by Dan Latus
The tunnel was a long one. It ran straight for a hundred yards, perhaps more, and then curved gently for the same distance again. But we still hadn’t finished with it. We walked on for another few minutes. Then, without us having reached an end to the tunnel, the woman stopped and began climbing a narrow flight of stone steps. I followed.
The steps led up to a cast-iron manhole cover. The woman braced herself and began to push up with both arms. It was a struggle. I moved up alongside her and joined in. Together, we raised the cover an inch or two. She eased off and took a quick look around. Satisfied, she began to push again. We lifted the cover higher and moved it aside.
I let her climb out first. When I followed, I found we were in some sort of small shop with an earthy, herbal smell about it. The shop was in darkness, but a dim light shining through a window revealed that it was located in one of the ancient interior malls that are so common in the historic centre of Prague. There seemed to be nobody about, either inside or outside the shop, and I assumed the blizzard had sent everyone home early. The entire mall was now closed and locked up for the night, or for the duration of the storm.
I helped the woman replace the manhole cover. Then I sat down wearily on a sack of something soft and said, ‘You must tell me who you are, and what’s going on.’
‘There is no time,’ she snapped once again. ‘We must hurry.’
I shook my head. ‘Who are you? And what is your connection to Leon? I’m going no further until I know that.’
She shut up then and studied me for a moment, as if assessing how far I could be trusted. ‘You helped me, back there,’ she said at last. ‘So I thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ I shrugged. ‘OK, you needn’t tell me what’s going on yet, but I do want to know who you are.’
‘I am Lenka, Leon’s sister.’
‘Ah!’
Somehow it didn’t surprise me. She seemed every bit as tough as he was.
‘Also ex-Russian special forces?’ I queried.
It was her turn to shrug, but I believed I’d got it right.
‘OK, Lenka. My name is Frank, Frank Doy. I am – or I was – a British tourist on a short break holiday in Prague.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, just like her brother had said earlier.
‘So who were we fighting back there?’
‘You don’t need to know that,’ she told me, reverting to type.
‘OK. Try this. Where’s Leon? What’s happened to him?’
That got to her and ruffled her composure. ‘I don’t know,’ she said bleakly.
I believed her, and felt even more worried for Leon.
‘So where are we going now?’
She didn’t even bother trying to answer that one. Instead, she moved to the shop door and began to unlock it. When the door was open, she looked back over her shoulder and motioned to me to follow her.
At that point, I could have stayed where I was, and let her go on alone. Probably I should have done. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Curiosity again. It always gets the better of me.
Lenka led the way out of the mall and into the street, out into a different world. We set off, trudging through knee-deep snow, ducking our heads against the bitter cold. A rising wind was driving the snow that was still falling into our faces, and lifting more of it from the ground in clouds.
I had no idea where we were but guessed that the tunnel had taken us half a mile away from the clinic and Leon’s luxury apartment. That didn’t really mean much to me. I still didn’t know where I was. The name of the area, Vinohrady, didn’t mean much to me, either. So I just concentrated on keeping up with Lenka, who seemed to know exactly where she was and where she was going even if she wasn’t prepared to tell me.
We reached the end of the first street and turned into another one. Halfway along that, Lenka led the way up a short flight of steps and into one of the old apartment blocks that filled all these streets. She used a key to get us through the external door, and then we pushed through a second set of doors into a spacious and rather grand entrance hall. The walls were clad in dark wood panelling, the ceiling furnished with ornate plasterwork in the traditional, Baroque style, and the floor tiled in an intricate ceramic mosaic. Very upmarket at one time; now a bit shabby, and in need of restoration.
There was no-one in sight. Lenka paused, watchful, listening. I waited. Seemingly, she heard nothing to concern her. She straightened up and nodded at me. ‘Come!’ she said.
Then she was off again, this time heading for the staircase that was an alternative to the wire-cage lift. I approved of her choice. I hate those old lifts. You feel as helpless as a cornered rat in those things.
We climbed six short flights of stone steps, and on the third floor turned into a corridor. Lenka walked swiftly along until she reached a certain door. There, she stopped, looked around and then pressed the buzzer sharply twice.
We waited.
The door began to open. Lenka gave a little cry and pushed her way forward. I followed. Then I just stopped, astonished, and stared. I couldn’t believe it.
Chapter Eight
‘YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE, Frank,’ Leon said, when he had disentangled himself from Lenka’s embrace.
I shrugged and tried to act casual. ‘So where should I be?’
‘Where I left you. You were safe there.’
I shook my head. ‘Tell him, Lenka.’
She started off in a torrent of Russian, telling him the story. By then, we had all three of us moved further inside. It was a flat, an ordinary, traditional sort of flat with old-fashioned décor and furniture. To my mind, it was something of a museum, full of bits of Bohemian history. Crystal glasses and earthenware jugs. Watercolours of forest and stream, mill and ruined castle, lines of cattle plodding their weary way somewhere, home probably.
The main living room was admittedly comfortable enough, with its tired furniture and its big, old-fashioned radiators that threw out heat like small power stations, but it was nothing like Leon’s bachelor pad. No wonder he thought he had left me in the right place.
