Lost and Found in Prague (26 page)

Father Borelli ran his fingers over the fabric. A fine cloth, smooth and silky, befitting a king. His hand shook with nerves. He’d noticed the man wore gloves. Borelli himself did not and he could feel the moisture of sweat on his own.

With an odd flash of a vision and memory—he was entering the church, he and Dana creeping to the altar in the dark, he holding the flashlight, she climbing up, quivering as she reached out to touch the Infant. It had been a fake, but Giovanni sensed that this was not—it was authentic. But, still, he must make sure. He lifted the robe to touch the core of the statue, feeling as if he were taking part in some sacrilege, violating the body of Christ, though these hands, Giovanni Borelli’s hands, had often held the body of Christ. In the Consecration and Communion. He had distributed the body and blood of Christ to the faithful.

He had no lingering doubts as his fingers made contact with the body. The lower portion had the texture of a candle. Wax, like the authentic Infant. He removed his hand, slowly pulled the outer garment back over the Infant’s body, carefully rewrapped the small statue. He zipped the bag.

“Yes,” he said. “We must make arrangements.”

The light flicked off. Darkness enveloped the two men.

“You have the money?”

“It can be arranged,” Father Borelli said. He still knelt, the man hovering over him, and he realized, as he braced himself against the cobbled earth, that he could not stand. He felt a sudden deep compression around his heart, his shoulder, moving to his jaw. He knew something was terribly wrong.

As they drove, Dal’s phone rang. Though Dana didn’t understand the quick words flying out of him, nor could she hear the responses, now and then she’d pick up a familiar name or word. Lenka Horácková. Branko Banik. Václav Horácek. Jirí Jankovic.

Dal slid his phone back in his pocket. “Jirí Jankovic. Many years ago, before the revolution, he serves in the Czech military. Many young men, when the protests begin, they start to defect. They know they are to be overturned. The Communists. Many sympathies did not rest with the oppressors; now they join forces with the youth. They have become sympathetic to the cause.”

“Turns in his gun for a guitar?” Dana asked. “Protest through song?”

“He serves . . . served on special sniper forces. Guns for guitar? Music had become part of the protest, a velvet revolution. Perhaps violence is never far from those who protest, even in a gentle revolution.”

“And now, in Prague, a democracy, he enters the world of free enterprise, doing business as a paid assassin?”

They had dropped Kristof off at headquarters. His assignment: Find a connection, something to link Kula and Banik. Now they knew what they were looking for. Damek continued to fill Dana in on details of their investigation.

Dana asked, “You suspect Banik decided to permanently shut Filip Kula up, too? Like he possibly did with Pavel Novák?”

Dal nodded.

“And the senator?”

“The senator had sent a representative to meet with Filip Kula. He was corresponding with a man who was constructing an index for the Communist-era secret police files. Perhaps delving into Banik’s past.”

“But why now? Why not years ago?”

Dal didn’t answer and Dana suspected he did not know.

“Lenka was, or is, receiving payments from Banik, as was Kula?” Dana asked.

“Yes, but there is something different about the payments. Our financial forensics officer uncovered many payments to Lenka quickly, while the source of Kula’s was securely hidden.” Dal explained how they made the connection. They were now in what appeared to be a high-end residential area. Dal swerved quickly into a parking spot, jumped out, and Dana followed. The apartment building was locked, the lobby dim. A guard sat at a desk inside, reading a newspaper. Dal pressed the buzzer, peering through the wide window, and then spoke rapidly into the speaker as the man hopped up and approached. Pulling identification from his pocket, Dal motioned. The man unlocked the door.

After a flurry of questions, the guard returned to the desk, waited for a woman in a similar uniform to arrive, then escorted Dal and Dana to the elevator and up several floors. She could see from the lobby, with plush carpet and chandeliers, then the hallway, as they exited the elevator, that it was a nice complex.

The man unlocked the door to one of the units, and the three of them entered the darkened room. Dana guessed that they were in Lenka’s new apartment, though she sensed, as Dal flicked on the light without a word, that no one was home. She wondered if this intrusion was legal under Czech law, if Damek was cutting corners. Or would this be considered a life-and-death situation?

She and the security man followed him as he went through the living room, down a hall, and entered what looked like the master bedroom with a queen bed and large adjacent bathroom. Dal glanced around quickly before stepping back into the hall. The three entered a second room. A floral bedspread covered the bed; stuffed animals were propped inside a dormer window with cushioned settee. The jewelry and makeup scattered on the vanity announced that the occupant had moved on from toys to the interests of a young woman, and Dana imagined a fragile, infirm girl, sitting in bed, propped up by pillows, her mother at her side, gently applying blush to her pale cheeks, a dab of lip gloss. A bookcase revealed not children’s books but paperback novels, romances and fantasies that a young woman might read, some in English, others in Czech. But what struck Dana most was the array of photographs scattered about the room—on the vanity, the bookcase, the nightstand. She could see Dal, too, took special interest in these, as he lifted one, speaking to the guard as he examined it. The photo, Dana determined, was the girl with her mother and brother, looking so much like a young Pavel, it was spooky. Lenka was blond, the daughter’s hair a strawberry blond. Dal motioned toward another photo on the stand beside the bed. Though a candid shot, rather than the formal portrait she’d seen at the Praha International headquarters, Dana was sure it was the same man. Branko Banik.

