The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  He urinated against a wall in the corner of the dark room and the urine burned from his body while the pain made black and red flashes across his vision.

  There were only three sounds in the darkness: the singing of the rats, the drip of water someplace, and, once, his own voice that sounded small and flat.

  “I’m alive.”

  Light broke painfully into the darkness.

  The shaft of light illuminated the room—it was a basement, after all—and the rats froze along the walls and watched the two figures descend the wooden stairs that dropped from the floor above.

  Devereaux shrank into a far corner away from the light.

  The two men spoke French. The first one said he hated the rats and the second one made a mumbled joke. They carried automatic pistols that picked up the glint of light. One of them had a flashlight and searched the room along the walls.

  “Fucking rats,” the first one said.

  “Hey, you,” said the second one. “You dead? Come on, we’re going upstairs.”

  “Maybe he is dead,” said the first one, looking at the rats in the light. “Maybe the rats ate him.”

  “You better hope they didn’t eat him,” the second one said. He was a heavy man and he stood still and let his gun muzzle wave across the semidarkness. “Hey, you, come on out. If you’re not dead yet, come on out.”

  Devereaux said nothing. He tried to coil his body. The two of them were less than ten feet away. But the pain in his left leg let the tension out of his body and he couldn’t set himself.

  “Where the hell is he?” said the first one.

  Devereaux pushed off but his leg fell under him. He fell heavily on the floor.

  “You’re there somewhere,” said the second one. “Come out here now.”

  “Come and get me, copper,” Devereaux said.

  They saw him at the same time and they trained the lights on him. The first one, who was afraid of the rats, saw he was alive and not eaten and slapped him on the side of the head with the pistol and Devereaux slumped into darkness again.

  “Don’t kill him,” said the second one. Devereaux heard him through the fog of pain, like a voice in a fever.

  “I don’t see why not,” said the first one.

  “You saw what happened to the driver. The driver tried to kill him. You saw what happened to him.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the first one said. Devereaux felt a hand grab his hair and felt himself being dragged across the cellar floor to the light at the stairs.

  The room had a single chair.

  The two men put him in the chair and cuffed him behind his back. The first one tried to cuff both legs together, but the left leg was so swollen that the cuff would not fit the ankle. The second one used a bandana to tie the left leg to the chair.

  They left him. They locked the door behind them and he heard their steps go down a hall. A small, dirty window illuminated a dirty day beyond.

  He tried to move the chair. He strained, levered himself and pushed. The chair nearly toppled but it skidded six inches across the wooden floor. When he pushed again, the chair toppled over and he was on the floor, his arms still fastened behind his back.

  The top of the chair-back touched the bottom of his neck. For a long time, he strained forward, trying to slide his manacled arms up the back of the chair and over the top. It was like doing extreme sit-ups lying sideways on the floor with your hands behind your back.

  He realized he had blacked out. Conscious again, he lay on the floor, feeling the sweat on his lips and forehead. He licked at his sweat.

  He strained this time, not to get his hands free over the top of the chair-back, but to break the chair. He felt the cuffs pulling the skin at his wrists and felt the strain in belly and arms and shoulders.

  He tried this three times.

  The chair cracked. The crack came like the pop of a distant pistol.

  He pushed again and concentrated on pushing his body out of the chair. The crack yawned. He imagined his body free of the chair and pushed his body toward the idea in his mind. It was like hitting someone: You never aimed for the spot of contact in your mind but for a point beyond the point of contact, so that the swing was sure and followed through.

  The back of the chair broke all the way through with a sigh.

  He lay on the floor and tried to catch his breath and ease the strain out of his muscles. It began to rain in the world and rain fell against the single windowpane. He was so thirsty. He licked at the sweat on his upper lip.

  He braced his right knee on the floor and slowly righted himself and the chair seat. The broken back lay on the floor. He half stood and slid his manacled arms down under his buttocks and the back of his thighs to the knotted bandana. By bending over, he could just touch the bandana. If he could unknot it, he might be able to drag himself to the window and smash the remains of the chair against the wall and break the window. And then what? he thought.

  He closed his eyes and felt at the knot.

  And the door burst open.

  “What are you doing?”

  The voice was full of smiles. It was the voice he’d heard in his nightmares, and it fit the grinning man he thought he had seen in that brief, blinding moment on the beach before the car hit him. He stopped his struggle and stared at the face. It was the same man, the same nightmare: For the first time, Devereaux felt the edge of fear.

  10

  IN KAFKA’S LAND

  The Ministry of Secrets believed in them. The walls of the building that contained the Ministry had few notices and even fewer names on doors. The names were not important in any case; the doors were more important because they led to the rooms that were the real symbols of authority. The bureaucrats came and went but the rooms remained and were unchanged: Men became identified with the room they occupied.

  Snow fell on the narrow valley of the river Vltava where Prague is built on the steep hills. The snow muted the clamor of the city and even the streetcars ran more silently along their tracks. It was the first snow of the long Slavic winter and Cernan felt both a child’s sense of delight and an adult’s sense of dread in watching the first snow.

