The Infant of Prague

by Bill Granger

  Denisov was on the stairs and shot the man at the top of the stairs. The man fell and dropped his Uzi and the gun went off, spraying a round of bullets into the plaster of the stairwell.

  Devereaux finished White Hair with a bullet in the face and went into the back room. Anna Jelinak was sitting at a table with cards in her hand. Other cards were face up on the table. She stared at Devereaux.

  Devereaux swept the room with his gun hand, crouching at the door. The dog in the backyard barked and hurtled itself against the back door. The back door had two bolts and a chain on it because it was the preferred point of entry for burglars.

  The shot came behind him. He turned and the black man was staring right at him with a red smudge on his white shirt. Devereaux fired point blank but he was already dead. He fell forward.

  Denisov came down to the landing. His face was white and his eyes glittered. “Everyone is dead,” he said in Russian.

  Devereaux looked at Anna.

  “Come on.”

  The girl got up. She held the cards in her hand: a king, an ace of spades, a seven. He walked around the table and saw the hallway cluttered with bodies. There was the smell of cordite mixed with the instant, putrid smell of death, of urine and feces and warm blood flowing. They were all deaf from the shock of the grenade and gunfire.

  “Come on,” Devereaux said again and grabbed her arm and dragged her over the bodies.

  She screamed once and he slapped her as hard as he could and the blow dazed her. They brought her outside and pushed her into the back of the car. Denisov sat next to her, Devereaux next to the driver.

  Tony was listening to the portable police radio he had mounted on the dashboard. “They haven’t even made a call yet. You know what that is? Good old 911. You call 911, it’ll take hours to get a cop out there. Especially this neighborhood.”

  “Change cars,” he said.

  “This is good for hours.”

  “Change cars,” Devereaux said.

  The next one was a bright red Pontiac Bonneville with a white interior. They picked it up on Irving Park Road, near Shulian’s Tavern on the north side.

  The girl said nothing because she had felt the sting of the slap and she could not hear very well.

  Tony knew his driving. He wheeled the Pontiac like an MG.

  “Not fancy, Tony,” Devereaux said. “Be slow. This isn’t a bank job and they aren’t in hot pursuit.”

  The radio squawked on: “Reports of gunfire at 2218 West Adams. A neighbor calling…”

  “See?” said Tony.

  Denisov said, “I expect to receive payment in my box by the end of December.”

  “You’ll have to report it then on this year’s tax,” Devereaux said.

  “Yes. That is my concern.” The departure level at O’Hare was nearly empty and the planes were taking two or three minutes between takeoffs now.

  “Let him off at American,” Devereaux said. “We get out here.”

  He pushed open the door and reached for the seat lever and pulled it. Anna climbed out. She had no coat and the night air plucked at her bare arms. She wore a dirty blouse and jeans. She held the three Bicycle playing cards in her hand and stared at the large man with gray hair and gray eyes.

  “I don’t have time to play with you, Anna,” he said in a soft voice. “We walk to the plane and if you shout or attract any attention, I kill you just like I killed those men. Do you understand?”

  Anna stared at him.

  The car was already pulling away.

  “Do you understand?”

  The planes bombed the air overhead.

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice.

  “Do you see the gun?” He slipped it a little out of his pocket.

  “Oh, please, sir, I will not—”

  “All right. We go now.”

  All the clocks in Terminal Two read nine minutes to eleven.

  They walked by a kiosk and he touched her arm. “Buy that jacket.” She picked up the navy and orange Bears football jacket and slipped it on over her blouse. Devereaux gave the woman behind the register a fifty-dollar bill. The terminal had the insomniac look of an updated Edward Hopper painting. Fluorescent lights made everything daytime bright; only the faces were gray.

  Devereaux slipped the pistol into the white metal wastebasket by the washroom entrances when Anna turned to stare at a bag lady curling up for the night on one of the vinyl chairs.

