Victory Square Page 9

  “From what we’re able to see,” said Beth, “it looks like your president, Mr. Pankov, he’s got a tight grip on things.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  “A week,” she said, then went on to explain that they’d originally planned for just three days, so they’d have time to go on to Prague, but Berta Raskovic, their travel agent back in Philly—she’d been a proud American citizen only three years—convinced them that her home country deserved more than just three days. Get to know the people, she’d told them. They’re a wonderful people.

  Harold said, “You should’ve heard her. Wow! Czechs? she said. They’re the rudest people on Earth, after Yugoslavs. Can you believe it? And she sold us koronas at 2,950 to the dollar. I checked on it afterward; it’s a good deal.”

  “You know the real reason we’re going?” whispered Beth.

  Gavra bowed his head close. “Tell me.”

  “Harold’s in love with our travel agent. She could sell him Florida swampland.”

  “Not so!” Harold said with vague indignation.

  In addition to everything else, Gavra found himself worrying about this idiotic couple. They were staying at the Metropol, at least, which meant that they could barricade themselves in if things became violent. But still…

  Luckily, a couple of hours into the flight, they started to doze, and he could work over what had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

  After escaping the Chesterfield Towne Center, he’d driven nonstop back to the Richmond airport, where he dropped his P-83 and Frank Jones’s Bren Ten into a wastebasket and bought a ticket on the next flight to JFK. He again wished he’d had an American visa in his own passport, because it was possible that by now Lebed Putonski had been discovered and an arrest warrant issued for Viktor Lukacs. So when he bought a ticket home, via New York and Frankfurt, he noticed the way the JFK Delta clerk stared at him. “Something wrong?” he said, giving a stiff smile.

  The woman blushed and apologized. “Sorry, sir. You just look very tired.”

  “I am,” he said, because by then it was four in the morning, and he’d been awake two full days.

  He washed in the airport bathroom to make himself presentable, and despite more stares from the guards he was allowed through passport control to the international terminal without hassle. Only once he’d reached his gate did he allow himself a couple of hours’sleep on the uncomfortable chairs.

  It was during his erratic nap that it occurred to him that Frank Jones and his Virginia driver’s license weren’t a lie. He was American. No one from Gavra’s country could master the accent and idiomatic phrases as well as he had.

  Before dying, Kolev had told him two things. One, that Lebed Putonski’s life was in danger. Two, that he got his information from a contact in the CIA. Were those two facts linked? Had Central Intelligence ordered Putonski’s murder?

  Hours later, with Beth Atkins’s head sliding dangerously close to his shoulder, Gavra went back to this slow line of reasoning.

  Lebed Putonski was a defector, brought into the United States by Central Intelligence, protected for eight years, and then killed by his protectors. Why? Why now?

  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 c
enter 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

  VIC TORY SQUARE 10 1

  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 colone
l, 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.”