Victory Square tyb-5 Page 9

  Beth Atkins’s head touched down on Gavra’s shoulder, but he didn’t move.

  Back up. Lebed Putonski and Yuri Kolev knew each other after the war, when they shared duties on a public tribunal, sentencing prisoners to work camps and executions. Afterward, Putonski had become a Ministry bureaucrat, working his way up to Stockholm resident, passing on information from their local agents and relaying orders from home.

  He unconsciously rubbed his eyes, and that movement woke Beth Atkins. She smiled and apologized for falling on him. “Can’t you sleep, dear?”

  He shook his head. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  She gave him a self-consciously sad expression. “You worried about your country?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

  Beth patted his arm, whispering, “Me too,” as if it were a secret.

  Then she closed her eyes and returned, magically, to sleep.

  EIGHT

  In the car, Katja said, “Where’re we going?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh no,” she said, because she did know.

  “I need to try. It’ll be quick.”

  “That may not be up to us.”

  I turned off of Lenin Avenue and took a side street to Victory Square. “Does Aron think you’re being overcautious sending him away?”

  She grunted loudly. “That’s a funny one.”

  “Oh?”

  She gazed out at the vacant streets. “Aron’s… well, he’s been weird over the last half year. If you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t.”

  She was silent a moment, but when she spoke it came out as if she’d been wanting to say this for a long time. “He’s paranoid, Emil. Or he’s seemed so for the last six months since his dad died. He thinks the world’s about to end. He’s gotten obsessed with the news, and every time something happens, it’s just more evidence that God’s hand is upon us.”

  “What? He’s religious?”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s just like a… a premonition. I’ve had to listen to it every damned night.” She went into an imitation of Aron’s rants, citing a wide range of events: the collision on the River Thames of a pleasure boat and a barge, which killed fifty-one, the Tiananmen Square massacre that resulted in at least four hundred dead, the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco that killed sixty-three, and even a report in the Soviet media that an alien spacecraft had landed in Voronezh. Last November’s explosion in a Krosno fertilizer plant, which The Spark blamed on “Polish counterrevolutionary terrorists,” disturbed him, as did the murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in August. “He was shocked by it, as if the man were a close friend.” And of course there were the changes occurring everywhere around us in our corner of the world. Each event became evidence for his unfocused paranoid thesis: The world’s collapsing from every corner.

  “You should’ve seen him in October, when the bulldozers were tearing down that old Calvinist church in our district. We could see it from the bedroom window. First he screamed about how he was going to kill Tomiak Pankov, then he just sat there for hours, watching the machines. I said to him,‘But you’re not even religious, Aron.’And he gave me that look. It’s a look I know. The one that says, You callous bitch.”

  That’s how, her face as red as the hammer-and-sickle crest on our flag, the story ended. I didn’t know what to say. What can you say when your friend’s husband is in the midst of a personal apocalypse?

  “But now,” she said quietly, “now I don’t know. Maybe he’s been right all along.”

  We stopped in front of Yalta Boulevard 36. I took my hands from the wheel and turned so I could look directly at her. “Everything might change, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to end.”

  “Tell him that,” she said, reaching for the door. “Not me.”

  I grabbed her shoulder. “I need to go in, but you don’t. Just wait here.”

  She gave me a hard expression that wasn’t uncommon for her, then she smiled. “Someone’s got to watch over you, old man.”

  We showed our documents to the front-door guard, but he was the same one I’d talked to yesterday, so he didn’t bother looking at them. He nodded down the street. “It’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “The BMW.”

  I found the spot where Kolev’s car had been, now filled with a Karpat Z-20. “Where is it?”

  “Ask the Comrade Colonel,” he said. His voice was full of envy. I wondered how Romek had moved the car; the keys were still in my desk.

  Remarkably, this was the first time I had ever passed through Yalta’s oak double doors. I’d been at its threshold more than once, but never stepped through. We entered a cavernous, wood-paneled foyer with too little light. At its center stood a wide oak table in front of a large bronze sculpture: the national hawk, wings folded, head turned to the side. At the table, two women in gray uniforms sat in front of dusty computers. One, with a pretty face marred by a harelip, looked up at us.

  “Yes?”

  I flashed my Militia certificate. “I’m here to look at Comrade Yuri Kolev’s office. Colonel Romek knows about this.”

  She looked at a clipboard beside her computer keyboard. “He’s in a meeting. You can wait in 209.”

  “We don’t need to see Romek,” I explained. “We’re just here to look at Kolev’s office.”

  She smiled, the crease in her lip spreading. “You do need to see Romek first. He said you’d be coming. Room 209. Comrade Sas will show you the way.”

  Comrade Sas was another uniformed guard, a big man with a boxer’s nose who materialized from the shadows. He opened a hand toward a doorway off to the left and nodded for Katja to go first. I followed, and he walked behind us.

  It wasn’t like the old days, when a summons to Yalta Boulevard was often a precursor to a man’s disappearance. Those days had passed with the Prague Spring, which had reminded leaders throughout the socialist world that there were limits to what you could do before your citizens snapped and set fire to tanks in the streets.