Dana stared at Dal, a million thoughts circling through her head. “The payments to Kula were untraceable?” Dana asked. “Yet those to Lenka were easily traced?”

“Perhaps not
easily
traced. We have a skillful team—”

“So, they are different?”

“Yes.”

“He had no fear that the payments to Lenka would be labeled illegal?”

“Possibly.”

Dana examined the photo of the young girl, then the image of Banik.

“The payments to Lenka are not from illegal activity or blackmail,” she said. “The payments are to support his daughter. Branko Banik is the girl’s father.”

Dal could see the resemblance between the girl and Banik. It would make sense that these payments to Lenka were to support her daughter.
Their
daughter. These transfers had been too easily traced to be of an illegal nature. Branko Banik was too clever to leave such a trail. Hiding payments from a wife through a series of corporate and business accounts made perfect sense. And there was no crime in supporting your own child.

Branko Banik’s wife—a woman with a father who had been a high-ranking official in the Czech government. A man whose connections and influence would be essential to Branko. A connection he would in no way wish to sever. No, Banik would not want his wife, or his father-in-law, to know he was supporting a child with another woman.

Dal picked up a photo from the bookcase and handed it to Dana. A laughing child, a beautiful, but thin, girl, standing beside her brother, both delightfully observing the antics of a man performing with a marionette.

Then Dana’s eyes rested on something that seemed not to fit at all with the rest of the decor. Against the far wall, on the opposite side of the bed, what appeared to be a small altar with votive candles. Though unlit, they still perfumed the air with the familiar scent of devotion. A small lace doily sat in the middle of the altar. Empty. Investigator Damek examined the area as he spoke with the guard, then glanced back at Dana, as a lump formed in her throat.

“The girl has been removed,” he said quietly. Again he spoke with the guard, then turned to Dana. “Her name is Lisabeta. She is just sixteen.”

He motioned Dana out of the room.

“You believe the Infant was here?” she asked, her voice low. “He’s been taken along with the girl to—” Dana gasped, wondering if the girl was dead. “You know where she is? She isn’t . . .” Dana glanced from Dal to the guard.

“She has been taken to IKEM,” Dal replied.

Dana raised her shoulders, needing more.

“The Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine.”

The man was on top of him, his thin, angular body, his strangely shaped head outlined against the faint light of the moon, and he was pounding, pounding, furiously on Giovanni Borelli’s chest.
He’s trying to kill me,
Father Borelli thought, but confusion swirled through every numb limb. Where was he? What was happening? Had he passed out? Who was this man? He felt as if something inside him had exploded and then as if something was fading away, even as the man pounded. The man was sweating, then pushing his hat from his head, rubbing moisture from the smooth surface, screaming in a language that puzzled Father Borelli before he realized it was Czech. “Don’t go, old man, don’t go.”

He woke, still confused, unaware of how much time had passed, to the hiss of the cats he’d heard earlier in the night, recalling now he was at the Jewish cemetery in Prague, though he was not sure why. Then the sound of a siren pierced the night air. Closer and closer, until he could feel it on top of him. Then he remembered, and though he could not move, the weight of his body pinning him down, he knew the man was gone. He would never return the Infant. The man was gone, and the Infant, too.

“You old fool,” he told himself, even as he felt himself vanishing again, as another man’s voice shouted, “Over here. He’s over here.”

•   •   •

“The Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine?” Dana asked.

“Much less sinister than it sounds,” Dal replied calmly. “Here in the Czech Republic we are as advanced as any country in the fields of medicine. At this center many transplants have been successfully performed. Recently, Branko Banik has made a substantial contribution to the hospital.”

“To assure the donation of a heart for his daughter?”

Dana turned and stared at Damek, her eyes blinking furiously. She removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes, slipped them back on.

The apartment guard, who was just getting off duty, had told Dal he’d seen the man coming into and out of the apartment, generally in the evenings, though he did not know his identity. The guard also confirmed a brother, an uncle, the toy store owner, pictured in a photograph on her bookshelf with a younger Václav and his little sister, Lisabeta, taken several years before. Dal was sure Dana was right—these two had taken the Infant. According to the guard at the apartment complex, she was the sweetest young woman he’d ever known. As ill as she was, she always asked about his family. Dal was sure she had no idea that her brother and uncle had stolen the Infant from the church, hoping for a miracle. That her father, whom Dal guessed she could not acknowledge in public, may or may not have been involved in this theft, and had certainly used his money and influence to procure her a heart.

“When I spoke with the musician on the bridge,” Dana said, “he told me if I was a family friend, I’d know where Václav was. . . . He meant the hospital. For his sister’s surgery, a heart transplant.”

