Book of the Dead (41 page)

Six knocks brought Trefzger to the door. He hustled her in before saying hello.

“You’re getting very jumpy these days, Detlef,” she reproached him.

“I should go and live in Albania,” he replied, “where your Hašek is.”

“He’s not my Hašek. And anyway, Berlin is the perfect place. Your work would never reach anyone from down there.”

“Of course it would,” he said. “They have excellent communications. Probably the best in the world.” He looked at her. “Let’s go in.”

Later, when they were lying on a deep rug and she was running a hand through his long blond hair, he asked: “How was your day at the replication unit?”

“You talk as if I work there,” she said. “I only waited an hour. Nothing came through. No documents, no messages. Any day now though, I should think.”

“He must really want you, Hella.”

“No, I don’t think so. I think he just wants something from me. Wants to use me. Same old story.”

“You know,” Trefzger said, sitting up, “you shouldn’t pretend to be so cynical. I can see you still feel for him underneath.”

“You’re jealous,” she said, gently scratching his back.

He laid a hand on her thigh. “No, I’m not jealous. You’ll grow tired of me one day like you did of him.”

“He died in a chemical attack a year ago.”

“You left him long before that, Hella. Seven or eight years before. He no longer excited you, just as one day I will no longer excite you.”

“That’s not true.” She sat up fully and threaded her hand around his waist, allowing it to drop to his crotch. “You excite me. He never did.”

Trefzger knew it wasn’t true, but rather than being a lie, it was a sort of code. He turned and kneeled between her legs. She drew his head closer and they kissed. He kissed her chin, her neck, her shoulders, and her breasts, gently biting. She threw her head back and tried to control her breathing. She opened her eyes to see if that would help. There was Detlef’s desk, his computer, the monitor screen a pattern of green symbols. Papers, books, pens, pencils… It was no good, the catalog of mundanity could not distract her body. She trembled as he sucked at her breast and as she distinctly felt the pulsing of his blood between her thighs. Wheezing now, she ignored the pain and hitched her legs up a little.

“All right?” he asked her.

“Yes,” between gasps for air.

“Your asthma?”

“Yes. Come on.”

He didn’t move, so she moved up farther, opened wider, and eased down onto his penis. He responded, thrusting up, and she yelped, then wheezed. Her breathing was a harsh rasp, but she urged him on, quicker still and harder. He came suddenly and she rode higher, then fell back, away, breathing quickly and noisily.

“Here.” Trefzger had reached for her insufflator. She pressed and inhaled, twice.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said, between gulping for air. “You’re meant… to grow out of it… I’m getting… worse every day. A doctor… the other day… told me if I didn’t have this stuff…” indicating the drug, “and I had a severe attack… it could be serious.”

“I was wondering,” Trefzger said, slowly, “why it should be getting worse. Then it came to me today. It’s the germs. All the bacteriological stuff. Most of them are composed of tiny spores. Tularemia, anthrax, plague, all these things. They are acting as irritants. There’s not enough in the air to kill, but plenty to exacerbate an asthmatic reaction. That’s the case away from the most active war zones, anyway. That’s why I don’t think you should go down to Belgrade or Tirana.”

“I have to,” she said, breathing a little more easily. “He needs me. He wants to live again, and I’m the only person he’s got to help him.”

“You do care more about him than me.” Trefzger sounded hurt.

“I don’t,” she shouted. “Don’t you understand? He needs me for five minutes. It’s not much to ask.”

“You won’t let me give you a child,” he said bitterly. “You had one by him.”

“You bastard!” She struck out, hitting him in the face. “Thanks for the memory.” She stood up in a rage and stormed across to the far side of the room, where she stood for a moment, then slumped down in a corner.

Her son, whom Hašek had not seen since just after the birth, when she left, taking the baby boy with her, had died at the age of eight in a heavy bomb attack on Hanover.

Varnov’s steel club thudded into the lieutenant’s head, and the man fell with a resounding crash, taking several wooden chairs with him.

