Victory Square Read online

  He turned off the television, because seeing it from the outside made him ill. Like most people—like myself, for instance—Gavra could not dispute the facts. Like everyone else, he knew that the Party newspaper, The Spark, would call the demonstrators “imperialist-financed counterrevolutionary agitators” and never report the reason for their gathering—to protest the recent arrest of a priest, Father Eduard Meyr. But also like the rest of ours, Gavra’s time was strained enough with his job, his friends, and himself. All he could do, sitting on an American motel bed, was focus on what he’d come to do: find a man and make a telephone call.

  He found a fat telephone directory under the bedside table and flipped through it looking for “firearms.” There they were, amazingly, five gun stores. The closest was Bob Moates Gun Shop, on Hull Street. He marked it on his rental car map.

  He dressed as he knew the Americans dressed: casually. A pair of Levi’s he’d picked up in a private Ministry store last year and a black polo shirt. He took out the NY baseball cap from La Guardia but was already too appalled by his outfit to add it.

  The turnpike was busy with morning traffic. It took twenty minutes to find the windowless brick building with a steel door. The inside was lined with glass cases full of armaments. A fat man with a T-shirt and tattoos up his arms ate Ruffles potato chips behind the cases. “Morning.”

  “Morning,” said Gavra.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “I’m looking for a gun.”

  “Well, I’d say you came to the right place.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Rifle, maybe? Just got in two AK-47s. Russian, you know.”

  “A little smaller, I think.”

  In the end he settled for a Polish P-83 with twenty rounds of 9mm cartridges, then bought three rolls of quarters. The clerk placed the pistol and ammunition into a paper sack and wished him a good day.

  One more thing to do, then he could sleep.

  He drove back, past the motel, to where, on the right, a ring of stores spread. At the entrance, a large wooden sign proclaimed BRAN-DERMILL, and beyond it were more trees—it was more like a forest than the “housing project” he’d imagined. Another right placed him inside the paved ring of parked cars and shops. A plaza, they called it.

  At the far end was a massive Safeway grocery store. Its windows were decorated with fake white snow and a cardboard Santa Claus leading twelve reindeer into the sky. Near its front door was a telephone booth. At this hour—noon—he had to avoid running over brightly dressed shoppers while searching for a parking spot.

  He shoved coins into the pay phone, shivering as he dialed the long number. After ten rings he gave up, cupping his hand to catch the money the phone returned.

  It was six in the evening back home, so the Lieutenant General had probably left for the day. He shoved in the coins again and tried the Ministry switchboard’s international access line. An operator picked up. “Welcome to Eastern Expressions, the world through the beauty of icon paintings.”

  The cover always made Gavra smile, but he cleared his throat and gave his ten-digit identification number, then his real name, and asked for Lieutenant General Yuri Kolev’s home number. The operator paused, her voice wavering as she said, “You do know about Comrade Kolev, right?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  The line wasn’t so clear that he could believe he’d heard her right, so he made her repeat it. “He had a heart attack this morning, right in the office. We’re all in shock.”

  “Who’s taking care of it?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s doing the paperwork on his death?”

  “It’s been handed to the Militia,” she told him. “I think Emil Brod’s working it personally.”

  “Why the Militia?”

  “You think anyone explained it to me?”

  When he hung up, the Virginia cold seemed a little harsher, the colors on the American shoppers that much more intense. He returned to his Toyota, which felt stuffy. He’d been sent here with no information, knowing only that he should capture a particular man and then get in touch with Kolev. And now …

  He didn’t like it, but Kolev had spelled it out for him: If anything goes wrong, return to Zagreb.

  TWO

  •

  When the call came in, I was at my desk, having just popped two twenty-five-milligram tablets of Captopril. Hypertension. It’s one of the innumerable annoyances that come with getting old. I was also wrapped in a wool coat (the heating had been out for a week), going through a box of old files I’d had shipped over from the Eleventh District Militia Archives. Why had I asked for it? I’m not sure. Maybe it was just nostalgia, because being three days from retirement makes an old man sentimental.

