The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  “Perhaps we were wrong.”

  “Or right. Terribly right. If this whole thing was a setup by our friends at Langley to give us a black eye,” Hanley said.

  “What does Mason say?”

  “He was in Zeebrugge. He found machine-gun cartridges in the gutter. Also some auto glass on the street. There might have been a fight. In any event, that’s all we have without calling in the Belgium police. And we can’t do that. I don’t think they would appreciate us using their country as a staging area for defections.”

  “Damn,” she said. She rarely cursed. Her voice was rough and raspy and she wore her hair in clumsy spikes fashioned twice a month by her husband, Leo. Leo had always cut her hair. He did so in the early years of their marriage as an economy. Now, like so many other things they did, it was an act of love. Leo was an accountant and Lydia Neumann was chief of a vast intelligence agency and they never talked about their work to each other.

  Hanley understood. There were always frustrations but sometimes, even after a lifetime of frustrations, it was too damned much to bear.

  “Is Devereaux alive?”

  “If he is, he is held against his will. That means that he is across the wall now and it is time to cut our losses. I’ve gone through his 201. Most of his old business is neatly sealed. I don’t think he can hurt us.”

  “He would hurt us?”

  “Mrs. Neumann. If this whole matter was an elaborate ploy by the Soviet Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia, it involved trapping an agent. If it was successful and Devereaux is not dead, then he will surely tell them everything they wish to know. Pain has no limits but men do.”

  “And the alternative is that he’s dead.”

  “Yes. It’s the preferable alternative.”

  “Was Miki worth it?”

  She had asked him the question three weeks ago when he proposed using Devereaux to bring Miki across. He had probed Miki through an agent in Amsterdam the previous summer. Miki had only let one nugget drop but it was a beauty: It was a photograph of a Paris restaurant in the Trocadero district. Two men sat together at a table. One was the highest-ranking CIA agent in the Paris embassy. The second man was Miki himself. Miki did not explain the photograph but it was enough to convince Hanley. This was good enough to bring in Devereaux, to work outside the routine apparatus of Eurodesk.

  “Miki was worth it if this was not a setup. If this was a setup, Miki is still worth it now because we will get him. Believe me, we will get him. This month or next or next year, but we’ll get him and break him and bleed him and get rid of him.”

  Hanley’s voice was still mild and flat and Mrs. Neumann frowned. “There are no sanctions, Mr. Hanley,” she said.

  “There are no rules,” he corrected. “If they have set us up, then we will set them up.”

  “We will review our options,” she said. “I don’t want any cowboys working here. We have enough cowboys working over there.”

  She inclined her head and Hanley knew she meant the White House crowd.

  “We’ll find out about Devereaux. If they have him, they’ll let it slip. If the real reason was to get Miki back—that they found out about the defection and moved to stop it—well, that’s within the rules.”

  “Devereaux is dead,” she said.

  Hanley blinked. “Of course,” he said. “One way or the other. If they have him, he’s dead. If they killed him, he’s dead. There are no other possibilities.”

  “But I want to know,” she said, her horrible raspy voice barely breathing the words.

  “I will put out trip wires and probes. Nothing will move until we find out.”

  “Put it back in channels,” she said suddenly.

  “Why?”

  “Let Stowe know about it and put out some chasers. Find out what went wrong. This is my responsibility. If I have made a mistake, I’ll acknowledge it. We just get in deeper when we keep fishing out of channels.”

  “Mrs. Neumann. I think it would be wiser—”

  She smiled. She was a plain woman with a beautiful smile. She wore plain dresses to work and never wore jewelry. She saw things with frightening clarity. She saw the way it was now.

  “Devereaux is dead. Or Devereaux is snatched over the wall. If it’s the latter, let’s see if we can make a trade. If that seems likely, then I’ll set up a conference with the White House people and see what we can negotiate. I may get a black eye but it won’t come from Langley saying we didn’t play by the rules. I can always ask about that picture and what their man was doing with Miki in Paris this summer. Meanwhile, put our Eurodesk on it directly. Find out what went wrong and why. And Mason…” She paused.

