Liberation movements tyb-4

by Olen Steinhauer

  The board didn’t say how late Turkish Air Flight 54 was, so Brano spoke with a girl at the information desk while Gavra lit a cigarette. Families wandered and settled heavily on chairs, waiting for the delayed plane. Brano returned, running his tongue behind his lips. “She says they don’t know how long.”

  “Here, have a cigarette.”

  “You see that man over there?”

  Gavra followed his gaze to the corner. Beside a potted mullein stood a small man in his late twenties with a wire-thin mustache out of a comic book. “What about him?”

  “His name’s Ludvik Mas. What’s he doing here?”

  “Why don’t you go ask him?”

  Brano gave him a look he’d seen too many times on this trip already.

  Gavra bought two coffees from the singing vendor and handed one to Brano. Ludvik Mas, still in the corner, looked at his watch. “He’s waiting for the same flight,” Gavra pointed out.

  Brano ignored his perceptiveness. “Come on.”

  They walked back to the information desk, where a policeman had joined the clerk.

  “Hello,” Brano said in English. “I’m waiting for Flight 54.”

  “I told you before,” the clerk said, her face stern. “You’ll receive information on that when everyone else does.”

  Brano took a red Interior Ministry certificate out of his pocket and handed it over. She squinted at the strange language, while the policeman frowned over her shoulder. “I’m a government official.”

  “Not the Turkish government,” said the policeman.

  As Brano stared at the smirking officer, Gavra sensed the cool, hard anger he’d felt only a few times over the last year of his apprenticeship. Brano said, “Are you interested in causing an international incident?”

  The policeman didn’t answer.

  “Because when I shoot you, my diplomatic immunity will allow me to walk out of here a free man.”

  As the policeman lifted a telephone and began to dial, Brano returned to his native language and said to Gavra, “Keep an eye on Ludvik Mas while I find out what’s going on.”

  When Brano sauntered off down the corridor with the policeman, Gavra lit another cigarette and leaned on a column. Beyond Ludvik Mas stood a young security guard with a machine gun hanging from his shoulder. Ludvik had that harried, claustrophobic look of men from their country, with his self-conscious mustache, disorganized sideburns, and too-tight suit, while the guard’s handsome face suggested-to Gavra, at least-relaxation and self-confidence: a few days’ beard, cap perched back on his head. Even his Uzi seemed a fashion accessory. As he watched the guard, Gavra felt the relaxation that Istanbul always brought him. Beautiful boys and a hot, clear sun that kept his skin tingling. The mosques appealed to his amateur aestheticism, mesmeric prayer-songs filled the city five times a day, and the expanse of the Bosphorus dividing Europe from Asia made his country’s stretch of the Tisa look like an open sewer. Istanbul was so different from life in the Capital, where clouds darkened the sky and the men were…

  Gavra rubbed his nose.

  Where the men were closed to new experiences.

  That was when Gavra finally comprehended Brano’s words. Because, love for one’s family or not, who would not choose to shake loose of the Capital and stay, indefinitely, in this paradise?

  Then Ludvik Mas left the mullein plant to use one of three pay phones along the opposite wall.

  Gavra sipped his coffee as he followed, watching Mas nod into the telephone and bite his lip between words. He reached the next phone and picked it up. Mas was saying, “Of course it’s irregular. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Gavra slipped in a coin and began to dial a random number.

  “Okay. But patience isn’t easy. Yes. Yes.”

  Mas hung up and walked back to his corner.

  “Who are you calling?” It was Brano.

  “I was listening to Mas’s conversation.”

  Brano, blinking rapidly, shook his head. “Forget that for now. Come with me.”

  He followed the colonel down a busy corridor to a door marked GUVENLIK — security-beside which stood another handsome guard wearing a tall cap. Gavra gave him a smile he didn’t return.

  The airport security office was small and dark, lit almost solely by the blue haze of video monitors and the glow of five cigarettes held by five sweating men. The scent of Turkish tobacco, which last night at the club had seemed so intoxicating, now made him want to flee.

