“You two!” he said, addressing the shamed bodyguards. “On the floor, faces down and stay there!”
The pair dropped without uttering a word a few feet from the monument. The Child, having reached the statue, turned back to face Peter who pointed once more with his gun.
“Don’t face me,” he said, his words cold and deliberate, “face them.”
The Child’s discomfort was obvious and Peter hoped that it increased his advantage. He had ignored Peter’s request, refusing to turn to the cold rows of children, their innocence frozen forever on metallic faces. Standing instead in front of them, like a frail and reluctant Grim Reaper come to reminisce.
“It’s true what they say about you isn’t it?” Peter asked, already knowing the answer.
“What do they say?”
“There are no records about you, you saw to that. Most people who’ve ever heard of you think you’re just another German bureaucrat who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.”
“And what do the others say? What do you say?”
Despite the gun in his hand Peter recognised his own interrogation; such was The Child’s manner. He nodded towards the metal children behind the aged figure, hoping to redress the balance.
“Which one are you?”
A furrow, small and solitary, strayed onto the old man’s brow as the words left Peter’s mouth and hovered in the air between them, and his gaze, normally granite like in its rigidity, began to drift, slowly from Peter’s own. Though the hypnotic stare was broken, Peter remained transfixed at the sight before him; the old man, this ‘Child’, turning reluctantly, deliberately to the cherubic smiles gathered behind him, before, for the briefest of seconds, allowing his eyes to clamp shut.
“McShade?” The Child asked, eventually.
“He only told me so much; but the clues are there when you stop to think about it. All anyone knows about you is you’re a German bureaucrat who hates the Nazis and has spent the last thirty years defending this nation Europe from all possible threats, inside and out. And you haven’t been shy about it. Everywhere you cast your glance you’ve been ruthless, bloodthirsty almost; you haven’t squirmed at sparking riots, provoking coups or whatever, except for here. Oh, you’ve been a bastard, no doubt. I’ve killed enough people on your order, implied or otherwise, to know that. I’ve helped steer this country’s destiny more times than I care to remember, whether in revolutions or taking out the men who’d follow a different path to you. But these two tiny little countries have been spared your wildest excesses, even as far back as ’92. You’ve trashed economies, and royally screwed the Ukraine, but the worst you did here was get me to lie down and pretend to be dead to spark a bloodless revolution. Why would you spare Czechoslovakia unless you had some connection to it?”
The old man responded stiffly. “I spared nothing,” he spat. “I loathe these countries; that I tore them apart without spilling blood was nothing but pragmatism; why cause a war or a bloody coup when the simple greed of incumbent politicians will work to your advantage? Despite what you may think of me I am no monster and my work brings me no sadistic pleasure, merely the satisfaction of having done what was necessary.”
“But why settle for an amicable split when a bit of good, old fashioned violence would have made the separation permanent? You must have some underlying affection for the country to do that, some love or some memory so strong that you couldn’t bear to see it destroyed.”
No response came, The Child simply looking into the eyes of each tiny metal child one by one, his hands caressing their cold, ossified cheeks.
“Look around,” Peter challenged. “Just take a look around. They’re still the same fields you used to walk in, the same woods you used to play in before they came and ripped you from your mother’s arms and called you a good little Aryan. Somewhere inside you there’s still the boy used to be. What was his name? Marek? He’s there no matter how deeply you’ve buried him. And I can’t understand why you’d want to break this country’s will and have it come to heel when that’s what started it for you all those years ago.”
The Child spun back, the authority returned to his voice, the dampness banished from his eyes.
“And I cannot understand, or at least I have a certain curiosity, as to why you have chosen to make your stand for Czechoslovakia.” He stood unmoving, a ghoul in the midst of the innocent, his white face and hair granting him an unearthly aura against the black night sky. The Institute for European Harmony is precisely that; our goal is harmonious co-existence. We have done nothing unusual here; indeed we are intervening in a much more humane manner than has been demonstrated at any point in history. Slavic destiny has been manipulated in one form or another for centuries. This country, divided or otherwise, would not even exist were it not for the intervention of outsiders.”
“Well I wasn’t around then.” Peter growled.
“I see,” said The Child with cold sarcasm. “Well what should we do to appease you hmm? Revive the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Put the Hapsburgs back on the throne?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“No? Please try me.” The Child spoke sharply, resentfully, as though he were an exasperated teacher grappling with an obtuse student’s failure to grasp the philosophical questions he was pondering. “If you were to rebel for money it would be understandable, for the murder of a friend or partner almost expected, but you accepted assignment after the Biely operation and have left your lover to her own devices. One can only assume that Biely wasn’t much of a friend and your lover not worth your energies.”
Peter’s anger manifested as a hollow laugh, and he smiled a wicked grin at his opponent.
“Bastard.” he said. “Don’t forget what working for you all this time has turned me into. I could snap your neck right now and go out for burgers and beer without batting an eyelid.”
The Child was the picture of disdain, his tone completely devoid of fear, unmoved by Peter’s threat. He remained quiet, just staring at Peter who began to feel nervous, and a nagging sense that he wasn’t as in control as he thought began pricking at him.