  Nonetheless, the Ministry for State Security still had the same powers it always had. If the Ministry had relinquished its magic acts of making holes where people once stood, it was because the Ministry had made that decision. Decisions could be reversed at any time.

  The institutional green corridor was lined with doors, each marked by a number on an opaque window. Number 209 was four doors down, on the right. It was unlocked. Inside, a secretary sat at a desk under an old portrait of President Pankov, from when he still had hair. Beside her was another door. She hung up the phone and nodded at three cushioned chairs against the opposite wall. Without a word, we sat and waited. Comrade Sas left us to our fate.

  From behind the closed door, Colonel Nikolai Romek spoke to someone we couldn’t hear. A telephone conversation. The colonel said, “I don’t care what those motherfuckers say. If they don’t get their fucking journalists out of our country, Belgrade can kiss its coal shipments good-bye. See how they fucking like that!”

  Silence followed, broken only by the colonel’s, “Uh huh. Uh huh. Right in the ass, yes.”

  I looked at Katja. The one-sided conversation only deepened her terror, and it wasn’t helping my blood pressure at all-my veins throbbed. I squeezed Katja’s hand; she squeezed back.

  We heard the phone bang down. The intercom on the secretary’s desk buzzed. She smiled at us. “The Comrade Colonel will see you now.”

  I took Katja’s elbow to help her up, and we walked through to the small office where Romek, at his desk, was frowning at a little metal box with five colored buttons and a speaker grille. He pressed buttons, cursing to himself. “Livia? Livia?”

  The secretary’s staticky voice came through the grille. “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

  “Three Turkish coffees.”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

  Romek looked up as if just realizing we were there. “Please, please,
” he said, half standing and gesturing at two chairs facing his desk. As we sat down, he pointed at the intercom. “Can’t ever figure this thing out.”

  “They’re difficult,” I said, then immediately regretted speaking. Perhaps it sounded like I was mocking him.

  Romek didn’t seem to notice. He gazed at Katja. “I see you’re in better company today, Comrade Brod.”

  “Lieutenant Katja Drdova,” I said.

  “Of course I know,” said Romek, touching his thin mustache. He came around the desk and took Katja’s hand, bringing it to his lips. Katja’s face was blank, as if she’d been drugged. He kissed her knuckles and said, “The first woman in homicide. You’re an example for the whole country, Comrade Lieutenant.”

  When he released her hand and returned to his desk, I noticed Katja wiping her knuckles clean on the side of her pants.

  “So,” said Romek, sitting again. He clapped his hands together, as if in prayer. “You’re here to look at Yuri Kolev’s office. No?”

  I nodded.

  “Despite what I told you yesterday?”

  Again, I nodded.

  He took a long breath through his nose. “Well, I’m afraid that’s going to be pointless.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. Katja was still comatose.

  “Of course you don’t. You’re busy working hard to save individual citizens from criminal death, and that’s of course commendable. But over here we’re more interested in saving the citizenry as a whole.”

  Despite myself, I was getting irritated. I leaned so my elbows touched my knees. “What are you telling me, Nikolai?”

  “I’m telling you that I gave you this little task, which you’ve bungled mercilessly. You upset Comrade Aspitan from the Archives, and now I hear that your coroner’s actually filed some ludicrous murder theory concerning heroin. So now I’ve taken back this simple job. It’s done, Brod. I filed the paperwork this morning.”

  “What?” Katja had found her tongue.

  Romek gave her a winning smile. “Comrade Drdova, I imagine you’re aware-that you’re both aware,” he added, acknowledging me, “of last night’s debacle in Sarospatak. I wish I could say that’s the end of the story, but I can’t. Just this morning, I received word that demonstrators are on the move right here, in the Capital. They haven’t reached the streets yet-they’re collecting in various apartments.” He shrugged. “It’s a smart scheme. By the time we’ve searched all the doors, it’ll be too late.”

  Without warning, I’d learned what my morning’s phone call had set in motion. My cheeks were hot; my heart made thumping noises.

  He continued. “My point to the two of you is, whether or not you realize it, your case is going to end by tomorrow morning however things develop. Either martial law will go into effect, and the law will be taken over by divisions of the army and the Ministry, or-and this is of course extremely unlikely-the agitators will have their day, and you can be sure that a dead lieutenant general won’t be their concern. There’ll be many, many more corpses to take your attention.”

  “Katja,” I said.

  She looked at me, as did Romek, surprised by interruption.

  I reached into my coat and handed over my key ring. “Please wait for me in the car.”

  “But, Chief, I-”

  “Now,” I said, in a tone I’d never used with her before.

  Flustered and embarrassed, she got out of her chair and mumbled, “Excuse me,” to Romek.

  He resurrected that shining smile and nodded at her.

  As she left, closing the door tightly behind herself, I didn’t take my eyes off of Romek. When I was a young man, I’d had trouble controlling my features, but years in the Militia, dealing with killers, had made this easier. He blinked at me. “What is it, Comrade Brod?”

  “I’ll drop the case if you’ll be straight with me.”

  “I’ll certainly try,” he said.

