by Ian Young
‘K-e-n-d-r-i-c-k, right?’ Tom scrolls through the results but finds nothing new. He types in ‘Kendrick scientist suicide’ and does the same.
‘Well,’ says Tom ominously. ‘If he did kill himself, he’s not alone.’
‘What do you mean? Let me see.’ Alabama shuffles her chair across to Tom’s and leans in to see the phone’s screen.
‘Some guy in Oxford,’ says Tom. ‘And this guy here.’
‘No women, though,’ says Alabama with relief. ‘Who were they?’
‘Oxford professor took an overdose of sleeping pills, and this guy … let’s see …’ Tom’s lips twitch as he silently reads the article.
‘What, what?’
‘Well, he’s not a scientist, he was a doctor of medicine in Oslo, Norway.’
‘Thanks, I know where Oslo is.’ Alabama gives Tom another slap on the leg.
‘He shot himself.’ Tom closes the article and goes back to the search results.
‘What about him?’ says Alabama. ‘“Louis Chaubert, outspoken critic of the French church” … blah blah … “found dead from an overdose of barbiturates”. Jeez, what’s the matter with all these people?’
‘So, now we know he killed himself,’ says Tom. ‘Let the police get on with their job while we look for a white Octavia.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Alabama gawps at Tom as though he’s asked her on a date. Would that be so bad?
‘About what?’
‘I need to know why he did this because the same is going to happen to Andreia. I’m sure of it.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ Tom screw his face up as though expecting bad news.
‘Do you know where the city morgue is?’
‘Sure … but you’re not—’
‘The FBI are helping the police and I’m an FBI Agent.’
Tom’s face drains of colour and he drops his head into his hands.
It takes twenty minutes on the Metro to reach the morgue. There’s no reception area but the door is open. Alabama follows Tom inside. They look around for signs to an office or chamber but nothing really makes sense, so they wander deeper into the building, a building that seems as dead as the bodies stored there.
‘Můžete mi pomoci prosím?’
The voice makes Alabama jump. Tom answers the woman standing behind them in the entrance lobby. She’s wearing a long white coat, like a doctor, and is perhaps in her mid-thirties. The brief conversation leaves the woman staring at Alabama as though expecting something. Tom nudges her.
‘Uh, Special Agent Fox, this is Technician Palacká.’
‘What? Oh yeah …’ Alabama pulls out her FBI badge. ‘Dobrý den, do you speak English?’
‘Some.’ The woman barely looks at Alabama’s ID. ‘You have come about the American?’
‘Yes …’ Alabama looks at Tom. ‘We just have a few questions … just to clear up some issues in the report.’
Palacká nods. ‘Can I help?’
Alabama has to be careful. She has to suggest that she knows everything the Legat (legal attaché) knows, without actually knowing anything. ‘Regardless of anything my department might be saying about Kendrick, what’s your gut feeling?’
Alabama smiles at the mortician – two women sticking together in a man’s world.
The technician flicks her gaze from Alabama to Tom and back again. ‘What I’ve already said. He drowned.’
‘Suicide or …?’
‘There were no injuries, no signs of struggle, no traces of drugs but …’
‘But?’
‘There was quite a lot of alcohol in his system.’
Alabama has to stop herself exclaiming something that reveals her personal involvement. The phrase ‘for fuck’s sake’ rattles between her lips but she holds it back. ‘Just as we suspected. We had a potential lead on a motive, but clearly there’s no one else involved.’
The technician shrugs. Alabama guesses she couldn’t care less, either way. ‘You’ve been very helpful. We won’t keep you any further.’
After they thank her and begin walking back down the steps, Alabama turns back for one last question. ‘Sorry … how long before drowning would you say he’d been drinking?’
‘My guess is that he would have walked from a bar straight into the river.’
‘Thanks.’ Alabama can’t get out of there quickly enough. She jumps the last few steps and rushes along the pavement out of sight of the technician. ‘He might have been drunk, but I still don’t believe he killed himself.’
‘I guess we’ll never know.’ Tom looks around the street as though trying to seek out a café or bar.
‘We might. You heard what she said: he probably went straight from a bar to the river. Let’s check out all the bars near the bridge – talk to the staff.’
Tom smiles down at her and puts one hand on her arm. ‘That’s why you’re an FBI Agent.’
Chapter 35
Hanzel is quiet for a few minutes while Mason reads the rest of the English newspaper. The pub has grown noisy and Hanzel is desperate to leave. He looks at his watch: 8 p.m. The children would be going to bed about now. He wants to say goodnight – would they miss him? Perhaps not, because he’s often still at work when they got to bed. But he misses them, particularly since he should be at home. Work isn’t keeping him, criminality is. He knows he can’t even phone home; the police will trace his call.
Mason shakes his head frequently while reading the paper, occasionally muttering things to himself as though he disapproves of what he’s reading. Hanzel supposes the newspapers in England are no different to those in the Czech Republic. It’s a candid moment, an opportunity to study the Englishman while he’s unaware. Hanzel knows little about Mason, and what he supposed from the beginning was scornfully refuted back in the car when they’d fled the embassy. Mason was an ordinary soldier, a GI as the Americans say, though he doesn’t know what the English Army calls it – or is it British? Hanzel has no idea. Not only was Mason just a basic soldier, he’s a student, studying … what is it again? History and something else. Not even military history. Bože, the man’s an academic. There’s something he has to raise with him, even if he, Hanzel, is a wanted man rather than a man of the law.