  “What about him?”

  “Do you suppose he was close to Devereaux?”

  “No,” Hanley said. “Devereaux probably never gave him another thought after he got him hired on. He was just someone who crossed his path one day.” Hanley knew the day and the time: It had been Sunday and they were stealing David Mason’s car from a parking lot in Bethesda and Mason had let them do it with a sort of bemused smile on his face. When the business had been concluded, Devereaux sent around one of the GS-12s and gave Mason his car back. And offered him a job because Devereaux had told Hanley, “Either he’s completely stupid, in which case he’ll wash out in two weeks, or he has the guts of a burglar and the same instincts. Section could use more burglars.” Which is what it turned out to be.

  “Devereaux’s woman,” Mrs. Neumann said. “Send Mason. Let her know as much as she has to know.”

  “We don’t know he’s dead.”

  “We know he’s disappeared. In some countries, that is the same thing,” she said. “Send her someone like Mason. Someone who can take the edge off what he has to tell her. Whatever Section has to do.”

  Hanley nodded.

  “And you should go home.”

  Hanley was pale and very tired from the flight home and the last twenty-four hours of waiting. He had not shaved in two days.

  “Go home,” she said.

  “I’ll signal Mason first. And then I’ll take a nap on my couch. We still might get a signal.” He meant from Devereaux. As soon as he said it, he felt foolish.

  “You don’t believe that,” Mrs. Neumann said.

  “It’s possible,” he said.

  But Lydia Neumann shook her head. She stared at the truth of things and she thought she saw the truth now. Like all women, she was not a romantic. Hanley made wishes like a child; Mrs. Neumann could see the beach of Zeebrugge and the body of a man on the sand. The agent called November was now, finally, finished with.

  6

  PRAGUE HAS NO TEARS

  When he could not bear the pressure anymore, Cernan put on his overcoat and muffler and walked down three flights to the front door of the gray Ministry building and went outside.

  It was strange that he found peace in the noisy clutter of Vaclavske Namesti. The streetcars ran back and forth full of shoppers going up to the main business streets at the top end of the broad avenue. What would they find today in the shops along the Narodni Trida or Prikopy? It was difficult to say, although things were not so bad in Prague anymore. Things had been much, much worse.

  He shoved his hands deep into the overcoat pockets and started out along the street. It is called Wenceslas Square and there is certainly a statue of the great king astride his horse in the center. But it is a street, really, and not a square. Like everything else in Prague, Vaclavske Namesti was not exactly what it said it was.

  Cernan frowned but did not realize he frowned. His face could frighten underlings in the Ministry when he was in this mood, and he took his solitary walks in moments like this because he had no wish to frighten anyone.

  The spires of Prague were gilded in thin November sunlight and the city smelled old and closed for the coming winter. The sunlight glittered on cobblestones in the streets where the students had fought the tanks.

  Cernan did not know where he was going—he was just walking to use up the fr
ustration that had built in him—but he always followed the same path: down to the Charles Bridge, across the river and through the steep park up to the castles and cathedral on the Heights above the city.

  On the Heights, the wind began and he felt chilled and that pleased him: Perhaps he would tire himself out this afternoon, perhaps he would sleep this evening.

  Sleep had become the great difficulty in the three days since Anna Jelinak went before a television camera in Chicago and declared that she was an orphan and that she wanted to be given asylum in the United States because she had seen a miracle.

  A weeping statue. It was incredible. It was so bizarre that Cernan could scarcely believe it was an accident. The agency had questioned Anton Huss in Chicago and the embassy had obtained the television tapes and even Cernan had seen them by now. But how could any of this happen? And how could Anna Jelinak suddenly declare that she was a misused, abandoned orphan when her mother was right here in Prague, living in the same house where she was born?

