Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

  “I saw some of their work.”

  “Oh.”

  She told me that after the massacre on Wednesday night, the only violent deaths in Sarospatak had been Tatiana Zoltenko and, on Thursday evening, Mayor Natan Pankov. I hadn’t heard.

  “It was a mob. Hundred or so people. Broke into his place up in the Castle District. Didn’t touch the wife or any of his three kids, though—I suppose that’s something—but they got hold of him and dragged him out into the street and beat him to death, then hung his body up on a lamppost so everyone could see.” She set the cups down and settled opposite me. “Some miserable stuff. But I guess it’s to be expected. No one else dead that I’ve heard of. And last night, the army officially announced it was with us.”

  “No Russians?”

  She shook her head. “Ferenc was terrified they’d show up in army uniforms and start shooting, but it didn’t happen. That guy they found before, Malevich—there’s been no sign of him since.” Magda peered into her cup. “You going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “It’s all over the news, you know. Rosta Gorski and that woman.”

  I knew there would be some report on Gorski’s shooting, but I didn’t know if they’d use my name. Then her words sank in. “What woman?”

  “The Frenchwoman. They say you shot her.”

  My hand jerked, and I spilled my tea. “Gisele Sully? Is she all right?”

  “They say you killed her.”

  “No!” The word came out involuntarily, then I had trouble breathing. “She had nothing to do with it!”

  Magda looked at the puddle of tea on the floor, then at me. She spoke calmly. “I don’t know, Emil. I’m just telling you what they said. They said you kidnapped her and tried to kill Rosta Gorski. You only got him in the leg, but on the way out you shot and killed this Sully woman.”

  I got up. My knees weren’t working right, and I nearly fell, but I used the wall to right myself and walked out the back to the screened-in porch, then through the door onto the cold, hard earth. The Capto-pril wasn’t doing its job; I could feel every one of my stiff veins. I paced for a while in the fresh darkness, my anger building, and when Magda came out, holding my coat, I could tell she was very uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t shoot her,” I said, “but I did trick her. I’m the reason she’s dead.”

  Magda didn’t speak, just handed me the coat and waited.

  I was crying again. “I used her to get into the Central Committee Building because I wanted to kill Rosta Gorski. He and his father

  VIC TOR Y SQUARE 22 3

  killed Lena.” I looked at her; she was blurry through my tears. “You understand? But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just kill the man. So I made sure Gisele was safe and I put a bullet in Gorski’s leg because I had to do something. Anything. And now“—I turned away from her steady gaze—”now she’s dead, too.”

  Lena was right—Magda was a prole. But Lena never understood what a good thing this could be. The proles of the world understand misery. They know misery because it comes to visit every day. Magda knew it had to be kicked, and kicked hard, before it would leave.

  She grabbed my shoulders. “You’re right, Emil. She’s dead because of you. You screwed up. Right?”

  I nodded like a weepy child.

  “Now cry and then get over it. Figure out what you did wrong and make sure you don’t do it again.”

  She spoke with such sternness and strength that I was almost frightened of her.

  “I’m going inside to make dinner. When you’ve figured it out, come in and eat. But I don’t want you inside until you’ve figured it out.”

  I nodded.

  “Because my family’s here. If you fuck up again, and someone I love is killed, I will kill you without hesitation. You understand?”

  I blinked at her. She meant it, and she was right to mean it. “Okay,” I said breathlessly.

  She gave me a soft pat on the cheek. “I don’t want to kill you, Emil Brod, because I love you, too. Don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”

  Then she went inside to make her family dinner.

  An hour later I was still outside, freezing, when I heard the others arrive in the coughing Militia Karpat Bernard had stolen from the station. I’d figured out my mistake, just as Magda had ordered, but didn’t come in because I had more to face. Lena’s death was also my fault. While I had killed Gisele Sully by using the poor woman to get my revenge, I had killed Lena by not taking care of Jerzy Michalec back in 1948.I could have, but the fact was that I’d never been the kind of man who could simply commit murder. It’s much more difficult than pulp novels make it out to be.

