I would like to thank Bohdan Kladivo, and his son, Roman. I would like to thank Emil and Libor and the three Brits and the guy on the train from Berlin to Prague. I would like to thank Paulus and Christian, too. And who can forget the pig in the alley behind the bar in Paris? What was it called? Skinny Goat? Fat Goat? Who can remember? In any case, I’d like to thank all these men. For the lessons they taught me. For the practice they gave the thing inside me, the cruelty, which grows larger and stronger and crueler with each passing day.
It’s the morning of the auction, a Tuesday. And as it happens, also my birthday. I turn eighteen today—or rather Gwendolyn Bloom, that old, obsolete version of me, who existed before the cruelty ate her, turns eighteen. The eighteenth birthday is the day you become an adult, the day you take everything you learned as a child and apply it to the grown-up world. All that came before today was mere prelude, a rehearsal for the real thing.
Though tonight there will be a celebration, a grand affair with Roman in a dinner jacket and me in an emerald sequined gown, it will not be a celebration of my birthday. It will be about the men flying in from around the world in their private jets, men who are of such privilege that their money permits them to transcend morality and buy another human being.
And these transcendent transactions are to be accompanied by great ceremony to give them rightness and a civilized hat to wear. Thus, the casino is closed so that the stage set may be dressed with—Roman let me see the list—crudités made that morning by the chef from the Ritz-Carlton and bottles of fifty-five-year-old Macallan scotch and enough Armand de Brignac champagne to drown in. Bohdan and Roman are spending the day schmoozing their clients, while the most senior others are supervising the rented army that takes care of the girls who are already on the casino’s private third floor, doing their hair and makeup, altering their gowns.
But the street side isn’t involved tonight. Emil and Libor are supposed to be elsewhere, closing another deal. And it’s them I’m counting on to help me, even though they don’t know it yet.
“Air out my dinner jacket and have it hanging in the bathroom,” Roman says before he leaves. “And my bow tie is frayed. Get me a new one from Pa?í?ská—grosgrain, not satin—and see if you can find my cuff links.”
“Of course,” I say, and watch the door close behind him.
But as busy as they all are, I’m busy, too. So after I take his dinner jacket out of its plastic dry-cleaning bag, dig through drawers to find his cuff links, and stop in at his haberdashery for a new tie, the cruelty and I head off to burn down the world.
*
Libor’s building in a dull neighborhood at the edge of Prague 8 isn’t half bad. It’s well kept, and there are flowerpots on nearly every balcony. The tiles of the terra-cotta roof seem bright even in the dull midmorning light.
I stand amid the people coming and going from a small grocery store across the street and from here can see that Libor’s car is still parked in front of his building. Then I step into an alley, pull out a new burner phone, and dial 1-1-2, the European 9-1-1. The operator answers in Czech, of course, but since I don’t speak Czech, I tell her a story in Russian, knowing it’s being recorded. At first, I’m afraid because I’ve never done any acting. Will I be convincing? Do I sound truthful? But the fact is, acting is all I’ve done since arriving in Europe.
A man named Libor Kren has beaten me, I say. Threatened me with a gun. He’s high on methamphetamine, and has a lot of it around the apartment. Five, six kilos maybe. A real drug kingpin, this Libor. Oh, I’m so frightened. I’m hiding in his bathroom as we speak. His address is 556 Na Strázi, Praha 8. Won’t you please hurry? I’m afraid for my life. Here he is now at the door—
Then I hang up, pull the SIM card out, and crush it with the heel of my boot. Precisely six minutes, forty-three seconds after I hang up, I watch from across the street as two police cars and a SWAT van arrive simultaneously. Prague cops, in helmets and body armor, submachine guns held tight at their shoulders, race up the steps of the apartment building. Two minutes later, Libor and his junkie brother are frog-marched out of the building. Libor has a fresh black eye and walks with a distinct limp.
It’s been less than a week since Libor’s last arrest—the night he was supposed to accompany Emil—and I have no doubt they’ll be harsher on him this time around. The Russian girl hiding in the bathroom won’t pan out, of course, and likely neither will the five or six kilos of meth the caller said was lying around the apartment. But there are certainly some drugs and likely more than a few guns. Even with the best lawyers in Prague, he won’t be out for at least a day or two. And that’s all I need.
I’m on the next tram to Prague 1 and arrive at the casino half an hour later. Word of Libor’s arrest hasn’t reached the casino yet, but I hang around, pretending to help the caterers for tonight’s auction. When I hear Emil’s loud cursing, I know the news has arrived. They were to pick up a shipment of something today, something unrelated to the auction but still very important. Libor’s absence creates certain difficulties and the need for improvisation on Emil’s part. Lucky thing I’m here.
I pull him aside in a hallway and volunteer reluctantly. How far is it? I ask. Not far, Emil says. Will we be back before evening? I ask. In plenty of time, Emil says. Let’s go, I say.
*
There’s no truck or van this time. Only a beat-up ?koda with Emil at the wheel. There are no plates on it, only a temporary registration tag in the rear window issued by the city of Bratislava, Slovakia. I assume we’re heading to the tábor, but then Emil enters the highway in the direction of Brno, a city about two hours southeast of Prague.
“What’s in Brno?” I ask.
“What we’re picking up,” he says, the tone of his answer making it clear he won’t provide details.
“But we’re delivering it to the tábor, right—whatever it is?”
He eyes me. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.”
“Yes,” he answers. “Why are you smiling?”
I picture my father in his cell, eyes on the door, hopeless, not knowing the endgame is only hours away.
“Was I?” I say.
It’s a straight-up cash deal this time round, Emil tells me later, pulling his knapsack from the backseat. I look inside and find it stuffed with plastic-wrapped bricks of 500-euro notes: 450,000 euros total. It’s surprising how small the size and weight of such an amount is.
A half hour outside Brno, we pull off the highway onto a deserted road between two closed factories, smokestacks dead, parking lots empty. We stop along the side of the road and wait. Just as he did on our last pickup, Emil hands me a gun.
“Expecting trouble?”
“You can never tell,” he says.
We’re there only about five minutes when a small box truck lumbers around the corner at the far end of the road. It looks like the kind people rent when they move, but the sides of it are bare, no logo, no markings other than a registration number. Whatever’s inside it weighs the truck down so that it lists and rolls as it crashes through the potholes. It comes to a stop ten meters in front of us.