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.
David Mason turned over in bed and reached for the telephone.
“Yes.”
His voice was dull. He squinted at his watch. It was seven.
“She telephoned the concierge from her room for a taxi.”
“All right,” he said.
He replaced the receiver and got up quickly in the darkness of the hotel room. He pulled on his trousers and buttoned his shirt. He slipped into his shoes and grabbed a raincoat. He had come to Brussels without a raincoat and he’d bought one the first day. It wasn’t raining at the moment. The dawn was full of edgy clouds.
The last thing of all, he slipped the pistol into the pocket of the raincoat. The pistol was small, a Walther PPK automatic, and he almost carried it now as a matter of habit, the way he was taught.
He took the stairs to the lobby and saw Rita Macklin at the concierge’s desk. He waited at the edge of the lobby until she crossed to the entrance of the hotel and stepped outside. He crossed the lobby after her and saw the concierge catch his eye. He nodded once, almost imperceptibly. He felt the pistol in his pocket.
She was waiting on the curb in front of the Amigo Hotel. The sky was wet with clouds.
She smiled at David Mason. “You never sleep.”
He grinned. “They teach you that at the Acme Spy School. One of the first lessons.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
“We can do it two ways. I can follow you in another cab, but that’s expensive and I don’t speak French very well. Cherchez la femme. Well, I suppose that would be good enough.”
“I can’t decide about you.”
“They teach you that as well.”
“You must be a good student.”
“Not particularly. But when the alternative is cleaning out toilet bowls with a toothbrush, I get motivated.”
“The youth of America.”
“You’re about my age.”
“Years older. Centuries older, David.” But it was not said with unkindness. She took his arm. “Get a taxi.”
The Peugeot crept to the entrance and they slid into the backseat. “Gare Central,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“Bruges.”
“What’s in Bruges?”
“A man who can be bought and who says he knows about him.”
David Mason was silent. He frowned. What were his orders exactly? Hanley chewed him out pretty well the last time, considering it was a coded message and might be on file somewhere. He had lied to Hanley, not for the first time. Why was he letting her have such a free rein anyway? To find out what she could find out? Or because he was in love with her?
He thought about that.
She was Devereaux’s girl, he had decided, and that might be part of the reason he was in love with her. They were chasing a ghost if he was dead and he was… what exactly? The heroic younger brother? He had read the book when he was fourteen and it had filled him with warm pleasure — it was How Green Was My Valley. When his brother dies, young Owen goes to live in the house of his brother’s widow and acts as surrogate husband for her. Not to sleep with her but to do the manly things. It was a child’s dream. He did not want him dead, of course.
She had taken his arm and asked him to call a cab. Owen Morgan, a man you are. He smelled her presence. She smelled of wildflowers and milk. She wore no perfume and he felt embarrassed at his thoughts and blushed and the Peugeot made a sweeping curve in front of the central station up the hill above the center of Brussels.
To hell with Hanley. He knew he had to see this thing out the way he had started.
“He talked to a friend of a friend of mine.”
“Section should hire you for Eurodesk.”
“There is no Section.” She turned to him and her utterly green eyes were deep and cold. “You forgot.”
“I never forget.” He felt stung by his brother’s widow, as though he had become a little boy again. “I just don’t believe in all the bullshit.”
“The booga-booga,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He called it the booga-booga.” She had said it before to him but didn’t remember. She kept recalling him, saying secret thoughts out loud as though to make his presence in her mind stronger. Would she forget him? Would she remember him so clearly in twenty or thirty years? She still made him part of the past tense. It made her strong enough to sleep at night. The grief was always there, yawning and sore like a throat that has been abused by sobs. It hurt too much but it had to keep hurting during the day. Only at night did she have to be numb. She had to have a drink and not think about him being around. Not see him in the corner of her room. Not hear his voice. Not smell him next to her in bed. That was past; that was gone. Except she kept looking for him because she had to know what really happened. But keep him part of the past tense to make it easier when she found out. Don’t make him alive in mind or she would break into a thousand pieces, knowing he was alive and that she couldn’t find him.
“The old black magic,” Mason said. “We get so careful being careful about the small shit, we forget about the big shit.”
She took his arm and her hand was strong.
“I can’t shake you. Not yet. I can shake you when I want to shake you, but I don’t want you running all over Belgium screwing it up for me. I don’t forget about the big stuff either. You’re Section, you’re another goddamn spook and I don’t care if he got you a job or if you’re his long-lost son or what you are. I don’t give a damn about you or the spooks. I have to find out about him. There’s some connection with those two fags at the Club Tres and what happened. Whatever happened. You won’t say but I get the idea now.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a good trick, David. You say that so honestly that anyone could believe it. But I don’t.”
“We live in an age of unbelief,” he said.
The driver said something about the meter in French. Mason paid and they slid out of the cab and walked into the grimy depth of the central station. The place was full of people, some of whom had slept the night. The walls were dirty. Everything about Brussels struck him as shabby and a little grand, like royalty fallen on hard times. He liked the city because it had so few pretensions, even when it was quite beautiful.
He took her arm again to stop her. She turned to look at him and waited.
“The man in Bruges,” Mason said.
“He said a man like Devereaux was in a house there four days ago,” Rita said.
“What else?”
“The ‘what else’ is when I meet him in Bruges. You stay away from me in Bruges, David, I mean it.”
“All right.”
“I’ll get a room there for tonight, when I meet him. There are steps to the meeting, and if he sees you he won’t go through with it.”
“I see,” Mason said.
They bought tickets and waited for the train on the platform beneath the station concourse.
“Devereaux is alive,” David Mason said. He said it for himself and for her and he didn’t see the tears in her eyes.
She thought her heart would break.
19
Cernan took out the weapon. It was the very good Czech remake of the original Israeli Uzi submachine gun which was the weapon of choice for bodyguards and terrorists. He clicked the action and pointed it at Devereaux’s bare chest.
“Well, I receive a message and then another message.”