  That was my real mistake. Had I been a stronger man and killed him in 1948, there would have been no son to shoot in the leg, and Lena, Gisele, and the others from that list would still be alive.

  I heard the screen door open. Ferenc lumbered through the darkness toward me. He had a solemn expression on his face; I didn’t know if it was because of Lena or because Magda had discussed her threat to kill me.

  No. She was too much of a prole to talk about what didn’t need to be said.

  “Mag tells me this Rosta Gorski’s responsible for Lena.”

  “Him and his father.”

  “Father?”

  “Jerzy Michalec.”

  Ferenc frowned, then remembered. He’d been around that year, but we weren’t close yet, and what he knew of that case was hearsay, much of it rehashed from our nostalgic beers on his back porch.

  He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. He was going through mixed emotions—a revolt he’d put the last ten years of his life into had come to fruition, and that ecstatic joy was running head-on into Lena’s death and my depression. “Well, then,” he said, “let’s go get the bastard.” It was all he could think of to say.

  I shook my head. “You’re busy enough. Besides, I don’t want anyone else dying.”

  “Take Bernard. He’s a lousy son-in-law anyway.”

  He seemed to be smiling in the darkness, but it was hard to tell.

  “Did you ever tell Magda or Agota about him?” I said. “About those Ministry reports?”

  “No. We came to our agreement, and he stuck to it.”

  “Good.” That’s when I noticed my teeth were chattering.

  “Come inside,” said Ferenc. “It’s freezing out here.”

  Halfway through the pork Magda had baked with apples, Ferenc shook his head at what I’d been telling him. “That’s impossible. We own the town now, and the whole country looks to Patak for direction. They’re not looking to the Capital anymore.”

  “You’re being naive,” said Bernard. Sanja was propped on his knee while Agota, beside him, fed the child soft apple mush. “All you’ve seen is Patak, day after day. There’s a lot more country than that town. And they’re watching television. Television comes from the Capital.” He shrugged. “It just makes sense.”

  I didn’t want to press the point, because Ferenc was already frustrated being put in his place by his son-in-law. He poked a fork around his plate. “You think it’s true what they said in that paper?” “What did they say?”

  “That the Americans have recognized the Galicia Committee?” I nodded. “Gisele Sully believed it. I trusted her.” “Even if it’s a lie,” said Magda, “it makes no difference.” Ferenc glared at her. “Of course it makes a difference!” She smiled at her husband. “You know better than that. If they announce to a whole country that President Bush is behind them, then President Bush would look like a coward if he said he never made the phone call. Particularly after the lie encouraged France and England to follow suit.” She shook her head. “No, the Americans aren’t going to be the last ones to congratulate the revolution they’ve been pushing us to make the last forty years.”

  “The Soviets still haven’t recognized the committee,” said Agota, grinning close to Sanja’s face.

  “Of course they haven’t,” said Ferenc. “They’re tre
mbling in their boots.”

  “They’re not,” I said, then told them about the secret telegram I’d found in Romek’s house. “Pankov thought they were behind the revolution. They said they weren’t, but they also refused to help put it down.”

  That earned a collective moment of silence, as each person readjusted his position in regard to Moscow.

  After dinner, Agota took me to the guest bedroom and showed me endless black-and-white photographs she’d taken of the revolution in Sarospatak: candlelight vigils in 25 August Square; dark faces lit from below; men climbing on statues; lone fists in the air; young people on tanks and facing lines of soldiers; abandoned Kalash-nikovs on a sidewalk; blurry shots of panic during the massacre; women crying with bloodstained hands; a dead man surrounded by furious demonstrators; an empty 25 August Square, littered with lost hats, shirts, a shoe, and splashed with blood.

  Going through them was like reading a story I hadn’t been around to witness. Frozen instants from events that were defined by their very motion. They didn’t seem to do the revolution justice, but what could?

