The Pillars of Abraham

by Ian Young

‘Pavel in apartment twelve? He is a lawyer I suppose.’

  Krystina slaps her husband’s arm and rises to leave. ‘Dinner’s almost ready.’

  After his wife leaves, Zdeněk opens up the web page Seznam and enters ‘John Kendrick Boston’ into the search bar. There are plenty of English language stories describing his disappearance (and reappearance earlier today) and the unfortunate journalist he’s been linked to. One online newspaper suggests he’s linked to the Californian professor who died in a hit and run, and then, of course, there’s the connection to Dr Andreia Menendes who similarly went missing after her colleague was found dead. The article goes on to suggest that sooner or later her body will be found, and the riddle of the academic suicides will continue. None of the news articles Zdeněk reads mentions a religious angle.

  Zdeněk scans the Czech language articles and finds one that suggest the Vltava should be searched for Andreia’s body. Why would any journalist think Andreia was even in Prague let alone dead? The fact she is in Prague is irrelevant. No one knows. But then again, such a notion might keep the Městská Police busy while he investigates the real case.

  His cell phone rings. ‘Ano.’ Yes.

  ‘Shit.’ Zdeněk listens for a moment then hangs up.

  Suddenly the idea of searching the Vltava seems a very good one.

  ‘Sorry, miláčku,’ says Hanzel, slipping his shoes on. ‘Something terrible has happened.’ And then on seeing is wife’s scowl, he adds, ‘It’s matter of life and death. It really is.’

  Krystina nods and manages to morph her scowl into a half-smile. Hanzel kisses his wife on the cheek and leaves. Searching the Vltava is unlikely to be Hanzel’s first line of investigation following news of Andreia’s disappearance, but given that his driver didn’t manage to pick up the priest’s tail once they’d sped from the terminal, he had no idea what would be. Making his job even more difficult, now he is on official leave, is that BIS resources are off limits. There is only one person he can go to.

  Hanzel is more than a little uneasy about confronting the Englishman. Hanzel’s plan has backfired terribly and Mason, it’s fair to say, would be less than amused. Hanzel always imagined the English as a fun-loving, joke-cracking lot. Admittedly, his only experience of real life English people is the drunken yobs that littered Prague every night. It used to be only at weekends that revellers would swarm about Prague in search of cheap beer, cheap women and costly fights. Now it’s every night, thanks to airlines like the one Unsworth was meant to be on.

  But Hanzel had seen English TV shows like Top Gear: three curmudgeonly middle-aged Englishmen fooling around and making fun of each other. Perhaps Mason would just crack some sexist joke about women not being allowed out of the kitchen, or something like that. Hanzel barely knows the former soldier and personal security consultant, but it’s probably safe to say he’d have no chance against him.

  The first tram to reach his stop is entirely empty. Most people, at this time, would be heading out of Prague and back to the suburbs. He sits by the window and gazes out, the apartment blocks passing his eyes in a blur, almost like life at the moment of death. And then the view changes and his eyes immediately come into focus as the close buildings give way to the view over the river Vltava. Is she already in there? Hanzel blinks and refocuses on the towers of Prague Castle, the seat of government. Do they know about the secret religious group? Perhaps it’s they who warned his boss off the Catholic Priest. The Machiavellian antics of politics never interested him; it was no different in his father’s day. Nothing changes.

  Hanzel presses the button to indicate his stop and waits by the door. A few passengers get on, not bothering to wait for him to disembark. His father would have arrested them and thrown them in the cellars. Actually, his father would never have travelled on a tram. But the mood Hanzel is in makes him want to throw these ignorant bastards in prison too.

  The nameplate on the door of Mason’s apartment building still has the last tenant’s name on it: Langford, another Englishman. It doesn’t surprise him, the apartment is owned by an English couple and rented through an English website. Hanzel presses the buzzer and within seconds the door unlocks.

