by Bill Granger
“I know. So I haven’t proposed anything yet.”
“You’ve talked about killing her.”
“I’ve talked about having her killed. I’m not talking about you and me killing her. I’ve talked about talking about her to someone.”
“That guy with the scar. I wouldn’t like to cross him. You know what he did with the driver? I guess the driver didn’t obey some instruction or something. I wouldn’t cross someone like him. You think he would be interested in that woman?”
“Maybe he would be. She’s talking about the man, the one we didn’t like. The American. He was a fag-basher if you ask me. I didn’t like him at all.”
“You’re right.”
Philip poured the brandy.
“She might not even be interested in the operation the other night.”
“Come on, Philip. It is not a coincidence she comes here. Not so soon after what happened.”
“Nothing happened, I remind you. We’re the go-between. I didn’t like him at all. He ordered me around as though I were a servant. As if I didn’t exist.”
“Oh, you didn’t like him? That’s a good one. You liked him well enough. I saw the way you looked at him.”
“He ordered me around. And he didn’t trust anyone.”
“Well, Philip, he was right about that, wasn’t he?”
“The trouble is, I don’t really want to know any more about what happened than we know now.”
“We don’t know anything. We provided a car and a driver.”
“Well, I don’t want to go beyond that.”
“Are you going to call him or should I call him?”
“I’ll call him. I just want to finish my coffee.”
“Don’t get drunk before you call him.”
“I never get drunk.”
“Sometimes when you’re like this you get drunk.”
“I never get drunk,” Philip repeated. “I’ll call the man with the scar and I’ll tell him about the woman with the red hair who is asking all the questions, pumping old Reiter at the bar last night. He was enjoying himself, Reiter was. The woman might interest our friend; maybe we can make a little more money, set something up for her to make it easy for the man.”
David Mason turned over in bed and reached for the telephone.
“Yes.”
His voice was dull. He squinted at his watch. It was seven.
“She telephoned the concierge from her room for a taxi.”
“All right,” he said.
He replaced the receiver and got up quickly in the darkness of the hotel room. He pulled on his trousers and buttoned his shirt. He slipped into his shoes and grabbed a raincoat. He had come to Brussels without a raincoat and he’d bought one the first day. It wasn’t raining at the moment. The dawn was full of edgy clouds.
The last thing of all, he slipped the pistol into the pocket of the raincoat. The pistol was small, a Walther PPK automatic, and he almost carried it now as a matter of habit, the way he was taught.
He took the stairs to the lobby and saw Rita Macklin at the concierge’s desk. He waited at the edge of the lobby until she crossed to the entrance of the hotel and stepped outside. He crossed the lobby after her and saw the concierge catch his eye. He nodded once, almost imperceptibly. He felt the pistol in his pocket.
She was waiting on the curb in front of the Amigo Hotel. The sky was wet with clouds.
She smiled at David Mason. “You never sleep.”
He grinned. “They teach you that at the Acme Spy School. One of the first lessons.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
“We can do it two ways. I can follow you in another cab, but that’s expensive and I don’t speak French very well. Cherchez la femme. Well, I suppose that would be good enough.”
“I can’t decide about you.”
“They teach you that as well.”
“You must be a good student.”
“Not particularly. But when the alternative is cleaning out toilet bowls with a toothbrush, I get motivated.”
“The youth of America.”
“You’re about my age.”
“Years older. Centuries older, David.” But it was not said with unkindness. She took his arm. “Get a taxi.”
The Peugeot crept to the entrance and they slid into the backseat. “Gare Central,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“Bruges.”
“What’s in Bruges?”
“A man who can be bought and who says he knows about him.”
David Mason was silent. He frowned. What were his orders exactly? Hanley chewed him out pretty well the last time, considering it was a coded message and might be on file somewhere. He had lied to Hanley, not for the first time. Why was he letting her have such a free rein anyway? To find out what she could find out? Or because he was in love with her?
He thought about that.
She was Devereaux’s girl, he had decided, and that might be part of the reason he was in love with her. They were chasing a ghost if he was dead and he was… what exactly? The heroic younger brother? He had read the book when he was fourteen and it had filled him with warm pleasure—it was How Green Was My Valley. When his brother dies, young Owen goes to live in the house of his brother’s widow and acts as surrogate husband for her. Not to sleep with her but to do the manly things. It was a child’s dream. He did not want him dead, of course.
She had taken his arm and asked him to call a cab. Owen Morgan, a man you are. He smelled her presence. She smelled of wildflowers and milk. She wore no perfume and he felt embarrassed at his thoughts and blushed and the Peugeot made a sweeping curve in front of the central station up the hill above the center of Brussels.
To hell with Hanley. He knew he had to see this thing out the way he had started.
“He talked to a friend of a friend of mine.”
“Section should hire you for Eurodesk.”
“There is no Section.” She turned to him and her utterly green eyes were deep and cold. “You forgot.”
“I never forget.” He felt stung by his brother’s widow, as though he had become a little boy again. “I just don’t believe in all the bullshit.”
