The Prodigal Spy (19 page)

“What?”

His father smiled. “So much information from America. They still work overtime at it, my friends. Like addicts. I thought, why not a little for me? Don’t they owe me that much? Of course, the newspapers I could see for myself at the institute. But the rest—” He paused. “I didn’t want to miss everything in your life.”

“Wait a minute.” A sudden anger. “You had people spy on me?”

His father shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. Just what anyone would know. The public record.” He stopped. “Well, once. In the beginning. I was so desperate –I couldn’t bear it. So I asked someone at the institute. You know, it’s so easy. To arrange that. He brought me pictures. Hockey in Central Park. You were still a boy. Then I saw how
crazy
it was. How could I do that to you? It was my fault, all of it. I had to let go. So I made them stop.” He turned to him. “It was just that once.”

Nick stared up at him, not knowing what to say. In all the years, he had not once imagined what his father had felt. Now he saw, as in the science experiment, that if you just took a few steps to the side, the angle of the world was different.

“What else?” he said, curious.

His father shrugged. “It wasn’t much, Nick. A picture. A few clippings. I couldn’t watch you grow. Remember the height marks?”

Nick nodded. The notches on the side of the cabin door, measuring him every six months.

“It was like that. Just the marks. So I’d know how you were doing.”

His father was quiet for a minute, and Nick could hear the music rising in the background, almost at an end.

“So college and then the army and—” His father stopped, took a breath. “All the time, I thought, he doesn’t even know me anymore. Leave it–it’s over and done with. But then you went to London to work with Wiseman. Un-American activities. And I thought, it’s not over for him either. It’s time.”

“For what?” Nick said, standing up. “Why now?”

His father looked around, disconcerted, as if the question had come too soon, then turned to face him.

“Because I’m dying, Nick,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

Nick stared at him, seeing now that what he had taken for age was really illness.

“No, don’t look like that,” his father said quickly, concerned. “It’s all right. I don’t say it to upset you. It’s just–a fact.” He paused. “So it has to be now.” He looked away from Nick’s gaze. “Please don’t. I know I’m a stranger to you. I didn’t ask you to come to—”

“Why did you, then?” Nick asked, unexpectedly bitter, his voice unsteady. “To say goodbye?”

“No. I wanted to see you, it’s true. Selfish. But there’s something else.” He reached up, putting his hands on Nick’s shoulders. “I want to put an end to that time. For both of us. I need you to help me.”

“But—”

“Don’t you see? You’re the only one I can trust.”

Nick looked at him, amazed. In the distance, the applause began. “To do what?”

His father looked up at the sound of the clapping, the lights beginning to come on, and patted Nick’s hand. “Not here. We’ll talk. It’s a long story. We can’t start it here.” Then he held him by the arms again. “Tomorrow.”

But the lights seemed to bring with them a kind of urgency. There would never be time to catch his breath, sort out the noises that were a jumble in his mind. He watched me grow. He’s dying. Something’s worrying him. Was any of it real? He felt somehow that his father might rise up and float away, like the applause.

“Nick!” He heard her voice from the other end of the arcade, tentative, obviously looking for him, and he grabbed his father’s shoulder.

“One thing,” he said. “I have to know.”

His father looked at him, surprised at the strength of his grasp. “What?”

“Tell me the truth. The
truth
. Just to me. That night, when you left–did you go to the Mayflower?”

His father stared, assessing, then looked down, almost with a smile. “So you think that too. I thought I was the only one.” He looked back up. “No, I didn’t go there. Somebody else killed her.”

There it was, as simple as that. Nick felt empty with it gone, the relief of an aching limb finally removed.

“But you do think she was killed?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Nick.” Molly again, closer now.

“Who—”

“It’s all the same crime, you see,” his father said, leaning toward him, conspiratorial. “What happened to her. What happened to me. That’s why I need your help. I want to know. While I still have time.”

Before Nick could respond, Molly was with them. His father glanced at him, a flicker of the eye to signal an end to the conversation. But why shouldn’t she know? Secrecy became a reflex. Nick looked at her, waiting to see if she’d overheard, but the words, so loud to him, evidently hadn’t carried.

“There you are,” she said. Then, to his father, “Hello again.”

