The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  “If you’re in business, you want money,” Devereaux said. “What kind of money do you want?”

  “What? For you? Or for Miki and you? I got Miki, too, you see. I had to make a few calls in Brussels, see a few people, do some business. That’s why this idiot put you in the cellar. I think; I have my arrangement set up.”

  “Our organization is interested in Miki. And me, naturally,” Devereaux said.

  Ready smiled. “I bet they are. And if it was just a matter of money, I would have certainly got in touch with your people. But sometimes, it just isn’t all about money. You see the way it is. Everyone thinks this was about snatching Miki. I had no idea that Miki had any value. You’re the goods, Devereaux. I wanted to see a way to get you, and Miki was just a bonus for me. I followed you down to Chartres, I followed you up to Brussels. So it was going to be a train, I found out. It was a pretty crude operation, using the Club Tres and depending on those boys who run it. When you want to blow up the train, just get to the engineer. I got me a driver and he didn’t care which way it worked as long as he got paid. And then he went and tried to kill you. I was so fucking mad I blew his brains out right there on the beach. I was so fucking mad.”

  “There’ll be searchers out now, Ready. You know the way it works. Someone snatched an agent and Section can’t let that happen. You should have stayed in your hidey-hole and counted yourself lucky the world didn’t know you were alive.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ready said. “The Czechs really wanted Miki back, that was clear enough. So they are willing to pay for him. And you. There’s you, Dev. You’re the bonus as far as I’m concerned. I thought about killing you. I hung around Lausanne, I saw you come and go, I thought about killing you. Or killing Rita Macklin and letting you know how I did it. Like you thought, it wasn’t just enough to kill your enemy. You kill someone, the mind goes blank, the film ends. But what if I could kill you and keep you alive, keep you in the coffin in a way, watching your body die and yet, it never dying?”

  “Booga-booga,” Devereaux said.

  “Sure, just the old booga-booga. But sometimes there are things in the dark that you should be scared of. There really are monsters, you know.”

  Devereaux smiled.

  “So the Czechs are willing to pay for Miki for their own reasons. I’m not even interested in their reasons. Miki is just another way to make money as far as I’m concerned. If I was interested in what it is that Miki has that they’re interested in, I might work on Miki and break him down, you know the way it’s done, and then figure out who would pay the most for him. But this one is for you, Dev. So I make an arrangement through a man with another man I don’t even know in Prague, and it comes down to them sending over a man and that man taking you and Miki back to Prague. You’re the bonus. They’ll examine you, of course, and see what you’re made of and then they’ll pass you along to Moscow. That’s the best part. They pass you along and you go to Lubyanka through the back door and you know that Lubyanka is real, don’t you, Dev? They really do have cells and the interrogation rooms where they ask you all the questions, and you better know the answers because they have goons like this idiot Damon here who likes to put himself in his work. The work is pain. That’s the pleasure of it for people like Damon here. We both know there’s pain, brother Devereaux. We know how to give it and take it and we know that there is no one who can stand the pain. We all break down in the end.”

  “Make an offer to Section. Be a rich man,” Devereaux said.

  Ready showed all his teeth. “You still don’t get it, do you? This is endgame. With a twist, the kind you tried on me. You stay alive with your friends in Moscow and they use you, and when they really get done with you they put you out to work laying track in Siberia or they put a nine-millimeter in your head. And all the while, you tell them everything you know to make the pain go away. But it never goes away, does it?”

  “Are you going to talk me to death?”

  The smile faded on Ready’s face. “You think it’s not going to end up that way? Buddy, you don’t understand. The wheel is in motion already. You’ll be in Prague in less than three days. What do the Sicilians say about revenge? ‘It’s a dish best eaten cold.’ I had two years thinking about it and it worked out better than I thought, and when you’re getting the shit beaten out of you in the basement at Lubyanka, think about me.”

  “You talk a lot more than you used to. You must be alone a lot. You talk to remind yourself you’re not dead. You must be practicing in front of mirrors.”

  Ready hit him then with his open hand. He hit him several times in the face and Devereaux heard a ringing in his ears.

  “See, we got maybe twenty-four hours together before I turn you over. Maybe a little longer. It can be like this or we can act civilized to each other.”

  Devereaux spit in his face then. Damon took a step but Ready held up his hand.

  “This idiot wants to kill you. He doesn’t understand your psychology.”

  “Then why not make a sensible deal. Sell me back to Section.”

  Ready rubbed his palm against his trousers. “I’m going back to Lausanne after this and I’m going to see Rita. Just something else to think about in Lubyanka. She’ll be looking for you and I’ll lead her to you. And it’ll be a little like it was in St. Michel, only I’ll have more time with her, give her more instructions, show her the way it has to be between us. She’s a bright girl, I think she’ll understand.”

  Devereaux sat very still. There must be no sound, no movement, no reaction at all.

  “You’re already thinking about it, Devereaux. You’re already seeing it, seeing Lubyanka, seeing Rita with me. It works on you, even if you try to think of something else. You’ll think about it all the time when you’re learning to speak Russian.”

