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.
“What would have happened to Miki if he had made his way to America?”
“He would have been milked,” Devereaux said.
“Of course.”
“That’s all.”
“You said I was the connection between Anna’s disappearance and Miki,” Cernan said.
Devereaux waited.
“Is it too much pain to walk a little way with me?” Cernan said.
“No,” Devereaux said. Slowly, down the shabby street, the two men strolled. They walked toward the center of the city. A police car cruised past and the policemen looked at them. For a long time, they did not speak. The street was cluttered with shops of stamp dealers and junk peddlers and little souvenir stands that sold statuettes of the Mannekin-Pis. This part of the city seemed full of odd, useless enterprises.
“I am the connection,” Cernan said. “They wish Miki dead because of all he knows. And for this, they kidnap Anna Jelinak because she is my daughter. Is she not harmed?”
“She is harmed, Cernan,” Devereaux said.
“How is she hurt?”
“In her mind,” Devereaux said. “She needs her father to talk to her.”
“Who does this to her?”
Devereaux said, “Who wants Miki dead?”
Cernan slapped his hands behind his back and walked like a policeman on patrol. His shoulders were hunched and he frowned instinctively, a frown to frighten schoolboys.
“She said her father was killed by the police long ago,” Devereaux said.
“Anna.” His voice was sad. “She is a child of dreams. How can I tell her in all those years when I would see Elena that I am her father? How can I talk to her when I am too much a coward to marry her mother? I was young in the Party and full of ideals then. I was part of the new country, the new revolution to sweep aside the caste of privilege. Were you ever so?”
Devereaux stopped. They stood at the window of a tearoom where people sat in the gloom of lush surroundings and ate delicate foods.
“Who wants you to kill Miki?”
“After you leave, I am made a visit by Colonel Ready. He wants this woman, your woman who loves you so much. I tell him he must get my daughter first. You see, I am not such a good person. I want something, I lie for it, I betray for it, it does not matter to me. I have so many ideals that I have no scruples. Do you understand me? I can see Anna from afar, I can see her stand by the Hradcany Castle, where they make a film, and I say to myself, ‘It’s all right, Cernan, you have done your best for your daughter. You have opened all the doors for her and given her privilege. If you can’t acknowledge her, well, that is just a little thing.’ It is no little thing, Devereaux.”
Devereaux saw the broken place inside the man. He decided to hurt Cernan, to make him give up Miki.
“When they had her,” Devereaux said, “they abused her. They took her clothes off and made photographs of her. She told me that much. She said no one in the world loved her. Then, after a while, she said that God loved her. I just listened to her, but she had to tell me. She said she was sure God loved her, even if God let bad things happen to her. That’s when she told me about the men who held her and made her take her clothes off.”
Cernan did not fight the tears.
He stood solid and alone and took the words like blows. But Devereaux was not through.
“I listened to her all night long, all across the ocean. We were the only two people in the passenger section. She had to tell me things. She said that she had a statue of the Infant of Prague and that she saw the statue weep for her. She told me about her father being killed by the police, she said the woman who said she was her mother was not her mother. She said her real mother would have loved her.”
“What do you want from me?”
Devereaux stopped at the cry from the man. The empty, shabby street around them seemed frozen in this time and place forever.
“I want Rita and I want Miki. I want to know about Colonel Ready.”
“I told him to go after Anna, the same I told you. He said he had many contacts in America. I didn’t trust you, I trusted no one. Except Gorkeho, who is now to be arrested. All the idealists get arrested finally, until there are no ideals left at all.”
“The man who wants to kill Miki took Anna and all the bad things that happened to her are because of him,” Devereaux said. His voice had no mercy for the other man. “When they came to take her, they killed the lady who had taken her in. She said she asked them not to kill her. One of them hit the woman with a sledgehammer and knocked her down. They took Anna down to a car and they waited for the last one left in the apartment. When he came downstairs and got in the car, she said she looked at his eyes and she knew that the woman was dead. She’s seen all this in the last four days.”
“You are a barbaric people. Americans kill and destroy and think nothing of it. Nothing is sacred to you, not even children,” Cernan said. His eyes glittered in the dull morning light because of the tears.
“Who is the barbarian? The father who does not tell his daughter who he is? The man who kills Miki for a corrupt master?”
“Proof,” Cernan said. “He said he wanted proof. He wanted Miki’s finger. He said to cut off Miki’s finger when I killed him.”
Cernan took the little jewelry box from his pocket and handed it to Devereaux.
Devereaux opened the box. The finger was waxy and the ruby ring was now too large for it.
“Miki is dead,” Devereaux said.
“So it appears,” Cernan said.
The two men looked at the finger in the box and Devereaux closed it and handed it back to Cernan.
“The little girl is in a car in Brussels. Arrange for me to have Rita.”
“Rita is waiting,” Cernan said. “It is not so far to Zeebrugge. You know the way. You can be there in an hour. I think you know the way.”
Devereaux stared at Cernan. “This isn’t all, is it?”
“What is R Section?”
“It does not exist,” Devereaux said.
“Miki said he wanted to go out, that he did not trust CIA because CIA is involved in this matter. I said to him, ‘Why trust any of them?’ But he had to trust this agency. R Section. What is it?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t exist.”
Cernan put the box in his pocket. “I have proof now for Henkin of Miki’s death. The proof is all that is ever required. So it is in every bureaucracy. Go to Zeebrugge now, Devereaux, and when you see Rita Macklin, you make your signal and Anna is delivered to the embassy at Brussels.”
Cernan turned to go.
Devereaux spoke his name.
Cernan looked back. His face was drawn, empty.
“The little girl wants one person in the world who belongs to her,” he said. “I told her on the plane that her father was alive.”
“Why did you tell her?”
“Because she needed to know the truth. I told her that her father had been afraid for her for a long time and that now he wanted to tell her he loved her.”
Cernan made a small, wry smile. “I do not expect this of you, Devereaux.”
Devereaux did not speak.
“You said that if Rita Macklin is harmed, then you will kill Anna. It was not so, was it?”
Devereaux started at him with level, gray eyes. “Yes, Cernan. It was so. I would have killed her and then come to kill you. Don’t misjudge that. Even now, don’t misjudge that.”
The smile faded. Cernan thought a moment and shrugged, then stopped and turned back.
“You talk to her all night?”
“Yes. She fell asleep when the first light came near Ireland.”
“Then you tell me: this miracle. This was all an arrangement? Was this false, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“The men who kidnap her—”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she see a statue with tears?”
“She said she did.”