“The booga-booga,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He called it the booga-booga.” She had said it before to him but didn’t remember. She kept recalling him, saying secret thoughts out loud as though to make his presence in her mind stronger. Would she forget him? Would she remember him so clearly in twenty or thirty years? She still made him part of the past tense. It made her strong enough to sleep at night. The grief was always there, yawning and sore like a throat that has been abused by sobs. It hurt too much but it had to keep hurting during the day. Only at night did she have to be numb. She had to have a drink and not think about him being around. Not see him in the corner of her room. Not hear his voice. Not smell him next to her in bed. That was past; that was gone. Except she kept looking for him because she had to know what really happened. But keep him part of the past tense to make it easier when she found out. Don’t make him alive in mind or she would break into a thousand pieces, knowing he was alive and that she couldn’t find him.
“The old black magic,” Mason said. “We get so careful being careful about the small shit, we forget about the big shit.”
She took his arm and her hand was strong.
“I can’t shake you. Not yet. I can shake you when I want to shake you, but I don’t want you running all over Belgium screwing it up for me. I don’t forget about the big stuff either. You’re Section, you’re another goddamn spook and I don’t care if he got you a job or if you’re his long-lost son or what you are. I don’t give a damn about you or the spooks. I have to find out about him. There’s some connection with those two fags at the Club Tres and what happened. Whatever happened. You won’t say but I get the idea now.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a good trick, David. You say that so honestly that anyo
ne could believe it. But I don’t.”
“We live in an age of unbelief,” he said.
The driver said something about the meter in French. Mason paid and they slid out of the cab and walked into the grimy depth of the central station. The place was full of people, some of whom had slept the night. The walls were dirty. Everything about Brussels struck him as shabby and a little grand, like royalty fallen on hard times. He liked the city because it had so few pretensions, even when it was quite beautiful.
He took her arm again to stop her. She turned to look at him and waited.
“The man in Bruges,” Mason said.
“He said a man like Devereaux was in a house there four days ago,” Rita said.
“What else?”
“The ‘what else’ is when I meet him in Bruges. You stay away from me in Bruges, David, I mean it.”
“All right.”
“I’ll get a room there for tonight, when I meet him. There are steps to the meeting, and if he sees you he won’t go through with it.”
“I see,” Mason said.
They bought tickets and waited for the train on the platform beneath the station concourse.
“Devereaux is alive,” David Mason said. He said it for himself and for her and he didn’t see the tears in her eyes.
She thought her heart would break.
19
THE INFANT OF PRAGUE
Cernan took out the weapon. It was the very good Czech remake of the original Israeli Uzi submachine gun which was the weapon of choice for bodyguards and terrorists. He clicked the action and pointed it at Devereaux’s bare chest.
“Well, I receive a message and then another message.”
They were alone in the kitchen. The two big Czechs were outside as usual. Miki spent all his time in his room at the back of the house, reading and smoking as though he did not have a care in the world. He made it clear that he resented Devereaux for screwing up his perfectly good defection and that when he returned to Prague, he might register a complaint about it with someone, perhaps Henkin. He mentioned Henkin to Cernan several times, as though he might have to do something about Cernan as well if he were not treated with more respect. Cernan frowned whenever Miki mentioned Henkin’s name. Once, Miki told Devereaux that Henkin was his mentor and that Henkin would do anything to have him returned, which is probably why he had sent Cernan, because the mission was so important.
And yet, a curious lethargy had come over the operation. They had been in the farmhouse for two days, fretful days of Cernan waiting for something. Perhaps now it had come.
“Good news?” Devereaux said.
“No,” Cernan said.
“I see.”
“Perhaps you are not so valuable to them after all,” Cernan said. The eyes revealed nothing. The face was set. Perhaps a little too hard.
“No. Perhaps not.”
“You pretend not to be afraid?”
“Yes. I pretend.”
“Good. Because you understand my choice now?”
“No,” Devereaux said. “I didn’t understand at the beginning.”
“There is no interest in you. Not in Prague, not in your own country, it seems.”
“You were going to trade me.”
Cernan grunted.
“You offered me in a trade and there were no takers? I don’t believe that.”
“They make two crosses,” Cernan said.
“Double cross. How did they double-cross?”
“It is of no importance now.” Again, he made a sound that might have been a sigh, and he brought up the Uzi and checked the action to make certain the first round was seated in the firing chamber.
Devereaux did not speak. He saw the way it was. The distance between the two seated men was seven feet. The table could be overturned. Cernan would get off a few rounds and that would bring the Czechs in from outside, but at least it would be a fighting chance. Only lambs went to the slaughter with meekness.
“I do not understand you,” Cernan said in a very soft voice. Again, he seemed to hesitate. He brought the barrel of the automatic weapon down. He stared at Devereaux. “Why do they not want you to be returned?”
“What did you want? Whom did you want? Whom did you contact?”