“You’ll forgive me, but your recent actions suggest otherwise. I don’t have the time to forge tools Mr Lowe.” The Child said. “I’m interested only in purchasing those tools already manufactured. Whatever human tragedy you consider yourself to be, you already were long before your association with the Institute; we wouldn’t have been interested in you otherwise.”
Peter winced at the truth of the remark and knew at once that his momentary flash of emotion was temptation enough for The Child to continue his assault.
“And now you’re older, with a weakness for drink and faced with the reality of your own impending death, and you search vainly around for someone else to blame, when the responsibility is and has always been entirely yours. I may have supplied you with the canvas, but a painter you have always been.”
Peter cursed himself, struggling to come up with an answer to The Child’s words. “And now you pin your vain hopes of ill-deserved redemption onto the fate of these countries, but what do you truly understand about them? They’re just a loose collection of Slavs and gypsies with no great love for each other, suddenly caught up in foolish talk of unification without having thought it through. If they actually find themselves unified do you think they’ll be able to handle the position they’ll have thrust upon themselves? The other Visegrad nations will hold them up as some sort of guiding light, and they will stumble under the burden of expectation placed upon them by their neighbours. They will refuse to follow our direction, they’ll be trampled by America and Russia and there will be dissent in Brussels. They will suddenly find themselves as the new unofficial Leader of the Eastern Block and as a consequence, the Union will splinter. Is that what you really want? Chaos returned to Europe?
Have it your way and the memorial before which we now stand becomes only the first of many.”
Despite the nagging doubts, Peter, free from the alcoholic s
tupor that typically fuelled his anger, was revelling in his ability to control it. The Child’s words had been deliberate, calculating, designed to get a rise from him, but Peter was not prepared to give in.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Peter began, “it only matters what these people choose. They’ve been controlled long enough by people who claim to know better. Austrian monarchs, Nazis, Communists and now the European bloody Union. I robbed them of their choice back when I took out Dubček for you; who knows what might have been if he’d still been around? And I’m damned if I’ll let you do it again. If these people want to be one state, two states or servants to some bloody Hapsburg king then it’s their business; not yours, not mine. All they really want is what no-one has ever let them have; the freedom to choose.”
The Child shook his head gently.
“Not every freedom brings the benefits one expects,” he said, his voice sombre, “and that is one freedom these people cannot enjoy.”
Peter stepped closer to the old man, his feet squelching beneath him and stirring up the smell of cold, wet mud. His top lip curled back showing his tightly gritted white teeth, framed in a feral display by his dark stubble.
“Because you know better eh? You’re no different than the politicians who think they’ve got the right to go storming into other people’s countries toppling regimes and changing governments because they think the way they do things back home is better. They couldn’t care less how much innocent blood gets spilled, how many children go parentless or what kind of mob controls the streets afterwards. They just tear everything to pieces then pat themselves on the back for giving people the opportunity of democracy. They butcher thousands in the name of liberal intervention and run off to spend their oil dollars while kids weep for parents who aren’t coming home. And no matter how much they protest about their noble intentions and their hard choices, and no matter how much they insist that it’s all worth it in the name of democracy, it’s never them on the front line is it? It’s never their wife or husband or child getting bombed or shot or ripped to pieces. They just send in the troops and tell them to turn three times and start firing, just like you did with me. Fuck the troops eh? That’s what they’re there for after all, to take the shit. Just like me and all those ‘operatives’ like me were there to take the shit. You lot think pain is ‘agonising’ over tough choices while you pocket cash and watch your strategies unfold, but a soldier’s pain is a bullet in the gut or a rocket in the face, or living with the knowledge you’ve killed innocent people. And that’s the way you bastards like it isn’t it, eh? Well I’m not your soldier anymore. I’m not taking any bullets or any more flak for you. And I’m not crying myself to sleep anymore because you think you know how the world should be run. You want a federal Europe? That’s fine with me if that’s what the people want. But it’s their decision, their choice, not yours. People have grown up, they don’t mind getting their own hands dirty, and they don’t need you holding on to them anymore. Just let people be.”
For a moment The Child remained silent, as though he were, for a fraction of a second actually contemplating Peter’s words, before he raised his eyes and spoke again.
“Irrelevant.”
“Don’t say that word to me.”
“Irrelevant!” The Child bellowed. “I care little for your posturing or your soul searching. If I were you, I would be dead now. It seems you sought to bring me to Gethsemane, only for you to be the one to refuse the chalice. There is no soul inside me to search, it was ripped from me here, many years ago, and here it remains, along with the souls of every other child whose metal eyes stare back at you now. This will forever be their playground, and they are always and forever within it; in the trees, in the grass, inside you as you breathe the air they live in. Do not look for Marek inside this shell; Marek is and always has been here, with his friends, with his brothers and sisters, and with them he remains. I am someone else. And I will drink from my cup.”
Peter laughed, a sardonic, bitter laugh, and he squeezed the gun tighter in his hand, sending a twinge through his sore knuckles.