  They crossed the terminal and passed through the metal detectors and Anna did not seem to notice anything. Her face was blank with shock and her eyes were tired. A Chicago policeman stared at Devereaux as though he knew him from someplace.

  “Keep going, Anna,” he said, and the voice was not meant to be friendly.

  They walked down the wide, bright corridor all the way to F12 near the end. The terminal was quiet down here. The nearest passenger boarding area in use was F6. The clock read 10:59.

  The boarding area had a red rug, fake mahogany check-in desk, and no destination listed on the board. Hanley stood at the desk.

  “I forgot my ticket, can I pay on the plane?” Devereaux said.

  “This is not a joke.”

  “No.” Devereaux held Anna by the arm.

  “How did you arrange it?” Hanley said.

  “Are you going along?”

  “No. You’re cleared out of here. I’ll go back commercial and face the music at midnight.” Hanley looked glum.

  “It shouldn’t be too bad,” Devereaux said.

  “Aiding and abetting a kidnapping? This girl has rights.”

  “She has the right to live,” Devereaux said. The smile faded. “So do I. You forfeited a lot of your rights back in Chartres. You should have told me.”

  “I cannot tell you what I do not know. Miki is valuable but I don’t know why.”

  “I do,” Devereaux said.

  “What do you know?” Hanley said.

  “The tip of the iceberg. Are we ready to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have the supplies?”

  “Money and a weapon. Where is the other weapon?”

  “In the trash bin right by the men’s urinal just as you get out of this corridor.”

  “All right. I have to return it.”

  “Yes. See to the details, Hanley, and let the big things take care of themselves.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t help your case.”

  “But Miki will.”

  “He’s not going to return him, you know.”

  “Yes. I know. That’s what he thinks now.”

  They stared at each other. “I wish this had never happened,” Hanley said. His face looked gray beneath the lights.

  “Yes,” Devereaux said. “But beggars still walk, don’t they?”

  And he led the child by her arm into the umbilical cord that linked the building with the plane beyond. The pilot had gotten two kinds of pizza from the delivery service in Rosemont—pepperoni and cheese and sausage. There were cans of Coca-Cola as well, but they were not very cold.

  34

  CERNAN’S GAME

  They were in a car and it was raining.

  Rita huddled in her jacket and held her arms across her breast. She stared at the rain. There is a way to be a prisoner and this is one of the ways: You sleep, even when you’re awake. You hold yourself in. You don’t scream in your mind about the constrictions or the injustices. You hold yourself in and endure this moment and the next moment. The rain beat down on the steel roof, and the car was intimate with breaths, smells, body heat. The motor was running and it growled very low, very steadily. If she listened hard to it, it made a voice and was saying the same thing over and over. She realized she could imagine any number of combinations of words. She closed her eyes.

  Cernan was in the house at the end of the drive. When he came out, they would go to another place and wait. He had received the signal from Brussels just before dawn. He had gone into the bedroom where she slept huddled in her clothes under a blanket. He
had touched her shoulder and she started awake. “He arrived in England. He has Anna. In a little while it will be over.”

  It will be over, she thought. She opened her eyes because they were bringing Miki to the car from the shed where they had kept him. Miki staggered a little between the two men who held him up. They shoved him into the backseat next to Rita. His hands were manacled.

  “I need a cigarette,” Miki said in very good English. “This is absolutely disgusting.” He put on a brave front. Cernan had hurt him over a long period of time until he told Cernan everything and then it had been all right. He had told Cernan about Henkin and about the American companies. Cernan had been satisfied then and Miki had regained a little of his old self-confidence, even if one eye was blackened. He had even flirted with Rita over the past two days. She had to hit him finally and he pouted. Some men were worse than women.

  At that moment, it was clear and calm in Prague. Henkin sat at his famous desk in the corner office of the Ministry and waited for Cernan to be put on the line. When he heard Cernan’s voice at last, he felt such relief that he scarcely was able to speak at all.

  “You have Miki.”

  “At last, I have Miki,” Cernan said. Why had the secret call to Gorkeho been transferred to Henkin’s office? What had happened in the last twenty-four hours in Prague?

  “And why does this take so much time?”

  “Because it was a difficult matter. I can tell you when I bring Miki back.”

  “No,” Henkin said. “We have different orders. I have orders for you now. Is Miki safe?”

  “Yes, Director.”

  “Cernan, you are authorized as a member of the Secret Service to execute Emil Mikita now and to return immediately to Prague.”

  Cernan said nothing.

  “Are you there, pan Cernan?”

  “Yes, Director. I am not authorized to—”

  Henkin raised his voice. “Do you hear me? I am Conrad Henkin, I have ordered you—”

  “I am not authorized,” Cernan began again. It was the weary, nagging voice of the eternal bureaucrat.

  “Cernan. I am speaking to you man to man. I have learned many things. I have learned things about Miki that would make you sick and you are a man of the world, yet I want to tell you—”

  “Director,” Cernan began.

  “Be quiet, Cernan. Miki has arranged the kidnapping of Anna Jelinak. That is your daughter. No, don’t deny it. I know this; more, Miki knows this thing and it was arranged by him and his American conspirators. That is why Anna ‘defected’ in Chicago despite your excellent security arrangements. Everyone was in it. I suspect even Gorkeho. I know that the man you trusted, Anton Huss, he was an agent for Miki. It was no coincidence that Anna defected on the day Miki defected. It was arranged as insurance. So that if Miki… if Miki did not defect, then you would lose your daughter. Don’t deny it again, Cernan; I know she is your daughter. Miki told me this thing.”

  Cernan said nothing. Henkin nearly smiled.

  “I have made my own… contacts. I want to get to the bottom of this, Cernan. That is why I trusted you with this assignment. I have located Anna and I can arrange her release. It is in the process of happening. But if Miki comes back to Prague to work with his old gang—and I mean with your superior, Gorkeho—then, I am afraid, they will make me powerless.

  “You must do as I order you. I am your superior. Miki must be dead and you must see to it at once and then return to Prague. Anna will be safe and we will confront this gang of conspirators.”

  Cernan said, “I do not understand.”

  “It is enough that I understand. You must believe me in this and trust me,” Henkin said. “I love Anna as you do, as a daughter. She is a bright star on the Czech stage. I am her mentor, she is my protégée. I wish her every good thing, you know this.”

  “Yes, Director,” Cernan said. The voice was soft, almost in awe.

  “Eliminate Miki now. Eliminate the problem and return to Prague and we shall see about cleaning up this corruption,” Henkin said.

  Another long pause.

  “Cernan. I know you were to call Gorkeho.” Softly, with just the hint of menace. “I have arranged for Gorkeho’s calls to be transferred. I have issued a warrant for the arrest of Gorkeho. He is part of a conspiracy against the state. Against me. Against our precarious position in international commerce.”

  So there it was, Cernan thought. Gorkeho had played for time, played against Henkin from the beginning. Everything Cernan had learned from Miki—about Henkin’s corruption, his involvement with the American interests—somehow, in the much more intricate and ruthless world of internal politics in Prague, Henkin had beaten Cernan’s man. And Henkin was explaining that to Cernan.

  In that moment, standing alone in the farmhouse, Cernan saw the way it was. Henkin had arranged the kidnapping of Anna to use her as leverage against Cernan, to force Cernan to kill the one man who had all the secrets about Henkin and the corruption in Prague. It was dirty and cynical and Henkin had used his daughter and… it had worked. That was the worst part of all.

  “Yes, Director. I am confused, merely. I do not understand. But I am a soldier of the Republic and we must follow our orders.”

  Henkin wiped his lip dry.

  “Yes,” Henkin said.

  “As you say,” Cernan said. “So it must be done.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miki must die,” Cernan said.

  “Yes. That is my order,” Henkin said. “His finger,” Henkin added, thinking of Jules Bergen. Jules Bergen had wanted proof. Let it be Miki’s finger with the beautiful ring on it. Cernan only grunted an agreement, then he broke the connection.