  “You talk too much,” Devereaux said. “You’ve been listening to yourself so long, you think you’re making sense, but not really. Try the old booga-booga someplace else.”

  But Ready saw it in Devereaux’s eyes. Ready saw the look and it was worth it.

  13

  THE DROWNING SAILOR

  “There’s all kinds of stories about that place,” Lee Reuben said. “Which one you want me to start with?”

  “Well, the thing is, is it reasonable that this would be the place?”

  Reuben picked up his glass of Johnny Walker Black Label on the rocks. He looked at the amber and stared through it. “Here’s looking at you.”

  “Cheers,” Rita Macklin said, meaning none of it.

  She tasted the cold Stella Artois and swallowed some and put the glass down. They were in the little bar of the Amigo Hotel with its vaguely Spanish wall coverings and dark wood. She ate a salted cashew and then another and watched the face of the fat man across from her. He had been thin when she first knew him. He had gone to Brussels six years ago to report for the best but not biggest private economic newsletter in English. He was telling her about the Brussels that was not written about. He knew everything and he kept no secrets if you knew how to ask him the right questions. Now he was talking about the Club Tres, just across La Grand Place from where they sat.

  “There was smuggling there for a while. That was a previous owner but the same family. They’re Dutch speakers, but because they’re in Brussels their help is all French speaking. The place is a front but it’s a public front, the kind you wink at.”

  “What’s the kind you wink at?”

  “The kind you wink at,” Lee Reuben said. “Like buying votes in Chicago or kicking back to the unions on construction in New York. There are laws against that kind of thing, but that’s the way it’s done. Brussels is a very strange city, Rita, plunk in the middle of an even stranger country. They don’t speak the same languages to each other, and they’re a joke to outsiders. For the love of God, the symbol of the city is the Manneken-Pis, a statue of a little boy taking a leak. How do you explain a city like that to anyone?”

  “I just want to get a handle,” she said. “I
’ve got to have some place to start.”

  But Lee was going into his lecture mode. Rita knew him and she tolerated it. She had known Lee a long time ago in Green Bay. Lee had been in love with her then.

  “Look, Brussels is The European City. Nothing comes close. Paris is old and tired, and besides, it’s full of Frogs. Berlin is broken, London is just money, Italy doesn’t count. People want to do business, they do it in Brussels. Common Market, NATO headquarters, it’s all here. Arms dealing, drugs, arrangements. There could have been all kinds of private contractors involved in something you are hinting at. And I wish you’d tell me more about it.”

  “I can’t, Lee.”

  “Rita Macklin, girl reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette, and Lee Reuben, boy reporter for the same sheet, and here we are, drinking on expense account in the Amigo bar in Brussels.”

  “Lee, where do I find out?”

  “What is this about really?”

  “Not a story. It has nothing to do with that. If there was a story I could tell you, I would tell you. This is personal, Lee.”

  “Personal,” he said. He looked at his drink. “Okay. It’s personal. You want to know about dangerous things.”

  “Like the place you mentioned.”

  “The Club Tres.” He had brought up the name from the first. The Club Tres was one of a half-dozen places where matters were arranged and where you met people who could do anything. Smuggle arms or smuggle people or give you a new identity or move a hundred kilos of heroin from Marseille to New York City. Brussels was at the center of a strange world because it belonged to no one—center of a country divided by language, crunched between France, Holland, and Germany, invaded first in two great wars, strangely sophisticated and provincial at the same time. Lee Reuben ladled in the history of the city he clearly loved.

  “Who do you see there?” Rita Macklin said.

  “A man named Philip Petty. Half-English, half-Belgian, he’s the manager. About twenty-eight years old and a flaming fag and an arranger of lives. Yes. I like that. An arranger of lives. You could tell him you needed to be put in touch with Monsieur so-and-so, the prominent arms dealer, and he would ask you your name and where you are staying and he would see what he could do. And maybe, in the next twenty-four hours, Monsieur so-and-so calls you up. You might be grateful enough to give Philip a thousand-franc tip the next time you saw him or not; he wouldn’t bring it up. If your deal with the arms dealer was profitable, Philip would be taken care of somehow, by someone.”

  “I see.”

  “No. Don’t see too much. If you make your inquiry of Monsieur Petty, make certain you don’t see too much. I told you, you want to know about dangerous people.” He signaled for another drink.

  “Why do you know them?” Rita asked. Lee Reuben had been a thin, eager reporter when they first knew each other. Now he had a weariness to match his added weight. She thought he seemed very desperate.

  “Because I know Brussels.” He picked up his new Scotch and drained some of it off. “Cheers,” he said.

  “You drink a lot,” she said.

  “Of course. I’m paid to drink a lot and listen to people and ask a few questions now and then. It gets to be a habit. Besides, I was never so far from home. Imagine missing Green Bay, Wisconsin.”

  She thought she wanted to touch him and tell him it was all right to miss home. She did nothing.

  “Cheers,” he said again and took another sip. He looked at her.

  “It’s good to see you, Rita. It’s been years.”

  “I knew you were here. I should have come up to see you,” she said. “I only came when I needed information.”

  “That’s what I’m paid for,” he said. “I’m well informed.”

