Paper by Noon

0:00 The Evening Paper Among the Unsold Poets

0:04 Narrator: Prague, June of nineteen ninety-seven. I, Pavel Hruška, had shut my bookshop early, and in the back office my friend Antonín Zima sat among my unsold poets while I read him the evening paper. "Lion Fund frozen by the Ministry at noon. Best holdings moved out that same morning."

0:25 Zima: You've read me that twice, Hruška. Narrator: Once isn't enough to believe it. "Ministry leak suspected. Chairman's signature on the transfers."

0:35 Zima: Then whoever moved them knew the hour of the freeze. Shares don't leave at breakfast by luck. Narrator: My coupon book. A thousand-crown stamp, and every point of it in the Lion Fund. Ten times your money, the posters said, with Professor Malina's face on them. The honest economist.

0:58 Zima: Then you'll want to hear who wrote to me this afternoon. Narrator: Oh? Who?

1:03 Zima: "Mr Zima. I am accused of a theft I did not commit. There is no one else to ask. Malina." Pencil, on the back of a ruled answer sheet.

1:14 Narrator: University examination stock. Grey, cheap, sold by the ream. I sell it to his students.

1:21 Zima: Then he wrote it at his desk, in a hurry. A man with a lawyer uses letterhead. Narrator: Or a man who wants you to think he has nothing left.

1:30 Zima: Possibly. Either way, he's stopped being a poster. Get your hat. Let's meet the most hated man in Prague.

1:39 Up the Stairs to the Professor's Door

1:43 Narrator: We climbed four flights at the University of Economics in Žižkov and found Professor Malina's door with a word chalked across it. Thief. In capitals. Pressed so hard the chalk snapped. There's half a stick on the floor.

2:00 Malina: Mr Zima. You came. I am Malina. Well. You've read the door.

2:06 Zima: Written this morning. The cleaners mopped around it and left it standing. Malina: On instruction. The dean calls it evidence of public feeling. I'm suspended, you understand.

2:19 Narrator: My coupon book went into your fund, Professor. Because of your face, and now— Malina: And you deserve plain words for it, sir. I signed nothing. No orders, no company. Nothing.

2:30 Narrator: The paper says it's your signature. Malina: It's my name. That proves nothing. Any first-year could tell you that the—

2:37 Zima: Spare us the seminar. Who sees your signature, Professor? Malina: Who does not? I sign grade books by the hundred. And now these come back to me.

2:48 Narrator: You've opened every one. Malina: Students' families. A railwayman in Kolín. A widow in Tábor who put in her husband's book with her own... I told them it was safe. I said— I said, I have read the accounts, I'd never lend my name to—

3:04 Zima: Professor. Malina: Forty years I lectured on the value of a promise, and now... forgive me... I cannot—

3:11 Narrator: Sit down, Professor. Sit. Malina: Mr Zima, I can't pay you. I have only the one thing they took.

3:19 Zima: Your name. Malina: They trusted my name. Give it back to me.

3:25 Seals Across the Fund's Doors

3:29 Narrator: The Lion Fund kept two floors above a bank on Na Příkopě, and a young policeman was pasting seals across its doors as we came up. Rys: Rys, Criminal Police. You're Zima, the consulting man. The professor's man, I hear.

3:43 Zima: Nobody's man yet, kapitán. You're sealing the lot? Rys: Safe, files, desks. Until my men have turned out every drawer. A day, two—

3:52 Linhart: And then we count what's left. Linhart. I started this fund. Come in, gentlemen, while there's still a door. Six hundred thousand shareholders. I know them by their account numbers. God help me, that's how I know them.

4:10 Narrator: I'm one of the numbers. Linhart: Then I'm sorry, sir. Anything you— anything you need, Mr Zima. I'd rather it were anyone on earth but the professor.

4:20 Rys: Nine transfer orders, dropped in the Centre's night box at dawn. Porter emptied it at four, nothing. At seven, there they were.

4:29 Zima: No clerk, no receipt. Nobody saw who. Rys: A professor whose face is on every tram in the city? Of course he didn't hand them in.