  “This is my associate, Gavra Noukas,” Brano said in English. “Nothing is to be kept from him.”

  It was an introduction he appreciated. Gavra nodded at each man, but none introduced himself. A fat Turk sitting in front of the monitors, said, “What to tell? There is no more plane. It blow up over Bulgaria.”

  Gavra touched the back of an empty chair to steady himself. “What?”

  “The pilot, he reports they are hijacked. So we talk to the hijackers-Armenians, members of…of the what?”

  “Army of the Liberation of Armenia,” said another man.

  “Who are they?” Gavra asked.

  The fat man shrugged. “Who knows? Just more dis…disaffected Armenians what think his empty bank account is the fault of Turkey. We talk to them, then lose contact. Then the plane, it disappear from the radar.”

  “You’re sure it exploded? It didn’t go down?”

  Brano explained. “The Bulgarians saw it. Sofia Airport reported the fireball.”

  “Before we can answer the demands,” said the fat man.

  Gavra turned the empty chair around and sank into it. “Then why did they hijack the plane?”

  The fat man shook his head. “You think I know, kid?”

  “You said you have a recording?” asked Brano.

  The fat man nodded. “They bring the equipment right now. But it’s no help. None. Probably they just wire the bomb all wrong. Fucking Armenians.”

  Brano turned to Gavra. “I want you to watch him, Ludvik Mas. Maybe he has nothing to do with this, but if he leaves, you follow. Do not make contact, only follow. Here are the car keys. You understand?”

  “Okay,” Gavra said. “But Libarid, wasn’t he Ar-”

  “Now,” said Brano.

  Peter

  1968

  It was seven by the time he left Private Stanislav Klym and, a little drunk, began tracing his steps back through the darkening university district. He was surprised by how unchanged it looked. He’d expected crumbled buildings and commons areas turned into impromptu graveyards, but Prague was much as it had been before he left, the few people he saw only looking a little more exhausted.

  He caught a half-empty tram, held onto the leather strap, and, as he swung back and forth, wondered if he hated, or if he should hate, Stanislav Klym. There was something that gnawed at him about the man, but it wasn’t hatred. Despite the invasion, and despite what had happened outside eske Bud jovice, he never felt the urge to spit in any soldier’s face. They were boys just as he was a boy, taken from their homes and stuck in a city where, like Stanislav, they’d rather be tourists.

  He wasn’t upset with Stanislav because of his uniform but because of what the man had. Stanislav was happy; he had a life back home he was eager to return to. Whereas Peter Husak was returning to nothing.

  In the Tenth District he got out and walked up Pod Stanici to the Hostivar? dormitory, which was decorated by a painted proclamation: AN ELEPHANT CANNOT SWALLOW A HEDGEHOG. He nodded at the young men who stood at the front door as if they were guarding the place. Inside, a thin, spectacled political science student ran up to him. “Jesus, what are you doing here?”

  “I didn’t make it, Jan.”

  Jan gripped his shoulders and squeezed as tight as his weak fingers could manage. “Christ. Peter-”

  “I’m really tired. Can we talk later?”

  “Yes, yes. Of course.” Jan patted his back. “I’m glad you’re all right. Josef’s up there now.”

  He took the stairs to the se
cond floor and paused in the empty corridor. The window at the far end was broken, and a cool evening breeze swept through. He took a breath and knocked on the door marked 305.

  “Yeah?”

  On one of the two cots, his roommate, Josef, lay with a book propped on his chest. Then he dropped it and was on his feet, his small, dark face twisting. “What happened?”

  “They caught me,” he said as he dropped into his own cot. “Near eske Bud jovice.”

  “Where’s Toman?”

  Peter shook his head. “Toman and Ivana weren’t caught.”

  “They made it?”

  “I assume so.”

  Josef paced a moment, as if this news opened a whole new world to him. Then he stopped. “But you’re all right, Peter? They didn’t hurt you.”