Within minutes, they’d arrived at the hospital parking lot, and Dal glanced around again to make sure no one was following them. He was about to step out when, again, his phone rang.

“Investigator Damek.”

“What can I do for you, Investigator Damek?” the reporter asked. “Must be important. You know it’s past midnight?”

Dal didn’t apologize. “What do you know about Branko Banik?”

“He’s one of the wealthiest men in the Czech Republic.”

“Common knowledge,” he came back impatiently. “Anything that hasn’t been published?”

“What’s in it for me?” the reporter shot back.

“The biggest scoop of your life?”

“As?”

“Not yet, but you’ll be first.”

“You probably know this, but your predecessor, the one who came in big on the Kula murder, he’s being considered for a top security position with one of Banik’s companies.”

One plus one plus one plus one. Rumors had been flying around headquarters, but a company had never been named. Pieces were being laid out on the table, but still others were missing. Dal’s predecessor, who had so easily solved the murder of Filip Kula, was being paid off with a position in the private sector with a company owned by Branko Banik. “Anything else?”

“How big’s the scoop?”

“Big.”

“It’s not confirmed, so we haven’t printed it, but it’s likely he’s going to make a run for Parliament. His father-in-law, retired years ago, has been using Senator Viktor Vlasák as his puppet, but looks like he is about to retire. Rumors are flying that Banik’s setting up a team to run.”

Senator Vlasák, the very man who had called Senator Zajic the morning of his murder. He was possibly attempting to get Senator Zajic, who by all accounts was a respected politician, if not a particularly faithful spouse, behind Banik’s run. Senator Zajic was doing a little vetting of his own, checking into the background of Branko Banik. His phone communications with Hugo Hutka, his aide’s meeting with Filip Kula, might indicate such and provide a possible motive for several murders. If it was revealed that Banik was an StB informant, that would be more than enough to keep him out of office.

He thanked the reporter, said he’d be in touch.

As they drove, Dal explained what he’d just learned to Dana.

“I met him once,” Dana said. There was a tremor in her voice.

“Jankovic?” Dal asked. Hadn’t she just said she didn’t know him?

“Branko Banik,” she said.

Dal wondered why she’d waited until now to tell him. He got the feeling that this was an important piece of information. “You know him?” Was she about to place another piece of the puzzle on the board?

“Years ago, during the revolution . . .” She stopped, as if deciding whether or not to continue. “I went by his office, left him a note.”

“His office? When?” Was her mind stepping back in time?

“Yesterday. No. Day before. I told him”—Dana paused again—“I was looking for Pavel Novák. I asked if he could help me find Pavel.”

“He contacted you?”

“No,” she said, “but—”

“Pavel Novák? You asked about the very man Sister Agnes believes Banik murdered many years ago?”

Dana nodded, but for many moments there were no words, as if she, too, were placing, piece by piece, jagged edges into a puzzle.

Dal turned the steering wheel, screeched out of the parking lot without another word. He’d been a fool to bring her along. Treating her as if she were some kind of detective, the two of them working side by side, like romantic leads on a movie set. He’d sensed she might be in danger and yet he’d let her hop in the vehicle as if they were off on some kind of adventure. If Banik had murdered Pavel Novák years ago, Dana’s inquiry, seemingly out of nowhere, surely stirred up concerns in the man. If his “goon” had seen her hanging out with the chief homicide investigator in Prague . . . Dana had no idea what she had gotten herself into, and he needed to get her out of harm’s way.

“I am returning you to your hotel,” he said, attempting to remain calm, yet aware the words were rushing out before they’d firmly formed in his head. “Lock the door. An officer will be sent to your hotel. Stay there. We will provide an escort to the airport in the morning.”

For several moments she did not object. Finally she said, “No, I want to see this through. And the officer, send him to the convent. If someone has been following me, they might have seen me go to visit Caroline. Put a guard at the convent.”

“I will send someone to the convent, but please—”

“I’m involved now . . . I want to help.”

Arriving in front of Dana’s hotel, again he surveyed the surroundings. He told her to stay in the car. He stepped out, went around for her door, and opened it. She swung her leg to step out as Dal caught a metallic flash, something off to the right on the dimly lit street. He pushed her down just as it sounded. And then another shot as they fell onto unyielding stone, another blast, as he heard and felt it, mere centimeters from his head. Then another quick shot, an explosion, a spray, spattering into his eyes. He smelled the warmth of blood, entrails. He knew she’d been shot—in the gut. Praying, praying his mistakes would not cost Dana her life, even as he sensed they already had, he pulled his handgun and shot toward the fleeing figure. One leg, then the other. He wanted this man alive. The man twisted and turned, getting off one more well-placed shot. Dal pulled his cell, feeling a sharp pain in his chest, smelling his own blood, everything moving in slow motion, the man’s gun slipping from his hand as his body slumped and dropped to the street. Then all went dark.