Lost and Found in Prague (2 page)

Two weeks, two days before Easter

The streetlamp provided scant light; he used the flashlight beam as he traced along the outline of the form, bulky as a grizzly bear in winter. A bullet hole pierced the side of the head. Twisted beneath the tower of the old town hall at the Staromestské námesti, the man’s body lay as if placed on the bull’s-eye of a target, centered in a circle constructed of dark stones alternating with light stones, a sidewalk mosaic. The astronomical clock hovered above, marking time, tracking the movement of sun and moon. If it had been summer or fall, the tourists might be gathering now, though the chimes would not sound for another two hours. It was too early, too cold, too dark.

Chief Investigator Dal Damek of the Czech Republic Police Force and the Mestská policie Praha officer who’d made the call stood conversing in low whispers. The young officer, part of the city police force, had heard the shot rip through the quiet morning and claimed to have seen a quick flash from the roof of a building—he pointed across the square toward the Grand Hotel Praha.

A tilt of the head from Damek sent Detective Kristof Sokol and the team off toward the hotel, the eager young rookie leading the way.
Charging,
Damek thought, with the barely tested enthusiasm of a novice.

“There.” The Mestská policie Praha officer’s voice trembled, as did his still-extended arm, and Damek guessed he was new to the local force, an officer whose duties normally consisted of overseeing traffic and animal control, attending to the tourists. Damek himself was well seasoned, seven years now in homicide. Seven days as chief investigator.

A cool wind whipped through the square, tumbling a paper cup along the cobbles, catching against the wheel of the forensics van. Tiny sparkling flakes, dust motes, danced in the glow of the streetlight. Damek pulled a kerchief out of his pocket to catch a sneeze. Too early in the season for pollen, but something had invaded the morning air. Once more he surveyed the scene, then folded the square into his jacket and knelt down on the hard, cold stone.

The victim, a man with broad shoulders and thick legs, wore expensive, finely polished leather shoes, a heavy winter coat, soft black fur around the collar. Little more than a week into spring, mornings had yet to welcome the season. The last snowfall had come in early March.

“I didn’t touch anything,” the Mestská officer assured him. His voice quivered with nerves and Damek knew the man hadn’t approached the body. The location and appearance of the entry wound, the lack of blood, indicated it wouldn’t have mattered; death had come quickly. Once more the investigator scanned the square, his eyes settling on the hotel where faces pressed against the windows.

Branislov Cerný, “the old Commie,” as some of the younger officers called him, stooped to examine the metal door at the base of the clock tower. The photographer, other technicians, and officers scurried about, recording details, taking measurements. Damek could not see an exit wound, just the small hole in the dead man’s head. Gauging the distance to the hotel, the way the body had fallen, it was likely the fatal shot had originated from the roof, just as the young officer had said.

Cerný approached, his left leg slowing him down in the cold. Something perhaps overlooked during his last physical as he neared retirement. The senior detective stood beside the chief investigator, staring down. Damek knew the expression that had settled on the man’s craggy face even before he glanced back. An expression that some would call no expression at all. They said Detective Cerný had been doing this too long—he was a holdover, one of the few, from the old days. He operated mostly on gut instinct. Passed over too many times for promotion. Now just biding his time. Over the years, Damek had come to know the man well, and he knew exactly what the old detective was thinking—this was not the work of an amateur. One bullet to the head. This was an execution, a professional.

A small crowd gathered, standing at a distance, held back by the bright yellow crime scene tape. Curious, hushed voices. Others were cordoned off, being questioned now, anyone who might have seen or heard anything. Two of the officers were turning the body, face fully visible now, tongue protruding from a distorted mouth, a thin drool jelling on the gaping lower lip. A pair of pale blue eyes stared up at Damek, wide with astonishment. The man’s dark hair was peppered with silver.

A cell phone rang. The uniformed officer meticulously bagging the victim’s belongings glanced at Damek, who nodded. The officer handed him the dead man’s phone. Nothing to identify the caller on the screen—the number officially blocked. Damek hit answer.

A rough voice, quick and impatient. “I wish to continue our discussion. Ten. Same place.” Damek said nothing. He heard only the caller’s shallow breathing, then dead air.

The officer handed the man’s ID to Cerný, who in turn pressed it into Dal’s hand without a word. Damek glanced down at the official government-issued ID, then at the body, matching the victim’s face with the photo of a jowly middle-aged man, aware of how easily one could be stripped of power, control, and dignity. Again his eyes met Cerný’s, and once more he read the old detective’s thoughts.

