Peter felt his special talent-the one the StB officer had been so impressed by-bring on a big, authentic smile. “I don’t want to let you down.”
So they bought a bottle of Becherovka liquor and began again to drink. “Did you fight?” asked Peter.
“When?”
“Here. You’ve only said you ended up being stationed here. You never told me what you did.”
Stanislav shifted, then peered into his shot glass. “Most of the time, no. We were all quite pleased no one wanted to fight us. These girls-pretty girls, and what short skirts they had-they gave us flowers and told us to go home.” He shook his head. “As if we had a choice in the matter. But they were nice. At the beginning, though, there was some fighting.” He finished his glass and refilled it. “It was the twenty-first. We’d just gotten here, and half of us didn’t even know where we were. Then we were sent over to the radio building, over on Stalinova Street. A big crowd outside. I think the radio station had called them all there to protest. Well, it got out of hand. They threw rocks, someone started shooting, and, well…” He lifted the dark liquor to his chin. “Yeah, there were dead people.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“I hope not. In the confusion, I couldn’t tell. But the station-” He grunted. “Those guys are clever. Radio Prague still broadcasts from different areas of town. They change frequencies and give out news for ten minutes, then move on. I doubt anyone will be able to stop them.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Me?” Stanislav peered at the dark liquor in his glass. “You think any of us want to be here? You think any of us are here because we want to defend socialism?”
Peter raised his own glass. “To going home.”
They swallowed what they had and then poured more.
Katja
As the plane descends toward Ataturk International, I yawn to pop my ears. Beside me, the young electric-fan salesman rubs his eyes and smiles. “Did I sleep the whole way?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
“I can’t seem to sleep these days.”
“Well, you won’t sleep in Istanbul. Very un restful place. Where are you staying?”
His thin hair lies flat on his scalp, and in a few years he’ll be bald. He has bright eyes.
“I didn’t make a reservation,” I say, and it occurs to me how sudden this trip is. How ill planned. This afternoon, taking the long taxi ride from the Hotel Metropol to the airport, fingering my crisp new passport, it felt like the only option. But that was the fatigue confusing me. The fatigue and the buzzing in my ears that muted all other sounds.
“Well, you’ve got to make a reservation,” he says. “It’s a popular city. I’m staying at the Pera Palas. Why don’t you come into town with me and we’ll see if we can get you a room?”
“Yes,” I say, trying on a smile. “That’s a good idea.”
“I’m Istvan. Istvan Farkas.”
I make a smile with teeth and take his hand. “Good to meet you, Istvan.”
Then I notice the fat man looking at me again. When I catch him he turns away.
Waiting for Brano Sev at the Metropol earlier today, I also felt watched-a woman on her own at the half-empty bar, male eyes converging on my back. So I ordered vodka from a lanky bartender who set the glass down and smiled. “You waiting for someone?”
“Don’t give me trouble,” I said. He grunted and moved on to another customer.
Brano arrived, sweating in his too heavy jacket, and stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette. He moved quickly for an old man. The bartender, recognizing him, slipped back. “Comrade Sev, so good-”
“Zywiec.”
“Of course.”
Brano took off his jacket and climbed onto a stool. There were sweat stains all over his shirt. “As I told you on the telephone, Katja, I don’t know where Gavra is. He-”
“That’s not why I asked you here.”
“Okay.” The bartender set down a glass of beer and disappeared again. “Then why am I here?”
I took a breath. “Two days ago, on Monday, you and Gavra met a man in the Seventh District, on Tolar. He’s young, like me. He has a little mustache now. His name is Peter Husak. Where is he now?”
Brano’s face, unused to expressing emotion, let slip an instant of surprise. “Peter Husak?”
“Yes. Where is he?”
“Why are you interested in this man?”
“It’s personal.”
“Nothing’s personal.”
I considered my words. With Brano Sev, a misplaced syllable could end all discussion. “I knew him, once. Some years ago. In 1968.”
“How well did you know him?”
“He was-” I paused. “He told me he was a friend of my old boyfriend. That he knew him in Prague.”
“Why was your boyfriend in Prague?”
“He was in the army. He died there. He helped put down their revolution.”
“Their counterrevolution.”
“Whatever.”
“And that’s how Peter Husak knew your boyfriend?”
“He told me he worked with our soldiers, that they became close.”
“Your boyfriend’s name?”
“Stanislav Klym.”
Brano touched his glass but didn’t lift it. He nodded. “Right.”
“What?”
He stood up. “I have to go now, but…” He frowned, considering something. “Can you meet me back here at five?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at five.”
Then he was gone.
Gavra
Brano Sev arrived looking as he always did. Unamused. He stared at Arendt’s body, the blood that matted his once-white hair and soaked the rug, then turned to Katja. “Comrade Drdova, would you please interview the neighbors? I saw a few venturing out. Statements might be of use.”
Katja looked at Gavra, who shrugged. She marched out.
Brano spoke quietly. “So?”
“We interviewed the doctor earlier,” Gavra said. “We learned that Zrinka Martrich was delusional. She spent time in the Vuzlove clinic-Tarabon-but was transferred three years ago to Rokosyn, a research institute.”
