“Because they’re connected to the operation,” Gavra said, not sure anymore what to believe. “But what about Wilhelm Adler? You called him-you told him about the plane.”
“Not me.” Mas raised his hands. “Adler wasn’t part of the operation. But if he was working with these terrorists, he didn’t deserve to live. As for Doctor Arendt, he simply knew too much. He would begin to ask questions about his old patient.”
“What about the others?” said Gavra. “The other patients.”
Mas shrugged, clearly unwilling to answer. “The reason you’re being told all of this is that I need you to do two things.”
Gavra settled back into his chair, arms crossed over his chest.
“First, I need silence. In particular, you are not to breathe a word of this to your partner, that-what’s her name?”
“Comrade Drdova,” Brano told him.
“Yes,” said Mas. “Is that understood?”
Gavra nodded.
“Second, I want you to remain with Adrian Martrich. I’m waiting to find out what we’ll do with him. It’s possible the Comrade Lieutenant General will want to use that faggot in another way.”
Gavra opened his mouth but didn’t speak.
Mas winked-a secret communication. “Yes, comrade. He’s got the capitalist disease. Just watch out for yourself when you’re with him.”
“What if he isn’t of use?” Gavra asked.
Mas looked at Brano, who spoke quietly and, Gavra believed, reluctantly. “Then you’ll be asked to kill him, Comrade Noukas.”
Gavra eased his hand down because it had jumped to his ear.
Katja
On a rack in the lobby of the Pera Palas I find a tourist map that I study just outside the front door, in the hot light. Hotels and restaurants are marked by childish hand-drawn icons of roofs. At the bottom, beyond the Galata Bridge that crosses the Golden Horn where it flows from the Bosphorus, and through a tangle of ancient streets, is a comical roof marked SULTAN INN, a block north of the Sea of Marmara, which they call Marmara Denizi.
This is my first time outside, under the Turkish sun. A line of dirty cars pushes by, and pedestrians wander in all directions. In other circumstances, I would be thrilled just to stand here.
As Brano told me, the Union Church is only two blocks away, straight from the hotel, up an alley, across Istiklal Caddesi, full of overpriced shops and multilingual tourists, then down another alley to where a small sign points me to a door in an ancient wall. As it also houses the Dutch consulate, a guard asks my nationality. I tell him and ask for the church. With a smile, he points me up a cobbled path inside.
It’s a small, modest place, in some ways similar to the Catholic chapel in Pacin, where I grew up. Since moving to the Capital years ago, I’ve found myself reluctant to return to see my family. Perhaps it’s just an aspect of growing up, but when I do return and walk with Mother arm in arm past that chapel, I always feel as if I’m visiting another country. I told this once to Aron, but he didn’t understand. He snorted under his breath, pulled up his sheet, and turned off the bedroom light.
The inner walls of the Union Church are rough, striped by slender bricks, and only two people sit in the pews, far from each other. I spot an old man dusting the pulpit with a feathered brush. He looks up when I approach.
“Evet?”
“Father Janssen,” I say.
He frowns, then speaks in labored English. “I do not know Janssen, a father.”
My English is just as labored. “Is priest here?”
He considers this, and it’s one of those moments when I’m pleased to be a woman because I present no threat. “Come,” he says, and leads me back to the front. Above our heads, over the entrance, is a second floor filled with an old pipe organ. The cleaner leads me upstairs to the dim floor, where a black-suited priest is reading a book laid on the organ keys. He looks up. “Evet?”
The cleaner says a few words in Dutch that I can’t make out, though I can tell that this priest’s name is Van der Berg. Then the cleaner says, “Janssen,” and the priest’s eyes light up. He nods for the old man to leave as he smiles at me. He doesn’t speak until the cleaner is visible again over the railing, headed for the altar.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?”
I close my eyes, trying to remember. “Is the harvest come down on the mountains?”
Van der Berg bites his lip, then lowers his voice and speaks in my language. “It has indeed, my child. A moment.”
Beneath a stained-glass window is a low bookshelf filled with twenty leather-bound books. He peers back down the length of the chapel, then pulls out a book called Sygdommen til Doden and opens it.
