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.
“Get on your knees,” Ready said.
“No.”
“If you won’t get on your knees, I might have to shoot you in the belly instead of in the head. Chop, chop, just like Nam, Devereaux. One behind the ear. What do you say?”
“All right,” Devereaux said.
He got down in the mud on his knees. The wind was cold. It was too early in the season to put out the tables. Ready came around the car and stood in front of him.
“Why did you wait at Chartres?”
“I wanted to understand something.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you get it figured out?”
“Yes. In a way.”
“I go after the girl next,” Ready said. He smiled. “I don’t care about the nigger baby, but I owe the girl something.”
“She’s safe. She’s watched.”
“No one is safe,” Ready said.
It was perfectly true. They were apart from each other for a moment, listening to the North Sea wind howl over the brown, broken fields.
“Chop, chop, just like Nam,” Ready said. He smiled down at Devereaux on his knees. Madness glittered in his blue eyes.
“You want to die,” he said. “You have the look, the sleep look. You wait to die.” His voice was a little awed by what he saw in Devereaux’s face.
He took a step to Devereaux’s side.
Devereaux raised his right hand and touched him. “Please,” he said.
Ready half turned toward him.
It was the perfect position.
Devereaux drove the blade of the Swiss army knife high into Ready’s liver, through flesh and bowel. The knife pierced the pancreas in that demonic thrust. It was all shoulder, arm, hand, leveraged into the body from the man on his knees.
Ready blinked and saw blood-red at the edge of blackness. He blinked again and fired.
The shot made a thump through the silencer and tore a bloody chunk from Devereaux’s shoulder. He fell back, toward the ditch, but he held the knife and it snagged at the ribcage and he dragged Ready on top of him.
They were falling in a dream. They fell around and around, fell to earth and beneath the earth, and could not touch the sides.
In this dream of falling, Devereaux raises the knife above his head and plunges it into Ready’s right eye and Ready begins to scream. The scream rises and Devereaux, so slowly, pulls the knife out of the blood-soaked eye and the other eye is staring and he plunges the knife into his neck, slowly, beneath the chin, rending the voice box. The scream becomes a slow, gurgling bubble of blood foaming on his lips, but the face stares at him, judges him, and Ready is laughing still in silence as they fall together.
In the dream, Devereaux raises his knife again and again, slashing at the dread beneath him. Ready holds him as they fall and if he can cut him away, perhaps the falling will stop. He plunges the knife down and it is covered with blood, his hand is covered with blood, their blood comingles.
His breath comes in sobs and he opens his eyes and there is no dream. The dread is beneath his body, is covered with blood. Ready’s mouth is covered with blood and his mortality can be seen in the one staring eye which sees nothing.
Devereaux rose in the ditch, covered with blood and mud. He stood in the mud and looked across the empty fields. Some of the fields were turned for planting and others covered with the brown haze of rotting stalks. He stared across the fields, dumb and in pain, and he saw them. At the horizon were the twin spires of the great church against the low sky. It was the view of the peasant eight hundred years ago; it was the vision of the pilgrim, coming to Chartres to find his faith. He stared at the spires of the church in the distance and then, after a long moment, turned and climbed up to the road.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
An award-winning novelist and reporter, Bill Granger was raised in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He began his extraordinary career in 1963 when, while still in college, he joined the staff of United Press International. He later worked for the Chicago Tribune, writing about crime, cops, and politics, and covering such events as the race riots of the late 1960s and the 1968 Democratic Convention. In 1969, he joined the staff of the Chicago Sun-Times, where he won an Associated Press award for his story of a participant in the My Lai Massacre. He also wrote a series of stories on Northern Ireland for Newsday—and unwittingly added to a wealth of information and experiences that would form the foundations of future spy thrillers and mystery novels. By 1978, Bill Granger had contributed articles to Time, the New Republic, and other magazines; and become a daily columnist, television critic, and teacher of journalism at Columbia College in Chicago.
He began his literary career in 1979 with Code Name November (originally published as The November Man), the book that became an international sensation and introduced the cool American spy who later gave rise to a whole series. His second novel, Public Murders, a Chicago police procedural, won the Edgar® Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1981.
In all, Bill Granger published twenty-two novels, including thirteen in the November Man series, and three nonfiction books. In 1980, he began weekly columns in the Chicago Tribune on everyday life (he was voted best Illinois columnist by UPI), which were collected in the book Chicago Pieces. His books have been translated into ten languages.
Bill Granger passed away in 2012.