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.
“The way it was,” Devereaux repeated. “How will they handle it?”
“Quietly. Do you think they intend to call a press conference?”
“They have to handle it, Hanley. They really have to follow through, you know.”
“They will. We are the nudge. I don’t think the FBI director thinks well of you either. He wonders how you found the girl so quickly.”
“They were in Chicago, I told you. I was born there. You know about me, Hanley. I have friends in unsavory businesses there. The FBI talked to the wrong people. If they were really trying to find her, I mean.”
There was a long silence after that. Hanley yawned into the receiver. “We buy arms from our enemies and give arms to our friends. I really don’t understand.”
“You’re getting old. Or you believe too much.”
“Yes, perhaps that’s it. Both of those things. I never turn out to be as cynical as I would like to be.”
“I milked Miki yesterday. He has all sorts of interesting stories. He’s still a bit woozy. I bedded him down at the Hilton.”
“You’re not at the Hilton? I thought you were at the Hilton?”
“No. I have perverse tastes. I like small and noisy French hotels.”
“Is Miki all right?”
“Yes,” Devereaux said. “Why?”
“Colonel Ready,” Hanley said. “Our passport surveillance said he was a step behind you. He came into the States through O’Hare Airport thirty-six hours after you.”
Devereaux felt the cold again in himself. It was like passing into shadows. He said nothing.
“We’ll be in Dulles by one,” he said at last.
“I’ll be there.”
He replaced the receiver and went back to the bed. He looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and she breathed softly. After living on the edge all these days, they had made shuddering love in the large, soft bed. All of the lovemaking had rushed out of their bodies, released into each other. When he made love to her, he discovered her all over again. He never said a word to her, except to say her name.
Rita opened her eyes now. She smiled at him, reached for him.
“What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“The days get short.”
“It’ll be warmer in Washington,” he said. He sat on the bed next to her. She reached for him. He was naked and she was naked beneath the covers. She put her hand between his legs and touched him. There and there. He sat for a moment and looked at her hand. Each part of her was examined as a part: her mouth, the line of her upper lip and the line of her lower lip; the slight hollow of her cheeks; the eyes, cloudless and wide and very knowing. He studied her sometimes in the morning light as a painter studies his model, to see the beauty of the lines, with no more desire than a child yet with a child’s delight at the appearance of beauty. In those moments — now — there was no reserve in him.
He reached across her body and held her as a child holds beauty. He felt his warmth press against her belly. He went into her belly and he made love that was not original or even very skilled. His real skill was the urgency of his lovemaking. Her skill was the savage thing that took over her body when he was in her.
After they made love and Paris became morning beyond the window, they lay apart from each other for a time, and when he spoke he did not look at her.
“There’s only one thing we didn’t talk about.”
She put the palm of her hand flat on his belly. She made little circles with her hand on his belly. She didn’t say anything.
He stared at the ceiling. “Ready. One way or the other, we can’t let it alone. He’ll finish us or we’ll finish him.”
Rita said, “I was going to kill him with my little knife.”
“Maybe he doesn’t die,” Devereaux said. “Maybe he’s the evil that was loosed at the beginning of time and he can’t die until time ends.”
She smiled at his tone. “The ultimate booga-booga.”
He touched her hair. She bent, kissed his nipple, put her head on his chest. But they were both thinking about it.
“He went after me when I went after Anna. He missed me, Hanley said he was right behind me. So he has to be back here. And when we leave here, he’ll be wherever we go. In Washington, Lausanne, wherever we go.”
“I want to go home, Dev,” she said.
“Where is it?”
“At least D.C. I want to be with Americans again. We couldn’t lose ourselves in the world, let’s give it up and go home. Could you go home?”
“I could go with you. Anywhere.”
“We’ll take Philippe out of school at the end of term. He’d do well in Washington.”
She spoke of the black child whom Devereaux had rescued from St. Michel, who went to school now in Switzerland.
“All right,” he said.
She felt troubled.
The morning light filled the room and the noise was full of Paris: Men shouted in the street and someone played a radio too loud and parrots talked to lonely old women in apartments across the court.
“I love you,” she said.
“I’ll wait here for a while,” he said. “Wait for Ready. He’ll come for us. I’ll wait for him this time and get him.”
“Don’t.” It was voice to the premonition. She trembled and felt cold. He pulled the cover over her naked body.
“Come back with me. Let Section find him for you. They owe you that.”
“David Mason. I didn’t tell you. He walked into the embassy last night and Eurodesk debriefed him. He was conked on the head in Bruges by a policeman who saw he had a gun. He was trying to accost two men, the police said. He told Eurodesk it was Ready. With Cernan. He got into trouble with Stowe and I told Hanley to take care of it.”
“I liked him. He was decent,” she said. She invested the word with all sorts of properties of approval.
“Ready would have killed him. Ready is alive, Rita,” Devereaux said. He said it as suddenly as if he had just realized it.
“He can’t hurt us,” she said.
They lay in bed, naked and touching, staring at the same cracked ceiling, thinking about the man who hunted them both. A woman began to play Bach on a piano and the city began its daily argument, full of shouts and laughter. He felt her hand in his.
He got up then without a word and went to the telephone and dialed the number. He asked for the room and waited. He listened to the voice and asked a question in French and was asked a question in return. He put down the receiver. He looked at Rita lying on the soft, wide bed.
The voice on the phone had belonged to a policeman. Ready was that close, he thought. And he thought he must not tell Rita anything yet.
But she said, “Miki?”
He stared at her.
Rita understood. “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. Oh, come and hold me, please.”
He sat down next to her.
He held her. Naked, they clung to each other.
The plane banked against the clouds above Bohemia and descended through them by bumpy steps.
Anna held her father’s hand though she was not afraid. It was a luxury to seem to be afraid.
Her father, a ferocious man with a sad face, had told her many things in the past four hours and she thought they were all true. He had told her he was not a brave man and that he had made many mistakes but the worst mistake of all had been in nearly losing her. He told her many things.
Anna believed everything.
She saw the clouds like smoke streak past the windows. The plane smelled of home, the voices were of home, the smiles and faces were home. And her father was a handsome man and he cried once, when he first saw her in the embassy at Brussels.
“I love you, little one,” he said again. He had said it many times in four hours, to make up for all the fourteen years he had not said it at all.
He knew that Gorkeho was arrested and that Henkin had received the finger and that, by now, it would become apparent that Miki was loose in the West. Goddamn Miki and the United States, Cernan thought. At least it was clean and there was an end to it. He might suffer from Henkin, but what could Henkin do to him?