  Cernan had gone to see Elena on the second day. Elena had been drunk on brandy. It was only noon and it had made Cernan angry. She said she had been visited by the police and then by two men from the Ministry. Cernan had not authorized that and later discovered the two men had acted on the authority of Cernan’s deputy. Elena was beside herself.

  Cernan listened to her for a long time, to all the boozy self-justification he had heard before. Anna had everything, Elena had nothing. Elena’s youth and beauty had slipped away and all the years had been empty. Yes, yes, yes, Elena; Cernan nodded, felt uncomfortable, exactly as he always felt. But Elena knew and Cernan knew that he would not become impatient and tell Elena to stop blubbering and he would not walk out of the house. They both knew that Cernan must suffer.

  The house was small and neat, which was extraordinary in that Elena was such a sloppy woman now and a heavy drinker besides. But something of what Elena had been showed itself in the four small rooms of the house in the Little Quarter.

  “You will have to go to America. To get Anna back,” Cernan had said.

  “Oh, my God, I can’t go there, I cannot even speak that language—”

  “It will all be arranged. Anton Huss will be there. He is from the embassy in Washington, he can interpret for you and he will make the arrangements. They are holding Anna for court proceedings, to see if she can be granted defector status. It is important for you to be there and to claim your child.”

  Elena sobbed into her brandy. “How important is this for you? What do you care if Anna is there or here? She is lost to me, she was lost when she began to go with those film people, all of them perverts and sex fiends.… Oh, my poor little girl, do you think they have taken her?”

  Cernan knew what she meant. Poor Elena. She kept her little house as clean as any and she had a little statue of the Infant on the sideboard and she had a crucifix on the wall above her bed. Elena clung to faith as she held onto her bottle of brandy, with a fierce and childlike belief that all would be well.

  All would be well. For three nights without sleep, Cernan had sat in his own rooms in his own apartment, smoking one cigarette after another, waiting for morning, staring into the heart of the problem.

  The problem was Anna Jelinak. What had induced this extraordinary display? Had Anton Huss failed in his job to guard her from contact by agents from the other side? Cernan was certain he had not. It was more than just a fear of reprimand or even punishment: Anton Huss had a splendid record, it was the reason he had been chosen to guard Anna. Chosen by Cernan himself. How did this make Cernan look? His deputy at the Ministry had dispatched two men to question Anna’s mother on his own authority. When Cernan had raged at him, the deputy took it with a certain insolence, as though he were silently saying that this was all Cernan’s fault in the first place and that Anna would not have defected if she had been more carefully guarded.

  Anna.

  Cernan saw the face of the child in memory. He did not need the photographs or the copy of the Beta tape. He saw her walking on the Heights above the city. She was very famous in Prague, and none of the newspapers had printed a word about her defection but they were already telling little jokes in the artist cafés and in the bar at the Intercontinental where the foreigners gathered. Prague had no secrets if you understood where to look for the answers; Prague had no tears for Anna, for Cernan’s dilemma, for Elena—Prague was always filled with a malicious sort of laughter, a mix of scorn and ridicule and satire. If Cernan fell on his face, so much better the joke for everyone else to enjoy.

  The more Cernan knew of the case, the less he knew.

  Anna Jelinak was now staying in the home of Stephanie Fields, the lawyer appointed by the American court to defend Anna’s interests. He’d found out all about Stephanie Fields within twelve hours—the efficiency of the Service in the embassy in America never ceased to amaze him.

  Stephanie Fields was an American leftist with vague socialist leanings that could not be counted on at all. She was not married and she was what Americans called a “feminist.”

  The embassy’s law firm had sent a top man to Chicago to represent the rights of Anna’s family and the court had been told that Elena Jelinak would soon be in America. Elena was taken to the airport outside Prague by two men from the Ministry and they described her as nearly hysterical and quite drunk. Another reason for Cernan not to sleep.