Just like in the movies, I think.
It’s a hollowed-out book, containing a silk-wrapped package that he hands to me. I unwrap it and look at the small Turkish MKE pistol, 380 caliber, not unlike the Walther PPs I used for practice in the Militia Academy.
“There are seven,” he whispers, tapping the handle. “Will you need more?”
“What?”
“Cartridges. Do you need more than seven?”
I shake my head.
He holds out his hand. “Please. The scarf.”
I give him the silk scarf and put the gun into my handbag.
“Is there anything else?”
I hesitate, looking into his kindly face, trying to think. Maybe some direction, that’s something I could use, but that’s not why he’s here.
He smiles. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”
I blink.
“Just remember, maintain your calm. And afterward, get rid of it.”
“Here?”
“No, silly girl. The Bosphorus. I don’t know how many guns that waterway has swallowed.”
“I see.”
The priest glances back again at the empty pews, then says in a high whisper, “For the victory of the world’s proletariat!”
“Of course,” I mutter, then turn to go.
The map helps. It takes me up Istiklal Caddesi to an underground train, the Tunel, which brings me down to the Galata Bridge. I cross on foot. Men line the railing clutching fishing poles. Then I’m making my way through hot, narrow streets, ignoring voices-Hello pretty lady; Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Finally, I reach Mustafa Pasa, a busy avenue choked with shops selling bronze sculptures and carpets and food.
The Sultan Inn is unassuming and run-down, not the kind of place I expect to find an officer of the Ministry for State Security. Or maybe I’m just inexperienced (which I am) and naive (which I may be). The lobby is dark, not made for the world’s tourists, but the bald desk clerk in the sweat-stained undershirt is smiling broadly at me. “Heh-low, ” he says.
I’ve already made a mistake. Walking inside only announces my presence. So I give him a confused expression and step backward across the cracked tiles. “Sorry. Wrong address.”
He shrugs as if it’s an opportunity missed.
Across the street I buy coffee from a street vendor and sip it beside a carpet shop. Passersby bump into me, and the occasional beggar demands things with open hands. It’s five o’clock, and the lowlying sun at the end of the street makes me flush.
“Madam,” says a shriveled old man. “You are lost?”
I shake my head and turn away.
“Can I be of assistance, perhaps? Show you Istanbul?”
I give him my Militia stare. The one where you momentarily separate from your body and display the full force of your scorn. “Leave me alone.”
It works as well here as it does back home-the old man moves on-but the Militia stare is only a facade. I’m having trouble focusing on the faces in the street. What would Aron do now? We’ve traveled together to Krakow and the Black Sea, and he knows how to take care of me when I stumble like this.
He would put his arm around my shoulders and guide me to a cafe where the time could settle down again. Blurred faces surge toward me, and I know that if Peter Husak comes I won’t even see him.
/>
I step into the carpet shop to catch my breath, but suddenly two salesmen are on me. “The lovely madam, so very proud we are that such a lovely madam is interested in our carpets!”
I rub my face. “No.”
“Original Turkish, handwoven. Touch!”
“A taxi,” I say. “Please. Just call a taxi for me.”
Gavra
Brano drove him back to the Metropol to retrieve his car. They rode in silence until Gavra cleared his throat. “There’s something wrong with this.”
“I know,” said Brano. “There’s a lot wrong with this.”
“Then what are you doing about it?”
Brano turned up Yalta Boulevard. “It’s best you’re kept in the dark, Gavra. I know you don’t like this, and despite what you may believe, I don’t enjoy keeping things from you. But I am working on it.”
“Tell me about Ludvik Mas.”
Brano took a breath. “He used to be like you, Gavra. Some years ago I brought him into the Ministry. He was young, intelligent, and eager to please. But he was also desperate for power. I didn’t see that; it’s my fault. Once I realized my error, it was too late. He had gone over my head-and against my orders-when he set up Room 305. This office began with the operation you’ve just heard about, a fraud around parapsychology, but has since expanded considerably. The Lieutenant General calls it ‘Disruption Services,’ because its various operations also work to disrupt capitalist countries’ internal workings. Often by funding dissident groups.”