  That’s when the phone rang and a calloused voice said, “Comrade Chief Brod?”

  “Yes.”

  “We met at Brano Sev’s retirement party. Romek,” said the caller. “Colonel Nikolai Romek.”

  All I remembered was a painfully dull party at the Grunwald Restaurant three years ago. Brano Sev surrounded by a general contingency of state security elders who only talked about sex. I’d been drunk and angry that night. “Sorry, but I don’t recall.”

  “No matter,” said Romek. “This is official business anyway. Seems one of our officers is dead. Lieutenant General Yuri Kolev. He was at the party, too.”

  I didn’t remember the Lieutenant General either. Later, I could ask Lena, because despite being seventy-two—eight years older than me—she had a crisp, clean memory for details I never caught. I grabbed a ballpoint and wrote down the dead officer’s name. “How did it happen?”

  “Fell over at his desk. Heart attack.”

  “Why call us?”

  “Why not call you?”

  “We’re the Murder Squad, Comrade Colonel. As much as we’d like to, we don’t bother with natural deaths.”

  Romek cleared his throat. “As you may know, Emil, we’ve got demonstrations in Sarospatak. What you may not know is that other counties are also making noise. We simply don’t have the manpower to process this.”

  It was true that, over the last week, citizens in that western town had been pouring into the streets each night to protest the incarceration of Father Eduard Meyr. But it was also common knowledge that one out of five people in the country worked for the Ministry for State Security in some capacity. They had plenty of men to fill out a lousy form, while I had only two homicide inspectors.

  “Just send someone over,” he said. “It’ll take five minutes.”

  I looked at the dusty, yellowed file I’d been leafing through, then closed it. “We’ll be right there.” After hanging up, I called down to our coroner, Markus Feder. He sounded pleased—overall, it had been a slow month for corpses.

  In those days, murder in the Capital was a rare enough occurrence, and we could make do in the First District with my two detectives, Katja Drdova and Bernard Kovar. We were supposed to have three, but after the death of Captain Imre Papp four years ago, and the subsequent replacements who burned out so quickly, I gave up. When necessary, I went out with Katja or Bernard to visit crime scenes, but they usually insisted on leaving me to my desk. I don’t think they liked having the boss look over their shoulders.

  This time, I would insist. I didn’t want either of my detectives going up to Yalta Boulevard without me there to back them up.

  This morning, the homicide office was empty. Katja was investigating the murder of a retired judge, Dusan Volan, who’d been shot three days ago while wandering the grounds of his extensive Thirteenth District estate. Bernard had stayed behind, but he wasn’t at his desk. I knew where I’d find him.

  In the corridor, some uniforms winked at me knowingly, and others made jokes about me not getting killed before my last day. I told them I’d make a solid effort. For the last two weeks, Katja had been making arrangements for my retirement party Friday; she thought it was a secret, but she’d
made the mistake of bringing Bernard in on the deception, and I’d seen the guest list he’d left on his desk.

  As expected, he was in the lounge, sipping acorn coffee with one of the receptionists, a pretty girl from Vranov named Margit. “Bernard.”

  The big captain was surprised to see me. Surprised and embarrassed. Embarrassment looked funny on a man his size. He stood up, mustache twitching. “Chief.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got a corpse to look at.”

  “Oh!” said Margit.

  I led Bernard down a pea-colored stairwell to the second underground level, where I signed out an unmarked Militia Karpat and took the wheel. Once we’d turned onto Lenin Avenue, I broke the silence by asking about his wife: “How’s Agi?”

  “Good.”

  “The portrait’s today, isn’t it?”

  All he did was nod at that, which annoyed me. Today was the most important commission of Agota’s career—a large-format photograph of our Great Leader. He said, “She’s taking Sanja to Ti-sakarad this afternoon. Doesn’t want to wait for me.””Surprising,” I said, without a hint of surprise.