Seven days in, and Damek had been handed his first high-profile case as chief of homicide. Once more, he scanned the square, then stared up at the clock, the signs of the zodiac on the face of the tower. He’d come here to the Staromestské námesti, the Old Town Square, often with Karla when they were young, after the revolution, then with Petr, particularly for the holidays. During the Christmas season and again for Easter, the square overflowed with vendors and festivities. Easter, just two weeks away. The traditional beginning of the tourist season.

The unseen apostles remained silent and still, high in the tower, enclosed within the intricacies of the ancient mechanical device, hidden behind the star-dappled doors, as if they were the gates to paradise. Damek knew how it would all begin. The knell to mark each hour. The sliding doors opening to reveal the turning figures, the apostles’ procession. Below this parade of saints, four figures of stone stood without motion, poised for what was to come. Vanity held a mirror. Greed grasped a bag of gold. Death stood to the right, along with Sloth, two more figures for symmetry. Death, a form devoid of flesh and heart. Mere bones. In the left hand he grasped a rope, prepared to pull; in the right hand, the hourglass ready to turn. The sand would slip slowly, each sifting grain a reminder of time running out.

In myths and legends, Death stalked at midnight. Damek looked to the east, spires of the city visible in the early pink glow of dawn. In Prague, Death danced with delight after daybreak, performing each hour for tourists and visitors gathered in the square. This morning the esteemed Senator Jaroslav Zajic had been invited to join the show.

Two days after Easter

She traveled alone. Unnoticed. A woman, neither young nor old. Neither beautiful nor plain. Perhaps a woman with a secret, something hidden. Yet, if one were to look deeply, sorrow, rather than secrets, might be revealed. A grief she wished to share with no one. And so, each year, she left, arranging her schedule around the Easter holiday, leaving behind laptop, cell phone, any thread of connection to home, choosing destinations where she was unlikely to encounter anyone she knew. Dana Pierson wished to be alone, to disappear into the crowds.

She gazed out the airplane window at a vast expanse, wishing for a moment she could become part of it, then stared down at the open novel on her lap, realizing she’d read a full page, unaware of a single word. It wasn’t the type of book she’d normally pick up at home—an improbable mystery requiring little thought, silly and complicated at the same time, a book she may or may not finish and would probably leave in the hotel room for the next guest.

She’d spent a week in Rome and was now flying to Prague where she planned to visit her cousin, an exception to the solitude of her spring escape, though by virtue of Caroline’s life choice the two women would have little time together. Dana heard her brother Ben admonishing her, “Better with those who love you. You must know we are here for you.”

Caroline hadn’t been there. She’d sent a letter. Filled with words, attempting comfort. Dana hadn’t seen her in years. At one time they were very close. Then something changed, and Caroline had made a momentous decision that Dana had never understood.

Her thoughts turned to a gloomy November almost twenty years earlier, a youthful journey, an introduction to Prague. Dark clouds cast a shadow over this unknown world, and Dana had wondered, as she looked out the train window, how she had conceived such a notion, why she hadn’t listened to Caroline’s protests about the dangers of entering a Communist country. Caroline, generally open to possibility, always game for a little adventure, perpetually seeing the good in everyone, was, in fact, afraid of godless Communists, and it had taken some cajoling on Dana’s part to convince her to agree to the excursion. The wall in Berlin had just fallen and figurative walls were crumbling all over Europe: The Iron Curtain had been rent. They had heard from others along the way about groups of young, hopeful students organizing in Prague and throughout Czechoslovakia to demonstrate for justice and freedom. As an aspiring journalist, Dana wanted to witness history. Caroline did not share her enthusiasm.

“We could see the Holy Infant of Prague,” Dana had offered, and this turned out to be the shining lure—the opportunity for Caroline, a young woman who believed in angels and saints and divine intervention, to see the small, revered sixteenth-century religious icon.

They were twenty-two at the time, just graduated from college. Both from Boston University, Dana in journalism, Caroline in art history. The trip was a gift from their parents, the great adventure before settling down to enter the real world of employment and grown-up responsibilities. Originally intended for a month-long adventure, a summer trip, it had now extended into the fall, and now as winter took hold.

Dana recalled clearly the noisy locomotive coming to an abrupt halt at the Austria-Czechoslovakia border, the mismatched pair of armed guards muscling their way onto the train, thumbing through passports, checking for visas, glancing up at every turn of the page. The younger officer, short and compact, eyed the Americans suspiciously. The larger and older, square-shouldered with thick dark brows and tight-set mouth, took his time examining papers as if viewing every foreigner as a potential threat. The girls exchanged guarded looks and Dana guessed that Caroline was praying they might be sent back to Austria, fearing that, if allowed to enter, they would be arrested immediately and thrown into a rat-infested prison, their parents not even aware of where they were.