“Rokosyn?”
“Yes. But the brother-her brother, Adrian Martrich-claims this is a lie, because there’s no clinic in Rokosyn. While we were interviewing the brother, someone did this.”
“Adrian Martrich is right,” said Brano. “There hasn’t been a clinic in Rokosyn for years. There was, but it was shut down long ago.”
Gavra raised Zrinka Martrich’s file. “The killer made a mess, probably looking for this.”
“I see.”
“I want to talk to Adler again.”
Brano squatted beside the doctor. He used the flat end of a pencil to look inside Arendt’s pants pockets. “I wouldn’t worry about Wilhelm Adler. His wife returned home an hour ago and found him in the living room, much like the doctor here.”
“Dead?” Gavra muttered, but Brano didn’t bother answering. He walked to the front door and began examining the frame for forced entry, while Gavra tried to manage his annoyance. “Adler’s killed because he talked to us,” said Gavra. “So it’s what I thought. The Ministry’s involved.”
Again, Brano Sev didn’t answer.
“You know something about this, don’t you? Where’s Ludvik Mas?”
Brano maintained his silence as he walked to the window, pulled back the curtain, and peered down at the dark street, now empty of promenading families. “A funeral and two murders.” He let the curtain go. “It’s been a long day.”
Gavra threw Zrinka Martrich’s file on the desk. “Why aren’t you helping?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“What does that mean?”
“Are you watching the brother?” said Brano. “This Adrian Martrich?”
“I will.”
“Give Katja the first shift. You need sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s an order. And Gavra?”
“Yes?”
“Be sure and have your pistol next time. I can see you’re unarmed.”
“Oh. Right.”
Brano Sev walked out.
Katja returned, predictably, with nothing from the neighbors. She’d knocked on doors, and the few who chose to answer insisted they had just returned home or had been watching the evening repeat of Family Popa and heard nothing. So Gavra told her about Adler’s murder.
“Jesus,” she said.
“Can you watch Adrian Martrich’s apartment? The Comrade insists I get some sleep.”
“No problem,” she said, then looked at the wet rug and added, half to herself, “Better than going home.”
Gavra had a natural affinity for puzzles, but this one wouldn’t fit together. Two murders in the Capital and a terrorist action gone wrong. The only connection was a young woman, Zrinka, who had died on the plane, a delusional who left a message for the terrorists when they were standing in the same terminal she was. Zrinka’s old therapist was dead, as well as the German who helped arrange the hijacking.
The answer was in there, he knew, but his Yalta-trained logic was of no use. So he floundered, rolling in his musty bed, finally going to the kitchen for the palinka, which only did its job at 3:00 A.M.
He nearly made it out the door without his Makarov, and had to run back to the bedroom to search for his shoulder holster. He relieved Katja at ten, by which time she’d followed Adrian Martrich in her Skoda from his apartment to the tram, and then to Union Street-where, it appeared, Martrich had decided to open for a few Sunday hours in honor of the next day’s holiday, Monday the twenty-eighth of April, General Secretary Tomiak Pankov’s birthday.
Katja had nothing to report because she was tired-she admitted to falling asleep a few times in the car. Gavra was too exhausted to practice intimidation with her.
After she drove off, he settled in his own Skoda across the street from the butcher shop. It was warm out, so he’d worn shirtsleeves under his jacket, and now loosened his tie. He spent the next few hours trying not to sleep.
During the past year under Brano Sev’s tutelage, he’d sat in so many cars on so many street corners, simply watching. At first it was nearly impossible to take. He grew bored and fidgety within the first half hour and always had to pee. He’d limp off to an alleyway to relieve himself, glancing around the corner to be sure his subject hadn’t changed position, then hurry back to sit behind the wheel. For daytime watches, he found it helped to bring along a novel. He’d read Anna Karenina during a week-long session last summer, and remembered being pleased when Tolstoy entered the mind of a hunting dog as easily as he entered Anna’s.
But Brano disapproved of reading on the job and forced him to learn to do without his books. Mental quiet, his tutor said. Like the Buddhists.
What do you know about Buddhism?
A woman I loved used to be a Buddhist.
Gavra couldn’t imagine Brano with either a woman or a man. Who, after all, could fall for someone as cold as that? The advice was sound though. Sitting in his car, Gavra silenced his wandering thoughts and watched Adrian Martrich come out now and then to oversee the mute crowds their country produced whenever a fresh shipment of lamb arrived. The line grew the length of the block. Gavra observed with some detached interest the subculture of the queue-how, with time, a straight line becomes a crowd, and then each person takes a role. A tall, older man becomes the dictator, keeping track of the order, stopping one person and letting one through. Another, perhaps an old woman, becomes his assistant, her careful eye on everyone, tugging the dictator’s sleeve at the first sign of disruption. Among the sheep are the gossipers, the knitters, the readers, as well as the complainers who make speeches to strangers about the infiltrator-usually a Gypsy who ignores the painstakingly arranged order and tries to slip in undetected. But he never succeeds, because the assistant has tugged the dictator’s sleeve; the dictator has spoken and pointed; and the infiltrator has been blocked by a wall of firm backs, shoulder to shoulder, these steadfast sheep acting as if there’s no one behind them, trying to get through.