  Bernard Kovar was married to, and had a baby with, Agota, the daughter of my oldest friend, Ferenc Kolyeszar. Famous Ferenc. For the last thirty years, due largely to his literary career, Ferenc had been living in internal exile, first in Pocspetri, then in Tisakarad, forty-five minutes from Sarospatak. By now Ferenc was internationally famous; even the French had praised his “dissident” works.

  Agota moved to the Capital five years ago and, as her symbolic guardians, neither Lena nor I really approved when Bernard and she became an item. To us, he was still too young, at thirty-seven, to have an adult relationship with a woman ten years his senior. Despite that, they married, and nearly every day I found him flirting with another receptionist.

  We turned onto the roundabout at Victory Square. To the right, the high columns of the Central Committee Building rose up. In front of it, a bronze Vladimir Ilyich, jacket raised in a permanent breeze, pointed to the gray sky.

  I suppose Vladimir’s gone by now.

  “You’ve got a nice family,” I told him.

  “Christ, Emil. Can’t a man flirt?”

  I turned up Yalta Boulevard, then passed the high glass tower of the Hotel Metropol. Ahead, at number 36, two uniformed Ministry guards stood on the right side of the road, outside Ministry headquarters, waving pedestrians to the opposite sidewalk. “Just watch out,” I said. “It’s not only me you’ll have to answer to.” No?

  “Lena will have your balls.”

  Bernard groaned.

  When we climbed out, a guard waved at us, saying, “Nothing to see.”

  I flashed my Militia certificate. “Comrade Colonel Romek called me.” I said it as if the colonel and I were very old friends, then noticed the corpse. It was lying on the cracked sidewalk, covered by a simple white sheet. “Why’s the body out here?”

  The guard shrugged. “Orders.”

  Unbelievable. I approached Yuri Kolev’s body; his shroud rippled in the frigid breeze. “Go ahead,” I said to Bernard. “Let’s see him.”

  He crouched and pulled back the sheet, and when I saw the dead, gray-bearded face it came back to me: a loud, drunken old man from Brano Sev’s retirement party, who ogled Agota all night. I even remembered the man’s bitterness when Agota walked over to Bernard Kovar and asked him to dance.

  “Do I know this guy?” said Bernard, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think I know him.”

  “I hope you do,” said a calloused voice. We turned to find a small man in his fifties, with a thin gray mustache and brown suit, smiling. He stuck out a hand. “Nikolai Romek. Remember now?”

  I did. Yet another Agota-admirer from that party. Lena and I had had our hands busy keeping these men off of her, only to fail with Bernard. “Good to see you again, Comrade Romek. Meet Captain Bernard Kovar.”

  Romek smiled but didn’t offer his hand. “Of course. I remember.”

  “You going to explain this?” I said.

  “Explain what?”

  “You’ve taken Kolev out of his office and left him here. My foren-sics man is going to explode.”

  “Forensics?” said Romek, smiling involuntarily. “Emil, the man died of a heart attack. I’m just dumping the paperwork on you.”

  “Because your men are too busy to fill out a three-page form.”

  Romek nodded—he didn’t care whether I believed him or not.

  I said, “Could this be related to his work?”

  “Why are you obsessed with making this into a murder?”

  “I meant stress, Comrade Colonel.”

  He paused, then shook his head. “No. We weren’t burdening him with anything tougher than photocopying. He was retiring soon.” Romek looked down at Kolev’s flaccid, pale face. “A damned shame.”

  “When?”

  “When, what?”

  “His retirement.”

  “Next month.”

  “Medical records?”

  “Send a request to Pasha Medical if you like.”

  I knew about file requests sent to the Ministry’s private hospital. I’d be retired by the time it showed up. “We should at least have a look at his office.”