  “Here,” she said and passed over a series of large color photographs of an old, bald man in an Italian suit, sitting with one leg crossed over a knee, looking sternly, then smiling, at the camera. It was Tomiak Pankov. Those final portraits of the man are now famous and have been seen in so many newspapers that they’ve lost their effect. But that evening, seeing them for the first time, I was in shock. Unlike the kinetic shots of the revolution, these were immobile, stolid. Pankov was a statue that no amount of wind or rain could damage. He was eternal.

  I lost my breath just looking at them and had to turn the photographs facedown against the pillows. I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my face. Agota settled beside me and rubbed my back, then held on to me. She could tell I needed it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  •

  Harold and Beth showed Gavra more smiles when they left, and Beth leaned her frail body down to kiss his cheeks. Even Michalec smiled as he followed them out and locked the door. Gavra was again alone.

  Around ten in the evening, he noticed increased activity out in the corridor. His guard had been changed, and though the new one wasn’t as large as Balint, he was still a significant chunk of man. Gavra peered over his shoulder to see soldiers carrying electronic equipment in the direction of the classrooms. Microphones, video cameras, power cables. He wondered if all this was for him, for the single act of pointing a gun at an old couple and killing them.

  Whether or not the Pankovs deserved it, Gavra was still unwilling to pull the trigger. But Michalec had been right—you give a man enough time, and he stops reacting instinctively to a proposition. He has hours to turn it over in his head, examine the pros and cons, and measure the repercussions of the threat to kill his best friend.

  Gavra had met Karel Wollenchak in September of 1980, through one of his cases. Someone in Karel’s building who wanted Karel’s apartment had been meticulously fabricating evidence to suggest that he was in contact with spies from West Germany. Gavra was called in to examine the evidence and soon saw through the pitiful attempt. A year later, he had joined Karel in the apartment, which had once been owned by Karel’s grandmother.

  Though he never introduced me to his friend, I could tell when I first saw them together at my apartment that they were very close. When men make close friendships over the years, and particularly when they live together, the bond can be similar to that of a romantic relationship. Your friend becomes your other half; you begin to share weaknesses and strengths; you suddenly can’t imagine your life without the other person.

  That’s what Gavra felt as he considered the possibility that Karel would be murdered if he didn’t go through with the executions.

  I go into all of this because it’s vital that people understand why Gavra Noukas did what he did. He was not serving the interests of Jerzy Michalec, Rosta Gorski, or the Galicia Revolutionary Committee. What he ended up doing, he did for his own reasons, and for the good of others.

  But he still wasn’t convinced. Weighing the fate of his closest friend against the fate of the country was not enough to set his mind in any one direction. He needed to know more. He needed to see, hear, and feel more to decide what to do. Jerzy Michalec knew this.

  That’s why, at midnight, as the racket in the corridor reached its peak and he heard the faint beat of helicopter blades outside, the new guard opened his door, and Michalec stepped in.

  “Come on, Gavra.” He held out a hand, waving to lead him on. “There’s something I want you to see.”

  24 DECEMBER 1989

  SUNDAY

  •

  TWENTY-FIVE

  •

  He led Gavra down the corridor, which by now had become oneway. Everyone rushing with files, papers, and cameras followed the same path toward the classrooms.

  “You only want me to see something?” said Gavra.

  “For now, yes. By the way, you’ll be happy to know Karel’s doing fine. He’s agitated, for sure. Keeps asking where you are. But he’s safe, has a soft bed and food.”

  “Where? Here?”

  “An apartment. Somewhere.”

  Gavra imagined a cramped tenement bedroom, Karel terrified, sitting on the edge of a bed, while in the living room a man cleaned his pistol and watched television, waiting for a phone call.

  “But all isn’t roses,” said Michalec, his tone suddenly changing. “Seems your friend Emil Brod has shot my son.”

  Gavra stopped and stared at him. “Is he dead?”

