Victory Square Read online

  Bernard waited for me to complete my thought, but I couldn’t, not yet. I locked up the BMW, pocketed the keys and thanked the guard again for the cigarette.

  Markus Feder was quicker than expected; when we stepped into the homicide office, my phone was ringing. “Emil, I’ve got something.”

  “Be right down,” I said, then went out to Bernard, who was settling into his chair. He groaned as he got up again.

  We went back down the stairwell to the first underground level and Markus Feder’s “body shop.” Feder had been assigned to the First District Militia in the fifties, and since then he’d gradually built a reputation as the most astute coroner in the country. He was the one who tracked down a rare Nigerian poison used to kill a television broadcaster in 1978. Two years later, he identified not only the weapon—a wrench—that killed the wife of a Ukrainian diplomat, but the manufacturer, the year produced, and the shop where it was purchased. He’d conjured many small miracles in his cold, stainless steel lab, and today was no exception.

  “Poisoned,” he said, leaning against the gurney that held Yuri Kolev’s large, naked body aloft. This, for some reason, wasn’t a surprise to me. He raised a finger. “Guess how.”

  That, I didn’t know. I shrugged.

  “Ever heard of an eight-ball?”

  “Billiards?”

  Bernard said, “Crack cocaine and heroin.”

  Feder wagged the finger at him. “The young man wins. He’s been watching American movies. Anyway, what you’ve got is the same thing but without the crack. Colombian cocaine mixed with heroin.”

  “Injected?” I offered.

  “Not at all. This man’s been snorting for years. His nasal cavity’s like the Postojna Caves.” Feder propped his gloved finger on the tip of Kolev’s nose to demonstrate. “But this time, it was mixed with uncut heroin. It was pure poison. If his heart hadn’t killed him first, he would’ve suffocated as his body shut down.”

  I looked down at Kolev’s pale body and noticed his freshly shaved genitals, which were unusually red. “Could he have done it by accident?”

  “Emil, you don’t get hold of pure heroin by accident, and you certainly don’t snort it by accident.”

  “What’s wrong with his privates?” said Bernard.

  “Herpes,” Feder told him. He wagged his finger again. “A visual lesson for you, son. Oh!”

  “What?”

  Feder stepped back to the sink and picked up a plastic bag filled with slips of paper, some change, a wallet, and two identification booklets. “His effects.”

  I held up the bag and peered through it. “So if it wasn’t an accident, someone spiked his cocaine.”

  Feder nodded. “Someone who could get hold of the pure stuff.”

  “There you are!” said a woman’s voice. “There’s Daddy!”

  Feder brightened, looking past us to where Agota stood in the doorway, clutching two-year-old Sanja wrapped in a purple hooded coat. Agota was beautiful in the way her mother, Magda, had once been, with pale blue eyes and dark hair.

  She came in slowly. “We’re interrupting?”

  “Absolutely not, dear,” said Feder, a massive grin filling his face.

  Bernard waved for her to leave. “I’ll be right out.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to step in front of the corpse. “Go.”

  “Oh,” said Agota. She’d just caught sight of Yuri Kolev’s white body. She clutched Sanja tighter, one hand covering the child’s face. “I—”

  “Wait outside,” said Bernard.

  We watched her retreat and close the door behind herself, then heard coughing from the corridor, and Sanja’s low whine.

  “Nice one,” said Feder, a gloved finger on Yuri Kolev’s navel. “I’ve always said your wife was a nice one.”

  “Yeah,” Bernard said without interest.

  “If I was you, I’d keep a tight rein on myself. A woman like that doesn’t come along every day.”

  Bernard looked at Feder, then at me. He blinked and muttered, “Shut up,” before marching out of the lab.

  Using Feder’s lamps, I examined Kolev’s effects. He had two ID booklets: a Ministry for State Security certificate with his name, and a general citizen’s pass under the name LIPMANN, ULRICH. He’d used the false one to travel to Sarospatak three times in the last week. It didn’t look like the travel habits of someone who was only making photocopies for the office.

  The slips of paper were receipts for four meals at the Hotel Metropol. Large bills, at least three people at the table.

