The Infant of Prague

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

“If you’re in business, you want money,” Devereaux said. “What kind of money do you want?”

“What? For you? Or for Miki and you? I got Miki, too, you see. I had to make a few calls in Brussels, see a few people, do some business. That’s why this idiot put you in the cellar. I think; I have my arrangement set up.”

“Our organization is interested in Miki. And me, naturally,” Devereaux said.

Ready smiled. “I bet they are. And if it was just a matter of money, I would have certainly got in touch with your people. But sometimes, it just isn’t all about money. You see the way it is. Everyone thinks this was about snatching Miki. I had no idea that Miki had any value. You’re the goods, Devereaux. I wanted to see a way to get you, and Miki was just a bonus for me. I followed you down to Chartres, I followed you up to Brussels. So it was going to be a train, I found out. It was a pretty crude operation, using the Club Tres and depending on those boys who run it. When you want to blow up the train, just get to the engineer. I got me a driver and he didn’t care which way it worked as long as he got paid. And then he went and tried to kill you. I was so fucking mad I blew his brains out right there on the beach. I was so fucking mad.”

“There’ll be searchers out now, Ready. You know the way it works. Someone snatched an agent and Section can’t let that happen. You should have stayed in your hidey-hole and counted yourself lucky the world didn’t know you were alive.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ready said. “The Czechs really wanted Miki back, that was clear enough. So they are willing to pay for him. And you. There’s you, Dev. You’re the bonus as far as I’m concerned. I thought about killing you. I hung around Lausanne, I saw you come and go, I thought about killing you. Or killing Rita Macklin and letting you know how I did it. Like you thought, it wasn’t just enough to kill your enemy. You kill someone, the mind goes blank, the film ends. But what if I could kill you and keep you alive, keep you in the coffin in a way, watching your body die and yet, it never dying?”

“Booga-booga,” Devereaux said.

“Sure, just the old booga-booga. But sometimes there are things in the dark that you should be scared of. There really are monsters, you know.”

Devereaux smiled.

“So the Czechs are willing to pay for Miki for their own reasons. I’m not even interested in their reasons. Miki is just another way to make money as far as I’m concerned. If I was interested in what it is that Miki has that they’re interested in, I might work on Miki and break him down, you know the way it’s done, and then figure out who would pay the most for him. But this one is for you, Dev. So I make an arrangement through a man with another man I don’t even know in Prague, and it comes down to them sending over a man and that man taking you and Miki back to Prague. You’re the bonus. They’ll examine you, of course, and see what you’re made of and then they’ll pass you along to Moscow. That’s the best part. They pass you along and you go to Lubyanka through the back door and you know that Lubyanka is real, don’t you, Dev? They really do have cells and the interrogation rooms where they ask you all the questions, and you better know the answers because they have goons like this idiot Damon here who likes to put himself in his work. The work is pain. That’s the pleasure of it for people like Damon here. We both know there’s pain, brother Devereaux. We know how to give it and take it and we know that there is no one who can stand the pain. We all break down in the end.”

“Make an offer to Section. Be a rich man,” Devereaux said.

Ready showed all his teeth. “You still don’t get it, do you? This is endgame. With a twist, the kind you tried on me. You stay alive with your friends in Moscow and they use you, and when they really get done with you they put you out to work laying track in Siberia or they put a nine-millimeter in your head. And all the while, you tell them everything you know to make the pain go away. But it never goes away, does it?”

“Are you going to talk me to death?”

The smile faded on Ready’s face. “You think it’s not going to end up that way? Buddy, you don’t understand. The wheel is in motion already. You’ll be in Prague in less than three days. What do the Sicilians say about revenge? ‘It’s a dish best eaten cold.’ I had two years thinking about it and it worked out better than I thought, and when you’re getting the shit beaten out of you in the basement at Lubyanka, think about me.”

“You talk a lot more than you used to. You must be alone a lot. You talk to remind yourself you’re not dead. You must be practicing in front of mirrors.”

Ready hit him then with his open hand. He hit him several times in the face and Devereaux heard a ringing in his ears.