Alex embraced them, then turned and hurried away, walking with his head down, his hands pushed deep into his empty coat pockets, trying to keep it together. After a short while, he couldn’t fight the feeling coursing through him and stopped. He turned back, searching the street desperately.

The pavements had grown busier, like a river rolling at him. It took several moments to locate them, far away now, two small specks in the crowd. He saw Harry’s gray-blond head, his grandfather bent in his dove-gray suit beside him.

Alex’s eyes blurred, and it seemed almost as if the old man straightened, stood elegant and tall again, and slapped Harry briskly on the back.

Somewhere in one of the towers high above, someone must have opened a window at that moment, because a sudden, dazzling glare of reflected white light blinded Alex for a second. When he looked again, he couldn’t see them anymore. The street seemed dimmer.

He took a step after them, then another, and then he was running, shoving through strangers. He stopped himself with difficulty and stood watching a second longer as people pushed softly past him.

Trick of the light, he thought. Then Alex turned away, promises to keep.

EPILOGUE

THAT’S THAT

A late summer sun is sinking over Prague, the old city beginning its slow nightly display, shading through gold and red to blue and black.

On the Charles Bridge, the crowds have started to thin. Two elderly men pause in their wandering to stand by one of the statues along the side, looking down into the river. A dog sits patiently at their heels.

The taller of the two lights a cigarette, leans on the parapet, then lifts his hand to the inside pocket of his immaculate gray coat. He stands poised like that, attentive, studying the water below, the old Vltava freshly nourished by recent rains.

The other turns his back to the river to watch the people passing by. When there is no one around them, he nudges the gray man’s elbow. His hand flashes out from his coat and something rather small drops, touches the skin of the water, then disappears forever as the river seals itself over it.

“And that’s that,” says the older of the two old men. He stands bowed a few seconds more, watching the last ripples fade. Then he straightens, turns, and considers his friend.

“How you feeling, Harry?”

“Yeah, not bad.”

“It just struck me—if that thing gave you your life back, destroying it might . . . y’know. Have some effect.”

“Now that you mention it.”

“Yes?”

“I do feel quite ’ungry.”

The old man spins happily and points with his cane toward the spiky shadows gradually lengthening from the far end of the bridge.

“About time for dinner, then, I think. Now, far as I remember, there’s a place hiding along here that you just won’t believe.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS