“Kamarádi,“ he began, “ Nemohu vám dostatečně poděkovat za to, že jste!“
The crowd began to whoop and cheer, each round of applause serving only to widen the grin on the politician’s face, while Stone laughed out loud at his sudden, delayed realisation that he had no idea what this man was saying. Shaking his head at the blind spot in his thinking, he reasoned that it wasn’t quite the handicap he supposed; assuming Myska would be serving up a course of his regular diatribe, then his words themselves were not the most important thing to learn right now, much more so were the actions of the crowd and the Captain intensified his observations.
The speech droned on, interspersed with the regular cheers of Myska’s devotees and the just as regular condemnation of the protestors, but free from anything that could be classed as a disturbance, which fitted Stone’s expectations precisely. If Myska’s modus operandi thus far was the avoidance of the grim pantomime which typically accompanied Far Right groupings, then his rallies were unlikely to involve anything more extreme than intense flag flying and a few verses of the National Anthem; it was the event’s periphery which interested Stone.
An extended, semi-coital cheer signalled the end of the political orgy, and Myska stepped down from his box and moved deceptively speedily but thoroughly charmingly through the crowd, pausing occasionally to acquiesce to ‘selfies’ or accept adoringly vigorous handshakes. This was a showman, an illusionist at work; a ringmaster performing in the centre of his own personal circus; or more accurately, Stone thought, a man who truly understood and encouraged the decent of political leadership to the level of reality television. And, Stone understood, like all illusionists, the man in the middle was just the distraction, the eye-catcher designed to steal away focus from what was going on behind the curtain.
Stone hung back in the alcove, allowing his eyes to scan over the dispersing crowd as they shuffled and slunk back to their everyday lives, some hurling reciprocal abuse at the restrained protestors across the square, some fixing the Captain himself with brief, but hostile glances, the odd one lingering, too fuelled by alcohol to immediately disperse and looking to Stone as though they were in search of trouble, then looking away with the realisation that the silent Stone could likely provide too much of it. Such people were a nuisance but no more so than the average bar room drunk on a Saturday night and Stone thought it unlikely they could inflict the kind of damage that Barry had described if they were unable even to hold a gaze effectively.
One man though met Stone’s eyes and didn’t break away, and it was he who intrigued the soldier.
Stood away from Stone, across the square, similarly still and guarded, the man fixed his eyes on Stone’s, a deliberate and unnerving smile forming on his bulky, cruel face. The man epitomised what Stone had expected to see when he agreed to attend the rally and he wondered when he had slunk onto the scene, realising too that the ugly, brutish face was one of those captured in Svobodova’s folder. He was big and obviously strong, the lack of hair on his tattooed head compensated by the full, unwashed and untidy beard, itself matching the dirty black clothes the figure wore.
The stragglers finally beginning to shuffle on, Stone looked across to see a young Romani boy, of no more than ten or eleven years, heaving a bagful of shopping with him across the square, ducking and sliding through the dispersing crowd, a few of whom fixed him with hostile stares while a couple attempted to jostle and sneer at him as he made his way through, forcing him to seek his escape via the alleyway guarded by the bearded man. As the boy heaved past him, the bearded man’s grin grew wider and he pointed at the scurrying figure, though his eyes remained fixed on Stone’s, fierce, challenging, stirring memories in the Captain of the bullies and tormentors of his youth and awakening him immediately to the thug’s intentions. In a heartbeat, the bearded man set off after the child, who dropped his bag in fear and fled, twisting down the cobbled streets rolling out in front of him. At once, Stone ran in pursuit, grim faced and determined, charging through the milling people in the square and spinning into the street the pair had run to.
