The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  “Yes, sir. Club Tres is for the night only.” He smiled. A nice-looking boy.

  “Where is Jans?”

  “We are not too busy on Monday night, so Jans leaves early. We take turns.”

  “I see,” David Mason said. He put down his drink along with a one-thousand-franc Belgian note. “Is this enough?”

  “It is generous, sir, whatever you wish to leave.”

  “No, I meant for another drink.”

  “Well, sir, we are closing.”

  “I need another drink,” Mason said.

  “Well, let me lock the door.” Philip smiled at him. “Let me lock the door and then we can see about that drink.” He moved around the wide oak bar to the big door and pulled the lock across. “There. We won’t be disturbed then,” Philip said. He wondered what the American boy had in mind.

  Mason stood up when Philip came back to the bar and hit him very hard in the stomach. Philip bent over and felt the waves of nausea and Mason hit him very hard in the face. He broke Philip’s nose. Philip sank to his knees and Mason kicked him in the stomach and Philip gagged. His nose was bleeding. Mason hit him a second time in the nose and then picked him up by his shirt and slammed him against the bar, so that the edge of the bar smacked Philip sharply in the kidneys.

  Mason took him by the shirt and slammed him against the wall that held the picture of the naked woman and the naked woman fell on the floor.

  Mason slammed Philip against the bar again and Philip could not scream with the pain because he didn’t have any breath in his body. He heaved for breath. It came at last and he moaned. Mason sat down on the barstool and Philip hung on to the bar to remain upright.

  Mason said, “Tell me about Colonel Ready. The man with the scar on his face.”

  His voice was good, calm, almost sweet. There was a natural softness that did not carry any inflection.

  “You broke it. You broke my nose.”

  Mason hit him in the stomach again.

  Philip groaned and retched but he had nothing in his stomach. He held his stomach and reached for a chair and collapsed into it. He groaned over and over and rocked back and forth.

  “Tell me about Colonel Ready,” Mason said.

  “You are killing me,” Philip said.

  “That’s not the answer, Philip,” Mason said. He broke the bottle of Stella Artois beer across the edge of the bar and grabbed Philip by his hair. He held the jagged edge of the bottle to his face.

  “I know how to contact him,” Philip said.

  “Why did you sell out the train?”

  “Who are you?”

  “The last person in the world you ever wanted to see, Philip. Maybe the last person you ever will see. How old are you, Philip?”

  “Thirty.”

  “That’s awfully young, Philip.”

  “There was a lot of money. We only supply the driver. And the car. We picked a driver. All he wanted to know was the name of the driver.”

  “He got to the driver. You picked out the driver for him. When you picked the wrong driver, you wrecked the train. When you wrecked the train, we lost a man. When we lose a man, we get upset. You upset us, Philip. Terribly. So what can you say to me to stop me?”

  “My God, my God,” Philip said.

  “No. That won’t do it.”

  He pushed the jagged edge into Philip’s right cheek. Philip didn’t even feel the pain for a moment, until he saw the blood on the edge of the bottle. He put his hand on his cheek and felt the pain and screamed in a very high-pitched voice. He screamed and screamed and then Mason said, “Shut up. The next time, I cut your eye out. So just shut up. I want you to concentrate.”

  “My God, my God.”

  Mason lifted the bottle. Philip felt the blood on his palm. He said, “I’ll tell you everything, everything.”

  “I know,” Mason said. He put the bottle down on the wide oak bar. He waited.

  “Colonel Ready. Except he said his name was Driver. He had all kinds of names. That woman that came here to ask about him called him that. He was interested in her.”

  “Yes. I know. I know all about it. He killed her. He was after her, he must have followed her to Bruges.” He paused, staring at the bleeding man. “She’s dead. We lost a man and we lost her, so someone has to pay for the damages. We have to reduce our losses.”

  “I called him. Jans called him. You want Jans.”

  “I’ll take care of Jans, Philip. I want you now. Does it hurt, Philip?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now tell me about Colonel Ready and how you contacted him.”

