Radek had set him up for a fall.
Martin remembered the pained look in the young man’s eyes; he could hear his voice, oozing sincerity, delivering his manifesto: I am not the man I appear to be.
Who amongst us is the man he appears to be?
Martin thought about going back to liberate Zuzana Slánská. But he quickly abandoned the idea—if he returned to the houseboat for her now, they would know that he’d figured out the scheme. And they would fall back on Plan B, which was bound to be less subtle but more immediate.
Martin could imagine the scenario of Plan A: The prisoner, carrying multiple false identity papers and arrested in the company of an arms dealer, overpowers his guard, swipes his handgun and escapes from the safe house where he is being questioned, heading for Austria. Somewhere along the route, or perhaps at the border crossing itself, he is stopped for a routine passport control. In front of witnesses he produces the gun and tries to shoot his way out of a tight spot, at which point he is gunned down by uniformed police. Open and shut case of self defense. Happens all the time in the former Soviet wastelands of Europe these days.
Knowing that Radek had been setting him up for a hit, Martin certainly didn’t want to use the Skoda, though if he parked it on a side street, where it could go unnoticed for hours or even for days, the authorities might spend precious time looking for Radek’s car on the highways leading south. Once he ditched the Skoda (he would throw the handgun in the river but leave the bullets on the driver’s seat to taunt Radek), the quickest way out of the country was the best: There were trains departing all through the day for Karlovy Vary, the spa in the northwestern corner of the country a long stone’s throw from the German frontier. And there were double-decker tourist busses heading back to Germany from Karlovy Vary by the dozens every afternoon; even under the communist regime it had been possible to bribe one of the bus drivers to take you across the border. If the frontier guards verified identities, he could use the Canadian passport that he’d stashed in the tattered lining of his Aquascutum. Checking the lining again, he felt there was a good possibility that Radek had not discovered that one.
The driver’s tinny voice, coming from small speakers in the roof of the tourist bus, stirred Martin from his reverie. “Bereitet Eure Pässe, wir werden an der Grenze sein.” Up ahead he could make out the low flat-roofed wooden buildings that housed the money changers and the toilets, and beyond that the border guards in brown uniforms and berets. There was one tourist bus ahead of theirs and three behind, which Martin knew was a stroke of luck; the guards tended toward cursory inspections at rush hours. When it was the turn of his bus, a young officer with a harassed expression on his face climbed onto the bus and walked down the aisle, glancing at faces more than the open passports, looking for Arabs or Afghans surely. Sitting on the banquette, Martin opened the passport to the page with his photo and, smiling pleasantly, held it out, but the young officer barely gave it, or him, a second glance. When the bus started up again and eased across the red stripe painted across the highway, the German passengers, relieved to be back in civilization, broke into a raucous cheer.
Martin didn’t join in the celebration. He was having second thoughts about leaving Zuzana Slánská in the clutches of the devious Radek. In his mind’s eye he could visualize the weight of the state crushing the breath out of her brittle body.
Standing on the fo’c’sle, Radek had watched the red taillights grow dimmer as the Skoda made its way along the quay toward the ramp. When the lights brightened and the car braked to a stop, the interrogator, standing next to him and peering through binoculars, grunted in irritation. Moments later, when the taillights finally started up the ramp and disappeared on the street above the quay, the two men clasped hands to salute a scheme well hatched. The interrogator flicked back the sleeve of his leather jacket to look at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. “I will alert our people that the American is on his way south,” he said. “The Oligarkh has wired instructions to our ministry—he wants the trail to Samat to end at the Slánská woman.”
Radek, pressing a handkerchief to his head wound to stop the bleeding, took out a small flashlight and signalled with it in the direction of the green garbage bin down the quay from the houseboat. Moments later the two heavies who had escorted Martin to and from his cell appeared on the gangplank. Radek motioned for them to follow him as he headed for the small cell two decks under the bow. They found Zuzana Slánská sitting on her metal cot, her eyes swollen with fear, her legs tucked under her body, her arms hugging the blanket over her shoulders despite the absence of a breath of air in the room. “Is it time for another interrogation already?” she asked, her fingers toying with the Star of David at her neck as she unwound from the sitting position on the cot and stood up. Instead of waving her through the door, the two guards positioned themselves on either side of the woman and gripped her arms above the elbows. Zuzana’s eyes widened as Radek stepped forward and wrenched her blouse out of the waistband, baring her stomach. When she caught sight of the small syringe in his hand, she struggled to break free, but the two men only tightened their holds on her arms. Thoroughly terrified, Zuzana began to sob silently as Radek jabbed the needle into the soft flesh of her navel and depressed the plunger. The drug took effect rapidly—within seconds Zuzana’s eyelids drooped, then her chin fell forward onto her chest. While the two heavies held her up, Radek produced a small pocket knife and began cutting strips from the blanket on the cot. He twisted the strips into cords and tied two of them end to end. Then he dragged the metal cot into the center of the cell under the light bulb and, climbing up on the bed, attached one end of the makeshift cord to the electric wire above the bulb. He pulled on it to make sure it would hold. The heavies hauled Zuzana’s limp body onto the cot under the bulb and held her up while Radek fashioned a noose and tightened it around the woman’s neck. Then he jumped free of the cot and kicked it onto its side and the three men stepped back and watched Zuzana’s body twisting slowly at the end of the cord. Radek grew impatient and motioned with a finger—one of the heavies grabbed her around the hips and added his weight to hers to speed up the execution. Clucking his tongue, Radek rolled his head from side to side in mock grief. “It is clearly not the state’s responsibility if you turned out to be suicidal,” he informed the woman strangling to death in the middle of the room.
Crystal Quest’s features clouded over as she fitted on narrow spectacles and read the deciphered “Eyes Only” action report from Prague Station that her chief of staff had deposited on the blotter. The two wallahs who had been briefing her on the mass graves recently uncovered in Bosnia exchanged looks; they had lived through enough of the DDO’s mood swings to recognize storm warnings when they saw them. Quest slowly looked up from the report. For once she seemed tongue-tied.
“When did this come in?” she finally asked.
“Ten minutes ago,” the chief of staff replied. “Knowing your interest, I thought I’d walk it through instead of rout it.”
“Where did they find the Skoda?”
“On one of those narrow cobblestoned streets on the Hradcany Castle side of the river.”