  He was summoned to the fifth floor at ten in the morning and he waited now in the anteroom for the director to see him. He stood at the window and watched the snow gild good King Wenceslas astride his horse. The pigeons huddled in the eaves of all the buildings. Cernan wondered if they dreaded the winter coming or if they only accepted each phenomenon of nature as an isolated event.

  The secretary—a tall, thin man in the uniform of an Army officer—opened the director’s door and nodded. Cernan sighed, turned, crossed the room, and entered.

  The Ministry was composed of several sections, including the divisions for internal secret police, liaison with military intelligence, and foreign security. Cernan was part of the apparatus of foreign security and the director was his ultimate supervisor. He had met with the director every morning since the defection of Anna Jelinak in America.

  The office was large but bare of mementos. There was a single antique desk of the Empire period and two straight chairs and a single, beautiful lamp with a polished brass base. On the left-hand wall was a modest fireplace where a little hardwood was smoldering. The director was named Gorkeho and he had been a soldier once, before he lost his leg. Everyone knew he had a wooden leg and no one knew how he had lost his real one.

  Gorkeho was thin, all parchment and bones. His eyes studied Cernan’s broad, frowning face as Cernan gave a little bow and crossed the room and sat down in the chair opposite.

  “There is a little progress,” Cernan said, grunting as he sat down on the delicate straight chair. Despite its bareness, the room was not oppressive. If there was a little edge of sadness to it, it was warmed by the fire and by the sheer presence of the man behind the desk.

  “Anton Huss reports that Anna’s mother was a… little tired… after the flight to America and that she is meeting with the lawyers today. In fact, the meetings sho
uld begin in about six hours Prague time. A court hearing is scheduled for Monday, and in the meantime the child has not been heard from, though the lawyers assure Huss she is perfectly all right. She will meet with her mother today as well.”

  “A little progress, as you said,” Gorkeho said. He tented his fingers and looked at the tips. “I have been in communication as well. On a related matter.”

  Cernan stared at the older man. Gorkeho seemed absorbed by the pattern of his fingers.

  “Henkin. He is in the Ministry for Tourism and Films and he is very well connected, I understand.” Gorkeho had been a soldier and learned the soldier’s trick of delivering reports with a neutral diffidence in voice and manner. But Cernan knew from the way Gorkeho framed his words that he did not like pan Henkin.

  “He has his own agents, of course, and they report to him and not to the Ministry. He said that Miki has been located. It was, as we suspected, an American trick, to take him out of Brussels. He was either a willing or unwilling defector at the time.”

  “He is alive.”

  “He is apparently alive,” Gorkeho said. He opened the tent and put his strong, thin hands flat on the beautiful desk. “Henkin said that a private contractor can locate him for us and return him for seventy-five ounces of gold. He wants one of us to arrange… the matter.”

  “When did all of this happen?”

  “Overnight, pan Cernan. While winter crept in and snow began to fall on the dear city,” Gorkeho said. His voice was smooth and quiet and he was amusing himself, Cernan thought. “Henkin is to be absolutely relied upon in this, of course, and we have to do nothing but transport gold to Belgium, wait for our contact, and pick up Miki and return him to Prague. Such a simple little errand.” Gorkeho glanced at Cernan. “It should only take you a day or two. Or three.”

  Cernan flushed. He glared across the desk at his superior. “Why me? I am already consumed with the matter of Anna Jelinak. I—”

  “Yes. Why you? I thought. He named you, you know. How does such a great and respected servant of the Republic as Henkin know of an insignificant person such as yourself? I mean you no disrespect, of course. But Henkin is at a level so much higher than you—than me, even. We only spend money, pan Cernan, and we get little for it, and every time America receives one of our new tennis stars we are diminished that much more. Henkin produces money for the beloved Republic, pan Cernan. He brings in visitors, he brings us film companies, he presents the beauty of our great city to the outside world.”

  Cernan waited because Gorkeho was only amusing himself. He really hated Henkin, Cernan thought. You could tell it by the words, even if the soft voice imparted nothing.

  “But where was I? I asked him how he knew of you and he said he had followed the matter of Anna Jelinak and her little miracle from the beginning because, after all, Anna was one of the coming stars of the Czech theater. And he thought the matter was very badly handled, down to the selection of Anton Huss to protect Anna from the blandishments of America or the devious plots of the FBI or the CIA. So, he had me there, although I do not blame you or Anton Huss for what has happened. Who would be able to foresee the power of the Christ Child to touch the heart of the little girl?”

  Gorkeho was smiling now, Cernan thought, but there would be no change in his expression.

  “So if you have failed in one assignment, why give you this assignment? That is the question I had in mind. I put it to comrade Henkin. Why select a failure from the ranks of the Ministry for Secret Services when we have so many other agents who have not failed? Or, at least, who have not failed recently? You see, Cernan, I had your best interests at heart.”

  Cernan took out his package of cigarettes. He looked at Gorkeho. Gorkeho nodded. Cernan lit the bitter-smelling cigarette with a wooden match and blew a cloud of brown smoke across the desk.

