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.
“Assuredly,” Hanley said. He had lost his appetite but the rush of words forced him to go on. “He’s thrown in his hand, Mrs. Neumann. I can see it, Miss Macklin can see it, surely you can see it. He waits like an old man. And what is Ready if not pure hatred, pure evil, with all the vitality of evil. He’s more than that: He is mad. The gods don’t make men mad before they destroy them; they make men mad to destroy other men. You can’t hurt madness or threaten it or reason with it. Being mad is the final advantage. Madness, Mrs. Neumann, finally rules the world because madness is so damned sure of itself.”
She had known Hanley ten years and never heard him speak this way. He spoke as certainly as a preacher.
“You don’t want this to happen,” she whispered to him in her raspy voice.
He blinked at her. He would not speak to her.
“You don’t want this,” she said.
“Devereaux once saved my life but he cannot save his own. He has lost the will. He sees Ready in every shadow. Ready has not lost, cannot lose, and Devereaux cannot resist the inevitable anymore. He is in Chartres waiting for the end of things.”
He blinked again.
Now, at the edge of his eyes, she saw the wetness.
42
He left the cathedral at the same time each afternoon. It was a little visit really and he never thought to pray. He sat in the silence of the great church and he stared at the walls or at the windows or at the huge vaulted ceiling. He thought of men climbing wooden ladders set on wooden trestles, men carrying up stones one by one, putting them in place, wondering if they would live to ever see the finish of it.
Sometimes, in the darkness of the afternoon in the church, he could see Ready. Sometimes, in the darkness in his room at the hotel, he could see Ready. Ready stood at the edge of the bed. Ready stood grinning at him.
Rita Macklin wrote to him. He had never thought of letters. The letters touched him more deeply than the sight of her. The words were formed so perfectly, he thought. He could never say such things or use such words. He only knew her name.
He called her now and then because she wanted to hear his voice. She said that he should come home. He would tell her there was a final assignment and it would take a little while longer. He did not tell her he waited for Ready. He did not tell the boy, Philippe. He had closed the apartment in Lausanne on the Rue de la Concorde Suisse and it was just as well because the Swiss were in one of their periodic antiforeigner moods and the woman who owned the building had decided to ask them to move in any case. Rita wrote to him and told him about daily life in America, about living again in Washington, about her happiness, and her yearning for him. America sounded so strange, he would think after reading her letters. In all his life in Section, in all those years, he had lived out of the country so much that America seemed a vague, slightly old-fashioned idea rather than a real place.
He waited in Chartres because Ready would want to find him there. The trail was just plain enough to follow. He chose Chartres because of the beauty of the great church and because it comforted him to contemplate it. He saw no ghosts, no gods, no signs or wonders; he only saw the cathedral and the men who had built it, but they were not ghosts, only figments of imagination. Sometimes, when he thought he saw Ready waiting for him, he knew it was only fear.
He was very afraid.
He thought he had been afraid before but this fear was more real to him. It was more than a physical fear. He thought of a word: dread.
He had dread. It soaked into his bones.
A taxi almost hit him once. It was only an accident. Would it be that way?
Another time, a man followed him back to the hotel. When he confronted the stranger in the shadow of the street near the hotel, he discovered that the Frenchman was only a homosexual, looking for a lover.
Dread woke him in the mornings after the night of dreams. He always dreamed. The dreams filled his mind the moment he fell asleep and they hammered at him furiously all night long, night after night, so that when he awoke, he was exhausted. Once in a while, he dreamed of Rita Macklin and he awoke with greater dread than he felt after the other dreams.
The season of Christmas proceeded into the season of Lent. The season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday and all the people of Chartres wore ashes on their foreheads that day. The day was blustery and gray and the faithful came into the cathedral and knelt before the priest at the railing around the high altar and they received the ashes. The ashes were made from the palms that had been burned on Sunday. The palms came from the palms of the previous year, given to the people to remind them of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem and the way in which the people had greeted his entry. The Church calendar rolled in cycles like the seasons, and Devereaux watched the changing calendar and the change from winter to spring and he thought it would be very soon now and he thought Ready was very close. On Ash Wednesday, he went to the church and watched the people trudge forward and receive the smudge of the ashes on their foreheads while the priest repeated, over and over, “Remember, man, that you are dust; and unto dust, you will return.”
Devereaux received no ashes. He sat in the Café au Départ near the station as he always did in the afternoon. Today, the proprietor thought he should put out the tables because it was going to be spring. The French are very optimistic about spring and always put out their tables too soon.
Devereaux sat at the table and drank his café noir and watched the world. He saw Ready at the entrance of the little station and he knew that this time he was not seeing his fear. He was seeing the dread of reality.
He did not have his pistol. It was in the hotel room. Had Ready watched him for days? Or was this just chance?
Ready crossed the plaza in front of the station and went to the café and stood over the table. He looked down at Devereaux.
“Pistol is cocked and aimed,” he said and grinned. “You made it a little hard but not too hard.”
“You’re a wanted man,” Devereaux said. “You should turn yourself in to the police.”
“I thought he was you. At the Hilton in Paris. I mean Miki. The concierge said he had a bandaged hand. I thought it was you.”
“It doesn’t matter. The tapes were made.”
“Where is our girl? I miss her.”
“Away.”
“Well, I can always find her.”
“Sit down and have some coffee,” Devereaux said.
“I’m going to kill you, man.”
“That’s what I supposed.”
“Aren’t you afraid, Devereaux?”
Devereaux thought about it. “Up to this moment, I was afraid. I think it was seeing you finally and hearing your voice. Sit down, Ready. You’ve got time for coffee.”
“Come on or I shoot you where you sit.”
“All right.”
He got up and put coins on the tip saucer. He said, “Where do we go?”
“I rented a car. Over in the car lot by the station. We’ll go out to the country and that’s where it’ll be.”
Devereaux got in the car and sat in the driver’s seat. Ready sat next to him with the pistol in view. It was long-barreled and automatic.
“Go south,” he said.
Devereaux drove carefully through the town to the sign that divides the world neatly in every place in France: One part of the sign has an arrow that says Paris and the other part an arrow that points to Autres Directions.
They found a gray place in the gray countryside and they stopped the car at a dirt road. Devereaux sat with his hands on the wheel and Ready got out of the car. Then Devereaux got out on the other side. They stood on either side of the little Renault.