“Is okay?” he said in stilted Czech.
Peter shrugged; the soldier sat down and sipped his beer. Then he pulled his lips tight over his teeth.
“Mmm. Is good. That.” He pointed at Peter’s glass. “You like, too?”
The soldier’s cheeks, pinked by the cold outside, were chubby; his eyes were wet. He had a face not unlike Peter’s but without a student’s gauntness; the invader was well fed. Peter spoke in the soldier’s language: “You don’t have to speak Czech. I grew up in Encs, just on our side of the border.”
The soldier laughed. “That’s a relief! Try starting conversations when you don’t know how to speak. No one wants to talk to me.”
“It’s not because of the language.”
The soldier considered that. “You get conscripted into the army, and six months later you find yourself in Prague. But you’re as far from a tourist as you can be. And the whole city hates you.” He shrugged. “It’s the injustice of the world.”
Peter agreed.
“Listen, I’m Stanislav. Stanislav Klym. I’m only here two more days-my captain gave me my discharge papers today-and I want to celebrate. Can you afford to be seen with me?”
“Are you buying?”
Stanislav winked. “I’m buying.”
So Peter let the foreign soldier buy him Budweiser Budvar; and while Peter said little, Stanislav spoke like a nostalgic old man, describing his life back in his hometown, his plans for becoming an engineer, and his girlfriend, Katja Uher.
“She’s young-seventeen-but I’ve known her most of my life. We’re from the same village, Pacin. Once I get back we’re going to move into my apartment in the Capital. I can absolutely not wait.”
“You have your own apartment?”
“Used to be my grandfather’s. When he died, my grandmother moved back to Pacin so I could take it over. Of course, as soon as she gave me the keys I was packed off to the army, so I haven’t enjoyed it yet.” He grabbed his pocket, making a sound like loose change. “I always keep them with me, just to remind me what I’ve got to go back to. And this,” he said, reaching into another pocket. He took out a crisp photograph and placed it on the table: a girl with dark eyes and a handsomely bent nose inside a bob of blond hair. “She’s a smart one, my Kati. I think she’ll be a mathematician. Numbers-she’s got them all figured out.”
“I’m no good with numbers,” said Peter, lifting the snapshot and staring at the face.
“You’re also uglier than she is.” Stanislav raised his glass. “To my Katja’s unbearable beauty.”
They both drank.
“They give you a good coat,” said Peter.
Stanislav rapped the table with his knuckles. “Socialist quality, one hundred percent!” He put the photograph away. “Lots of pockets-I can fit my whole life in them. Apartment keys, documents, my girl. I even carry this.”
From his belt, Stanislav unhooked a knife and set it on the table. The leather sheath was worn and old, the burned-in design of a hawk with folded wings just visible. “Belonged to my grandfather. My father presented it to me when I got sent here. We drank brandy to celebrate. The old man even cried.”
“Why did he cry?”
“You know. Sentimentality. Fathers get that way over their sons.”
Peter tried to judge whether this was a joke. He could not remember his own father crying for him. There had been tears, but only for the animals that died on the farm, placing his family that much closer to starvation. And the tears were always tamed by alcohol, which gave his father the strength to rage-at his whore of a wife, at his useless son. You’re a humiliation for me-you know that? Get your fucking education, what do I care? A goddamned humiliation.
“Sure,” said Peter, lifting the knife. He unsheathed it and found his own face in the reflection of the clean blade. “Sentimental fathers.”
As they talked, Peter noticed the bar clearing out. The men would stare at one another across their tables, then at Stanislav’s back and the Kalashnikov he’d propped against the table. Then they would leave. After a couple of hours, Peter and the soldier were the only customers, and Stanislav looked over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “This keeps happening.”
“Where are your friends?”
“Eh?”
“You’re out here celebrating, but you’re alone. Where are the other soldiers from your regiment?”
