The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  But the tape was running now.

  Between the two newsreaders, Anna Jelinak sat still and watched the monitor off camera at the side of the set. The monitor flashed a shot of St. Margaret of Scotland and then cut to Kay Davis inside the church and then to a statue.

  Anna Jelinak was very tired now but the English word Prague for her native Praha had alerted her. What was about Praha on the television?

  They all saw the statue.

  The camera pulled in and the tight shot filled the twenty-one-inch monitor with the plaster face and small blue eyes and the cherubic cheek lines. On the face were depicted tears. The camera froze and Kay’s voice was soft: “The statue is weeping. That is what hundreds who have seen it now believe. As the Cardinal said, ‘Perhaps it is a sign; perhaps it is an act of faith.’ Whatever it is, it is a moving experience.”

  Anna absorbed the English words and a flood of memory. There had been such a statue in the little hall off the dining room. There had been smells of cooking and a strange man sitting at the table, talking in a soft voice, talking to the woman who said she was her mother. Anna knew she was an orphan, that her real parents were dead, that she had been raised by this sad, drunk withered woman and that the strange man would come to their rooms in the Little Quarter and drink brandy and talk and talk and talk. The statue was on the sideboard. The statue did not weep. The statue was her friend when she could speak to no one else. She would whisper to the statue, “I am an orphan and no one loves me.” The statue would not speak to her. The statue was Christ in her heart. I am an orphan and unloved, she told Christ.

  And Christ wept.

  The monitor was frozen on the face of the weeping Child. For a moment, the rule about no silence on television was broken. Even Tom Day fell speechless. They all stared at the monitor. They saw the frozen tears on the frozen face. And then, slowly, the tape lurched from frame to frame in slow motion and they saw a tear slide down the cheek.

  Then Anna Jelinak spoke. Curiously, she spoke in English.

  “My God, oh my God,” she cried.

  Kay turned suddenly. Hal Newt barked into the microphone and his voice sounded tinny in Tom Day’s ear. Tom Day tried to hear the voice and see who had spoken. It wasn’t in the TelePrompTer script.

  Anna stood straight up as though she had touched an electrical outlet.

  “God!” she cried, her black eyes wide. She began to tremble. “This is a miracle!”

  Hal Newt was screaming in the control booth: “Two, get me in close. Tight, tight. One, stand by. One, pan. Two, pull back, get me Tom’s react. Tom, for Christ’s sake, grab the kid, she’s hysterical. Two, get me Kay, Tom is frozen out there—”

  Kay touched Anna and felt cold flesh. How could she be so cold in this place?

  “Anna,” she said.

  Anna turned and then said, “It is Christ.”

  Kay opened her arms. It wasn’t for show, it was just a woman’s instinct. She pulled the child into her grasp and held the cold, trembling body next to her. “It’s all right.”

  But Anna shook her head and there were tears in her eyes. “My mother is dead and my father and I am alone in the world and only Christ weeps for me.” She said this in a flat, stubborn English voice.

  And then Hal Newt saw Anton Huss at the edge of the set. Anton took a step forward and Hal said, “Number Three, catch the guy, get some lights on him. He’s the goon who brought her here and killed her parents—”

  Tom Day, still befuddled, caught the direction on his earpiece. He turned to see Anton Huss and shouted, “Murderer!”

  Anton Huss stopped.

  Camera Three came in close, the lights blinding him. He held up his hand.

  Anna began to scream, pointing at him.

  “Murderer,” Tom Day intoned. Later, he couldn’t explain why he came up with that particular word.

  “Three, keep blocking the goon, good, good, and Two—”

  Anton Huss felt the heat of the lights on his face and stepped forward, stumbling over a cable that pitched him to the edge of the desk on the set. Tom Day shrank back and Anton reached across the desk for Anna’s hand. If only he could touch her, to make it real again for her, to let her see that this was all just illusion—

  Kay pushed his hand away.

