The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  “And they have Miki now?”

  “No. The defection route was… interrupted. This is a private operator,” Henkin said. His face was bathed in sweat. His shirt was soaked. He felt the grinding in his belly again, the same feeling he had had all week. “Look, there is a risk in this, but I don’t want Miki’s return any more than you do. Any more than your contacts at Central Intelligence do. Miki can spoil everything.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Rather, what are we going to do.” Henkin would be more assured if he could see the other man. If the other man were occupying a straight chair in Henkin’s office in Prague. If Henkin could set the scene and the tone of the interview. But here he was, a worried man in a small room in an old hotel in Nürnberg, trying to make a case to another man 3,500 miles west.

  “Proceed.”

  “Let us be honest,” Henkin said. “When Miki defected, you assumed it was a double cross at worst, that we had arranged his disappearance or the CIA had. Or that Miki had made a bargain with a third party to reveal all he knew about… arrangements. And when that little girl in Chicago defected at nearly the same moment, you did not believe this was a coincidence.”

  The man in New York said nothing.

  “I can get Miki but I cannot order his execution. Not in a foreign country. He is somewhere in Belgium now, the agent from the Ministry for Secret Services has been dispatched to Brussels. He will report to me when he has Miki.”

  “And what will I do?” the man in New York asked in the same soft voice.

  “I need Anna Jelinak. I need control over her to control what must be done in the next two or three days in Belgium.”

  “We had intended… to use the child as a hostage,” the man in New York said. “We arrange deals, we had twenty million riding on this next project, and suddenly Miki disappears and all the deals have holes in them. At the same time, this little girl suddenly announces her defection. She’s in films, Miki’s in films—what was the connection here? And we looked into it and it was a coincidence as far as we were concerned… But what if we could use her to bargain with, in case it turned out you had Miki and wanted to increase the price of doing business? Or one of the agencies… we mule for… had snatched Miki for insurance reasons? My associate thought it was best to act right away, have the child under our control if she were needed. But it isn’t necessary now, is it?”

  “More than you understand,” Henkin said. “The child is more valuable at this moment than she has ever been. When can you… put her under control?”

  There was another pause. “Maybe in two days. Or three. We are trying to… dampen the publicity aspects of her defection. You people haven’t helped, you’ve sent that hysterical woman here, her mother, and—”

  “That is being taken care of,” Henkin said, sounding less like a worried traveler than the director of the Ministry for Tourism and Films. “There are aspects to this you do not even understand. They are being taken care of.”

  “I’d like to be put in the picture,” the New York man said.

  Henkin sighed and thought about it, about how far he could reveal his methods and his plan to this other man. If they were partners, they were business partners only at certain times and for certain reasons of mutual benefit. Beyond those times, the New York man was a stranger, perhaps an enemy. What could Henkin reveal to him? Yet he needed the little girl in Chicago “under control” if he was to arrange the fate of Miki in a foreign land.

  “Are you there?” said the soft voice from America.

  “Do you think it is positive you can put her… under control… in three days?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Jules. This is more important than you realize—”

  “We only considered her to be a hostage, a pawn if we needed one—”

  “We are not speaking now of ‘if.’ She is needed, Jules. If I must explain, I will tell some of it and more of it as it is necessary. I am trapped by my position, I cannot run to the telephone every hour to inform you—”

  “I understand,” the other man said.

  “All right.” Another sigh, this one coming from someplace deep. He was bathed in sweat, he would have to shower when the conversation ended. He felt tired and the grinding in his belly was almost audible. What a mess. Thank God for Miki’s inquisitiveness: If Miki had not known the truth about Anna Jelinak, Henkin would not have known. And if Henkin had not known, he would not have been able to arrange the assassination of Miki at all.

  Anton Huss sat down at table five in the Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago. Mr. Willis was waiting for him. The waiter hovered and took an order for coffee and seemed unhappy with Anton’s choice of beverage. It was four in the afternoon, in that time between lunch and dinner when waiters eat and cooks gossip and the business of commercial feeding is officially in abeyance. Mr. Willis had clout.

