The Woman From Prague Read online

  The only thing I’m sure of is that being here, doing something, it’s made me feel more at peace, more galvanized, since I moved to Prague.

  At least now there’s some momentum.

  Once I’ve exhausted the supply of hot water, I dry off carefully, not wanting to put too much pressure on anything. I get dressed and find Sam is sitting on the couch, her legs up on the coffee table, a steaming cup of coffee to her left. She’s balancing a laptop on her legs, clicking away.

  “Is there more coffee?” I ask.

  “Kitchen,” she says without looking up.

  The kitchen matches up with the rest of the place. The fridge is gilded. There’s an American-style drip coffee maker, which is rare in these parts. Everything is Americano—espresso cut with water. Called Americano because the GIs in World War II couldn’t handle the strong flavor of espresso, so it needed to be watered down for them.

  Truthfully, I can’t handle it either. Espresso is always too bitter for me, and god forbid I have to add milk or sugar. I want coffee, not a milkshake. So it’s nice to have some regular old patriotic drip right now.

  Back in the living room, I take the seat on the other side of the table and test the coffee but it’s too hot. Being up and moving around has cleared my head out a little. But there’s still this odd, alien feel to my skull.

  Still not at full steam. Maybe three-quarters steam.

  “Kaz had to go,” Sam says. “Porn stuff. He’s nice though.”

  “I’m glad you’re capable of liking somebody. What’s the plan for today, then?”

  Sam closes the laptop and picks up her coffee, staring at me. After a long sip she says, “Turns out you’re more useful than I would have expected.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I have a handler,” she says. “Fuller. I can’t get in touch with him. The only reason for that is he’s been compromised. Captured or dead. I need to find out which and track down where he was staying so I can go through his stuff. Here’s the problem: I don’t know where he was staying.”

  “So we have to figure that out.”

  “I think I might have. Not exactly where, but how to find it. And coincidence of coincidences, I found some correspondence that indicates he was using that place where you work as a janitor.”

  “Crash Hop. And I’m not a janitor.”

  “Don’t care,” she says, downing the last of her coffee. “Get your shoes on.”

  We cut through Reigrovy Sady Park, walk a sloping path, and come along a rolling hill that leads down to a series of buildings that looks out over a vista of the city. Sky a brilliant blue, the orange rooftops dusted with snow like a dessert that’s just been sugared, and for a moment I am very sad I’ll be leaving this city.

  Then I remember it’s full of people who want to do me harm.

  “Let’s go, princess,” Sam says.

  Present company maybe included.

  I button up my jacket against the bracing air. The fabric is a little stiff and it’s going to take some work to loosen up. I figured Kaz would give me a cast-off coat but this is brand-new. Heavy black wool with red trim around the collar. He also gave me a pair of black boots with steel toes that are both comfortable and fashionable.

  The outfit, along with the sunglasses that are cutting down on the glare of the sun and making my head hurt less, make it look like I’m way too into The Matrix. But this is Eastern Europe so maybe that makes me cool.

  Sam steps off the path, headed for a copse of trees. I follow along and we duck into the brush. Once we’re far enough from the roadway that we can’t see it, she sets down her duffel bag and hands me the contents: a bundle of sweaters.

  “Pad yourself,” she says. “You need to look like a fatty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not enough to change some clothes. We need to change your physical appearance to such a degree that anyone watching will skim right over you.”

  “Where’d you even get these?”

  “Kaz’s closet.”

  “He’s going to be annoyed.”

  “Don’t care.”

  I pull up my fleece and tie the sweaters around my mid-section, bunching them up around my stomach.

  When I turn to Sam she’s fitting a black wig over her head, before placing a knit cap on top of it. She puts on a big pair of sunglasses, and pulls the collar of her sweater forward and sticks wads of tissue down her bra. When she’s done, her respectable cleavage now looks far ampler, and everything taken together is enough to make me not recognize her unless I knew her pretty well.

