The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  He reached across her body and held her as a child holds beauty. He felt his warmth press against her belly. He went into her belly and he made love that was not original or even very skilled. His real skill was the urgency of his lovemaking. Her skill was the savage thing that took over her body when he was in her.

  After they made love and Paris became morning beyond the window, they lay apart from each other for a time, and when he spoke he did not look at her.

  “There’s only one thing we didn’t talk about.”

  She put the palm of her hand flat on his belly. She made little circles with her hand on his belly. She didn’t say anything.

  He stared at the ceiling. “Ready. One way or the other, we can’t let it alone. He’ll finish us or we’ll finish him.”

  Rita said, “I was going to kill him with my little knife.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t die,” Devereaux said. “Maybe he’s the evil that was loosed at the beginning of time and he can’t die until time ends.”

  She smiled at his tone. “The ultimate booga-booga.”

  He touched her hair. She bent, kissed his nipple, put her head on his chest. But they were both thinking about it.

  “He went after me when I went after Anna. He missed me, Hanley said he was right behind me. So he has to be back here. And when we leave here, he’ll be wherever we go. In Washington, Lausanne, wherever we go.”

  “I want to go home, Dev,” she said.

  “Where is it?”

  “At least D.C. I want to be with Americans again. We couldn’t lose ourselves in the world, let’s give it up and go home. Could you go home?”

  “I could go with you. Anywhere.”

  “We’ll take Philippe out of school at the end of term. He’d do well in Washington.”

  She spoke of the black child whom Devereaux had rescued from St. Michel, who went to school now in Switzerland.

  “All right,” he said.

  She felt troubled.

  The morning light filled the room and the noise was full of Paris: Men shouted in the street and someone played a radio too loud and parrots talked to lonely old women in apartments across the court.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I’ll wait here for a while,” he said. “Wait for Ready. He’ll come for us. I’ll wait for him this time and get him.”

  “Don’t.” It was voice to the premonition. She trembled and felt cold. He pulled the cover over her naked body.

  “Come back with me. Let Section find him for you. They owe you that.”

  “David Mason. I didn’t tell you. He walked into the embassy last night and Eurodesk debriefed him. He was conked on the head in Bruges by a policeman who saw he had a gun. He was trying to accost two men, the police said. He told Eurodesk it was Ready. With Cernan. He got into trouble with Stowe and I told Hanley to take care of it.”

  “I liked him. He was decent,” she said. She invested the word with all sorts of properties of approval.

  “Ready would have killed him. Ready is alive, Rita,” Devereaux said. He said it as suddenly as if he had just realized it.

  “He can’t hurt us,” she said.

  They lay in bed, naked and touching, staring at the same cracked ceiling, thinking about the man who hunted them both. A woman began to play Bach on a piano and the city began its daily argument, full of shouts and laughter. He felt her hand in his.

  He got up then without a word and went to the telephone and dialed the number. He asked for the room and waited. He listened to the voice and asked a question in French and was asked a question in return. He put down the receiver. He looked at Rita lying on the soft, wide bed.

  The voice on the phone had belonged to a policeman. Ready was that close, he thought. And he thought he must not tell Rita anything yet.

  But she said, “Miki?”

  He stared at her.

  Rita understood. “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. Oh, come and hold me, please.”

  He sat down next to her.

  He held her. Naked, they clung to each other.

  The plane banked against the clouds above Bohemia and descended through them by bumpy steps.

  Anna held her father’s hand though she was not afraid. It was a luxury to seem to be afraid.

  Her father, a ferocious man with a sad face, had told her many things in the past four hours and she thought they were all true. He had told her he was not a brave man and that he had made many mistakes but the worst mistake of all had been in nearly losing her. He told her many things.

  Anna believed everything.

  She saw the clouds like smoke streak past the windows. The plane smelled of home, the voices were of home, the smiles and faces were home. And her father was a handsome man and he cried once, when he first saw her in the embassy at Brussels.

  “I love you, little one,” he said again. He had said it many times in four hours, to make up for all the fourteen years he had not said it at all.

  He knew that Gorkeho was arrested and that Henkin had received the finger and that, by now, it would become apparent that Miki was loose in the West. Goddamn Miki and the United States, Cernan thought. At least it was clean and there was an end to it. He might suffer from Henkin, but what could Henkin do to him?

  He did not think to tell Anna what Henkin could do to him.

  Gorkeho, that honest one-legged soldier who had guided him through the thickets of the political life, was lost and Cernan might as well end up at his side, even in prison. But at least, for one moment, Anna would know there was a real father and that he loved her and if he was taken by the police and killed, well, then it was not just a dream but a real father who had died.

  “And what did you see?”

  “The Child,” she had said in the embassy. “He wept for me.”

  “I do not think I could see that. I mean, you have seen it and I believe you, but I do not think I could have seen such a miracle.”

  “But, Father, you must believe what you see,” she had said. “I saw the tears of Christ.”

  “Perhaps it was a trick of the Americans.”