Two hours later, the train huffed and snorted and continued on. When they finally arrived at the outskirts of Prague, they were greeted by a scene more dour than Dana had imagined. Slowing, they rolled past filthy building facades, tile roofs caked with soot, a winter sky clogged with black puffs billowing from dirty brick chimneys. The train jerked to a stop at an ancient-looking station.

A slap of frigid air greeted them as they filed out with other passengers. Lifting backpacks to shoulders, they started through the city, Caroline clutching her coat tighter and tighter around her throat, throwing her cousin one look of concern after another. Breathing air that was barely breathable and reeking with smoke, they walked past boxy Communist-constructed apartments, people bundled up in colorless clothes—few making eye contact—then more dark, filthy structures. With each step, Dana wondered if this had been a terrible mistake.

Eventually, they found a student hostel and, after they’d checked in and surrendered their passports, a plump matronly woman in a gray sacklike dress, clipboard in hand, led them silently down a narrow hall, past walls of peeling paint, over a speckled linoleum floor buckling beneath them. The girls’ dorm, lined with lumpy beds blanketed with itchy-looking wool, smelled of cold stone, overripe fruit, and wet socks and overflowed with the noisy chatter of young women. Mostly students, Dana guessed, all speaking in languages she did not understand. She glanced around, a few girls throwing furtive looks their way, no one offering a smile or welcome. Laundry—dingy underclothes—hung on makeshift clotheslines. Dana pressed her fingers along the side of her head, attempting to thwart the headache she felt coming, and then collapsed on her assigned bed.

Caroline threw her backpack on the adjacent bed, unzipped a pocket, and rummaged around, glancing at Dana with another one of
those
looks. Dana didn’t want to tell her cousin she was now having her own doubts.

Caroline took off down the hall to shower and wash her hair. A natural beauty, without conceit or arrogance, she had one vanity—her lovely, thick, long blond tresses. Dana, who often hopped out of bed and quickly ran a comb through her lank brown hair, frequently teased Caroline about her time-consuming ritual of washing, drying, combing, fluffing. Yet Dana could not deny that a girl with lovely, long blond hair, especially one as attractive as Caroline, caught the attention of the fellows. A definite plus when hanging out with her cousin. Boys sometimes told Dana she was cute, but Caroline far surpassed cute. She turned heads.

A thin girl, speaking in broken English, approached and attempted to bum a cigarette, which Dana didn’t have, and then invited her to join a march the following day to commemorate International Student Day.

Caroline returned to the room, shivering, her damp head still spotted with dabs of shampoo suds. Glaring at Dana, she shrieked, “The goddamned water just went off!”

Dana felt her lips splitting into a smile at the memory, particularly in light of what Caroline was now doing in Prague.
No swearing
.
No hair problems
. And then, like an unexpected hiccup, a quick high-pitched laugh escaped. She cleared her throat and glanced quickly at the man sitting next to her. He looked up from his newspaper with a faint smile of amusement.

“Good book?” he asked. He spoke in the deep, roughly textured voice of a smoker. Late sixties to early seventies, she guessed, with noticeable fatigue in his eyes, which were mapped with fine red threads. About her father’s age, if he were still alive. The man wore a dark suit with a nicely pressed white shirt, open collar, no tie. His black hair, little more than a neatly trimmed fringe set below a balding pate, was touched with a hint of gray. A large man, the bulk of his round body pressed against the armrest dividing their seats. Yet there was something rather refined about him—a man who had perhaps overindulged in the better things of life. He, too, appeared to be traveling alone.

Dana stared down at her book cover, feeling a blush of embarrassment over the shiny gold-embossed title, the woman in shapely silhouette holding a smoking gun. “Good book?” she replied. “Not really.” The man tilted his head as if waiting for her to explain the smile, as if she might owe him an explanation.

“I was thinking,” she said, “of an earlier visit to Prague.” As soon as she spoke, she wished she hadn’t. She could have nodded a yes and returned to her reading.

He folded his paper and stuffed it in the seat pocket, eager and ready to engage in conversation. She noticed his hands, carefully manicured, soft as if he’d never engaged in a day of hard, physical work.

“You are on holiday?” he asked with interest, and she nodded, realizing she’d randomly drawn the seat next to a talker. A person who actually enjoyed engaging with strangers. “You spent time in Rome?” He spoke with a slight accent. Italian, she guessed.

“Six days,” she answered.