Stanislav scratched his neck under his collar. “It’s a funny thing. They stick us in mixed regiments-internationalism or something like that-so I’m surrounded by Polacks and Bulgars and Ukris, and we all communicate in what little Russian we know. There was only one other guy from home, and he…well, he was killed last week, over at the radio station. I don’t know.” He waved for another round of drinks. “It’s all right, they don’t want to mix with me either. So I figure it’s best to celebrate on my own. Or with you. No?”
“And if I hadn’t come along?”
He reached into yet another pocket and tugged out a wrinkled envelope. “I’d reread Katja’s letters. Again and again.”
Libarid
Sitting at Gate 7 among yawning travelers, Libarid chain-smokes the rest of his Carpa i and writes only five sentences to his wife: For someone who weeps so much, it’s strange to me how deeply you hate sentimentality. But you do. You call it “fake emotions.” So I won’t pad this with sentimentality. I’m leaving you.
Then he stares through the large windows at the midnight darkness where lights seemingly unattached to planes take off and land. He wonders, again, about the mechanics of later getting Vahe out, and for the first time realizes he’s been fooling himself: He’ll never see his son again.
On his way down the corridor to the duty-free shop, he spots the woman again. She’s speaking with a tall, mustached man who’s holding a black briefcase and sweating. He’s visibly nervous, though the woman is calm, her smile serene.
In the shop he finds one other customer-the woman’s big companion-also buying cigarettes. The oaf smokes Moskwa-Volga. He ignores Libarid as he leaves.
A little before one o’clock, they board, and Libarid takes his window seat in the twentieth row. He’s relieved, as they all are, to finally be on the plane. Across the aisle from him, the nervous mustached man with the briefcase is sitting down. Then Libarid hears a voice.
“This is me.”
It’s the woman, settling into the seat next to him.
Her companion is nearer the front of the plane, unaware that she’s passed him, but then he figures it out. He pushes through people to get back to her. Without speaking, she shows him her boarding pass. The man looks dumbly up at the seat numbers, then holds out his own boarding pass to Libarid. He says, “I need to switch seats with you.” He has the clotted voice of a deaf person.
“I’m comfortable here,” says Libarid.
The man leans closer, forcing the woman back into her seat. He could break most of the people on the plane in half. “I insist.”
“So do I,” says Libarid.
The man places a big hand on Libarid’s headrest. “Don’t be a nuisance, comrade. Not unless you want the Ministry for State Security on you. I’m here to protect this woman.”
Libarid pauses, unsure, but then the woman touches his thigh with the side of her hand, just briefly, and it strengthens him. He says, “I’m a lieutenant in the People’s Militia. That tough-guy talk may work for the peasants you usually run into, but not with me.”
The man recoils slightly, maybe surprised, then looks at the woman. “I’ll be seven seats up.”
“I know,” she says.
Once he’s gone, Libarid, flushed, asks if he’s really from Yalta Boulevard.
“Don’t worry about him,” she says.
Libarid stops worrying. “He’s protecting you?”
“Protecting, watching-it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Libarid points out that it’s strange for the Ministry to send a deaf man to watch over someone; it doesn’t make much sens
e. The woman smiles, her pale eyes slits, and eludes him with a question. “When did the Ministry ever make sense?”
The lights dim, and they take off. She closes her eyes as Libarid takes the opportunity to look closely at her face. He lights another cigarette and feels the old pull of his checkered youth, when he had many women, before he settled down. He wonders if he’ll return to that checkered youth.
Probably.
Though he’s leaving his family, something in him believes it’s immoral to try anything yet. It’s too soon. It would prove with scientific accuracy that he never had any respect for his wife, his marriage, or his family in the first place.
So Libarid peers past her to the nervous man. He’s worse now that the vibrating plane is airborne: sweaty and pale, wiping his mustache and staring at a book he’s obviously not reading. Libarid notices that on the cover are the squiggly characters of his own native language. The Bible. Libarid leans over the dozing woman and gives a high whisper. “Parev!”
The man looks up at him, almost terrified.