‘Mason,’ he says, fixing him a steely glare. ‘Give me the gun.’
Mason looks up from the paper and gives Hanzel an equally steely glare. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Listen. I can’t let you loose in Prague with a gun, not if I’m coming along with you.’
‘I get that, but with respect, Mr Hanzel, you don’t know what we’re up against.’ Mason leans across the table, glancing round the pub as he does. ‘The Vrazi are all ex-forces, working as mercenaries. They’re ruthless killers and they’re all highly trained. I’ve come up against two of them and survived.’
‘OK, but I do have some training too.’ Hanzel is getting a bit pissed at the Englishman’s attitude, like Mason is the only one who’s ever dealt with bad guys.
‘Mr Hanzel, have you ever killed anyone? Have you even shot a man before?’
‘No, no, I haven’t.’ Hanzel sighs at his inevitable response.
‘Well, with respect, I think I’ll be keeping the weapon.’
‘Mason, you were in the army for five years, the regular army. And then you did a bodyguard course. Big deal. I did military service too. I can handle a gun, I’m a former police officer and a trained marksman.’
Mason nods as though he sees Hanzel’s point. Hanzel nods too. He’s made a good point; the Englishman needs to get off his throne.
‘I did two tours of Afghanistan,’ says Mason. ‘And I’ve been in countless firefights. The first time you engage the enemy you stand there frozen, wondering if this is really happening. Then you hear others around you
firing and shouting. You raise your weapon, single someone out and pull the trigger. Part of you hopes the round misses and the guy runs off, never to be seen again. But that doesn’t happen. They always come back. You have to drop them on the spot and move on to the next target. No amount of training prepares a soldier for his first firefight. It’s chaotic, loud, and scary as fuck. Had it not been for my men, I probably wouldn’t have fired a single shot.’
‘You were an officer?’
‘Yes. A lieutenant on my first tour, a captain on my second. Fortunately, all my men had been out there before, and I had a first-class sergeant major to keep everyone under control while I secretly crapped myself.’
Hanzel remains quiet, hoping to coax more from the uncharacteristically talkative Brit.
‘By the end of my second tour I’d had enough. I realised the army life wasn’t for me, even though I was decorated.’ Mason pulls a face as though he cares little for medals. Hanzel wonders if he should ask about it, or whether to draw him on through silence. He doesn’t need to decide.
‘I won the Military Medal for bravery after my troop was ambushed not far from Helmand. Our armoured vehicle hit a landmine. No one was injured at first but as we jumped out of the back, the Taliban opened fire. Three of my men were hit, one died instantly. The other two lay screaming in the road from stomach wounds, while we took up defensive positions to pin the Taliban down. We couldn’t do anything until we suppressed their fire. The radio operator called for a helivac, but I knew we had to neutralise the threat before a chopper could land. The only thing I could do was go after the Taliban. I took three of my men and we advanced on their positions while the other chaps pinned them down. When you come under fire, bullets beat around you like puffs of air from a compressor. Sometimes you hear the fizz of the bullet whipping past before you hear the pop of the gun. You can’t duck at the sound of gunfire like they do in the movies. The only thing that keeps you going is aggression. In a fight, that’s the difference between a soldier and a civilian: aggression, the relentless pursuit of victory that’s driven into soldiers during training.’
Mason looks out of the window for a moment, as though he might be reliving moments from the battlefield. Suddenly he turns back to Hanzel and fixes him another of those determined glares.
‘I know with certainty that I will use this gun if the situation calls for it. And if I do, I know I will win. With respect, I don’t know if you will.’
Hanzel ponders those words carefully, searching for any weakness in the Englishman’s poor assessment of him. But he finds none. Mason is right. Hanzel would be like Mason in that first firefight. After watching Mason disarm the embassy policeman, Hanzel knows the guy is in a league of his own. Hanzel simply nods and chooses to say nothing more.
In a way, Hanzel feels more reassured by evidence of the man’s humanity than by his experience in combat. The last scene he wants to be involved in over the coming days is an armed encounter with a psychotic, trigger-happy thug.
Mason goes back to the paper, no longer reading but flicking the remaining pages as though they’re all blank. Hanzel thinks about a drink, a proper one, not another coffee. But then he has another thought.
‘What if,’ begins Hanzel, frowning with concentration, ‘Kendrick and the other scientist – in Oxford, right? – really did kill themselves. You know, maybe there’s something that’s driven them to it.’
Mason turns his mouth up and looks around the pub, clearly thinking it over. He makes a short humming sound. ‘The link is science—’
‘The link is God,’ says Hanzel. ‘Or more precisely, God versus science.’
‘You’re right. The Pillars are not interested in killing scientists because they don’t believe in God. The world is bursting with non-believers. They can’t kill all of them.’
‘So the Pillars of Abraham are brainwashing them into believing in God and they can’t handle it?’