  He told him about the contact. There was a dead letter drop at the stamp shop near the statue of the Mannekin-Pis. You dropped the message one day in such a way and you got a reply the next day. In this case, he had got Colonel Ready in person at Club Tres. He was a mercenary contractor and he had a lot of money. He gave some of it to Philip and Jans. After all, they weren’t involved in anything. They just provided the station house for the trains and the driver and the car.

  “We were not involved,” Philip said. His voice was a moan. The blood was dried on his cheek but the scar would be very bad.

  “You were involved,” Mason said. He stared at Philip. “You fucked with the United States government, Philip.” He said the verb softly, almost with a child’s wonder. His voice was even more soft than it had been at the beginning. “But you might survive yet if you do everything right. I want you to get hold of Colonel Ready. I want you to call Jans and tell him to drop a message this morning and then to come over here. I want you to tell Jans that you got visited by a man who was the conductor of that train. The man in black. The man you set up.”

  “But Mr. Driver killed him.”

  “No. He did worse than that. I think he did worse than that. I think I know what Mr. Driver did and I think the man in black is alive but wishing he wasn’t alive. So if I figured it right, then Mr. Driver or Colonel Ready is going to wonder what the hell is going on with you. So I figure he’ll come over to talk to you about it.”

  “He’s a bad man.”

  “Yes, Philip. But better the devil you know. I’m here, Philip, and I just beat you up a little bit. Just a little body slamming. I can beat you up for a long time. I wasn’t in Nam or anything like that, but I did grow up on streets. You learn a lot of things. So I can beat you up until everything hurts and you piss blood and all that stuff and you still won’t be dead. I’m going to get Colonel Ready and kill him. And maybe I won’t kill you and Jans because, like you said, you were not involved. I make myself clear to you, Philip?”

  Philip stared at the calm-eyed madman and nodded. When he found his voice, he dialed the black telephone behind the bar. It rang for a long time because Jans was sleeping. Mason poured himself another beer and sat on the stool at the American-style bar and waited while Philip talked to Jans.

  24

  THE CALIFORNIA MESSAGE

  The driver was a sandy-haired kid who chewed gum. Mr. Willis was sweating by the time he stepped to the curb at Los Angeles International Airport. The sun was pale above the smog in the bowl of the city and Willis was dressed for November in Chicago. He let the kid open the back door of the stretch Cadillac and got inside. There was a television set. He turned it on and then off, just to see if it worked. There was a glass divider between the driver and the big rear compartment.

  The kid rolled the divider down. The radio was full of jungle sounds.

  “Roll the divider up,” Willis said.

  The kid said, “No sweat.” He pushed the button that sealed the rear compartment. He crawled through the lanes that led away from the airport on the ocean and drove north toward the city.

  Los Angeles had charm but you had to look for it. The center city was full of big buildings without character or pattern. There still were no pedestrians and some of the streets had not even bothered with sidewalks. All the cars seemed exotic and Willis stared out his side window at the cars and the drivers. The limousine was
cool and Willis felt dry and tired. The address was a stunted, whitewashed two-story building on Sunset, below the hills. He told the kid to wait and crossed to the entrance and went up the carpeted cement stairs to the second floor. Suite 201 was right off the stairs. He went through the door and the girl at the reception desk wore a white silk blouse that was open enough for Willis to stare at. He said his name. The girl went to a door and opened it. Willis saw a plastic penis sitting on the floor of the second office. A plastic penis, he thought. He filed the image.

  The big man was smoking a big cigar and wore a camel’s-hair sport coat that made him look even bigger than he was.

  He looked at Willis and didn’t say a thing. Willis nodded toward the door. Ben Herguth shrugged and followed him into the corridor and down the stairs. They both had an aversion to talking in a place where walls might have ears.

  The limousine roared down Sunset toward the ocean. The destination was a fish restaurant in Beverly Hills, off Rodeo, but the driver was instructed to go by way of the beach and take his time making a big circle through Santa Monica and Westwood.

  “We want to know about her.” Willis made his voice flat, almost uninterested.

  “Her? Who her?”

  “Cute,” Willis said.