  How do you tell a guy that his friend, the girl he’s sworn to protect has been abducted after your ill-thought-out plan went spectacularly wrong? Hanzel rocks back and forth on his feet – toe to heel, toe to heel – it’s as though he is unconsciously trying to make himself slightly taller, not that it would help. He isn’t going to shoot Mason but he feels reassured by the CZ 75 pistol in his pocket.

  Mason cracks the door then opens it fully. ‘What’s the news?’

  ‘There’s no way to say this other than the straight way.’

  There’s no denying it, the Englishman is very cool. When hearing the news, he stared at Hanzel for a second, silence in the room not even shared by the rumble of traffic outside. And then he looked at the floor and frowned, then through the window. He followed this by a cursory examination of the entire room, before finally settling his gaze back on Hanzel’s ashen face. Now, Hanzel waited for the explosion.

  ‘Do you have a gun?’ asks Mason, still calm and showing no signs of impending violence.

  ‘Yes, a handgun.’

  Mason lets out a pithy laugh. ‘For protection against me?’

  ‘Yes … no, of course not. Listen, Mason, I have no backup, it’s just you and me.’

  ‘Right.’ Mason nods and scrutinises Hanzel’s face for a moment. ‘Let’s start by tracing the car Unsworth left the airport in, shall we.’

  ‘Difficult. As I said, we lost it in traffic.’

  ‘But surely your man got a look at the registration number … the license plate.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I’m sure he did. Yes.’

  Mason stares at Hanzel, the latter simply staring back before embarking on his own cursory examination of the room.

  ‘Perhaps you could give him a call?’ says Mason with the patience of a care-worker dealing with a challenging client.

  The call lasts just seconds. Hanzel was told to remain incommunicado as far as the rest of the Service was concerned. The breach of instruction fails to yield the license plate number, but the driver did remember the car being a Škoda Octavia. Mason appeared less than impressed.

  ‘Oh that’s good,’ he says. ‘Because there aren’t many Octavias in Prague.’

  Hanzel tilts his head at Mason like a dog might when confused by his master. Is this the famous English humour, irony? Surely Mason knows the Czech-made car is hugely popular. And then he remembers more detail from the brief conversation with his driver.

  ‘It is good,’ he said, ‘because it was a white Octavia, and there aren’t many of those in Prague. Well, grey is more popular.’

  Mason’s impassive glare relaxes into a narrow smile. ‘So, it’s not the most popular colour, but there’s probably still quite a few?’

  ‘I suppose. But white will be easy to spot on CCTV.’

  ‘Got any friends in the local police?’

  ‘Just a few,’ says Hanzel, finally relaxing with a little irony of his own.

  Chapter 27

  It’s all she could do; sit and watch the news channels until something comes up. She could hardly go to the embassy and demand to speak to someone.

  She considers that she has a legitimate right to pursue the existence of crazy tech. That’s her job. But she can’t chase it halfway around the world and expect the US government to fund it. Alabama wonders whether she would be in Prague right now if Andreia Menendes were some crusty old male scientist from Harvard. Is all this because Andreia is a woman? A fellow scientrix, as Alabama calls herself. But then, it turns out, there is a crusty old scientist from Harvard in Prague. Would she have set out to find him if he hadn’t been a friend? Alabama considers her own questions and concludes that her answers lead to
one thing: this is a personal endeavour not a professional or scientific pursuit. It makes her, most emphatically, the very thing that also makes her a scientist: human.

  Grainy cell phone footage appears on the TV screen. Blurred images whizz by as the phone camera pans rapidly along the airport concourse and zooms in on a scuffle in the pickup zone. The news anchor prattles on in the background, presumably explaining what happened, but Alabama doesn’t need to understand Czech. A dark-haired woman has been bundled into a white car and driven away at speed. The dark hair was the second thing Alabama noticed. The first thing she noticed was the car’s license plate.

  She jots it down on a sheet of hotel paper and picks up her cell phone. ‘It’s me. Can you trace a license plate?’ Alabama reads out two numbers followed by a double X and three more numbers. There is silence on the phone; it’s as though there’s no one there, a blind call, only the distant breath indicating she isn’t talking to herself.