  For a long moment, Henkin waited and then put down the receiver.

  Four buildings south, Gorkeho stopped the tape machine. It was little enough but it was enough, he thought. The game with Henkin was not over yet.

  Rita saw Cernan stand in the doorway of the farmhouse a moment and then walk out to the car. He opened the door and motioned to Miki.

  Miki climbed out. He stood in the rain that fell on his bare head and he was afraid.

  Cernan took out his Uzi and pointed it at Miki.

  “You are someone who knows too much,” Cernan said. “I have spoken to Henkin. He wants me to kill you. And then he wants me to cut off your ring finger, the one with the big ruby on it, and bring it to him in Prague. What do you think of that, Miki?”

  Miki began to plead.

  Rita stared out the window of the car. She could not understand the two men speaking in the strange language, but she saw the pale horror on Miki’s face and she thought Cernan meant to kill him and was telling him that he was going to die.

  “Please do not kill me,” Miki said.

  “What will you say when we get back to Prague? You will say it is all lies, that I tortured you and made you say fantastic things. You will run back to Henkin and ask his protection and Henkin will give it to you. For a little time. Until he can take you out one day and put a bullet in your head and dump you in the Vltava River. What good are you to me?”

  “No, no, I will tell them the truth,” Miki said. “Please, let me live.”

  “But I have my order now. I am told you must die and I am a soldier of the Republic. I am the servant of the state.”

  Miki said, “Then for God’s sake do not kill me.”

  “You told Henkin that Anna was my daughter. Why did you tell him this? Who told you this thing?”

  “Elena.”

  Cernan looked strange, as though he were puzzled. “Why would she say this thing?”

  “I don’t know. It was just gossip. Just a rumor. Anna… Anna had no father. You were in the Party. Elena’s brother and cousin were part of the hateful Dubcek regime in 1968, they were unrehabilitated in 1968—”

  “They were taken to the Soviet Union when the tanks came into Prague and they were never heard from again,” Cernan said. “So Elena, who was not part of them, had to share their ignominy. She
was a woman. She had no place to turn.”

  “I never told—”

  “You told everyone everything, Miki. You knew everything and you lived on gossip. The only thing you never told was about Henkin and the American companies and how he was bribed and bribed very handsomely to arrange matters. Arms. Arms, Miki. Theft of arms from the Czech people! For what? For money, Miki. Money for you and for Henkin and for a few others, and because of our brilliant bureaucracy, we would never know of the theft. Where did the arms go?”

  Miki was trembling, tears ran down his face.

  “I should kill you,” Cernan said. “You are loathsome, you are a disease. You steal from your country for what reason? For money? You had enough. You had too much. You have the American disease. You need everything. I should kill you, Emil Mikita.” Cernan spit on Miki in the rain. The spittle washed down Miki’s handsome face and the rain obliterated it.

  Miki knelt in the mud by the gray car. Rita put her hand to her mouth. She saw he was crying.

  “Please, I beg you, do not kill me.”

  “Get up, Miki. You are not even a man—”

  “Oh, God, let me live!” he cried. “Mother of God, let me live.”

  “Get up,” Cernan said.

  Miki was gripped by hysteria. He shook and screamed. His eyes were large and out of control.

  One of the men came around the car and pulled him up and pushed him against the fender of the Mercedes.

  Cernan said something to the man then and he pulled Miki’s sleeve back and put the cold, strained hand on the hood of the car.

  Cernan nodded.

  The larger man had a knife that caught the dull light for a moment.

  Rita heard Miki’s scream and then, through the windshield, saw the severed finger on the blood-streaked hood of the car.

  Cernan held out a handkerchief. Miki wrapped his hand and the blood filled the white of the cloth. The large man picked up the finger and wrapped it in another cloth.

  Rita cried then and it was loud but it was not louder than Miki’s screams.

  35

  MANNEKIN-PIS