The Infant of Prague
- Автор: Granger Bill
- Серия: November Man #8
- Год: 1987
- Язык: французский
- Год: Warner
- ISBN: 0446347809
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Infant of Prague». Краткое содержание книги:
For in a humble Chicago parish church, the sacred statue of the Infant of Prague is found weeping real tears. A visiting Czech child star actress, transfigured by the wondrous event, declares, on live television, her intent to remain in American in the name of Christ and freedom.
Only an operative as cynical and seasoned as the November Man can sense the sinister link between two dramatic, yet apparently unrelated defections. A miracle has plunged him into a vast global adventure. And it will take a miracle to get him through it alive.
The defection of a highly visible Czech sparks an international crisis, and the November Man is caught in the middle.
And Stephanie smiled then. The smile dazzled him. He felt like he was ten years old and Sister Mary Theresa was awarding him a gold star in front of the whole class for spelling “thoroughly.” He even blushed in that moment and he never blushed anymore.
“Pray,” Stephanie said. “You could pray for Anna.”
All that had taken place the previous afternoon and now she was sitting with her hands folded, as though in prayer, staring at Anna and preparing to toughen her up for all that would come. It would get down to putting her on the stand at last, and a posturing lawyer from Washington, D.C., acting on behalf of Czechoslovakia and the “rights” of Anna’s mother, would push words at her like weapons and it would be terrible.
Anna saw the stern, troubled look.
She smiled. “It will be good when it is over, Stephanie. Do not worry too much.”
“You break my heart,” Stephanie said then. She smiled and it was the same dazzling smile that had made a priest blush.
“Anna, you’re going to have to meet this woman. In a room. Alone. I promise you the woman cannot take you back to Prague, but you are going to have to talk to her and I don’t want you to break down or be a baby because you’re not a baby. You’re a woman. You listen to her and you don’t have to say anything. Remember that.”
“The woman was drunk all the time but she never hit me. It was just like I wasn’t there sometimes,” Anna said.
“If she didn’t hit you, did she love you?”
Anna blinked.
“Stephanie. I don’t know. Can you tell this?”
“Can’t you tell when you are loved?” Stephanie asked.
Anna blinked her black liquid eyes. “The woman said I was a mistake.”
“No,” Stephanie said. “That’s a terrible thing and it isn’t true. You are intended. Everything in the world is intended. Every life. There are no mistakes. God doesn’t make mistakes ever.” And Stephanie touched Anna’s trembling hands.
So soft, Anna thought.
Stephanie smiled.
So warm, Anna thought. Her face was flushed. So warm and there is golden all about. She realized it then, what she felt. She tried the smile on her reluctant features and it broke through. She felt covered by Stephanie’s hands. Stephanie, she thought. Stephanie loves me.
“Thank you for using AT&T.”
Ben Herguth jiggled his bulk in the aluminum-sided telephone booth. The phone rang three times and Julie picked it up.
“Two Langley guys been around a couple of days, they look like they don’t figure what’s going on either. But that doesn’t explain where the fuck Miki is. Nothing from Prague except our man seems on edge, like he knows less than we know.”
“Where are you?”
“Fucking Chi, where else. I don’t know, Julie, I feel better if we take the direct-action approach to this and see which way Langley jumps after that.”
“Is the girl protected?”
“Usual shit. A couple of cops. No big thing. She goes to bat again next Monday in court. They flew in some bag who says she’s Anna’s mother and the judge is not one of ours.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Direct action, Julie,” Ben Herguth said. “Snatch the kid.”
“I don’t like it. It’s always the last option. I want Kay Davis out of this—”
“Put a hit on her.”
“I told the station manager to promote her out of this story, I hope the idiot knows how to do it—”
“Or we just put the hit on her,” Big Ben said. It was cold in the phone booth, cold in Chicago. He was outside a joint on Division Street owned by people in the action. He’d had a good time with two very clean and imaginative hookers sent up by Tony Lavelli, along with the comp champagne, but two days in Chi was two days in Chi. His clothes and blood were too thin for winter. Put the hit on someone, he silently screamed to Julie in New York. This was a put-the-hit-on-someone kind of town. Nobody’d notice.
All he heard was the icy caution at the other end of the line.
“I think we just keep going along the way we go along, feel our way. See what happens at the TV station, see if we can hose down the heat a little bit. Turn the heat down and then if we have to move, it doesn’t look like we’re doing it on the cover of People magazine. There’s too much circus right now.”
“I appreciate that. But time is money, too, Julie.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“We’ve got a lot of contracts tied up, lots of out-front dough even if the movie never gets made. We gotta be in Prague in January, fucking six weeks away, with the setup, ready to shoot. It drives me crazy thinking about it.”
“I know that, Ben. I know all that.” The voice was faintly weary. Ben caught the tone. Don’t piss off Julie, not ever.
Ben wiped his forehead where the sun freckles were arrayed. “Whatever you say, Julie. I’m just here to back your play.”
“Keep your eye on things and be in touch. Things might start moving quick.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Ben said. He heard the click. The hookers were inside, in the bar of Lavelli’s place. Division Street was filling up with Friday-night people looking for love.
Let ’em find it, Ben Herguth said to himself. He was going back to the hotel. Fuck it. He thought he was coming down with a cold. What he wanted right now was a bowl of chicken soup. He wondered if the hotel had any.
Elena Jelinak arrived in the international terminal at O’Hare Airport shortly after two P.M., and Kay Davis and the cameraman named Dick Lester waited outside the customs shed with all the other reporters.
The doors banged open — she had been rushed through the VIP line while the rest of the passengers were still sweating out their luggage — and Anton Huss was at her side, supporting her arm. She was a haggard woman in a print dress with the smell of brandy all about her. Kay sniffed, looked at Dick, smiled, and plunged in.
Why had she come here?
To get my daughter.
Is your daughter devoted to the Infant of Prague?
That is propaganda, the American government has stolen my child—
“Do you believe in miracles?” Kay asked. She asked everyone that now. She had gone back to the church twice, on her own, without a cameraman and without any real reason except to see the statue again, to stand in the lines with the pilgrims who filled the street now, paying her admission at the coffee table set up in the vestibule by officers of the Holy Name Society. As the president of the Society had explained to Father Hogan: “Miracles are fine, but when it comes down to a new roof for the church before winter, the roofer isn’t going to be looking for no miracle, he’s going to be looking for cash.” Father Hogan had given in and the admissions — called “donations”—were piling up in the rectory safe.
Kay Davis did not believe she saw a weeping statue when she stared at it. So she wanted to find out what others saw. She somehow had a strange feeling that if she asked enough people and got enough answers, she would understand.
Anton Huss, pale and a bit shaken by all the cameras pointed at him, translated the questions for Elena Jelinak. He wanted no part of this. When it was over, he would be transferred out. Farewell Washington and all the beautiful women of the city. He would probably end up in Addis Ababa.
“What did she say?” Elena asked Anton sharply.
“She says ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ ”
“Sure. Tell her I believe in miracles. Tell her I got fucked by a dove one day and Anna dropped out between my legs.”
Anton Huss blushed. He knew that the woman was drunk but this was a disaster.