  Peter stretched out and intertwined his fingers behind his head. “Just questions.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Did you give them anything?”

  Josef had never wanted to bring Peter in on the marches in the first place. He’s got no political conviction, Josef had told Toman. Peter shrugged. “I don’t know enough to tell them anything. You never let me know.”

  The pacing began again. “You see why now? If they’d gotten names out of you, there’d be hundreds more dead.”

  “Yes, Josef.”

  “They were around here, you know. Some bald bastard. Asking questions.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But at least Ivana and Toman made it. They’ll let the Americans know the truth.” He finally sat on his cot and clasped a knee. He sniffed. “Say, Peter…are you drunk?”

  “A soldier bought me drinks.”

  “One of ours?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “And you accepted his drinks?”

  “I needed them. If you’d ever been in prison, you’d know.” He closed his eyes. “All he wanted was to tell me about his girlfriend.”

  Gavra

  Back in the arrivals lounge, Gavra lit another cigarette. His hand didn’t shake, but it seemed that it should. A plane had exploded. His stomach felt like it was working on a stone.

  Claustrophobic Ludvik Mas was still by the mullein, trying unsuccessfully to look patient. Gavra scanned the other faces in the crowd, old women and young men and whole families. There was no concern in their sweating faces, only frustration. Some approached the information desk, and the girl did a good job with her smiles and sympathetic shakes of the head, as if she really didn’t know what was going on. Maybe she didn’t.

  Ludvik Mas checked his watch. He confirmed it with a clock on the wall-6:48 in the morning-then walked over to the telephones. Gavra joined him, two down.

  “…nothing, that’s what I’m telling you. And they’re not saying anything.”

  Gavra tapped cigarette ash on the floor and began to dial.

  “Who told you that?…I would have noticed something, some activity…Okay. Yes, comrade, you’re right. It does appear she didn’t play along.”

  Then Mas hung up and walked out of the airport.

  The morning sun was hotter than Gavra expected, beating down as he slipped on his sunglasses and followed Mas across the parking lot to where he got into a rented beige Mercedes. Gavra half-jogged to his Renault.

  On the drive back into Istanbul, he convinced himself that Ludvik Mas was behind the hijacking. There was no reason to believe this, but he believed it just the same, and he was self-aware enough to know why. He was too attached to surfaces, always falling victim to that word Brano Sev enjoyed harping on-sentimentality. It is, Brano had told him numerous times, the demise of all good operatives, resulting in the most fatalities. But you’re young. You just don’t understand yet.

  And that, as Gavra well knew, was true.

  It had been true the previous winter, back in the Capital, when a young woman named Dora was discovered taking photographs of military documents at her office and delivering them to her lover, a West German with diplomatic papers. Gavra had been alone on that case-Brano was on one of his many Vienna trips-and had decided that she was, in the end, apolitical. She was simply in love, and thus capable of immense stupidity. So he didn’t bring her in. The next day, Dora flew to Bonn with her lover and was promoted to major in the West German secret police, the BND.

  The Mercedes maintained an even clip, following signs to Beyo lu, yet sometimes Gavra had trouble keeping up. He swept around two car accidents, neither serious but both surrounded by small Turks shouting at one another and waving hands in the air.

  Finally, after driving up Ataturk Bulvari and across Ataturk Bridge, spanning the Golden Horn, then rising toward the Galata Tower, Mas stopped at a surprising place: the splendorous cube of the Hotel Pera Palas, where he handed his car keys to a doorman and strolled inside. Gavra parked a little farther down the narrow street, then jogged back, narrowly avoiding an accident.

  When he reached the ornate foyer, with Ottoman columns and a wall of coral marble, Mas was to the left, at the front desk, taking his key from a smiling clerk. Then he jogged up a few stairs and entered the century-old elevator.