  “You don’t sound very happy.”

  “I’m terribly happy,” he said. “Unless I drink too much and let the self-pity get to me. You’re changed, Rita. I was terribly excited by you. You were so eager, such a radical, a bomb-thrower. But you aren’t anymore, are you?”

  “I’m just older,” she said.

  “You can’t go there alone,” he said. “Philip wouldn’t talk to you. It’s not a place for single women. Women get taken there. You need a man.”

  “I see,” she said. She hoped he would not say anything.

  “I could take you there,” he said.

  “No. I can’t let you get involved.”

  “I can get involved. I know Brussels. You need a guide. An old friend.”

  “No. You can’t be involved in this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Information,” she said. “About a man.”

  “Your boyfriend,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Did he run out on you?”

  “Maybe something like that,” she said.

  “That’s a lie,” Lee said. “Nobody would walk out on you. I know that much.”

  “I have to find someone.”

  “In a dangerous place. In a dangerous trade,” he said. “I was always a good guesser. I still work the crossword puzzle in ink. Your boyfriend isn’t a journalist, is he? What have you gotten involved in, Rita?”

  She had thought about that all the way from Lausanne. She had let David Mason get her a room here, she had accepted the fact that he was watching her, that if she got close to it, he would be right behind her. What was she getting into?

  “Your boyfriend,” Lee was saying. “The one you’re looking for. He’s in something you can’t talk about.”

  She said nothing.

  “What is he? A dealer? Arms or drugs? Is that what you got involved in?”

  She stared at him with pretty green eyes and her face was very hard. It was so different from the way she had looked a long time before when they were both starting out on the newspaper in Wisconsin.

  He put down the drink and kept looking at her. “I don’t care, Rita. I really fell for you. You get over that but you don’t either. I’d do anything for you.”

  “I know,” she said. She had known it, too. That was why she looked him up. She never intended to see him again. That’s not something she would have admitted ten years ago.

  “Anything,” he said.

  But she was getting up now. He waited for her to leave the bar. He waved a fat index finger at Pierre behind the bar and Pierre knew the signal because he knew the fat American and he came down with the bottle of Scotch and a fresh glass.

  Kay Davis didn’t even feel fired. It had really happened just a few hours ago but she didn’t feel it as a thing yet. She took a long hot shower and made herself an indulgent cup of hot cocoa. She thought she should call her mother in Davenport, but then she thought she couldn’t tell her that she had just been fired. She felt like a little girl in her terrycloth robe with the cup of hot cocoa on the coffee table. The city was spread out in stark night colors below her window wall on the twenty-ninth floor of the condominium. The view was south toward the Loop, the spires all creating an orange sky. Her view. Her town. Until 4:12 P.M. that day.

  She sat on the Euro-style white couch and propped her bare feet up on the glass-and-chrome coffee table and took the cocoa a teaspoon at a time, the way she had done as a child when she was sick. The cocoa warmed her memory of being a little girl. She rarely thought now about being little and helpless. Maybe she was beginning to feel fired.

  Why did they want to kill the story of Anna Jelinak? Why did they think they could?

  She had called Stephanie Fields but got her answering machine. She had left her name. She had called the news director at Channel 7 and he was definitely interested, he definitely wanted to set up a meeting with the station manager.

  So why be upset? she thought. You’ll work tomorrow or the next day. This is still your town.

  Hal Newt had looked at her with such sad eyes.

  She put down the cup and got up. She felt a panicky sense of isolation. She went to
the window and looked down at Chestnut Street below. It was narrow and there were cars clogging both sides of the street. Chicago was the next to last step up to the Big Apple and she had slipped on a banana peel.

  Why did it happen to her?

  And she thought of Anna Jelinak. Did Anna wonder why the statue cried? Why it moved her that minute, that very afternoon in a TV studio in a foreign city?

  Kay started. She turned around because she suddenly thought she saw something reflected in the window.

  It was a large man.

  She felt dizzy and afraid. It was impossible for anyone to be inside her apartment. There was a doorman, there were security television cameras, there was a steel door with a peephole, and this was impossible. This building was as safe as they could make it.

  The large man just stood there in the foyer and looked at her. He had a wide forehead and his eyes were set so far apart that it was hard to keep both of them in mind in a single glance. She looked from eye to eye. His face had the pebbled texture of a basketball. He stood and stared at her and said nothing.

  She could not speak. When she found her voice, he was already talking.

  “You’re dumb, you know that?”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “You could be a leg up now but you were dumb. Dumb. How can you figure dumb people.”

  “You get out of here.”

  “You get a nice chance and you blow it. I could say you’ll regret it the rest of your life, but what the hell is that? Ten minutes?”

  He didn’t move.

  She picked up the letter opener. Gift from her Aunt Doris. Part of a set including desk pad, telephone book…

  The large man walked into the room.

  “Get out of here.”

  There was disgust on his face. “Dumb.”

  Oh my God, she said to herself. I don’t want to die.

  He took the letter opener out of her hand. He slapped her across the face and the blow sent her back into the window. The window wall shook from the force of her body hitting it.