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.
When Anna said, “I love Chicago,” she sounded a little like Greta Garbo and looked very much, as Time magazine had noted, like a “Pragueish Judy Garland.”
Now in the studio, the black television hostess was dancing about her one moment and darting to the audience the next, establishing the repartee she was noted for. She was a large woman who carried a microphone in one hand and a trailing cord in the other, and she seemed to float when she moved, as though her feet were wheels under her long dress. Her hands fluttered with practiced gestures as she indicated first this and then that person was to speak to Anna Jelinak.
“What about pornography? What do we know about porn in Prague?” the hostess suddenly demanded and Anna sat very straight in her chair on the stage and stared at her. She had a good command of English and she had understood all the words, but they did not make any sense to her.
“You’re in movies, what about sex in movies, in books, in magazines? In other words, how open is Prague today to Western values and Western morals?”
For the second time, Anna Jelinak answered with a blink of her pretty black eyes. What was this woman saying?
The hostess machine-gunned some more words at her and Anna finally caught a few. She blushed and put her hand to her mouth and a few women in the large audience tittered behind the smiling hostess.
“If there is such in my country or my city, I do not know of it,” she said. Her voice was deep, and the way she carried the foreign words, they made a nice lilt. “In my country, I think it must be, children are permitted not to see the evil in the world. They are allowed to be children still.”
Applause burst from the audience and the hostess flashed her famous smile and Anna felt comforted by the applause. She craved applause, which made her a good actress; she was warmed by the sounds of many hands clapping, even the applause of stagehands on a movie set. Most of the time she felt alone and frightened, but there was always the moment of applause when she was secure.
“Children should be allowed to be children,” the hostess was saying. “What about us, Anna? What you’ve seen of America so far, do you think we exploit our children? Do you think we have become a permissive society?”
“Well, I think it is a good thing so many children can afford to have blue jeans,” Anna said. Waves of laughter and more warm applause. She had won their hearts and she knew it. The Ministry for Tourism and Films would be pleased; Anton Huss, her temporary guardian in the U.S., would be pleased; even the sour old woman who pretended to be her mother in Prague would be pleased. It was a form of sweet revenge to be loved by these strangers.
She looked around the studio at the audience, her vision limited by the intensity of the arc lights that brightened the stage. Beyond the lights, behind the phalanx of cameras and booms, Anton Huss stood and watched her. He was a precise man who wore wool blue suits and starched white shirts. His clothes were cut in the European manner and he wore his hair a little longer than Americans did at that time. His sallow skin framed large, green eyes and he had an air of sadness and a little mystery about him. He listened carefully to all that Anna Jelinak said because there would be reports filed and evaluations made and questions asked, all the way up to the office of the Minister. He did not want this assignment any more than Anna wanted him as a guardian.
He was liaison at the embassy in Washington between the Secret Service and the other branches of the diplomatic mission. Essentially, the Czech mission was concerned with tourism, trade, and espionage, but since everything is the province of espionage, Anton Huss made certain that his specialty was not overlooked by the other branches as they went about more mundane matters.
There are no mundane matters, the Deputy Secretary of the embassy had once told him: All espionage is the light of intelligence brought to examine what appears to be ordinary. In that special light, said the pompous Deputy Secretary, all that is ordinary is revealed to be something more than it seems to be.
Anton Huss shook his head at the memory of the aphorisms of the Deputy Secretary. He endured them just as he endured this foolish assignment, to guard Anna Jelinak as she toured the United States on behalf of promoting tourism and the Czech film industry. Guard her from what? She was a good enough actress to get her way around any difficult situation.
At first, in New York, where they stayed in separate rooms at the Plaza Hotel, Anton Huss was afraid Anna was practicing feminine wiles on him. She flirted her way through a long lunch and Anton’s spirits had sunk. Was it going to be this bad through the whole tour? But no: Anna was just practicing, he decided after a while. She had no interest in Anton. She was merely a professional actress and she wanted Anton to love her because he was there. He decided to feign affection in a friendly avuncular way, and an amazing thing happened: Anna froze suddenly, her black eyes went cold. She said in her clear, precise Prague accent, “You do not like me. Very well, then. We can proceed on that basis and have as little to do with one another as is possible.”
What did that mean? Anton Huss had thought. What complicated thought lay behind her sudden shifts in mood? The Deputy Secretary would tell him to bring the light of intelligence to the subject to see it better. But then, the Deputy Secretary was an idiot.
Before Anton left Washington and the lovely, lingering autumn full of pretty leaves and pretty girls, he was given one final charge by the Deputy Secretary: “Remember, security is to be provided both ways. Anna Jelinak is a very important person to us, to the country, and it would not be the first time the CIA would attempt to subvert some… honest opening between our country and the United States… to purposes that were… well…”
Anton Huss understood the old man even before he finished. Defections. The Czechs had a sorry record in the department of defections. Sometimes it seemed Prague had a mission to train tennis stars who would mature into American refugees. No mistakes, Anton Huss: Make certain Anna does not let the light of apparent freedom blind Anna to her duties to the fatherland.
More applause, and it pushed his gloomy thoughts out of mind. Anton took a step forward and was boxed between two cameras. Anna was smiling and the black woman was smiling and he guessed this program was over. It was hard to be certain because this television business seemed a matter of stops and starts. There were so many times when the people onstage would not be on camera and the men in shirt sleeves would run around and tear pieces of paper from their pads or talk and joke with each other or just stand transfixed, listening to voices through earphones. It was maddening, he said to Anna. She had laughed at him and said, “You should see the way it is making films.”
Yes, it was truly over. As always, Anton Huss stepped forward and put his hand in Anna’s hand as though by renewing the physical contact he reminded her of who she was and what reality was. Reality was Prague, control, orders; it was difficult in the chaos of this vast, sprawling country to assert reality.
The cameramen stepped from behind the cameras and one of them smiled at Anna and said something in colloquial Bohemian that brightened her face. Anton looked suspiciously at him. It would be like the CIA to plant an agent provocateur as a cameraman. They had to hurry along in any case. He tugged her hand. She glanced up at him. “One more program, Anna,” he said. “We have to hurry.”