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.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Shut up,” he said.
She put her hands on her knees. The bottoms of her jeans were wet. The rain had lasted all day. The fields were matted by the constant rain and the black earth was opened here and there where a farmer had finally turned the field for spring to come.
She held the knife open in the pocket of her raincoat. It was just a Swiss Army knife, the kind with a red handle that is not a real Army knife at all but the kind that all the tourists buy. The blade was two and a half inches. If she had planned it out, she would have bought a real knife in Brussels but it had only come to her at the last moment, when she talked to the seaman in the Hotel Adornes, when she knew what she had to do.
So when Colonel Ready came to her, she would shove the knife into his throat.
She was certain Colonel Ready was waiting for her at the other end of the ride. Devereaux was dead; Rita was dead; at least Colonel Ready would be dead as well and David Mason would get the note at the Hotel Adornes and understand what Rita knew and why she had to go alone and kill Colonel Ready.
She had known it for certain from the moment in the Club Tres when the old man — Reiter — told her about the man with the interesting scar on his cheek that went from his ear to the corner of his mouth. The interesting man who had talked business with the two fag waiters.
Colonel Ready had Devereaux and that meant he was dead. In a little while, Rita would be dead, too. It was stupid and pointless, but it was the way it had to be because she loved Devereaux more than her life. It was the only way she could love.
The car pulled up at a little house at the end of a road in the middle of fields. There was a gray Citroën there as well, in a small shed behind the house. She got out of the car and let the second man lead her up the single stone step to the door. She felt the knife in her hand in the coat.
The door opened.
The light was small in the wooden kitchen.
She had the knife and felt the blade and waited to see better. Then she saw the hulking shape at the door on the far side of the kitchen.
She stared and dared not speak.
“Rita,” he said.
It was the voice she thought was dead. She thought she might be dreaming the voice.
Devereaux said her name again.
21
She opened the red thermos and poured out a little chicken soup. Chicken soup. Mrs. Neumann smiled for the first time. Dear Leo. Leo had driven down to Fourteenth Street from Bethesda, where they lived in a house off the Old Georgetown Road near Wisconsin Avenue. Leo had delivered a thermos full of homemade chicken soup.
“You’re not gonna never come home, home is gonna come to you,” he said to her in the visitors’ lobby, where he had to wait for her.
“Leo, my love,” she rasped and hugged him and kissed him on the lips. They were married so long that no one believed they could still love each other. Chicken soup was like flowers.
“You sound terrible.”
“The same old cold,” she said.
“The same on the phone. I made the soup. You ever coming home?”
“Things are… things are confused.”
“You got people work for you, you can’t do everything yourself.”
“Leo. I want to come home, with all my heart. I want to put on that nightgown and have you make love to me and be all warm with you in the bed. I want to sleep a week.”
“You don’t get away with sleeping right off the bat, honey.”
She tasted the soup and thought of Leo and let the thought warm her. Then the door opened and Leo was gone and the soup lost its taste.
Hanley sat down. He had not gone home in two days either and he looked it. He had no one waiting for him in the old apartment on Massachusetts Avenue.
There was unspoken intimacy between them. The matters were grave and they spoke in a kind of shorthand.
“Mason found a note she left him. She said she had a rendezvous with Colonel Ready and she was going to kill him and he was supposed to follow after her. He found a bicycle she rented on a path outside Bruges.”
“Belgium police.”
“Yes. He made the notification. Just a tourist, met this girl, was supposed to meet her for dinner in some suburb and she didn’t show and he found her bicycle. He’s a correspondent for Central News Associates.”
“They know that cover if they check with their own intelligence people.”
“It’s the best we can do for now. Besides, it’s mostly true. Straight police case.”
“Poor girl. She knew he was dead and it wasn’t true at the time at all and now she’s dead. The whole thing is blown.”
“Our Pennsylvania cousins keep in touch.” Hanley meant the FBI. It was the newest jargon, fitted for the FBI building on Pennsylvania Avenue. “They’re absolutely bonkers about the mess in Chicago. I think it’s genuine. No trace of the girl. Not a trace. And Langley?” She had not spoken but Hanley was talking as fast as his thoughts were processed. “Langley is uncomfortable. They make little probes in Brussels, here, Chicago. They made contact with the Czechs a couple of days before Anna disappeared in Chicago. The backgrounder is Langley wants the girl sent back home. Or did. Why is Langley involved at all? Because we had suspicions from the beginning. And Miki gave us a hint. This is bigger than a defection and we knew it all along and we didn’t tell Devereaux.” The last remark was the closest Hanley was willing to come to express regret.
“Finding the little girl really is up to the cousins. This is their business,” Mrs. Neumann rasped again.
“But we can’t get back our agent until she is found. And we don’t even know if the Czech contact in Brussels is interested in trading anymore.” The thought crossed both of their minds.
“Someone walks into a house and snatches a little girl and murders a woman and that is just possible, isn’t it?” Mrs. Neumann was not speaking to Hanley. “Why? Why, for God’s sake?”
“Why tie Devereaux’s return to getting Anna back to Prague?” Hanley said. “I don’t understand any of it. We messaged back through the couriers to whoever has Devereaux, but there hasn’t been a reply.”
“Did you try again?”
“Yes.”
“What about the woman in Chicago? The television person?” Mrs. Neumann asked. She was so tired. Her life had become confined to this room in the corner of this vast, dreadful building. The smell of the bureaucracy filled the corridors. It was musty and mean. She spent her life now asking questions and never getting the full answers.
“The cousins are on that. Working it to death, but Kay Davis doesn’t know any more than they do. The dead man was someone who apparently knew someone on the janitorial staff, some sort of juice loan or something, and that was how he gained access to her — to Kay Davis’—apartment. That’s all anyone knows.”
“All anyone knows is nothing. We have lost an agent, we have botched a simple defection, now we’re probably responsible for the death of that woman.”
“The one in Chicago—”
“Rita Macklin,” she said. “Is this all some attack on Section? Is this part of—”
Hanley felt the same shiver of paranoia. The trouble with paranoia in intelligence is that it is often truth disguised lightly by neurotic delusions.
“Stowe and Eurodesk in Brussels pinpoint the wreck of the train to the driver. His name was Klaus Beng and he was freelance. He was vetted by Club Tres. His body was found washed up in the harbor at Zeebrugge four hours ago. Chaser is pursuing the Ready connection.”
Mrs. Neumann closed her eyes. She thought of Leo and she thought of sleeping in Leo’s bed. She opened her eyes and there was chicken soup in a thermos. And Hanley across the desk from her.