Legends

Radek, pressing a handkerchief to his head wound to stop the bleeding, took out a small flashlight and signalled with it in the direction of the green garbage bin down the quay from the houseboat. Moments later the two heavies who had escorted Martin to and from his cell appeared on the gangplank. Radek motioned for them to follow him as he headed for the small cell two decks under the bow. They found Zuzana Slánská sitting on her metal cot, her eyes swollen with fear, her legs tucked under her body, her arms hugging the blanket over her shoulders despite the absence of a breath of air in the room. “Is it time for another interrogation already?” she asked, her fingers toying with the Star of David at her neck as she unwound from the sitting position on the cot and stood up. Instead of waving her through the door, the two guards positioned themselves on either side of the woman and gripped her arms above the elbows. Zuzana’s eyes widened as Radek stepped forward and wrenched her blouse out of the waistband, baring her stomach. When she caught sight of the small syringe in his hand, she struggled to break free, but the two men only tightened their holds on her arms. Thoroughly terrified, Zuzana began to sob silently as Radek jabbed the needle into the soft flesh of her navel and depressed the plunger. The drug took effect rapidly—within seconds Zuzana’s eyelids drooped, then her chin fell forward onto her chest. While the two heavies held her up, Radek produced a small pocket knife and began cutting strips from the blanket on the cot. He twisted the strips into cords and tied two of them end to end. Then he dragged the metal cot into the center of the cell under the light bulb and, climbing up on the bed, attached one end of the makeshift cord to the electric wire above the bulb. He pulled on it to make sure it would hold. The heavies hauled Zuzana’s limp body onto the cot under the bulb and held her up while Radek fashioned a noose and tightened it around the woman’s neck. Then he jumped free of the cot and kicked it onto its side and the three men stepped back and watched Zuzana’s body twisting slowly at the end of the cord. Radek grew impatient and motioned with a finger—one of the heavies grabbed her around the hips and added his weight to hers to speed up the execution. Clucking his tongue, Radek rolled his head from side to side in mock grief. “It is clearly not the state’s responsibility if you turned out to be suicidal,” he informed the woman strangling to death in the middle of the room.

Crystal Quest’s features clouded over as she fitted on narrow spectacles and read the deciphered “Eyes Only” action report from Prague Station that her chief of staff had deposited on the blotter. The two wallahs who had been briefing her on the mass graves recently uncovered in Bosnia exchanged looks; they had lived through enough of the DDO’s mood swings to recognize storm warnings when they saw them. Quest slowly looked up from the report. For once she seemed tongue-tied.

“When did this come in?” she finally asked.

“Ten minutes ago,” the chief of staff replied. “Knowing your interest, I thought I’d walk it through instead of rout it.”

“Where did they find the Skoda?”

“On one of those narrow cobblestoned streets on the Hradcany Castle side of the river.”

“When?”

“Twelve hours ago, which was a day and a half after the Czechs watched him drive off down the quay.”

The wallahs slumped back in their chairs and gripped the arm rests to better breast the storm. To their utter surprise, a cranky grin crept over Quest’s crimson lips.

“I love that son of a bitch,” she whispered harshly. “Where did they find the bullets?”

The chief of staff couldn’t help smiling, too. “On the front seat of the car,” he said. “Six 9-millimeter Parabellums set out in a neat row. They never found the handgun.”

Quest slapped at the action report with the palm of her hand. To the attending wallahs it came across as applause. “Naturally they never found the handgun. He would have deep-sixed it in the Vltava. Oh, he’s good, he is.”

“He ought to be,” agreed the chief of staff. “You trained him.”