Adrian didn’t.
He’d chosen it because the window was half down. “Don’t you have a car out front?” asked Adrian.
“Get in,” said Gavra.
He made quick work of the wires beneath the steering wheel, and soon they were moving through the dark streets. Once they reached the highway out of town, Adrian said, “Where?”
“Airport,” Gavra muttered.
“Where?”
Gavra looked at him then, as if only now aware he wasn’t alone in the car. “Sorry, it’s important we leave the country. I’ll explain later.”
“We’re going to Istanbul, aren’t we?”
Gavra slowed a little, peering over at him again. “How did you know that?”
Adrian shrugged. “She said you’d take me there.”
“She did?”
“She told me lots of things, Gavra. My sister was always right. Always.”
Katja
At five in the morning, Istvan’s snores wake me. I remain in bed, though, remembering what he said about the idle simplicity of pessimists. He’s right. For the past seven years I’ve let one incident paralyze me. That moment in Victory Park, the sharp cramp of that blade sinking into organs that were made to produce babies, waking up screaming in the Unity Medical emergency ward. Just one night. Years later, I married, but only because Aron Drdova did all the work. I’ve never really been involved in the marriage, instead standing off to the side with my arms crossed, waiting for its inevitable end. But this is not news-it’s something I’ve known but chosen to ignore as I’ve watched my husband, with his seemingly endless naive enthusiasm, labor for three years to keep us afloat, to make us into a family. Now he wants what I can’t give him-a child-and that makes it all that much worse, because I’ve never told him why a child is out of the question. He’s touched the scar and asked, but I’ve only given him angry silence.
As I quietly dress in the bathroom, I begin to wonder if this will change anything. After I’ve done what I’ve come here to do, will it make any difference to my marriage?
Probably not-but there, again, I’m doing what Istvan accused me of: I’m denying responsibility.
He’s still snoring when I get my handbag from the bedside table. It’s heavy. I don’t look back when I leave; I just go.
The gun in my bag makes me self-conscious in the early-morning crowd as I take the Tunel south to the Galata Bridge. Dark men catch my eye, a few even speak, and after a while they begin to look the same, as if any of them could be the man I slept with last night-the man whose name escapes me for a moment. He’s not the first one-night stand I’ve had since taking my vows to Aron, and probably won’t be the last.
No.
On the Galata I smile, because that, again, is the pessimist trap. As things have been, so they will remain. What bullshit.
I’m at the Hotel Erboy by seven, where there’s one other person in the lobby. A teenage boy reading a newspaper. The Cyrillic letters on the front confuse me a moment, then I realize it’s Pravda, PAB A.
For a while-I’m not sure how long, because time has again become strange-I sit in the high-ceilinged lobby, hands on the bag in my lap, looking past him to the elevator in the corner that sometimes spills guests who turn left and descend stairs to the restaurant.
The teenager smiles at me as he turns the page.
I go to the front desk, take a complimentary Herald Tribune from a pile, and return to my seat. My English is terrible, and I mostly look at pictures as the sound of morning prayers bleed through the windows.
A wall clock tells me it’s a little before eight when I come across the story beneath the face of a fat Turkish man. The story itself, which I translate with great effort, interests me now less than it should. Investigators admit to still being unsure about the cause of the explosion that downed Turkish Airlines Flight 54 just over a week ago, in the early hours of Wednesday, April 23, killing all 68 passengers and crew. “That it was a bomb placed by the Army of the Liberation of Armenia, we know, but whether its explosion was on purpose or the result of bad wiring is still being investigated,” said Istanbul police captain Talip Evren at a press conference Thursday morning.
At that point I stop reading, because the man known as Ludvik Mas is exiting the elevator and descending to the restaurant. It’s time for his complimentary breakfast.
Peter
Sitting over his sparse continental breakfast, Peter found himself dreaming of the afternoon flight home. Only a few hours to go. He had lain in bed last night, uncomfortable, wanting only to proceed to the room with his hunting knife and take care of that Martrich queer as soon as possible. But he had to wait. The flight left at eleven, and he would have to do the job just beforehand, to assure that no one alerted the border guards and kept him in this miserable city.
An hour ago, Brano Sev had called to explain that, despite his best efforts, he had found no record of another agent who would have used the Dutch chapel pistol. But he assured Peter that he would continue his investigations until he’d uncovered the culprit.
“You don’t really care,” Peter said.
“Excuse me, Comrade Mas?”
“Come on, Brano. You’ve never forgiven me for going over your head with Room 305.”
Brano sighed. “I don’t hold grudges.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Comrade Sev.”
“I still feel, however, that the project was never of any political value. I think its history has proven that.”
Peter grunted. He was so far from being Brano’s protege, and it had been such a long time since he’d had to listen to the old man’s antiquated ideals. “Brano, the political died in 1968 in Prague. Since then, socialism has become entirely personal. Room 305 may have had no political benefits, but it certainly had personal benefits.”
“Like your career.”
“For example.”
“Good day.”
“Good day, Comrade Sev.”
Over breakfast he remembered that other meeting in 1972, a week after Brano’s refusal to consider his plan. Peter had gone straight to the Comrade Lieutenant General and received an enthusiastic response. The next day, Brano cornered him in the Yalta lobby. Remember what I told you, Ludvik. Mushroom clouds on the horizon. Some of us don’t actually want that.
Over time their relationship had thawed again, each going about his own work, until Brano’s new protege, that Gavra Noukas, stuck his nose into the great debacle that was Zrinka Martrich.
They’d brought her to the clinic-not in Rokosyn, because that complex had already been destroyed, but a warehouse outside of Uzhorod-and treated her the same way they treated all the other delusionals they’d collected from around the country. Food, guarded walks in the fenced grounds, and sleep. The only plan was to keep them alive.
She was prettier than most-all the Ministry guards noticed this-and very even-tempered. She caused no trouble and, until a year into her stay, didn’t even bother to speak with her guards. When she did, it was to Petrov, an old Ministry hand nearing retirement, who tried to take her by force in the interview room.
Neither knew they were being recorded by a video camera Peter had recently had installed, but when Petrov stepped out into the corridor and placed his Walther PP against his own teeth and pulled the trigger, Peter demanded to see the tape.
Petrov’s recorded voice was not unlike his own back in 1968, when he cornered the fiancee of the man he had killed in Prague, but Zrinka’s reaction was entirely different from Katja Uher’s. When Zrinka pushed him back, she spoke calmly, just a few words about Petrov’s son, Sasha.
Sasha will never understand, but the rest of the world does. The rest of the world knows.
And Petrov went quiet. He walked into the corridor and closed the door. Zrinka crossed her arms…as if waiting. When the gunshot sounded, muffled by the door, she didn’t even jump.
They began the first actual tests the clinic had ever run. Zrinka would not perform for them, so Peter sent in another guard, Dubi, whom th
ey rushed to stop before he cut his own throat with a knife. Dubi spent the next week in a hospital bed, sedated, until finally making it to the window and throwing himself out.
Zrinka Martrich would perform, but only by force.
That was when Peter looked into her file and learned of a brother living in the Capital.
It was simple extortion. If she would go along with a test run on a Swedish Interpol official they wanted dead, then her brother could live. He smiled at her across the interview room’s table.
Stay away from my brother.
Only you can save him now.
You’re a true shit. That’s plain as day.
Such language!
She paused. Why do you want the man dead?
That’s our business.
She squinted a moment, her bloodshot eyes focused beyond him, then relaxed. He’s investigating something, isn’t he? The funding of terrorists. Yes. By our government. By you.
Peter almost dropped to the floor right there. This woman terrified him, but he got control of himself, climbed to his feet, and left.
Zrinka spent the next two days in her room considering the plan. On the video, she appeared to be sleeping most of the time. She ignored her food. Then, finally, she sat up straight and called for him.
What happens after I’ve done it?
Your brother will be allowed to live in peace.
She nodded. And me?
We’ll see then.
To Peter’s surprise, she agreed. Then she said, Would you like to know about an impending terrorist attack?
He didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
There is a group of Turkish Armenians, led by a man named Norair Tigran in Istanbul, who are planning to hijack a plane from our country. They haven’t yet decided what plane, or when, but there’s one person they’ll listen to. Wilhelm Adler.
That, finally, was enough to force him down into a chair. How do you know about Adler?
I know lots of things, Peter Husak.
He stood again, deeply frightened now, and backed out of the room.
“More?” asked a white-smocked woman with an aluminum teapot.
He watched her pour, then brought the cup to his lips.
From what they’d been able to learn, Zrinka Martrich controlled people not only by the words she spoke but also by the tone of her voice, which was why Peter went through the files of handicapped Ministry thugs and found Adam, a deaf ex-boxer from Krosno, who was told nothing of what would happen on the plane.
Only now was it evident that the bitch had been manipulating him all along. She had told him about the Armenians because she-somehow-knew that he would alter his plan. While she would still be sent to kill the Swede, she would have an additional, surprise task. She knew this. She knew he would call Wilhelm Adler to tell the Armenians to hijack the plane she would be taking to Istanbul. She knew he would supply them with explosives. And she knew that Peter believed that, placed in the middle of such a debacle, she would use her abilities to solve the problem.
He could not explain the how of her abilities. He only knew that she had been smarter than him. She had talked him into arranging her suicide.
At the time, though, he’d only been amazed by his good fortune.
Then, a fireball over Bulgaria.
But why? While Zrinka Martrich certainly had the ability to bring down the plane, he doubted she would kill sixty-eight people simply in order to undermine Peter’s career. If she really wanted to get at him, she would have convinced the terrorists to fly to the West, and then she’d be free. Then again, she knew that if she did that, he would kill her brother, Adrian. She couldn’t have known that he would kill him anyway.
Yet if she knew so many other things, how could she not know this?
He’d considered at first that Brano Sev was behind the explosion, but even Brano would not have gone so far. Theirs was not yet a war of attrition.
Despite everything, it had been a good run. Three years of a perfectly oiled trap that lured enemy agents into their territory and then crushed them. Unlike Romania or Poland, theirs was a country that the West would think twice about before invading with intelligence agents.
And he still had his career. Room 305 by now had multiple departments controlling many types of disruption services; there was plenty of work for him to return to. This particular department, dealing with Rokosyn, would be quietly covered up, the last remaining threads disposed of, and he could go on to the next project. Or he could take a well-earned vacation, take Ilza and Iulian to the Black Sea. They’d spent too long in the cloistered world he’d built for them; it was time to show them around.
As he climbed the stairs to the lobby and took the vibrating elevator back up to his room, he again thought through the mechanism of Adrian Martrich’s death. It was simple. In a few hours, the desk clerk would call up to their room and say that a package was being delivered for Gavra Noukas and needed to be signed for. A package from Brano Sev. While Gavra was downstairs, looking for the absent deliveryman, Peter would be upstairs. Gavra would return to a dead lover.
Peter stepped out of the elevator and unlocked his door, glancing once up the empty corridor, then went inside. As he packed his bag, he began humming unconsciously, then realized what it was. Mozart’s “Turkish Rondo.” He even laughed to himself. A bit of Mozart to see him off.
From the side pocket of his suitcase he took out the hunting knife, which he’d kept sharp over the years. He’d used it twice in the last three years, to dispose of a French agent and an American one. Now, when he looked at it, he could hardly remember the young private he’d taken it from.
What he did remember clearly, and could never forget, was the lesson of that night. He’d felt the unarticulated knowledge on the long train ride from Prague to the Capital, felt it again after that final night with the girl, but only during that week answering Brano Sev’s questions did the words gather and give voice to the most important lesson he would ever learn: The first step to complete independence, the first step to asserting your free will, is to seek out and bring to light all your own darkest secrets. You must act on your bleakest impulses before true freedom becomes yours, before you can take control of your life.
Sometimes he considered writing this down.
There was a knock at the door. Instinctively, he slipped the knife under the wardrobe, where he kept his money, then stepped over to the door.
“Yes?”
“Sir, for you a letter,” a woman said in difficult English.
“Slip it under.”
The woman paused, then said, “Is big. Is too big, sir.”
“Okay. Just a second.” He turned the lock, then opened the door.
The woman looking back at him was not Turkish. She was white, attractive despite the heavy, sleep-deprived eyes, and familiar. But from where? He reached to accept the letter, staring into those eyes, but there was no letter at all.
Katja
I shoot him once in the stomach when he opens the door. A sharp explosion rings in my ears. The recoil goes through to my elbow, jerking it. He stumbles back a few feet, then falls as if he’s slipped on a banana peel.
Really, that’s how it looks.
Lying on the floor, he covers the hole in his stomach with a hand, but the blood comes out between his fingers. His face-up close it’s older than I remember; it’s been through things-is contorted, his lips loose and flapping with his quick, stunned breaths.
That’s when my head clears. Cordite burns in my nostrils as I check the empty corridor, then come inside and close the door. He tries to cry for help, but he can’t get enough breath for anything more than quiet groans and the occasional whisper.
“What?” I say, standing over him. “Did you say something?”
It’s difficult to read that twisted face. There’s pain, but it seems to be masking something. Surprise, perhaps.
He whispers, “What do you want?”
It’s just like the voice on the
recording, just like the voice I remember.
But he’s asked me a question, and I’m not sure what I want. A part of me wonders if I’m done now, if seven years have led to that one bullet, and perhaps I should just leave.
He coughs, shooting pink spittle across the beige carpet.
I open his suitcase on the bed. Nothing except clothes.
“Money,” he whispers.
I come around to look at him. “Money?”
His eyes are very large. Blood drains from the corner of his lips as he says, “Wardrobe…under.” Then: “Hospital.”
I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ve shot a man in the stomach, but there’s a hysterical lightness to my step as I hop over him to look beneath the wardrobe. This lightness will leave me, I know, but now I’m almost giddy. Crouching, I find a plastic bag filled with Deutschmarks and, beside it, a hunting knife.
Only when I pick it up and look at the hawk burned into its leather sheath does the adrenaline lessen. The dying man is now trying to roll onto his side.
“Hospital,” he whispers.
Time slows again as I remember this knife, the hilt that I saw coming out of my stomach. Stanislav’s knife, the one his father, weeping, presented him before he was shipped off to Prague. I was there to see the exchange. So were my mother and father. We all drank plum brandy.
“I have family,” he whispers.
I crawl over to him because my legs are not working well. He’s rolled to his side in the pool of his blood. I’m in that pool myself, my forearms sticky.
As if he can understand, I say, “Maybe it’s too simple, but yes, I blame you for everything.”
He blinks and whispers: “Who…are…you?”
I don’t understand, because it’s an impossible question. He must know me. How could I carry his face with me for seven years and he justI unsheathe the knife.
“No,” he whispers, his confused eyes growing again.
I climb behind him, place the point against his Adam’s apple and my knee behind his head. He tries to swat it with his hands, but his arms won’t rise that far.
Just before I push it in, he says the word that will remain with me for some time to come, in that whispered, dying tone.
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