  Without thinking, Anton Huss slapped her very hard across the face.

  Kay Davis punched him then square on the nose. It was not such a terrible blow but it hurt.

  And Dick Lester, with the mind of a cameraman running interference through a mob of other cameramen, leaped onto Anton’s back and pounded him on the head.

  Anton stumbled again and fell.

  Kay was standing, the child clinging to her. Anna was sobbing into her breast. Number Two camera focused and pulled it in tight. Two got Kay Davis stroking Anna’s hair. Two got Anna’s tears. Two got it all.

  Tom Day said, “A miracle, we are seeing a miracle right here on live television.”

  And that, it seemed, was what it was.

  3

  MIKI’S TRAIN

  It had rained because it always rains in Brussels. The cobblestones of the large square called La Grand Place glistened in the yellow lights of the ornate streetlamps. The moon danced in and out of the clouds scudding across the night sky.

  All the lights were on in the baroque city hall that dominated the south side of the square. The party was not sponsored by the city, but the city was glad to host it because so many famous people had come together. There were film stars from America and Britain and France, and even the Russian director and his entourage who had spent the morning trying to convince a Flemish banking consortium that the Soviet version of Huckleberry Finn would find a ready worldwide audience. The hall was a glittering place tonight full of glittering people. And at the center of things, as usual, was the bright star called Miki.

  Everyone knew Miki, even the Hollywood actress with the sullen lips and spaced-out eyes who pretended not to know anyone. Miki was Miki, or he was “darling Miki” and “Miki dearest,” and he was going to receive an award tonight from the international film community for all he had done for them.

  He pushed through the glittering crowd and offered his lips to this cheek or that. Miki was reserved, a man of small delicate gestures in an arm-waving community. He seemed to smile just for you and listened to just your words. Miki understood things, as so many actresses put it. He had light brown hair and wore a leather coat and a silk shirt and a gold chain around his neck. It was not the usual ensemble of the Prague bureaucrat. But then, as Miki himself would have pointed out, he was special.

  “I can arrange that perhaps,” was Miki’s most useful line. He could arrange discreet amounts of cocaine for the doped-out American television star making a spy movie in Prague. Or he could find very young girls from Hungary for the important film director who relaxed off camera with Johnny Walker Black Label, a large waterbed, and hookers who pretended to be virgins. Not that Miki was a pimp; he was an impresario and a procurer to the stars.

  The Czech Philharmonic was a triumph in America and that was because of Miki. And when the latest tennis star defected to the extreme annoyance of the Minister of Sports, it was Miki who smoothed things over by arranging an international tennis exhibition in Prague featuring all past Czech tennis stars who were now honorary Americans. This graceful acceptance of individual decisions to defect prompted Newsweek to do an admiring piece on Miki and his policy of “turning the other Czech.”

  “Miki, when can I make a movie again in Prague?” called the fruity-voiced producer from halfway across the room.

  Miki turned, smiled, gathered his audience. “My dear man, you must go to Prague tonight, do not waste a single moment. Prague is empty, the stage set of the world, waiting for all you dear people to give it life.”

  Of course it was unbelievably humble of Miki to say such a thing, and no one in the Ministry of Tourism and Films would have permitted such an insult to Praha, but Miki knew his audience and knew just wha
t to say. They laughed, they tittered, they accepted his gracious humility. They were rich people who did not notice the servants who removed the dishes but would certainly notice the servants who didn’t.

  Of course, Miki always thought, I am your servant, your pet, your little monkey, your pimp, and your slave. Of course, I am whatever is useful to you.

  The marvelous thing was that he never showed contempt, even in private moments. He watched, he saw everything, he knew secrets contained in secrets, and that was enough satisfaction for him.

  And it would be enough tonight to know that in less than an hour, Miki would disappear from the face of the earth and that would frighten some people almost to death.