  “Why do you think we brought out the body?” He squinted at me. “It’s a hectic time. We don’t want militiamen crawling about.”

  Bernard, silent, watched the two of us stare at each another and exhale clouds of condensation.

  “Look,” said Romek, as if he were preparing to do me a great service against his better judgment, “I’ve already sent someone to clear out his home of classified documents. And just for you, I’ll have my people go through his office. We’ll let you know if there’s anything suspicious. All right?”

  “Don’t have a choice, do I?”

  Romek grunted a half-laugh and stuck his hands into his pockets.

  “Was he married?” I asked.

  “We’re all married, Comrade Chief. To the Ministry.” Romek nodded at Kolev’s body. “He did have himself a pretty Saxon girl for a while, but that ended long ago.”

  “No one now?”

  He shook his head again and began to step away. “I’ve got a desk full of work. Are we done?”

  “For now,” I said, and Bernard and I watched Romek climb the steps to where another uniformed guard opened the door of Yalta 36 for him.

  Markus Feder arrived in a white Karpat hearse with spots of rust along its edges. He climbed out slowly, brushing his white lab coat straight, then his white hair, which still held on to a few flakes of red. After looking at the body for five seconds, he said, “Don’t know why you need me on this, Emil. Look at those eyes—the man’s had a coronary.” He opened a pale hand. “That’ll be eight hundred thousand korona.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for his jokes. “Take him back with you. Do a full exam.”

  “Suspect something more devious?”

  “Just do it, will you?”

  Feder lowered his voice. “What’s the story?”

  “Just what you see.”

  “But why us?”

  “They say they’ve got manpower problems.”

  He didn’t believe it either. “I’ll get you something in a few hours.”

  “Thanks, Markus.”

  Bernard was standing over by a kolach shop, answering a pretty shopkeeper’s questions, but I ignored him and went to the Ministry guard. Now that the body was being loaded onto a gurney, he was sneaking a cigarette in the next doorway. “Can I get one?”

  He tapped one out and lit it for me. “It’s not murder, is it?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t look like it. Was the Lieutenant General on any medication?”

  “I don’t know,” said the guard, peering over at Bernard, who had somehow made the shopkeeper laugh. “I wonder what’ll happen to his car now.”

  “What?”

  “The Lieutenant General’s.” He nodded up the street to where a shining white BMW 7
Series was parked by the curb.

  “He parked out in the open?”

  “Didn’t trust the garage attendants. Besides, no one’s going to touch a car sitting here.”

  I thanked him for the smoke, then hurried across the street to Feder’s hearse. He was just getting behind the wheel. “Let me see the body again.”

  “You’re getting creepy in your old age.” He walked with me around the back and opened it so I could climb in to where Kolev was sealed inside a translucent body bag. I unzipped it halfway and reached in. Behind me, Feder made lewd jokes. He said, “Hmm,” when I pulled out Kolev’s car keys.

  Bernard had finally tired of pestering the local women, and as he walked back I turned him around and guided him up the street to the BMW. “Quick search,” I said.

  “What’re we looking for?”

  “Anything. Maybe medication.”

  Bernard inhaled audibly when I unlocked the car. Across the way, the guard tossed his cigarette and stared. I took the front seat, rummaging around the floorboards and in the glove compartment, while Bernard crouched in the back. “Hey,” he said.

  He held up a narrow sheet of paper—a poorly printed flyer— that said

  It was the same slogan they used in Czechoslovakia just before everything changed there. Student radicals and underground workers had used the question-and-answer to identify compatriots. The activists of our own country had borrowed the phrase.

  I took the flyer and stared at it.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  I looked at him a second, then past him, through the rear windshield. The guard had returned to the steps of Yalta 36 and was speaking with the other guard. I lowered my voice, though it wasn’t necessary.

  “This” I told him. “We’re called in to process the death of a Ministry lieutenant general. Forty years, and I’ve never seen this happen. We’re being brought in for a reason.”