The Prague Ultimatum

by James Silvester

  “Divinity,” he eventually muttered, “my devotion.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “OUR ONLY MOTIVATION is to offer moral support and practical assistance to a valued ally in the War Against Terror.”

  Benjamin Scarlet, US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia spoke with the same political sincerity in person as he demonstrated on the phone; and it was precisely because she had proven so difficult recently to reach on said device, Svobodova supposed, that he had taken the step of an impromptu visit to her private office, where he now sat comfortably, enjoying her diplomatic hospitality.

  “Your support is very much appreciated and your assistance unnecessary. What’s your real reason for being here, Benjamin?”

  Scarlet remained silent for a moment, his eyes remaining on Svobodova’s as he raised his china cup to his lips and quietly drained his coffee.

  “We want him.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  Svobodova’s cynicism displayed on her face in a wry smile and she looked away, shaking her head at her guest’s arrogance.

  “He’s our prisoner, captured by our own security…”

  “People are dying, Madam Prime Minister,” Scarlet’s voice raised slightly over Svobodova’s own, drowning out her words while his posture remained determinedly still. “American people are dying, here and now in your country. They died in the bar, they died at the concert and my government is keen to avoid any more deaths within your borders, even despite your ‘increased security’.

  “Are you implying…?”

  “What I’m implying is that it will go some way to repairing the relationship between our two countries if America sees the willingness of the Czechoslovak government to release a killer of American civilians, who may well come from the same cell as other killers of American civilians, to face justice in the country he hates.”

  Svobodova’s eyes remained on him as she raised her coffee cup to her lips. To dominate a discussion without obvious rudeness was an art and he was far from being the only person to attempt it with her. Few had ever succeeded.

  “I was not aware that our relationship had been imperilled in such a way,” she replied. “You’ll recall Benjamin, I asked you for the real reason.”

  Scarlet gave a half smile, acknowledging her wiliness.

  “The President is down in the polls, much farther than anyone expected. The interrogation and trial of a terrorist would be very good publicity, particularly one from the cell which caused the deaths of so many Americans.”

  “I haven’t been advised that such a link is confirmed.”

  “Neither have I, but that’s what the cameras will see.”

  Svobodova mustered the vestiges of her diplomacy to banish the grimace which threatened to claim her features.

  “You’re talking about a show trial,” she said, the hint of disgust in her voice undisguisable.

  “I’m talking about the media,” Scarlet replied, “I’m talking about public retribution, about showing the American people that their government will ensure those who would do them harm will be held accountable for their actions.”

  “Does that include members of their own government?”

  Her barb hung accusingly between them, adding a thin level of frosted ice to the tension enveloping the room. For a moment, she thought he might retaliate with a choice implication of his own, but instead he remained silent, the familiar derisive half-smile twisting onto his face as he drained the last drops of coffee from his cup.

  “Los Andes, huh?” he queried, reading the logo on his cup.

  “It’s Columbian,” she answered, matching his tone, “a small business run by a couple of friends of mine.”

  “Well, it’s excellent,” he answered. “These friends of yours, they’re Columbian too?”

  She nodded.

  “And there-in lies your problem, Madam Prime Minister,” Scarlet gave an exaggerated sigh, clinking his cup to its saucer, “you’ve always been a little too friendly with a few too many of the wrong type of people.”

  “Wrong type of people?”

  She repeated the words slowly and deliberately, as if she wanted to have misheard him and his sinister implication, though the hardness in his eyes told her otherwise.

  “You know what I mean,” he quietly said. “This guy Myska is calling you out on it and that’s why you’re stuck with the problems you have right now. Acquiescing to our request will help you go some way to pulling the rug from under him; you realise that don’t you? You’ll be seen as tough, taking a stand on Islamic terrorism, instead of soft and weak like you look right now.”