  For the next half hour, Gavra waited in the lounge with a copy of the International Herald Tribune, reading dismal editorials on Pol Pot’s recent proclamation of the “Democratic Republic of Kampuchea” in Cambodia before drifting to thoughts of Armenians.

  Being at the top of his class in the Ministry academy, he had a strong grasp of history. He knew that, despite Turkish claims to the contrary, a series of forced movements took place in the early part of the century, coming to a head in 1915, when the ruling group known as the Young Turks took it upon themselves to rid their country of Armenian Christians while the Great War diverted the rest of the world’s attention. The expulsion was carried out so systematically that no one could reasonably deny that orders from above set it in motion.

  The Turkish military was first purged of Armenian soldiers, often by group execution. Then cities and villages were taken over by newly purified Turkish troops, who killed Armenian men and forced the remaining women and children into overcrowded trains that spilled them into the desert, or sent them on death marches, where they died of starvation and disease under the summer sun. Reports from American and German officials at the time noted that the roads were lined and rivers choked with the rotting bodies of these ill-fated people. Later, according to a questionable American journalist, Adolf Hitler would tell his generals, Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

  Gavra believed most complex disputes to be hopeless, and this one was no exception.

  Brano had often wondered aloud about his pupil’s innate pessimism when it came to international affairs. Then why are you working for the Ministry? If you don’t believe some sort of good can come from what we do, then why are you doing it?

  Gavra had been recruited straight out of high school, by a man in his village he knew his father despised. He joined in order to make his father suffer for a childhood of humiliations. Even though it had begun in anger, over the years Gavra had found security in the shell of the Ministry that he nonetheless treated with suspicion. So why did he remain?

  Not even he knew the answer.

  He closed the newspaper and tried to recall Libarid Terzian. He didn’t know Libarid that well-only through his file and a few casual conversations-but for the last year they had sat at desks in the same room, and Gavra couldn’t help but mourn him in some way. Libarid and his late mother had been part of that stream of Armenian refugees fleeing the terror today’s hijackers had sought to revenge.

  Ludvik Mas returned to the front desk carrying a small suitcase. He handed over his key, paid his bill, then walked past his shadow and through the front door.

  On Ataturk Bulvari, passing another accident, he considered running Mas off the road. This man, who no doubt brought down a plane full of innocents, was probably going home. It was one thing in this world that Gavra could point at and, without hesitation,
call wrong.

  He sped up, halving the distance.

  Once they reached the airport, he and Brano would have to go through the Turks in order to do anything, but here on the open road, Gavra could take care of Mas himself. It was an appealing option.

  Like during other moments of decision, though, Gavra flustered as the old man’s orders came back to him: Do not make contact, only follow.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Gavra loosened his grip on the wheel and let Mas pull farther ahead. He turned on the radio for comfort, and half-listened to pop music with lilting Arabic tones as they left town again. He tapped his finger on the steering wheel, trying to whistle with the tune, but found that it was always slightly different than he expected; it was unpredictable.

  When he thought he’d finally gotten the melody down, Mas took the exit for Ataturk International Airport.

  Gavra switched off the radio.

  Mas carried his suitcase inside. He returned his keys to a car rental desk, then went to the small TisAir desk in the departures area. He bought a ticket and smiled at the heavyset Turkish woman who sold it to him, then walked through the security check to the gates.

  Gavra approached the TisAir desk with his most winning smile. “Excuse me. I know you’re going to think this is rude, but you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  She blushed. “Well…well, thank you.”

  “I bet this is an interesting job.”

  She snorted. “I wish. ”

  “People going all over the world, and you’re the one who puts them on the path. That’s not so bad.”

  “But I stay here.”

  “That may be true, but you meet the world through this desk. Like that man who just left. Where was he going?”

  In the arrivals lounge, the earlier frustration had become misery. Women wept beside the mullein plant, and men shouted as if they’d just wrecked each other’s cars. A squealing mother gripped Gavra’s arm, but he shook her off, heading down the corridor to the door marked GUVENLIK. The guard nodded at him, but still refused to smile.