Though his rival had a head start, Stone moved swiftly through the sparsely populated cobbled streets, his soldier’s skill and reconnaissance experience overriding their unfamiliarity, his only surprise being the speed with which the bulky, unfit looking man was able to move. He spotted the youngster, weaving past the occasional bystanders and looking over his shoulder, his face etched into an expression of dread, before he finally rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight, followed by his would-be assaulter. Stone quickened his pace, feeling the burn of his thigh muscles as they screamed in resentment at his sudden break from the last few week’s inactivity. Reaching the corner and skidding around it, Stone slowed his pace and looked around in frustration. He was back where he’d started, the Square stretching out before him, a grim-faced Barry and his more jovial colleagues away to the side, debating the intricacies of Myska’s speech in the shadow of the imperious T54.
A sudden movement flitted past the corner of Stone’s eye and he turned his head to see the youngster ducking into the entrance to the subway, and the Captain ran over in pursuit, scanning the entrance for sight of him. The bearded man was nowhere to be seen but Stone soon found the terrified boy pressing himself against the battered ticket machine that stood at the entrance to the station.
“Hey,” Stone began quietly, cursing his lack of linguistic knowledge to calm the boy, “It’s ok, it’s alright.” He walked slowly, arms outstretched towards the small, frightened child who pressed himself still further to the wall.
“Ne, ne, ne, ne!” The boy became hysterical as Stone approached, halting the Captain who tried again to placate the youngster.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised, raising his eyebrow as the boy shook his head.
“Not you,” the boy finally shouted in heavily accented English, pointing behind Stone, “Him!”
Stone barely had time to curse his own stupidity before the heavy fist connected with his temple, stunning him and sending him backwards towards the noisy escalator. Grabbing the side rail, he tried to shake the scrambling from his brain and straighten up to face his foe, before a second fist sent him sprawling on the downward slope.
Stone scraped his fingers across the metal steps, flinging himself to the side to avoid the boot directed at his head. He stared up into the still grinning face of the bearded man, who raised his heavy leg once more to deliver the coup de grace. This time Stone was ready, and he grabbed the kicking limb, forcing its owner off balance and onto his back on the moving stairs. The attacker, though strong, was bulkier than Stone and struggled to rise as the Captain scrambled past him to the higher ground, aiming his own kick, which caught the assailant a glancing blow.
His senses returning, Stone took in the full length of the drop below them; what was it Abelard had said, the deepest subway in Europe? Stone remembered the escalator’s length to be some eighty-seven metres, with most of those still below them, and he didn’t fancy taking the fall to find out for sure. Dodging another heavy fist, Stone instinctively raised his arms, adopting the boxing stance of his military training, dodging the flying arms of his opponent and countering with hard strikes of his own, until the ox-like figure flung his whole self at Stone, knocking him on his back and crushing the breath from his body, all the time grinning his disgusting grin.
With the weight of his attacker bearing down on him and his strength depleting, Stone summoned the reserves of his energies and threw his head up, hard into his attacker’s face, relishing the crunch of bone and splattering of warm blood the action brought. As the bearded man lurched backwards, reaching for his face, Stone wriggled his legs free of the giant frame and, with his feet on the bleeding man’s belly, pushed with all his might, sending his attacker tumbling backwards down the moving stairwell, his beefy arms clawing fruitlessly for grip against the stainless steel sides, before landing with a crunch at the bottom, laying there sprawled and still.
Filling his assaulted lungs with the stale, warm air of the subway, Stone rose to his feet, brushing himself off and hopping over the fallen body as the escalator completed its decent. Crouching down, he reached out to check for a pulse, only to reel when a hand rose like lightening to clamp down on his wrist, while the other arm struck once more against the side of the Captain’s head. Dazed, Stone felt himself dragged to the edge of the platform, the cold breeze from the tunnel bringing him to his senses. He was on his back, his head and shoulders hung over the edge of the platform, the still grinning bearded man straddling his legs and holding his arms tightly down. In the distance he could hear the approach of the train, and he fought to stop panic clouding his mind.
