Legends

Once, several incarnations back, Dante Pippen had barely survived an interminable bus trip that took him from a CIA safe house in a middle class neighborhood of Islamabad (furnished, for once, not in ancient Danish modern but in modern Pakistani kitsch) to Peshawar and the tribal badlands of the Khyber Pass, where he spent the better part of a year debriefing fighters infiltrating into and out of Afghanistan. The bus trip (Crystal Quest’s notion of how an Irish reporter working for a wire service—Dante’s cover at the time—would travel) had turned out to be a nightmare. Squeezed onto the wooden bench at the back of the bus between a mullah from Kandahar wearing a filthy shalwar kameez and a bearded Kashmiri fighter in a reeking djellaba, Dante had been eternally grateful when the bus pulled up, sometimes smack in the middle of nowhere, other times on the sewage-saturated streets of what passed for a village, to let the passengers stretch their legs, reckon the direction of Mecca and murmur the verses of the Koran a Muslim is required to recite five times a day. Now, slouching on the plush banquette in the back of the air-conditioned double-deck tourist bus, surrounded by well-dressed and, more importantly, well-scrubbed Germans on their way home from the spa at Karlovy Vary, Martin Odum suddenly thought of Dante’s Khyber trip and the memory brought a smile to his lips. As always, remembering a detail from Dante’s past reminded Martin that he, too, must have had a past, and this gave him a measure of hope that he could one day retrieve it. He patted the Canadian passport in the inside breast pocket of his jacket in anticipation of arriving at the Czech-German frontier. This particular passport, one of several he’d swiped from a safe when he was clearing out his office after being dismissed from the CIA, had been issued to a resident of British Columbia named Jozef Kafkor, a name Martin didn’t recognize but found easy to remember because it reminded him of Franz Kafka and his stories of anguished individuals struggling to survive in a nightmarish world, which was more or less how Martin saw himself. Lulled by the motion of the bus and the ticking of its diesel engine, Martin closed his eyes and dozed, reliving the events of the last twelve hours.

He could hear Radek’s voice whispering in his ear. Please, Mr. Odum, you must wake up.

Martin had drifted up toward the mirrored surface of consciousness in carefully calibrated increments, a deep sea diver rising languidly to avoid the bends. When he finally located the appropriate muscles and worked his lids open, he had discovered Radek, dressed again in jodhpurs and the Tyrolean jacket, crouching next to the metal army cot in his cell. “For the love of God, wake up, Mr. Odum.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Four, four and a half hours.”

Martin had struggled stiffly into a sitting position on the cot, with his back against the wooden bulkhead. “What time is it?”

“Twenty to six.”

“Antemeridian or postmeridian?”

“Before dawn. Are you able to focus on what I say? The guards on the quay, the staff on the houseboat have been sent home. People in high places want you to vanish into thin air.” He handed Martin his shoes, both of which had laces, along with his belt. “Put these on. Follow me.”

Radek led Martin up the metal staircase to the weather deck. In a tiny room next to the midships passageway, he returned his Aquascutum and valise, which he had retrieved from the bed and breakfast. Martin snapped open the valise and touched the white silk scarf folded on top of the clothes. He ran his fingers across the underside of the lid.

“Your false papers, as well as your dollars and English pounds, are where you hid them, Mr. Odum.”

Martin regarded Radek warily. “You provide a great deal for thirty lousy crowns an hour.”

There was a flicker of pain in Radek’s eyes. “I am not the man I appear to be,” he whispered. “I am not the person my superiors take me for. I did not rebel in my youth against the communists to serve so-called state capitalists who use the same methods. I refuse to be complicit with criminals.” He pulled the German Walther P1 with a clip inserted in it from a pocket of his Tyrollean jacket and offered it to Martin, butt first. “At least you are forewarned.”

Thoroughly confused, Martin took the weapon. “Forewarned and forearmed.”