by A. D. Winch
Back in the car, Ursula was shaking almost uncontrollably, and Eric was almost rigid. They both looked exhausted and moments after Andrea pulled away, they fell asleep.
The roads were busy, but Andrea weaved through the traffic like a racing car driver. Hoots and beeps from other drivers followed the red Subaru, but she hit no other vehicle. Without stopping, she drove out of rue Paul Baudry, away from Saint-Denis and onto the motorway out of Paris. Just after entering Germany, she filled the car up with unleaded petrol and phoned Ursula’s grandparents to explain what had happened. Mémé took some calming but otherwise they both understood that Andrea was removing the children from a potentially difficult situation. Eight hours later the red Subaru arrived at the villa in Prague. The children had slept the entire journey.
A fresh layer of dusty snow covered the driveway and shone brightly in the car’s headlights. However, once the car had stopped, and the lights were off the snow became grey. The moon was covered in thick cloud and the lamp outside the villa was not working.
Andrea got out and opened the back door. The car interior light flickered on to reveal the two sleeping children. Behind their ears, towards their neck, more white hair had appeared, and subtle wrinkles had etched crow’s feet around their eyes. Andrea picked up Eric, carried him to his bed and then did the same with Ursula.
Once she was sure the children would not wake up she went back outside and locked the villa behind her. She took absolutely everything out of the car and piled the things tidily beside the front door. After making sure no one was watching she got in the car, drove ten minutes away, parked in a grubby street next to the railway line, left the keys in the ignition and walked away. On the way back to the villa, she passed a black Chrysler. Unlike the other cars in the street the engine was still warm. Andrea didn’t notice.
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Chapter 20 – Pursued
The next day the children woke to a dull sky which promised rain rather than snow. Over a breakfast of porridge, Eric and Ursula kept glancing at each other’s white hairs and crow’s feet. Neither knew what to say about their changing appearance, and so it wasn’t mentioned. Instead, they tried to talk about what had happened in Serge’s post office but every time they brought it up Andrea would change the subject. Much to the children’s annoyance Andrea had also informed them that they would be returning to school the following day. The icing on the cake, however, was when she took both their mobile phones, crushed the SIM cards underfoot and then returned the phones without any explanation.
Just after breakfast the front door bell rang. In keeping with her odd behaviour, Andrea sent Eric and Ursula to their rooms and then went to answer it. When her back was turned the two children opened their doors. They lay on their stomachs and peered out to see who it was. A shifty looking man with a long nose and a dirty coat asked, in Czech, if he could speak to Eric Meyer. In fluent Czech Andrea responded by informing the man that he was on private property, was trespassing and that she would phone the police if he did not leave.
“So, he is here?” asked the man expectantly.
Andrea slammed the door in his face and walked back along the corridor. Eric and Ursula slid like snakes back into their rooms.
For the next hour, the doorbell rang every few minutes. Under orders from Andrea, nobody answered it, and the children began to feel as if they were under siege.
“And do not look out of the windows either,” she told them. “You must not be seen. Stay in your rooms.”
This was not greeted favourably by the children, who wanted to see what was going on. However, given Andrea’s strange mood, they did as they were told.
After half an hour, Eric crawled into Ursula’s room. She was sitting on her bed reading. He grabbed her foot and pulled her off the bed and onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” Ursula asked in a loud whisper.
“Shhh!” replied Eric, put his finger to his lips and then beckoned her to follow him.
Eric’s room was a mess. The bed, the boxing glove bean bag, the desk and the floor were covered in toys. They seemed to have been flung around the room by an explosion. The centre of the blast looked to be his long wardrobe. There were more toys on the floor in front of it than anywhere else.
“What happened?” Ursula asked.
“I was trying to find something.”
“What?”
“A spy kit. It’s here somewhere, but I can’t find it.”
Ursula looked at the floor and from under a teddy bear pulled out a yellow box with the words ‘spy kit’ written on it in big letters.
