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 make them an offer before tonight?”
She nodded. “And make them an offer.”
Three men walked into the foyer of the building on Seminary Avenue at three minutes after nine in the morning. It was 1603 in Prague and Henkin had finished yelling at Gorkeho.
The three men studied the mailboxes for a moment and then one of them nodded. A fourth man sat in a car at the curb. A fifth man waited in a car in the alley behind the three-flat.
Six minutes earlier, a large tow truck had careened down Seminary and smacked into four parked cars, doing severe damage to them. The policeman in the parked squad car up the block providing security for Anna Jelinak and Stephanie Fields had noticed the incident and started after the tow truck that turned west on Webster at the corner.
The three men in the foyer had sledgehammers. They walked up the steps past the unoccupied flats on the first two floors. First Floor went to work at the commodities exchange at five-thirty in the morning; Second Floor went to work at IBM at 7:55 A.M.
Anna was dressed in white and looked like a little girl. They were going to court again. Anna did not have to wear a ribbon in her hair. Stephanie said that it was too much of an effect. In fact, Stephanie knew that Anna did not want to seem to be a little girl.
Stephanie was finishing her tea in the kitchen. She wore a gray pinstriped suit and silk blouse with a small black tie. Her briefcase was worn: It was brown leather and carried her initials and it had been a gift from her brother in Cleveland when she was graduated from law school six years before.
They heard the sound at the front door and looked at each other with fear draining all the color from their faces. Anna screamed then, one long piercing yell.
Stephanie grabbed the wall telephone. It was dead. She hit the receiver and it was still dead. She glanced out the back window and saw the man in the alley. The sledgehammer cracked the oak door at the front of the hall. Two more whacks and the door was open and broken.
The men crowded into the narrow corridor and one went into the front room and the second man went into the first bedroom. They looked in the bathroom and the first man ran to the kitchen and saw them.
Stephanie had turned the locks and the back door was nearly open when the first man got into the kitchen.
She saw the man, saw Anna, saw she could not open the door in time. She grabbed the black sawtooth knife she had just used to cut the bread. She pushed Anna behind her to the place where the kitchen counter met the stove top.
“Get out of here,” she said in a low, flat voice. She held the knife the right way, close in to her body. The real knife fighter holds it wide, but that is when the other man does not have a sledgehammer. She held it close and watched the room fill up with the others.
“Don’t hurt her,” Stephanie said. Her voice was calm.
“Nobody gets hurt,” the first one said. “That’s really up to you, though.”
The voice didn’t have any threat in it. The speaker had a thin face and flat nickel eyes.
“Get out right now, there’s a policeman outside, he’s waiting for us. You don’t know who we are.”
“She’s gonna talk you to death, George,” the second one said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Put the knife down and get out of the way.”
Stephanie held the knife. The first one whacked her arm with the sledge and her arm broke and the knife fell out of her hand. She blacked out and slipped to the floor, the pain all white in her head.
“Why’d you call me ‘George’?” the first one said. “Now I gotta whack her.”
“Don’t whack her. Nobody has to get whacked.”
George thought about it.
He looked at the crumpled body.
“I guess so,” George said. “There’s a lot of Georges.”
“She saw you though,” said the third one.
George thought about it.
“Yeah, you’re right. And she’s a lawyer. She could remember better than a lot of people.”
“Yeah,” said the third one.
“Well, let’s get the kid out of here,” said George.
They grabbed her arm. George stared at her and Anna said, in a sob, “Please do not hurt Stephanie. I love Stephanie.”
“I won’t hurt her, she’ll be all right,” George said. “You’ve got to go downstairs now.”
The other two men led Anna through the apartment, past the shattered front door, and down the stairs. George bent down over Stephanie’s crumpled form and shot her then, very clean, once through the base of the skull. The sound was small, even in the quiet apartment, because of the silencer screwed onto the .22 automatic. Anna never heard a thing.
18
Philip Petty, the manager, spoke to Jans: “The woman who came in alone tonight?”
“Who else would I mean?”
“Well, the problem with what you’re talking about is that she might be connected with some agency we’re not aware of.”
“I’ve looked into that.”
“You have pretty good sources,” Philip agreed. They were drinking coffee and brandy in the tavern of the Club Tres. It was a little past dawn and they had not locked the front door although the last customer had left two hours ago. They stood on each side of the wide oak bar with their shirt collars open.
“She’s a very highly paid freelance journalist. Everyone is a freelance journalist but not a lot of them make any money.”
“Who pays her?”
“Legitimate sources. American magazines. She has a contract with one of the weekly magazines.”
“But this place is not news.”
“Well, you’re being coy again, Philip. You don’t want me to speak plainly.”
“I do want you to speak plainly, Jans. I just don’t like to jump into something if there’s some way to avoid it. You know that being cautious is—”
“I know. So I haven’t proposed anything yet.”
“You’ve talked about killing her.”
“I’ve talked about having her killed. I’m not talking about you and me killing her. I’ve talked about talking about her to someone.”
“That guy with the scar. I wouldn’t like to cross him. You know what he did with the driver? I guess the driver didn’t obey some instruction or something. I wouldn’t cross someone like him. You think he would be interested in that woman?”
“Maybe he would be. She’s talking about the man, the one we didn’t like. The American. He was a fag-basher if you ask me. I didn’t like him at all.”
“You’re right.”
Philip poured the brandy.
“She might not even be interested in the operation the other night.”
“Come on, Philip. It is not a coincidence she comes here. Not so soon after what happened.”
“Nothing happened, I remind you. We’re the go-between. I didn’t like him at all. He ordered me around as though I were a servant. As if I didn’t exist.”
“Oh, you didn’t like him? That’s a good one. You liked him well enough. I saw the way you looked at him.”
“He ordered me around. And he didn’t trust anyone.”
“Well, Philip, he was right about that, wasn’t he?”
“The trouble is, I don’t really want to know any more about what happened than we know now.”
“We don’t know anything. We provided a car and a driver.”
“Well, I don’t want to go beyond that.”
“Are you going to call him or should I call him?”
“I’ll call him. I just want to finish my coffee.”
“Don’t get drunk before you call him.”
“I never get drunk.”
“Sometimes when you’re like this you get drunk.”
“I never get drunk,” Philip repeated. “I’ll call the man with the scar and I’ll tell him about the woman with the red hair who is asking all the questions, pumping old Reiter at the bar last night. He was enjoying himself, Reiter was. The woman might interest our friend; maybe we can make a little more money, set something up for her to make it easy for the man.”