  “Hey, fuck you, G-man. You fuck this up from Jump Street, so you got nothing to say about where it’s going.”

  Willis said, “You know how much trouble you can be in?”

  “Fuck you, G-man. I’m shitting in my boots, you got me so scared.”

  Willis tried it a different way. “Look. We were caught flat-footed by Miki. When Miki pulled a defect. We don’t know where the hell he is, we don’t even know if he’s alive.”

  “He’s alive,” Herguth said. He liked the look of surprise. “Temporarily.”

  “We need smooth relations,” Willis said. “First that little girl pulls a religious defection in Chicago. We got heat from the Czech ambassador, the White House got a personal note from the Czech President. It would be just our luck that Prague closes its borders for a few months. That’d be just what we need.”

  Herguth said, “You need? I sympathize with you and what you fuckheads need. What about me? I got a production company ready to shoot a twenty-eight-part miniseries, I got a hundred and thirty-five contracts inked in with time, dates, and termination periods, and what the fuck do I do with all of it if Prague closes down? It’s too late to shoot it in Spain. Besides, Spain doesn’t have snow. This is supposed to be the life of Napoleon and Napoleon needs snow. You know. Russia. That kind of stuff.”

  “And we’ve smoothed the way for you, haven’t we?” Willis said.

  “For a price.”

  “For a bit of patriotism. So tell me, Ben: Where is Anna Jelinak?”

  “Beats the shit out of me.”

  “You aren’t gonna tell me. I come all the way out here to see you.”

  “I’m touched.”

  “Look. The heat is real. Emil Mikita disappears in the West. We had nothing to do with that, I can assure you. Fucking Miki didn’t know which way from Sunday about how to come across. Then, the exact same day, Anna Jelinak defects. Prague looks like a prize sap, Uncle’s punching bag. Countries get pissed off just like people when you start cuffing them around. We didn’t have anything to do with Anna. We didn’t have anything to do with Miki. But it looks like we did. I got a rocket for you, Ben. It came down this morning before I left. The rocket says that certain people in Prague are so pissed off about Miki and now Anna disappearing that something better shake loose soon or you can kiss your miniseries on the tuchus good-bye.”

  Ben Herguth smiled.

  It wasn’t what Willis was looking for.

  The smile got wider as the limo pulled into Rodeo Drive.

  “See, Willis, you guys at Langley ain’t got a clue. Everything you touch turns to sugar maple shit. Anna is all tied to Miki after all but not the way you think. Give it forty-eight hours tops and Miki’s problem is solved and Anna’s problem is solved and Prague gets happy again. What you don’t know, you can’t fuck up. So let’s eat lunch in peace.”

  “What kind of message is that for me to bring back?”

  “I give a fuck what kind of message you bring back. I’m just telling you the way it is. Everything is taken care of because we aren’t waiting around now for you to do something. Don’t worry, Willis. You’re in California, nobody worries in California. It’s warm, Willis, even in November. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “I am trying to impress on you that the Czechs are upset—”

  “Fuck ’em. They live in a cold climate. If they lived in California, they wouldn’t even want to be Communists. You ever think about it. The only place Communism works is in cold climates.”

  “Like Cuba.”

  “So, one exception. Count Nicaragua, maybe two. But it still proves the rule. People worry when it’s cold. I’m not cold, I’m not worried. Two days, Anna wakes up in Prague and that’s all over and you guys can take the credit for it if you want, I give a fuck. Two days, Miki is buttoned up permanent and we can go ahead with our fun and games and not worry about anyone being a snitch. And when January comes, Napoleon goes back to Russia to get the shit kicked out of him, except it won’t be Russia, it’ll be Prague with a few onion domes thrown in. A forty-five-million-dollar extravaganza, we sell a hundred eighty mill in commercials on first and second run, worldwide distribs, videotape, tie-ins. Plus a full three-hour movie in six foreign languages, particularly French since we got the leading Frog lady of the day to play Josephine. What a tush she’s got on her.”

  The limo pulled up at the curb and Sandy jumped out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door.

