Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

  At about eight in the evening, we stopped outside Tarvis, or, to the Italians, Tarvisio. Austrian guards walked leisurely down the corridor, coming upon us first because we were at the end of the train. The Americans grinned as a chubby guard stamped their passports, and I handed over my fresh Austrian one. He gripped the stamp in his fist and stared a moment at the passport. I didn’t know if it was real or not—Brano hadn’t told me either way—and when he closed it again without stamping it, I was sure it was a forgery, a lousy one. He gave me a brief, severe smile and nodded down the corridor. “Please, come with me.”

  The Americans gazed in confusion as I got up and followed him out.

  It was snowing here, the winds from the Julian Alps bearing down on us as we crossed the platform. I started to tell him that I was a police officer working on a case but realized there was no point. By the door to a quaint-looking office building, my guard whispered to the ranking officer, a fat man with a white mustache. This, I supposed, was the man who would end my journey. He looked me over a moment as I stared through heavy, wet snowflakes at the train—no, no one was getting off. He held up my passport and told me to come inside.

  The office was overheated and stank of burned coffee—but real coffee. He looked through the mess on his desk and picked up a telegram.

  He noticed me sniffing. “Get yourself a cup,” he told me. Then he picked up the telephone and dialed. I poured the coffee and drank it black—it was scalded, but I needed it. I almost unzipped my coat, then remembered the heavy pistol and decided against it.

  After a moment, the officer said, “Hello? Yes, this is Major Karloff Brentswinger. Yes, Tarvis. I was told to call this number when an Emil Brod reached the border. Yes. Danke.”

  He covered the mouthpiece as I sipped the dreadful coffee and said, “He’s not in the office. They’re transferring me.”

  “Who?”

  He seemed surprised I didn’t know this, but he was only too aware of the limitations of his job in this snowy outpost, so he didn’t answer. I drank my coffee quickly.

  “Yes,” the major said into the phone. “Emil Brod.” He nodded at my passport. “Yes. Okay.” He held out the phone. “He wants to speak to you.”

  I set down the empty cup and took the phone. Ludwig’s voice came through the line. “Brod? That you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You bastard! Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “Yes,” I said, biting my lip before the word “comrade” made it out. “I have some idea.”

  “An international fucking incident. That’s what you’ve done.”

  There was noise on the line, movement, then Brano Sev came on, returning to my language. “Emil? Tell me the situation.”

  “Look, Brano. I’m sorry.”

  “Just tell me.”

  So I did. As far as I knew, Michalec was on the train, headed to Italy. He might get off beforehand, but I suspected he would take it all the way to Trieste. I imagined he could find protection there. “I’m following him.”

  “To kill him?” said Brano.

  “I think so.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  There was a long pause. “And money? Dijana gave you some.”

  “Most of it’s gone.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t say good-bye, just went silent; then I heard him speaking to Ludwig. I couldn’t make out the words. The Austrian was agitated, but Brano wasn’t. Ludwig came back on. He sounded disgusted. “Give me the major, Brod.”

  It was, inexplicably, accomplished. After hanging up, Major Karloff Brentswinger took a stamp from his drawer, adjusted the date, inked it, and pressed it into one of the pages of my passport. I tried to read it when he handed it over, but it wasn’t in German. It was in Italian. Some kind of Italian visa. When I looked at him, he shook his head. “Don’t ask, okay?” Then he went through another drawer and handed me a slip of cardboard—a second-class ticket the rest of the way to Trieste.

  He walked me back to the train. The conductor, farther up the platform, stared angrily when he saw I wasn’t being removed. The Americans, having seen me shake hands with the major on the snowy platform, offered another beer, which I declined with thanks.

  When the Italian border guards saw the passport, they didn’t give me any trouble, so I suppose the stamp was official enough. They only peered at the shelves around me, looking for extra bottles of liquor, but I had nothing. The Americans told the guards all about their plans to see Venice, then Florence, then Rome, and the guards wished them a happy trip.

  After a while, an Italian conductor came through, selling tickets. I handed him my new ticket. He punched a hole in it and handed it back with a smile.

  I couldn’t understand my good fortune. Brano didn’t want me to kill Michalec—he’d made that clear. Was he just too soft, as I’d suspected before? Had he become too sentimental about his old friends and decided to give me my revenge because I needed it? Or was he being what he had always been—practical? His plan to arrest Michalec had gone disastrously wrong, and Ludwig’s journalist friend was at that moment writing a scathing article about the ineptitude of Austrian intelligence for Der Standard. Perhaps the only solution left to Brano was to let me get rid of Michalec. I still hadn’t had a chance to ask him.

  By ten, we had descended from the mountains and were moving toward the Adriatic. I could smell the sea.

