The Kingfisher Secret

by AnonYMous

  “I spoke to police both here in Prague and in Strasbourg, where these men followed me. Also, there was a fire yesterday in Mladá Boleslav. In the press they’re calling it an accident but believe me it was no accident.”

  “Why do you believe this is the case?”

  Grace explained, without naming names, about a powerful American who had been seduced by a woman who might be a spy, a swallow. Had he heard of swallows? This woman, this swallow, had a KGB code name and so did her parents, and while Grace knew the KGB wasn’t a thing anymore it didn’t matter: it might have been the StB, not the KGB. One answered to the other.

  The soldier stared at her in an appraising way. She had rambled a bit, and wished she could start over. He had not written anything in his notebook.

  “The integrity of the American election is at stake!”

  After a while, with a faint sigh, he stepped into a small office. Then he emerged with a clipboard and a three-page form to fill out. “Please describe your situation.”

  “Wait.” Grace knew what the young soldier thought of her. “Once I’m finished describing it, what happens then?”

  “Tomorrow morning, when the staff come in, they will evaluate it and contact you.”

  “I want to speak to someone now about this, rather than write it down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the nature of the story I’m pursuing.”

  “Can you tell me the nature?”

  “I just did!” Grace handed the clipboard back to him. “It’s very sensitive. I’m in danger.”

  He readied his notebook again. “What publication do you work for?”

  “It isn’t for my publication.”

  “You’re a freelance journalist, then?” Now there was genuine fatigue in his voice. “Unemployed?”

  “I work for the National Flash.”

  The soldier frowned. He had still not written a word in his notebook. He gave her the clipboard again. “Fill out the form, ma’am. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  Grace looked through the three pages. “Can you let me into the embassy, so I can speak to an FBI agent?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You don’t have a tipline?”

  He pointed to the form on the clipboard. “You can do it here or you can do it online.” He went into his office and re-emerged with a card. “You can also phone this number and leave a message, if you prefer. Someone will call you back for more information as needed, in one to five business days.”

  “As needed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Through the blastproof glass the main floor of the embassy was dotted with soft lamps, the same ones she had seen from outside. Grace imagined sitting next to one of the lamps in a brown leather chair, on the other side of safety, a glass of whiskey in her hand. Then she imagined the number of people who came by the American embassies of the world with stories. There was a word for what these murderers, what this massive, very experienced apparatus had done to her: gaslighting.

  Grace saw herself the way the young soldier saw her: crazy. She handed the clipboard back to him.

  “You have a great evening, ma’am.” There was a trace of triumph in his voice as she stepped out into the street.

  * * *

  —

  She decided to walk back to her apartment. It wasn’t far. With one turn she would reach the pedestrian street that led to the Charles Bridge. Before she reached it, just as she passed from the light of a streetlamp into a pond of shadow, she heard, “Stop.” It was not the way an English speaker would say stop.

  She turned and the two men in black from the embassy plaza jogged through the shadows. Heavy items on their belts rattled as they made their way over the cobblestones. For an instant, while they remained in darkness, she thought these men were here to help her, to call what had happened in the foyer a travesty and to escort her into leather chairs, soft lamps, whiskey, whispers.

  But only for an instant.

  When they entered the yellow streetlight, she recognized them. She turned and ran, but they were faster than her. She had removed the knife from her bag, for airport security, and as she ran she could not find her keys.

  They reached her and shouted in her face, shoved her onto her knees and then onto her chest. One of the men yanked her bag away. The other pulled her hands behind her back and it hurt so much she thought her arms would snap. Her head fell forward and she scraped her chin on the stone.

  She tried to scream, “Help,” but it was too hard to take in a deep enough breath.

  In the distance she saw some people walking past. She tried to scream for help again and they turned to look but did not come to her aid.

  “Please!” She sobbed. “Help me!”

  There was a knee on her back now. She was certain she would die, that she would never speak to her mother or her friends again. They would kill her like they had killed Katka and Coach Vacek.

  She thought of Jason—lovely, kind Jason. Why had she not wanted to have kids with him? Now she was going to die alone, with gravel in her mouth and a knee on her back, in the shadows of a street in Prague.

  “Let me go. I’ll do whatever you say. Please.”

  Rough hands reached around and under her, into all of her pockets. Breath mints, tissues, a dogshit bag from walking Manon’s Yorkshire terrier.

  Then they were off her, allowing her to turn so she could see them again. The bow-legged one was lighting a cigarette. His partner with the pretty eyes and the bulbous nose pulled the printouts from her notebook and stuffed them into his pants pocket. Then he played with her iPhone.

  “What is the password, Grace?” He was a bit breathless, from running and fighting her. “Your password, and we go. Otherwise…” He mimed a kick with his big black boot.

  “I’m calling the police!”

  The bow-legged man laughed.

  “Password, Grace.”

  They liked saying her name. “Fuck you,” she spat.

  A moment later the one with her phone and the notebook stepped forward and kicked her to the ground again, with his heavy boot. He placed it on her chest and she tried, with all of her strength, to move it off or to wriggle away but he was too strong. She could hardly breathe. “Grace. You can stop speaking to the FBI now.”