They were in Belgrade now, where they’d found themselves driving through and past endless groups of aimlessly wandering children, until they found what they wanted: a vulnerable unit of fit men. A group of American soldiers, wearing uniforms under heavy, dark coats, were completing a deal with a small party of Czechoslovakian rebels. The two groups froze on either side of the room with the pile of weapons in the middle, when Jensen broke the door down and Varnov and Hašek stepped through behind her. The American lieutenant pulled an automatic pistol from inside his coat and shot several times, hitting Varnov and Hašek, before Varnov clubbed him to the floor. Using his machine gun, Hašek dispatched the Czech who advanced on him, experiencing a flicker of recognition at the insignia on the rebel soldier’s battledress. So, the man was a Czech, as Hašek himself had been, but it meant nothing; there was work to be done.

It was important to fire as little as possible, so as not to damage the vital organs, which was what they were after.

All Hašek, Varnov, and Jensen had to fear was an incendiary or explosive attack, something that would ravage their bodies to such an extent that they would be unusable. Also, whereas a few bullet wounds were neither here nor there, to be subjected to constant automatic gunfire could theoretically destroy them. So when the Czechs ran to the weapons and seized the flamethrowers on top of the pile, Jensen and Hašek hurried to disarm them. But they were not quick enough. A blond, spiky-haired Czech, no older than seventeen, operated his weapon, and Jensen, whom the youth was facing, awaited her annihilation by fire. But nothing happened. The other Czechs experienced the same problem. The Americans had sold them dud weapons. The youth grabbed a repeating rifle and aimed at the Americans. Again nothing happened.

The Americans, meanwhile, seeing their popularity dwindling, were crowding into the corner, trying to open a door that, as a precaution, the Czech leader had locked earlier.

Hašek and the Czech youth, armed now with a working machine gun, bore down on the frightened Americans, one of whom opened fire, unwisely choosing Hašek as his target. The bullets passed uselessly through the dead man, and the Czech sprayed the men in the corner with gunfire. He was stopped by Varnov, who brought his club to bear on the backs of his knees, then, as he fell, on his kneecaps. The boy screamed, dropped his gun, and fainted.

While Hašek checked the Americans for any sign of life, Varnov held the Czechs, and Jensen systematically slit their throats, thus preserving all their organs.

“Hašek,” Varnov said. Hašek looked up. “The boxes in the jeep.”

Hašek understood and left the room. Returning with the boxed preservation cylinders he found Varnov and Jensen already at work on the corpses. Two sets of surgical hardware lay open on the floor. Jensen replaced one instrument and took a small hacksaw. Hašek watched as she cut through the Czech youth’s forehead and worked at his skull, being careful not to saw too quickly and damage the brain. Varnov was extricating a heart with maximum speed and mess: he had to keep wiping his scrawny hands on his coat to prevent the scalpel slipping in his grasp.

Hašek told them he was neither equipped nor experienced and would therefore sit out the operations. Neither replied, so he left the room. He went downstairs and sat in the jeep. There was no one around and no trace yet of any natural light in the sky. Belgrade’s solid gray buildings had survived the war very well so far. Practically all were still standing. Varnov had parked the jeep between two imposing but essentially characterless examples, in juxtaposition to which Hašek seemed almost to come alive.

His hands molded around his remembered saxophone and his fingers warmed up on a few scales before slipping into Sonny Rollins’s “St. Thomas.” He played this through, then slowed down the tempo and segued into “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” He’d played through six more tunes, with some lengthy improvisation, by the time Varnov and Jensen appeared, heavily laden with their boxes, at the entrance to the building. They came down the steps and walked over to the jeep.

They drove northwest a little way to Zemun, where Varnov had planned to rendezvous with Larry, an American dealer. Larry, whose surname, if one existed, was known to nobody, did not discriminate on grounds of nationality: he’d accept anyone’s organs, even an American’s, provided he had buyers lined up. Especially an American’s, in actual fact, since he often liked to pitch his sales talk with the proud boast that this was not just any old kidney, this was an
American
kidney he was selling. Consequently, many of his buyers were American.

The electronically controlled gate swung open and Varnov stepped through, closely followed by Jensen and Hašek. Larry was waiting for them at the door, with his woollen plaid shirt and large, overhanging belly. They filed in and down a number of corridors.

