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.
“Does the position change you?” Hanley said.
“Yes.”
“All right,” he said. “I still make my protest.”
“Noted. The problem is too much secrecy. Agencies get in trouble because they get too clever. Devereaux is trouble for us out there. Bring him in and proceed with logic.”
“How do we do it?”
“Straight. We have reason to believe a man working for the Czechoslovakian Secret Service has entered the United States with the intention of tracking Anna Jelinak,” she said. The hoarse whispery voice was as neutral now as a government report. “Description. The usual. No. He is not with Section. We have an agent carried on the Mexico City morning report with Section named November. We keep this clear of Section.”
“And that is a deception,” Hanley said. “He could point this out.”
“Every person ever arrested claims he works for the CIA,” she said. There was a sadness to her voice he had not noticed before. Did the position of director really change you all that much? Or was it the prospect of facing chaos that changed you when you really longed to believe in the rule of logic, order, sanity?
“I’ll send out the notification.”
“Priority,” she said.
“I’ll do it myself,” he said softly. The room was darkened and only the lights of the television monitors and a small lamp at the corner of the desk softened the darkness. The litany of disasters was repeated silently on the three monitors as the evening news unfolded in three gospels. Was there one truth at the heart of the three readings?
Hanley sent the message to the agencies within twenty minutes. The alert was top secret but it was general so that all the agencies got the message in clearspeak.
Which is why, shortly before midnight, people in Los Angeles and New York — and Chicago — knew Devereaux was coming.
28
Al Buck kissed wife number two good-bye and smiled at Nana, who was six, and frowned at Jeremiah, who was thirteen, and opened the door of Apartment 19H and walked into his world. The elevator hurtled down eighteen floors to the lobby, there being no thirteenth floor in the square glass-walled building at 1345 N. Lake Shore Drive. He crossed the lobby, picked up the Tribune waiting at the security desk and let the doorman do his job. He stepped into the back of the stretch Lincoln and settled into the black leather. The television set was not on.
The fucking television set was not on.
He threw the paper down on the seat and leaned forward and knelt across the rear-facing seats and knocked at the divider glass.
The driver turned and opened the window.
It wasn’t the regular driver.
“I’ve got a standing order. The television is supposed to be on. You know who I am? You know where you’re taking me?” His face was a little red. It was a lousy way to start out the day.
Then he saw the gun.
The driver had the gun.
“What’s this?” Al Buck said.
“This is a gun,” the driver said.
“Is this a joke?”
“No. It’s a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson with a thirteen-shot double-action automatic. You kneel on the seat and keep your face close to the window and we’re going on a little drive.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Shut up.”
Al Buck held on to the back of the seat and the driver turned right at Division Street and Michigan Avenue. He went down Division past the shuttered nightclubs that looked shabby in bright daylight. He turned into an alley before they got to Rush Street and the car stopped. The driver said:
“Get in the front seat. With me.”
Al Buck got out of the car and the pistol was on him. He had never had a gun pointed at him. He thought of some situation like this. He could remember just about every television program he’d ever watched. There had been something similar in Mike Hammer, he thought. What did Stacy Keach do? Wasn’t it about rolling under the car? He shut the rear door and opened the front door. He slid onto the leather and slammed the door.
The driver wore a black hat and a black jacket and a white shirt and tie. He pushed the stick into “D” and rolled heavily down the alley to the corner, turned left and headed back toward Michigan Avenue. The day was so bright and warm for November that the men and women surging up and down the avenue seemed to have light steps, as though it was spring after a long winter. Miss Humphrey would be waiting for him. In a half hour, she would call his home. His wife would tell her the driver picked him up a half hour ago. Then they would dawdle some. It might be an hour more before they called the police.
The driver held the pistol in his lap. In Remington Steele—no, wasn’t it in The Enforcer? — Edward Woodward reached across and hit the driver hard in the kidney and dropped to the piece in one motion.
Al Buck sat very still. The limousine reached Lake Shore Drive and surged into the six-lane highway that runs along the lake. The lake was shrouded in fog because the water was still warmer than the air. There were clouds on the horizon like a line of sailing ships.
They went south, skimming the Loop and Grant Park. The driver turned off at Thirty-First Street on the South Side and meandered down side streets to an area of abandoned factories south of the Prairie Avenue historic district. Then they were bumping across open ground, south of Soldier Field and below the pilings that held up the roadway of the Drive. This was an abandoned place, Al Buck thought. And he knew he was going to die.
The driver stopped the car.
He turned to look at Al Buck and picked up the automatic pistol. He put the pistol in Al Buck’s face. “Open your mouth,” the driver said in a soft voice.
Al Buck opened his mouth.
The driver put the pistol on his tongue.
“I’ll ask you questions and you’ll tell me answers. If you get all the answers right, you go back to the office and say you were delayed. If you get the answers wrong, I kill you and put you in the trunk and drop the car at Lot C at O’Hare. Those are the only two scenarios today, Mr. Buck. You understand?”
Al Buck made a sound around the pistol barrel.
“Answer this one: Who told you to pull Kay Davis off the story about the Infant of Prague?”
Al Buck’s eyes went wide.
The driver took the pistol out of his mouth.
“What is this about? This is about some story? All this is about some story?” He licked his lips.
“Are you that naïve?” the driver asked.
“Easy. It’s just — well, it was Jules Bergen. He gave me a call the day we had our… misunderstanding… with Kay. He said he was getting hell from the Archbishop of New York about the story. You know the story was networked. He said the Archbishop said there were outbreaks of weeping statues in Queens. He said we should downplay the story, he said the Archbishop was a friend of his. That isn’t a secret. I told the FBI, they checked with the Archbishop, I think. I mean, that’s all there was to it.”
The driver said, “Who is Jules Bergen?”
“Are you kidding?” Al Buck smiled. “President of the network is who.”
“So you fired Kay Davis.”
“Are you a friend of hers? Look—”
“And why did you hire her back?”
“What is this?”
Devereaux shoved the barrel against his cheek and Al Buck’s eyes went down, trying to see the barrel below the level of vision. His eyes were wide again.
“You keep forgetting about the pistol,” Devereaux said.
“I won’t forget.”
“Why did you hire her back?”
“Because. Because Jules called me at home. He said he got my message that Kay was terminated and he said he didn’t want that, he said he didn’t want anyone to lose his job because of a private favor, and besides, it would make the network look bad if it came out. He said I was to make sure that she got her job back. So I got her job back. I thought that was really decent of Jules. He’s that kind of a guy. A decent guy. He’s on all the committees in New York. His wife has been very sick for years but he still takes her out.”