  26 DECEMBER 1989

  TUESDAY

  •

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  •

  After an hour in Trieste, I still hadn’t fired a shot. The Americans followed me out to the platform, muttering about what track their Venice train was leaving from. Then the girl grabbed my shoulder, which made me reach toward my gun. She smiled toothily. “Well, have a good trip, mister.”

  “And you.” I smiled, then moved quickly away, rising to my toes to see over heads. It was difficult. These people had the height of the West, of protein-rich diets that had never been handicapped by rationing.

  I spotted him. The same gray suit I’d seen at the Vienna airport. Walking easily toward the exit. He had no idea he was being followed.

  I kept my hand on the pistol in my coat, walking about five people behind. My heart made noises again. We descended the steps to the underground tunnel connecting the platforms.

  I wanted to take care of it there. A public assassination was what I’d tried in Vienna. But over the last seven and a half hours on the train, it had occurred to me that that kind of impulsive behavior wasn’t truly what I wanted. I didn’t want the shock of terrified Italians around me, or the sudden arrest to stop me before I could finish the job.

  Admittedly, I also wanted what I’d wanted from his son—some kind of explanation or understanding. I wanted what Gavra would later tell me he’d wanted from the Pankovs—some measure of apology.

  So I shadowed him into the Stazione Centrale and out to the cool eleven-thirty gloom of Viale Miramare. He wasn’t hesitating over anything—I noticed that. His tall form moved directly to the taxi stand as if, unlike me, he was familiar with this town. In fact it was true, though he hadn’t been to Trieste since Europe’s last big war, when he was working for the Gestapo.

  I took the next taxi. Instead of telling the driver to follow Michalec’s taxi, I gave him unsure directions from the passenger seat, in German, watching the other car make turns. The driver was tired from a long night’s shift and became annoyed. “Where but you are going?” he asked in labored German.

  “I’ll know when I get there.”

  He grunted to make his frustration clear but didn’t put up a fight. He’d dealt with plenty of strange Germans in his life.

  Michalec’s taxi stopped in front of the eroded luxury of the Grand Hotel Duchi D’Aosta. By then, the taxi driver had figured out what we were doing and said, “I am bet you want stop there at end of the street so he don’t see.”

  I tipped the driver well, but he frowned at the Austrian schilling
s.

  “Is that all right?” I said.

  “You have none lire?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, it must to be.”

  I thought a moment before getting out, then counted the last of my schillings. Thirty-two—about three U.S. dollars, or 9,000 ko-rona. “Can you change these?”

  The man just wanted to go home; maybe that’s why he went ahead and bought them from me. With four thousand lire in my pocket, I got out.

  I spent half the money on a pack of cheap cigarettes from an all-night kiosk and smoked one on the street. It was warmer here, the temperate Adriatic wind full of salt. I walked to a street called Riva Caduti per I’Italianita di Trieste, where, on the other side, a concrete boardwalk ran alongside the black Adriatic. There were no stars out, but I spotted occasional pairs of lovers wandering by. They were pleasant to look at; they helped calm my flailing heart. But over the sound of waves lapping the ramparts, my ears started acting up again, humming. By then, I was sure he’d made it to his room. I returned to the hotel.

  The Duchi D’Aosta’s lobby was spare and dimly lit. The rates were listed behind a wood-paneled desk in Italian, English, German, and Russian. The clerk, with his thin black mustache and oiled hair, looked like a cartoon Italian. He turned morosely from a small television, the screen the size of a hand, showing a muted soccer game. “Mi dica.”

  “I’d like a room,” I answered in German.

  He seemed as irritated as the taxi driver had been, but he passed over a form for me to fill out. I used the information in my Austrian papers. He gave me a key to the third floor, and I said, “My friend arrived just a few minutes before me. Jerzy Michalec. What room’s he in?”

  The clerk seemed to wake up a little. “You two travel light.”

  “We’re funny that way.”

  “I can call up to his room for you.”

  I shook my head. “He’ll be asleep. I won’t knock on his door until he’s rested.”

  “It’s against the rules to give out room numbers,” said the clerk, shrugging.

  He was waiting for a bribe, but two thousand lire wouldn’t get me anything. I couldn’t even pay for the room. I leaned against the counter. “Can you at least tell me the floor?”

  He sagged a little, realizing he wasn’t going to get anything out of me. He glanced at the game on the television and said, “Same as yours.”

  I wasn’t rested enough; I knew this. And despite the shower at Brano’s house, I stank, and wanted another one. In the stairwell I prepared myself anyway. I took out the Walther.

