Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

  Halfway there, he spotted his blond shadow standing beside the dark entrance to Spencer’s Gifts, drinking from a large paper cup of Coca-Cola.

  The shadow was staring back at him.

  Despite the lessons that Brano Sev had hammered into him during his two-year apprenticeship a decade and a half ago, when he met those eyes, the panic hit him hard. Rationally, he knew that if this man wanted to kill him, he would have tried it back at the motel, but Gavra couldn’t hold on to the numbers anymore.

  An old woman bumped into him, then went around, muttering something. The shadow lowered his drink and smiled. Then the panic became solid, because Gavra could see his position here with complete clarity. He was in a foreign, enemy country with false papers, and there was a dead man in his room.

  Gavra turned and walked quickly away.

  He followed bathroom signs into a white corridor and entered the door marked with an abstracted male figure. He ignored the men lined at the urinals and closed himself in a vacant stall, then squatted, feet on the toilet seat, and tried to catch his breath. He took out his pistol.

  Fifteen minutes later, his knees felt like sacks of stone. He tensed when an old man came in, taking the stall beside his, then again when a father and son entered and went to pee together, but he didn’t move. He knew that, whatever orders the shadow was working under, he would inevitably have to come in here.

  It was a momentary advantage, but he had trouble visualizing how to utilize it. The numbers were a mess. All he could do was wait for a sign that the man was out there. A voice, a cocked pistol, or someone opening the stalls one at a time.

  What he got was water running, then the explosion of a door kicked open.

  But it wasn’t his door. The old man in the next stall screamed in pain as the kicked door struck his knees.

  Gavra leapt off the toilet, ripped open the door, and pressed his pistol against the base of the shadow’s neck. His hand still shook, but he could visualize it all now. “Drop the gun and kick it away,” he said in English.

  The young man did so, kicking a compact Bren Ten over to the sinks, shaking his head in disgust.

  When Gavra told him to step back to the vacant urinals, the old man in the stall whimpered. Gavra picked up the Bren Ten and, through the door, told the old man to stay where he was. “This will take a few minutes. Then we’ll go. Keep your door closed.”

  He heard a grunt as the old man pushed on his broken door.

  His shadow seemed strangely unconcerned by this turn of events. Gavra switched to his own language. “Documents.”

  The blond man smiled, hands at shoulder height, and said, “I don’t speak Swahili, partner.”

  It was the voice from Lebed Putonski’s telephone. Possibly CIA, or a Ministry agent who did a good impersonation of an American. Gavra repeated his demand in English and watched the man reach slowly into his blazer and take out a brown leather wallet. He handed it over.

  “And you were sent by … ?” Gavra asked as he used a thumb to open the wallet. “Well?”

  The man shook his head.

  Gavra found a Virginia driver’s license with a picture of this man, the same passivity, beside the name, FRANK JONES.

  “Tell me why you killed Putonski, Frank.”

  Jones blinked, as if the question were unexpected. “I’m a simple man. I follow my orders.”

  “Who gives the orders?”

  Jones grinned. “That’s rich, Comrade Lukacs.”

  At least the man didn’t know Gavra’s real name.

  The bathroom door opened, and a fat man stepped in. They looked at him as he registered the pistol in Gavra’s hand. He fled.

  Gavra took Jones by the elbow and stood close behind him, the pistol in the small of the shadow’s back—the same way, earlier that day, he’d walked Lebed Putonski out of Clover Hill High School.

  Lets go.

  Gavra pulled open the door, and they slowly entered the white corridor. The Muzak returned, and voices from the mall rolled toward them. When they reached the packed line of stores, shoppers jostled into them. Gavra kept his pistol up under Jones’s jacket.

  “It’s impossible,” said Frank Jones.

  Gavra’s eyes swept the mall, watching for security guards. “It’s possible.”

  But as he spoke, Jones raised his arms high above his head, and that’s when Gavra realized he was right.