  When we’re both finished, she nods. “You look appropriately fat.”

  “Thanks. Why can’t we walk in? I work there. We could sit at a computer and have everything we need in two minutes.”

  “Two reasons,” she says. She sticks one gloved finger into the air. “First, that place is almost definitely under surveillance.” She holds up finger number two. “Second, I don’t want anyone to know we’re there. Because if someone can remember us, someone else can confirm it. And I don’t care if the people in that office know you and want to protect you. Shove a kitchen knife under a fingernail and loyalty goes out the window pretty quick. Do I need to speak slower?”

  “You do not.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  We trudge toward the building, which is on the other side of the park and a few blocks past. The sweaters are bunched up and uncomfortable but at least they’re keeping me warm. The wind is picking up and it’s not in a nice mood.

  “You don’t need to be such a dick,” I tell her.

  “I think I do.”

  “I get it. You’re good at this and you look at me and you see an amateur. That’s fine. I’ve never claimed to be a pro at anything other than drinking. I’ve made some mistakes, but I have done some good, too.”

  “Have you now?” she asks. “I thought you were a janitor.”

  “People used to call me a private investigator,” I tell her. “I didn’t always call myself that but that’s what I was doing. Odd jobs, helping people out.”

  “Were you licensed?” she asks. “Or were you playing make-believe?”

  “That’s… I wouldn’t put it like that.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “I like to help people.”

  “Why?”

  “The satisfaction of knowing I did the right thing.”

  “Fuck satisfaction,” she says. “Everyone does everything for one of two reasons. To make money or to get laid.”

  We stop at the corner of the street and wait for traffic to slow enough so we can cross. The sunlight has reduced lingering snow to dank puddles and dirty slush. “So then what are you in for?” I ask. “The money or the fucking?”

  “I’ve got my reasons,” she says, not looking at me.

  “Oh, so your high and mighty skepticism falls apart with the slightest bit of scrutiny,” I tell her. “You are so full of shit.”

  “I don’t care what you think.”

  Her voice is thin and harsh and I don’t figure on pushing any more right now. We turn the corner and find the building we’re looking for and Sam asks, “Fourth floor, right? Is there a bathroom? A broom closet?”

  I think for a minute. Remember when I was there last. “A bathroom, yeah. Other end of the hall. Unisex.”

  “Good. We get in, pull the alarm, hide in the bathroom. When it clears out, I go into the office.”

  “And then what? We’re probably not going to have very long.”

  “We don’t need long. You stay in the bathroom. Wait five minutes after the alarm gets shut off and leave. Meet me back in the park where we changed. Same spot.”

  “Maybe we should sneak in at night. This building can’t be that secure.”

  “I don’t want to wait that long.”

  We reach the building and pass through an ornate set of double doors. When they close behind us, it’s dark, light streaming from dingy frosted windows. There’s a wide staircase
leading up to a landing, and a bank of elevators. The place looks abandoned until a man shuffles across the landing using a mop handle to push a bucket on wheels. Sam shoves me into the corner, slightly out of view, but the man doesn’t look in our direction. When he’s gone, we climb the staircase, my boots squeaking on the waxed floors. Sam tenses at the noise and has a look on her face like she wants to slap me, but mercifully doesn’t. I walk toward the elevator but she pats me on the shoulder and nods toward the stairs.

  The fourth floor has carpeting, which muffles my footsteps. I do like she says and head toward the bathroom.

  There’s a long line of offices here, and only one of them is Crash Hop. I already told Sam what it looked like inside. Small, a few desks and a back room, mostly in disarray. Two computers. The one closest to the door is the one used by the receptionist, a sweet woman from Ghana named Abénna.

  She’s the only permanent staffer. Stanislav is there sometimes but mostly in the field. I have a master key, apartments are stocked with supplies, and a guy finds where I’m staying and drops my pay off in an envelope. I haven’t had to come into the office in the two months I’ve been here, so I assume it’s like that for the other employees.