Stone was not afraid to die, far from it; he had faced that final journey to the Greenfields countless times and called it a career. But he couldn’t die here, now…. He frantically wriggled under the stronger man’s hold, his eyes darting around searching desperately for something, anything to help him, until the twin beams of the oncoming train burst through the blackness of the tunnel and into his face, accompanied by the angry howling of its horn and the laughter of his grinning murderer. There was no escape, none. No, NO! His boy…!
With the horns at their loudest and the train as close as it could be, Stone felt the weight of his assailant lifted, the man suddenly falling over his head, and himself pulled sharply back from the platform’s edge. He watched for a brief eternity as the bearded man’s grin turned to a look of abject horror as he dropped onto the tracks to be instantly pounced on by the roaring train, his cry accompanied by the impotent screech of futile brakes.
Stone bolted upright, confused and unsure. A bony hand reached out, helping him to his feet and he stared into the eyes of a wrinkled, dishevelled man with unkempt grey hair and eyes as fierce as any Stone could remember.
“You’ve been fucking spotted mate,” the man hissed. “Get the fuck out of here before they start asking questions.” He nodded over to the train where Stone saw a shocked and pale driver radioing the incident while stuck passengers stared through dirty Perspex windows at him.
“But wait, who…?” Stone turned back but the stranger was gone, the platform deserted. As angry passengers began to bang on the still closed doors of the train, desperate to get out, Stone turned to the upwards escalator, leaping up the steps three at a time, gasping fresher air into his lungs with each bound. At the top, the boy he’d sought to rescue was nowhere to be seen and Stone tried his best to appear relaxed and decided to get back to his apartment and figure out what had happened. He hadn’t gone more than three steps before a figure stepped into his path, causing him once more to recoil in readiness for violence.
“Captain? Captain Stone?”
The delicate Welsh lilt at once brought him back from the edge and he smiled into the concerned face of Professor Abelard.
“Professor,” he breathed, “what are you doing here?”
“Never mind me, what about you? You look like you’ve been in the wars.”
“Not my usual kind of battlefield,” he laughed, “but just as dangerous.”
The concern on Abelard’s face was joined by a quizzical eyebrow, eventually giving way to a smile.
“Really?” she grinned. “Tell me over a drink?”
FIVE
IT WAS ONLY A SHORT WHILE LATER that Stone had relayed his tale to Abelard before reclining back in his seat on the edge of the beautiful Old Town Square. Contrary to his expectation, the news seemed to bring her to life, the contrast to her persona earlier in the day stark to say the least, and she quizzed him with eagerness and no trace of fear on the details of his fight and rescue by the strange bedraggled man, until he had to almost insist upon changing the subject. His telephone conversation with Radoslav had been entirely different, curt to the point of irritability. The young officer had insisted on only the facts before bluntly assuring him that CCTV records would be taken care of, a call to the police was not necessary and that the Captain should present himself at Svobodova’s office later that afternoon, ready to explain in person.
Not far from them, a multitude of accents and skin tones bustled in the hourly tourist ritual to witness Death tolling his bell to the procession of dead souls guarding the Astronomical clock face high above. Not a single cry of ‘scum’, ‘immigrant’ or profane demands to leave accompanied their presence. As cameras flashed sightseers cooed at the foot of the tourist trap.
Abelard returned to the table from freshening up and gave the Captain a warmer smile than he had previously had from her, lifting her glass towards him.
“Well, here’s to working together, Captain Stone,” she grinned.
“I’m enjoying it already, Professor Abelard,” he smiled back, grateful for the easing of tensions between them. In truth, he thought, she seemed like a different person to the rigid professional who had woken him that morning and resisted his attempts at conversation on the journey to meet Svobodova. Whereas then her face had been stern and her voice austere, there was a bright openness to her demeanour now, as though her ‘business’ character was an uncomfortable item of clothing she dressed in each morning and was keen to discard as quickly as possible.
“I suppose I should toast Jonathan for making it happen, too.”