  “And Stephanie. You would have seen that Stephanie did not make tricks. She loved me, Father.”

  “I am glad.”

  “I saw tears,” Anna had said in the embassy.

  All right, Cernan thought. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps, in time, miracles become too cynical for belief. What had he ever believed except in the perfectability of man in the State? An ideal, Gorkeho would have said and smiled. But where was Gorkeho now and when would Cernan join him?

  “I do not say I love you, Father, because it is so soon since I’ve met you,” Anna said. “Will you give me time?”

  His heart broke as they bumped through the clouds. The earth came up to them.

  The miracle came when they opened the door and he went to the stairs and looked down at the man waiting at the bottom of the ramp. Then he understood the possibility of things.

  It was Gorkeho.

  He was smiling.

  40

  WITHOUT ILLUSIONS

  They were all going to Acorn on Oak Street after the ten-o’clock local news. She was just a little late because she had to scrub off the makeup or she would have an allergic reaction in the morning.

  Kay Davis walked out of the station shortly after eleven and there were no cabs and it didn’t matter. Acorn bar was only a few blocks west. She started down the street, heels click-clacking on the pavement. The night was bright with the red city sky and the street lamps and the doormen were in their cubbyholes in the lobbies of all the high-rise condominiums.

  Al Buck was being transferred to Adelaide. That was in Australia. He had gotten a raise, of course, and the kids were keen on meeting Crocodile Dundee or someone very like him. That’s the face Al Buck put on it.

  It was hilarious. There were notes on the newsroom bulletin board, the one management pretended not to read. No one knew very much about Australia but everyone tried to make kangaroo jokes.
/>   Kay smiled at that. She walked along in the normal, aggressive urban manner, her head driving her body forward, her steps very businesslike. It was a grand illusion and every woman in every city knows it.

  The man passed her and grabbed her purse.

  She turned, held on.

  And the purse-snatcher showed his long, thin knife and slashed once and twice and Kay Davis felt first warmth and then blood. Blood on her face. She held the strap of the purse and touched her face and there wasn’t any pain. She stared at his face but he had let go of the purse, he was running up the street.

  There was no pain.

  She thought of herself as she had seen herself thousands of times, the pretty girl on television in Des Moines and Chicago and, next step up, the Big Apple. Pretty Kay Davis.

  Felt the warmth of her own blood on her face.

  And began to scream.

  “That’s done,” Herguth said to Jules Bergen.

  “My work is not as cut and dried.” It was one in the morning and they were at the network apartment on West Fifty-Sixth Street. The room was done in vague Oriental colors and there was a samurai warrior’s set of swords on a wall in an inner room that might have been a den. Ben’s girl was in bed in the next room, sleeping off the booze and pills.

  “Well, you got the patience.”

  “I have whatever has to be had,” Jules Bergen said. He stared out at New York and began to hum the Sinatra song very softly. It kept his spirits up. The city was cranky in the early morning, squawking to itself.

  “You did good, Ben,” Jules said.

  That made Ben feel better. If Julie thought it was good, then it was. Like coming to him with an idea for a show: If Julie said something would work, then it would work, never mind if it bombed in the ratings. It would still be a go because Julie said so.

  “Cunt’ll never work in television again with a face like chopped meat,” Herguth said. “I liked that. I liked that part of it.”

  “Did you ever consider you’re a sadist?”

  “Everyone on top is a sadist.” Herguth smiled. “It’s part of the perks, like getting keys to the gold washroom.”

  Jules said, “I didn’t even give Key Davis a second thought the other night.”

  “I know that, Julie, I know that but I had my pride. I told you a thing was gonna be taken care of and it wasn’t and that made me feel bad.”

  “Henkin was arrested last night in Prague.”

  “And Miki was shot dead in Paris.” Ben Herguth smiled. “My man didn’t get the G-man, but he got Miki and that means we are halfway home free. No Miki, no snitching.”

  “But we’re still out all that money in contracts, set design, scripts—”

  “I’m working on that, too, Julie,” Ben said. He was full of himself, he felt good, better than he had in years. “Prague is out for now, I appreciate that, but we’re already starting to make progress. I been on the phone all afternoon. How does this grab you?”

  Jules waited. Ben gurgled like a kid.

  “Belgrade,” Ben said like a present.

  “Belgrade?”

  “Yugoslavia. Belgrade looks exactly like Moscow used to look when they burned it down. Further, my man says we can get all the Yugoslav Army extras we need. And the cost gets down as low as Prague, maybe even lower.”

  “Belgrade,” Jules repeated.

  “Even snow isn’t a problem, they already got six inches of snow there,” Ben said. “They said they can handle the whole cast the month of January as long as we get out when the party congress starts February third.”

  Belgrade didn’t make any impression on Jules. He closed his eyes and tried to think of it but it was no good. Jules had never seen the city, never set foot in Yugoslavia. He opened his eyes and Ben was grinning at him. Ben was making up for a lot of mistakes. Miki was whacked, he had gotten rid of Kay Davis in Chicago.… Jules grinned back.

  “Why the hell not?” Jules said.

  41

  THE UNTOUCHABLES

  The scandal, if that is what it was, broke in little waves.

  Miki was dead. His existence continued as 114 minutes recorded on both sides of a cassette tape. The voice was scratchy, at times incomprehensible. The voice of the questioner was plain and flat and the answers were fascinating.

  Miki talked about the details of how Henkin routinely helped launder the money that poured into Prague from the production companies. There were kickbacks along the way to Henkin and various other cronies, including Miki. There were numbered Swiss bank accounts—and Miki knew some of the numbers because he handled all sorts of sordid details. The FBI made its request to the Swiss banking authorities through the State Department, and the Swiss, reluctant as always, honored it in time.

  It was a dull financial scandal and no part of it touched Jules Bergen. Naturally, a few questions were asked in the network boardroom but the answers were satisfactory. The target of the investigation was Benjamin C. Herguth, president of BH Productions of California and a supplier of network fare. Herguth was overseeing the scheduled shooting of Life of Napoleon, which was to be a twenty-nine-part miniseries the following fall. It would be shot on location in and around Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

  In the Senate, two young Democrats on the Senate Oversight Committee asked questions about possible involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency. Miki on tape alleged that the CIA mingled funds with the production companies that used Czechoslovakia and bought arms from the burgeoning Czech arms industries and then smuggled these arms out of the country through the film company. All location shootings of any size involved vast logistics requiring tons of equipment ranging from cameras and sound booms to basic kitchens.

  Where did the arms go?

  For two days, one television network insisted the arms were smuggled to the contras in Honduras. This story was not only vigorously denied by the head of the CIA but was proven false when the Sandinista leadership denied it as well. As for the Czechs, they said nothing. A stony winter silence fell over Prague and there were reports of trials held in secret and of the execution of a high-ranking member of the bureaucracy named Henkin. But these were rumors, gathered at the usual listening posts in Vienna and Berlin.

  The scandal had no life to it. It had no beginning and no end. The scandal could not be summarized neatly at the end of the evening news.

  The Central Intelligence Agency was slightly shaken but no damage had been done. After all, the scandal came down to the scratchy allegations played on a tape made in a Paris hotel room.

  Miki was dead; where was the proof of what he said? Certainly the government at Prague was not willing to come forward to support the story of the defector.

  A federal grand jury in Baltimore returned six counts of an indictment on charges of income tax evasion against Benjamin Herguth in January. At the time, he was out of the country, overseeing production on Napoleon. He returned to the United States and posted bond. His attorneys assured him the case against him was weak and that it would take months to come to trial in any case.

  Ben Herguth told his attorneys he wasn’t worried.

  She had called the number while she was still in the hospital. She had left her name and waited for him.

  Kay Davis had the sympathy of all her colleagues who were still before the camera. There was no question of Kay Davis returning to the camera. One of the radio stations made her an offer; another television station asked her to sign on as a producer. People were kind to her in that special way that separates them from the unlucky one.

  The scars were healed. One was across her cheek, below her left eye. The second one was a jagged line from her temple to the edge of her mouth. The surgeon had been skilled; the scars were traces. “They will fade further,” he said. And there was the chance of more cosmetic surgery in time. It was a matter of time.

  He came before Christmas. The city was bright with the holiday. The great tree was lit in the square between city hall and the courts building. On Michigan Avenue, thousand
s of little Italian lights winked on the bare trees.

  Kay had been home to Iowa and everyone there was very kind. They were also kind at her old television station. No one offered her a job.

  A woman from People magazine had written a story about her that was touching. They ran her photograph. A millionaire insurance executive offered her money for more cosmetic surgery.

  She thought she would kill herself before Christmas. She thought she would sit in her bath and cut her wrists and let her blood mingle with the warm water until she was dead.

  But he came to see her six days before Christmas and she let him into her apartment on Chestnut Street and she told him everything that had happened. It wasn’t very much really but she told him everything and told it to him over and over.

  Devereaux listened to her and sat with her for a long time. Afternoon became evening. She made him a drink and then another one. They sat together on the couch and looked out the window wall at the city. He had given her the number, to call him if she needed any help, if she got into any trouble. The premonition had filled him from the moment he met her. He was full of premonitions this winter. He thought of Ready every morning when he awoke. He would open his eyes and he would see Ready in his mind. Stowe and Eurodesk said Ready had disappeared off the face of the earth. Rita Macklin said, “Perhaps he has gone back to hell.”

  Devereaux held Kay Davis’ hand and when she cried—she cried several times—he held her and let her cry against him.

  Devereaux had given the tape to Hanley and filled out a complete report and Hanley had said that it wasn’t enough.

  “These are big guys,” Hanley had said. “It just isn’t enough to get them on anything.”

  “So nothing happens,” Devereaux had said.

  Hanley had shrugged. “It happens,” he said.

  Win some, lose some.

  He felt her tears against him. They sat in silence when she stopped crying.

  “Why did it happen to me?” Kay Davis said. “I wasn’t important to them, was I?”