Peter was surprised to find the battered old door unlocked. Inside in the darkness, he squinted to make out the twisting stone steps leading high into the tower. He peered back to see Stanislav falling through the door, then closing it behind himself. “I don’t think you’ll make it,” said Peter.
“Eh?”
“To the top.” He pointed up into the blackness.
“I’ll make it.” Stanislav ushered him up with his hands.
But as they reached the fourth narrow window that looked down on the bridge and across to the castle district, Stanislav sat heavily on a step.
“Just a little…rest. Da? But you…” He yawned and looked up. “But you will wake me? Eight,” he said. “Eight thirty.”
“I’ll do that.”
Stanislav stifled another yawn and closed his eyes. “You won’t…sleep?”
Peter settled on a step above the soldier and opened the window, letting in a cool river breeze. The alcohol had been washed away by his night’s act of betrayal, and as his eyes adjusted to the shadows of the bridge he wished they’d brought along another bottle. “Don’t worry. I won’t sleep.”
For a half hour Peter remained there, his knees up to his chest. The breeze coming in off the Vltava seeped through his thin coat and pants. From below he heard occasional distant voices he thought were Russian. Once, a truck rumbled across the bridge, and he watched its lights dwindle between the rows of statues.
“What’re you thinking, Peter?” Stanislav seemed to be speaking in his sleep.
“I’m wondering how I can have a life like yours.”
The soldier squirmed into a tighter fetal position, his head on the step just below Peter’s foot. “ Da, da. Well, wake me up when you know.”
Another truck passed under them, then the noise faded away. He had no answers. The only sure thing was that he could not return to the university. His phone call to Captain Poborsky had ended that. Those who had not been rounded up would know who had turned them in. They would manhandle him from his bed in the night, then carry him to some vacant janitor’s closet or toilet stall; they would teach him a lesson.
The soldier began to snore. In the darkness, Peter could just see his hunched back, the way he was rolled tight. On the crest of his hip, where his fine coat had fallen back, the knife from his father was looped in his belt. It seemed to Peter like a motif in their relationship. A single object that signified the difference between the two of them. Stanislav’s loving family was in that knife, and the knife, like the family, protected Stanislav as he made his way through the world.
Peter cleared his throat. “Stanislav?”
The snores continued, the soldier’s chest rising and falling.
Peter spoke quietly. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve done. I killed my best friend and the woman I loved. Not on purpose, but because of my stupidity. But now-now I’m not so sure. Did I mean to do it? Did I want us to be caught? Was I so jealous I’d rather they were dead than together? Because afterward I did something completely consciously. I made a phone call I never thought I would make. And right now, my old friends are in that convent on Bartolom jska. They’re probably…” He couldn’t finish the sentence aloud, but his mind repeated it in full: They’re probably being tortured. He cleared his throat again, his mind now inventing grotesque scenes that took place in that small basement room. Poor meek Jan in a chair, tied down, his glasses cracked and blood dripping from his fingernails.
He felt like he was going to be sick, so he put his face as far through the window as he could, sucking in fresh air.
It wasn’t only the gore of his imagination, but also the realization of this fact: Because his old friends were the kind of men they were, with their pride and convictions, at some point Comrade Poborsky would walk them out to the convent courtyard and shoot them in the head.
He looked out at the river and across to the lights of the castle district. That was something he would miss. Mistakes or not, what he’d done in the last days had rerouted his life. It was entirely different.
He sank back on the steps, his stomach now settling.
The only sounds were water lapping medieval stones down below and Stanislav’s irregular snores. Peter leaned forward and reached out, touching the handle of the knife. Another hawk was carved into its worn wooden handle, stretched to fit the length. When he slid it out, the blade reflected a distant street lamp into his eyes, and he blinked. It was a heavy knife, and well balanced. Like the soldier’s family, he thought, and smiled. Because not even then did he know what he was going to do.
