There’s been no contact with anyone since my interrogation the first night. For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think the guys doing the interrogating were actually Czech cops. Their English was too good, and their suits too expensive. They were government types—specifically, intelligence types. Not that I gave them much by way of new intelligence. I admitted to nothing and told them only my name, my real name, Gwendolyn Bloom. What about the dozen bodies found poisoned? What about the abandoned police station north of Prague with the burnt-out truck? No idea. No clue.
Seventy-two. Seventy-three. Seventy-four. Seventy-five. I collapse to the concrete floor, exhausted but finally warm. There’s a noise at the door, and at first I wonder whether it’s mealtime already because it seems like I just ate. But then I realize this sound is different. It’s the sound of a key in a lock.
*
There are no windows in the police van, either. I’m alone in the unheated back but grateful they’ve finally given me cheap felt slippers to go with the jumpsuit. There’s not even a guard here, and the wall between me and the front of the van is solid white metal.
We drive for what feels like only twenty minutes or so, first over smooth paved roads, then over cobblestone streets in very slow traffic. Outside, I hear engines and angry horns and distant sirens. We must be back in Prague. The van makes a sharp right turn and almost immediately comes to a stop. I hear voices outside, two women talking to a man, but I can’t hear what they’re saying or even what language they’re saying it in.
The door opens, and I squint at the dull gray sky, the first daylight I’ve seen in what feels like ages. A female guard motions for me to come out.
It looks and smells like rain today, and there’s a biting chill in the air. We’re parked in an alley between two very old buildings made of brown stone. A beer bottle rolls along the ground in the wind. The female guard is joined by another, and the two lead me through an unmarked steel door and down a long corridor to a closed elevator.
When the elevator slides open, I’m startled by the sight. It looks like a portal to another, much preferable world. My slippered feet stand in plush red carpet, and I can see my reflection and those of the guards in the mirrors that line the walls. A brass no-smoking sign is mounted over the buttons. The third floor is marked CLUB LEVEL.
Peculiar smells here: disinfectant, nice soap, roasting chicken. Peculiar sounds, too: the chatter of a crowd, a bustling restaurant kitchen, a vacuum cleaner. The elevator climbs up through the floors and as it passes each one lets out not an institutional beep but a well-tuned chime. We stop at the top floor, the fourteenth, and as the doors open, I realize we’re in a hotel.
The guards lead me down a hallway and through the open doors of the room at the end of it. Only it’s not a room but a suite so large and so nice there’s a grand piano in the living room, and a fireplace and two matching couches upholstered in blue silk. A handsome young man with black hair is dressed in a porter’s uniform complete with bow tie and white gloves. He bows and smiles pleasantly as if guests show up here all the time in chains and orange jumpsuits.
The guards unshackle me and close the door behind them as they exit, leaving me to blink in confusion at the still-smiling porter.
“Welcome to the Eminence Royale Hotel of Praha, miss. May I familiarize you with your lodgings?”
I stammer that he may, and the porter points out the switch for the fireplace, shows me how to work the tub, and opens the closet in the bedroom to show me where I can find the iron and ironing board. As he does so, I see all my clothing I’d brought to Roman’s apartment hanging there, dry-cleaned and pressed.
“Who—who arranged all this?” I ask.
“Friends of yours, miss. That is all I may say because that is all I know.”
“And is there a phone? I need to make a call.”
“Ah, sadly the phones have been removed. But if you should want for anything, there is an attendant waiting outside the door of the suite twenty-four hours a day.”
I see the “attendant” for myself when the porter leaves, a man in his late thirties with the unmoving expression and buzz cut of a soldier. He stands with his back flat against the wall and hands folded over his crotch as if shielding himself from embarrassment. A black suit that’s too big for him hangs from his body, and the curly little cord from an earpiece disappears into his jacket.
In other words, he’s just another kind of guard, and this is just another kind of jail. I watch the porter go down the hallway and wait for the attendant to say something, but he doesn’t, so I close the door. I look for the chain lock, but of course this, like the phone, has been removed.
The room smells pleasantly of vanilla and flowers, in stark contrast to my own smell, which I suddenly notice for the first time. I haven’t bathed or combed my hair or so much as brushed my teeth since the day of the auction, and a glance in the gilt mirror above a spray of fresh flowers confirms that I look like a disaster. I head to the bathroom and find that the lock on the door is thankfully still intact.
I strip and climb into the shower. Even the water feels luxurious, softer somehow, hot without scalding. The shampoo lathers perfectly into rich suds, and so does the soap. When I finish, I throw on an enormous white bathrobe as thick and soft as a mink coat. That’s when I hear a sound coming from outside the bathroom. It’s nothing ominous, just the sound of silverware being set and low conversation. I open the bathroom door and walk through the bedroom to discover a trio of waiters setting up a single but very elaborate place setting on the dining room table. More mysterious gifts.
I look on as one of the bow-tied waiters ladles matzo-ball soup into a bowl, and a second lifts a silver dome over the main course to reveal an enormous and very handsome club sandwich in a nest of french fries. After three days of grayish-pink something that might have been either bland goulash or spicy oatmeal, it’s a gorgeous sight, but I know there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
I eat it anyway, devouring it all in minutes and washing it down with a bottle of Coke the waiters left chilling in a champagne bucket. I eat too fast and am too full, and finish just in time for the arrival of the bill: a knock at the door that’s not really a request because it opens a second later without my saying anything.
*
It takes me a minute to recognize the figure who walks in as Chase Carlisle, but when it clicks, panic splashes over me like boiling water. Instinctively, I tighten my robe. He’s a little heavier and a lot more tired than I remember him looking in New York. Even his perfectly brown hair isn’t quite as perfect as it used to be, graying at the temples.
“There’s some bullshit Colombian-Asian fusion restaurant downstairs,” he says with the soft Virginia-gentleman lilt. “But I thought after three days of Czech prison food, young Gwendolyn might prefer something that sticks to the ribs.”
“It was very good, thank you,” I say like any nice little girl with good manners would.
Carlisle pulls out a chair and slumps into it. His tie is loosened at his throat and his tweed sport coat looks wrinkled and slept in. “Where is he, Gwendolyn?”
“He?”
“Your father.”
My eyes wander to the fork lying next to my plate, and I wonder how fast I can grab it. “I don’t know,” I say.