We were all still standing, Leon listening intently to Lenka’s tale of woe. I looked around, and began to notice all sorts of little homely touches that had been applied to the room. There were vases of dried flowers and gaily coloured, embroidered cushion covers. A big tapestry occupied most of one wall. It featured a wooden church with an onion dome, surrounded by fields of spring flowers bathed in sunshine. Family photographs – they looked like – had their place on a bureau.
Already the flat was looking better to my eye. Someone had taken a lot of trouble over it, and given it much loving thought and care. Unlike Leon’s contemporary bachelor pad, it was very definitely somebody’s home.
Lenka finished her account. Leon gave her a kiss on the cheek and turned to me. ‘I am very sorry, Frank. It seems that my troubles have fallen on you for a third time today.’
I gave him a rueful smile and shrugged it off. ‘These things happen, Leon.’
‘Not in your world, surely? Only in mine.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Please sit down, Frank. You deserve a rest after all that.’
I sat down on a sofa and Leon dropped into a big, old chair, while Lenka rounded up a tray with three glasses and a bottle with a colourful label. I wasn’t sure alcohol was what I needed right then, but what could I do? I drank a toast with them, although I wasn’t sure to whom or what it was dedicated. Then Leon started to explain things. He said he owed me that, which I thought was true. So I listened.
‘This flat belongs to my sister,’ he began.
I looked at Lenka, surprised she had not told me.
‘No, no!’ Leon said quickly. ‘Not this one. My other sister. Our other sister,’ he corrected himself. ‘She is called Olga. I have two sisters.’
That was more like it. I couldn’t imagine Lenka living somewhere like this. It wasn’t her style at all. Lenka would have been better off in the place where she had found me,
or out in the woods perhaps. Somewhere bracing, rather than homely.
‘Olga is not here?’ I asked, trying to coax a little more from him.
Leon sighed and had several exchanges with Lenka before replying to me.
‘She is not here,’ he agreed. ‘I came to see her, but she was not here. So I have been waiting. Now,’ he added with a frown, ‘we do not know where she is, and we are both worried about her.’
‘Was she a target, like you?’
‘Perhaps. It is possible.’
The conversation wasn’t going very fast. My impatience was growing.
‘However, thank you for helping Lenka, Frank. I gather she would not be still with us without your valuable assistance. So today you have saved us both. I thank you. We both thank you.’
I couldn’t help wondering if Olga needed saving, too. The day wasn’t over yet.
‘What’s going on, Leon?’
‘It is complicated.’
Lenka cut in then with what seemed to be a very incisive piece of advice. Leon smiled and said, ‘My sister says don’t tell you anything – for your own good. Perhaps she is right.’
He turned back to her and said, ‘Lenka, you must have realized by now how capable and formidable this man is? From what you say, if he had not intervened this evening, you would not be here. You would be dead. I could say the same thing for myself, earlier today. We are in his debt. He deserves to be told something.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lenka admitted reluctantly, in English, ‘but not everything, Leon. We know nothing about him.’
‘Well, I may not know everything about him, it is true, but I know enough to have offered him work. He declined, of course, but I am still hopeful,’ he added with a cheerful smile.
‘Work? Doing what?’
‘Providing security for the house in England.’
‘Oh, that!’ she said, making clear where that stood in her list of priorities.
‘Lenka, my dear. One day we might all be glad that we have such a house.’
‘Does Martha know about this?’
‘Not yet, no.’
I wondered if that was another sister. A wife even?
Lenka shook her head and sighed, and then decided to make us all tea in Olga’s samovar.
‘About Olga,’ I said to Leon. ‘What do you think has happened?’
‘Maybe she has been abducted,’ he said with a shrug, ‘and maybe she has a new boyfriend. I don’t know. The snow, perhaps?’
‘But you expected to find her here?’
‘Yes, I did. It is her home.’
I looked around the room thoughtfully and said, ‘Your sister seems to live differently to you.’
He nodded. ‘She does. She has her own way. I respect her for that. Lenka does too, but less so, I think.’
‘This flat is very … homely,’ I suggested.
‘Homely?’ He looked puzzled for a moment, and then said, ‘Like a home, yes?’
I nodded.
‘It is true. Olga is a person who likes where she lives to be a home, a traditional home she has made herself, not something very modern that was designed by an architect.’
He chuckled and added, ‘Olga is still a socialist, I fear! Or is she a conservative? I don’t know.’
I didn’t know, either. But it did seem remarkable that the three of them were siblings, and so close still. They weren’t much alike. Perhaps it was Leon’s wealth that kept them together.
‘What do you intend doing about her?’ I asked him.
‘For now, we will wait. Sooner or later we will hear something, either from Olga herself or from somebody who knows about her.’
Fair enough. I couldn’t see any alternative to waiting. Leon was a sensible man – in some respects.
‘I am sorry, Frank, that your travel plans have been so disrupted. Without the snow, you would have been home by now. As it is, you must stay here with us. This is not the height of luxury, I know, but it would be difficult for you to find anywhere else tonight. Even if you could find somewhere, of course, we couldn’t take you. We must wait for Olga.’