  I thanked Feder and found Bernard and Agota whispering in the stairwell, Sanja on her mother’s knee.

  “Hey, old man,” said Agota.

  Since moving to the Capital in 1984, Agota had gone from disconsolate textile-factory worker to weekend photographer. Then, after one successful commission shooting a Ministry general’s son’s wedding, she started getting calls. She applied for permission to leave her factory just after the birth of her daughter two years ago and had been photographing full-time ever since, sharing a studio co-op on Lenin Avenue, not far from the Militia station. Her life showed us that change was never impossible. She’d married a man ten years youngerthan herself and then became pregnant at the age of forty-five—Katja often spoke of this as if it were a miracle—and then she’d made a complete career change. These things gave the rest of us hope.

  I kissed her cheeks, then Sanja’s soft white forehead. “You know better than to walk into that room.”

  “I needed to find Berni.” She wrinkled her nose. “But the smell. What is that smell?”

  “Chemicals,” Bernard guessed. He reached down to take Sanja.

  “So how was it?” I asked.

  “How was what?”

  “Don’t be funny. It doesn’t suit you.”

  People say a lot of things about Tomiak Pankov now, most of them true, but back then you could think what you wanted; it didn’t change the fact that his very name frightened you. So none of us said it aloud.

  She’d done his portrait in the newly finished Workers’Palace, that Third District monstrosity fronted by the long, cobblestone Workers’Boulevard, which The Spark continually reminded us was one meter wider than the Champs-Elysees.

  She frowned, trying to find the words to describe the experience.

  “Scary?” I offered.

  She blew some air, then nodded. “Terrifying. I got some nice shots, though.”

  “That’s good.”

  “They searched me.”

  “What?” said Bernard, bouncing Sanja on his hip.

  “On my way out. They searched me. As if I were a thief.”

  Neither of us knew how to answer that. Agota reached for her purse as she stood. “I’ve gotta go. Train leaves in a half hour.”

  “Wait a minute,” I told her as we started up the stairs. “Let’s call your father—I might drive you halfway. He can take you the rest.”

  Bernard groaned loudly. He and his father-in-law spoke only at family gatherings in the Tisakarad farmhouse. Even then, conversation was strained. He smiled, pressing his nose against Sanja’s. “If you can get him to speak about something other than how much the French love him, you’ll have done a great service to humanity.” “Bernard,” warned Agota.

  Back in the office, I closed the door and pulled the blinds shut before dialing. After three rings Magda Kolyeszar picked up. We hadn’t talked in a month, and it surprised me how old she sounded. “Emil, that you?”

  “How’s the easy life, Magda?”

  “Speak for yourself. I’ve been assigned the job of archivist.”

  “Archivist?”

  “For the dissident. It’s amazing how much bad writing you can accumulate over a lifetime.”

  “You should read my case reports.”

  She gave a polite chuckle. “You hear about Agi’s commission? Scares me to death.”

  “She’s here now. Made it out without a scratch. Is the farmer in?”

  “You’re i
n luck,” she told me. “He’s decided to stay in today. You’ll put Agi on afterward?”

  Sure.

  She called for her husband, and after a moment that deep voice came on the line. “Emil?”

  “Ferenc.” I leaned into the receiver. “How’s the farming?”

  “The land doesn’t like me.”

  “Can we meet today?”

  “Important?”

  “I’ve got a dead Ministry officer, and I’d like to know what all’s possible.”

  “Who?”

  “Yuri Kolev. Lieutenant general. You know him?”

  “I know them all, but…” Ferenc trailed off. “The usual spot? I’ll have to get back for tonight’s rally”

  “Should you say that over the phone?”

  He made a harruph noise. “Trust me, Emil. They know already.”

  “What time?” I said, looking up as Agota opened my door and smiled. I waved her in.

  “Say, three o’clock.”

  By the dusty clock on my wall, it was a little after one. “Perfect. Hold on. I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you.”

  THREE

  •

  It was one by the time Gavra reached the Stop & Drop office. The next flight from Richmond to New York wouldn’t leave until late that night, so in the meantime he could at least catch up on his sleep.