  ‘Be on the next flight home. There’s a United flight via Frankfurt tonight.’

  Alabama frowns. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘It’s a Škoda Octavia, registered to the American embassy in Prague.’

  The phone goes dead. Alabama is left staring into the mirror above the desk in her hotel room, her flesh tingling, her stomach twisting. There’s a clear reddening of her skin spreading around her face like a rash, like an alien disease. She throws the phone down on the bed and storms over to the window, looking out as though she might see a white Octavia racing through the narrow street.

  ‘Like hell I’m going anywhere.’ She reaches for the phone and makes another call.

  Outside on the cobbled pavement, Alabama glances left and right as though watching a tennis match. Her head turns to follow each car that passes, one way then the other. An elderly woman creeps by, forcing Alabama closer to the road as though the babička owns the pavement. Go girl, she thinks, allowing herself an indulgent smile. A car horn blares out; Alabama winces as though the horn is in her belly. The car stops and she jumps in the front seat.

  ‘So, you decided on a little tour after all?’ says the driver.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Alabama smiles at the young guy who picked her up earlier. ‘Can you take me to the embassy?’

  ‘Yours, I guess?’

  Alabama glares at the driver for a second then spots his grin. ‘Sorry, yes, the American embassy.’

  ‘You ran into some trouble already?’ says the driver, pulling away into the traffic. Another horn sounds and Alabama jerks her head around to look behind.

  ‘Asshole!’ The driver shakes his head. ‘By the way, my name’s Tom.’

  ‘Tom? Doesn’t sound very Czech.’

  ‘It does if you say Tomáš.’

  ‘Ah, I see what you’ve done.’ Alabama smiles out of the passenger window before turning back to Tom. ‘You’ve anglicised it to make it easier for the thick American.’

  ‘So what’s your name?’

  ‘Alabama.’

  ‘And what’s that simplified from? Alabama … Tarantino?’

  Alabama slaps his arm and looks back through the passenger window.

  ‘Hey, that’s assault,’ says Tom. ‘I can have you arrested for that. Now I see why you get in trouble so quickly.’

  They cross a bridge. Alabama spots the castle again and makes a promise to herself to pay a visit before she leaves Prague, if she still has the freedom to do so. Tom’s OK. He’s a safe guy to spend some time with, she’s sure of that.

  ‘So, where did you learn English?’ she asks. ‘You speak better English than the taxi drivers in Boston.’

  ‘I’m a student,’ he says. ‘Funding my doctorate. The entire course is in English.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ Alabama turns and stares at Tom. ‘You studying English Lit, or something?’

  ‘Computer science.’

  ‘That must be tough if your English is a bit crap.’

  ‘Half the school curriculum is in English these days – maths, sciences … English, obviously. By the time we get to university, we’re, how might you say, shit-hot.’

  ‘Well, God damn.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘Me? I learned English at school too. Most of our lessons are—’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Tom laughs and looks a little too long at Alabama for someone driving a car.

  ‘I’m a … scientist,’ she says.

  ‘Well you be careful,’ said Tom. ‘You don’t want to end up in the Vltava.’

  ‘I’ll try not to. What are the police saying about the whole thing?’

  ‘The guy’s wanted for murder in the US, apparently.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘They say it’s suicide. That the FBI has traced him here and that he jumped rather than face trial.’

  ‘What a load of bullshit. Four scientists kill themselves in Prague in the space of a month and the Feds reckon Kendrick’s suicide isn’t linked. Anyway, the FBI wasn’t even looking for him.’

  Tom slowed the car, glancing repeatedly at Alabama. A car horn blared out and Tom swerved back into his own lane.

  ‘You know this guy, don’t you? You know about this.’

  Alabama lets out a long stream of air but says nothing. ‘Are we near the embassy?’

  ‘Uh, not really—’

  ‘Drop me here.’

  ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, I just fancy some fresh air.’

  ‘Open the window then!’ Tom pulls over and stops the car. ‘Don’t get out.’