  “To start with, you know who I am and where I come from,” Willis said to Anton Huss.

  Anton said, “I believe I do. Nothing is very certain in the profession, is it?”

  “In this case, we want to make it absolutely clear. If you want, I can show you a card with my photograph on it.”

  “We have such things as well,” Anton Huss said.

  “And you’ve seen pictures of the Firm,” Willis said.

  “Very nice on postcards. ‘Welcome to Langley, Virginia, home of the Central Intelligence Agency,’ ” Anton Huss said.

  Willis smiled. “Good. I want to tell you that we don’t like this situation any better than you people do. It screws up all kinds of things you don’t even know anything about.”

  “I am instructed to listen.” Anton Huss sipped his black coffee. It was bitter and matched his mood. His face was haggard. He had not been sleeping well in the week since Anna Jelinak decided to have a religious experience on live television. And now Anna’s mother was on his hands as well. She was passed out in her hotel room. Each night, he had to file a lengthy verbal report with the liaison officer in the Washington embassy. He was exhausted by events and he knew that when it was over, if it ever was over, they would find some particularly nasty place to assign him. He was certain it would be an African country.

  “You sure you don’t want something stronger than coffee? Hell, man, the sun’s over the yardarm. Loosen up.”

  Anton frowned. The Americanisms jangled him.

  “I’ll put my cards on the table. All of them. Face up. You pick the ones you want.”

  He had talked to Willis once before. The man was a fount of jargon. Anton Huss had been in America five years and yet he barely understood half of what Willis said.

  “Tony,” said Willis. “You and I are just cogs in great big locomotives and neither of us even knows what the next town is. We just turn and the big wheel keeps on turnin’. Get it? Anna Jelinak went off her nut. Imagine what woulda happened if she’d been watching It’s a Wonderful Life instead of what she thought she saw. Well, that’s water up the creek. The thing is, we want to get her back to Prague in the worst way, same as you people do. I was telling you about locomotives. I get the buzz from high up that there are deals in deals going on right now between Prague and D.C. that you and I can’t even hint at. Something like Anna Jelinak puts everyone’s nose out of joint and screws up the timing. At least, that’s the buzz I get. I got it official, too, Tony, you can go to the bank with it.”

  “Perhaps I’ll have a dry martini,” Anton said suddenly. Anything to stop this torrent of words, images, clichés. What was Willis saying?

  Willis signaled the reluctant waiter. The martini arrived in a large, wet glass. Anton burned his tongue on the gin and was grateful.

  “We go through this the regular way, it might take months, Tony. What I am saying, what I am authorized to say, is that if you people come up with some idea, our people will be willing to help to implement it. To facilitate Anna’s return.”

  Anton blinked. He almost thought he understood. He said nothing.

&n
bsp; “Come on, Tone, loosen up,” Willis said, his face flushed. He had the remains of a second martini in front of him and had signaled for a third. “You got Anna’s mama. I can arrange that she can be alone with her, put the old home ties screws to her, you know, make her homesick. We can’t fix the judge we got, but maybe we can get this transferred to a friendlier jurisdiction. You know the way it works.”

  Anton nodded because Willis wanted him to.

  “Or maybe you people have got your own scenario.”

  Cernan had warned him about that. Meet with them if they want, Cernan had said. Avoid scenarios. Avoid apparent agreement. Do not argue, do not disagree, do not agree. Do nothing until we find out who is behind Anna’s defection. But Cernan was not in Chicago. Cernan was not going to be sent to Addis Ababa. Huss was certain it would be Addis Ababa.

  “What can be done?” Anton Huss said.

  Willis smiled. It was what he wanted. That and the third martini the waiter was bringing over to table five.

  “Why is she in Brussels?” Hanley asked.