4:38 Zima: Fair. And since? Rys: Sealed at the Centre. Shown to nobody outside it but me.

4:45 Zima: Not even the founder? Linhart: Not even me, and I founded the thing. Ostrá: Tea, prosím, pan Linhart said to bring... oh. The seals. I'm sorry.

4:58 Linhart: Put it down, Ostrá, before it goes on the floor. Zima: You've been on your feet all night, Ostrá. You're standing on the sides of your shoes.

5:07 Ostrá: New shoes, prosím. They— they pinch. Zima: Do they. Rys: Three keys to this office. The professor's, pan Linhart's, and yours, slečna. Pan Linhart's statement I've had since yesterday.

5:20 Rys: Where were you the night before the freeze? Ostrá: Me? I type letters. I don't even understand shares—

5:26 Rys: That isn't an answer. Ostrá: I was home. Asleep, kapitán. Ask— ask anyone.

5:34 Behind Frosted Glass in the Registry

5:38 Narrator: Down in the Securities Centre, behind frosted glass, lay the room where signatures were compared, and Kapitán Rys led us there himself. Rys: Paní Doubravová, registry. Mr Zima would like to see the orders.

5:53 Doubravová: Not possible. The documents are sealed in cabinet number three, pending the instruction of the court. Narrator: You'd have done well in the old days.

6:02 Doubravová: I did, sir. Twenty-two years keeping state registers, three governments, and never one irregular entry. Zima: Then you checked the signature before the shares moved, not after.

6:14 Doubravová: Before. Always before. The signature matched the professor's specimen card, the same hand, every loop of it. I will swear to it in any court of this republic.

6:25 Zima: And yet you keep your hand flat on that ledger. Doubravová: It is the register, sir. It is my responsibility.

6:33 Rys: Read him the entry. Doubravová: Transferred: shares to the value of one billion, two hundred million crowns. To the account of Flamingo Limited, of Nassau, in the Bahamas.

6:45 Narrator: Flamingo. My coupon book went to a pink bird. Rys: Registered in April. A Nassau lawyer for director. Bearer shares. Whoever holds the paper owns the company.

6:56 Zima: So on paper nobody owns it. Which is the whole point of Nassau. Rys: Exactly. And who'd know that better than a professor of economics? His signature. His card. Now tell me your professor doesn't own it.

7:10 Near Midnight in the Kapitán's Office

7:14 Narrator: Near midnight we were still in Kapitán Rys's office on Bartolomějská Street, in the building where the secret police had kept their files. Ten years ago nobody knocked in this building. Doors got knocked down.

7:29 Rys: Come. Doubravová: Kapitán. Forgive the hour. Doubravová, registry. I wish to correct the record.

7:38 Rys: The signature? Doubravová: The signature stands. It's my log. My log is...

7:44 Zima: The ledger you were guarding with your hand. Doubravová: Orders reach us undated, sir. The sender leaves it blank. The Centre stamps its own. That is the legal date.

7:55 Doubravová: These came dated by hand. The figure six, a stroke, then the figures one and four. Rys: So?

8:03 Doubravová: Day, then month, as the regulations teach. Sixth day. Fourteenth— I logged a fourteenth month, kapitán, in ink, in a state register.

8:14 Narrator: Even the old regime only managed twelve. Zima: Unless the writer put the month first. Then it's plain June the fourteenth, written back to front.

8:24 Doubravová: Oh. Zima: And nobody at the Centre wrote it. You stamp your own. The date came from the same desk as the signature, and—

8:31 Rys: The professor's desk. So he writes his dates backwards. Professors.

8:38 Doubravová: If an inspector finds that entry, it's my pension. Twenty-two years, kapitán, and— Rys: Nobody finds it. A month that doesn't exist? The papers would make a circus of the Centre. It stays out of them.

8:49 Zima: And out of the fund? Rys: Out of the fund, out of the professor's hearing, out of any lawyer's. Nobody outside this room. Doubravová: Thank you, kapitán.

9:00 Narrator: Antonín... did the professor rob us himself?

