Isaac wouldn’t dress for dinner. He arrived at the table in his windbreaker, with his Glock. They were in the dacha’s main dining hall. Isaac was startled to see pictures of Terezín on the walls—the children’s chorus, an acting troupe, a soccer match among starving Jewish athletes and the SS, as if it comforted Karel to revisit his own childhood, or perhaps these images had been put up as souvenirs for Sidel. He’d never unravel all the riddles. He was surrounded by Czech diplomats, members of his own court, including Bull Latham and Colin Fremont, colonels from the secret police who hovered over Karel like hawks, communist party officials, and a blond woman in a blue dinner dress.
The doyenne of Georgetown had arrived at this dacha before Isaac ever had a chance. Renata wasn’t here to see the sights. She was Viktor Danzig’s courier. And Isaac realized that all the counterfeit currency Bull Latham had grabbed from Rembrandt didn’t matter now. Karel had made his own deal with Viktor. And suddenly the Big Guy was enjoying himself. His mavens in the Situation Room didn’t know shit about Karel. This president of Czechoslovakia, who was still under Soviet scrutiny, had made idiots of them all. Isaac’s visit was hardly more than a smokescreen, a chance to puff up Karel’s stature in the West, and hide his money deals.
Isaac could imagine Czechoslovakia as one big Monopoly board. And Karel was in league with the bankers who may have tried to murder him. Yes, he wanted to help the local farmers, but he also wanted Prague revitalized and revamped, turned into a tourist’s paradise, with cafés and museums that would re-create the ambience, the aromas, and the vitality of Franz Kafka’s Bohemian village. If the Jews were gone from the old Jewish Quarter, he would replace them with young artists and rebels, once the Soviets withdrew inside the walls of the Kremlin. Karel must have been banking on that, and even if he lost his seat at the Castle and had to give up the president’s dacha, he would still be the virtual ruler of Prague. The besprizornye must have been behind this deal. If Isaac couldn’t congratulate Viktor, he still had Viktor’s courier with the clipped blond hair.
She sat next to Karel, across from Sidel. Bull Latham was in full bloom, in a bowtie and shirt with ruffles as befit a vice president. He was drinking pivo, amber Czech beer, and toasting everyone at the table. Renata Swallow meant little to him. She was a Republican Queen Bee, and the Bull had crossed party lines and joined Isaac’s Democratic ticket. It no longer mattered who ran the CIA or the FBI and the Secret Service; Bull had a stranglehold on all the agencies. But he hadn’t grasped that Rembrandt was running rings around him and Isaac Sidel.
The waitresses wore peasant blouses with full bodices, and they weren’t like the zombies of East Berlin. They stared into Isaac’s eyes with a lasciviousness that almost made him blush. Had they come from an StB bordello in Prague? Their mascara was as thick as a mask. They slid from table to table with bowls of potato soup and baskets of dark rye bread with caraway seeds. They could have been StB agents themselves, prowling the tables like lusty she-wolves. They had little cords behind their ears, and they whispered into button mikes as they served the soup.
Everyone drank mineral water—minerálka—and dark or light beer. The president of Czechoslovakia stood up, tapped his pilsner glass with a spoon, and toasted Isaac Sidel.
“To the president of the United States, a child of Manhattan, who has come here as a pilgrim, paying homage to one of Bohemia’s favorite sons. And I would like to honor Sidel with a tale of my own, composed for him on the occasion of his visit.”
Isaac’s sleuths and spymasters should have studied modern lit rather than the political contours of a communist state. Then they might have understood Karel’s real predicament. His persona had shattered—the werewolf poet was devouring the politician. Karel held up a blinding mirror to Terezín. He didn’t spare himself or the commandant. He told of the commandant’s lust for Jewish girls, how he would take a starving young woman from the barracks, picked by the boy himself, declare her as his housekeeper, and fondle her in front of Karel’s eyes.
I told her not to weep. The commandant is blind and he will give you bread.
A communist party official cleared his throat and tried to interrupt Karel.
“Mr. President, I beg you to stop. Is this the picture you want to give of us to our American guests? Select another story, please, in a lighter vein. We were victims, not vultures.”
But the Czech president ignored this official, sang above his complaints.
