The Prague Plot: The Cold War Meets the Jihad (Jeannine Ryan Series Book 3)
Page 1
The Prague
Plot
The Cold War
Meets
The Jihad
James E. Mosimann
Brightview Press
Gainesville, Virginia
Copyright © James E. Mosimann, 2012
All Rights Reserved.
In accordance with the U. S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
Brightview Press, LLC
ISBN 978-0-9897659-6-1
For Miloš Pacak
who left in 1948 and never returned,
and Jiři Pochobradsky,
who left in 1968 and did.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or to actual events and places is coincidental.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Envoi
About the Author
Author’s Note
Prologue
Early September
Like many a successful European entrepreneur, he wore an expensive dark suit with a double-vented jacket, black shoes of Italian leather, and a conservative tie. But Abdul Rahman, “the Servant of the Merciful,” hated Western businessmen. He did not like their ways, he did not trust them.
Still more, did he detest those godless unbelievers, the atheists. At least the infidels who were “People of the Book” (Jews and Christians) admitted Allah’s existence in some fashion, although to Mr. Rahman, the Christians with their Trinitarian God were not monotheists.
There is one God and Muhammad is his messenger.
Rahman took his seat at the table and studied the three men across from him.
These men were distasteful. They were truly godless. They were former communists, and whatever ideals they may have had before, now their only god was money. The three were ruthless and without human conscience. They were “trustworthy” only because they would receive most of their payment after completion of the task.
Rahman, the “Servant of the Merciful,” concluded his evaluation of the men before him. He knew only one by name, a Czech, a Mr. Moravec who had arranged this meeting.
Moravec stood to talk. He wasted no time. He finished his proposal in ten minutes.
Five minutes into the presentation, the normally unflappable Rahman was excited, after ten, he was stunned. Is this truly possible? He swallowed hard.
He studied the eyes of the other two men. There was no doubt. They believed Moravec. The proposal was genuine.
Incredible. It was a one-time opportunity! And Moravec’s plan could work!
Rahman put his briefcase under the table.
He clenched his fist and exhaled a silent, Allahu akbar! “God is great!”
If these infidels could deliver what they promised, the United States, the Great Satan, would suffer a blow infinitely more deadly than the destruction of the twin towers!
The room was quiet. All eyes were on Rahman.
He peered out the window.
It was evening. The streets of the staré město, Prague’s Old Town, were aglow with spotlights that hid the soot and decay of once-splendid buildings. Rahman cringed at the thought of decadent old structures and godless neighborhoods.
The West was dissolute. The time was indeed ripe for action. The worldwide Caliphate would be a reality, perhaps in his own lifetime.
Rahman drew in a deep breath. He paused to straighten his tie, then he made his decision.
He agreed to the infidel’s terms, millions upon millions of Euros. His backers were true believers, flush with petrodollars. Thanks to the recent upswing in oil prices, money was no object.
Amid their smiles, Rahman stood to leave.
He did not shake the proffered hands. He would not soil his own. He managed a slight smile.
He strode from the room. The meeting was over.
Out on the street, a light rain fell as Abdul Rahman walked to his hotel. He did not notice. He mouthed over and over to himself,
“Allahu akbar! ... Allahu akbar! ... Allahu akbar!”
***
******
Chapter 1
Wednesday, November 17
Anne Simek did not like insects, not any of them, but mostly she detested roaches. It seemed that every time she rented a beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the roaches of coastal Carolina scheduled a convention at that spot. But today was to prove her fears unfounded. Her realtor cousin, Mila Patekova, had found a rental for her in the town of Corolla. The brand-new house was absurdly huge for one person, but Mila had obtained an off-season rate that was too good to pass up.
Moreover Mila had assured her that the house was completely pest-free. Anne wanted to believe her.
Anyway here she was, in Corolla, unpacking her bag in a bedroom whose high ceilings were bright with sunlight that streamed through wide glass doors. These latter opened on a railed deck two stories above the ground. Visible from the deck was a gray wooden walkway that stretched through the brown marsh grass to a tidal creek of the Currituck Sound.
The late afternoon sun shone on the pristine walls of the west-facing bedroom. Anne scanned the surfaces carefully, looking for dark specks that might move. There were none. She unfolded her bed linens. She had carefully washed them before her departure. They were free of six-legged invaders.
Gingerly, she pulled back the bed cover, fully expecting to see a brown form scuttle away from the light. Nothing. She sighed with relief, and attached the corners of her fitted sheet to the mattress. She tucked in the top sheet, and spread a light blanket, also from home, over it. A shake of the pillow into her clean case, and she was done.
