The Bridge of Sights tyb-1

by Olen Steinhauer

  The old man was welling up as he stared at the city, and his mouth kept slipping into nervous smiles. He squeezed and released the arms of his chair.

  “That’s when I came back. They had her on the floor. I saw her there and…I don’t know how to say it…I saw her seeing me seeing her. I couldn’t move. They were still…and I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. It was-I could only fall down.” He was crying now like he had then, shaking all over, the chair clicking against the balcony, saying, “You have to understand, they had guns. One to her head…”

  Emil was cold from head to foot.

  When they were finished, they gave Avram Brod a pint of vodka. “A thank-you, they told me. Then they were gone.” His weeping sounded choked and small, like a child’s.

  Women’s voices came up from the square.

  “I just want someone,” he began, then shook his head. He looked at the sky. “I just want someone to make it better. Worth living. You see?”

  Emil didn’t know what to say. He was praying the old man would not ask to see his father’s watch.

  “We have everything here,” said Grandfather. “And we have lost it all. You. You’re everything we have left.” He was finally looking at his grandson.

  He was so old, and Emil was still so young.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  He locked the Zorki in his desk. He didn’t trust himself to unload the film without exposing it, so he left it inside the camera. When he needed the copies, he would have them taken care of. The original was folded inside his jacket, in the pocket opposite his pistol.

  It was a little before ten in the morning. Leonek watched as Emil locked the desk. “What’s that?”

  “Are we going, or not?”

  Leonek shrugged, then led the way.

  The waitress looked as though she had been in this cafe, doing this particular job, all her life. Her wavy hair settled over her low brow, and when they asked for coffees, she told them there was no milk.

  “It’s all right,” said Emil. “Just sugar.”

  “Saccharine tablets,” she said.

  Leonek winked at her. “Corina, can you tell Max I’m expecting a call?”

  Emil thought she was going to spit on them both, but she turned and went to talk with the slight man working the coffee machine. Max gave Leonek a knowing nod.

  “You know every cafe and bar in the Capital, don’t you?”

  Leonek smiled, pleased.

  They sat beside a wide, high window that faced tiny, brick-laid October Square. They did not speak-they had talked everything out by now-but stared at the busy market and listened to the voices that shot through the thin pane. It was cold, but bright. Vendors called for customers to look at their wares, and colorful Gypsy women lifted fabrics to see clearly while the men behind the tables watched suspiciously. Children appeared from somewhere-quick, hoarse shouts-and ran across the square. Stiff old veterans from the first big war sat on the benches they occupied every day, nodding heads, watching. Some uniformed police stood around eating off a fresh loaf of bread, and a woman with no teeth laughed beside the tallest one, then punched him on the arm. The Capital had always been cosmopolitan despite itself. Romanians and Hungarians and Slovaks and Poles and Ukrainians fell irresistibly into the mix. Fat and round faces, and faces of gradating shades. Emil was unexpectedly overcome.

  There was not a single Russian in sight.

  “Comrade Inspector!” called Max. Leonek looked up from his own thoughts. The bartender was holding the telephone in his hand, waving it.

  They stayed away from the station so that nothing would keep them from their appointment. They drank coffee in the morning, then switched to wine to get rid of the shakes. “This waiting is impossible,” said Emil.

  “Then think of something to do.”

  “I will.”

  But all that came to Emil was food, and once they were in front of their cabbage soups, he had no appetite. His stomach was shrunken and sore.

  “I’m getting tired.”

  Leonek pushed away his bowl. “Then we go back to coffee.”

  When they finished the coffee, it was time.

  They parked in the gravel lot at 8:30, and continued on foot. In the darkness, their slow path along footbridges, through narrow, wet passageways and across steps wrapping around crumbling stone walls brought them to a bridge that had snapped in mid- arch when the far side sank too deep. To span the distance, someone had laid boards that shifted beneath their feet. They heard fragments of bridge dropping into the canal, and smelled piss.

  It was called the Deeps. Here, the silted pilings beneath the stone houses and walkways had begun to crumble, and this corner of the Canal District was slowly sinking. In the thirties, most of the Deeps had been cleared out by the royal police, but during the Occupation, communists and Jews who could not flee to the mountains escaped here, to the higher, dry floors. When the Liberation came, German sympathizers disappeared here. Now and then, one emerged and, with great fanfare, was arrested. No one lived here by choice.

  The water on the other side was ankle-deep, and they had to maneuver using door stoops and blocks of wood set out like boulders in a pond. The windows were gaping black holes, and from everywhere came the sound of dripping and, sometimes, the labored mew of cats.

  Emil wanted to verify again the particulars of what Dora had told Leonek, where the exchange was to take place, what time exactly, but the cold, quiet streets necessitated silence. He had been to the Deeps only once before, during the weeks just after Filia had left him. The water level had been more manageable then, and some prostitutes lived in large attic apartments that had in drier days been home to fashionable bourgeois who had left their murals and bridal beds behind. Emil had met a dark hooker in the squares-not quite as dark as the American he’d seen in Berlin-and she’d led him back to her huge room. She was from Ankara, Turkey, and he never learned how she ended up here.

  “What’s that stinkF hissed Leonek.

  Open and collapsed sewers. Rotting vermin. Dead bodies.

  The photograph was stiff beside his heart, and the weight of the pistol in his pocket was unfamiliar. It made him fear losing balance.

  They turned and emerged into a water-covered courtyard where a church wall hung over them. It was a small square, no bigger than the canals would allow, and the tall church made it seem smaller. In a hollowed alcove stood the broken statue of a saint, without shoulders or head, only the vertical folds of robe. High up, a black, round church window was ringed by glass chips.

  He heard a rat swimming nearby, and jumped into a doorway, wavering slightly from the pain that burrowed up his leg and into his stomach. The steps were slick with moss. “This is it?”

  Leonek lit a match and squinted at his wristwatch. In the yellow, shifting light his hungry face was kinetic. “Five before nine,” he said. He leapt up beside Emil. Despite their efforts, their feet were drenched and cold. Leonek checked the door behind them-soggy double doors-and opened them a crack. Then he wrapped his arms around himself, squatted and rocked on his heels. The flat, chipped walls of the square seemed to slide in as the minutes passed, and in the black pool at their feet Emil thought he saw the ripples of distant movement. They both looked up at the black sky, framed by walls. “You hear something?” whispered Leonek.

  Emil did. Then he didn’t. Then he did.

  The stumble of feet in water, off to the left. Heavy breathing. The hiss of a curse. Leonek held a finger to his lips, then pushed the door behind them open further.

  Jerzy Michalec appeared first from the edge of the church, dim, red-faced, straining forward. His left arm was pulling something out of the gloom. A hand, then an arm. Then all of her was visible, fighting each inch.

  His whisper jumped out of him: “ Lena!”

  “Emil!” It echoed along the waterways, her head twisting back and forth, then she found him with her eyes.

  They were on opposite corners of the little square, the inspectors half-hidden in their
doorway, Michalec and Lena just beyond the church. She tried to shake free of him, but he threw her back into the water. A small pistol appeared in his hand.

  “You have it?” Michalec’s untraceable voice was weary. He was still catching his breath. There was nothing of the control and calm Emil remembered from his house.

  Emil unfolded and waved the photograph, though he didn’t know if Michalec could see it in the darkness.

  Michalec saw. He kept the pistol waist-high. “I’m surprised you mix with men like Dora, Comrade Inspector. That’s some lousy company you keep.”

  “Where’s the colonel?” asked Emil.

  Michalec made an expression of bafflement.

  “Herr Oberst? Emil shouted.

  “Up here,” came the familiar accent. The German leaned out of the glass-toothed church window, waving what was no doubt another Walther in his white-gloved hand.

  Lena was against the far wall, wet and shivering. “God damn it!”

  Michalec had caught his breath. “Let’s make this simple. Just the photograph, and here she is. No one else needs to die.”

  Behind Emil, Leonek was saying shit beneath his breath, repeatedly, for walking voluntarily into this deathtrap.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” Emil asked, his fingers tightening on the photograph, his eyes just past Smerdyakov, on Lena’s frantic features.

  Michalec’s arms dropped to his sides. “What should I tell you, Inspector? That I’m a changed man? That I’ve grown fond of you through all this? Will that make you feel better?”

  “Shut up,” said Lena. Exasperated.

  Leonek was easing into the door behind them, which creaked as it slid open. The German still hovered in the dark window- his pale gloves were like fireflies.

  “I want to know we’ll get out of here alive,” said Emil.

  Leonek slipped through the door.

  “This photograph is the end,” Michalec smiled, opening his hands. “Don’t you see? We can get back to the living now.” He glanced at Lena, who looked scared against the wall, then stepped back and grabbed her arm. This time she came willingly. “Now,” he said to Emil.

  The photograph was in one hand, his cane in the other. He stepped down into the water. Trash floated against his freezing ankles. As they approached the center of the square, Lena looked into Emil’s face, and when they were close he could see the expression on her face was transparent. There was something behind her fear that made him forget the icy water, and he was suddenly sure that something was going to collapse, and he would lose her. He and Michalec were very close.

  “What about the colonel, then?” Emil tilted his head toward the church. “What does he get out of this?”

  Michalec’s mouth came to Emil’s nose. When he whispered, the smell of onions came with the words. “The colonel and I are of use to one another. We have a gentlemen’s agreement.” He held out a hand; his fingers gripped the air.

  When Michalec took the photograph, Emil didn’t let go. They held each side. “What if I turn you in?” he asked.

  “Without this?” Michalec jerked the photograph away and squinted at it. He gave Emil a smile without warmth. “I know where you live. I know your family, I know everything you love. I’ve killed you twice already, Inspector Brod. One of these days, it’s going to take.”

  It was cold again, cold right through. That long roll-call of corpses was on him again, with all the pain of this journey.

  Lena squeezed his arm while Michalec folded the photograph into his coat, nodding. The gun in Emil’s coat was heavy. He could barely hear her whisper Oh god Emil come on I love you let’sgo as he saw those dead boy-soldiers in Berlin, saw soldiers haunting the streets looking for watches, saw skulls crushed by the gears of the world that were run by Michalec’s hands. Then a cold deck, the work blade in his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut. Come with me come on. She was turning him around, and he felt like crying. Then he was crying, and throwing her off of him. He rushed into Michalec’s retreating back, the Marakov in his fist now, the barrel pressed against Michalec’s temple.

  They were both in the cold water. Michalec squirmed beneath him, shouting “Oberst!” weakly.

  The Marakov on his ear, on his cheek, on his mouth. Each point of entry was unsatisfactory.

  There was shooting up above, and water splashed. Michalec pushed, and they rolled over, struggling, and saw orange flashes in the sky. Michalec tried to punch his stomach, but Emil was on top again, sitting on him. He used the pistol like a club on Smerdyakov’s head, twice, then forced the barrel into his mouth. A brief elation sang through him. That face was terrified. Eyes sealed shut, cheeks trembling. He saw the seal blade make work of this man, like the work done on soulless animals. Emil’s finger held the trigger.

  There was a celebration of gunshots above. Beneath him was an old, crying man with a pistol in his mouth. His fat stomach shook beneath Emil.

  Behind him was a voice that he couldn’t make out, but he knew before turning that it was Lena calling for him. She was huddled in a far doorway.

  The old man was crying terribly now, trying to plead but unable because of the gun, and Emil looked at him for a moment, lightheaded by what he could do, then took the pistol out of his mouth and got up and walked to the door and sat beside Lena. They were both drenched, and holding each other did nothing to make them warmer. The shooting above had stopped. There was only black sky.

  The sound of feet running down church steps on the other side of the square, then through water. He knew he should get up, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t take on the chase. He couldn’t even look. Lena’s breathing was a rhythm against his chest. The square was empty, old ripples the only sign of Michalec’s departure. Then, behind them, Leonek stumbled out of the doorway. One bloody hand gripped his shoulder.

  “Shit, shit,” Leonek repeated through clenched teeth. He slipped on the lowest step and fell into the water. Groaned. Lena, beneath Emil’s arm, was weeping. He turned at the sound of splashing. But it was only the distant noise of running, wet footfalls echoing off the stone walls, becoming quieter by the second.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  On the way out of the Canal District, Lena tore off a strip of her skirt and tied it around Leonek’s shoulder to slow the bleeding. He grunted when she knotted it, and gave Emil a queer grin. “Crazy bastard. You didn’t get hit once?”

  First, Emil felt only the fatigue-a draining anticlimax, then, once they had reached the drier areas, he put his arm around Lena. She bowed her head into his shoulder. He had gotten her back, alive. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. He felt her steadying breaths against him, and when he looked down, her soft hair was in his face.

  Leonek muttered curses. He was trying to figure out if he’d gotten the Oberst at all.

  But by the time they reached the parking lot, Emil’s joy and self-congratulation was ebbing, and as they drove in silence to the hospital, he became focused on Michalec’s Politburo seat, and what lay in their future. In weeks or months, maybe, there would be no place to hide. He felt the Marakov again as he leaned into a turn, and wanted to go back. He still didn’t understand why he had let Michalec live.

  He touched his bare head. “Anyone seen my hat?”

  They both stared at him.

  He helped Leonek out of the car and walked him into the crowded hospital corridor. Moaning peasants looked up-they were the same ones, it seemed to Emil, who had been here two months ago when they had gone down to the morgue. As he looked into the glazed eyes of the on-duty nurse he realized he would have to use the photos waiting in Janos Crowder s Zorki camera. Self-preservation demanded it.

  The old, stale mess at her house was disheartening. She moved from room to room until she found one-the dining room-that had not been completely demolished by the colonel, Leonek, and whoever else had cut paths through the rubble. She made them both apricot brandies, and apologized for the lack of ice. It had melted. When the icebox, mysteriously, had been knocked over. The
n she stood him up, put her arms around him and kissed him very hard on the lips. They stood like that for a while, kissing, their teeth sometimes rubbing together. The whole time it felt like desperation.

  He told her about Irma. It came out over the oak dining table, where they sat in stiff chairs with high backs. She didn’t cry at first, but her shoulders sank toward her chest, and she shivered as though very cold. The bottle of brandy was near her, so she poured another. She had washed and changed into a long dress made of green, spongy material, and while taking the second drink she spilled some on it. The brandy turned the green to black where it fell.

  After a while, Lena said, “She was my friend.” She smiled a tight, ironic smile. “It wasn’t servitude, not really. Not anymore. She was a sister.” Then she shook her head because she knew no one would believe that these days.

  Emil was still on his first drink, and his nerves had not calmed. “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Irma?”

  “Smerdyakov.”

  She made herself a third drink and swallowed it all without spilling. “This man came to Ruscova two mornings after you left. A single small man, wiry. A sneerer,” she said, and he knew it was Radu, the butler. “He’d been misinformed, I guess, at that little bar, and had already broken into Greta’s house. She told him to get out of her house, to go to Irinas, but he must have been afraid of breaking too many doors, so he just knocked. He said it was time for me to go, no arguments.” She shrugged. “Irina tried to argue, but what could she do? He dragged me to the car. Some old farmers came out of their houses and yelled at him, it was nice to see. They waved their hands and said God would judge him harshly, but he wasn’t fazed. Atheists never are.”

  It had taken half a day for Radu to drive her, at gunpoint, back to the Capital. Once he stopped and showed his Party card at a house and was given fruits and dried meat from a terrified farm couple. It was twilight when they arrived at Michalec’s estate.

  She refilled her glass and tilted the bottle toward him.