Gavra watched until four, when the meat ran out and Martrich walked the length of the block, asking everyone to please leave. Adrian carried himself very well among his disappointed customers. He patted their shoulders and bent to speak with very old, shrunken women. He knew them all and treated them as if they were his people. And they, Gavra could see, appreciated this. They appreciated him. They liked this handsome, pale-eyed young man who handed them their daily ration of meat.
An hour later Gavra watched Adrian’s young assistant leave for home, then Adrian himself locked up. He paused at the door, looking up the street toward the tram stop at the next intersection. He ran his fingers through his hair.
Then Adrian Martrich turned, smiled directly at Gavra, and crossed the street to meet him.
Gavra rolled down his window; Adrian bent close.
“Comrade Noukas, you’re not trying to be secretive, are you?”
“Uh, no.” Gavra’s mental silence was breaking up.
“I noticed Comrade Drdova out here earlier, too. You don’t think I blew up my sister’s plane, do you?”
Adrian was becoming irritating, but Gavra had the overwhelming sense that he was doing this on purpose. “Just making sure you’re all right.”
“Very comforting,” said Adrian. “If you’re watching anyway, can you give me a lift home? Save tram fare.”
Gavra wasn’t sure how Brano would feel about this, but there was no point letting the old man know. “Come on.”
They drove north along empty Sunday streets, and while Gavra tried not to look at his passenger, he felt Adrian’s presence; the right half of his body began to sweat.
“Why do I need protection?”
“We’re not sure you need it.”
“But you have reason to worry.”
“Yes.”
“Doctor Arendt?”
Gavra submitted and looked at him. “How did you know that?”
Adrian was staring straight ahead through the windshield. “Lucky guess. Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Gavra. “Do you?”
Adrian shook his head. “You think it has something to do with Zrinka?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t know much, do you?” He didn’t say this with any bitterness, and Gavra didn’t bother answering.
When they parked in the vast gravel lot between apartment blocks, Adrian said, “Might as well come up. You’ll fall asleep down here.”
Gavra knew what his mentor would say to that. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“You won’t fall asleep, then? I mean, if I’m in danger.”
“No.”
Adrian nodded, then climbed out. Gavra watched him walk gingerly to the glass door of his building and open it with a key. Before entering, Adrian turned back and shot him another smile.
Gavra lit a cigarette.
He watched neighbors arrive. Old men and women, a group of three teenagers lighting cigarettes, a family with two young children. Everyone appeared tired, returning from long Sunday lunches that inevitably grew into drunken dinners with lascivious uncles, dozing fathers, fussy mothers, and grandmothers cooking vast meals for dozens. Gavra remembered them from childhood as wonderful, exhausting affairs, where he would run around his grandparents’ farm with a pellet gun, shooting crows perched on branches. But he’d never known those Sunday lunches as an adult, because after joining the Ministry he had never returned home. He sometimes considered visiting-surely by now he had no reason to be uncomfortable there. He was an adult, and an officer of the Ministry for State Security.
Besides, it was so long ago that his father found him in his grandparents’ barn with that young farmhand from Krosno. Gavra had been sixteen then; fourteen years was a long time for any father to sustain his anger.<
br />
He’d lost his mental silence, and because of that he nearly missed it when, around six thirty, as the shadows of the occasional tree stretched across the glass entryway, an old Saxon walked up to the front door, fumbling with his keys, then stopped. The old man looked back as a younger man in a wide hat jogged up, calling for him to wait. From his open window, Gavra could hear the peculiar accent of the jogger. Flat, the syllables spoken from the front of the mouth.
Western. Perhaps American.
The old man noticed it, too, his surprise evident even from this distance, but let the man in with him as Gavra threw his cigarette out the window.
Gavra didn’t open the door, because there were perhaps eighty apartments in Zrinka’s brother’s ten-story building, making a total of at least two hundred inhabitants. There was no reason to assume this foreigner had arrived to see Adrian Martrich. So he hesitated, just a few seconds, until another man jogged across the pitted courtyard and used a key to get inside. The man’s suit was too tight, and an air of claustrophobia surrounded him.
Gavra climbed out of his car and began to run, because that second man was Ludvik Mas.
Peter
1968
They were the only customers left in the bar when it closed at one, and they stumbled arm in arm down Celetna, past soldiers standing against the old town’s medieval stone walls. Stanislav sometimes drunkenly saluted them. “Oblov, you’re still here?” he called in Russian.
A fat soldier on the opposite corner squinted. “Stanislav, get your ass out of my district or I’ll personally take care of that girlfriend of yours!”
Stanislav shot him a rude hand gesture, then grabbed Peter’s shoulder and walked on.
By the time they reached the arch of the Charles Bridge’s Old Town gate, Stanislav was failing. A long day of drinking had broken up his words into barely comprehensible syllables. “Got to…I’m…uh…tired.”
“You’re tired?”
“Da.”
“Should I get you to the train station?”
“No… nyet. There.”
Stanislav pointed at the small door on the inside of the bridge’s gate. “In there,” he mumbled. “Good for sit.”
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