The room they ended up in seemed to be the nerve center of Larry’s operations. It was also his living room. A television set in the corner was tuned to American football. On the floor by the battered armchair facing the set were three cans of American beer and a dirty polystyrene food container. On the other side of the room was ranged a bank of monitors and computer terminals. One screen displayed up-to-the-minute details of relative currency changes throughout the world. Another gave the correct time in all major capital cities. Several preservation boxes stood waiting on a wooden bench.

“Well, come on, fellers,” Larry said, picking his teeth. “Let’s see what you got.”

Larry examined the contents of the cylinders and announced he would take three kidneys, two livers, two sets of lungs, one set of testicles, and a brain.

“I hope it’s an American brain,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” Jensen lied, holding up the cylinder containing the blond Czech youth’s brain. All the Americans had received bullet wounds in the head.

“And the testicles, too?” asked Larry.

“Yes, American also,” said Varnov, truthfully.

Larry explained he couldn’t take the risk on the remaining viscera, since he could not predict how soon he would find more buyers. He paid them, in dollars, and returned to his chair to watch football and crack open a beer before they had even left the room.

Back in the jeep, Varnov distributed the money. Hašek noticed his share was slightly less and assumed this was accounted for by his nonparticipation in the eviscerations. He accepted the money—a large sum and more than sufficient for his purposes—without mentioning the discrepancy.

They returned to Belgrade, Varnov and Jensen to try to unload the unsold organs on another dealer and then to visit Petrovic, a Yugoslav, to see about subscription to a new satellite television and communications system; and Hašek, though the other two did not know it, to seek out Midgley, a corrupt British envoy to the Yugoslav government. There was no shortage of corrupt officials, but Midgley was the one to whom Hašek had an introduction.

During the short journey Hašek just had time to wrap his fingers around “I Found a New Baby.”

Varnov drove at breakneck speed. He had expected Larry to take the lot off them, so was now in a hurry to find another approachable dealer before the end of the night. He wanted to be back inside the frontier before daybreak to minimize the risk of further attack.

It was so easy, laughably easy. The jeep screeched to a halt before a large fortified building and Varnov leapt out, saying this particular dealer might take the stuff, but then again, they’d never dealt with him before, so there was no guarantee. Hašek said he would try a dealer he knew of in the next street and report back. Varnov and Jensen, presumably having heard but not acknowledging his comment, disappeared into the building.

He walked east on the Bulevar Revolucije for two hundred meters, then turned up the Milana Rakica. Three blocks up he turned left and spoke into an intercom.

“So what do you need these visas for?” asked Midgley authoritatively, ushering Hašek through into a leatherbound-book-lined study at the rear of the apartment.

“Very civilized,” Hašek said, looking around.

“I try,” Midgley replied, looking pleased, “to maintain standards. Drink…?” He looked at Hašek. “Oh no, of course not. Excuse me.”

“I’ll have a drink. Scotch and water. I developed a taste for it in Berlin.”

“Oh really?” Midgley nervously poured Scotch from a decanter and iced water from a jug. “And when were you in Berlin?”

“Eight years ago. I knew an American woman there. We drank a lot of Scotch. She moved away… Now, about the visas?”

“Of course.” Midgley passed Hašek the tumbler of Scotch. He took the drink and waited for the other man to turn away, but he didn’t, so Hašek tipped the contents of the glass down his throat in one go. Apparently slightly unnerved, Midgley turned and crossed to a desk. He opened a drawer, rummaged around inside, and found a pair of half-moon spectacles, which he put on, then continued his search.

Hašek hoped the Scotch and water had taken an undamaged route into his gut. Had it seeped out through a wound anywhere, he would be unable to feel the dampness and so would drip unawares on the Englishman’s floor. It wasn’t that he cared to avoid offending propriety; he just didn’t want to telegraph his weaknesses to this man.

“A return transit visa, is it?” Midgley asked. A swathe of thick, black, greased hair had fallen down over his forehead. He tried to smooth it back into place.

“I only need to see her for two minutes.”

“The trouble is,” Midgley began, “they are in great demand and very short supply. It’s mothers, you see, wanting for some morbid reason to come down and look for their dead children. Here in Belgrade, mainly. I don’t know if you’ve noticed how few children there are in Tirana. They’re mostly retained in Belgrade.”