The Bridge of Sights tyb-1

by Olen Steinhauer

  Their eyes were red, tired. These Russians had worked quickly, had tracked him down in no time. They would see through him. These intelligence agents were the kind of policemen he would never be. They were efficient and focused and always thinking. He knew this. They were also MVD: militant, brutal and all-knowing.

  “Tell me what you want to know.”

  The tall one put out his cigarette on the floor with his foot. “We want to know what you’re doing in Berlin, killing good Germans. It’s our responsibility to watch out not only for our Soviet citizens, but also for the defeated Fascist nation that has been entrusted to us.”

  Emil took only a second to think it through. He told them everything in a straightforward tone. He was a homicide inspector. He had come to Berlin to look into the death of a well- connected songwriter. “ Proletarian songwriter.” He contacted Comrade Konrad Messer because of information received via their office here in Berlin. They nodded knowledgeably-this was not news. The deceased had apparently been interested in military records at the Tempelhof airbase. He tried not to pause before his one lie: “My search for what he was seeking was fruitless.”

  He waited for them to ask questions. His body was about to collapse. If they tested him, he would not last any time. But he had to hold his position, if only to have something to give them in case it came to brutality. But they asked nothing. He filled the silence:

  “When I returned to the Soviet sector, I was set upon by this taxi driver and his friends. Apparently, they thought I had money. When they discovered how poor I was, they did this to me.” He pointed at his face, then shrugged. He tried for casual sincerity, but didn’t know if it looked right. “I’m not sure what happened then. I was in and out. A fight, I guess. When I woke up, three of them were dead, and the fourth was gone.”

  They seemed unmoved by the tragedy.

  “I went to Comrade Messer for help, and I made an Aeroflot reservation. To return home. I can’t do anything else here.”

  They nodded in unison. “And Tempelhof?” asked the one with glasses. “You searched the base?”

  “I couldn’t get inside,” he said slowly, evenly. “They turned me away at the gate.”

  The wide one asked if Emil could describe the fourth man.

  He shook his head in an approximation of sadness. “I wish I could. It was dark. I only knew the driver’s face.”

  The other looked down at the papers. “Your prints were on the pistol that killed these men.”

  “I know.” Emil nodded. “I woke with it in my hand. But there was no way I could have done it. You should have seen me last night.”

  “We see you now.” A wide smile. He looked at his partner, then back at Emil. “We’ll be right back.”

  When they were gone, the nausea filled him, a delayed reaction, and he noticed again the speckled dried blood on the wall. It had come out of people who had thought they could outsmart the Soviet secret police.

  His stomach seized up-partly nerves, partly the alcohol. He was so stupid.

  They knew. They had to know-it was their job to know. He was a liar, and they would soon walk back in here with other, larger men whose job was to beat the truth out of the unfortunate. And when the truth was out, they would continue beating until he admitted to any crime they felt like solving, or inventing. He would admit to killing those three men. He would say he had killed Janos Crowder, that he had been hoping for a shot at Comrade Chairman Stalin. They would open their casebooks and tie him to all the unsolved deaths. Yes, he would admit to anything in the end, because that’s how human beings were.

  It could have been an hour, or five. He closed his eyes and began, after a while, to drift off. But then the door opened, loudly, and the smiling Russian came rushing up to him. “You have a plane reservation?”

  Emil nodded. “In the morning.”

  “Now,” he said, cheeks fat and pink. “It’s morning now. I’ll give you a lift.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Emil expected the Russian to pull over to the side of the road, place a pistol to his temple and shoot. He wouldn’t have had the energy to fight it. But then Schonefeld Airfield rose out of the predawn gloom. “You may wonder,” the Russian said, smiling as he drove, “and be afraid to ask. Really, you shouldn’t be afraid. Just ask.”

  Emil’s voice was hoarse: “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “this is not for us. This is for your people. If you want to make trouble with your men, your politicos, as you say, then the people’s representatives of the Soviet Union would not consider standing in your way. Each of our socialist brothers acts independently, and this is for the good of the whole. You follow?”