  Yuri Kolev’s death surprised and disturbed him, but it couldn’t be called a shock. Gavra had long heard Ministry rumors about the Lieutenant General’s cocaine addiction, and so a sudden heart attack wasn’t out of the question. He even began to wonder if this whole job had been some drug-fueled fantasy.

  But no. Brano Sev had made such a particular point of trusting the Lieutenant General that Gavra had no choice but to feel the same. That’s how much General Brano Sev’s judgment meant to the younger man, even though he hadn’t spoken to or heard of Brano in the last three years.

  Brano Sev’s postretirement vanishing act had only deepened his near-legendary reputation among Ministry agents, as well as those of us in homicide who had worked with him. He’d fought the Germans in the Patriotic War, tracked down ex-Nazis after it, and had quietly, meticulously, made the country safe for socialism. His name evoked both admiration and fear. For me, though, his name provoked feelings of revulsion.

  But if the now-absent Brano Sev had said that Lieutenant General Yuri Kolev was to be trusted, that was all Gavra needed to know.

  He found Freddy behind the desk, feet propped up, wearing an Orioles cap. Freddy raised the brim with a knuckle. “Well, hey there, Viktor! Decide to take me up on that beer?”

  “I need to pay my bill. I’ll be leaving tonight.”

  “As you like, man. But as for the beer, I’m insisting.”

  “I’m a little tired, Freddy.”

  “Trust me. You’ll sleep like a baby.”

  Gavra rubbed his eyes for effect. “Okay, but just one.”

  Freddy leveled a finger-pistol at him and shot. “You got it, buddy.” He took two cans of Budweiser—not the Czech Budweiser Budvar but something else entirely—out of a tiny refrigerator and passed one over. Gavra tried to appear pleased with the taste—like a half-can of beer topped off with stale water—but it was difficult.

  Freddy began their fraternity by complaining. About his old woman. Which Gavra took to mean his wife, Tracey. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. She’s a good woman. Puts out like a goddamned machine and makes a massive pot roast. But that mouth on her… wow! Sometimes I’m like to take a swing at her.”

  “You hit her?”

  “Not yet, brother. But someday it’s gonna happen. Got yourself a wife?”

  Gavra shook his head.

  “No problem. How old are you? Fifty?”

  “Forty-four.”

  “Well, don’t hurry into it. That’s a tip from the top. Might as well track down all the pussy you can before buying the cow. Can’t imagine it’s any different in Russia.”

  “It’s the same all over.”

  “Who you visiting with?”

  Gavra rubbed his eyes. He wished he could get through this terrible can and to bed. “My cousin, Lubov. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  “Lubov Shevchenko?”

  Gavra thought he’d heard wrong. Not merely that Freddy knew Lubov Shevchenko but that he’d pronounced the name correctly. “You know him?”

  “Course I do! My kid, Jeremy, he’s got Shevchenko for math. He’s a tough bastard, doesn’t stand for no bullshit in his class.” He raised his beer in a kind of salute. “Country needs more teachers like him.”

  “He teaches?”

  “I kid you not. Didn’t Lubov tell you?”

  Gavra was speechless a moment. “You know Lubov. He’s secretive.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Freddy. He scratched his beard. “I figured it was all Russians, but meeting you, I see it’s just Lubov. School’s just a little farther up the turnpike. Clover Hill High. Done all right by himself, your cousin.”

  “I’m glad he’s happy.”

  “Land of the free, and all.”

  He didn’t have to do this. No one knew that, at the last minute, he’d been handed Lubov Shevchenko’s location. But opportunity changes how you look at the world. With Shevchenko just “up the turnpike,” Gavra could see that nothing really added up. A defector-turned-schoolteacher who needed to be kept alive. Why? A now-dead lieutenant general who wouldn’t share the man’s real name, who was in fact getting his orders from someone else who wanted to remain anonymous. He was starting to believe that the timing of Kolev’s heart attack was too much of a coincidence.