  The only consolation for Cernan in the last three days was that the Ministry was in an uproar because of the disappearance of Emil Mikita. Anna Jelinak might be a problem and certainly she was a public-relations disaster. But Miki had disappeared and that was much, much worse. Thank God I had no part of that, Cernan had thought more than once in the last three days.

  Not that he wasn’t involved now.

  Anna was in films and Miki was the great impresario. Was Anna’s defection tied to Miki’s disappearance? The question had been posed by Henkin and they had all thought about it for a long time and certain probes had been made in Brussels and even in Los Angeles and the result was that no one had any idea.

  Henkin was Minister for Tourism and Films, an unlikely combination of interests but perfectly logical if one considered what the end product was: Preserve Prague and the illusion of a quaint, charming European city of another age. Certainly Prague was dominated at night by a great illuminated red star that rotated slowly above the spires in the old quarter. But that was to be expected; Prague was not ashamed of the Soviet Republic that had replaced the corrupt and brief rightist government after the war. Prague was in the business of making money and Henkin made a lot of money for the country, partially through the good offices of his agent and friend, Miki. Where the hell was Miki? What were the Americans up to now?

  Henkin had rarely talked to Cernan in the past and now he seemed to need to talk to him twenty-four hours a day. He was part of Cernan’s frustration. He was driving Cernan crazy with his endless questions and speculations. What was the point of guessing about connections until they could get some concrete idea of where Miki was and what the Americans wanted him for? Hearing that argument, Henkin became very cold and reminded Cernan that he was a Minister and Cernan was nothing but an upper-level civil servant. “Miki is a vital man with vital contacts and he has secrets, Mr. Cernan, that would be disastrous to fall into American hands.”

  What nonsense! Cernan glared and frightened a small boy playing in the park in front of him. When he saw what he had done, Cernan tried to smile and made it worse. The boy ran away, clattering down the broken sidewalk. Cernan shook his head. His thoughts were so gloomy and he had no wish to frighten anyone. But Anna Jelinak—

  He stopped, blinked, remembered the summer afternoon again when they were making a film outside Hradcany Castle and little Anna was dressed as a child of another century.

  He had driven up to the site to see Anna. He watched her under the artificial lights that were turned on despite the fact that it was a bright summer afternoon. It had been very warm and he sat in th
e car with all the windows rolled down and watched her from a distance. He could see her clearly that day.

  He stood now in November, in the chill, in the same place. He saw the castle, which was real and eternal like all of Prague, and he saw the illusion of the past. He could almost speak to Anna, it was so real to him.

  Come back, child.

  She stared at him.

  Come back. You’re only a little lost now. Don’t go on any further. Come back.

  7

  THE MESSENGER

  Rita Macklin felt afraid when she heard the knock at the door. Her life with Devereaux was so singular, so private, that the door to the apartment on the Rue de la Concorde Suisse never admitted visitors. And now there was the knock of a stranger. Dread filled her.

  She thought she had prepared for this moment because she had rehearsed it so many times in daydreams and nightmares. A time would come when he would go away, saying nothing to her, leaving in the silence of a midnight, and days later or weeks later there would be a stranger at the door of the apartment and he would tell her so little about what had happened. Except that something had happened. She had rehearsed the moment until she knew how she would react. Now the moment had come.

  Rita pulled the robe tight around her and went to the door and opened it on a thin chain. She saw the tall man in the unlit hall. It was the middle of the morning in Lausanne and brittle autumn sunlight fell through the window at the end of the hall and illuminated the apartment.

  “Rita Macklin,” he said, not asking a question. She felt a moment of dizziness. She closed the door, dropped the chain, opened it again. Yes, she definitely felt as if she might be falling.

  He must have caught her beneath the arms and dragged her across the room to the couch. When her green eyes opened, he was sitting on the coffee table in front of her, holding a glass of water in his hand. She brushed her red hair away from her forehead and her face felt damp and cold to her own touch. She shook her head to shake away the strange feeling. She sipped the water until the glass was nearly empty. As she drank, he watched her and said nothing.