The Infant of Prague

Devereaux held her. They stood in the kitchen and he held her for a long time and felt her strong body beneath his fingers. He inhaled her scent, he pressed into her curves. She clung to him and she was crying a little, more from a sense of relief than anything else. He was alive! They might have been survivors of some tragedy who suddenly realize they are still alive when all around them are dead.

The kitchen was growing dark. The light of the brief November day moved from gray to gloaming purple, colored by a distant setting sun that dropped into the clear from the clouds.

“Why?” he said at last.

“I had to come after you. I thought you were alive. And then I thought Colonel Ready had you and I had to kill him. I had to come after you.”

She told him about Club Tres on La Grand Place in Brussels and about the man named Reiter who described Colonel Ready to her. She had come after Colonel Ready to kill him. She took out the opened knife in her raincoat and he smiled. He held it a moment.

“It’s a little knife,” he said. He closed the blade and put it in his pocket like a souvenir.

It was. She saw it. It was absurd. It was as though she had reasoned everything out but it had only been a dream and when she awoke — now — she realized how absurd the dream had been.

“My God, where are we? Can we go? Is it over?” she said.

He held her and looked at her in the fading light. Her eyes were so bright. He touched her lips with his fingers and she opened her mouth. He kissed her. It was a deep kiss and it went on for a long time, with hunger and hurt at both ends of the kiss. She strained against him so that he could feel her breasts and the warmth in her belly.

Night came heavily around the house and pressed against the windows. The men had gone, Miki had gone, they were alone in the world.

“Can we leave now?”

Devereaux shook his head.

“Everyone is gone,” she said.

Devereaux shook his head again. He felt the sense of the others still around the house. Perhaps they were in the shed where they had taken Miki. Perhaps one or both of the big Czechs were outside now, having a cigarette.

“Who are they?”

“Cernan knew about you. Cernan knew you were coming after me.”

She was a little angry now. “Dammit. I thought you were dead.”

“Maybe I am,” he said.

“Damn you,” she said. “Colonel Ready—”

“Had me,” he finished. “Sold me. Sold the defector I was carrying across. To these men. Who have been sitting here a couple of days, waiting for something. And then you came along. So I think we’re going to know pretty soon.”

“Who are they?”

“Czech Secret Service. Come to take Miki back to Prague. He was the defector. The one I went after. The night I left you. And didn’t tell you.”

“And what are they going to do with you?”

“I thought they were going to kill me,” he said. He stared at her and touched her cheek with his hand. His touch was so gentle that she scarcely felt it. “I never thought I would see you again.” His words were as clumsy as his touch was sure. He could never tell her things because all the words sounded false to him, as though they had been used too many times by other people who did not mean them.

“Dev.” Her voice caught. She wanted to crawl inside him, to wear his skin, to be so completely part of him that when he died, she died.

They heard a sound on the porch outside the kitchen. Devereaux dropped his hands. He limped to the window. She made a sound and put her hand to her mouth.

“They’re out there talking,” he said.

“You limp like Ready. Like that terrible day in Lausanne he came to kill you.”

“He hasn’t killed me yet.” The voice was flat and cold and the words didn’t comfort her.

Cernan came into the dim room. He did not carry a gun. He looked at Rita, then at Devereaux.

“You see?” Cernan said to Devereaux.

Devereaux inclined his head. He understood.

“I cannot stay in Belgium forever. If I go back to Prague, it is without you. If I go back to Prague, it is without this woman.”

Devereaux said nothing. Rita crossed the room, reached for him. But now his body was set, cold, apart. She could not cling to him.

“She loves you,” Cernan said.

“And what do I do?” Devereaux said.

“You understand?” Cernan said.

“I think so.”

“I have maybe two days. Maybe three days. Anna must be delivered safe, delivered by you here.”

“I understand.”

“If you cannot—”

Devereaux said nothing.

“I wish you no harm,” he said to both of them. “It is a way a matter must be done.”

“Why does Henkin want contact with you?”

Cernan stared, thought about it. He shrugged. “I think it is to kill Miki. That is what I think. That is why I think about Anna. I talk to Miki today.”

“You were a long time in the shed,” Devereaux said.