“Nice to see another Armenian face,” says Libarid. “And don’t worry. The pilot may be a Turk, but he knows what he’s doing.”
The man nods, a little stunned. “ Aayo — yes, I’m sure he does.”
Then he goes back to his Bible, and Libarid looks out the window at blackness.
Eyes still shut, the woman says, “He’s not afraid of flying. He’s afraid of dying. Everyone’s afraid of that.”
Libarid turns to her. “Just trying to help him out.”
“It’s ironic.”
“What is?”
She doesn’t answer. She opens her eyes. “Are you happy?”
“That’s a strange question.”
“You’re married. You have a son. I’m just wondering if that makes you happy.”
“Sure.”
“Then why are you leaving them?”
Libarid stares a moment into her pale blue eyes, which remain steady, watching as he tries to comprehend this. The letter. She must have seen the letter. While he was buying cigarettes, she must have gone through his bag. But Libarid has been a militiaman for over thirty years. He knows not to give her the reaction she wants. He clears his throat. “What makes you think I have a wife and son?”
“It’s the way you walk,” she says. “Married men have a certain confidence that’s not for show. Single men who look confident do it for show.”
“And a son?”
She raises her shoulders. “Again, the walk. Biologically, you’ve accomplished what you were born to do. You have someone to carry on your name. As for you leaving them…well, you’re freeing yourself from the guilt of affairs by leaving. It’s obvious that if I gave you the chance, you’d fuck me in a second.”
“What a mouth.”
She smiles, and it seems like an honest smile, as if she’s been fond of Libarid for a very long time. She settles her head in the seat again.
“So who are you?” he asks.
“Me? I’m nobody. But my name is Zrinka.”
“I’m Libarid.”
“I know.”
He ignores this. “Why are you going to Istanbul?”
“The Interpol conference, just like you.”
“You’re a militiawoman?”
“Hardly.” Zrinka pauses. “But I have a feeling I won’t make it to the conference.”
“Oh, we’ll both make it. Your friend will make sure. I’ve got a couple friends, too, waiting for me. My chap erones.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll lose them. I know it.”
“You think you know everything.”
“I have a knack for suppositions. For example, in about ten seconds that man next to us-his name is Emin Kazanjian-is going to walk to the toilet. But he won’t make it to the toilet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just watch.”
Zrinka closes her eyes as if there’s no need to see, and Libarid looks over just as the nervous man sets aside his Bible and gingerly takes his briefcase from under the seat. He carries it slowly toward the bathroom in the front of the plane. Just before he reaches it, though, he stops and turns around, looking at faces. At that moment, three men, spread throughout the plane, get up as well and move to the aisles.
Libarid, understanding now, allows himself a curse: “Oh shit.”
That’s when Emin Kazanjian shouts.
“Your attention, everyone! This plane is being taken over by the Army of the Liberation of Armenia!”
Everyone gasps. The three other men pull out handguns.
The hijacker raises his briefcase. “There’s a bomb in the baggage compartment, and I’m holding the detonator. So no one move!”
Despite all this activity, what Libarid notices is that Zrinka’s eyes are still closed. Then she whispers:
“See what I told you?”
Gavra
Captain Gavra Noukas blinked a few times in the early morning darkness. Someone was banging on his door. Face in the pillow, he first saw the dirty hotel glass on the bedside table and caught the rough scent of so many crushed cigarettes. The banging continued. He raised his head, but slowly because of the hangover. “Wait!” he called.
From the other side of the door came the old man’s voice. “We’re late, Gavra. I told you before. Four o’clock.”
Beside him in the small bed, the young, handsome Turk from last night shifted, muttering in English, “What the hell is that?”
“Quiet.” Gavra held a finger to his lips and slipped into his underwear. He opened the door a couple of inches. In the bright corridor stood a short, graying old man with three moles on his cheek. “I’ll be out in a minute, Comrade Colonel.”
The old man’s expression betrayed none of his feelings. “Get some clothes on. Now. I’ll be in the car.”