In his study of the semantics of music, he had learned about Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of the “dyadic sign,” that which unites a work’s concept with its sound-image. What Peter liked about this was that it completely disregarded the composer, who, at the point when his work is being played, is entirely disassociated from the piece. His intentions and desires no longer matter. The piece he has written is now simply action and sound. Now, here, Peter felt like a composer out of touch with his creation; he was instead in the audience, only understanding his actions as they were being performed.
He took two steps down and bent over the snoring soldier’s large ear. The Warsaw Pact collar was up over the neck, so he folded it down. The soldier did not stir, his snores a steady engine echoing lightly up the tower’s stairwell.
By now he knew, though to put it into words would have been impossible. He lowered the knife in front of the soldier’s throat, parallel to the ground, and placed a knee behind the neck.
Peter remained in that position for a minute, his quick breaths feeling hot in this cool place.
Only now could he find the words to describe what he was doing.
Katja
What did I do between noon and five, waiting for my second meeting with Brano Sev? That was just five hours ago, but standing here by the carousel, waiting for Istvan Farkas to collect his baggage and feeling naked beside a group of women covered in black with only slits to reveal their eyes, I’m having trouble remembering. Yes-I walked. I walked from the Metropol, up Mihai Boulevard, along the concrete landing that borders the Tisa, stopping to look now and then at the high cranes leaning over the broken roofs of the Canal District. Tomiak Pankov’s celebrated project to clean, scour, and rebuild that oldest part of the Capital meant nothing to me. Then I turned onto the small side streets and found a bakery with a few rolls left in the window, eating them as I continued westward, unable to look at the people I passed. This troubled me, that I could not relegate the events of seven years ago-relegate Peter Husak-to a small room in my head, a small room that could be managed and dealt with constructively. Instead, I was left numb, standing at the edge of Victory Park with half-eaten rolls that I let fall to the grass. I worried that the memory of Peter Husak was killing me. I even considered finding Aron and talking to him. After three years of marriage, perhaps, I could finally tell my husband the story that made me cold in bed and ruptured any chance we had of marital calm, or children. But the secret had gone on too long, and now not even honesty could save us.
Once we’ve bought Turkish lira at an exchange desk and then purchased visas, Istvan says, “Ready?” When he smiles, it’s a trembling, proud smile, as if he’s hiding a present behind his back. Or a triumphant smile. With only a few words, he’s gotten a woman to come to his hotel with him.
We take a taxi through the dry evening fields surrounding Ataturk International, the static of the driver’s radio broken now and then by Istvan’s innocuous observations: “It’s lucky we met, isn’t it?…You haven’t had a gyro until you’ve had one here…There’s an excellent bar at the hotel, so we can have a decent nightcap.”
The main roads take us through European Istanbul, toward a place the signs call Beyo lu, and the old city grows around us. Istvan points to the right, into a dark spread of lights and roofs that dwindle toward a glowing dome with six pointed spires. “Sultan Ahmet Camii,” he says, and the driver perks up.
“Evet,” he says, then switches to English: “Blue Mosque. You tourist?”
I nod in the direction of the lights but am distracted by my own reflection in the window.
We cross a bridge, and I say, “This is the Bosphorus?”
“The Golden Horn,” Istvan corrects. He again points to the right. “The Bosphorus is over in that direction; on the other side is Asia.”
“Asia,” I say.
“You’re on the very edge of the continent.”
When we finally arrive at the Hotel Pera Palas, I’m stunned. It’s an enormous, lavish structure, lit up like a church. Under the high ceiling, the marbled lobby is full of grandiose columns and velvet carpets. Men in suits and ties sit in formally arranged leather chairs and read newspapers, sipping tea from glass cups.
The clerk remembers Istvan from a previous visit. “Mister Farkas, we have been expecting you,” he says in English.
Istvan glances back at me with a smile-I’m to be impressed. “Good to be back. Perhaps you have a spare room for my friend?”
“Reservation?”