Good old Mila, I thought I could trust you. You said this place was spotless, and it is!
Anne was tired, the drive to the island from Norfolk International Airport had been tedious, and the last part had been over a rough unpaved
road.
She stretched out on the bed. Why not grab a quick nap? She shut her eyes.
***
Born in Chicago, Anne Simek was all American. Her birth certificate confirmed this. Thanks to her mother, (and to the Registrar of Births) it read “Anne Simek” not “Anna Simekova” as her Czech father might have preferred.
Anne’s grandfather, Marek, was born near Prague in the town of Kladno. There, as a young man in June, 1942, he had watched columns of smoke spiral upward from Lidice, a village across the valley. Those dark spirals signaled the death of that village and its male inhabitants as Hitler avenged the assassination of his friend, Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy Reichsprotektor. Due to those columns of smoke, and the wanton slaughter they signaled at the hands of the Nazis, Marek became a dedicated communist, a true Soudruh, a true “Comrade.” He stood with the Red youths in Prague’s Wenceslas Square to celebrate the Party’s ascent to power in 1948.
Twenty years later, in August, 1968, Marek’s disillusioned son, Havel, (Anne’s father to be) stood in that same Wenceslas Square as Warsaw-Pact armor brought all hope of the “Prague Spring” to a violent end. Later, and not far from that square, a puzzled Havel watched as Soviet-made tanks blasted the façade of the defenseless building that housed Rudé Právo, the newspaper of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Only with the arrival of film crews from the Soviet news agency, Tass, did he understand that the event was staged for propaganda.
The next day Havel’s good friend Johan or “Jan” stood with him in protest, but when troops fired above (and into) the crowd, Johan fled. Havel cried out.
“Jane, kam jdeš? ‘Jan, where are you going?’”
To no avail. Johan disappeared down a side street.
Two days later, Havel was arrested as an anti-socialist agitator after an informant gave Havel’s name to State Security, the Státní bezpečnost.
Anne’s father spent over a year in prison. It was there that he learned that the informant was none other than his former friend, Johan.
After his “rehabilitation,” Havel was released. He escaped the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for Austria. There, he met Anne’s mother, an American studying Physics in Vienna. After a rapid courtship, and the less rapid completion of her doctorate, the young couple returned to Chicago, where some years later, Anne was born.
***
Throughout his life, Havel Simek nurtured the bitterness of Johan’s betrayal. Havel was by no means a Christian, but riding the “L” in Chicago to accompany his young daughter to school, he had repeatedly told Anne the story of Saint Peter fleeing from Nero’s Rome.
As Anne understood it, Peter was fleeing persecution when he met the Christ heading towards Rome and asked him.
“Quo vadis? Pane, kam jdete? ‘Where are you going, Lord?’”
To this, Christ had answered.
“To Rome to be crucified again.”
At that reply Peter, convicted of cowardice and lack of faith was shamed into changing his mind. He went back to Rome to, himself, be crucified.
To young Anne, this story was at best a garbled version of her father’s experience in Wenceslas Square. True, like the fleeing Peter, her father had posed the question, but he had not fled. It was Johan, the one questioned, who had run away.
Accurate analogy or not, these discrepancies were unimportant to her father. To him the connection was vivid.
Johan’s answer to “Quo vadis?” was for Havel to be “crucified” instead of him!
***
To Anne, now nearly thirty, the story might have remained just that, a story, but for the fact that Johan’s son Peter Zeleny, a young M. D., recently had immigrated to Chicago to take a position in a local Mental Health Clinic. Anne had spotted Peter’s photograph in a newspaper article announcing his appointment. She once had met Peter during her (aborted) study of Medicine at Charles University in Prague.
When she showed the picture to her father, his eyes had bulged while his face turned purplish gray. Slumping into his chair, he had signaled weakly for a glass of water.
The contrast between her father’s ashen face and Peter’s smile in the photo impacted Anne. In those two expressions, Anne saw how bitterness destroyed its bearer, not its target. She resolved to the best of her ability to live in the present, and never to dwell on past hurts.
After that newspaper article, Anne thought no more of Peter Zeleny or his father, Johan. She separated herself from old family issues, and happily immersed herself in her own doctoral studies in Philosophy and Religion. Her work filled her life, and the Outer Banks became her favorite locale to think and write.
***
Anne awoke with a start. The room was deep in shadows. How long did I sleep? She sat up. To the west, the sun was only a red glow on a horizon interrupted by dark clouds. She shook her head clear, stood up, and reached for the light switch.
She hesitated. The thought of brown forms with six spiky legs flashed before her. She steeled herself and flipped the switch.
