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.
“Ah, but you are wiser than I, pan Henkin. Perhaps you understood that it needed a very experienced man like Cernan when I, too, thought it such a simple matter.” Cernan would have understood Gorkeho’s little smile. “Perhaps it is not so simple after all, but you have done well to assign such a veteran as Cernan to it.”
Damn him, Henkin though.
But what could he say to the grinning little one-legged martinet?
It was 1600 hours in Prague and it was snowy and already the light was failing at the end of the dreary day and they had not heard from Cernan for thirty-six hours. Was the money passed on? Was Miki in Cernan’s hands? Sixteen hundred hours Prague time would be 0900 in Chicago. It was happening right now but everything that happened was of no use if Henkin could not contact Cernan and make him do what he wanted him to do.
Gorkeho was still smiling and anger bubbled inside Henkin and he wanted to tell him, he wanted to order him—
Order him to do what?
But then, he could not say, could he?
Where the hell was Cernan anyway?
Mrs. Neumann put her hands in her lap and waited for Hanley. The blip from Eurodesk had arrived at six in the morning and Hanley had rushed down to Section from his apartment on the hill near the National Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue. The blip had been “ironed out” and the words rendered into clearspeak.
“There are only two possibilities,” Hanley said.
Mrs. Neumann said, “It is true or it is not true.”
Hanley frowned. “That’s obvious. The motive in either case is not obvious.”
“Eurodesk has received a message through the Secret section of the Czech trade mission in Brussels. Without going into all of it, there is a trade proposed. The life of an American agent for the return of a Czech citizen.”
Hanley said, “Anna Jelinak. I still have an incomplete report. It seems she’s the little girl who defected in Chicago more than a week ago. I don’t really see any connection at all.”
Mrs. Neumann glanced at the clock on her desk, next to the photograph of Leo taken two years ago at Yellowstone Park. Behind Leo was the geyser Old Faithful. The photo had amused both of them and it was her favorite of all the photos she had taken of her beloved over the years.
“It’s nearly eight A.M.,” she said. “When do they want an answer?”
“Twelve hours. That makes it five P.M. our time, eleven P.M. Brussels time.”
“And midnight in Prague. What is behind this, Hanley? This is so bizarre.”
“Coincidence, except that it is usually never coincidence,” he said. “They describe November, they say he is ‘damaged’ but alive and they propose the trade. They don’t mention Miki but we assume they have Miki as well.”
“Then the Czechs hit our train, not Colonel Ready.”
Hanley had been over that ground in his mind waiting for Mrs. Neumann to show up. “Or Colonel Ready works for the Czechs,” he said. “Or Colonel Ready hit the train as we assumed and sold both bodies to the Czechs. The Czechs are interested in Miki and not terribly interested in November. Or, to put it differently, more interested in obtaining Anna Jelinak.”
“But that’s something we can’t agree to.”
“Mrs. Neumann, we don’t even know what the aspects of this Jelinak case are. What is the connection between Miki and Anna Jelinak? They are both in the theater world, the films — perhaps Anna is part of the puzzle picture we thought we obtained in bringing Miki across. I’ve only had an hour, we are cross-checking the Competition to see if they have an interest in this Anna Jelinak.”
“Do they?”
Hanley pulled his lower lip. “There are inconsistencies. There is a Langley man named Willis assigned to the matter but in an observatory way. I don’t know why Langley is impacted when a little girl sees weeping statues in Chicago. And I don’t understand why they pick her out of the blue as the trade for Devereaux. Devereaux for Anna Jelinak, all delivered to Eurodesk by messenger from the Czech trade mission in Brussels at eleven o’clock at night.”
“Is there any chance of making the trade?”
Hanley sighed. He was the operations director and Mrs. Neumann was chief of Section. Mrs. Neumann set the “guidelines” for operation but that was not what she was asking now. She was asking for all the possibilities. Did she really want to know about black-bag jobs and how they are done? Hanley frowned again. Perhaps it was time to continue Mrs. Neumann’s education.
“Of course. We can simply disappear the little girl. It will take two men. The safest way is to use contractors and then flush the contractors. The next safest way is to take someone from the field — say someone like Tuesday in Ethiopia now — and bring him in, set the target, have the job finished in less than three days, and send him back to Ethiopia without really being involved in it. Then you put a negotiator of the highest level on this. I would say someone like me. You make certain the goods are as stated on the bill of lading and you make the trade. Not here, not in Brussels, some third place.”
“Everything you say breaks the law,” Mrs. Neumann said in her harsh whispery voice.
“Yes, Mrs. Neumann.” Hanley said it with mild words. “You ask for the possibility and you shrink from the payment. You ask me if a thing can be done and then, when I say it can be done, you don’t want to know it.”
Mrs. Neumann put her hand on the picture frame. Leo. It is so complicated, Leo, you would be as horrified as I am. Perhaps ignorance was bliss after all and knowledge was not power because it induced a sort of weakness.
“This all began with Miki,” she said. “He gave us hints and we were intrigued. Gullible. He said he knew about the Central Intelligence Agency and about dealings with arms merchants in the Middle East and how weapons were made and smuggled to the Afghans.… It was so intriguing, all of it. And the business about the films, about how the money was transferred back and forth between countries.… He lured us and suckered us and we fell for it so that we went outside our own channels and set up a senior intelligence officer and it all started collapsing after that.”
“This is not a morality play,” Hanley said. “This is merely real life. It is a fragmentary existence, and the scenario does not hold together because life is fragmentary and there is no scenario. The ethics are defined by the situation. We wanted Miki bad enough to do something about it and someone else wanted Miki bad enough to do something about it and our wills collided. There has been a certain amount of… breakage… as a result. Now it is at a pass where we are offered a simple trade. I think we would be foolish not to explore it.”
“How…”
“It is eight in the morning here, seven in Chicago, and we are trying to find out the status of this matter with the Jelinak girl. I think we should be prepared to give the Czech mission an answer before their deadline. It does not necessarily have to be the final answer or even the truth. But it keeps open the possibility that Devereaux stays alive a few more hours in the event that he is alive at all. That is time that is given to Stowe and his agents to find Devereaux, find his status out.”
“And Rita Macklin?”
He snapped his fingers. “An annoyance, nothing more serious. Mason follows her and she goes in circles. I leave Mason to her in the event Colonel Ready reappears. I knew that was your wish. But she’s of no consequence in this, now that we know—”
“We should tell her. That he is alive.”
Hanley glared at her and she blushed. Of course it was foolish.
“All right, Hanley.” She hesitated. She had always been so certain and in the months since she had become chief of Section, she had learned hesitation. “We’ll wait. To see what we can learn in Chicago and what Stowe can learn.”