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.
“For both of us. For all our interests. You say the CIA double-crossed us in the first place?”
“No. Not them. The information is that it was another intelligence agency. But Americans. They had arranged Miki’s defection.”
“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.”