There was one woman who would never have been sent to Terezín if she hadn’t divorced her husband—a Gentile—in 1942. After the divorce, she put on her rucksack, kissed her two daughters goodbye, walked the streets of Prague for the last time, stopped at the central police station, declared herself a Jew, and got on the bus to Terezín. Her face revealed nothing at all. She could have been going on a picnic in the woods . . .
It was Kafka’s sister, of course. She was no great beauty, yet the commandant and the little boy were entranced. She would not touch the bread and cheese the commandant had served her. She was a hunger artist who saved the tiny parcel of food for the children in her care.
The little boy watched her board the train to Auschwitz. Her hair shone in the sunlight. Her shoulders had a marvelous sweep. Another picnic, the boy thought. A picnic in the East.
“We will not tolerate such an indignity,” said the same party official. All the party members rose, hurled their napkins onto the table, and left the dining hall. Karel sat down again. He tore into the dumplings and breaded mushrooms on his plate like a wild animal. “Eat, Mr. President,” he shouted with a fanatical joy, “this may be our last supper together.”
One of the waitresses whispered in his ear. Karel ripped the cord of her button mike and sent her into the kitchen. The other waitresses mumbled while the president had his compote. Bull Latham got up from his chair and stood behind Isaac, cupped his hand, and muttered, “I don’t like it, Mr. President. There are too many tricksters at the table. I think it’s time to leave Dodge.”
“Finish your compote, Bull. Wouldn’t want to abandon Karel.”
“It’s imperative, sir.”
“Finish your compote.”
The Bull returned to his chair, while Isaac reached across the table and clasped Renata’s hands.
“Are you gonna be the next queen of the winter festival in Prague, Renata dear? Is that why you’ve come to Czech Land?”
“You’ll never see Prague,” Renata said. Isaac wanted to stroke her clipped blond hair. If he couldn’t have Kafka’s streets, he still wanted to step inside the Staranová Synagogue with its medieval pitched roof. He loved the tale of the Golem that he’d heard as a boy on the Lower East Side. Near the end of the sixteenth century, it seems, there were rumors that the King of Bohemia wanted to raid the Prague ghetto and burn it to the ground. And to protect the Jews of Prague, the illustrious Rabbi Judah Loew fashioned a creature of clay from the banks of the Vltava River. He worked in secret for six moonless nights. He blessed a stone with the word of God and dug this sem under the Golem’s tongue; the monster’s eyes blinked, and the Golem came to life. The Golem guarded the ghetto from the king and his troops. But the rabbi always removed the sem from the Golem’s mouth on Friday nights to preserve the ritual of the Sabbath—even a Golem had to have a day of rest.
The rabbi forgot to retrieve the sem one Friday night, and the monster went on a razzia, attacking Jews and Gentiles alike. Rabbi Loew was able to lure the Golem into the attic of the Staranová Synagogue. The rabbi reached into the monster’s mouth and removed the sem, whereby the Golem reverted to a dumb creature of clay. And the rabbi locked this lifeless clay man inside the attic and kept him there. Isaac would have loved to reconnoiter in that old, medieval synagogue and look for the iron ladder that led to the attic . . .
He found himself standing next to Karel. “Isaac, this castle isn’t safe. You must leave as soon as you can.”
“Why? You have a whole garrison of troops at the bottom of the hill, inside Terezín.”
“These soldiers have been sent out on war games. They can’t help us—we’re isolated, alone. I can’t even recognize my own bodyguards. And the women who served us are pirates from an StB unit in Prague.”
Isaac was amused. “I never saw pirates with such deep chests.”
“They’re runaways, rogues,” the Bull said, clutching a mobile phone with the biggest antenna Isaac had ever seen. “Mr. President, there’s a NATO base within five hundred clicks of here. I suggest we saddle up in twenty minutes and evacuate. I checked with Colonel Oliver. He can assemble the lift package. What choice do we have, sir? We’re a walking nuclear arsenal, with a pair of fucking footballs and biscuits in our possession.”
“We’re not moving,” Isaac said.
“Matt,” Bull Latham shouted, “talk to the Big Guy, will ya?”
“Sir,” said Matt Malloy,” I’m not certain we can protect you here.”