I just nodded in agreement. He was being sensible again, and so would I have to be. For the time being, we were stuck with each other. So we each took a cup of the very strong, black tea Lenka had made, and then we waited. It seemed to have been a long evening already, and a very long day. I couldn’t help wondering what more there was still to come. It seemed to be just one damn thing after another.
Chapter Nine
THE BREAKTHROUGH CAME JUST before one in the morning. Leon got a phone call. When he took it, Lenka hung on his every word. So did I, even though I couldn’t understand any of them. But you could tell something significant had happened.
There were flurries of two-way exchanges before Leon switched off. He looked round at us and got to his feet. ‘We know where she is,’ he said calmly.
I guessed what that meant. ‘She’s been abducted?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. But one of my men has located where she is being held. Now we will go to free her.’
He turned to Lenka and began to rattle out instructions. She nodded and got to her feet. They both began checking weapons that appeared from beneath clothing. These were people, I realized then, who probably never travelled light.
‘Are you going far?’ I asked.
‘Not far, no. They are still in the city, but by tomorrow they might not be. The snow has held them back.’
In English, Lenka said, ‘Where did they get her?’
‘Roman said from the street, when she was coming home.’
‘Not from here?’ I asked.
Leon shook his head. ‘They don’t seem to know about this flat. In fact, they probably don’t know much about Olga at all. They must have gone for her because they couldn’t reach me.’
So the abduction had been improvised. Nonetheless effective for it, of course, but it did seem to mean the flat was safe ground for now. So I could stay here – if I wanted to.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.
‘No!’ Lenka snapped.
Leon looked from her to me, and back again. ‘No?’
‘He will be useless,’ she insisted. ‘A burden.’
‘I think not,’ Leon said softly. ‘I have seen him fight. So have you, you told me. Frank, we will be honoured to have you with us.’
I must be mad, of course. There was absolutely no need at all for me to volunteer for this. It wasn’t my fight.
Lenka muttered to herself and disappeared into the bathroom.
‘Don’t worry about her,’ Leon said. ‘She is nervous. That is all. And impatient. She wants to do everything herself, but really she knows she can’t.’
I just nodded. Maybe I was going on a split decision, but I was still going. As to why I was going, I couldn’t really have told you. It just seemed a better thing to do than to sit there alone in the flat while the others were facing great danger. Besides, I had some sort of bond with Leon already. I liked the guy, as I’ve said, and I wanted to help him.
‘Where are we?’ I asked, looking around as we left the building.
‘Vinohrady,’ Leon said.
‘Still? And where are we going?’
‘Žižkov.’
‘I know it.’
‘You do not,’ Lenka said scornfully.
‘Red Prague,’ I responded. ‘Isn’t that what they used to call it?’
‘And what did you see there? Anything?’
‘A big man on a big horse. And a T34 tank.’
Leon chuckled. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘Frank really does know it.’
Lenka shut up.
‘Lenka,’ I said, anxious to close the gap between us, ‘whatever you think, I really am on your side.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said non-committally, but as we crossed a patch of light I was nearly sure she smiled.
The man on a horse I had referred to was a Czech national monument. It was located at the Army Museum in Žižkov, and related to some semi-my
thic figure in Czech history. Just as well, really. The Czech army hadn’t exactly covered itself in glory in recent centuries.
The T34 at the entrance to the museum, on the other hand, was a reminder that the Red Army had been here, not just a bunch of local communists. Such things are dear still to Russians, and they famously hadn’t liked it at all, back in the death throws of the Soviet Union, when David Černy painted another T34, on another plinth in Prague, a bold pink. That became a “diplomatic incident”.
The snow had almost stopped falling at last but there was plenty of it on the ground. Walking was difficult. Trudging was a better description of what we were doing through the knee-high snow. Žižkov wasn’t far, but if we were to walk all the way there, I thought it might take us the rest of the night.
Fortunately, we only walked to the end of the street. A big vehicle on balloon tyres was waiting patiently there for us, clouds of exhaust fumes puffing contentedly into the night.
‘Gregor is here,’ Leon said with satisfaction.
Whoever he was, Gregor had done very well to get here. I had seen no other vehicles moving on these streets. The Czechs would be used to moving quantities of snow quickly, and no doubt work was under way somewhere, but probably only on main roads. We climbed into the truck’s big cab and basked in the heat while Gregor gave Leon a briefing.
‘It’s not far,’ Leon said, turning back to me. ‘We will drive as close as we can, and then go on foot. They have Olga in an old department store that now is not used.’
I nodded. A department store? I hoped Leon could narrow down the search area a bit. ‘How many men are with her? Does Gregor have any idea?’
‘He says six, maximum. Maybe only four right now.’
And we were three plus me. I wondered if we had enough manpower.
‘If we brought in more men,’ Leon said, reading my mind, ‘there would be delay. Better like this.’
I nodded. He was probably right.
Leon’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at the screen. Then he switched off and instructed Gregor to get us moving.