  Emil nodded, then said that he did understand.

  “Your own state security may take some issue with you, but we don’t. We are for freedom and international peace.”

  Emil wanted to laugh, because it sounded like a joke, but didn’t. As they drove through the gates, the Russian showed an ID to a guard who waved them on.

  “Anyway,” he added, “you certainly didn’t kill those lowlifes. They’re the kind of men you hire to do the kind of thing that was done to them.” He parked in a lot and ran around to open the door for Emil. They began walking to the terminal. “I’m Andrei,”he said. “From Tblisi, you know? Georgian Republic. Good luck finding your man.”

  He shook hands with Emil outside the airplane, and held his forearm firmly. A wink and a smile. Ruddy cheeks. All the way up the steps to the plane, Emil waited for the bullet in the back of the head. But it never came.

  He searched each face and ignored any taxi driver who approached him. He hobbled to the edge of their crowd and woke an elderly driver dozing beneath the morning’s Spark. More airplanes covered the front page, more exclamations.

  It was Sunday-the Militia station wouldn’t be open until tomorrow-so he directed the driver home.

  In the Third District they had to wait at an intersection for a parade to pass. Children with red flags held high. Girls with red kerchiefs and boys with red suspenders. Their song sounded familiar. He folded his arms in the backseat as the driver hummed and waved at the children and the portraits of the Great Economists, as a writer in The Spark had called them. Emil closed his eyes. He saw nothing but failures.

  Janos Crowder, Aleks Tudor, Irma-

  God, he had forgotten her family name again.

  So many dead, it left him numb.

  Lena was the only thing left. Maybe.

  A few uniformed Militia followed the marching boys and girls, and waved the taxi through.

  Grandfather looked disapprovingly at Konrad’s clothes before Emil changed into his own. Grandmother boiled tea. They buzzed and whispered, but did not speak to him. His abused face kept them quiet. He went out to the telephone in the corridor.

  As he listened to the ringing on the line, he had a hopeful dream of escape-air or train, no matter-back to Berlin, but with her-find her and drag her along-she packs something small-a few dresses and hats and shoes-he brings nothing but a handful of Ostmarks for the Brandenburg guard, and maybe a joke in Russian. Then they would be through.

  Maybe a coffee with the American officer at Brandenburg, whatever he wants to know, then another excruciating flight. To Hanover, or Frankfurt. The West.

  Filia had asked him why he didn’t stay over there, in the West. The truth was that he didn’t know how to live anywhere else.

  He hung up when it was plain there was no one home at Leonek’s. He had never thought to get Leonek’s address, then a word came to him from the back of his mind: Bobia.

  Swiftly, gratefully. Irma Bobia.

  “Who did it?” Grandfather finally asked. He pulled up a blistered balcony chair he’d brought inside. He touched his face to make himself clear. “Those.”

  “A Nazi,” Emil said, and rolled in the sofa to face the ceiling. He wondered what would happen to his grandparents if he left.

  “Nazis.” He sighed. “They’re still around? I thought the Re
d Army made good meat of them.”

  Emil closed his eyes. He wondered if they would be put under house arrest. Sometimes that happened to families when traitors ran out on utopia.

  “Shut up about your Russians,” snapped Grandmother. She almost barked it. She replaced Emil’s cold tea with a fresh one. “He doesn’t want to listen to your claptrap.”

  The light was hazy through the windows. Emil blinked toward the sky. “Do you know the time?”

  “Seven o’clock,” said Grandfather.

  He had tried the telephone at least ten times and considered visiting all the bars and cafes in the Capital to find him, but went to bed and tried, again, to focus.

  Lena had been taken. Fact.

  Unlike the others, she had been dragged out of Ruscova, not executed where she stood. So maybe she was still alive, somewhere.

  He could try to force his way onto the estate, but Michalec would be prepared for him. He would only join that long list of dead. Lena’s doom would be sealed.

  He had nothing. No leverage, no power. Nothing.

  Around four he woke from a cold, dreamless sleep to shouting from the next room. Grandmother’s voice quivered at a hysterical pitch, a sound Emil had never heard from her. Grandfather’s voice was staccato and weakly defiant. Then louder, more angry. Emil covered his head with the blanket and tried to sleep, but the walls were like paper. It was as if they were shouting in the room with him. This was one sleep he needed more than any in his life; he needed to be unconscious. Words floated through- Grandfather called her a whore and an ungrateful cunt, words he’d never heard him use against anyone. Sharp slaps. Emil was on his feet then, the cold hardly touching his half-naked form, the impulse carrying him through the door, where Grandfather’s hand was raised to hit her again. The old man was shouting hoarsely, his face twisted in pink fury. Emil caught his hand on its way down, and used a quick fist on his jaw. Grandmother gasped-she was falling back into the sofa-and Grandfather tumbled to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her.

  But she wasn’t listening to him. She was on her feet and then crouching beside her stunned husband, the trace of blood on her lip quickly licked away as she whispered and lifted his head into her lap.

  She woke him at eight by sitting on the bed and stroking his hair. She did this all the time in Ruscova, before the Jews came. He remembered enjoying how much she enjoyed it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said groggily, but he wasn’t. He would do it again. He hadn’t gotten much sleep, thinking of how he would do it again.

  She tilted her head from side to side and smiled. The corner of her lip looked a little swollen, but her eyes were sky blue in the light. They had an unreal quality that Grandfather’s dark eyes could never have. She picked at her eyebrow. “Your grandfather’s a little stupid sometimes.”

  He nodded into the pillow and slid up against the headboard. “What was it? The argument.”

  She shook her head. “It’s from a long time ago.”

  He furrowed his brow, and she pressed a warm hand to his cheek.

  “It’s time for you to get up.”

  Leonek’s mother answered again. “This is Emil Brod. I called the day before yesterday.”

  “When?”

  “Saturday.”

  Emil waited. Finally a wary male voice said, “Yes?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Emil! Thank God it’s you. Let’s meet.”

  “Why?” This morning he felt the full, deep knowledge of his powerlessness. It had taken all night to seep into his bones, but now it was there, in his marrow. Leonek was saying something. “What?”

  “I said, it’s not all bad.”

  That didn’t make any sense. Emil leaned against the railing as some children scurried and laughed on the ground floor. It was utterly bad.

  “Emil? You there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, listen to me, okay? Last night I went to Lena Crowder’s house again. I searched everywhere. Nothing was coming up. Then I remembered those pictures you had. You remember them?”

  Emil said he did.

  “You found them behind the icebox,” he said. “So I went to the kitchen, and there it was. It had been tied up.”

  “With twine.”

  “Exactly. A photograph. I recognized Smerdyakov right away. And get this: He’s accepting a medal from a Nazi officer. Can you believe it? Emil?”

  Leonek picked him up in the Mercedes with the smashed headlights, and his face fell when he saw the bruises. “ Christ,” he said as he drove. “You really are the world’s punching bag.”

  “Let me see the photograph.”

  It was a large print that had been folded for so long that a white crease cut down between the two men sharing a medal. The difference was that it was a photograph of a photograph that was lying on a floor.

  “This is it,” said Leonek. “Right?” He squinted at some soldiers crossing the street.

  Emil held it up in the sunlight, then returned it to his knee. He began to think clearly again.

  She was not dead. Michalec was a killer, but he did not kill without reason. He knew this photograph was still at large. Michalec worked according to the logic of self-preservation. Others make the rules. We can only try to live by them.

  When they trembled over the tram tracks at Yalta Boulevard, Emil saw what he had to do. A swift, immaculate vision.

  “Can you get in touch with Dora?”

  “Dora?” Leonek sounded doubtful. “Why do you want that son of a bitch?”

  “We need him.”

  Leonek gazed ahead at nothing in particular. “Did you hear about Liv Popescu?”

  Emil shook his head.

  “They took her to the holding cells north of town, and she used her prison clothes to hang herself from the pipes.” He turned at the next corner.

