“For almost four hundred years, this was the only crossing of the Vltava,” Andrej remarked as they came through the tower arch. “Charles IV commissioned it in 1357. Peter Parler, one of the most famous Czechs ever, built it. And do you know why it’s so strong? Because they mixed the mortar with eggs.”
“I thought this was your first time in Prague.”
“First time in a long time,” Andrej corrected, “but I have been here before.” Then for a few seconds he went silent. He had been, he thought, to most capitals and also many tucked-away places in the near abroad. Once upon a time, his work at the GRU, the main intelligence directorate of the Russian armed forces, had required it. “Anyway,” he continued, “there’s great history to the statues. For the first couple of centuries, the crucifix, third up on the right, stood all alone. Then I think the one of St. John Nepomuk was the next after that. He was a great hero to the Jesuits, vicar-general of the archdiocese, but he’d angered King Wenceslas IV over some point of church politics, and so they tortured him and threw his body off the bridge. There was a lot of that sort of thing.”
“Everywhere,” Philip added.
“Sadly,” Andrej concurred. “One supposes it is simply a virus that must run its course.”
“Through different civilizations at different times,” Philip added.
“Precisely,” Andrej agreed. “Do you see those gilded words on the crucifix? They say ‘Holy, Holy, Holy Lord.’ But the church didn’t pay for them, and neither did the king. They made one of the Jews do it to punish him for blasphemy.”
“Alas,” Philip said with a laugh, “we’ve been consulting the same travel guide.”
On the distant hill, Prague Castle and Hradcˇany glistened, backlit by the declining sun. They walked toward it, losing themselves in the tide of students and tourists. Several young men they passed wore billboards advertising concerts in the Old Town. By the statue of St. Augustine, a young woman sold cut daffodils. Farther along another offered silk scarves, stylishly displayed through small holes in a white-enameled easel that rested atop a weathered pantechnicon. A gentleman in a frayed coat and a wool tie hawked postcards, film, assorted sundries.
Now, at last, they walked deliberately, still away from the Old Town, all the way to the steps to Saská Street by the Judith Bridge Tower and from there to the Malá Strana, the Little Quarter that sloped beneath the castle.
Finally Philip said, “This seems as good a place as any to do business.”
“It does,” Andrej agreed.
“Your message was cryptic.”
“Of necessity,” Andrej replied in a carefully modulated voice. “As I suggested, one has the feeling there are questions being asked.”
“What sorts of questions?” Philip replied.
“Banal on the surface, but they are questions with implications. In my experience those are the most dangerous kind.”
When Philip made no response, Andrej continued. “How could Zhugov have afforded such a large suite at the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, for a month no less? Or to take that villa every summer in the hills above Monte Carlo? How could he have afforded the casino, to play at the tables and for the stakes and with the women he did? He must have known that an eye is kept on such things. So perhaps there is an innocent explanation after all. But the difficulty with explanations is that they prompt further questions, don’t they? Was he in bed with an oligarch? If so, since when, and which oligarch, and on what deals? Let’s face it: Everyone knew he traded a bit on the side. It was a perk of office. But to live so well, he would have to have traded more than seems seemly.”
“Can you pinpoint the source of these questions?” Philip asked.
“No,” Andrej said, “but they have been raised and repeated within the walls of Main Directorate Number Four. That much I do know. Could be it’s jealousy and no more than that.”
“Could be,” Philip repeated, “although it’s rare to be jealous of the dead.”
“From what I hear, the supposition is that he may have profited from his friendship with your friend Santal.”
“He wouldn’t have been the first to have done so.”
“No, I’m sure.”
“Do the questions stop there?”
“Yes, so far.”
“How can this be?”
“Are you asking if your name has surfaced? The answer is no, not yet—and, honestly, I doubt it will.”
“Why shouldn’t it? I am known to be close to Ian Santal.”
“So are many others who remain above suspicion. But come on, you are on a different plane. As the people who evaluate such things would view it, you are there to legitimize him. He has sought you out for that reason, all the more credit to you! Nor do you concern yourself with the kind of boring, questionable but profitable material in which he might sometimes trade. You are ridding the world of danger. Eliminating, not adding to, its perils. The fact is that by its very conceit our operation lies beyond the imagination of the bureaucrats. The numbers are all in perfect order, and as long as that’s the case, they cannot conceive of theft on the scale we’ve achieved. After all, nothing’s missing!”
Philip mulled Andrej’s reasoning. “I hope you’re right,” he said.
“I am right,” Andrej said, “but I thought you should know.”
“Thank you. It was the correct decision.”
“It’s the fear of guilt by association that protects you,” Andrej added obliquely. “Having lived with it so long that it has become part of our nature, we Russians are wary of invoking it. If it were once more to become our standard, everyone would be in the gulag. So in a strange way it is your shield rather than your vulnerability.”