“You enjoyed it?” Something in his voice told her Rome was home, that he was proud of his city. “A lovely place to enjoy the Easter holidays.”

“Yes, I did enjoy the city.” She’d done the regular tourist things: the Colosseum, the Vatican, St. Peter’s. But Easter Sunday, the five-year anniversary, as well as the day before Easter—the cruelty of a moveable holiday requiring she relive it twice every year—she’d done nothing but wander the streets, purposely placing herself in the busiest squares, the areas with the most pedestrian traffic, in order to be alone, and yet among others. To be unnoticed. To become a no one among so many.

“Rome is a beautiful city with much history. As is Prague.” His tone was friendly. “What brings you back to the Czech Republic?” he asked.

“I’m visiting a friend, my cousin, actually,” she said. He seemed a nice enough man, and the flight wasn’t long enough to get bogged down in a lengthy, unwelcome conversation.

“She lives in Prague?”

Dana nodded.

“It’s been some time since you’ve visited?” he asked.

“About twenty years.”

“On holiday then, too?”

“Well, yes, though . . .” She stopped. Why was she sharing this with a complete stranger?

He raised an inviting brow as if to say,
Do tell me, I’m interested
. “Prague twenty years ago?” he asked. “What brought you to the city back
then
?”

“A revolution,” she replied, wondering if this would shock him terribly.

“A revolution.” He repeated the words slowly. He was pensive, rather than surprised. “
Sametová revoluce
, a velvet revolution.” The word
velvet
rolled off his tongue devoid of any roughness, imbued with a softness the word itself deserved.

Dana nodded, acknowledging his familiarity with the history of Prague.

“Prague, they say, has become the new Paris,” he told her. “Much changed since the Communists.” He tilted his head as if offering this last statement as a subject of discussion.

“You’re also on holiday?” Dana asked, using the European word, which sounded more fun than
vacation
or
break
, like a true celebration.

“I’m not sure,” he said with a laugh that had a rough, raspy tone, as if it came from deep within, rattling up through his lungs. “I’m visiting a dear friend. Like you.” He held out his hands, palms up, then turned them back to himself, as if he and Dana shared something in common. “Though I have not been apprised of the details, I believe I’ve been called upon to exercise the skills I’ve developed in the course of my work, in positions I’ve held through the past several decades.” This was pronounced with a combination of pride, authority, and something that might have been described as a tease—a tease in the sense of
My work is so important that I’m not at liberty to discuss it with you.
“Not an official assignment,” he added.

She offered a curious smile. The man’s face held a hint of the same, the possibility quickly aborted with an agitated glance around as if searching for something or someone.

“This dry air,” he said, bringing a closed fist to his mouth and clearing his throat. “I would certainly enjoy a drink.” He gazed down the aisle at the smiling flight attendant pushing the refreshment cart, slowly making her way toward them.

He’d aroused Dana’s natural curiosity. She felt tested to draw out more, as if he were challenging her to do just that.

“You work for a business here in . . .” she said, motioning back with her head to imply where they’d come from, rather than where they were going. “Italy?”

He stared at her for a moment, as if determining her need to know. “Yes,” he conceded. He leaned closer as if they were about to share a secret. She smelled the liquor on his breath, as well as his spicy cologne or aftershave, along with a scent that confirmed he was a smoker. “I work for a large organization based in Italy,” he said softly, and she was sure she detected a taunting twinkle in his eye. The Italian Mafia, she thought with an inner laugh, edged with a small portion of self-warning. Was she sitting here with the Godfather?

“My work, in some aspects similar to yours,” he added.

“Mine?” she asked, the single word coming out slow and tentative. “My work?” He’d caught her off guard and now she felt more irritated than inquisitive. Did he know her? Had he read something she’d written? She was about to ask if they’d met before when he called to the flight attendant, chatting with the passenger in front of them.

“Per favore, signorina.”
He spoke rapidly, urgently, in Italian. Dana sat back in her seat and gazed out the window, feeling as if her space—if such a thing existed in the narrow confines of an airplane—had been invaded. Though she’d certainly opened herself up for conversation.

“You, miss?” The flight attendant leaned in and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”

Dana looked up at the smiling face, the perfectly applied mauve lipstick and white teeth. “No, thank you.”

“A journalist?” she asked the man as the attendant poured him a whiskey. “You’re a journalist?” She prided herself in being observant, but she couldn’t place him.

“Like you, my work often involves gathering facts, analyzing, and recording my findings. Though, no, I’m not a journalist, not published traditionally as you.” The attendant handed him his drink and moved down the aisle.