  A bruise on Emil’s cheek was beginning to itch. He scratched it. His organs felt hard and cold. Outside, parade banners were on the ground, and crowds of drunk soldiers were mindlessly trampling political slogans.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  They crossed the Georgian Bridge and parked near the arched footbridges leading into the labyrinth. It was quiet here-no farmers shouted out their vegetables, and no engines rumbled- so their footsteps on stone, and the fifth step of Emil’s cane, echoed before them. They walked in perpetual shadow. Faces peered through slits in yellowed lace curtains, and some pensioners came out to their stoops to watch Emil and Leonek pass. In place of engines, there was the quiet murmur of water smacking stone. Cats in windowsills kept track of them.

  After a few turns, they were in an area of the Canal District Emil had never been to before, not even when he was younger and curious. “We aren’t lost,” he whispered involuntarily; it was a question.

  “You’ll get to know this place well,” said Leonek. He whispered too.

  It was quickly apparent that everyone knew they were Militia. Hesitant glances and mistrusting frowns shot their way. The prostitutes smiled at them, because a single pair of policemen with law enforcement on their minds wouldn’t have a chance back here. Emil noticed the young one who had whispered to him before. Her freckles peeked out from beneath powder, and when she whispered to one of the veterans he caught sight of her milk teeth. She moved now with the smooth grace of the broken, as if she had nothing left to lose.

  A redheaded, barefoot hooker cut the distance between them in half. “There’s four of us, Comrade Inspectors.” Her voice was smoky and rough. “That’s a mighty good time.”

  Leonek smiled and touched her arm lightly. “Maybe we’ll come back for that, Beatrice. But this time it’s easier money.” He took a few bills out of his pocket.

  She folded the koronas until they were a tight, tiny package she could slip into her mangled stocking. “How easy?”

  “Your brother. Where is he?”

  She pouted playfully. “ Inspector. What kind of sister-”

  “Just business, Bea. It’s
always just business.”

  Dora’s address was in the center of the Canal District, in the grimy back passages where water trickled loudly-Emil heard the occasional high pitch of rats. It was a small courtyard still named after a dead king, and Dora’s front door was a soft, waterlogged plank that stank of the sea. There was a worn hole instead of a handle. They climbed the narrow, damp stairs where light came in through a shattered window, and knocked at one of three doors at the top.

  There was scurrying inside.

  “Dora! It’s Terzian. Want to open up?”

  The movement stopped, but then they heard a faint shhh from someone’s lips.

  “I just want to talk, Dora. It’ll be worth your time.”

  A lock snapped, and the door opened a few inches. An eye appeared from the gloom, looking at them jerkily, one and then the other. Then the door opened the rest of the way, and a thin, graying man in his forties stood in boxer shorts and an undershirt. He had a thick white scar along the side of his neck. “What is it?” His voice was high like a child’s.

  “Some help,” said Leonek. He showed more bills, but returned them to his pocket. “Can we come in?”

  Dora’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of help?”

  “We need you to set up a meeting. Simple stuff.”

  Dora retreated into the room, where a fourteen-year-old sat in a corner, her bare, scratched knees pulled to her chin. Her makeup had been smeared by old tears, but she smiled at them.

  “Hanna,” said Dora. “Get out of here.”

  She looked at the visitors again, then at him, and went into the next room. When she stood up, Emil noticed the black needle marks on the pale inside of her left thigh, and maybe that was what did it.

  Dora sat on the edge of a cracked coffee table, bare feet spread, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. “Who’s your kid?”

  “Inspector Brod,” said Emil, but he was no longer seeing clearly. What he saw was that first week, the humiliations, the fighting, the gunshots. He saw the unfounded, nearly fatal suspicion all over again, felt it grinding in his gut. The suspicion caused by this one wretch. He saw the abused girl who had just left, saw the freckled hooker who was once a girl and now completely broken, and he saw Liv Popescu and Alana Yoskovich rotting in their graves because of the same kind of sickness. He saw those faceless schoolgirls who now walked the Capital as women who had known more of this man than they ever wanted. Emil’s hands were ice cold. “Inspector Emil Brod,” he said, making his identity completely clear.