  David Mason stood by the side of his bed in the Amigo Hotel behind city hall and stared at the picture on the wall. He was naked except for the large bath towel wrapped around his middle. Rita Macklin was in the adjoining single room. They had been in Brussels four hours.

  “Because she wants to find Devereaux,” David Mason said.

  “You told her too much.”

  “I told her a little.”

  “You told her too much.”

  “She guessed a lot of it. Devereaux told her before he went to Brussels.”

  “He would never have done that.”

  David said nothing. They let the lie alone with their silences. There was no point in Hanley reprimanding him. Hanley knew the way it was with Eurodesk. Eurodesk had its nose out of joint and still didn’t know about Miki and why Section wanted him. Eurodesk was looking for a missing agent presumed dead; in fact, he was dead as far as Eurodesk was concerned. Devereaux was out of channels. Fine. Let him stay out of channels.

  “She’s a journalist, David.” Hanley said the word as a pejorative. “She really can’t be trusted. If she had her way, she’d blow Section open. She really can’t be trusted at all.”

  “I don’t trust her,” David said. He saw her in his mind’s eye. They had flown from Geneva together. She was pretty, prettier than he expected. She was young. Her face was open and her eyes were bright green. She was really lovely, David had thought on the plane, and the thought mixed with pity for her because she loved Devereaux.

  “What is she going to do in Brussels?”

  “If I don’t trust her, then she doesn’t trust me,” David said. “She said she had friends here. Probably other journalists.” He knew the word made Hanley uncomfortable. “You can’t lock her up or have her arrested, Mr. Hanley. So the next best thing is to watch her.”

  He saw Hanley’s face in the silence. He was considering that.

  “We haven’t got a flutter from Eurodesk yet,” Hanley admitted.

  David said nothing.

  “One way or the other,” Hanley said. “Nothing from across the wall, either. No one has Devereaux and his body can’t be found.”

  “And Miki?”

  “Miki is in the same sad state. The other side is pulling its hair out.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  Hanley said, “You should have been in Lausanne, helping her buy widow’s clothes. You should have been finding his life-insurance policy in a lockbox. You should not be with that woman in Brussels. She is a danger, Mason, to you and to Section.”

  “And herself?”

  “I don’t care about herself. Survival of Section, Mason. It’s the thing you have to keep in mind all the time. What we do is for Section, not for some goddamn newspaper writer.”

  “If he’s dead, she wants to know it,” David said.

  “Yes.”

  Another silence between them.

  “Yes,” Hanley repeated. “We all want to know it.”

  12

  THE MAN WHO LIMPED AWAY

  Colonel Ready smiled down at Devereaux and went to the small window and sat on the ledge. They could hear the rain on the pane and on the roof. Devereaux sat still on the broken chair with his arms manacled behind his back.

  “I was the last person you ever wanted to see again,” Ready said. He grinned at that but it was not pleasant. He had red hair with more gray in it than when Devereaux had last seen him three years before.

  A big Belgian was in the room as well. It was the one who had tied the bandana around Devereaux’s swollen leg and who had clipped Devereaux with the pistol in the cellar.

  “Do you want to know all about it, Devereaux? About how I got away? I could tell you a lot of stories. You cut my leg and you thought they’d catch up with me but I got away. I still got my limp. I appreciate that reminder, Devereaux, it keeps me going. If I get lazy or comfortable in a situation, I can still limp away because I remember the souvenir you gave me.”

  “Good,” Devereaux said. He didn’t smile but his voice was easy and flat. “I hoped it would be permanent. It’s better than just a scar. And you’ve got a scar already.”

  Colonel Ready touched his cheek and grinned. The scar went from the corner of his mouth to his ear. His face was always grinning and he might have looked boyish except for the scar and the deep blue eyes. His eyes were as hard as his words.