  “You can’t shoot me, not here. You’ll be caught before you reach the doors. They run your name, and they’ll find a dead man in your motel. Killed with the gun in your pocket.” He turned to face Gavra, hands still up. He had the ecstatic pride of youth in his smile. “Go on, Comrade Lukacs. Get the hell out of here.”

  Around them, oblivious Americans cooed at shop windows.

  “Look behind you,” he added.

  Through the crowd, by the corridor to the bathrooms, the fat man stood with the still-trembling old man and two burly security guards. The fat man was pointing directly at Gavra. The guards started to work their way through the shoppers.

  “Good luck,” said Jones.

  Gavra ran.

  21 DECEMBER 1989

  THURSDAY

  •

  SIX

  •

  Lena kept me up most of the night, shifting and turning in our bed, sometimes saying, “Emil? You awake?” I played dead until the alarm buzzed at six thirty. She was finally deep in sleep, but I got up. After forty years of rising at the same hour, I doubted I’d ever be able to sleep late again. And it says something that this was the thought that first came to me that morning. I didn’t want to think about revolutions, massacres, or even a dead lieutenant general. All I wanted was a little quiet, a little simplicity, and a peaceful retirement party the following night—and even that, I didn’t give a damn about.

  Only while waiting in vain for the hot water, then suffering through a cold shower, did I remember what I had promised Agota I would do. It would have to wait until the post office opened at eight thirty; I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  The roads were empty for that hour. I was used to swerving around Gypsy families who came into town to search through trash before the Militia arrived to send them away. That should have told me something, but without caffeine I still couldn’t think straight. Instead, I focused on a pitiful papier-mache St. Nicholas in a shoe store window, knowing that, behind the Christmas sculpture, the store was empty. I wondered why the shopkeeper even bothered.

  The night crew at the Militia station was getting ready to leave,and when they saw me come in, they nodded their acknowledgment. “Any coffee?” I asked.

  Tamas, a young recruit, was putting on his coat. “None in the station.”

  “None at all?”

  He shook his head regretfully, then yawned.

  “I’ve got some in my desk,” I admitted. “I’m willing to share.”

  But Tamas didn’t have time for it. He, like the others, wanted to get home to his family. I stopped him at the door. “Anything last night?”

  “It’s all on the form,” he said, then unlatched himself from my grip and was gone.

  The night form listed calls made over the previous eight hours. There were nine, ranging from simple disturbances—a neighbor’s music was too loud—to someone insisting that she had heard tanks moving in the street. I scribbled down her number and took it up to the homicide office, where someone had left a couple of copies of the morning’s Spark. I didn’t read it. Not yet. Instead, I dialed the number.

  A groggy male voice picked up. “What?”

  “This is Chief Emil Brod of the People’s Militia. Did you call last night?”

  “My wife, comrade.” He was suddenly awake. “No, it’s nothing. Sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s all right. But is it true?”

  “Who knows? She said she heard it, but I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I used the percolator and my stash of acorn coffee in the empty lounge.
When, a couple of years ago, the stores began replacing real coffee with this sludge, I suffered flashbacks of those desperate years just after the war. Acorn coffee, for me, was the irrefutable evidence that we were sliding in the wrong direction. Ration cards and petrol rationing were one thing, but when you couldn’t get a cup of real coffee anymore, that was a sure sign that everything was collapsing.

  Now, people were being shot in the streets.

  As the coffee brewed, I read The Spark’s interpretation of last night. It was, not surprisingly, buried on page eight, under a lengthy profile of our most famous ice-skater, Ingrid Tolopov.

  PATAK MOB KILLS 6

  A riot broke out in Sarospatak’s main square last night

  when a mob organized by foreign elements threw stones at

  members of the People’s Militia.

  Six hooligans were killed when militiamen were forced

  to defend themselves.