“Like terrorists.”
Brano nodded. “Once Ludvik had set it up, under the protection of the Lieutenant General, I could do nothing to stop him.”
“So you disagree with the operation.”
“Like I said, I told him not to begin it. It’s always been my belief that the Ministry should not be involved in the haphazard murder of foreign agents. But others above me felt differently.”
He parked behind Gavra’s car and turned off the engine, then stared out the windshield at the opaque windows of the Hotel Metropol. “Gavra,” he said, “I want you to be very careful. I don’t trust that Mas won’t try something again, and you’ll be in danger. He knows as well as I do that you’re a homosexual, and for that reason he places little value on your life. He’s that kind of person.”
Gavra felt as if his chest were being squeezed. His vision was fuzzy. “You know?”
Brano surprised him by patting his knee. “Of course I know. And I knew that was no girl in your bed back in Istanbul. My only concern is that you keep such things quiet. You can’t afford to be…” He paused, as if the next word were not part of his vocabulary: “Flamboyant. It could ruin your career. Or worse.”
Gavra was at first unable to think of a reply, but then it occurred to him. “Thank you, Comrade Sev.”
Brano placed his hands on the wheel again. “It’s nothing, Gavra. Though I do suggest you avoid becoming involved with Adrian Martrich.”
“Of course.”
“But watch him. Make sure Katja stays away. This doesn’t need to spread any further than it already has.”
“Yes, comrade.” Gavra opened the door and climbed into the hot sunlight.
He returned to find Katja and Adrian in the living room, drinking cans of Zipfer beer. Katja was in a state. She was pulling at her hair, making it dirty, and when she noticed Gavra she spoke with an unfocused voice. “Okay, you can tell me now.”
“What?” Gavra asked as innocently as he could manage.
She pointed at him. “Everything.”
Adrian shrugged at his questioning glance.
She said, “I don’t appreciate being left in the dark. You’ve been meeting with a man named Peter Husak, correct?”
“I don’t know who that is,” said Gavra.
Katja stood, the beer in her hand. “Either you tell me what’s going on, or I’m walking out of here right now, and you can take care of this yourself.”
Perhaps it was Brano Sev’s half-remembered training coming back, but Gavra became hard at that moment. His jaw tensed, squaring his face. He said, “I can’t tell you. If you want to leave, then fine.”
Katja walked over to him and emptied the rest of her beer on his shirt. Before leaving, she said, “Sorry about the floor, Adrian.”
“No problem,” said Adrian.
Peter
Seven years later, with a new life, a family, a position and a new name, Peter sat at an outdoor cafe table between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, on Mimar Mehmet Aga Caddesi. He did not like Istanbul. It was unbearably hot, packed with the unwashed wretches of Islam, and the noise-what they generously called “music”-was inescapable. Even the mornings were filled with mournful muezzins who climbed their minarets and moaned wobbly prayers for the whole city to suffer through. And this was the city where, eight days ago, he’d stood in the airport waiting for a plane that would never arrive, wondering if its absence marked the end of his career.
He’d arrived badly, of course. A rough flight followed by a swarthy taxi driver who charged him three times the going rate to get to the Sultan Inn, then a hot room that opened onto the noise and stink of Mustafa Pasa, allowing him no sleep.
But his career had not ended-not yet-because he’d recovered swiftly, explaining to the Comrade Lieutenant General that the entire Rokosyn operation would be cleaned up, and soon. That was why he was here. It would be as if the operation had never existed, and the other departments of Disruption Services could continue unabated.
And the old man, always a sucker for easy solutions, only told him, Just clean it up fast. Had the Lieutenant General known what he knew about Zrinka Martrich, and how the Armenians ended up on her plane, he would have said something entirely different.
Up the street, a tablah — and-buzuq street duo made terrible sounds, and Peter felt again that all this could be dealt with, were it not for the music. That incessant, moronic percussion and those tinny, agonizing strings doing their best to remain out of tune. All in praise of fat, coin-adorned belly dancers.
