Joseph Kanon - The Prodigal Spy

“You know, you lose one faith and you replace it with the opposite. And then the opposite has to destroy the first. They really did believe a conspiracy was threatening the country, because they used to believe in it themselves. So in some crazy way it was their duty to expose it, now that they were on the other side. But that doesn’t sound like her at all. Not from your description. How many nightclub singers have a problem with apostasy?”

She looked at him, the helpless beginning of a smile. “You know, I’ve never heard that word used before. In speech. Only in print. Is that how it’s pronounced?”

“You don’t want to talk about this.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe she had political convictions, I don’t know. What are they, anyway? What would you do to stop the war? Besides rallies and things. Suppose there was a way. What would you do? Name names? Maybe it wouldn’t seem like much if you really thought they were the enemy. Maybe you’re right-maybe she didn’t care about any of that. I don’t know. Maybe she just wanted a little attention. Anyway, she got it.” She paused. “While he was on his way to Canada.”

“You still think he’s lying.”

She said nothing, as if she had to think about it, then sat up and reached for a cigarette. “Yes.” He watched her light it, her movements stretched in time by the dope. “Now I know it.”

“How?”

“Remember that drive in the snow? All the little details. How he was dying for a smoke but he left his lighter behind?”

“So?”

“So they found it in the hotel room. That’s where he left it-it’s in the report. He still doesn’t know. I was watching. He probably still thinks he left it at home.” She turned to him. “He was there, Nick.”

“How do they know it was his?”

“They didn’t use these,” she said, indicating the disposable plastic lighter in her hand. “They had real lighters. With initials. W.K.”

“And O.K.,” he said softly.

She looked at him, puzzled.

“My mother. It was from her. She was always giving him stuff like that.” He stared at the road. “That still doesn’t mean he was there.”

“Have it your way. How else would it get there?”

“Somebody could have planted it.”

“Do you really think that’s likely?” she said quietly.

“No.” He remembered it in his father’s hand, shiny, always with him, like the wave in his hair.

“He was there,” she said, an end to it.

“That still doesn’t mean he killed her. I don’t believe it.”

“You mean you don’t want to.”

“Do you?”

“Want to? No. But that doesn’t change things.” She paused, biting her lip in thought. “I’ll give you this, though. I sat there and I thought, could he really do that? It doesn’t feel right.”

“How is it supposed to feel?”

“I don’t know. Threatening. But he’s not.”

“No.”

“Whatever that’s worth. Maybe that’s how they get away with it. They stop believing it themselves. So there’s nothing to pick up on.”

“Killer vibes.”

“I know, it sounds stupid. But there should be something. A little radar blip, you know? A little ping.”

“A little ping.”

She looked at him, then tossed her cigarette out the window and slumped down in her seat, burrowing in. “You’re right. It’s stupid. I mean, he was there. We know that. It’s just-”

“What?”

She shook her head. “Her lover. I can’t see them together.”

Nick was quiet, following his own thought, a blip across the screen.

“They weren’t together,” he said finally, sure. “He was devoted to my mother.”

“Yeah. So was mine. Every time he came back. Anyway, I don’t mean him. I mean her. He wasn’t her type. Not — I don’t know-flashy enough.”

Nick thought of him changing upstairs, the pale, slack skin. “No, he’s not flashy.”

“Still. People change.”

“No, they don’t.”

By the time they got to town they were alone again; the other cars had melted away into the dark edges of the city as mysteriously as they had come. The streets were deserted, wet cobblestones cut by the bumpy tram rails, whose metal caught their headlights and gleamed back at them through the mist. Dim pools of yellow light from the street lamps. It was, finally, the Prague of his imagination, Kafka’s maze of alleys and looming towers, spires poking suddenly through the fog. They drove along the river, Hradcany somewhere off to the right, then turned into streets where nothing was visible beyond the reach of the car’s lights and, still lulled by the dope, Nick felt that he had begun driving through his own mind, one confusing turn after another, going in circles. How could anyone live here? When they reached Wenceslas, the empty, lighted tram that appeared clanging in front of them seemed to come out of a dream.

The parky stalls were closed but the Alcron was still awake, the doorman leaping from the bright door as if he’d been waiting for them. The lobby was empty. Nick saw the bellhop and desk clerk glance up. The drug was wearing off, leaving only a pleasant tiredness and now the familiar sensation that everyone was watching them. For an instant he stopped, then smiled to himself. They were being watched; it was what people did here. Did they notice he was walking slowly? Then the bellhop yawned, and he saw that his cover would be exhaustion. It was only eleven, but everyone seemed ready for bed.

“A long day, Pan Warren,” the clerk said, handing him the key. “Not so nice for Karlovy Vary, the weather.”

Was he checking up or only being polite?

“You took the waters?”

Nick looked at him blankly, but Molly said, “Why do the glasses have those pipestems?”

“Pipestems? Ah, like a pipe, yes. To drink in. For the minerals, you see. To get past the teeth. Otherwise they would stain.”

“Ah,” Molly said. “Well, goodnight.”

The desk clerk smiled and bowed at them, satisfied.

“That was good,” Nick said as they crossed to the elevator.

“It’s the only thing I remembered about the place, those funny little glasses. Thank God. Now he can put it in his report. Our day at Karlsbad.”

Nick stopped. “But it wouldn’t be true. I mean, just because something’s in a report. There it is in black and white, but we were never there.”

Molly looked at him for an instant, then lowered her eyes. “But the lighter was.”

“How can we be sure?”

“Ask him.”

Their room was stifling, the heavy drapes drawn tight, and while Molly ran her bath, he opened the windows, then lay on the bed in his underwear, feeling the cool night air move over him. His body was tired but alert, and when he closed his eyes he could hear the sounds around him with a sharp clarity: water splashing in the tub; the bells of the late trams below, carried in by the mist, disconnected, like the sounds of ships at night. He went over the day, putting it in order, as if the chronology would tell him something. In the report. What if all of it was true? None of it? Why would he lie? Or was it the usual mix, the half-truths of things left out or just forgotten? But which? Then he was in the cottage bedroom, his arm gripped, caught. Snug as a bug.

There was a shaft of light from the bathroom when she opened the door, and he squinted at her, wrapped in her thin robe, toweling her hair. Her movements were languid, almost swaying.

“Are you asleep?”

“Thinking.”

“About what?” she said idly, moving toward the window. When he didn’t answer, she said, “Okay. A penny? A Czech crown?”

“About what it’s like for you. When you see him. I mean, if you really think he-” He trailed off, not able to say it.