  Nearly one hundred yards north of the city hall was a three-story building attached to a four-story structure next door. The façade of the building carried a date in ornate stone script: 1706. In three centuries of life, it had been many things, including a nineteenth-century version of a French-speaking Hellfire Club. During the Nazi occupation, the building had slipped into the hands of collaborators and was used as a club and whorehouse by German staff officers. Now it was simply a tavern that opened each evening at six and closed each morning at dawn. It was a place for men who made contacts. Many of the men were important.

  The first floor held the narrow bar and a couple of tables, and Philip, the manager, worked the place. The second floor also held tables but was empty. The third floor was a large, empty room and a man stood there by the single narrow window.

  Devereaux looked down at the square. He was barely visible at the window. He was dressed in black—black raincoat, black trousers, black turtleneck sweater. He wore a navy-blue watch cap on his head. Even the pistol in his belt was fashioned of dark steel and did not reflect the light.

  Devereaux listened to the steps on the stairs and counted them. He had counted all the stairs in the narrow building and examined the garage beneath the first floor, and even then he had not been satisfied with the arrangement. He was the reluctant agent of R Section and he had been with Section too long to trust what Hanley said or even what Hanley implied by saying nothing.

  The door opened and light burst into the room. Then it closed again.

  Philip said, “Everything is set. He made the signal.”

  Devereaux did not speak. The train had been set up without him. He was the conductor because he was the man from R Section and that made him in charge. But Devereaux felt out of control. His status in R Section had evolved in the last couple of years and it was something he could live with: He was the outside man, kept on payroll and maintained in the records but only called in when the problem required a solution out of channels. That’s the way Hanley put it in bureaucratese: out of channels. But what was so special about conducting a defector to the American side? Why involve him? Hanley had not answered and Devereaux had known from that moment in the cathedral at Chartres that the matter was more important than it seemed.

  “Did the driver show up?”

  “He’s in the cellar garage, everything is ready. The passenger should disappear in the next fifteen minutes.”

  Devereaux frowned in the darkness. Everything like clockwork. As though none of it was real. He had worked with independent contractors before and he never trusted any of them.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Philip said and almost giggled. He was young with a pointed nose designed for a thinner man set between two fat cheeks. He annoyed Devereaux and knew it.

  “We could have handled this ourselves, you know,” Philip went on. “We do lots of work for lots of people. We’ve done work for the CIA.”

  “You talk too much,” Devereaux said.

  “Just so you understand we know what we’re doing, we do lots of work for lots of people. I don’t know if you’ve done this kind of thing, but it’s a piece of cake once our passenger makes his departure. It’s all up to him, you see. He’s got to make the first move, you might say.”

  “You still talk too much,” Devereaux said.

  Philip wiped at his lips and tried a smile. He wanted to push it in a little more. “You don’t speak French very well, you know that? I mean, from your accent, you could tell you were an American.”

  “Or just an ordinary Belgique trying to pass for a Norman,” Devereaux said. It was a nasty French slur.

  Philip flushed then. “Next time, I hope they send someone else.”

  Devereaux turned. He stared at the square. He was tired of Philip and the waiting. It was always a matter of waiting, even when you didn’t know if anything at all would happen.

  “You didn’t have to be unfriendly. In the beginning, I mean,” Philip went on. “You don’t like homosexuals, is that it?”

  Devereaux saw the moon on the square. It was a lovely square and a little sad in the moonlight.

  “You didn’t have to be unfriendly.”

  But Devereaux was watching now. There. Across the square. The man in the raincoat was walking very slowly, as though he were out for an evening’s stroll. The square was empty because of the rain. Suddenly, a car flashed its high beams on the square and came around the corner from the direction of the Amigo Hotel. The lights picked up the pedestrian.

  Devereaux removed the pistol from his belt. It was the weapon he had insisted on, a modified version of the Colt Python .357 with a skeleton handle and other alterations to lighten the weight. The ordinary Python was over three pounds but his version was less than two pounds. He had lost a little accuracy in making the conversions, but the reliability of the revolver and the devastating stopping power of the ammunition were what he wanted. All the people in hardware at Section insisted he should use a lighter, more sophisticated weapon, like the new Italian .9-millimeter automatic. He thought they were wrong.