  “Or anyone else,” said the bow-legged one.

  Grace tried to create a gap between her chest and the man’s boot so she could breathe.

  “We know who you are. We know who your loved ones are. We know where you are going.” He held up her iPhone and the notebook. “Soon we will know everything, and we’ll have no need for you. Unless we work together. Yes? Now who have you spoken to about this?”

  The man took his boot off her chest for a moment and she gasped.

  “I’ve already written the story. The people who have it, if they don’t hear from me—”

  He stepped on her again. “What people?”

  Light shone from behind the two men, headlights, and a car approached. The murderer slid his boot from her chest to her face and pressed hard enough that her nose exploded with pain. With a final push the back of her head cracked into the cobblestones. Then as the car came closer the men walked past her and turned left away from the Charles Bridge.

  Grace struggled to her feet and shouted at them, too furious to cry. Her nose was bleeding. The car, one of the Craigs from the embassy, slowly passed her. She could not see inside.

  The men had stolen nothing else from her purse. Her wallet and passport were still there, with panties and socks, deodorant, a brush, tampons, Four Seasons shampoo and conditioner, lipstick, and an eyebrow pencil. There were no tissues so she used the panties to stop her nose from bleeding.

  Rather than go back, pointlessly, to the embassy and fill out a form, she walked toward the Charles Bridge, wondering why the men had not killed her. When they discovered whom she had spoken to, that no one had the story, that there was no story, would they be as gentle with her?

  *
* *

  —

  Among the tourists, there was a bright store selling phones, phone cases, SIM cards, and accessories. Grace bought a cheap Samsung with a minimal data package.

  It was late afternoon Montreal time when Steadman Coe answered.

  “You in your office?” she asked.

  “I am. Where are you calling from? This number—”

  “I’m still in Prague and I’ve just been attacked. These men have been following me. They stole my notes and my phone. I realize now they’ve hacked into my computer and they knew what I’m working on. I’m so stupid.”

  “What men, Grace? What are you working on? What do you mean attacked?”

  “Steadman, listen. I’m working on a story. It’s big.”

  “Is this about Violet Rain? That’s not a story. I should know because I own it. And if this is about that book idea, I already said no. She doesn’t want it. Josef Straka told me—”

  “I was with Elena, in her hometown, and then I went back. I met these people who told me about her childhood, about a man, a Russian man. I think he was KGB. And her own parents—”

  “What does this have to do with getting mugged?”

  “I didn’t get mugged!” Grace paused, took a breath. “Elena isn’t who we think she is, Steadman, and I think it’s important for next week, for the election. If we hurry…”

  “If we hurry, what?”

  “This could change everything. The people who told me about her, from her hometown, they died yesterday in a fire.”

  “An accident?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Is this Russian shit?”

  “Yes. I’ll write it up, what I have now, from memory, and I’ll send it to you.”

  “Grace: no. We can discuss this when you’re home but don’t you write a goddamn word about this. First of all, Anthony and Elena divorced a million years ago. Second, no one fucking cares about Elena despite our best efforts to keep her in the starry firmament. Third, this Russian shit: no goddamn way. It’s fake. We haven’t worked this hard to let it all go, based on a bunch of garbage rumors. Listen to me: come home.”

  “I’m flying to Miami to see my mom tomorrow, then I’m coming straight to you. And you’d better cancel my phone and report it stolen.”

  “Do not write a word about this.”

  Grace ended the call and looked down into the darkness of the Vltava River. She thought of the British journalist who had been helped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. She realized she had been out of breath the whole time, like she had just climbed three sets of stairs.

  Then she crossed the bridge with dozens of ordinary late-night tourists who were—like her—on their way back to their beds for the night. But unlike her, they did not have blood on their faces or boot marks on their chests or the taste of cobblestone in their mouths.

  21

  NEW YORK, 1977

  The day before her wedding, Elena Klimentová told her fiancé she needed to do a bit of last-minute shopping. She had forgotten to buy gifts for her bridesmaids: Danika and two other Kara girls, one Russian and one Slovenian. Anthony did not seem to care about her absence. The new Craig sedans were not selling well, and he was having trouble managing the expectations of “whiny, impatient, weak” dealers in Podunk, America.

  Happily, the bearings side of the business, the part that interested him the least, was doing well enough that losing money on cars was not yet calamitous.

  Elena had helped him see that marrying a glamorous woman with an exotic accent would help the Craig brand. It was a good story and he was already telling it: an Olympic gymnast who comes from European car manufacturing royalty is squished by communism. Her parents, who can’t even get out of the country for their only daughter’s wedding, languish in Czechoslovakia. Lining up for hours, for bread and toilet paper! Yet here she is, one of the chief designers at Craig International.

  Anthony was not yet famous enough to draw press photographers and no one in the city knew who she was, so it did not matter where Elena went after the driver dropped her at Bloomingdale’s. It was a ten-minute walk south on Lexington Avenue to the Hotel Beverly.