“Then where can you protect me, Matt? You went through this castle with all your devices. Do we have a secure perimeter?”
“Not if Ludvik’s own team is compromised. The White Top on the ramparts is secure at the moment, with all our sharpshooters guarding the perimeter. But the situation could deteriorate in a matter of seconds. This isn’t our terrain. Mr. Latham is correct, sir. We should evacuate.”
“We’re not moving until I have a couple of minutes with Karel—alone.”
“Impossible, sir,” Matt said. “You have to have at least one babysitter at your side.”
“Then let me have Captain Sarah.”
“Negative, sir. She’s not part of our detail.”
The Bull nodded once with that monstrous phone in his fist, like a torch with an antenna, and Matt Malloy backed away. Isaac stood in a tiny alcove of the dining hall with Karel and Captain Sarah.
“Now you tell me what the fuck Ramona Swallow is doing here on the same exact day of my trip? A lovely coincidence.”
“Roger that, sir,” Captain Sarah said.
All of Karel’s bravura was gone. He was neither the poet nor the politician, but a hapless shoemaker’s boy. Isaac had missed the mark. Karel had never been a werewolf, not even inside Terezín.
“We’re bankrupt. There’s no point printing any more currency. The Czech crown is almost as worthless as the ruble. An entire tank corps is on strike. Several garrisons have gone home. The mayor of Prague hasn’t collected his salary in months. Our policemen are out of ammunition. That’s why I couldn’t have you come to Prague—it’s utter madness.”
“And yet you angled to have me visit Czechoslovakia.”
“It was a great coup for us. The prince—”
“Enough,” Isaac said. “I was your currency. I was your bait. That’s how you lured Ramona, the Queen Bee. My appearance makes Viktor Danzig’s paper more valuable. Rembrandt is helping you stay afloat. I’ll bet he and his besprizornye are among the biggest investors in Prague.”
“They’re buying up whatever real estate they can,” Karel said.
“Then where’s the glitch? You’re the new King of Bohemia with all those fifty-dollar bills. You can bribe the young Turks in the StB and fill up your garrisons again. Where’s the glitch?”
“Viktor isn’t immortal. He has his enemies. And you’ve become a hazard, an endangered species.”
And that’s when Isaac noticed her out of the corner of his eye. One of the “pirates” was prancing toward him with a snarl on her face and the snout of a machine pistol rising from the folds of her skirt, like a metallic infant in its own soft cradle. Sarah shoved Isaac and Karel aside, charged into the lady pirate, knocked the machine pistol out of her hand, and walloped her so hard, her teeth rattled as she flopped into a chair.
“Five unfriendlies—no, six, at five o’clock,” Sarah said, with her right hand turned into an arrow.
Karel’s bodyguards appeared with their Berettas; they didn’t seem so sinister, as Isaac’s detail stared them down with .357 Magnums.
Matt Malloy disposed of the renegade bodyguards without firing a shot. He had them drop their Berettas inside a sack. Isaac had never seen Matt with so much zeal. He had them sit with their noses touching the floor, while his agents mummified each bodyguard in a roll of plastic tape.
Was this a palace coup? Isaac was disappointed in the assassins that the anonymous Swiss bankers had sent. Or were these bums just disenchanted members of the StB?
“Sir,” Matt said, “it’s time to roll.”
“What about Karel?” Isaac asked. “We can’t leave him in this mess.”
“Mr. President, we’ll create an international incident,” the Bull said, holstering his hand cannon. “You can’t grab the leader of a Warsaw Pact nation. He could have staged this little drama to get our sympathy.”
“I don’t care,” Isaac said. “I’m not leaving without him. And that’s final.”
Isaac didn’t have a chance to continue his chat. His own body betrayed him, as his feet collapsed first in a roar that rang in his ears, and he flew right over a table. He heard groans all around him as the dining hall went dark. Isaac’s head was spinning. He danced around in the debris.
15
It was beyond Isaac’s control. A medivac team had come from the U.S. military hospital in Wiesbaden, two hundred clicks away. A doc in fatigues nearly poked a pencil-thin flashlight into Isaac’s eye.
“It’s protocol, Mr. President. Please state your name and place of birth.”
“Sidel,” Isaac said. “I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Jesus, Doc, how many of us are hurt?”
