Legends

Martin could imagine the scenario of Plan A: The prisoner, carrying multiple false identity papers and arrested in the company of an arms dealer, overpowers his guard, swipes his handgun and escapes from the safe house where he is being questioned, heading for Austria. Somewhere along the route, or perhaps at the border crossing itself, he is stopped for a routine passport control. In front of witnesses he produces the gun and tries to shoot his way out of a tight spot, at which point he is gunned down by uniformed police. Open and shut case of self defense. Happens all the time in the former Soviet wastelands of Europe these days.

Knowing that Radek had been setting him up for a hit, Martin certainly didn’t want to use the Skoda, though if he parked it on a side street, where it could go unnoticed for hours or even for days, the authorities might spend precious time looking for Radek’s car on the highways leading south. Once he ditched the Skoda (he would throw the handgun in the river but leave the bullets on the driver’s seat to taunt Radek), the quickest way out of the country was the best: There were trains departing all through the day for Karlovy Vary, the spa in the northwestern corner of the country a long stone’s throw from the German frontier. And there were double-decker tourist busses heading back to Germany from Karlovy Vary by the dozens every afternoon; even under the communist regime it had been possible to bribe one of the bus drivers to take you across the border. If the frontier guards verified identities, he could use the Canadian passport that he’d stashed in the tattered lining of his Aquascutum. Checking the lining again, he felt there was a good possibility that Radek had not discovered that one.

The driver’s tinny voice, coming from small speakers in the roof of the tourist bus, stirred Martin from his reverie. “Bereitet Eure Pässe, wir werden an der Grenze sein.” Up ahead he could make out the low flat-roofed wooden buildings that housed the money changers and the toilets, and beyond that the border guards in brown uniforms and berets. There was one tourist bus ahead of theirs and three behind, which Martin knew was a stroke of luck; the guards tended toward cursory inspections at rush hours. When it was the turn of his bus, a young officer with a harassed expression on his face climbed onto the bus and walked down the aisle, glancing at faces more than the open passports, looking for Arabs or Afghans surely. Sitting on the banquette, Martin opened the passport to the page with his photo and, smiling pleasantly, held it out, but the young officer barely gave it, or him, a second glance. When the bus started up again and eased across the red stripe painted across the highway, the German passengers, relieved to be back in civilization, broke into a raucous cheer.

Martin didn’t join in the celebration. He was having second thoughts about leaving Zuzana Slánská in the clutches of the devious Radek. In his mind’s eye he could visualize the weight of the state crushing the breath out of her brittle body.

Standing on the fo’c’sle, Radek had watched the red taillights grow dimmer as the Skoda made its way along the quay toward the ramp. When the lights brightened and the car braked to a stop, the interrogator, standing next to him and peering through binoculars, grunted in irritation. Moments later, when the taillights finally started up the ramp and disappeared on the street above the quay, the two men clasped hands to salute a scheme well hatched. The interrogator flicked back the sleeve of his leather jacket to look at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. “I will alert our people that the American is on his way south,” he said. “The Oligarkh has wired instructions to our ministry—he wants the trail to Samat to end at the Slánská woman.”