He closed the door and rubbed a hand through his hair. As the young man sat up, the sheets fell from his thin, pale chest, revealing the long white scar Gavra had discovered last night while undressing him. At the time he’d hardly noticed it. “Who the fuck’s that?” the Turk insisted.
“I have to go to work,” said Gavra. “Which means you have to go as well.”
“At four o’clock in the morning?” The young man pouted with a certain effeminacy and aura of desperation that Gavra found revolting. “We can’t even have a coffee together?”
Gavra threw him his underwear.
Quietly, the young man said, “It’s a long walk home.”
So Gavra tossed some Turkish lira on the bed as well. “Come on, let’s move.”
He might have been kinder to the young man, but the fact was that Gavra couldn’t remember his name.
Colonel Brano Sev leaned against the rented blue Renault just down the narrow, cobbled street from the Hotel Erboy, smoking. When he saw Gavra step out of the lobby into the warm early dawn, he climbed in and revved the engine.
As the car lurched and trembled over stones, he said, “This isn’t the kind of behavior I expect, Gavra.”
“I should have set my alarm.”
Brano shook his head, and Gavra noticed he was looking slightly different. Over the last year of Gavra’s apprenticeship, largely at his urging, Brano had gradually acquiesced to sideburns. Gray and thick. Brano said, “I mean picking up girls, Gavra. There was someone else in your bed. I could see her moving.”
Gavra opened his mouth but then thought better of it.
“You’ve got the stupidity of youth. If you want to make it anywhere in the Ministry, you have to grow up.”
Gavra told him he understood, then looked out the window down the length of Sultanahmet Park to the domes and minarets of the Blue Mosque topped by sunlight and proved that he didn’t understand at all by saying, “But this isn’t the most sensitive of jobs. All we’re doing is picking him up from the airport.”
Brano Sev didn’t answer at first. He took a long breath, the kind he took when gathering patience. The Comrade Lieutenant General, a bi
g man who tended to speak in fraternal shouts, once pulled Gavra aside and explained that Brano had never wanted to take on a 29-year-old pupil. But don’t worry, the head of the Ministry told him, he’s an old man who knows much more than he’s able to do, and we’ve made the decision for him.
Brano Sev exhaled, glanced in the rearview, and spoke slowly. “Just suppose that we arrived late. Libarid Terzian’s plane has let him off and he’s had a half hour to stand around in the arrivals lounge, waiting for us.”
“He can take care of himself, Comrade Sev.”
“I’m not disputing that,” said Brano. “He’s a homicide inspector; he knows how to protect himself. But let’s say he’s had a half hour to consider his options. Let’s say he decided he didn’t want to return home. Do you know how simple it is to lose yourself in Istanbul?”
“But he has a family. That’s why he was chosen for the conference. That’s why he was issued an external passport.”
“How do you know he loves his family?”
For some reason, Gavra had never considered that possibility.
“Twenty years ago,” Brano explained, “Comrade Terzian embarked on a rather reckless affair with another militiaman’s wife. Though it didn’t last, he has admitted more than once that this woman was the love of his life. But, since she was no longer available-she decided to stay with her husband-he married Zara Sasuni and has built a life he probably never really desired. It wouldn’t be so strange if he wanted to leave this life.”
Brano paused to let the story sink in.
“You see, Gavra, no matter how many electric ears we place, no matter how many feet of film we have on them, we never know what’s going on. Up here.” He tapped his temple and turned onto Kennedy Caddesi. Off to the left, the Sea of Marmara opened up, sprinkled with freighters.
Ataturk International Airport was a long, low building west of Istanbul, in a barren, burnt-grass corner of Yesilkoy. Brano parked in the middle of the lot, and as Gavra followed him inside, he noticed how the old man glanced around in an unconscious fashion, and how he didn’t even register the man with a cart of drinks who sang his price to them. In the arrivals lounge, Brano scanned the board marking planes and times. Gavra peered over his shoulder. “See? It’s late.”
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