“That’s where it was. Well found,” said Eric, taking the box from Ursula and opening it.
Inside were toy spy gadgets, including a mini camera, a disguise, a listening device and walkie-talkies. Eric ignored them and rummaged to the bottom where he found a periscope. It was about half a metre long, yellow like everything else in the box and shaped like two Ls joined together.
“This is what we need. We can look in here and see what is going on above us,” he explained. “Come on, follow me.”
Eric tiptoed out his room and walked down the corridor towards the front door. Ursula followed but tapped him on the shoulder after only a few paces.
“What about Andrea?” she whispered in Eric’s ear.
“Don’t worry, she’s downstairs somewhere. I think she’s in the cellar. She spends a lot of time down there for some reason,” and he shivered.
At the front door, Eric turned left and went into the room beside it. Once through the door he crouched down onto all fours and crawled towards the window. Ursula cautiously followed him. She had not been in this room before. The velvet curtains were almost closed, and there was not much light in the room. A large, Turkish rug dominated the floor and what she could see of the furniture looked very heavy and very old. Every piece - armchairs, sofa, bookcases, a table and a writing desk - was covered in plastic sheeting. The whole room looked like it should have been in a museum.
Eric crawled under the curtain and sat facing the wall. Ursula joined him. Carefully, he raised the periscope, so the top of it rested against the window and then looked in the viewing panel.
A shifty looking man was standing at the end of the driveway, on the public road through the park. The trees around him had spindly trunks and no leaves on the brittle branches. In his long coat, the man blended in with his surroundings. He was holding a cigarette in one hand and mobile phone in the other. In between puffs he would speak into his phone, finish a call and then make another one. Hanging around him were another twelve people. After a few minutes, a burgundy Škoda screeched to a halt beside him, and a photographer jumped out. Within an hour, four more reporters had joined him.
During the rest of the day, Eric and Ursula kept coming back to the room to spy on the people outside. By the time darkness fell, there were twenty-four reporters and photographers huddled together under the bare trees.
Overnight rain fell from the skies and washed the snow, the reporters and the photographers away. Before the children left the villa for school, Andrea did a quick sweep of the driveway, to check that nobody was still lurking around. Once satisfied, she collected the Range Rover from the garage and pulled up in front of the building. She summoned Eric and Ursula to get in the car with two toots on the horn. Despite not wanting to go to school, both children were looking forward to returning to some kind of normality. Eric was worried that other children would ask him questions about the news reports over the Christmas holidays, but Ursula had promised to help him out if she was around. In the Range Rover, they chatted happily about the new term. There was a degree of warmth between them which definitely had not been there on the first day of the school year.
Andrea drove silently and did not join in the conversation. She had other things to think about. These became clear as they turned into the narrow school road. It was often congested, but this morning it was full of expensive looking vehicles. Horns were beeping i
mpatiently, and they were moving at a snail’s pace, bumper to bumper. The reason for the traffic jam became apparent when they finally neared the drop off point.
The reporters and photographers had moved from the Meyer property to the school. They had been joined by two television crews, and all their vehicles were partially blocking the road. This was a situation that none of them seemed to care about. The shifty looking journalist, with a dirty coat and long nose, was talking to a serious looking woman in a brown woolly hat, a nodding photographer in a red baseball cap and a few others. The television cameramen, weighed down by their cameras, sat upon a low wall. Their frontmen stood around making sure they looked smart for when they went on air. The rest of the reporters, including two built like tanks, hung around in small separate groups, fiddling with their dictaphones or notebooks.
“Are they all for me?” cried Eric in disbelief.
“Yes. Now you must do exactly what I say. When I stop the car, open your door, get out and do not get back in the car until the journalists are almost on top of you,” Andrea instructed.
She stopped fifty metres from the drop off point and anticipated that the traffic in front of her would clear. As Eric jumped out of the car, it did. Ursula giggled at Eric standing uncomfortably beside his door and waited to see what would happen. Behind the Range Rover other parents, seeing a gap open up, started beeping their horns angrily. The noise attracted the journalists’ attention and as they turned they saw Eric. Within a second, they gathered their equipment and stampeded towards their story. Just before they reached him he climbed quickly back into the Range Rover, and Andrea accelerated up to the drop off point. Eric and Ursula jumped out and quickly darted into school. As the car door closed behind them, cameras flashed but questions remained unanswered.
Mr Ball, the head teacher, was standing in the main reception wearing his usual straw coloured suit. His arms were behind his back, and he was watching the events outside as if he had seen it all before.
“Welcome back. There is a busy term ahead for you two. You have tests, the school show and a trip to Pompeii all coming up I believe,” said Mr Ball.
“Yes, Sir,” replied the two children.
Before they went to class, Mr Ball turned to Eric.
“Journalists are tenacious beasts young man. Once they smell blood they won’t give up the hunt. I hope you have the stamina to outrun them, the resolve to ignore them and the intellect to out think them.”
For the first four days, Eric was supported by Andrea and Ursula and exhibited all these qualities. On the fifth day, he ran out of stamina. He was tired of playing the same cat and mouse game wherever he went. On the seventh day, his resolve was all used up. He was sick of having journalists stalking him; he just wanted to be left alone and could no longer ignore them. By the eighth day, Eric had had enough of being a prisoner at school and at home. That evening they had celebrated Eric and Ursula’s twelfth birthdays, but Andrea had refused to throw a party. Neither Eric nor Ursula was in the mood to celebrate anyway and, even if they had held a party, none of the other parents would have sent their children. On the ninth day, Eric used the only quality he had left, his intellect, and escaped. The escape had not been planned, but Eric saw his moment and took it.
It was the last lesson of the day, PE, and as they were getting changed Mr Tait popped his head into the changing room. He announced unexpectedly that the Year 7 classes were going on a cross-country run. In Mr Tait’s opinion, the ‘conditions were perfect for a bit of a jog.’ The sky was clear; the snow had melted away and the ground, rather than being icy, was simply hard.
All the Year 7 children trudged into the gym and sat on the multi-coloured floor. They were all dressed in their tracksuits, woolly hats and gloves. Nobody wanted to go on a run, and they all looked miserable.
‘We’ll go the normal route. Not too far,” explained Mr Tait happily.
Most of the children groaned, but Mr Tait ignored them.
“Just follow me out of the gym, through the gate at the back of the school, into the park, down to the river at Modřany and back again. Easy! Any questions?”
Eric saw his opportunity and said, “Mr Tait, I’ve left my gloves in the changing room. Can I get them, please?”
It was a bare-faced lie, but Mr Tait didn’t doubt his star pupil for a second.
“If you must, but you’ll have to catch us up. I’m not waiting for you.”
“No problem. I’ll be with you before you reach the path.”
“A challenge, Mr Meyer? We’ll see about that. Come on everyone let’s go,” and Mr Tait sped out of the gym followed by all the other children.
Eric took his time. He went back into the smelly changing rooms, packed his bag and then returned to the empty gym. After a few minutes of stretching, he pushed open the fire door and stepped out into the cold. There was no one around. All the children were in lessons; the herd of journalists were at the front of the school, and the car park next to the gym was quiet. Eric began with a fast walk over the playground, broke into a jog across the football pitch, sprinted out of the back gate and into the trees.
There were many paths through the park. The main one led gently down to the river beside a trickling stream and was covered in crumbling tarmac. This was the path Mr Tait would have taken. Eric followed it at first, skipping over pot holes and jumping over larger cracks as he went. After a few hundred metres a thin, well-trodden path appeared on his right. Hanging branches provided a canopy over it, but they were too low for adults to go under. Eric ran down this path. The mud was hard and easier to run on than the tarmac. Within a few minutes, the main route was out of sight and he was surrounded by bare trees. For the first time in over a week, he felt free and happy. There were no journalists, no photographers and no one to bother him. Eric now understood why his father had been so keen to protect their privacy and for the first time appreciated his father’s decision.
