Mozoň (Silent) contentedly preens himself. “I told you,” he says. “And this is just the start!” He waves his fist menacingly at the window, which is covered, for secrecy, by a heavy curtain. “They haven’t heard the last of us! We’re going not just to make money, but get recognition for all we’ve done! When this democracy is laid to rest, we, the working people, will be in power again!”
“The labouring classes!” adds Tupý.
“Workers and peasants!” Šolik joins in. A celebratory mood fills the room. All three men have sparkling eyes.
The day the three men were sacked, it seemed like the end of the world. They all had very conventional wives who had no idea that their husbands worked for State Security. So they could not be told that State Security had been abolished. In a rare flash of intelligence, in the short period when something could still be saved, Mozoň got into the archives, found a file with a list of safe houses, flats and villas, and tore out a page. If he’d destroyed the whole file, that would soon have aroused suspicions and the new men in power would have discovered the list of apartments and houses some other way. Like this, nobody noticed anything. One villa more, or less… So Mozoň (Silent) kept for himself and his subordinates a safe place to hole up and plot their future. Every day Mozoň got up, had breakfast, got dressed and, briefcase in hand, after adjusting his tie in the mirror, unlocked the door of his apartment. He kissed his wife, who knew him as Ščepán, and left for work. His wife thought that Mozoň (Silent) alias Ščepán worked as a bank clerk. Mozoň then took a trolleybus to the safe house in a prestigious part of the town high above the city. It was so prestigious that nobody paid any attention to anyone. And you didn’t have to worry about the neighbours poking their nose in. The neighbours also valued discretion and nobody was out to rock the boat. “We haven’t done so badly,” Mozoň reflected, as he observed the old, bent, former communist bigwigs as they slowly and carefully shovelled snow away from the entrances to their manor-houses. He felt they were kindred spirits; it seemed to him that what linked them was common membership of a sort of secret fraternity or sect. “We’ll see,” he would say at such moments, shaking his fist.
Mozoň, Tupý, and Šolik spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon in the villa overlooking the city. They were bored, but it was pleasant boredom. Mozoň spent ages looking out of the window, or he locked himself in the bathroom and looked at pornographic magazines. Šolik slept on the couch with a newspaper over his face. Tupý drew up lists of people he would visit after this interlude ended. He noted in brackets following the names the tortures that he would inflict on them after arrest. He spent entire days on this and often loudly expressed his disenchantment with, and hatred of, those who’d destroyed his existence. At three thirty all three packed up, locked the villa, and went to their homes, as if returning from work. The first days and weeks were tolerable. They were all certain that in a week or two the situation would resolve itself, the guilty parties would be punished and everything would go back to normal. A month passed by slowly, and nothing happened. There was no money. Pay-day came round, but there was no pay. They realised they might have to wait longer. They’d have to think of some solution, so as not to come clean to their wives. After all, that was unthinkable, purely from an official point of view.
Mozoň came up with the idea of police warrant cards. They’d had to surrender their State Security cards when they were sacked. But all of them had still their police cards. “Look, there’s something here,” Šolik told them one day, tapping his finger impatiently on a newspaper, “about a black market flourishing around the Hotel Ambassador. Suppose we started dealing on the black market, chief?”
“What do you use for money, you idiot?” Mozoň turned on him. “We’ve got nothing. We don’t even have money.” Mozoň remembered that his wife had been asking suspiciously when his salary would be paid. He explained his plan to Šolik and Tupý. He had to tell them twice before they understood.
“It’s a brilliant idea, chief!” Tupý smiled.
Both subordinates were shaking and yawning with impatience.
It only took a few hours of hanging around the Hotel Ambassador, standing under the plane trees and drinking coffee in the hotel bar and keeping their trained secret-police ears alert to work out what was worrying the Albanians, the gypsies, and the Slovak currency dealers. All the hustlers were angry with an unknown smart-alick who’d neatly jumped the queue and grabbed the foreign currency right from under their noses. Šolik and Tupý conveyed this information to their chief in the conspiratorial villa. When Mozoň found out that his subordinates hadn’t brought any money with them, he got really angry. Šolik and Tupý had to explain everything in detail.
“Well then, let’s squeeze that bloke! The one buying all the currency. That’d be a great catch!”
“Yes, chief,” Šolik nodded and sighed. “But how do we find him? He doesn’t operate near the hotel. If he did, he’d have been lynched a long time ago.”
“Do I have to think of everything?” Mozoň complained and got up from his chair. He began pacing the room with long strides. He stopped by the window and looked onto the street. “I’ve got it,” he said after a while. “We’ve got to find out where the mystery man does his dirty deals. We’ve got to find the point where he comes into contact with foreigners and buys their money. That’s where we’ve got to catch him. All clear to you now?”
“Yes,” agreed Tupý uncertainly.
“No,” confessed Šolik.
“You fools,” said Mozoň, and laughed. “How are we going to find the location? Simply by covering the itinerary a western tourist covers when he comes here. From customs to the hotel. Somewhere along this route our mystery man appears. You catch him and squeeze him hard. I mean, hard! And then, when you show him that there is a way he can get himself out of it, he’ll kiss both your hands. Now go! Go to the border crossing and elbow your way onto a bus. The customs officers will let you in when you show them the warrant cards. And if you don’t succeed on the first bus, get out and get on the next one. Repeat from the beginning. And don’t even think of coming back without money! Dismissed!”
That was a few days ago, and there’s still plenty of money left. Joy reigns in the safe house. There’s fine food and champagne from morning till knocking-off time. Waiting for the good old days to come back is much more pleasant now. Mozoň’s booming voice cheerfully reverberates through the rooms of the safe house.
“Only don’t let’s cock it all up, or blow money on stupid things,” Mozoň says firmly, but kindly when he spots Tupý bringing in a Lego set costing thirteen hundred crowns. However, at heart, Mozoň does not grudge his subordinates their naïve extravagance. Times are hard. Political change can’t be expected soon. Mozoň believes that shopping sprees help his subordinates keep up their ideology and morale, so he lets them shop. He’s reintroduced the ten-minute morale-boosters that he used to give his men when they first came to the safe house, and which he’d neglected when they suddenly became rich.
“Where did you get all this money?” Mozoň asks, expecting a familiar, often heard answer.
“It was a brilliant idea,” says Tupý.
“A brilliant idea to use those police warrant cards,” says Šolik.
“Really? Brilliant?” asks Mozoň. “And what do you two propose to do?” he rebukes them. His subordinates are taken aback. However, Mozoň continues to show his disappointment, saying that he does what he can. And if it weren’t for him, they’d have to go begging. Who’d employ them? They’ve got a dubious past. What’s more, they’re totally unskilled. Mozoň doesn’t mind admitting this about himself. He’s never done anything in his life. He was kicked out of Law Faculty after a couple of semesters. Then for three years he worked as a barman. Then he joined the Secret Police, State Security. But nobody can deny he did those two semesters. At least he’d been a student. And that is why he, Mozoň, is the chief and not Šolik, or heaven help us, Tupý! And as their superior officer, he orders them to go and do something.