  She replaced her own cup on the table, keeping her eyes firmly on his as she mulled over his words. There was no denying the veracity of at least some of what he said; large chunks of the electorate were indeed frustrated with her multi-racial idealism and reluctance to counter the attacks of the past months with knee-jerk reactions and draconian restrictions of rights for the groups the attackers had come from. But despite her political struggles, she had no desire to avoid or ease them by enabling another government to use someone as a tool to lie to its people, even a person as odious as the man in custody must surely be.

  “As ever, Benjamin,” she eventually began, “I appreciate your forthrightness and honesty, and I shall give your proposal the most urgent consideration.”

  She stood up gracefully and gestured politely with her arm; a clear invitation to step to the door ahead of her. Scarlet instead though remained in his seat, his smirk still defiantly perched on his face; he removed his glasses and played idly with the frame, looking up at her with an accustomed arrogance.

  “You know,” he said, “in recognition of the mutually beneficial arrangements our countries have enjoyed in recent years, I’m going to lay it on the line for you as clearly as possible. It isn’t always just our enemies that do us harm, sometimes, even with the best of intentions, our allies do as well. Your reluctance to allow us into the investigation is harming us and we will simply not allow that to continue. Support for US military action in the Middle East has never been lower, not just abroad but at home. People are tired of seeing their sons and daughters brought home in body bags draped in the Stars and Stripes; they figure all this has been going on for too long, that it’s too far away to really matter to them anymore. Reports are being published by the month that condemn our attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, while most people couldn’t even find Syria on a map let alone tell you why we’re fighting there. And so we need someone, a symbol, a scapegoat, call it what you will; something to reassure the people that their sacrifices haven’t been in vain, something to remind them why the War on Terror costs so much by way of dollars and lives. Bin Laden’s death is a fading memory and any ISIS Leaders coming to prominence get taken out by drones; we need a real, flesh and blood ‘Monster of the Week’ to take the fall publically on their behalf. Abdul Salam is to be that Monster.”

  “Our investigation is still ongoing…”

  “I really couldn’t care less about your investigation. Neither will the President and neither will NATO. This man is connected to people responsible for the deaths of Americans right across this continent and one way or another he will take the fall.”

  “If a jury of his peers determines his guilt, he will indeed take the fall, here, in Czechoslovakia where the alleged crimes took place, and I will not abandon the rule of law, even for one accused of such crimes as he, to provide a propaganda victory for our allies, however valued and close they might be!”

  Svobodova’s tone rose with each word, defying Scarlet’s attempts to shout over here and drown her out. Instead, he remained silent for a few brief moments, allowing his own frustrations to cool.

  “Madam Prime Minister,” he looked at her with narrowed, almost sinister eyes, every portion of his features conveying the implicit hostility behind the façade, “America has a need right now, a need to show purpose to the sacrifices made since the turn of the century. Czechos
lovakia likewise has a need: it needs friends. Russia is already at your doorstep, it’s peeking through your curtains while you bathe. The European Union is poised to throw you out in the cold and abandon you; do you really want NATO to follow suit?

  Svobodova’s heart sunk at his words and she strained to prevent it displaying on her face, instead merely raising a cynical eyebrow to the threat, while Scarlet revelled in his role as enforcer.

  “We can announce it sensitively, call it a joint investigation or whatever you want. But we’ll tie him in to a bagful of unsolved cases back in the US and he’ll quickly be sent packing there. Otherwise, you and your people may just find out how lonely it can be in the middle of Central Europe, when all your friends are gone.”

  He let the last words hang in the air, then stood swiftly and quietly to leave.

  “Madam Prime Minister,” he acknowledged as he opened the door, “please do give my offer your most thorough and immediate attention.”

  “With respect, Mr Ambassador,” Svobodova answered, her countenance strong, “this is no offer; it has all the hallmarks of a threat.”

  Scarlet stopped in the doorway, turning back towards her, the sarcastic smile which had adorned his features replaced with an incredulous irritation.

  “This is no threat,” he replied, with something approaching offence in his voice, “this is international politics. The world is a small place, there’s no halfway house anymore and there’s nowhere to hide. You’ve stepped up to be a piece on the board and like it or not the only freedom you have is choosing which of the players you prefer to be used by, Them or Us, and you live or die by that choice. You can sulk all you like, you can shout and cry about the unfairness of it all and say you don’t want to play anymore, but if you do, you’ll find yourself very quickly advanced into pretty precarious territory, and maybe your Player won’t try all that hard to protect you from being taken by the other side. Your noble little vision of a planet filled with people gloriously at peace with each other will never amount to shit, your grand ideals can never change the world, because the world doesn’t want to be changed; it likes the way it is, it enjoys the game. And if you refuse to see the nature of the world as it really is then it will turn on you and devour you before you can say Utopia. That’s the choice you have Madam Prime Minister, that’s your ultimatum; you, like everyone, are trapped in a world that hates you and you can either have a seat with the big boys and enjoy the view, or watch in chains as the game plays out without you. You will either authorise an immediate extradition and allow your prisoner to be tried in the US, or we will be forced to support a motion suspending Czechoslovakia’s membership of NATO, which with Russia’s hands all over your ass at the border isn’t something I think you’d appreciate.”

  He paused for a moment, silhouetted in the doorway like an immaculately tailored harbinger of misfortune, his stare meeting hers and his silence reinforcing his message.

  “It’s time to make your choice,” he said softly, before turning away and letting the door close behind him. And as it finally did, a cold draft blew over the beleaguered Svobodova, who standing alone in the centre of her room, began to feel the unwelcome torment of a new depth of isolation.

  NINETEEN

  STONE FELT THE WARMTH FADE from his face as the sun’s rays dipped over the hillside to be replaced by the evening’s familiar cool breeze. Stretching the cricks from his back as he pushed against the hill, the Captain stared out, trying to ignore the footsteps, and the person they belonged to, approaching him from his right.

  “You look like you could use a drink.”

  “I’m not convinced I want to have it with you.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake man, just take the bottle.”

  Stone looked up, the cynically delivered profanity almost raising a smile, to see Williams alongside him, holding out a glass bottle of Czech ale with one hand, while swigging from his own. Giving in to the peace offering, he accepted it, clinked it against Williams’ own and took a deep drink.

  “I thought we did alright in there, to be honest,” Williams said, joining the Captain in looking out at the silhouetted Karlštejn Castle, “eventually anyway. I don’t know what you’re moping about; after what happened to you I wouldn’t have thought you’d have much sympathy for terrorist bombers, coerced or otherwise.”

  “Ah, he was just a kid,” Stone sighed, “but a kid willing to go out and kill. He just got me thinking a little bit, that’s all.”

  “About?”

  “About why I do it, while I still do it; spend all my time fighting politicians’ wars, looking after my squaddies when I had a boy back home who needed his dad. Do you ever read Oscar Wilde?”

  “Not recently.”

  “You should. He said that children begin by loving their parents, after a time they judge them. Rarely do they forgive them.”

  Williams frowned, unsettled. “Rarely doesn’t mean never.”

  “Kids like Salam,” Stone continued to muse, “so many of them are so angry with the mess the parents, the grown-ups have made of the world that they think going out and killing innocents is a better way. Did we really get things so wrong?”

  “Stop that shit right there!” Williams forcefully demanded. “You and I have enough things to blame ourselves for without feeling responsible every time some fucked up psycho wanders onto a train and blows himself up. A: That wasn’t your fucking fault and B: the kid in the cave was doped up. End of story.”

  “If you say so,” said Stone, raising the bottle to his lips.

  Williams sighed loudly, as though unable to cope with Stone’s insistence on examining the state of his soul.

  “Go on then, tell me,” he reluctantly said, “why do you still get your kicks dodging bullets?”

  Still the Captain kept his eyes straight ahead on the busily setting sun, allowing the gentle coolness its disappearance set in to compliment the cold beer chilling his insides.

  “Because it felt like I was doing something worthwhile,” he finally said. “I wasn’t fighting to oppress, I wasn’t fighting to conquer someone’s land, but everywhere I went I met people who were desperate for some kind of freedom from the people who were oppressing or conquering them. So while I was there, I fought for them, because no-one else would, and I let the politicians sort out the diplomacy afterwards.”

  Taking a large swig from his bottle, Williams pondered Stone’s words for a moment.

  “Look, I know what you think of me,” he said, gazing at the castle, as it settled comfortably into dusk, “and I can’t blame you for it. You’re a soldier, it’s your job to see things in black and white; you’ve a defined enemy, a clear battleground. You go in, fight like hell, move when you’re told to move. Basically, you’re a pawn.”

  Stone felt his smile growing, despite himself, and he laughed.

  “Is this you trying to make me feel good about myself?”

  “Maybe I’m not a very tactful guy,” Williams conceded, “but it’s true. I’m a pawn too, just a different kind. My battlefield is everywhere, my enemies not so clearly defined. An ally watching my back one day could be stabbing me in it the next. There’s not much by the way of honour or valour on my battlefield, Captain, all I can do is keep sight of the objective and hope I have stomach enough to reach it, and if I’m not prepared to limbo under the bar of morality on occasion then I won’t.”

  Stone took in Williams’ words, spoken in an almost resigned despondency, but with a simultaneous resentful disdain for any condemnation the Captain might respond with. In the end, the military man simply shook his head, a wry smile forming at his lips.

  “The ends justify the means, eh?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” Williams sighed, swigging from his half-spent bottle. “In the old days I used to think so, like the objective was something worth fighting for. But the older you get, you realise that there is no shining utopia, no happy ever after and that you’ve spent so long complaining about the other side’s smell that you don�
��t notice the stench coming from your own.”

  He knocked his grey head back, pushing the last of the ale down his wrinkled throat, toying with the top of the empty bottle in his hand.

  “So why do you go on?” Stone asked gently, sincerely, his own stare joining his grim colleague’s.

  Williams shrugged. “You can’t survive in this world if you look at it like some deontological minefield to be carefully negotiated for fear of making the ‘wrong’ choice. It’s the same for everyone these days in any walk of life. I mean, look at the state of elections in the past couple of years; it’s got to the stage where voting is pretty much just an exercise in deciding which politician you’d prefer to be fucked by. They all promise you the moon, you know? But all the manifestos and slogans all boil down to saying the same thing: Our guy isn’t quite as big a cunt as theirs. At the end of the day, all we guys and gals in the middle can do is pick whichever side looks slightly less shit than the other and hope for the best. But even that gets more difficult the more mind numbingly stupid the electorate continues to prove itself to be.”

  The bitterness underscoring Williams’ melancholia was obvious to Stone, despite its delivery with the Scotsman’s typical nonchalance, and it was an emotion with which the Captain could sympathise. He had long since tired both of the gloating of the ‘Brexiteers’ in the aftermath of the referendum a couple of years previously, and that so many continued to use the result as a means to vindicate their own long held hatreds. It wasn’t that Stone had thought the EU perfect, far from it in fact, but the willingness of the elite to pin the blame for their own failings on it while affecting a concern for the poor and dispossessed riled him intensely. Successive governments of every shade had perpetuated all manner of inequalities in Britain for as long as Stone could remember; chronically under-investing in the areas that needed it most and which ironically would have the most to lose by withdrawal from Europe, as they were now discovering, alas too late. Likewise, it wasn’t that Stone had trouble accepting that rational, sensible arguments existed for withdrawal; it was more that he had so rarely heard them used, with the default position of most he had debated with ultimately revealed as there being ‘too many bloody foreigners’ or some equally ineloquent riposte. But since his arrival in Prague and the references Williams and others had made to this ‘Institute for European Harmony’, even his own staunchly European passions had been rocked.