  Comrade Mayor Natan Pankov said that he has been

  dealing with German, Hungarian, and Yugoslav reactionaries

  in Sarospatak over the previous month. “This is an attack

  on all of us,” he said.

  “It’s no secret that the counterrevolutionary uprisings

  destroying the socialist frameworks of our fraternal countries

  have been making great efforts here.”

  A Militia corporal said, “I saw Hungarians breaking

  shop windows.”

  In an effort to protect his citizens, Comrade Mayor

  Pankov has instituted martial law.

  There were no surprises here: no mention of why the crowd was there in the first place; blaming foreigners; and quoting Comrade Mayor Natan Pankov, Tomiak Pankov’s son.

  I threw the paper into a wastebasket and brought my cup back to the office, taking yesterday’s day-end report from Katja’s desk. I took a sip of the wretched coffee and tried to focus on the homicide investigation she’d been working on.

  Dusan Volan was a seventy-year-old retired judge who had been found Sunday night by the high stone wall that encircled his Thirteenth District estate. A photograph showed how he had fallen, a face-down lump on the grass, and that the bullet had entered his skull through the back. A 9mm.

  The ballistics report told me that the bullet that killed the judge was shot from an ASP pistol. I’d never heard of it.

  ASP: 9x19 mm, 7 rounds. Length: 173 mm. Developed by

  American gunsmith Paris Theodore in 1970s. Designed for

  concealment—i.e., clandestine work. Only 300 on the open

  market, in USA, the rest supposedly produced for CIA.

  It went on, going into the gun’s special snag-proof design, which made it impossible to catch on clothing, the American company that produced it, and the fact that it was last known to be manufactured in 1983. The ballistics specialist added a handwritten side note. Just dumb luck I know this—we’ve got 1 ASP, from a dead American 5 years ago.

  My phone rang, and when I picked it up the line was fuzzy, long distance. “Emil?” said a familiar voice.

  “Gavra? Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Zagreb,” he lied. “How’s the Kolev report coming?”

  “It’s not simple.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.” I told him about the heroin and then heard some voice on his side, a woman over a loudspeaker—she was announcing a flight in English. I didn’t bother asking about that.

  There was a rush of static, then he said, “Take down this name: Lebed Putonski.”

  I wrote it down as, through my open door, I saw Katja arriving. She smiled at me but looked tired, and I nodded back. I lowered my voice to a whisper: “Who’s Lebed Putonski?”

  “Ex-Ministry. Also murdered. I should be home by tonight, but can you pull his file?”

  “Is it connected to Kolev?”

  “Yes, Emil. Undoubtedly.”

  As I hung up, Katja sniffed the air in my office. Her short-cropped blond hair looked disheveled, and her makeup seemed a little off. “Where’s the coffee?”

  “Lounge.”

  She grabbed her cup from her desk but paused at the door. She looked back at me. “Where’s Berni?”

  “Out of town,” I said. “Just you and me.”

  “Oh.” She frowned theatrically before continuing to the corridor.

  I called Central Archives. A tired woman answered, saying, “Records.”

  “I need a file sent over. Name’s Lebed Putonski.”

  I started to spell it out, but she interrupted. “You’ll have to fill out the form, Comrade Chief. You know that.”

  What I knew was that going through proper channels would take a week. “I don’t have time. Please, just check. I’ll make it worth your trouble.”

  “You will, huh?”

  “How’s your coffee ration?”

  She hummed into the phone. “How much’ve you got?”

  “Two kilos,” I said. “I’ll give it to the courier.”

  When I hung up, Katja threw herself into the chair that faced my desk, placed an ankle on a knee, and sipped her steaming coffee. She was my most astute detective, as well as the first woman in homicide. Lena often accused me—not without justification—of having a crush on her.

  I tapped her day-end report. “How’s this coming?”

  She shook her head. “Not well. The wife got hysterical when I asked her questions. I might have been wrong.”

  “How?”