  “I had some errands to do, I had to go to Brussels, I told this idiot here to keep an eye on you, I didn’t tell him to put you in the cellar, you might have died in the cellar. He’s an idiot, what can I tell you. I didn’t want you to die. But he wanted to go off whoring and it was easier to put you in the cellar than to keep an eye on you.” He said it all in a measured way, giving the words no special inflection.

  “I should have just killed you. The way Rita said,” Devereaux said. “I should have just killed you, but it didn’t seem like it was enough, just to kill you.”

  “But you should have,” Ready agreed.

  “How did you shake the wet contract?”

  “You set me up as ‘November,’ so I set up another poor fool as ‘November.’ His name was Lars. He bought it from a Russian hitter on the Finlandia. The case on ‘November’ is closed as far as the Russians are concerned. They got their man.”

  Devereaux did not speak. Ready had changed. The eyes showed the pain. There must be pain all the time. Devereaux had cut him across the Achilles tendon and left him there, writhing on the floor of the little house above the town of St. Michel.

  They were in Nam originally, that was where they met. Ready was working for DIA and moonlighting on the side for himself. He ran dope in Nam and women and he probably shipped intelligence both ways. Devereaux kept running across him. They circled each other in Nam like knife fighters. Then Devereaux was suddenly shipped home and they would never have seen each other again except that Ready came looking for him in Switzerland that time. Ready had a scam going—he always had a scam—and this one involved a whole overpopulated and wretchedly poor Caribbean island named St. Michel. Ready had used Devereaux, leveraged him out of hiding, and then had used Rita Macklin.

  The first day she saw him, she said to Devereaux: Kill him. Kill him now. And he had hesitated and Ready knew he had won that one, that he had bested Devereaux. And when he got a chance to take Rita Macklin, he had done it. He had raped her with particular brutal force and thrown her naked into the cells and told her how many more rapes she would endure. It had all been a way of destroying his enemy, Devereaux. And Devereaux, when he got Rita back, had thought to let the Soviets kill Ready for him, and he had cut Ready so that Ready could limp away along the trail and all the Soviet hitters had to do was follow the bloodstains and kill him.

  And they had failed.

  Devereaux felt the sick weakness in his bowels. He had failed twice with Ready and now he was Ready’s victim.

  “I’m not a man for small cruelties, Devereaux.
I wouldn’t have put you in the cellar. The rats might have got you.”

  Devereaux sat very still and did not speak.

  “You weren’t supposed to be killed, I told them that from the beginning. You panicked the driver I guess when you started shooting. He didn’t mean to hit you. He told me that. He said he was sorry. I killed him anyway because you have to have discipline and you can’t let people decide these things in panic.” He paused. “How’s Rita? Lovely as ever?”

  Devereaux pushed the words aside. “You’re working for yourself now.”

  “I always was. It just took Uncle a while to catch on. Now they don’t even know I exist, anymore than you did until you saw me just now.”

  “So what do you do next? You got it figured out?”

  “The trouble with you is you’ve got no small talk. You never could handle the con part of it. You think this is about intelligence, about thinking about things and getting information and putting two and two together, and that’s all just the bullshit part. The real part of it is the con, working the con. You got to give them small talk while you’re stealing their wallets so that they feel good about themselves. Just now I was asking you about Rita, how she was, and that might have been small talk but it wasn’t. I was really interested. The girl had something. I give you credit for that, Devereaux. The girl really has something. I thought about her almost as much as I thought about you the last couple of years.”

  “What kind of a business are you in now? Terrorism?”

  “That’s right. Let’s get off the subject of Rita, let’s get rid of the small talk.” Ready grinned. “All right, we won’t talk about Rita now. About the apartment you live in on the Rue de la Concorde Suisse. No, I’m not a terrorist, there’s a crowded market for terrorists. Everyone is a terrorist. I think it started when anyone could get a gun. That makes it a lot easier. Like you. I think of you as a terrorist. That’s your style. You cost me a lot, my friend.”

  And Devereaux saw the pain at the edge of the hard blue eyes. He was glad to see the pain at least.