  As we make our way down the hall, I’m thinking we’ve got things set up pretty sweet. The bathroom at the end of the hallway clearly isn’t occupied, the door slightly ajar and the light off.

  Right next to the door is a little pull fire alarm.

  It couldn’t be more perfect.

  We’re within five feet of the Crash Hop door when it swings out and Stanislav lunges into the hallway.

  I say Stanislav lunges because a man of his size can’t do much else than heave himself forward to achieve locomotion. The dude is big. Unhealthy big. But he seems at peace with himself. He’s wearing the same thing he’s worn the few times I’ve met him—a nice dress shirt and fine black pants and a pair of well-worn but clean sneakers. The remaining wisps of his black hair combed over his shining head in a desperate refusal to surrender. He’s wearing a heavy coat, so he must be leaving.

  This is exactly what we didn’t want.

  And it’s pretty damn awkward to have to explain away several things, like my beaten-to-shit face, and why I’ve got sweaters stuffed underneath my shirt, and why I’m even here in the first place.

  I pause, like I’ve got to come up with some on-the-spot excuse, but Stanislav doesn’t stop. His eyes slide off me and onto Sam’s tits for a second. Then he smiles and nods and says, “Prominte.”

  We both move to either side of the hallway, pressing ourselves against the walls, and he walks past.

  Sam looks at me and I see one eyebrow raise past the boundary of her glasses. I nod to confirm her suspicion, and we keep walking. By the time we reach the bathroom, the hallway is clear, Stanislav having reached the elevator, so we both duck inside. It’s a small space. Someone missed the toilet by a wide margin and left it to dry. It doesn’t smell nice. Sam takes off her sunglasses.

  “I can’t believe that worked,” I tell her.

  “I’m not surprised. Changing someone’s gait or physical appearance is one thing. You’ve got a built-in disguise.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your face,” she says. “You are very unpleasant to look at right now. People are going to actively not want to look at you.”

  “Whatever works.”

  Sam opens the bathroom door, reaches out, flips the alarm, and pushes me against the wall. A bell rings in the distance, a white light flashing in time with it. She leaves the door slightly ajar, presumably so anyone who walks by will assume it’s empty and doesn’t check it for stragglers.

  Out in the hall I can hear a succession of doors opening and closing, and footsteps receding down the hall. Sam reaches into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out something that she holds in a closed fist. After a moment she peeks out, goes all the way around the door, and disappears.

  I pull out my phone and check. Wait for the time to pass. When it gets up to four minutes, I peek around the door. Find a middle-aged guy in cowboy boots and a long black coat. Close-cropped hair and a face carved out of ice. He’s holding something in his hand that I think is a cell phone but then realize is a small handgun.

  Ah, fuck.

  I push open the bathroom door before I even realize what I’m doing. For a second I wonder how I can be so stupid and impulsive, but the man moves the gun behind his leg, so from my vantage point I can’t see it. He must think I’m a random worker from the building.

  Which gives me the advantage.

  I come out of the bathroom, acting as naturally as I can, stride down the hall like now I’m evacuating along with everyone else. Halfway between us, there’s a flashing light set high on the wall. The alarm has stopped but the light is still flashing. Our footsteps are lost on the threadbare industrial carpet.

  He smiles and nods at me as I get close, lingering a little too long on my face, like he wants what he’s doing to seem natural. Concentrating real hard on making me think everything is okay. But I get what Sam was talking about.

  Moments like this make me miss my umbrella. It made me feel more confident about going up against someone with a gun. Not that it was foolproof, or bulletproof, but it seemed to level the playing field a bit.

  Right now, I’ve got nothing. And I’m a little nauseous, and every time I take a step forward and put my foot down, I feel like I’m going to tumble forward.

  As we move alongside each other, the man sidesteps out of my way, turning slightly toward me, rotating his hand behind him so I won’t see the gun.