Cernan smiled. “We contact the right people. They know you. They agree to this… trade. Then, in less than six hours, they double the cross, they—”
He stopped, shut his eyes fiercely for a moment and then opened them.
Devereaux saw his eyes were wet.
What was this about? Why were they waiting in a farmhouse in the middle of Belgium for two days? What the hell was this about?
“You are not authorized,” Devereaux said suddenly.
Cernan waited.
Devereaux smiled.
“What do you mean?”
“You are not authorized. What are you making a trade for when you are not authorized?”
“I won’t argue with you. You’re a prisoner. You have limited importance.”
“Important enough for you to do something for which you are not authorized. Two days we wait here. Is it so hard to get back to Prague? Don’t the East German freighters still use Zeebrugge? Or Antwerp? Or any of a dozen places up and down the coast? Is it so hard to bring me back to Prague and make your deals from there? You came to get Miki; you have Miki. Why wait, Cernan?”
The tone was mocking, almost teasing, certainly with the edge of an insult to it. Cernan caught the tone all right. He pointed the barrel at Devereaux’s chest.
“Are you so brave? Or are you crazy?”
“You don’t want to kill me. You want something else and you want me to tell you how to get it.”
Cernan said nothing. The Uzi created the mood for the room.
“What do you want?”
Cernan looked at the Uzi. He waved the barrel toward the stove. “Make coffee. No, do not make it too easy for me. You make coffee and throw it in my face? That is a nice trick, I think of that trick on the first day when you look at me with the bowl on the table. We both do not fool each other.”
“We do not.”
Devereaux moved to the stove and lit it with a kitchen match. The gas burned bright and filled the room with gas smells. He was clean, for the first time. He washed in the mornings and his pants were clean, if torn and a little tattered at the knees. The smell of urine was gone and he felt almost well. His leg was not as stiff and the swelling was almost gone. There was a long and ugly bruise on the shin and another from the knee to the buttocks. The water boiled and he dropped coffee grounds into it and watched the grounds stain the water. He cut a piece of bread from the loaf and buttered it. He put the coffee in the bowl and poured in milk. He put the bowl on the table and dipped the bread in the bowl and chewed off the end.
Cernan was on the far side of the kitchen now, watching Devereaux eat. He held the Uzi but now it was not pointed at Devereaux.
“Do you know about Anna Jelinak?” Cernan’s voice was almost shy. The tone surprised Devereaux but he said nothing. He kept his eyes down and ate. After a moment, he shook his head.
“On the same day that you take Miki, Anna Jelinak is in Chicago. In the United States.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Devereaux said.
“It is my duty to see to her protection on the tour of the United States. I assure you, the visitor to Prague has every protection, every courtesy. But it is not the same in the United States. There is a very violent country, very brutal, very hard for people.”
“It builds character,” Devereaux said.
Cernan did not bother to frown. The American agent had intrigued him from the beginning. He had represented a way out of a twin dilemma for Cernan. Now, perhaps, he was about to die and it wasn’t even his fault.
“Nearly ten days ago, she is in Chicago and a very strange thing. I cannot explain it. She is in a television place, what do you say it is?”
“A studio?”
“A studio. She is in the studio and the
y are showing a film of some ‘miracle’ in a church in that city. It is something you hear about, usually in Spain or Italy where the people have nothing else to do but make themselves crazy with talk about blood on statues or paintings. On this film is the Infant of Prague, which is an icon in my country, a religious relic. It is a statue of Christ as a child, as a King, from when people believed in kings and such things.”
“I know what it is,” Devereaux said. He had stopped eating. The monologue was getting very strange, he thought. He stared at Cernan’s eyes and they were looking beyond this room.
“They say she sees a miracle in this statue, that it is crying for Anna Jelinak who has never even been in Paris, not to say Chicago. Now they hold Anna because they say she wishes to defect. I do not believe this. This is a girl who is in the film in Prague, who is very well loved in my country. She has everything. She wishes to defect? No sir, I do not believe it, sir. And since it is my duty to find her and to bring her home, I send her mother to her. Now, what happens? This other duty intrudes upon me and it is completed and what do I think?”
Devereaux stared at Cernan.
Cernan sighed, broke the spell. “It does not matter. I expect to sell you back to your side, but the cross is double. They say one thing, they do another thing. There is nothing to be done with such people. I do not hate you, Devereaux, but I cannot bring you back to Prague. It is too… well, I cannot tell you. But I cannot let you go, perhaps then my superiors would question me. So what can I do but kill you?”
Devereaux saw the apology was genuine.
“You can tell me about the trade. What was the message?”
“I want Anna returned to Prague. And you will be returned to your countrymen.”
“What did they say?”
“I use one of my old runners. One of my trusted runners, he is in Brussels now, he puts the message to your Section. No, don’t deny all this. There is Section and you are part of Section R. So they answer: Yes, but it will take several days to arrange. All right. But what do I learn now from my runner?”
“What do you learn now?”
The room was bleak with silence. Cernan stared at Devereaux with sadness, the look reserved for people we know are dying.