  Michalec shook his head. “Not a fatal shot. He’ll be fine, though he’ll probably walk with a limp the rest of his life.” He paused. “Any idea where Brod is now? We’re having a hell of a time tracking him down.”

  It pleased him that I’d put a bullet in Rosta Gorski. “I’m surprised he didn’t kill your son. The man’s responsible for Lena’s death.”

  Michalec waved him on and, before they reached the room, admitted that he was surprised as well. “But it turns out Brod goes in for theater. He told Rosta that the bullet was part of a message. The message is that he’s going to come after me. And kill me. Think I should be scared?”

  “I think you should be very scared.”

  “Thought you’d say that.” Michalec winked and placed a hand on Gavra’s shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

  This classroom was larger than the others, probably for meetings where the entire barracks needed to listen. The walls were yellow and hadn’t been washed in some time, and on the ceiling two incandescent bulbs flickered. There were no children’s desks here, just rows of metal folding chairs where people—some in uniform, some not—were settling down and chatting in a steady murmur. The chairs faced the end of the long room where three tables were set up, each with a single microphone. The table against the back wall had three empty chairs. The one against the left wall had two chairs, and opposite, against the right wall, was another table with two chairs. In these chairs sat Tomiak and Ilona Pankov, a Kalashnikov-toting guard on either side.

  “It’s a trial,” Gavra said involuntarily.

  “There’s a new thing called due process,” whispered Michalec, guiding him to a chair in the back. “It’s all the rage in America.”

  Ilona Pankov, wrapped in a fur coat with a white babushka over her hair, looked cold in this unheated room. Her nose was red, and she clutched a handkerchief against her hollow cheek, sometimes rubbing her nostrils. Tomiak Pankov, in the greatcoat that was a few sizes too large, didn’t seem to mind the cold. He sat stiffly in his chair, arms folded over his chest, looking around. He sometimes leaned over to whisper to Ilona, who nodded vigorously and followed the finger he used to point out people he recognized. Their disgusted expressions made no attempt to hide their feelings.

  Against the two side walls a few soldiers stood with wheeled metal racks holding recording equipment connected to two video cameras on tripods. The cameras each faced the side table against the opposit
e wall. There was no camera pointing at the table against the rear wall, presumably the bench.

  The front row of chairs was filled with a mix of young people and the senior citizens he’d seen earlier. Beth and Harold were among them, whispering excitedly. Some sat straight and stared bitterly at the Pankovs.

  Suddenly, Pankov stood and pointed across to the door, shouting, “Traitor!”

  Gavra turned; it was Andras Todescu. The ex-presidential advisor reddened, then quickly came over to Michalec, crouching to the old man’s ear. “They’re ready,” Todescu whispered.

  “Good,” said Michalec. “Send them in. I’m sick of waiting.”

  Todescu left again. Up front, Pankov was shaking his guard’s hand off his shoulder and sitting down on his own.

  Behind Gavra, three officers—two colonels and a lieutenant general—entered and walked around the edge of the chairs toward the table at the end of the room. A soldier switched on the video camera that faced the Pankovs. The couple whispered animatedly, shaking their heads, but the crowd was silent, watching the men approach the bench and stand behind their chairs. The lieutenant general, in the center, spoke, his voice sounding strained and awkward. “I call this session of the trial of Tomiak and Ilona Pankov to order.” Then he patted his damp forehead with the back of his hand. The man was terrified.

  Before the lieutenant general could continue, Tomiak Pankov leaned forward and spoke loudly. “I only recognize the Grand National Assembly. I will only speak in front of it.” He planted his fist on the table to punctuate his statement, and Gavra could see his wife rubbing his knee under the table in encouragement.

  Pankov was ignored.

  A young man in the front row stood, shaking his head, and turned to look at the audience. He wore an elegant Western suit and held an open notepad. “In the same way he refused to hold a dialogue with the people,” he said, glancing at his notes, “now he also refuses to speak with us.”

  It all sounded very rehearsed to Gavra.