By this time they had crossed the Certovka, the Devil’s Stream. On the northern side of Grand Priory Square, undisturbed since the eighteenth century, stood the former palace of the grand prior of the Knights of Malta. Across from it the baroque masterpiece Buquoy Palace was now the French embassy. In this tranquil square, Philip stopped abruptly and surprised Andrej, who had not realized that their conversation was over, by offering his hand. “It’s a comforting thought,” Philip declared, almost in a whisper, before he hailed a taxi that had just discharged its passengers. He waited until the old Audi had progressed to the far end of the square before announcing his destination as the Powder Tower by Prague Castle.
“Closed at this hour,” the driver said.
“Never mind, I’m to meet someone nearby.”
When the taxi reached the vicinity, Philip kept his eye out for tourist restaurants, then, settling on a pleasant, crowded one at random, instructed the driver to stop. As if in search of the party with whom he was to rendezvous, he shot his glances left, right and behind, making certain he had not been followed. Finally, with an air of exasperation, he advanced past the packed outdoor tables into a quieter, half-full interior of dark pine. Opera posters, many of them old but still colorful, had been placed into identical baroque frames and were spotlighted at intervals along three walls. In the distance, beyond the service bar, he spied the public telephone for which he’d been searching. There he carefully tapped in the number of a small hotel in Naples.
“Estensione tre-due-sette,” Philip told the operator without mentioning a name. When that extension was answered, he switched into matter-of-fact English. “We spoke sometime ago,” he said. “Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Good, because there has been a slight change of plan, nothing serious. For the time being, we’ve decided to go with the second option.”
“The second option?”
“Exactly.”
“You may consider it done.”
“Grazie,” Philip said.
Chapter Fourteen
When Philip returned to the street, he walked east for several minutes until, sati
sfied that he was alone at the edge of the Ledebour Garden, he hailed another taxi.
“The Still Life restaurant in Liliova Street,” he told the new driver, who found their way to the restaurant through a dimly lit maze of brightly repainted façades.
Aromatic with thyme and paprika, alive with conversation and laughter, the Still Life was a sequence of simply furnished rooms whose ecru walls were hung with oils and watercolors by local artists. Now, in the middle of dinner, it exuded that buzz that Philip had always preferred in restaurants. His table was waiting in a cheerfully lit corner
“I’m expecting a guest,” he told the waiter.
“She has just arrived,” the waiter said, gesturing toward the corridor that led to the ladies’ room. When she emerged, Philip’s eyes came alight.
Ordinarily, in Rome or London, anywhere he shared territory with Isabella or might have been recognized, Philip would not have dined with a prostitute in public, but Prague felt more hospitable to such a risk, as if its ancient shadows and centuries-old layers of intrigue supplied a perfect disguise. He could almost hear a haunting zither as he stood, with a kind of mock graciousness, to pull back his guest’s chair. She was just right, as they all had been since he’d struck up his arrangement with Dieter Albanese, the fashion photographer who found them for him. Were he to be discovered with her, he would have only to introduce her as a colleague from this or that government or organization. He had no doubt she would pass.
He’d had his first whore at seventeen, having tagged along to Paris to stay with a school friend during the Christmas holidays, as his own father had been occupied elsewhere. The brothel to which his friend had introduced him, allegedly descended from the fabled Madame Claude’s of a couple of generations before, had been located in a slim house in the seizième, not too far from the Champs-Élysées. The Corsican who’d admitted them had exuded a phony bonhomie, and the parlor had smelled of fresh paint. Finally a party of dewy ingenues had descended from the stairwell to join them. They might have been the boys’ slightly older sisters, from similar backgrounds, bound for similar futures. Their deceptiveness had enhanced their allure. Philip had gone off with the redhead, the memory and even the taste of whom flashed back to him now, because until Dieter that Parisian adventure had set the standard.
“Paulina,” the new girl whispered, putting forth her hand with assurance. “Dieter said he thought I’d meet your expectations.”
“Ah, yes, Dieter,” he repeated, “indispensable Dieter!”
“To so many of us, in so many ways,” observed Paulina.
“He’s very thorough.”
“He is in love with beauty, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing in the least, but it is not only beauty he loves.”
“Everyone needs money—everyone who doesn’t have it. To Dieter, people are works of art. Well, certain people, the ones whose genes have managed to express themselves in a way that’s pleasing to the eye. And there is no more shame in trafficking in their beauty, before it perishes, than there would be in buying or selling photographs of them.”
“Interesting,” Philip said, “although I wouldn’t beat the idea to death. You’re Czech?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Philip gave a grudging nod. “And how old?” he asked. “Don’t lie.”
“Twenty-two.”
“And still a student?”
“Part-time,” Paulina said. “I also work in a government office.”
“Doing what?”
“Not much. I file a lot of paperwork for people trying to get back property that was appropriated by the Communists, sometimes by the Nazis. I distribute forms.”
“And how did you find your way to Dieter?”
“He found me.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sure Dieter told you the rules.”
“Has he ever failed to?”
“Never,” Philip said.
“He told me you would establish them.”
“That is correct. You must accept it. Do you?”
“Yes, in your case.”
“Because?”