  Alabama grabs the door lever, but pauses, looking at Tom.

  ‘I don’t believe what the police are saying,’ says Tom. ‘They now say on the news that the Americans have captured a suspect at the airport today. A woman, they say she’s wanted for murder in the US too.’

  ‘Andreia Menendes,’ breathes Alabama. ‘That’s bullshit too. She and Kendrick – the dead guy in the river – are both scientists. They’re caught up in some weird discovery shit. I want to find out what, and I want to find the woman.’

  ‘So who are you?’

  Alabama takes a deep breath then lets it all out without words. She takes another breath as Tom waits, then reaches into her pocket and pulls out a wallet.

  ‘Special Agent Alabama Fox, FBI.’

  Tom whistles then fidgets in his seat as though excited to be caught up in American intrigue.

  ‘Only I’m beginning to think,’ says Alabama, ‘that I work for a different FBI to the one I keep hearing about.’

  They drive along a cobbled street with intricate pavers on the sidewalks that must have taken months and months to lay. An unbroken stretch of architecturally rich buildings – Renaissance abutting baroque abutting neo-classical – frames the street. It’s as though Prague wears its history like a war veteran wears his medals.

  The decoratively paved terraces bustle with tourists taking an afternoon beer on the many pavement cafés that line the street. Tom slows down to let a family scuttle across the road, a straggler from the group, a young boy, nearly flattened by a passing tram.

  Aha! Subway. Alabama nods her approval at the American sandwich chain; they must be getting close to the embassy.

  Tom picks up speed and catches the tram, passing it on the left, then slows as he spots a silver car with blue and yellow markings along the side. ‘Police,’ he says.

  ‘We’re not speeding,’ says Alabama with an arrogant shrug.

  ‘No, but in any case …’

  Alabama pulls a ‘whatever’ face. ‘What kind of car is that?’

  ‘The police? It’s a Škoda Octavia, made here in Czech.’

  ‘They seem quite popular.’

  ‘It’s a great car,’ agrees Tom. ‘German engi
neering, Czech prices.’

  ‘It’s what we’re looking for.’ Alabama turns away and continues looking at the rows of shops and cafés.

  Tom slows again and eases the car into a street to the left. ‘It’s up here.’

  ‘Tržiště’ reads the sign fixed to the building. The cobbles continue, as do the paved walkways, the bars and the shops. An Irish pub! Kendrick would have loved that. He was proud of his Irish ancestry – aren’t they all? The narrow street feels claustrophobic and, although the buildings are only a couple of stories high, they loom like the skyscrapers back home. It’s all about perspective. Alabama nods to herself: she knows all about perspective. She knows exactly why the short buildings in a narrow street have the same overbearing presence as tall buildings in a wide street. What she doesn’t know is what the hell she’ll do if she sees the white Škoda.

  Two soldiers stand at the head of the street, their automatic weapons pointed at the cobbles. One asks Tom to open the trunk, the other rolls a mirror under the car to search for threats. It’s a cursory search and Tom is soon on his way.

  ‘That’s the American Centre,’ says Tom, pointing left. ‘I’ve never been in but you can watch a movie, see a play … there’s a library too.’

  ‘Sounds cool. Is there a McDonald’s?’

  ‘I don’t know, why?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Alabama laughs, then she spots the Stars and Stripes fluttering on a pole ahead. Her stomach tightens. The US embassy is meant to be a refuge for troubled Americans, a place they ought to feel safe; the home of democracy where every citizen is protected by a mature system of law. What a heap of shit. Alabama has never been so terrified of seeing the symbol of her country’s power.

  The street opens up into a triangular space and Alabama feels less caged. There’s a café on the end of a block where the road splits in two. It’d be a good place to take a beer while waiting for something to happen. Like what? Like the white Škoda comes rattling along the road and Andreia Menendes jumps out holding Ambassador Shapiro’s hand? The question in Alabama’s mind is would the FBI repatriate Andreia to stand trial for murder or would they dump her in the river, too?