When they’d recovered, Grady e-mailed the photograph to Interpol and his contacts at the FBI, along with the photographs of the Ragan brothers on the pier, asking for an assist. They split up the paperwork. He had the banking records. Jez had the cell phone logs.
“I’m going to work this at home, catch a few hours, and take my baby to school in the morning,” said Jez.
“He’s ten. Not a baby.”
She smiled. “You sound like my ex. He’ll always be my baby. Ten, sixteen, sixty-you’re always a baby to your mama.”
“True,” he said, thinking of his own ma.
They turned out their desk lamps and walked together to the door.
“You think Shane told us everything?” asked Jez.
“Probably not,” he said, holding the door for her. “But your eye doesn’t look as bad as I thought it was going to.” The swelling had gone down some, and instead of blooming purple, the blue had started to fade.
“I’ve taken worse hits in class. You bruise less over time.”
“You’re so butch.”
Another laugh from Jez. He liked to make her laugh; he didn’t know why.
22
At night, the smaller boys cried. They tried to be quiet. But they were always heard. In the morning, those who had wept were ridiculed mercilessly, beaten if they dared to fight back. Kristof had cried; not Ivan. But no one dared to beat him, because of the size and temper of his older brother. Neither he nor Ivan joined in the humiliations of the younger children.
Sometimes, even now, he awoke in the night hearing the sound of a child’s soft whimper, despair and loneliness cutting a swath through his center. Sometimes he was back there, a little boy, still weeping for his mother. Ivan had been a sweet and loyal brother, letting Kristof climb into his cot at night, waking earlier enough to shoo him out before the other boys woke. But Kristof stopped crying eventually, didn’t need Ivan’s comfort for long.
This morning he had awoken, hearing the sound of his brother roaring in pain, bleeding on the dock where he’d brought Kristof to die.
“You betrayed me!” he’d screamed. “You’re my brother!”
The other men, he’d shot to kill. Rolled them, still alive, into the water. Ivan, he’d shot to wound, to warn. He might have survived the injury, might have time to think about things, come to his senses.
“YOU OWE ME some money, Kristof,” Ivan had said in the car. It seemed like months ago-it hadn’t even been a week. They had left Manhattan, Isabel, the life he’d made, behind and were on the Brooklyn Bridge. He was still thinking about his wife, how she’d looked in the last moments he saw her on the street, getting ready for her run. Strong, determined, ready to battle the calories of the croissant she’d eaten. He almost smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been saving it for you, Ivan. For your release from prison.”
“You’re such a good brother,” Ivan said grimly, looking at the road ahead. He spoke in Czech. Outside the sky was turning grayish black. Snow.
Ivan turned on the radio. He liked classical music, found a violin concerto Kristof didn’t recognize, kept the volume low.
“I had a lot of time to think. To wonder who might have informed the police about the guns in our apartment, Kristof.”
It was the apartment they’d shared. He’d cleared out his stuff and found another place before making the call, knowing that Ivan would never tell the police that they shared the apartment. There was no lease; his name was on nothing, not even the electric bill. Kristof felt a thump begin in his chest.
“And?”
“I was never able to figure it out.”
“Where are we going, Ivan?”
His brother ignored him. “Then, just days before my release, I had a visitor.”
Kristof thought it was best to stay silent. He knew who had visited Ivan.
“Camilla Novak. The girl you loved so much, the one you had to have. She said you betrayed me to the police. That you broke all your promises to her. That we did all the work-she getting you access to the apartment, his accounts and passwords, all his identification. I took care of the murder, the disposal of the body. And you? You took all the money.”
Kristof smiled. “Ivan, come on. She’s lying. She’s angry because I don’t want her any longer. You know how I am with women. Easily bored.”
“Then who?”
“How should I know? I’m sorry it happened. But I can help you now. There’s money, a lot of it. What’s mine is yours. You’re my brother.”
He patted the big man on the shoulder. Ivan didn’t turn to look at him. Kristof knew it was too late. Ivan was lost to the silent rage brewing within him.
“Where are we going, Ivan?”
“Some people want to talk to you.”
“What people?”
“Friends of mine.”
Kristof’s mind was racing. How was he going to get himself out of this? Ivan had locked the doors. He was unarmed, outweighed by Ivan. He had no choice but to play it out.
“I always took care of you. I always loved you,” said Ivan. He looked so sad.
“I know.”
Kristof looked out the window of the passing landscape of concrete buildings, the gunmetal sky. Ivan was fast, silent. Kristof never even heard him reach for the gun and deliver a sure blow to the side of his head. The world just grayed out. Then, the next thing he knew, he was facedown on a cold, hard floor, surrounded by Ivan and his gloved, black-clad friends. It wasn’t much of a party and it didn’t end well.
HE THOUGHT OF this as he trekked across the uneven gray cobblestones of the ancient Karluv Most, the Charles Bridge, in Prague. The hours of unpleasantness, his ultimate escape thanks to moves he had learned from, of all people, Sara. They knew the day might come when he’d have to extract himself from a bad outcome, had planned for it. The memory of Ivan, his time in the warehouse, the last moments on the dock caused him to look over his shoulder.
The bridge was mobbed with tourists, snapping pictures of the towering saints-St. Francis Borgia, St. John the Baptist, St. Ann, St. Joseph-leaning over the edge to gaze at the swans in the gray water of the Vltava River. The bridge had stood since 1357. Now people strolled across it sipping soda and listening to iPods. He didn’t resent them. In fact, he was always glad for a crowd. Easier to be invisible.
He passed the Old Town Bridge Tower, a magnificent Gothic structure reaching into the sky with a pinnacled wedge spire. Tourists sat at its base eating ice cream cones, in spite of the cold. Shops lining the street sold wooden toys and Czech glass, T-shirts and rolls of film and candy bars.
He made a left and passed a popular chain called Bohemia Bagel and was suddenly off the main drag, alone on a narrow street. To his right a courtyard behind a high, wrought-iron gate, a dark alley to his left where a woman’s shoe lay in a puddle of black water. The street was quiet, as if the crowded street just a hundred feet away didn’t exist at all. Prague was like that. Turn one corner and you move from the modern to the ancient, as though you’ve stepped through a portal to another time and place.
For now he was home. He was safe. All threats delayed or neutralized. The streets of Prague welcomed their native son, allowed him to blend into their gray mystery, took him into their sandstone arms, hid him no matter what he’d done elsewhere in the world. It didn’t matter here. Prague was the mother he’d never had.
He ducked into the dark side entrance of the building where Beethoven himself composed during his stay in Prague, when the building was known as the Inn of the Golden and White Unicorn. He liked the romance of that, even if he doubted its veracity. Now it housed sleek, trendy condos with all the modern amenities. Real-estate