  Ben Herguth slid out, stood up, patted his clothes, and waited.

  But Willis was rubbing his stomach.

  “You ain’t hungry?” Ben said with a smile.

  Willis shook his head. He wondered if he would ever be hungry again.

  25

  DEVEREAUX GOES HOME

  British Airways was nearly forty-five minutes late arriving at Kennedy because of traffic, and the helicopter across Long Island to LaGuardia was late, and the United flight to Chicago was late taking off because of traffic at O’Hare.

  Devereaux felt the ache of travel and the ache in his stiff left leg and all the pains of spending nearly eleven hours in the air or trying to get in the air. The shuffle through customs at Kennedy was routine; the Swiss passport was Devereaux’s own, given to Cernan by Colonel Ready. The passport number would show up in twelve hours on the computer at Section because it was a creation of Section; it would be the signal that Devereaux—or someone using Devereaux’s passport—had entered the United States.

  O’Hare was bright on this November afternoon and there were souvenirs celebrating Christmas or the Chicago Bears in the newsstands. Devereaux walked the long corridor from gate F12 to the main concourse at Terminal Two and then pushed through the people to the street. Traffic was standing still. A black cab driver in a yellow car was screaming insults at a white man in a black limousine and a paunchy Chicago policeman was yelling at both of them. The street was narrowed by construction barriers and filled with private cars, cabs, limousines, police cars, rental vans, suburban buses, and airport service trucks. Devereaux stared at it all for a moment, his head filling with the noises of his native land and native city. Each time he came back to the States now, the brutal vitality of it—the colors, the openness, the obscene grace—startled him. He was a stranger now. His exile had no roots.

  He reentered the terminal and found the entrance to the subway by asking directions from three different policemen. The car was waiting in the station and he fell into a seat and closed his eyes. His single bag—packed by one of Cernan’s men—was between his legs.

  The doors clicked closed and the train picked up speed, emerging suddenly into the light and climbing to an elevated trestle at River Road. The day was bright with bright gray clouds and there was the smell
of snow in the air. The train screamed along the tracks heading south and east toward the Loop. Devereaux stared at the pitched roofs of the bungalows and the dense traffic clogging the Kennedy Expressway. He was tired and drained and it was more than the two airplane trips. It was the thought of Rita held hostage mixed with the thought of coming home.

  He detested nostalgia and the memories of a past life.

  What had he been all his life but the outsider? First on city streets, outside the law and protection of home, then inside a secret agency so buried in the government that its very name was snatched from deep within the funding bill that created it. Subparagraph R became Section R. And Devereaux became a pawn named November and lost his right to ever come inside.

  He accepted that. He could stand the silence, the cold, the aloneness, and being apart. And then, by accident, he would suddenly be thrust into a reminder of all the past he had lost and the waste of it. Now he was on a Chicago El train, screeching along above the low bungalows down to the heart of the high-rise city, and he might have been ten years old again, starting out on the streets with his knife and his guts and his savage sense of self.

  There was too much pain in nostalgia. Yet the past kept thrusting itself at him. It hurt him more now to be in Chicago than to have endured all the real pains of the past week.

  He closed his eyes to shut out the city.

  But when he closed his eyes, Rita was near. He could smell her and touch her.

  “I’ve told the police that.”

  Kay Davis picked up her glass of white wine, studied it, put it down. She had done that a half dozen times. The man across from her did not touch his vodka.

  “Yes. Is it secret?”

  “No, Mr. Devereaux. But Al Buck was really generous, really a prince about it. I mean that. In this business, you never get a second chance. He had been calling me, he said. He said it was wrong, his way of handling it was wrong. He took the blame, he said he wanted me back at the station and that I could go after the story any way I saw fit. He was really terrific. He took the blame for everything and he gave me a three-year contract and he said he must have been crazy to want to jump off a good story like this one and would I come back. So I came back. The story was kind of petering out anyway because the statue stopped crying and this court thing could have gone on and on.… My God, I think about Stephanie. I talked to her that night, the night I was attacked. I mean, it’s so coincidental the way things work.”