  Gorkeho said, “Henkin was impatient with me because I did not understand the world as he understood it. He said he had decided the matter of Anna Jelinak is receiving too much scrutiny. Too much ‘publicity’ in the American press. He said this was going to harm not only tourism but his ‘complex’ relationships with several companies preparing to film here. He said I did not appreciate the extreme nervousness of the ‘Hollywood community,’ that all creative people were sensitive to stressful situations and that Anna Jelinak’s defection was a stressful situation.”

  To Cernan’s surprise, Gorkeho smiled. It lit the room. “He wants you to leave the matter of Anna in abeyance for the time being. He wants the matter pursued in the courts, of course, but he wants no more extraordinary measures, such as the use of Anna’s mother to appeal to the better instincts of the American public.”

  “But why? Doesn’t he want her to return?” Cernan gaped.

  “I ventured that question a bit more delicately than you have stated it. When he was through glaring at me, he said the matters of Miki and Anna were somehow mixed together and he had every assurance that if Miki is returned to Prague, the matter of Anna Jelinak will resolve itself quietly.”

  “This is absurd,” Cernan said.

  “So much is,” Gorkeho agreed. “Does he have some secret contact with the CIA that assures him of this? I do not know, I am not expected to know.”

  “But his Ministry is not authorized… to act as intelligence agents, to—”

  “I can assure you, Cernan, that I was surprised as you seem to be by the extent of Henkin’s influence. He educated me in one afternoon. You will go to Brussels and you will carry seventy-five ounces of gold with you and you will report to me and I shall report to Henkin until the matter is resolved. That is how influential this man is.”

  Cernan bit his lip. He thought of Anna Jelinak, suddenly cut off. He thought of Anna far away. He tried to think of the little girl as she had been that summer day in the shadow of Hradcany, but the image was fading.

  “He chose me because he wants to leave Anna alone. Why? Is it not important to get Anna back and to get Miki? Both important?”

  “Yes. That is logical. But there is something else at work here that has nothing to do with logic. It is Henkin’s game and he has made it clear to me that it does not involve you or me.”

  “But what do you think?” Cernan raised his voice almost to a shout.

  Gorkeho looked at him. “Too much passion, Cernan. Sit down and try to calm yourself. What I think is beside the point. What I think is that Henkin, through very unusual channels we know nothing about, has struck a delicate bargain with one or more private parties to have Miki returned to us, and it involves using you—not someone like you but you yourself—to act as the errand boy. If I probe into this, it is not profitable to me. Or you. I will probe, I assure you, comrade Cernan, but delicately and with some grace. Not blundering ahead as you would do. We will know the truth but it will take a little while.” His voice was so soft now that Cernan strained to hear him.

  “Take Henkin’s gold and orders and do as he said. But be careful, Cernan. Be very careful how you proceed. I do not trust Henkin, I do not trust Miki, I do not trust the Americans who arranged all this. Poke the ground with a stick before you take a step. And leave a trail so that I can follow you in everything you are doing.”

  “There is no danger to me,” Cernan began.

  “Yes. To you. The moment Henkin used your name, you were in danger. And a little danger to me but it only interests me, it makes me wary.”

  “And Anna.”

  “Yes.” The old soldier sighed. “Yes. Danger to Anna Jelinak, I think, most of all.”

  11

  VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

  If Henkin was worried, he didn’t show it. The plane banked and descended over the fields of southern Germany and bumped rudely to a landing in the rural airport outside of Nürnberg. The taxi ride in the stately old Mercedes to the walled city took exactly nineteen minutes. In all, Henkin had traveled two hours from Prague by the time he checked into the Victoria Hotel just inside the city wall. Two minutes later, he placed the tel
ephone call to New York. It was absurd to think about, but even a high-level government official like Henkin was subject to tapped telephone lines. Which is why he was suddenly called to make an overnight visit in Nürnberg.

  The worry he had held in on the fifty-two-minute plane ride from Prague broke now in a line of perspiration across his cold, pale face. The telephone relays clicked and whirred and Henkin tapped his fingers on the desk at the side of his bed until he heard the ringing begin.

  The American voice sounded distant.

  “It’s me,” Henkin said.

  The other man waited.

  “Our mutual friend has been located,” Henkin said. “It’s all arranged. At least, I assume it is arranged.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He is to be handed over to my government in exchange for a certain… ransom. This was a very near thing. The Americans had arranged for his defection. That would have been a disaster. For you, for me. I assure you, we are allies in this matter.”

  “We had our doubts,” said the other man. It was the same soft, sure voice that had instructed Ben Herguth seven hours earlier. It was just after dawn now in New York City, early afternoon in Germany. “I’m glad to hear that our doubts will be put to rest.” Another pause. “When will you have Miki in hand?”

  “I think in forty-eight hours, perhaps a little more or less. The problem is not getting Miki, it is getting a satisfactory solution… to our problem. Miki has shown he is not to be trusted.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid that’s the case.”

  “The problem is that if he is brought back to Prague… well, he might be in a position to bargain his… knowledge to certain authorities in order to escape his punishment. You see how delicate it is.”

  “For both of us. For all our interests. You say the CIA double-crossed us in the first place?”

  “No. Not them. The information is that it was another intelligence agency. But Americans. They had arranged Miki’s defection.”