9:05 Back Through the Seals at Eight

9:08 Narrator: Rys cut through his own seals at eight the next morning, and Zima and I followed him into the records room, where Ostrá stood waiting with her keys. Rys: Your desk, slečna Ostrá. Top drawer. Open it, or my men—

9:21 Ostrá: It isn't locked, prosím. Nothing here's locked any more. Rys: Under the carbon paper. An envelope. A fat little brick of twenties and fifties.

9:32 Narrator: Nobody's wages come in twenties, kapitán. Not even a bookseller's. Rys: Let's see how fat it— Ostrá: Give me that! Four thousand crowns in my drawer is my own business!

9:45 Rys: Not in the drawer of a robbed fund, it isn't. Zima: Where did it come from, Ostrá? Ostrá: I've said... I've said what I have to say.

9:54 Zima: Small notes, folded in four. Passed hand to hand, a little at a time. Nobody pays an accomplice in tram fares, kapitán.

10:04 Rys: He might, if he pays her weekly, so nothing shows at a bank. Zima: Fair. It'd fold the same way.

10:10 Narrator: And she keeps it here, not at home. Somebody at home mustn't see it. Ostrá: You know nothing about my home, sir, nothing about—

10:19 Rys: I know you hold a key, and a night nobody can vouch for. Ostrá: I was asleep. I told you. I told you...

10:28 Rys: A secretary with keys and hidden cash. An accomplice, then. Ostrá: I'm not...

10:36 Rys Knocks on the Chalked Door

10:39 Narrator: The chalk still stood on the professor's door that afternoon when Rys knocked, with Zima and me two steps behind him. Malina: Kapitán. And Mr Zima. Together. I see.

10:52 Rys: Professor Malina, I'm arresting you for the theft of the Lion Fund's holdings. Narrator: Good Lord. Malina: On what ground? You can't simply say a thing, kapitán, you must show—

11:03 Rys: The sworn word of the Securities Centre. Your signature, checked against your card. Malina: Mr Zima. Tell him this is—

11:10 Zima: I can't tell him the clerk is wrong, Professor. She's seen the orders. I haven't.

11:16 Malina: You haven't...? Rys: There. Even your own man.

11:20 Malina: My own man. Rys: And what's this, tucked in your blotter? Narrator: That's a registered-post slip. Czechs keep those like relics.

11:31 Rys: Ministry of Finance, Letenská. Posted the sixteenth of April. Zima: The same week Flamingo was registered in Nassau.

11:39 Narrator: Ah. Rys: I'll put that in my report, Mr Zima. What did you write them, Professor?

11:45 Malina: Yes, I wrote the Finance Ministry. What I wrote is between a citizen and his government. Rys: It's between you and a court now.

11:54 Malina: Then let the court ask, and I shall decline. We were promised that much in eighty-nine. Zima: The charge rests on the signature alone, kapitán?

12:05 Rys: The signature alone. The rest stays in my room, as I— Malina: What rest?

12:09 Rys: Nothing your lawyer reads. Your hands, Professor. Narrator: Four floors up! Somebody meant that. Professor, your cheek. Here, my handkerchief.

12:21 Malina: Thank you. They have a right to be angry, kapitán. Leave them be. Mr Zima. Every door— every door in this city has my name chalked on it. There's nobody left but you.

12:35 Back Up to the Fund's Offices

12:39 Narrator: The searchers had finished and their seals were gone when Zima and I climbed back to Na Příkopě, where Linhart was packing the fund into crates. Ostrá: Pan Linhart. Mr Zima again, and the bookseller.

12:53 Linhart: Come in, mind the crates. The Ministry's administrator wants every file by Monday. Zima: We've come for the professor's things. They'll allow him books and spectacles.

13:04 Linhart: Ostrá, show the gentleman the professor's desk. Narrator: I'll go. I know what a professor can't live without. Pencils, and something to correct.

13:15 Linhart: I read the evening paper. You stood beside Rys when they took him, and you didn't lie for him. Zima: I said what I knew. It wasn't much.

13:24 Linhart: You know what kills me? I paid him a professor's fee to lend my posters his face. Zima: Did you.

13:32 Linhart: And the poor fool even wrote six, fourteen on them, in his own hand. On orders nobody ever dates. Zima: Professors like to be exact.