His father took her hand. “Thank you. For bringing him. I owe you a great debt.”

“I’m glad someone does,” she said cheerfully, refusing to be solemn. “You’ve had a visit?”

“A sighting,” his father said. He looked around at the people milling toward the garden door. “Tomorrow we’ll visit.”

“You’re going?” Nick said.

“It’s better.”

“But we’ve just–I’ll come back with you.”

“No, no. Tomorrow. The country.” He smiled at Nick’s urprise. “The weekend is sacred here. To stay home would be noticed. We leave our flat every Saturday at eight. Like clockwork. So we must keep the clock running.”

“You’re going away?” Nick said, incredulous.

“And you. Leave the hotel early, with your camera. There’s a lot to see in Prague. I can pick you up by the tram stop—”

“We have a car.”

His father smiled. “Rich Americans. I forgot. Even better. Two cars. You know the tank at the bottom of Holečhova?” This to Molly, who nodded. “Eight-ten. It’s quite safe. They never follow us there.”

His voice, growing faint, ended in a small cough. Then the coughing came again, stronger, until he was forced to give in to it, partially doubling over to catch his breath.

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket to cover his mouth.

Nick leaned forward, peering at him. “What’s wrong?”

His father waved his hand dismissively, still catching his breath. Then he managed a smile. “Nothing. Overcome with emotion.”

He tossed it out casually, and in that second Nick heard his father again, young, unable to resist an ironic turn. But he looked drawn, shaken by the cough.

“It passes,” he said, and fumbled in his pocket for a small tin box, the kind used for pastille candies. When he opened it, the pills seemed enormous. “Soviet medicine,” he said wryly. “Not for the weak.”

“There’s some water in the men’s room,” Nick said, turning to get it. To his surprise, his father leaned on his arm and began walking with him.

“Just a moment,” his father said to Molly, attempting to be jaunty, but his voice was raspy now, and Nick wondered if it really was just a coughing spell.

In the men’s room, people were lined up at the urinals. Nick’s father went over to the washbasin, taking his time with the pill. He chased it down with water and stood quietly for a minute calming himself. A few men left.

“Better?” Nick said.

His father nodded. “What we talked about before? It’s better, I think, not to say anything.”

“To Molly, you mean. Why?” A man at the urinal glanced in their direction, surprised at the English, but Nick ignored him.

His father was nodding again, stifling the beginning of another cough. “Not yet. Not even her. Not until I’m sure. I’ll explain.”

“You all right?” Nick put his hand gently on his father’s back, afraid that a stronger pat would set him off again.

“You think it’s crazy, don’t you? Whispering in corners,” he said, his voice now in fact a whisper. “You’re not used to it.”

Nick looked around the room. The overhead vents might be hiding mikes, but why? Who would bother to bug the men’s room at the Wallenstein Palace? It occurred to him for the first time that his father, this man he didn’t know, might really be paranoid, common sense and skepticism worn down by the years to a membrane too thin to stop suspicion seeping through.

“Is it always like this?” Nick said.

“No. Sometimes they really are listening.”

Nick smiled, relieved. It was the kind of offhand joke his father would have made on 2nd Street, having a drink with his mother before they went out. A throwaway, not a story, and she’d be smiling, just happy to be with him. His father smiled now too, pleased with himself. But when he spoke, his voice was serious. “I don’t do it for myself,” he said, looking straight at Nick. Then another cough, his face crinkling up a little in pain, and he turned around to the basin so that Nick had to look at him in the mirror.

“What’s wrong with you?” Nick said, alarmed, frustrated at not knowing how to react.

In the mirror his father lowered his head, eyes dropping out of sight, and waved his hand again. “It’s all right. You go. Please. I’ll be fine. Tomorrow. By the tank.”

But Nick wouldn’t let go. He took the back of his father’s shoulders, turning him. “It’s not all right. You’re sick.”

The man at the urinal had zipped and now came over, saying something in Czech. His father answered quickly, the sound of Czech surprising Nick.

“He thinks you’re molesting me,” his father said, his head still down, trying again for a wry joke. “You’d better go.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.” Nick still held him by the shoulders, but when his father lifted his face Nick let go, stung by the look of dismay.