The sweating man at the table with him-another fat one-no doubt loved all the chaos. That music was made for him. Like the music, this Turk lacked any trace of subtlety. After shaking Peter’s hand, he patted the table and spoke in his heavily accented English. “So you have it? The money?”
Peter admitted that he did have the money.
“I can see?”
Peter placed his elbows on the table. Beyond the shade of the cafe’s umbrellas, the unwashed throbbed, sometimes spilling in, grimy children bumping into the backs of chairs. “Not until I have my information,” said Peter.
The fat Turk frowned, then sipped his tea. He was a captain in their police force, used sometimes by this or that side of the Great Game for a nugget of information. It was perhaps the only trait that Peter shared with Captain Talip Evren: Neither had ever known the conviction of the zealot. Evren pursed his damp lips. “You like Istanbul, Comrade…?”
“I love it, Captain. And the music…what a people.” When he said this he made no expression to suggest he meant it.
Captain Evren grinned. “It is a sin…sin cere place, comrade. We are very open people. Sometime, sometime foreigners, they think we are very foolish. Stupid even. But you know in Ottoman time we are making algebra when you make fire with sticks.”
Peter leaned forward. “I don’t care what you were doing a thousand years ago. What I care about, Captain, is the reason I’m carrying two hundred Deutschmarks in my pocket right now.”
“You’re in the hurry, comrade! Why not a cup of tea?”
Peter hushed the shout before it reached his throat. Maybe it wasn’t the noise or the stink or the heat soaking his thin shirt that got to him; maybe it was simply that in Istanbul, the scene of his most complete failure, he so easily lost control of himself.
He took a breath.
He lit a cigarette.
“No, thank you, Captain. I’m not thirsty.”
The captain pointed at the cigar
ette pack on the table. “May I?”
Peter tapped one out, handed it over, and lit it for him.
Behind a cloud of smoke, the captain said, “You ask for this man.”
“That’s right.”
“According to the border record, this Adrian Martrich, he is on our Turkish soil.”
“Okay, then,” said Peter. “The hotel.”
The Turk scratched his cheek. “Well, this is not so…”
“Two hundred Deutschmarks,” said Peter. “Not a schilling more. So stop wasting my time.”
Captain Evren allowed himself a brief, admiring smile. “The Hotel Erboy, in the Sirkeci neighborhood. Ebusuud Caddesi, number 32. Check in two nights ago. Not by himself.”
“I know. What room?”
“Three-oh-five.”
Peter hesitated, never trusting coincidences. “Three hundred and five.”
“Yes.”
“And there’s no doubt about this?”
The captain shook his head. “The registration, it come yesterday. Of course, it is always possible he will have change hotel, but this very morning I call the Erboy. Is there still.” He put out the unfinished cigarette. “These are very rough for my pink lungs. You have the money?”
On his walk north toward the Golden Horn, crushed by the heat of all those bodies, he wished, as he often did, for his farmhouse. He wished for his wife, Ilza, and four-year-old Iulian, but most of all he wished for that house with its magnificent expanse of empty, rolling fields outside Baia Mare. No one in sight. It was ten in the morning, and at this moment Ilza would have driven Iulian to the village school-the only student in the village to be brought by car-and she would now be in the market, picking over vegetables still dirty from the fields. His wife was accustomed to his long absences-they both were-and she recognized that because of his absences they lived better than anyone they knew. She complained sometimes, of course, because life in the provinces could get to you, leave you longing for the kinetic life of the Capital. But he had explained it enough times. Their home was a refuge from the world. He knew more of the world than his provincial wife did, and she had to trust him when he told her that it was an unimaginably cruel and forbidding place.
He crossed the Galata Bridge lined with fishermen, rode the Tunel up the hill, and continued north to the small Union Church at the Dutch consulate. The inside was peaceful, clean like only the Dutch could pull off in this dirty city, with dark wood pews leading to a small altar. Ilza would have liked this. She was always taken in by the solemnity of religious cults. One lone tourist shared the chapel with him, a young woman reading a guidebook in a pew, no doubt escaping the heat. He ignored her and took the stairs up to the balcony, which held the chapel’s pipe organ.
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