  The car’s headlights swept the pedestrian but he did not turn to look at the lights. The car squealed around the square and the walking man was left in the dim light of lampposts again. He had a lot of guts, Devereaux thought. Or maybe it was all just theatrical to him, maybe he knew how to make entrances and exits.

  And disappearances.

  “He’s here,” Devereaux said as the man approached the building. Philip pulled at his long nose, turned, opened the door, and started down the stairs.

  Devereaux swept the square with the barrel of his gun. No one. The center of Brussels was all baroque emptiness. It began to rain again, softly as it always rains in Belgium, and the rain polished the cobblestones beneath the lamp lights.

  The door opened on the third floor.

  Miki blinked, stepped into the dark room. Philip was behind him. They couldn’t see the third man.

  Devereaux, in darkness, said, “Leave the door open, Philip. I want his pockets turned inside out.”

  “Who the hell are you?” said Miki.

  “The Man,” Devereaux said. He held the pistol. In the light now, they could see the pistol.

  Miki turned out his pockets. He had a wad of mixed Belgian francs and Czech kovnas and a gold box of cigarettes with a matching lighter.

  “Spread your legs, Miki, on the floor please. Hands above your head.”

  Miki stared at the darkness. He could begin to see the shape of the man who held the gun. He got down on the dusty floor and spread his legs and put his hands above his head.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Miki said.

  Devereaux stepped out from the shadows and pressed the pistol against Miki’s ear. He started with each arm from the wrist down to the shoulder. He felt along the leather jacket. He patted down the length of each leg from crotch to ankle.

  “How does he feel to you?” Philip said in French.

  Devereaux stood up. “All right, Mikita.”

  “Miki. Everyone calls me Miki. Who are you?”

  “Just The Man,” Devereaux said. “We won’t need you, Philip. Go back down.”

  “I was supposed to lead you to the garage—”

  “Change of plans,” Devereaux said. “Good night, sweetheart.” This last was in En
glish. Philip stared and mostly he saw the gun. He turned to the door.

  Devereaux lifted the trapdoor. The trapdoor was cut irregularly into the planking on the third floor. Beneath the door was a set of wooden steps. There were thirty-nine steps which led down between a false wall of the club and the wall of the building next door. It was not the only secret of the ancient building. It had been added just after the First War.

  “Go first, Miki,” Devereaux said.

  “It’s dark.”

  “Yes. Try not to fall.”

  Devereaux closed the trap above him. He had a pencil-sized flashlight that broke the darkness of the stairwell. The well was small, enclosed. The walls pressed in, the ceiling was too low. They went down the steps as cautiously as old men.

  “Open the door.”

  They were in a cellar that had the stale, damp odor of all old cellars. They could hear the click-click-click squealing of rats. Devereaux blinked the pencil light three times and they both heard the roar of the motor before they saw the car.

  The headlamps of the Mercedes 560 flashed on the garage door that led up to the street. The driver was inside.

  “Go ahead,” Devereaux said. Miki moved to the car, opened the front door.

  “Back seat,” Devereaux said. He held the light and the pistol on the driver.

  The driver did not look at him.

  “Get out,” Devereaux said.

  The driver started to turn off the ignition.

  “Leave the motor running. Get out.”

  The driver wore a chauffeur’s cap and a black raincoat. He got out of the front seat and stared at Devereaux. He had a white face and a broken nose and a wide, thin mouth.

  “Hands on the roof, spread your legs,” Devereaux said.

  The driver followed the instructions and Devereaux went over his body. When he found the pistol, he was not very surprised.

  It was a .22 automatic, probably a Spanish-made knock-off of a Smith & Wesson. It was a gut-shooter’s pistol. Devereaux put it in his pocket.

  “I always carry a pistol on a job,” the driver said.