I open my mouth, but Istvan says, “I’m afraid not.”
The clerk, whose mustache looks like it was stolen from a much larger man, makes a face, then shrugs dramatically. “If only I could. There is a convention in town-Greeks, ” he whispers.
“Is that so?”
“I am afraid, yes.”
“It’s no problem,” I say, because a part of me has been wishing that circumstances would stop me at some point and force me to return. Not that I don’t want to go through with this, only that I’m searching for some sign, some direction.
Istvan holds up a finger, asking for my patience. He signs a piece of paper and takes his keys, then steps back to me. “I don’t know how you feel about it, but my rooms are always too large. They treat me well. And so, if you’re not concerned for your safety, I’d be honored if you would stay in my room. There’s a large couch for me to sleep on.”
“I couldn’t.”
“It’s up to you,” he says, leaning close. “But rest assured that this is no inconvenience for me. In fact, it would be a pleasure.”
Despite the surprising aura of shoddy decay above the ground floor, our room is in fact two decomposing rooms, a bedroom and a living room. I pull back the curtains and find a terrace that overlooks nighttime Istanbul, the barrage of lights and sounds drifting up to us. When I tell him it’s beautiful, he nearly blushes. “I’m lucky the comrades feel their salesmen should maintain an air of sophistication. Do you feel like a drink?”
I’m standing out on the shallow terrace, wondering which of those lights is Peter Husak.
“The bar’s just downstairs.”
I turn back and give him a smile. “Just let me wash up first.”
Gavra
Gavra buzzed a whole row of apartments on the large panel by the front door. A cacophony of puzzled who’s-theres sputtered out as he tugged the handle, waiting for that one innocent to let him in. Then he flew through the foyer and up the stairwell, pausing on the second floor, where the dead stranger with the wide hat and the foreign accent lay, blood pulsing from a hole in his trachea. Gavra sprinted on.
On the third floor, looking up to the fourth, he spotted Mas at the top of the stairs with a pistol lengthened by a long silencer screwed to the end of it.
“Ludvik Mas!” he shouted.
Mas looked down, perhaps surprised, his comical mustache twitching.
Gavra raised his Makarov. “Put it on the floor and walk down here.”
A trace of a smile flickered across Mas’s face. He aimed between Gavra’s eyes and descended a step, speaking calmly. “Comrade Noukas, we can both die on this stairwell, or we can both survive the night.”
He descended two more steps. He said, “I suggest you speak with Comrade Sev before you pull that trigger.”
“Who’s the man downstairs?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
He was two steps above Gavra, their pistols pointed at each other’s faces. Ludvik Mas lowered his, but Gavra didn’t shift his aim.
“I’m going now, Comrade Noukas.”
“You’re going to tell me what’s going on.”
“I’ll do no such thing. Speak with your superiors.” He paused, then added, “Faggot.”
He passed quickly, trotted down the next flight, and was gone.
Gavra stood with his gun by his side, feeling suddenly cold, then continued up. In answer to his knock, Adrian opened the door. The butcher’s face, at first hesitant, lit up and even smiled when he registered who his visitor was. But Gavra only said, “I need to use your phone.”
During the twenty minutes they waited for Brano Sev, Gavra smoked three cigarettes. Adrian poured them each a vodka and sat across from him on the sofa. Absently, Gavra said, “Thanks,” and threw back the shot.
“You’re sure he’s dead?” asked Adrian.
Gavra looked at him.
“From the door,” he explained. “I could hear everything.”
He nodded.
“Who is he?”
That question stunned him, because in his distraction he hadn’t thought to check this. He bolted out of the apartment. His feet clattered down the stairs. After a few minutes, he returned with a wallet and a passport, frowning. He sat again in the chair and asked Adrian, “Do you know a Maxwell Palmer?”
Adrian shook his head. “Can I see?”
Gavra showed him the bland photo in Maxwell Palmer’s passport. The face was also unfamiliar, but Adrian frowned at the cover. “Why is there a dead American here?”
