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.
Jules Bergen and the messenger got on the elevator together and rode up together. The messenger carried a package of videotapes and he wore a Sony Walkman and sunglasses, even though the day was bleak and gray.
Jules did not really see him. No one really sees messengers. He wore a stocking cap pulled down tight to the sunglasses and a battered Army fatigue jacket.
Ding. Jules stepped out on forty-nine. The messenger came behind him. They went into the executive suite together. Jules and the messenger pushed into the outer offices and Jules said good morning to someone and stepped down the corridor to his own office.
The messenger was behind him.
That’s when Jules noticed him.
Jules Bergen turned and said, “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” the messenger said. He closed the door. They were in the office together and Jules saw what it was. He went to the desk to press the intercom. The messenger slammed him onto the couch. Jules said, “You can’t do—”
“Shut up,” the messenger said.
“Who are you?”
“The messenger.”
“Messenger from who?”
“Messenger from God,” the messenger said. “Gimme all your money.”
Jules took out his wallet and money clip and handed them to the messenger. The messenger put the videotapes on the desk. The messenger stared at Jules through the sunglasses. The mouth was straight, the shoulders hunched.
“What are you gonna do?” Jules stammered.
“Ben Herguth,” the messenger said. “Got a message from Ben.”
“Ben is in Yugoslavia.”
“I know where the fuck Ben is. Don’t interrupt me. I’m the messenger.”
“What’s the message?”
The messenger smiled. “Ben says he’s tired of you letting him take all the gaff. He says you got to stand out there by yourself on some of this. He says he’s gonna make a deal with the G and give them you. You know why he wants to tell you this? Because he says if you don’t quash those fucking indictments through your friends in the White House, he’s gonna cut all your fingers and toes off and then your nose and then he’s gonna let you hang on a meat hook until you go crazy or dead, that’s what the message is.”
Jules trembled. He was in his own office on the forty-ninth floor in the middle of Manhattan in the middle of the morning and he was listening to a madman with a Sony Walkman and headphones.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jules said.
“That’s what Ben said you’d say. So I do the second part of the message now.”
“What are you going to do?”
The messenger picked up Jules by the shirtfront.
“I’ll yell,” Jules said.
“I know,” the messenger said.
Actually, there was no pain at first. The little finger of his left hand was detached quickly with a sharp cut of the scalpel in the messenger’s hand.
“Now you can scream,” the messenger said. He picked up the finger and put it in a videotape box and closed the box. “Bye, Jules. Don’t forget the message.”
And walked out the door.
All the screaming a moment later just added to the confusion. And when Jules described the attacker to police, the story made the evening news on all the network shows. It was so uncivilized, New Yorkers said to each other: You can’t even trust messengers.
The next afternoon, Ben Herguth was back in New York but he couldn’t see Jules. The afternoon after that, Ben Herguth was in Washington, D.C., talking to a thin man from the Justice Department, talking about Jules and about Jules wanting to kill him and what kind of a deal could Ben Herguth make.
The scandal, moribund so long, finally got sexy.
The whole country started following it, including Kay Davis in Chicago.
“It is a filthy matter,” Mrs. Neumann said to the man seated at the lunch table across from her. Hanley bit into his cheeseburger. His old Greek friend, Sianis, had lost his place on Fourteenth Street but found another storefront off DuPont Circle, near a bookstore that served booze. It was a strange neighborhood for someone like Sianis, but the cheeseburgers tasted the same to Hanley.
“They are all filthy matters. Ben Herguth has made his deal and Jules Bergen will receive some sort of punishment.”
“But who was the messenger?”
“Yes,” Hanley said. “Well, perhaps we should not probe too carefully.”
“Devereaux,” Mrs. Neumann said.
“No. I have it on good authority — from Stowe — that Devereaux is in Europe. In fact, he is in Chartres of all places.”
“The pilgrim,” she said.
He studied her. The winter had aged her. The filthy matters had aged her. She was a woman who saw good in the world and did not temporize.
“I don’t want to know who the messenger is, I don’t want to know about Jules or the CIA,” Hanley said. “The matter of Miki was a failure in the end. It came to nothing. We were lucky not to lose our agent in the end.”
“The matter isn’t resolved. There is still Ready. Somewhere,” she said.
He put down his cheeseburger with finality. “That,” he said, “is not my concern. That is a matter that does not concern Section.”
“Come on, Hanley,” she began.
“Mrs. Neumann. The matter of transporting Miki was as straightforward as I put it to Devereaux that afternoon in the cathedral at Chartres. I could not be expected to know that Ready stalked the train, had changed the driver, had subverted our private contractors in Brussels. Ready was driven to kill Devereaux and that was a matter that Devereaux set in motion himself with his childish act of violence on St. Michel, when he cut Ready’s leg instead of sanctioning him. Devereaux is a man of logic but not when it concerns Ready. There is blood between them, blood spilled and blood ties. There are two sides of the same coin, yin and yang, whatever you want to call it. Except Ready is the stronger side.
“Ready wanted to kill Devereaux, that’s why he hit the train. Miki was a bonus to him. He wanted to ship Devereaux across the wall. He got as cute as Devereaux had been. Well, it is stupid and childish and we have no part of it.”
“And Devereaux is sitting at Chartres all winter, waiting for him.”
“Yes. If Ready doesn’t know where he is, it is because Ready is dead.”
“He isn’t though.”
“No. I am sure he is not,” Hanley said. “Ready stalks Devereaux to see if it is a trap.”
“Is it a trap?”
“No. Devereaux is waiting. I think he is waiting for his own death. I put my faith in the wiser of the foxes, the one who was hunted and escaped his hunters. Devereaux was very good.”
She felt the horror of the cold words.
“He was very good and he is going to die. There is nothing we can do about it. Don’t tell me about filthy business, I know how filthy it all is. Devereaux knows he is going to die as surely as I do.”
“Why?”
“He settled Rita Macklin, he settled the boy, Philippe, he settled one last score, a quixotic gesture no doubt for some distressed damsel. Well, all his accounts are settled, his bill is paid, the will has been written. He waits in Chartres. Why there? I don’t know, I don’t want to know. Perhaps because it began there and it has to end there.” His voice was rising. He paused. “Devereaux awaits Armageddon. It is poetic but it is nonsense. It is merely two enemies who are going to meet, and one of them is going to die at the hands of the other.”
“And Devereaux will die.”