13:43 Linhart: Exact about everything. Except what was good for him. Zima: Those three crates are tied with string, not taped. They're not going to the Ministry.

13:53 Linhart: My own papers. Letters from— from Aldermoor, my mother's photographs. The Ministry can't have my mother.

14:00 Narrator: Back again. Spectacles, three pencils and a Seneca. On consolation.

14:07 Linhart: Ostrá, before I forget. Book me the Sunday flight. London, then Nassau.

14:12 Ostrá: Nassau, prosím? Linhart: Someone has to sit in that Flamingo lawyer's office until he gives the shares back. It may as well be me.

14:21 Zima: Generous of you. Ostrá: Pan Linhart, my wages. They're— it's a week late now, and the rent—

14:28 Linhart: Your wages can wait, Ostrá. Six hundred thousand people are waiting too.

14:34 A Coupon Book and a Bottle of Becherovka

14:38 Narrator: That evening Zima took my chair behind the shop and I took the stool, with my coupon book lying between us like an exhibit. Becherovka. For shareholders, on doctor's orders. Lay it out for me, Antonín.

14:54 Zima: You lay it out. I'll argue with it. Narrator: Ostrá. Hidden cash, not a word where from, and a night at home nobody can swear to.

15:03 Zima: And she stands on the sides of her shoes. New shoes pinch the toes, Hruška, not the edges. Narrator: Do they?

15:11 Zima: That's a woman who stood all night on a hard floor. Not a woman who slept. Narrator: Stood where?

15:18 Zima: Somewhere she's ashamed of. That doesn't make it criminal. Narrator: The professor, then. A clerk swears to his hand, and he writes the Ministry the week Flamingo is born. I'll say it plainly. He bought the hour of the freeze. Tired of lending his face to the posters for a professor's pay.

15:37 Zima: Possibly. But the clerk was frightened when she swore. Frightened people swear louder, that's all.

15:45 Narrator: Here's the only signature of his I've ever seen. The prospectus. Printed under the promise, in every copy. He signed with a blot on the tail, and they printed the blot for all six hundred thousand of us. I carry it everywhere. Like a bad tooth you keep touching...

16:04 Narrator: Antonín. In all of this, what have you seen with your own eyes?

16:10 Ostrá Fetched Back for Questioning

16:14 Narrator: Ostrá was fetched back to Bartolomějská Street and sat facing Rys with her coat buttoned to the throat, while Zima and I kept to the window. Rys: Accessory to fraud, slečna Ostrá. That's years. Unless the money—

16:27 Ostrá: Money? He hasn't paid me, kapitán. Did you know? My wages can wait, pan Linhart says.

16:35 Zima: Small notes, a night on your feet, and you'd sooner be called a thief than say where. A bar. Ostrá: A casino. On Wenceslas Square. I'm in the— the cloakroom. A bar pays worse.

16:50 Rys: The night before the freeze? Ostrá: Eight in the evening until six. Four thousand crowns in my drawer, kapitán, and every crown from a man who looked straight through me. By day I type for a man who talks in billions. By night I hang coats for twenty crowns, and say thank you—

17:10 Ostrá: Thank you, prosím, and I smile, and I... I was ashamed. That's all. Not a thief. Ashamed.

17:20 Narrator: There's no shame in a cloakroom, slečna. My father sold tram tickets for thirty years. Rys: The casino will say so?

17:29 Ostrá: The manager will. And the girl on the next hooks. Rys: Then I'll ask them.

17:34 Ostrá: And by day, for wages that never come, I retype both their letters. Pan Linhart dates everything month first, the way they taught him at Aldermoor. I turn every one round.

17:47 Zima: And the professor? Ostrá: Day first, always. Forty years of grade books. His hand knows no other way.

17:56 Rys: Go home, slečna. Don't leave Prague. Habits, Mr Zima. Habits are for novelists. I have a sworn—

18:04 Zima: Sworn, yes. Then let me see the signature you're swearing by. One look at the orders, kapitán, before the court has them.