The room flooded with light, but there was no movement, no scuttling. No roaches, nothing! She exhaled with relief. Score two for Mila!
Anne first met her cousin Mila in Prague when Anne had been a student at Charles University. Since that time, Mila had emigrated from the Czech Republic. She now had her “Green Card,” and was on the way to U. S. Citizenship. Mila worked as a realtor on the Outer Banks and neighboring mainland. Her residence and Realty Office were in Nags Head.
Anne’s trust in Mila, was not limited to roaches. Mila had forwarded to her an unsigned letter from Prague. The anonymous writer, a man, knew of Anne’s scheduled vacation from Chicago to the Outer Banks and wanted to meet her there. Mila knew and vouched for him. She had assured Anne that the visitor was trustworthy with good intentions. With some trepidation Anne had agreed to meet him during her visit to Corolla. I have to trust Mila!
Anne stared out over the dark deck. Out on the sound, red and green pin points of light marked the movements of distant boats.
In close, barely discernible among the moonlit shadows, an old man rowed a small skiff past the end of her dock. Anne was not worried. Mila had told her of the harmless “local graybeard” who occupied a drab shack on the sound. Still, she was fully exposed in the illuminated room. She pulled the heavy curtains shut across the sliding glass doors and wedged a heavy stick in the slide’s runway.
Besides that shack, no other houses were nearby. Mila had found an isolated location near Corolla.
Anne left the bedroom for the living area where an expansive glass front faced towards the ocean. The drapes were drawn, but even when open, no waves were visible. The view of the beach was blocked by extensive dunes topped with wavering Sea Oats backed by clumps of brush whose evergreen branches were rounded by salt-spray.
She sank into the padded sofa and clicked on the TV.
American football. No thanks!
She thought to change the channel, but hit the off button instead. She reached for her laptop and opened the cover. Moments later she was typing vigorously.
***
It was midnight when the first gust of wind rattled the wide glass doors. Rain quickly followed. Sheets of water hurled themselves at the sliding panels and flowed downwards in continuous waves. From the ceiling above, a flapping sound signaled distressed shingles, while lights flickered on and off as some distant power station tried to adjust to storm-lost lines and blown transformers.
Anne left her computer on the sofa and went to pull back the drapes. She could see nothing until a flash of lightning revealed clusters of sea oats pressed to the dunes in submission to the wind.
She started. Had she imagined a shadowy form heading her way, struggling through the dunes against the gusts? Stop it Anne. Don’t be a wimp! The meeting shouldn’t be today. (Anne had arrived early.) Distracted, she looked at her feet. They were damp. Water had seeped under the doors and dripped off the window sills to merge into a pool that edged towards the expensive rug. Anne react
ed. She stuffed towels from her suitcase under the openings. The towels soaked quickly. She found a bucket, wrung out the soaked items and replaced them. The seepage was contained. She returned to the sofa.
The lights flicked off and on again, then off for good. Outside, wind and rain continued unabated. Inside, the only light was from the pale screen of her laptop, now on battery power. Anne returned to the sofa, reassured by that dim glow.
The house was built on stilt-like wooden pilings that lifted the rooms on the first level well above the sand. The great room was higher still, on the top level, and Anne felt the floor and walls vibrate in the violent wind.
She shivered and pressed her arms against her body, prepared to wait out the storm.
After a while, the gusts lessened and came at more regular intervals. The rhythmic cadence of the shaking siding provided relative calm, hardly soothing but not as scary. The regular beat resonated with her thoughts.
Who wants to meet me and why?
Mila had vouched for this person! Mila trusted him.
She settled the computer on her lap and studied the words on the screen, a PDF of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. She concentrated on the text. Did Dietrich von Hildebrand agree with Thomas? She tried to focus, but her thoughts faded.
Her eyelids drooped. Moments later, she was asleep.
***
Also in Corolla, and not far away, the driver of a minivan squinted to keep the rutted roadway in his headlights, but without success. Sheets of water slid beneath and around the struggling wipers to coat the glass in an unbroken murky film. The driver cursed and pressed hard on the brake pedal. The wheels splashed and slid sideways to stop in a water-filled depression. He could drive no further, and he was nearly a mile from his target.
Damn this storm! The Northeaster had risen quickly and unexpectedly. No one had expected it this far south. It could spoil his plans. He cared little that from Delaware to North Carolina, the beaches were being gouged and scooped into the waters of the Atlantic by a surging Labrador Current. Those capitalist vacation-home owners would pass their losses onto others, but he could not let the weather delay him. He had a task to perform, for a large amount of money. He would continue on foot.