Mason laughs at the absurdity. Even Hanzel can’t believe he suggested it.
‘If you’re right,’ says Mason, ‘though I don’t know why they would do something like that …’ He looks up at the ceiling and screws his eyes tightly shut. After a moment Mason drops his gaze back down again. ‘But if you’re right, and if I know Andreia, she’ll be in serious danger right now.’
Chapter 36
Alabama’s gut feeling is that Kendrick was bound to have been drinking in the Intercontinental Hotel. It’s closest to the bridge and represents an international environment any American, far from home, would feel comfortable walking into.
But Tom has compiled a list of bars for them to visit and Alabama has to remember this is not some kind of bar crawl. There are two men behind the bar in the Intercontinental when she goes in, but neither remembers a drunk American three nights earlier. She asks the concierge, and all of the waitresses she can find, but meets a blank with each. She feels sure now that Kendrick wasn’t, after all, in the Intercontinental the night he killed himself.
The next bar on Tom’s list is a Czech bar just a little further away, but Alabama isn’t convinced Kendrick would wander into such unfamiliar territory. For a scientist Kendrick was strangely uncurious when it came to experiences. He would almost certainly head for a bar he felt represented a piece of home. For Kendrick, that could just as likely be one of the city’s five Irish bars, and the nearest is only a few minutes’ walk away. The James Joyce Irish Pub was down a cul-de-sac, and elevated from the paved road by a raised footpath. She and Tom climb the steps and walk along the sidewalk above a number of parked cars.
The pub is already in full swing. Tom says it’s entirely normal for this time of night and all the British pubs would be packed by now. Alabama questions whether an Irish pub would classify as British, but Tom admits he doesn’t know the difference. Neither does Alabama: Britain, Great Britain, UK, Ireland – all filed under the general heading of ‘England’.
Apart from the noise, the first thing Alabama notices when she steps inside the James Joyce Irish Pub is that there is currently no ban on smoking in the Czech Republic. The stench leaves her queasy but somehow she manages to cough her way to the bar and grab the attention of a barman.
‘Jesus,’ says the man. ‘We get drunken Americans in here every fecking night. What will it be?’
‘What will what be?’ shouts Alabama, stretching across the bar to hear better.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ Alabama feels her throat rasp as she shouts across the bar. ‘This guy was in his fifties, about five ten, and grey. Got really pissed. Probably drunk Jameson’s unless you had bourbon.’
The barman, a guy about Tom’s age, quite short with ginger hair and a mottled complexion, stares at Alabama for a moment, grimacing as though trying to squeeze his memory into revealing something he knows is there. ‘Hang on a minute …’
The barman looks away and screws up his face. ‘D’ya know something … I think there was a guy, kept talking about his Irish roots.’
‘Yeah, his dad came from County Something or other, I can’t remember.’
‘County Cahir?’
‘That’s it! You remember him?’
‘I think I know your man, came in every night.’ The barman smiles and shakes his head. ‘Talking a lot of bollocks about religion.’
‘What?’ Alabama twists her head to get one ear closer to the barman.
‘A bit of a religious nut,’ he says. ‘Thought he was trying to convert everyone.’
Alabama sinks back and shakes her head. ‘That’s not him.’ She feels like someone has rushed up to her with great news only to realise they’ve got the wrong person.
She turns to Tom and sinks her head into his chest. She feels his arms wrap around her and squeeze gently. Over the top of her head she hears him ask for a couple of Pilsner beers. Christ, one of those wou
ld sink like a brick right now. How did he know?
They find a small space at the end of the bar. Tom raises his glass and says something that, in the noise of the bar, sounded like ‘nasty bee’. Alabama raises her eyebrows.
‘Nasty what?’
‘Na zdraví!’ says Tom. ‘Cheers!’
‘Ah, nasty … whatever, cheers!’
They chink glasses and Alabama sinks the beer in one hit. ‘Another?’
‘Bože! What about our challenge?’
‘What’s the next bar on your list?’
‘The next Irish bar? It’s a block away.’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ says Alabama. ‘Kendrick got pissed in a bar then jumped off the bridge. So what?’
‘But we want to know if he was with one of these guys, the ones who took the American lady.’
‘Andreia Menendes.’ Alabama realises the beer has gone straight to her head. She puts a hand on Tom’s arm and blinks hard. ‘Christ, what the hell is this stuff?’
‘Pilsner, it’s, like, the best beer in the world.’
‘It’s fucking strong!’ Alabama closes her eyes and waits, like she’s just popped a pill and is waiting for the effect to kick in. ‘Whoa!’
When she opens her eyes she looks around the room to see if everything is still in focus. ‘Shut the fuck up! That’s Mason, over there, by the window.’
Tom is about to turn around but Alabama grabs him. ‘And he’s with the other guy who was in the car with him.’
‘Who is this Mason?’ Tom jerks his head again but doesn’t look around.
‘He’s some kind of contractor, probably killed the guy they found in Andreia’s apartment. He’s been looking after her. If he’s here then we must be in the right place.’
‘Maybe he’s just come in for a beer.’
‘Tom, I’m a scientist. There’s a reason for everything.’