  “I thought she’d killed her husband.” Katja rocked her head. “He’d been keeping two mistresses for years. But to be honest, I don’t think she gave a damn. I was planning to visit her again today…” She trailed off. “You want to come?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s wait a while. I’m expecting a call.”

  “No hurry.” She rubbed her ear with her buffed but unpainted fingernails. She had small hands with smooth, pale skin; they were very pretty. “Any more news from Patak?”

  I blinked, then shook my head, that anxiety coming back.

  “I heard sixteen dead.”

  I didn’t bother saying I’d heard thirty. “Any family there?”

  “No. You?”

  “Agota and Bernard are in Tisakarad, but I’ll bet Ferenc has dragged them over there by now.”

  We let that sit between us, because even though this was our space, neither of us knew for sure how well Gavra Noukas did his job, which was in part to keep an eye on us, and measure our political morality. It was always possible he’d bugged the place.

  So she changed the subject. “What’s going on with Yuri Kolev?”

  “Poisoned. And I don’t have any tenable leads.”

  Then Katja put into words something that had been nagging at me. “It seems odd, though. Two men, Volan and Kolev, one retired and the other ready to retire. Killed a few days apart.”

  “By that logic, I’m next,” I said, smiling.

  “Watch out, Chief.”

  My phone rang, but she made no move to leave. I picked it up. “Yes?”

  “This is Records,” said the woman.

  “Will you be drinking coffee today?”

  She sighed loudly. “Just send one kilo for my effort.”

  “Nothing?”

  “The file on Lebed Putonski was signed out two weeks ago and not returned.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “If you knew me, Comrade Chief, you’d know how unlikely that was. The file should’ve been returned after three days.”

  “If you can tell me who signed it out, you’ll get both kilos.”

  “I’m not supposed to do that, you know.”

  “Three kilos.” I didn’t have three kilos, but I was retiring. This would be my last bribe as a militiaman. Katja stared at me over the rim of her cup.

  “You win. Name’s Rosta Gorski.”

  I asked her to spell it, then scribbled it in my notepad. “What else di
d he sign out?”

  She hummed. “Don’t tell me you have more coffee?”

  “You need stockings?” I could take a couple of pairs from Lena if necessary.

  “Hold on.”

  I heard her set down the phone. Katja mouthed, What’s going on?

  I shook my head and waved her out, but, like Lena, she wasn’t the kind of woman to be shooed off. She read what I’d written. “Gorski?”

  I put a finger to my lips as the clerk returned. “Got a pen?”

  “Shoot.”

  “One Militia case file, number 10-3283-48.”

  As I wrote the number in my notepad, my hand went cold. I knew that case intimately. “Go on.”

  “And a bunch of personnel files. Names: Volan, Dusan. Sev, Brano … hey.”

  My heart was palpitating, and my hand was damp. “What?”

  “Youre here. Brod, Emil.”

  For an instant I couldn’t speak. Katja, seeing my face, stood instinctively. I wrote one word—me—and said, “Go on.”

  The clerk noticed my tone; when she continued, it was in a whisper. “Michalec, Jerzy, and Zoltenko, Tatiana. And that Putonski one. You got them all?”

  I looked at the list. “Who gave Gorski the authority to walk out with all these files?”

  “A minute.”

  She set the phone down again, and I heard papers being shifted and flipped through. Katja was in her seat again but leaning forward to read the names. Brano Sev, she mouthed, a look of terror on her face.

  “Comrade Chief Brod?” I heard—but it wasn’t the clerk. It was a man.

  “Yes?”

  “Comrade Chief, you know the regulations. As much as we respect your tenure, I’m afraid you’ll have to go through proper channels for your information.”

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Chief Administrator Zoran Aspitan.”

  “Comrade Aspitan,” I said, making no effort to hide my annoyance, “you’re obstructing a murder investigation, which comes under the direct supervision of Comrade Colonel Nikolai Romek of the Ministry for State Security. Do you understand what I’m saying?”