  When I’m perfectly perpendicular to him, I throw my hand into his throat as hard as I can, using the momentum first to crush his windpipe, and then to push him into the wall. He tries to bring the gun up but I grab it with my left hand, keep it pointed at the floor.

  I’m pushing down so I’ve got all the leverage. I don’t let off his throat, either. He coughs and chokes, his face growing red. Tries to pull my hand away with his free hand, but can’t, so he throws a few punches into my midsection. The sweaters absorb the blows.

  I brace myself, expecting him to fire, but he doesn’t. I think my hand is blocking him from pulling the trigger. He reaches back to swing at my head, so I move in closer, preventing him from getting a solid shot.

  Just as it looks like he’s about to pass out, I let off on his throat a little and throw my knee into his stomach as hard as I can, nearly puking from the exertion. His grip loosens on the gun as he folds to the floor. I take it from him, stash it in the inside pocket of my jacket. Reach for the Crash Hop door, push it open, but find there’s no one inside.

  Could Sam have already been in and out?

  The mystery man is writhing on the floor, coughing, trying to say something. Instead of letting him, I throw my foot into his stomach so hard it knocks him back into the wall, and run down the hallway, toward the exit.

  Safely concealed in the copse, I strip off my jacket and realize I still have the guy’s gun, which does not make me feel great, but I don’t want to toss it. What if a kid finds it? I hang the jacket over a branch, pull off my fleece, and dump the sweaters. I’m sweating now and the cold air feels nice.

  Once I’m recombobulated, I step onto the path, looking in the direction of where we came from, expecting to see Sam. But all there is to see is an empty pathway. She couldn’t have gotten compromised. I got that asshole before he got to her. She was barely in there.

  What if she didn’t go in? What if this was a ploy to distract me?

  I have no idea why she would do that, but what else is there?

  If she’s gone, I’ve got nothing. The best I can figure is go back to one of the apartments and wait for Roman to find me so I can let him know what I know, which is nearly nothing, and hope that’s enough to get him to let me off the hook and leave my mom alone.

  I take the burner Sam gave me out of my pocket. No texts, no calls. Navigate to the only number inside that’s saved a
nd dial. I count off fifteen rings before I hang up.

  There are footsteps out on the path. I peek out and see a young couple walking hand in hand.

  How long should I wait here? I wish Sam had given me some kind of guideline. Like if she didn’t show up in ten minutes, to run like hell. She could have taken the long way around, but if she got a little held up, why isn’t she calling me?

  I do not like any of this, on any level.

  Moscow rules. Never go against your gut.

  My gut says run.

  I step out of the safety of trees and there’s a crunch to my left. Sam is standing there, staring at me. Like she was the one waiting for me.

  “Giving up on me already?” she asks.

  “What took you so long?”

  “There was a complication,” she says.

  “Tell me about it. Some guy with a gun was coming after you.”

  “What?”

  I hold out the coat, which is ridiculous because it’s not like she can see the gun in the pocket. “Some dude, with a gun. I stopped him. I have the gun. You are welcome.”

  “Wait… that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What was the complication?”

  “There was already a trace on the computer,” she says. “Someone got to it before I did. Which makes me a little nervous. I mean… they can’t be this far ahead of me.”

  She looks at the ground, and then at me, and her eyes narrow.

  “Are you playing me?” she asks.

  “What? No.”

  Sam nods, bites her lip, and strides toward me. Moving like a viper again. Her limbs flick and then she’s on top of me and I feel something cold pressed against my throat. The knife with the black blade.

  “I ask again, are you playing me?” she whispers.

  I keep my head up and speak slowly. “I just stopped someone from killing you.”

  “You could be lying. You’ve got a mom to protect. Mama’s boy. Are you playing me, mama’s boy?”

  “You tell me.”

  She tenses her arm and I feel something sharp, then warm. She looks me deep in the eye, like she’s trying to see the colors of my optic nerve, and for a second I think she’s going to open my throat.