“I don’t envy you,” Stone said, at the mention of Greyson, “working for your ex can’t be easy.”
She huffed.
“Well, at least he’s not here to rub my nose in it,” she said distractedly, “unlike a certain Prime Minister of our acquaintance.”
“What makes you think they’re sleeping together?”
“Intuition,” she said. “He’s forever making trips to this part of the world, or ‘bumping into her’ at conferences the world over, it’s become a joke now.”
“It could just be a coincidence,” Stone suggested, “they are both ‘world leaders’ after all, and Greyson needs to drum up all the support for Britain he can get after Brexit.”
“I might believe that if he didn’t have form,” she replied, cynicism poisoning her accent. “You know his junior minister, the one who died?”
“Yeah, she dropped dead of a drug overdose, if I remember rightly, what was her name?”
“Caroline Bland,” she spat, the bitterness still apparent. “That was here, in Prague. I’d suspected it for months and he always denied it, but after she died he finally admitted he’d been fucking her. That’s why I divorced him; the lecherous git’s just like his Dad…”
Stone, no stranger to broken relationships had few words to offer other than the standard issue perfunctory ‘sorry’ which he duly offered, only for her to shake her head and smile.
“I’m not stupid,” she said, “I know what goes on when you mix with the political class, but actually being faced with the reality of it still hurts. Ah, what’s the bloody point? I don’t even know why I’m bothered, he’s free and single and he can get his leg over with whoever he likes. And what about you? Any lady back home eagerly awaiting your return?”
Stone laughed at her change of tack.
“Ha! If only. No, I’m a single Dad, my wife left years ago and I can’t honestly say I’ve been in much of a rush to get involved again, not seriously anyway.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, catching him a little off guard before she picked up.
“Sorry to hear that, do you mind if I ask what happened?” She asked the question gently, non-judgementally and to his surprise Stone found himself answering.
“She met someone whose battles weren’t fought in deserts or fields thousands of miles away.” He grimaced slightly, taking another mouthful of ale. “I can’t really blame her, being partnered to a professional soldier must be hard and I was frequently not there, even when I was, if you know what I mean.”
“Forgive me,” Abelard replied, “but it’s unusual for a mum to leave her child, isn’t it? From what I’ve heard it’s usually the other way around.”
“I won’t blame her for her choi
ces.” Stone was adamant. “That she left meant I got to keep him and that boy is the single most important thing in my entire existence, even if he is a pain in the arse.” He placed his glass back on the table and focused on Abelard with honesty in his eyes. “He’s my reason for living.”
She smiled back, awkwardly, seemingly stuck for something to say, and Stone’s chivalrous instinct kicked in, pushing him to pick up the conversation.
“Anyway,” he smiled, “it seems heartbreak and separation are two things we have in common.”
“Divorcees of the world unite,” she laughed back.
“It was all a long time ago anyway,” he said, “I’m quite happy without her but I’ll admit that every now and then I’ll catch myself thinking about her, sometimes hoping she spares me a thought from time to time.”
“Bullshit.”
The word pricked the bubble of delicate melancholy that had swollen around their conversation, at first causing Stone’s eyebrow to rise in surprise, before he felt a snigger begin to rise from inside, quickly becoming a laugh.
“Bullshit?”
“Bullshit!”
Abelard echoed his laughter, tilting her glass to her lips before elaborating on her exclamation.
“You don’t hope she ‘spares you a thought from time to time, that’s just what you tell yourself. What you really hope, deep down, is that one day she’ll look in the mirror and ask herself why the fuck she ever let you go, then spend every day for the rest of her life wishing and praying that she was lying in bed next to you, instead of whichever lightweight façade she’s really waking up to. You loved her so much that losing her damn near destroyed you and deep down you want her to go through the same. Not out of cruelty mind, but because true love brings us all to the edge of destruction and if she goes through that too, then it means she really did love you after all.”
The Prague Ultimatum Page 6
