters shorter than the Chairman, but then again, Ziomkowski was a very tall man. Szponder was also over thirty T-years older than the Chairman, and he’d been one of Włodzimierz Ziomkowski’s graduate students ten years before Szymon Ziomkowski was ever born. He was also a member in good standing of the Oligarchia, the group of incredibly wealthy families who totally dominated the Włocławek System’s economy. There’d been a time when Tomasz Szponder had been something close to a personal friend of Grzegorz Zieliński, as well, but that, too, had been a long time ago. Back in the heady early days of the Agitacja, when they’d both been enthusiastic members of the newly organized Ruch Odnowy Narodowej. Back before the National Redemption Movement had succeeded in its goal of winning the political power to implement its reforms through the ballot box.
    These days, Szponder had settled back into the familiar comfort of his role as an oligarcha and Grzegorz Zieliński had settled back into his familiar role as someone who protected the Oligarchia. There were times, in the privacy of his mind, when he allowed himself to be disappointed in Szponder, but at least he wasn’t one of the łowcy trufli , the “truffle