“You know what? You’re right. All the way here I was trying to think of another way, some way out of this for you, but at the end of the day, if you die, Mirushka lives and that’s all there is to consider.”
“If you feel she deserves to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The Child smiled, an eerie, hollow smile drawn only from cruelty.
“My dear Mr Lowe, you really never worked it out did you? Why you were assigned to this project so late into its development?”
Peter felt his stomach begin to sink and scowled at his enemy, who revelled in his gloating.
“You aren’t the only ex-employee I’ve had who sought repentance for the terrible sin of ensuring stability. If you want advice on how to live with yourself you should look to someone close to you; someone particularly close to you.”
The feeling turned to horror in Peter’s stomach as a wave of nausea swept over him. No. Not her!
“I don’t believe you.” Peter’s voice was far from convincing.
“Don’t you?” Why else do you think she was so eager to forgive your murderous intentions towards her?
“She wouldn’t have anything to do with you, she was with Herbert from the start!”
“Actually she was mine from the start, and for quite some time. In fact before her attack of conscience, she proved quite the mine of useful information. It was only because of her dereliction of duty and refusal to see reason that you found yourself assigned to this mission in the first place.”
Peter was struggling for breath, crouching down under the weight of the revelation, struggling to keep his gun on the mocking figure.
“No, that’s not true, why wouldn’t…why wouldn’t she have said something?”
“You’d have to ask her,” opined The Child. “Although that won’t be possible of course, she’ll be quite dead very soon; we always have a reserve plan in place”.
Peter stood up, his anger and his sickness overwhelming. He raised his arm, aiming his weapon at the head of The Child, who stood unflinching.
“I’m sorry Rasti,” he muttered quietly, “I tried.”
Adjusting his frame for to ensure accuracy, Peter’s left arm brushed against his jacket pocket, a soft jingling sound distracting him. Pausing, he lifted them out of his pocket and held them outstretched for the old man to see, and the shell of rage he’d built around himself cracked.
“You know,” Peter chuckled, “I’ve had these for years, so long I don’t even know what half of them open anymore. Back in the Revolution, they were the most important weapon I had, that any of us had. We used to shake our keys at the soldiers, at the Old Guard politicians, at anything connected to the regime dying all around us. It was just a way of saying ‘off you go now, it’s time for a change.’”
Peter lowered his gun arm and smiled at The Child.
“What’s your Plan B?”
Another smile, a softer one, met him in response.
“You wish to save her? After knowing what she kept from you all this time?”
“Try me.”
“You lack the courage of your new convictions Mr Lowe. How easy it has been to provoke you once more into anger, an anger you know to quench only by blood or by spirits. You are no hero, no warrior for God, England and St George and ultimately of no consequence to me, to your young lover or to anyone at all. I could tell you, but only because it is entirely safe for me to do so; whatever posturing you indulge yourself in as we stand here is pointless. With your penchant for introspection you will, I am sure, prove unable to forgive Ms Svobodova for her deception and leave her to her fate, after which I give you my word that we will leave you alone. Leave you to your perpetual cycle of drunken violence and repentant remorse as you drink yourself to death in that bar you so enjoy. Or else of course you will die in some foolhardy attempt to stop the inevitable”
“So what
’s the plan?”
“The means have always been in place, we just prefer to move with more subtlety than such actions require; heart attacks, car crashes, accidents. Events that make everyone believe a conspiracy is at work but are sufficiently random for such theories to be impossible to prove.”
“What’s the plan?” Peter said again.
The Child smiled. “As I inferred,” he said, “you aren’t the only person in my employ.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed.
“Rado…?”
“Oh no, no, no.” The Child chuckled. “I’m afraid he’s not really our type. Far too loyal. Not as amenable to our suggestions as, say, a driver?”
“The car.” Peter spat. “Typical. The driver’s set a bomb?”
“My lips are sealed,” smiled The Child, his words dripping with sarcasm, “but I’d hurry if I were you; you wouldn’t want her to go off without you. And I’m genuinely curious to see your decision.”
“A gentleman’s agreement?” asked Peter.
“More a wager, against you,” came the reply. “But of course, you have still to decide what immediate action you will take.” He gestured to the gun, still tight in Peter’s hand.
Holding it in his outstretched fingers, Peter marvelled at its lightness and lethal simplicity, weighing it up alongside the keys in his other hand. Looking up at the old man who stood as unmoved as ever before him, Peter wrestled away the last vestiges of his murderous resentment and tossed the weapon into the mud at his feet and the keys towards The Child, who caught them in instinctive reaction.
“Decide for yourself,” Peter said, then turned and headed back towards the cars.
The bulldog minder sprang forward as Peter walked away and scrambled in the mud for the gun, grasping it tightly and raising it at the still walking Peter’s back.
“No!”
The Child’s subordinate spun around in shock at the command, the expression on his face pleading for permission to take the shot. Instead, The Child placed his hand on his operative’s arm and lowered it to the side, looking at the hurriedly moving figure of Peter Lowe before him.
Escape to Perdition--a gripping thriller! Page 22