“Like you, I suspect, I enjoy testing my limits.”
“Is Paulina your true name? Never mind, what does it matter?”
“It doesn’t.”
“We dine as though we are two professionals, acquainted but not intimate. I don’t enjoy eating alone.”
“Who does?”
“Afterwards we shall return separately to my hotel. You will have a key card and precede me to the suite. Everything you will require will be there. From that moment forward, you will do as I ask, submit to my will in every respect, then leave before dawn, making no disturbance when you do. You will not ask any questions whatsoever. Should you be asked with whom you dined this evening, you will say that I was a man with Czech roots who wondered if he might be able to lay claim to something or other. Make up a name, the less precise the better. Out of loneliness or brazenness—who are you to say?—I asked you to dinner, after which you’ve never seen me again.”
“What if we actually should see each other?” Paulina ventured.
“We behave as we would with any stranger, but the chances of such an encounter are low.”
“I’ve heard of men who will only fuck a girl once.”
“It would be wrong to take it personally,” Philip said.
They chose the same dinner from the menu. With it they drank a bottle of Ryzlink rýnský 2000. It was a sweeter wine than Philip might have chosen elsewhere, but he was determined to taste whatever was authentically Czech.
“I am impressed with how the great families have managed to reassemble their fortunes,” he said idly, “especially the princely ones, the Lobkowiczes, for instance, with their wonderful palaces here and in the country.”
“It is impressive,” Paulina agreed.
“And also ironic,” Philip said, “since it is possible only because you Czechs were never strong enough to defend yourselves from your neighbors. Too weak to make a stand, you had no choice but to surrender and bide your time.”
Outside, in the distance, a solitary French horn blew the two-four rhythm of Ravel’s Boléro into the night. Halting after the first bars, the horn repeated itself.
“It must be difficult to imagine.” Paulina sighed. “Isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“Being rescued from Hitler by Stalin!”
Chapter Fifteen
Early the next morning, Philip awoke to find Paulina gone as instructed, her lingering scent the only trace of her presence. After breakfast on his balcony, he exited the hotel, turned the corner into Krˇižovnická Street, and walked briskly toward the Old Town. Beyond the boulevard, large old buildings, some of whose exteriors were still stained with the soot of the twentieth century, shared blocks with others that had been recently sandblasted and immaculately restored.
Intending to exercise his mind as well as his limbs, he gradually picked up speed, and by the time he reached Staromeˇstské námeˇstí, the Old Town Square, could feel that admixture of relief and prospect that had always ignited his imagination. Along the square’s south façade, he recognized, from ancient pictographs, “At the Golden Unicorn,” which occupied the same building in which Franz Kafka had once attended a literary salon. That was the first landmark he’d been given, and, registering it in his memory, he began to move away from the colorful row of Gothic and Romanesque houses and head at first east, then gradually north, distancing himself from the medieval Town Hall Clock, upon whose intricate blue, orange and gold astronomical dial the earth remained fixed at the universe’s center.
From there he continued along Maiselova until Kaprova forked to the right, then followed that until
the first corner, where he had no choice but to stop for the traffic signal at Žatecká. This was his second landmark, and by the time he reached the amber light at Valentinská his destination was in full view.
He had slowed to an amble long before he reached it and entered the shop as if on impulse, almost reticently stepping down its three wide and graceful marble steps into a mahogany repository of music boxes the likes of which he had never seen. Oddly, except for the bell he’d triggered by opening the front door, the deep, vaulted room was enveloped in museum-like silence. Arrayed in its high display windows and upon the rows of shelves that covered its walls were hundreds of players of various descriptions, sounds and worth. One by one he tested those that bore signs inviting such tests.
“Are you the gentleman who called earlier?” the shop assistant inquired.
“Yes, about the music-box jewel case advertised in this morning’s Post.”
“It’s just over here,” she told him, directing his attention to a small, elaborately inlaid rectangular prism of exotic woods he found it difficult to recognize.
Smiling broadly, Philip measured the music box against the length of his hand. He was in luck. It was not only exquisite but of a size and weight he could easily manage to carry back with him. “It must play Dvorˇák,” he said.
“Forty-nine percent of the music boxes in Prague play Dvorˇák,” the shop assistant replied. “Another forty-nine percent play Mozart. The remaining two percent cover the rest of the catalog. Why must it play Dvorˇák?”
“Because it’s meant to be a souvenir from Prague.”
“Well, it’s a very nice one, isn’t it? And at one hundred twenty euros, excellent value.”
“Can you wrap it,” Philip asked, “but leave one side open so that I can place a card inside?”
“You can do that now if you like.”
“No, I can’t. I haven’t yet thought of what to say.”
“Never mind, it will come to you, I’m sure.”
When the transaction was complete, Philip thanked her and, once outside, began to retrace his steps toward the Old Town Square. As soon as he was out of sight, however, instead of completing that route, he turned, by habit, into a side street and walked a square block out of his way to avoid being followed before it came to him that, at least in this instance, he had nothing to hide.
Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) Page 14
