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.
Rita Macklin registered at the Hotel Adornes in the oldest part of the city. The hotel huddled on one of the canals less than a mile from the central square of the town. The hotel was specified, the time of the meeting was specified. She scarcely had time to wash up before the meeting.
The man came to see her in the lobby of the hotel at one. He nodded to her sitting on the couch in the little lobby and he went to the front desk and ordered a bottle of Jupiler beer from the woman behind the desk. She went into the kitchen and got the beer and a cold glass. It was that kind of a place. He went to the couch and sat down next to her and poured the strong beer steadily in the glass.
“You weren’t followed,” he said.
“Not here. You know I was followed from Brussels, but I made him go to the Holiday Inn and I came here. I wasn’t followed here.”
“We watched you. We saw him at the train station. Who is he?”
“You know all about him,” she said. “If you don’t know about him, you don’t know anything about this business and I’m wasting my time.”
The man, who wore a seaman’s outfit with pea coat and stocking cap, smiled at that. He had a red beard and merry eyes. “We know about him.”
She sat with her hands on her jeans. She wore jeans and a sweater and she had no baggage with her, other than the inevitable raincoat. The lobby was small and plain and the furniture was comfortable on the wooden floors. The woman who owned the hotel was in the breakfast room, tending the fire.
It was raining now but no one noticed. It rains in Belgium and then stops and then rains again and then stops and no one notices after a while.
“The man had gray hair and gray eyes. He was hurt, I know that. His hand was swollen, this one, and he moved with a limp. He looked pretty banged up. I think he was hit by a car. That’s what I heard about it.”
“But alive,” she said. Very small voice.
“The last I heard.”
“When was that?”
“Three days ago. He left the house where they kept him. He went away in a big car, maybe a Mercedes-Benz.”
“Where is he now?”
“What about the money?”
She gave him the money. He counted it. The woman who owned the hotel glanced at them from the breakfast room, but she could not leave it because she had the fire going strong. The good smell of the burning dried wood filled the hotel and made it seem very warm.
“It might be harder,” the seaman said with a smile.
“How hard?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
“All right,” she said.
“That was easy. I should have asked for more.”
She stared at him. “Don’t get cute.”
“Tough girl, huh?”
“Tough,” she said.
“Well, he was pretty banged up, like I said.”
“You said. He’s alive though.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You said it. You want two grand for it.”
“Yes. Well. I’m not sure. But it’s a good bet. The problem is your keeper. How do we get rid of him?”
“I told you I could shake him. I told you and I did it. Now leave that up to me.”
“If he queers the deal, that’s it. No more contact. We’re in enough trouble now.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and my partners, you might say.”
The voice was light, the accent was English learned the English way.
“I can shake him.”
“You have to. We don’t want any trouble and we don’t want nothing to do with agents.”
“How do you come by all this information?”
“Bruges is small, very small. You’re a sailor, you understand how small it is and any fiddle that goes on, you learn about it right off. Sailors talk to sailors and now and then they have something worth talking about.”
“So you know where he is? You take me there.”
“I don’t take nobody no place. You get your money and you go get yourself a bicycle over at the train station. You get a map and you go out of Bruges and you go out along the canal that goes down to Damme. It’s the old town. You do that about four this afternoon, when there’s still light.”
“And what happens when I get there?”
“You’ll see. See, if you shake your friend, it’ll show up when you go for your bicycle ride. I think—”
“I haven’t ridden a bicycle since I was fourteen years old.”
The merry eyes smiled even more. “Learn.” His voice was abrupt. “Two thousand dollars, girl. You bring it along and you learn to ride a bicycle.”
The sailor put down his beer and got up and walked out of the front door without another word. He walked along the canal a way and past a Citroën parked at the curb. He walked along the canal until the Citroën came up and he got into the back without a word.
“It’ll work. She’ll be alone.”
“Good,” the other man in back said. And they both looked out their side windows at the rain as the car splashed along the cobblestones, out toward the edge of the old city.
She remembered how to ride a bicycle almost right away.
The baggage handler in the station had been surprised to have a customer for the rental bicycles in November but he didn’t say so. He had very good English and she was an American and pretty. He said she would get wet riding a bicycle. It was a poor little joke but he always used it. It meant he was friendly.
She rode the circular route through the park that goes around the south end of the town and up to the west, where she could pick up the straight canal that goes right to the sea at Zeebrugge. The parkway along the canal outside the town was marked by a long straight bicycle path and a long straight road separated from the path by a row of trees. The branches were bare and the grass was turning brown. Farm fields fell away in straight dimensions to the flat horizon. She wore a red beret she’d bought in town and the rain came down on her face and made it shine. She pumped hard against the pedals and there was no one on the path. The gloaming light was almost gone.
She had told David she was going back to Brussels and would meet him in the bar at the Amigo at seven. She called him from the train station, where she bought a ticket for Brussels and made a fuss about buying a copy of the Herald-Tribune and asking everyone where she could catch the train for Brussels. She went to the platform and got on the train at the last minute and got off the train just as the doors closed. She went back around the platform and over a small knoll into the grass and picked up her bicycle and rode through the parkway around the south end of Bruges to the canal path.
The car lights picked her up on the path. The car was coming from Damme and parked about four hundred feet west of her and waited for her. She knew the car was for her.
She slowed as she approached. She saw it was a gray Mercedes. She felt her body becoming very warm and her eyes were wide and a sense of fear replaced the tentative sense that it was all hopeless. She was really going to see him. The adrenaline surged in her. She was close. She was this close. She was terribly afraid and the fear made a sick knot in her belly but she knew she would go through with it, right to the bad final moment.
She got off the bicycle and walked it up the grassy slope to the road and leaned it against a tree. She locked the rear wheel with the automatic lock from the seat.
She got in the car without a word.
The other man was dressed in black and the driver did not turn his head. They swung around in the empty roadway and headed west again, toward the sea. No one spoke. The second man in the backseat next to her lit a cigarette and blew the smoke against the side window. He seemed bored.