Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

Rácz disliked a foreigner with drooping lips cruising round a city that he had long considered his own. One day a commando with anti-tank weapons ambushed Sürgünn and riddled his luxurious armoured limousine full of holes. And everything in it, too.

Üngurtt Tököroll and Cmüngürül Gabdźâ attended Sürgünn’s funeral at a crematorium. The next evening they had a secret meeting in the Hotel Junior. Each brought about a hundred underlings. The meeting centred on an opulent dinner and an agreement on dividing up influence in Central Europe.

The Junjan gangsters were just eating their first course when at least fifty kilograms of Semtex, packed in paper bags filled with nails, exploded inside the air-conditioning pipes in the restaurant ceiling. Nobody finished the crab cocktail in mayonnaise or the well-chilled champagne.

Rácz was not taking half measures. The amount of explosive could have flattened all of Eastern Slovakia Steel Works (now US Steel). Štrkovec Lake immediately doubled in size. The hotel no longer existed and emergency crews of divers spent three days pulling out of ruins anything with the vaguest resemblance to a corpse.

The police response was tough. This was more than misbehaviour by ministers, gangsters, members of parliament, or ex-secret policemen. The Minister of Police, a party colleague of the Minister of Food, took a personal interest in the investigation. Rácz became a suspect, though no evidence was found against him. Anyway, he had a cosy relationship with the previous Minister of Police. The latter had retrieved documents about the present Minister of Police’s pædophile activities, including nice photos of various friendly encounters with eight-year-old prostitutes.

Rácz had the documents copied and made sure that the minister found an envelope on his desk. The minister took a quick look at the photos and the copies of invoices for underage flesh that he had charged to his office: he came to his senses.

The investigator was taken off the case for incompetence. Very soon, he had a fatal heart attack. A second investigator was swamped by paperwork. Evidence vanished. Finally, he died of a heart attack, too. The case was shelved.

After this mass execution, the Junjan mafia finally understood what the Albanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese and Chechen mafias had long understood: that Rácz was boss in this city. Heavenly peace reigned. And ordinary people soon found something else to chew over in the media. Ethnic conflict in Junja escalated into real civil war. The whole world focused its interest there.

* * *

When Kubeš receives a summons to the Ministry of Defence, at first he is afraid that he is being called up for military manœuvres. He did his military service under the communists, in the eighties. He’s in no mood for fooling about in a uniform.

Fortunately, his reception at the entrance is already proof that there is some other reason. The warrant officer at reception takes Kubeš’s summons, pushes the intercom button and announces to some unseen person, “Mr Kubeš has arrived.”

Soon a lieutenant in braided uniform appears.

“Please follow me,” he tells Kubeš, politely, but formally.

Kubeš can’t believe his eyes. What’s happened to the crowds of sweaty, greasy duty officers in shiny trousers that he remembers from his military service? Everyone’s attitude here seem different, as if they’d graduated from Anglo-Saxon military colleges. Stunned, he follows the officer, who takes him to a room where a number of people are already sitting or standing.

“Please sit down and wait for a bit,” he says. “We’re about to begin.”

Kubeš takes a look round. As well as himself there are seven or eight other men roughly his age. Two of them are in Czech Elbe-Oder river fleet uniform. The others are also obviously sailors. Kubeš take a closer look. He sees by the window his friends from the Prague sightseeing boat fleet, Honza Libáň and Franta Skopšík. He greets them and goes up to them. Then he notices a man standing with them.

“Mikuš!” he says.

“Kubeš!” says the man.

The former messmates of the Naval Academy hug each other.

“I haven’t seen you since Odessa!” says Kubeš. “The last time I heard about you, you were on the Zlín. ”

“The Zlín ’s history,” sighs Mikuš. “Like all our sea-going navy, in fact. I was on it until the last moment, even after it was sold. I thought the new owners would keep me.”

“The Zlín was sold to the Koreans, right?” Kubeš asks.

“Yes,” says Mikuš. “But they weren’t interested in us. We’re still not cheap enough for them. Russians will do the same for half the money, or even a third. I work now in southern Bohemia, on soil improvement.”

“That’s no fun, is it?” Kubeš says.

“Certainly not,” Mikuš agrees. “If I could catch that Kožený, I’d make him eat his own balls. But at least I have a place to sleep: a trailer. How about you?”

“I still have a vessel,” says Kubeš. “On the Vltava. I’m captain of the Mayor Pfitzner .”

“You’re kidding,” says Mikuš in disbelief. “What kind of a vessel is it?”

Kubeš, Libáň and Skopšík burst out laughing.

“Next time you come to Prague, buy a ticket,” Libáň tells him. “Sightseeing cruise boat on the Vltava. The panorama of Prague Castle and Vyšehrad. It’s like the Captain Corcoran.”

Now all four laugh in unison.

A man enters the room. He’s about forty, slim, with prematurely grey hair and blue eyes. He is dressed in civvies, but one look tells you he’s a military man.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he says in a stentorian voice so that all the hushed conversations in the room cease. “I see you’re in an excellent mood. Thanks for accepting our invitation. My name is Sosna. Jiří Sosna. That should be enough to start with. But I’d like to get to know you.”

He approaches the navy officers individually and shakes their hands. Each one tells him his name.

“You must be curious why we’ve invited you,” says Sosna. “It’s simple. You’re all former naval officers, serving in the now non-existent Czech merchant fleet. You’re all graduates of the Naval Academy. Mr Kylar and Mr Drličiak,” Sosna lifts his head, seeking someone out, “have even got two degrees each. I’m here to offer you an exceptional chance in life. Perhaps some of you, after the demise of the Czech merchant fleet, enjoy working on dry land and dreaming of the sea. My offer is for those who want to go further in life than being captain of a clapped out rust bucket of a tugboat on the Vltava or Elbe.”

The visitors say nothing.

“I’m offering you something you can’t even imagine,” says Sosna. “If you sat here a whole day and night and tried to guess what it was, I guarantee that none of you would guess right. It’s a tremendously important, but also very risky business. Your reward will be very good money. I repeat: very good money. But not just that. Most of you will certainly be motivated by the chance to take part in something great that will earn you the respect of the entire Czech nation, the respect of the whole world and a career which none of you has even dreamt of.”

Sosna makes a dramatic pause.

“Anyone who feels,” he says, “for any reason, that he doesn’t belong here can leave. Anyone dissatisfied with his present life, but lacking courage, can also go. Only those who want to get ahead in life should stay. Right. Gentlemen, you have ten minutes to make a decision. When I come back, if anyone’s still here, we’ll discuss the matter in more detail.”

Sosna turns on his heel and leaves the room, which is humming like an angry beehive. When he returns in ten minutes, everyone is still there. A hint of a smile plays on his lips.