18:13 Back Down to the Registry with the Professor

18:17 Narrator: At the Securities Centre, Doubravová had her light-box burning when Rys brought the professor down to us in cuffs, his cheek still dressed. Rys: Fresh specimens for the court, paní Doubravová. Five. Sign, Professor.

18:31 Malina: In irons. Very well. I can still hold a pen.

18:37 Zima: Five signatures, and no two the same length. The fourth runs off the line. Doubravová: That's normal, sir. No hand signs twice alike. In twenty-two years, never.

18:48 Zima: Then lay the first order on your light, over Hruška's prospectus. Narrator: My bad tooth. Here.

18:55 Doubravová: Over a printed copy? That's not the procedure. Rys: One look, I promised him. Do it.

19:03 Doubravová: Mother of God. Every loop lies on every loop. And the tail... the blot on the tail. A blot falls once, sir, and never twice in the same place. Traced off the prospectus, blot and all.

19:18 Rys: You swore to me it matched the professor's specimen card! Doubravová: It did, kapitán. It's his hand, copied. I compared it to the card, as regulations require. Nobody lays an order on a prospectus.

19:32 Malina: A man who owns the hand has no need to trace it. Even a first-year sees that. Narrator: And six hundred thousand copies to trace from.

19:42 Rys: You're free, Professor. For today. Malina: Mr Zima. My name. Thank you.

19:48 Rys: So he didn't trace his own name. Fine. Then who traced it?

19:53 Mist on Charles Bridge After Midnight

19:57 Narrator: Mist had come off the Vltava after midnight, and Zima walked ahead of me across Charles Bridge, between saints we could hear dripping but never see. You've said nothing since the Centre, Antonín. Neither has Saint John, but he's got an excuse. Zima: I'm listening to two people who were never in the same room.

20:19 Narrator: Doubravová, with her fourteenth month. Zima: A six, a stroke, a one and a four. By hand, on orders that come in blank. And Rys swearing it'd never leave his office. The other one's Linhart, among his crates, while you were fetching the Seneca.

20:37 Narrator: I missed something? Zima: He sighed that the poor professor even put six, fourteen on the orders. In his own hand.

20:45 Narrator: Six, fourteen. Like that? Not the fourteenth of June?

20:52 Zima: Like that. And he knew it was written by hand. Narrator: Ah. Then Rys leaked it. Or the clerk did, to save her—

20:59 Zima: No. Rys wants a circus less than anyone. Doubravová would sooner lose her pension than say "fourteenth month" outside a locked room. Narrator: Then nobody told him... Antonín, who outside the Centre ever saw those orders?

21:17 Rys Waiting, Notebook Open, Short of Breath

21:21 Narrator: Ruzyně was all trolleys and loudspeakers that Sunday, and Kapitán Rys stood waiting under the departures board, notebook open, short of breath. Rys: Czech Airlines desk, Mr Zima. London first. I've ten minutes and no warrant.

21:37 Narrator: One small case. For a man who's going to camp in a Nassau lawyer's office for weeks. Zima: And three crates tied with string back on Na Příkopě. A man coming home doesn't ship his mother's photographs.

21:50 Rys: Here he comes. Linhart: Mr Zima! And the kapitán. Come to wave me off? Nobody in this city waves off a fund man.

22:00 Zima: One question before London. Among your crates you told me the professor wrote six, fourteen on them. His own hand, you said.

22:08 Linhart: Did I? I— well. Then I'm sorry for him all over again.

22:15 Zima: Who told you? Linhart: Told me? Surely it's common knowledge by—

22:19 Rys: It isn't. Those orders went into the Centre's night box at dawn with nobody seen carrying them, and they've been sealed in a cabinet ever since. You said it yourself, in your own office: you'd never seen them. Linhart: Nor have I. I never— no. Nor have I.

22:36 Rys: And I've told nobody what's written on them. Not the papers, not your fund, not the professor. Linhart: Kapitán. The shares moved on the fourteenth of June. It was in every paper in Prague, on every front—

22:48 Narrator: And from the fourteenth of June you got six, fourteen. Funny sort of sum. Linhart: A guess, bookseller. An educated one. I was educated at some expense.

22:59 Zima: An educated guess about a hand you never saw. Linhart: About a date. Every order bears a date, kapitán. My flight is boarding.