“I’m not prepared to answer that, sir. We haven’t assessed the situation. You’re my immediate concern. I haven’t felt any broken bones. Could be some internal bleeding, and we have to get you off this site. I noticed a lot of nasty gas in the air—poison, sir, could be part of the device.”
A team of medics carried Isaac through the blinding dust in a gurney, and up to the battlements. Isaac didn’t remember much after that. He flew over the bombed castle in a gondola that did its own curious ballet, as if it had an angel’s whirring wings.
He woke in a palatial room that overlooked a long garden, with the reek of overripe flowers in his nostrils. Isaac hadn’t come out of some miasma. He was as alert as a lion on the lam. There were no tubes attached to him, no monitors, no machines. He stood up in his hospital gown. He was still wearing his socks. He wandered into the hall, which was cluttered with gurneys.
“Where are we?” Isaac asked a medic.
“Wiesbaden, sir, but you’re not supposed to get out of bed.”
“Do you have a casualty list?”
“Negative, sir.”
“But where are the wounded?” he had to ask.
The medic gave him a sly look. “All over the facility.”
A general arrived, saluted Isaac, and made him return to his own little palace overlooking the gardens—it didn’t even have a TV monitor on the wall. The Big Guy was kept in some kind of quarantine. There were no casualty reports.
“I want some fucking news,” he shouted. But he might as well have been talking to the wind. He got rid of his gown and was given a military uniform to wear without any insignias. An MP arrived and drove him to some airport that wasn’t on the map, with his football and a military aide he had never met. He flew to Washington on Air Force One. He didn’t recognize any of the stewards. He was the only real passenger on board, except for his aide—it felt like a ghost ship. There was still no news from Wiesbaden. Then he got an oceanic call from Ramona Dazzle, and Isaac realized that she was the one who had choreographed this return trip, had kept him in her own isolation ward. She gave the Big Guy his new itinerary. He’d land at Andrews in the middle of the night. The Secret Service would be waiting to whisk him to Walter Reed, where he’d have to endure a battery of tests. He should have gone to Bethesda, the hospital of presidents, but Ramona wanted to dodge any reporters who might be on Isaac’s trail. So she put him into cold storage, told his family and h
is aides where he was, but she wouldn’t issue a press release. And Ramona was an amnesiac when it came to Karel Ludvik’s castle.
“Welcome home, Mr. President.”
He was closeted at Walter Reed. Doctors in surgical caps loomed over him and then disappeared. Matt Malloy and the Bull stood in their wake, wearing bandages on their skulls. The Bull had a patch over one eye.
“Thank God you’re here,” Isaac said. “I’ve been living among doctors and lunatics.”
“Colin didn’t make it,” the Bull said. “An artery burst and the medics couldn’t stop the bleeding. He died on the way to Wiesbaden.”
“It’s my fault,” Isaac muttered. “I shouldn’t have gone hunting for Kafka’s footsteps. Does Colin have much of a family? Brothers, sisters?”
“No one,” Matt said.
“What about a live-in lover?”
“Mr. President,” the Bull whispered, “we can’t get involved in that. It would sully Colin’s reputation if word ever got out, and consider the collateral damage to State.”
“Fuck collateral damage. I want Colin’s live-in notified. Pronto. And what about the others, damn it? Colonel Oliver, Captain Sarah, and the whole White House detail?”
“I’m not sure about Sarah. She’s with Naval Intel right now, and Stef’s still in Wiesbaden, but I hear he’ll be fine. The detail took a lot of hits.”
Isaac couldn’t hold back his rage. “You had your bomb-sniffing dogs, Matt. How come the castle was compromised?”
“It’s not that simple. The device came from inside Terezín.”
“But it’s a military garrison,” Isaac insisted.
“It was once, sir—the soldiers are gone. There’s a tunnel that leads from Terezín to Karel Ludvik’s castle. That’s how the bomber got in. I’m told the device was standard fare—plastic explosives with a time switch. Forgive me, sir, but luck was on your side, or you wouldn’t be here. The bomber might have been in a hurry, and he didn’t have a chance to mold his gel. But you were the main target. The blast pattern proves that. He was tracking your movements with a very sophisticated stethoscope—the kind that burglars use.”
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