“It doesn’t matter. Just a side effect. Please,” his father said quietly. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Nick looked down in confusion and saw the stain. His father had wet himself. When he looked back up, his father’s eyes were moist with embarrassment. “It’s all right,” Nick said, words to a child.

But his father shook his head. “No. Now you’ll always think of me this way.” He looked up, his eyes a kind of odd plea, past all the jokes. “I can’t make it up to you. I’m not expecting—” He stopped, his voice almost feverish. “But not this. Not some stranger with wet pants.”

Now it was Nick who reached out to him, bringing him close in the dingy men’s room, holding him, whispering into his ear so that no one could hear. “You’re not a stranger,” he said.

“He’s all right. He wants us to leave separately,” he said to Molly outside.

“He doesn’t look all right.”

“I know. He’s been sick.”

“You look a little shaky yourself,” she said, studying him.

He led her toward the last of the crowd funneling through the garden door.

“I can’t stand it,” she said. “What did he say? What did you talk about?”

He looked at her, unprepared. Why not tell her?

“He’s not just sick. He thinks he’s dying. That’s why he wanted to see me,” Nick said, surprised at how easily it came out. It had begun already, the convenient half-truths, covering tracks.

“Oh,” she said, deflated. Then, an afterthought, “I’m sorry. How do you feel?”

“Ask me later. Right now, I’m not sure.”

The street was a small eddy of Tatras and Skodas, loud motors and clunky headlights shining on the cobblestones. In the square a large crowd bundled in coats waited for late trams. Instinctively, Nick headed away, toward the bridge, where couples were still loitering by the statues.

“What else did he say?” Molly said. “I mean, why doesn’t he want anyone to know you’re here? What difference would it make?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s sick. You summon the family, it’s a land of tip-off. I don’t know.”

She shook her head. “There’s something else.” But when he stopped and looked down at the water, she let it go, sensing his reluctance.

“This is the way cities used to look,” he said. “Just enough light to see where you’re going.” A delayed thought from the walk over, when he had taken in the streets without ads and lighted shops, just corner lights like sconces and recesses that were really dark.

“Nick? What was it like, seeing him? Do you mind my asking?”

He turned to her. “It was easy. It was him.” He looked back at the mist gathering along the surface of the river. Soon everything would be covered, insubstantial. He glanced over his shoulder as if he could catch a last glimpse of his father on the streets twisting up to Hradčany, a proof he’d really been there. “All this time. For years–
years –
I thought he was, I don’t know, on the other side of the moon or something. But he’s been here. In an apartment.

“All you have to do is drive in, spend a few dollars. All this time.”

She put her hand on his arm. “He hasn’t always been here.”

“Moscow, then,” he said, a little annoyed. “What’s the difference? The point is, he’s been
somewhere.
I
could have seen him. They stamp a passport. That’s it. What did I think it was? Some fucking Checkpoint Charlie? I could have seen him, not waited until he was sick. So why didn’t I?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Nick, you’re not the one who left.”

Nick nodded. “I know.” He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and handed her one. “He wrote to me.”

“Wrote to you?” Her face was caught in the glare of the match.

“In the beginning. He says. Anyway, I never got them.” He lit his own and exhaled a long stream, looking back at the water. “It’s like I missed a train. And I don’t know why.”

She took his arm, leading him away from the railing. “Come on. You’re tired,” she said, her voice familiar, as if they were already a couple. “Maybe this wasn’t as easy as you thought.”

Karlova fed into the Old Town Square, where the clock was ringing to nearly deserted streets. There were no cars; the town had reverted to its medieval life. He could hear the click of her heels. Like him, the city was brooding and quiet, slipping back into its own past.

They were on one of the side streets that led toward the lights of Wenceslas when they heard the whistle, an urgent shriek of authority, and the clomp of boots, the sounds of a dozen war movies. Two figures were racing toward them, chased by a group of uniforms. Shouts, indistinguishable words, a Gestapo bark, and then the whistle again, flying toward them like a pointed finger. Nick froze. The sound of fear, always directed at you, so that even when it was merely overheard, you felt caught too. Here, in the foreign street, it had the anxious confusion of a bad dream–it was coming to get you. Shoes cracked against the pavement.