  The Beverly was a lovely Beaux Arts hotel but it would be on no one’s top ten list. Elena did not think Anthony would allow a client or partner to stay in a place like this. If it were her hotel, she would rip down all of the old curtains, replace the carpet, and shine a light on the carved stone. Elena went straight to the elevator and hit the button for the third floor. Sergei had taught her a way to identify herself at his door. It went knock [pause] [pause] [pause] knock-knock-knock.

  By the time she reached his room Elena had worked herself into an emotional wreck. For over a year she had been pretending, but never more than in the past weeks. Whenever she broke down in tears, Anthony assumed it was because her father and mother could not be here for the most important day of her life. She did not know many happy women but there were a few, and what they had in common was choosing the life they led. Nothing made a woman more unhappy than feeling trapped—by the wrong man, by poverty, by religion, by tradition.

  Danika was now married to Carlos, who still worked for the senator, who still planned to run for the House of Representatives, who still called her a whore and blamed her for his failures and hurt her when he was drinking. Danika drank as much as Carlos did now, and needed cocaine for fun and Valium for sleep. She had become a genuine New Yorker.

  It felt queer to choose Danika as her maid of honor, and other swallows as bridesmaids. There was no honor in anything they did, but they were her only real friends, the only ones who understood.

  Of course Sergei would claim the opposite: their work, their sacrifice, was all about honor.

  Knock [pause] [pause] [pause] knock-knock-knock.

  When Sergei was visiting New York under his pseudonym, pretending to be a violin dealer who had defected to Paris, he dressed like other Western men in bright, garish polyester jackets. But today, in the lamplit quiet of his hotel room, he wore a muted blue wool suit.

  She had hoped it would make her feel better to see Sergei, but now she felt worse. The room smelled of whiskey. His shirt was untucked and what remained of his hair was greasy and combed haphazardly.

  Once she was inside they kissed and embraced and he whispered Czech into her ear. “Speak no louder than this.”

  “But they don’t know who you are.”

  “They could, Elenka.” He went to the desk beside the bed, where he had set up a portable typewriter. There was a bottle of Jameson off to its right and two glasses. One was half full and there were drips and little puddles all about it. Sergei filled up the second glass, nearly to the top, and handed it to her.

  “To love.”

  She lifted her glass. “To love.”

  Neither of them spoke. The sounds of the city below, honking, sirens, and random shouting, leaked in through the thin windows. She had wanted to tell Sergei everything, to shout it at him the moment the heavy door closed behind her. But here he was: clammy with perspiration and heavy on his heels, like a fighter at the end of a losing night. He put his left hand on her face. She thought he was going to kiss her again but instead he whispered in her ear that none of the other professors in the program had seen what he had seen in her. There were a hundred swallows around the world but not one of them had achieved what she had achieved. His success was assured.

  Elena wanted to leave. She had imagined all of this differently. Sergei was turning into someone else, no better than Anthony. Now he took off his jacket and began unbuttoning his shirt. There was not a drop of blood in her body that wanted what he wanted.

  “Sergei,” she said, “I don’t have enough time.”

  This was not true and he knew it wasn’t. He held her roughly and she dropped the glass full of whiskey and he laughed. “You’re in luck. I don’t need much time.”

  Under him, in the soft light, willing him to hurry, she began to cry. For a moment she was a
fraid of what he might do but he only licked the tears from her cheek like it was something he had done before, with another woman on the day before her wedding.

  She had brought her diary with her, with the list of weak and failing men, the bankrupt, the men who propositioned her, the secretly gay. Elena had never considered herself to be an agent or a spy. She did not do the work of turning or compromising anyone. There were no fistfights or gun battles. She had formulated no poisons. Compared to the other women in her social circle in Manhattan, her life was boring.

  When Sergei finished he sat naked and moist on the bed, Humpty Dumpty with hair, she thought.

  “Good girl.” He read through her diary and sipped his whiskey. “This is more perfect than perfect.”

  The more she achieved, the more her parents would receive. There were advantages. In September, she and Anthony would move to a four-bedroom penthouse apartment with a view of the park, a two-million-dollar wedding present from Anthony’s parents, which she had already begun renovating. Anthony trusted her completely to do it, and to plan the children’s bedrooms as well. He wanted a big family: five kids, maybe six.

  “We want to make as many babies as we can,” Anthony had said aloud, at a dinner in Aspen with his most successful dealer and his wife. “Look at this woman. Hell, look at me! It’s our duty.”

  Elena knew what Sergei would ask of her when she heard Anthony speak this way: praise him, laugh at his wit. The goal of the program was achingly simple: to encourage and create agents of disorder and chaos in America, to use democracy as a weapon against itself.

  Sergei mumbled into his glass of whiskey and waved at Elena, who was nearly finished getting dressed. “Go on. Marry your industrialist before you get too old. Let’s divide. Let’s conquer.”

  22

  PRAGUE, 2016

  William stood up from the stone steps in front of the spice shop where he was waiting and took a tentative step toward Grace. “My God. What happened to you?”