23:09 A Quarter of an Hour in a Bare Room

23:13 Narrator: The airport police kept a bare room behind passport control, and Rys sat Linhart down in it, his boarding card still in his fist, while Zima leaned on the wall beside me. Linhart: A quarter of an hour, kapitán. After that I want a lawyer, and he'll want your— Rys: Securities Centre, register of receipts, the morning of the freeze. Copied from the log itself. "Fund orders received undated, as standard. Centre stamp applied. Nine orders bear in addition a date by hand: six, stroke, one four."

23:45 Rys: And underneath it the registry logged a fourteenth month. Never published. Never shown outside the Centre.

23:52 Linhart: So a clerk can't count. You heard me. Every order bears a—

23:56 Zima: Bears a stamp, pan Linhart. The Centre's own, on each one. You said his own hand. And among your crates you said something truer. "Orders nobody ever dates." You knew they come in blank. You knew these didn't.

24:13 Linhart: Anyone in the business would— Zima: Would say the fourteenth of June, yes. Anyone would. A Czech puts the day first. You said six, fourteen, the way it sits on the paper.

24:25 Linhart: Nonsense. Rys: Now the woman who types your letters. Statement of Ostrá, secretary. "Of the two men whose letters I retype, only one dates everything month first, and that is pan Linhart. The professor, never."

24:42 Narrator: She'd know. She turned every one of yours round, for wages that could wait. Linhart: Ostrá. My own typist. You think I gambled on the hour? I bought it. A file from an intelligence man, cash, in a café on Národní.

25:00 Linhart: Noon, the fourteenth, freeze. And do you know whose letter was in it? Your saintly professor's own letter. Ask him what he wrote them in April. Ask him why he—

25:10 Rys: You forged his name on nine orders. Linhart: I promised this country ten times its money, on a poster! And what did it give me? A professor's face, and— Six hundred thousand fools who thought paper was bread!

25:25 Narrator: That's London, connecting for Nassau. Your flight, Linhart.

25:33 Wrapped in Mist Behind the Bookshop

25:31 Rys: It can go without you.

25:37 Narrator: Prague, the night it ended, was wrapped in mist to the chimneys; behind my bookshop the professor had my good chair, and Kapitán Rys, off duty, had the stool. Rys: Charged this afternoon. Forgery, nine counts, and fraud on six hundred thousand shareholders.

25:57 Narrator: Good. Rys: He says his bought file held a letter of yours, Professor. From April.

26:03 Malina: Then you shall have it, Mr Zima. I owe you that much and more. In April I wrote the Finance Ministry and begged them to freeze my own fund. I'd read the accounts. Ten times your money was a lie.

26:19 Narrator: And you sat in handcuffs rather than say so. Malina: A chairman who calls his own fund a fraud starts a run, sir. The widow in Tábor is always the last to the counter.

26:31 Zima: So the freeze he timed his theft by was your own alarm. And your letter told him whose name to sign. Malina: My name was traced off the prospectus, blot and all, from under the very promise I'd begged them to stop. There's a lecture in that somewhere. I won't be the one to give it.

26:49 Narrator: Here's what I still don't follow, Antonín. Anyone could guess the fourteenth. Why was six, fourteen enough? Zima: Because the papers printed the day. Nobody printed that a date was written on those orders at all. Doubravová told us near midnight, in Rys's office, and Rys kept it there. Yet Linhart knew it was there, and in a hand.

27:13 Narrator: And month first. Zima: That was Ostrá, who retypes him. Only the man who held the pen knew all of it.

27:21 Rys: The Centre voids forged orders. Paní Doubravová reversed the entry herself, and signed it twice. Narrator: Twice?

27:28 Rys: She said once might not be believed. The shares are back in the Lion Fund. Ostrá's wages come first out of it.

27:36 Narrator: Bless her. Malina: And my window? Narrator: I'll pay for the glass. It was my sort who threw the stone.

27:45 Narrator: Hear that? The castle bells, through all that mist. Linhart hears them from a cell now, not from Nassau. And Prague, buying itself back, one coupon book at a time.