At one point, he heard his classmates but fortunately he didn’t see them. This was the first time he had ever skipped school. He did not want to get caught before he had actually taken full advantage of it, and he wanted to treat himself to something. As he neared the river, he sensed that Ursula had spotted he was missing. Her initial fears soon passed, and her concentration turned away from Eric.
The park would have ended right on the Vltava river if a four lane road and tramline had not been built there instead. Eric crossed the road and waited at the tram stop. A thin layer of sweat covered his face, and his cheeks were rosy from the run. A plan of action had formed in his mind. He was now officially skiving and as he was in trouble anyway he wanted to do something to deserve a punishment. With this in mind he decided to go into the city centre, lose himself amongst the thousands of tourists and buy an ice cream at the best ice cream shop in Prague.
A red and white tram soon arrived, and he got on. Elderly people had taken all the seats, and other adults were clinging on to the hand rails. Faced with no choice Eric decided to tram surf all the way to the Old Town area of Prague.
Old Town square was bursting with tourists. Hundreds stood by the six hundred year old astronomical clock, waiting for the skeleton to strike four and the apostles to move. Big groups of Japanese lined up in an orderly manner to take photos of the twin-towered Tyn church. Numerous school groups stared dutifully at the architecture and other tourists just hung around taking in the atmosphere as the winter sun set.
Getting lost amongst the tourists was easy, but escaping them was almost as hard as getting away from the reporters. Fortunately, Eric knew his way well around the smaller, cobbled streets and alleys. There were always fewer tourists on them, and he was soon at his favourite ice cream shop.
A bell jingled as Eric pushed the old door open. In front of him, glistening like a frozen paint palette, was a white counter jammed full of tubs of freshly made ice cream. Forest fruits, pistachio, mint, caramel, banana and more fought for Eric’s attention. In truth, he wanted them all, however, after muc
h deliberation he chose chocolate and coconut. The young lady behind the counter skilfully balanced his two scoops on top of a wafer cone and Eric paid his money.
Outside the shop, it was nearly dark. The sun had not quite set, but the closely packed old buildings reduced the fading light in the narrow lanes. A group of Italian tourists had noisily gathered in front of the shop, gesticulating wildly. Fearing that one of them may accidentally knock his ice cream, Eric cut through them and walked happily into a cobbled alley between two old hotels.
The alley was thankfully free of tourists. There were no shops on it, no cafes and no street entertainers. It was empty except for an old street lamp which cast weak light over the peeling walls.
Eric stood against the cold metal of the lamp and admired his creation. Despite the short walk, it had not melted and still looked as delicious as when it was served to him. As he brought the cone towards his mouth, someone bumped sharply into his back. The ice cream was sent spiralling into the air and landed with a splat on the cobbles.
“I’m sorry,” apologized the man in English. “I was in a rush and didn’t look where I was going.”
Eric did not look at him. His eyes were fixed on the messy pile that was his ice cream. At that moment, it was all he wanted and all he needed. Everything else had been lost to him. Even though he knew it was only an ice cream, and in spite of himself, his eyes welled up with tears.
“As I said, I’m really sorry, it was my fault. Please don’t cry. I’ll give you the money to buy another one. How much was it?”
Through sniffles, Eric told him the price and the man rummaged through his pockets.
“Here you are, and a bit extra,” said the man.
Eric blindly held out his hand to receive the money. Without warning, strong fingers gripped Eric’s wrist, and a needle painfully pierced his vein. He tried to shake free, but it was no use. He was held tightly until the syringe was empty.
The world around Eric became muffled, he felt dizzy and couldn’t focus. The last thing he saw was the red splodge of a cap on the man’s cloudy head, and then he passed out. Before Eric hit the cobbles, the man caught hold of his arms, slung him on his back and walked away calmly. Apart from two grey rats feasting on Eric’s ice cream the alley was deserted again.