He wanted to be open with Adrian Martrich, to let him know that the man who killed the American was a state security officer, and that he suspected the next target had been Adrian himself-but Ludvik Mas’s confidence made this difficult. Mas was part of that shadowy world of the back offices of Yalta, like Room 305, the source of puzzling commands and sudden bursts of retribution. Room 305 was the last office Gavra wanted causing him trouble.
So he held his tongue until Brano Sev arrived, the gray hair behind his ears wet, as if he’d been called from the bath. He nodded imperceptibly at Adrian, then turned to Gavra. “Comrade Noukas, can we talk?”
In the corridor and down the stairs, Gavra told him every detail of the story, omitting only Mas’s final word, faggot.
Brano looked through the dead American’s papers. “So it’s Maxwell Palmer tonight.”
“You know him?”
“His real name is Timothy Brixton, CIA. His cover is as a television salesman.” Brano paused. “What was Brixton doing here?”
“He came alone, and an old man let him in.”
“A contact?”
“No. But Ludvik Mas was following him. And he had a key.”
“He would.”
Brano squatted to stare at the hole in the dead American’s throat. Blood covered Brixton’s clothes and congealed on the stairs. Gavra could still smell the potassium nitrate from the shot that had killed him.
“You say Mas was heading to Adrian Martrich’s apartment?”
“Looks that way. But when he saw me, he left. It seems clear enough that Ludvik Mas also murdered Doctor Arendt and Wilhelm Adler, and that his next target was Adrian Martrich.”
“Is it clear?” Brano began going through the dead American’s pockets. “But Timothy Brixton was here for a reason as well.”
“Are you going to talk to Mas?”
“I’ll certainly try,” said Brano.
“He’s our prime suspect.”
Brano came up with some loose change and a key from the Hotel Metropol.
“Can you tell me?” Gavra asked.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“Mas seemed to think you would know.”
Brano stood. “I can find out. Let’s get someone to clean this up. And, Gavra?”
“Yes?”
“Keep this quiet. It’s not the kind of thing Katja should know about.�
� Brano handed over the Metropol key and squinted at the top of the stairs as something occurred to him.
“What?”
Brano shook his head. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Just make sure Comrade Martrich survives the night.”
Katja
We’re on velvet-seated stools at the Orient Express Bar of the Pera Palas, surrounded by pink-tinted walls. Past Istvan, at dark corner tables, men in loosened ties with fuming cigarettes huddle over drinks, and the occasional tourist family tries to rein in their children. This is so different from the bar where I last met Brano Sev.
“Spies used to come here,” says Istvan.
“That so?”
“Mata Hari, Kim Philby. Back when spying was still glamorous.” He winks when he says that, and, as he slides a glass with clear liquor in front of me, adds, “Agatha Christie wrote Orient Express in one of their rooms.”
“Thus the name of this bar.”
“Exactly.”
I look at my glass as he pours cold water into it, the mix turning milky.
“ Rak? Turkish brandy,” he says. “Is that all right?”
I answer by draining the anise-heavy liquid, and Istvan, seemingly impressed, calls for another.
He talks to me like a man trying to sell something. He tells me about electric fans. “The real symbol of the twentieth century. Man over nature. When nature makes you hot, you beat her to the ground with one of these. The next step is climatization, what the Americans call ‘air-conditioning,’ but we’re not yet ready for that much control over nature.”
“You’re very philosophical for a salesman.”
“You’d be surprised. Salesmen are some of the most philosophical people around. It’s the long hours alone, stuck with your own thoughts. And the hotels, which, even if they’re as beautiful as this one, begin to look the same. The world begins to look the same. And you start to wonder how different we all really are, and why we do what we do. That’s really all of philosophy in a nutshell.”
“The why. ”
“Yes, why. That’s the basic question of philosophy. How is a question for science.”
“Maybe you should write this down.”
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