  I wasn’t as sure of myself as I pretended to be. My head hurt, and I was certain Romek could hear my loud heartbeat from where he sat. With my next words I could receive enlightenment or a quick trip down to the barred cells in the basement of Yalta 36. “Four people. Dusan Volan, Lebed Putonski, Tatiana Zoltenko, and Jerzy Michalec.” For the moment, I left out Brano Sev and myself. “What’s their connection?”

  Romek was also good at masking his face, but he didn’t have the same kind of experience I did. There was an instant, as I rattled off the names, when pain flashed across his features. He recovered quickly, his upper teeth grazing his lower lip to get it back in line, but that instant had occurred. I knew that whatever followed would be a lie.

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know where you got those names. Tatiana Zoltenko’s a Ministry colonel, like myself. Exemplary. Tania’s in Sarospatak as we speak. The rest-Putonski, you said? And Dusan Vol-wait. I do know him, I think,” he said with earnestness, correcting himself as if he were absentminded. “In The Spark. A judge. The man was murdered, wasn’t he?”

  I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a reply, so I didn’t.

  “Yes,” he continued after a moment. “A murdered judge- murdered, just as you claim Kolev was murdered. Is that what you’re talking about? Have all these people been killed?”

  He reached into an aluminum case and took out a cigarette. I still didn’t answer him. I rubbed the edge of my dry lips. I waited.

  He lit his cigarette. “Don’t just sit there, Emil.” He took a drag, and the rush of nicotine brought back his composure. He exhaled bitter smoke. “What’s your game?”

  Finally, I said, “Jerzy Michalec.”

  “What about Jerzy Michalec?”

  “He’s a murderer.”

  “You’re saying he killed Kolev and Volan?”

  “I’m saying all these people have a connection, and that connection is Jerzy Michalec.”

  “Interesting,” he said without interest.

  I blinked once. “Where’s Brano Sev living these days?”

  “Sev?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. Isn’t he a friend of yours?”

  “Brano Sev is no friend of mine.”

  Halfway through his cigarette, Romek seemed to remember who he was. He recalled that he didn’t have to listen to anything I said. “I don’t like your tone, Comrade Brod.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that people are being killed. They’ll continue to be killed, however things develop today.”

  “What made you put these names together in the first place? Did someone tell you something?”

  “Who’s Rosta Gorski?”

  Showing your cards one at a time produces wonderful results. The pain returned briefly, the teeth again, and he put out his unfinished cigarette. “Listen, Brod. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’ve got my hands full trying to keep down an insurrection. I don’t have time to bother with a bunch of senior citizens.”

  “I never said they were all senior citizens.”

  His eyelids drifted down in annoyance. He pointed at the door. “Get out of here, Brod. While you still can.”

  I got up and walked through the door, ignoring Romek’s secretary, down the green corridor, past the front desk and its enormous bronze hawk, and out the door. I heard nothing outside the dangerous pounding of my blood. Only on the sidewalk, crossing to reach the car, did I let my body release its anxiety. My knees went weak, my arms ached, and I thought I might cry. Or have a heart attack. That’s what Yalta 36 could do to a man. Particularly an old man like me.

  “What’s wrong?” said Katja.

  I started the car and, with some effort, put it in first, but my hands had trouble doing anything. I took a long breath, placed my forehead on the wheel, and said, “Can you drive?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Can you drive,” I repeated, “and not ask me any questions?”

  I’d been honest with Romek about everything, including Brano Sev. We’d parted ways in 1985, and it was only at Lena’
s insistence that I even attended his retirement party the following year. I remember us fighting about it. She sat at her vanity mirror, putting on makeup and explaining what a fool I was. “The man worked with you for thirty years. Send him off with a pat on the back, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Why?” I said, full of self-righteousness. “You think the others are going because they like the man? No. They’re afraid that if they don’t go, he’ll leave a report on them with the Ministry. But I’m too old to be scared. People are dead because of Brano. Do you understand what that means?”

  She wouldn’t have it. “You jump to conclusions. You always have. You think you know what people are thinking, but you’re nearly always wrong. The fact is, Imre’s death wasn’t Brano’s fault.” Then she got up, found my tie, and threw it at me.

  Our relationship had ended the night Brano Sev called me down to discuss the murder of Captain Imre Papp. I found Brano parked on Friendship Street, just outside our door. “Get in,” he said.

  “Why don’t you come up?”

  “Please, Emil.”

  He didn’t want anyone seeing us together, so for the space of our conversation he drove slowly down half-deserted streets, where we were hidden by the warm July darkness. But I could see him. In the ten years since we’d worked together in homicide, he’d aged dramatically-he was Lena’s age, but had the sickly expression of someone even older.

  “I need to tell you a story, Emil. But you have to promise to keep it to yourself.”

  “Then don’t tell me.”

  “I think I should. Gavra thinks I should.”

  “Gavra?”

  Brano focused on the dark road. “He says Imre’s murder is tearing you up. He thinks you should know the truth behind it.”

  I was surprised Gavra cared, but I was more surprised that Gavra, working every day with us as we tracked down futile clues, had never shared his secret knowledge. “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  “This is not for your report, understand? Not even for Dora. I don’t want his wife knowing anything.”