  So he thanked Freddy for the beer and conversation, then stepped out into the bright, cold sunlight. Behind the wheel of the Toyota, he looked around to be sure no one was watching. He reached under his seat, took the P-83 from the paper bag, then filled the clip with eight rounds. He wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon.

  By two, he was on the turnpike again. Thick forests lined the road, and that somehow made the discomfort of all of this more bearable.

  Over the next hill he spotted the high school. Clover Hill. It was a low, flat-topped building that spread back into a deep field checkered with a baseball diamond and an American football field and a running track. It was impressive. His own village school had been a small house. All their sports were done in the public park, or for special events they went to the Palace of Physical Culture in nearby Satu Mare.

  He parked near the front door, between a Subaru and a Ford pickup, and slipped the pistol into the glove compartment. He wouldn’t need it yet. Inside, crowds of teenagers clutched books and shouted at one another, ignoring him. They were on their way to classes, and the corridor soon thinned until only a few were left when the grating bell sounded. He nodded at a brunette. “Excuse me, where is the main office?”

  “There,” she said, exasperated.

  Directly behind him was a door labeled OFFICE. He let himself inside.

  A heavy woman sat at a wide desk, talking into a telephone. Behind her were two doors, PRINCIPAL and VICE-PRINCIPAL. TO Gavra’s right was a line of four chairs, and in two of them sat a boy and a girl, teenagers. The boy was pale with prematurely thinning red hair he’d foolishly chosen to grow long. The girl gripped the boy’s hand, looking like a stunned model, with long blond hair and eager eyes that locked on to him. He smiled.

  “Need some help?” It was the woman at the desk. She covered the telephone mouthpiece with her palm.

  “Uh, yes. I’m looking for my cousin. Lubov Shevchenko. He teaches math.”

  He heard a gasp and turned to see the girl whispering to the boy, who nodded.

  “Cousin, huh?” said the clerk. “What’s your name?”

  “Viktor Lukacs.”

  “Well, Mr. Shevchenko has a class right now.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt him,” Gavra said quickly. “When will he be finished?”

  The woman thought a moment, wrinkling her nose. “I think Mr. Shevche
nko’s running detention today. Is that right, Jennifer?”

  The girl nodded. “Last detention of the year.”

  “Yes, so he’ll get out around five thirty. Want to leave a message for him?”

  “He’s not expecting me until next week. I want to surprise him.”

  The boy said, “I don’t think Mr. Shevchenko likes surprises.”

  “Yeah,” said Jennifer.

  “Mind your own business, you two,” said the clerk. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  Gavra picked up Marlboros and a ham-and-cheese sandwich from the Brandermill Plaza and learned from the pimply cashier that the name Brandermill referred to not just the plaza but the whole wooded area that bordered it. “It’s a housing development” she told him between smacks of her chewing gum. “Ain’t no project. Got its own lake, restaurants, sports club, and all these shops here. Ain’t no reason to leave. It’s just like a town.”

  On the drive back, Gavra was struck by the similarity—in theory, at least—between the Brandermill development and Tomiak Pankov’s New Towns, those vast concrete estates where reassigned farmers were moved in order to man newly constructed factories. The difference, of course, was that people chose to move to Brandermill.

  He parked in the same spot again, ate the sandwich (which was delicious), and waited in the car, smoking. Occasional adults emerged from the front doors, found their cars, and drove away. A woman with horn-rimmed glasses frowned at him when he tossed a butt out the window, but he ignored her. Later, two teenage boys came out, throwing punches at one another and laughing, then raced at full speed through the lot.

  His plan was simple: find Shevchenko and then follow him home. There, he could take control of the man in privacy and get the answers Kolev had been unwilling, or unable, to share.

  At four thirty, the grating bell sounded again. Students poured out. Older ones tossed bookbags into pickup trucks and small Japanese cars. Teachers patiently shouted at students to slow down, wished them a Merry Christmas, or reminded them to do this or that over the holiday. The Subaru beside Gavra’s window was owned—or at least used—by a tall kid who dribbled a basketball on his way to his car, stopping as he unlocked it to glare at Gavra.