  After my fiasco at the Vienna airport, I was left with three rounds in the magazine, one in the breech. I paused at my door, number 312, checked to be sure the corridor was empty, and walked slowly past the other rooms, listening. Halfway down, on the left, at room 305,I heard it. My language, spoken softly into a telephone. It was loud enough for me to recognize the rhythm and inflection but too quiet to make out the words.

  For a moment I stood there, inches from the door, staring. There was a small, bright spy hole in the middle of it. I wondered if he would check it before opening the door. Of course he would. I couldn’t just knock and wait for him to let me in.

  I looked at the handle—a simple but effective lock. In movies, you always see men enter a locked room by firing a bullet into the lock. I’ve never seen it work in real life.

  I heard him hang up the telephone, and then there was silence.

  I returned to 312 at the end of the corridor and washed my face and hands and stripped off my dirty coat, leaving on my wrinkled blazer. My pulse raced, bringing on another headache, so I took my last two Captopril and tossed the empty bottle into the wastebasket. More than the money, this was the one sure sign I couldn’t go back.

  The bed was alluring, but if I sat on it, I wouldn’t get up again. So I paced, walking to the high window that looked out on the narrow, dark Via Mercato Vecchio, trying to figure this out.

  Then it occurred to me.

  It was one in the morning when I called down to the lobby. The grumpy clerk said, “Grand Hotel Duchi D’Aosta.”

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said in German. “I was just down there. Can you connect me to my friend’s room?”

  The clerk didn’t bother replying. I just heard the brr brr of the phone ringing. “Da?” Michalec said abruptly.

  I couldn’t find any air. It was the first time in forty years that I’d heard his voice, but there was something to that single syllable that reminded me of all the empty words he’d spoken to me in 1948.

  “Yes?” he repeated, in English.

  “Jerzy,” I said, and there was silence on his end. Perhaps he recognized my voice as well. I said, “Jerzy, you’re finished. I’m on the train behind you. We just stopped at Udine. I thought I’d give you fair warning. The kind of warning you never gave my wife.”

  Though the words came out well enough, my tongue felt bloated and my cheeks were hot. But I knew he’d believe it. He would believe that I, like most everyone in our country, wanted to show how morally superior I was.

  “Mr. Brod,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think you had it in you. How did you find me?”

  “I’m clever.”

  So you are.

  “The conductor’s calling,” I said. “See you soon.” I hung up.

  He didn’t come out immediately. Jerzy believed he had about two hours until my arrival, so he would use that time wisely. I stood to the left of his door, where it was hinged to the frame, and listened to him making telephone calls. He was louder now, but that wasn’t panic; he only needed to make himself heard and understood. “How fast can you get a plane to Trieste? Okay. Direct to the Capital. I have to leave this phone within the hour. Right… right.”

  I wondered whom he was talking to. Perhaps his son, or some Italian collaborator, or a Parisian friend. It didn’t matter.

  As I waited, a drunk couple appeared at the end of the hallway,laughing. I tried not to look at them, but I was a peculiar sight: a bald, disheveled-looking elderly man standing beside a door, one hand stuffed tight into his blazer pocket. The man said, “Hey,” and I gave a brief smile. The girl opened her mouth, but I cut her off by crossing a finger over my lips, giving off a quiet shh. I pointed at the door and pantomimed surprising a good friend. The woman ahh’d and nodded; the man snickered. They went to their room a couple of doors away, and soon afterward I heard them having loud sex.

  Then Michalec’s door clicked as he unlocked it and paused to look out the spy hole. I was out of its range. I removed the Walther from my pocket as the door started to open, then threw my shoulder into it with all my weight. There was resistance as he flailed on the other side, but he fell back. I pushed through, stumbled, and fell heavily on top of him. My shoulder hurt. I kicked blindly until the door slammed shut.

  This close, in the dim light streaming in from the Piazza dell’Unita d’Italia, I couldn’t see the man under me. I could only smell him. He was scented heavily, probably something from France. I don’t know. I never asked.

  As I raised myself from his chest, I heard him gasping for breath. I got to my knees, the pistol aimed, as my eyes adjusted. He wasn’t even trying to fight back. He just rubbed his face, took a long, phlegmy breath, then looked up at me, squinting. “Is that you, Brod?”

  I almost couldn’t get to my feet; my knees hurt that much. “Yes.”

  He rubbed his face again. “Wow. I never even suspected. You’ve changed.”

  The real surprise for me was that he was unarmed. I expected to have to fight a pistol out of his hand, or quick-draw him before he got a chance to kill me, but during his years in France, he’d learned to put his safety in the hands of other people. Maybe that’s what living in the West did to people. Living in the East, one never felt that way.

  I could see him better now, but the shadows on his face were deep. After locking the door, I turned on the overhead light. He blinked, shielding his eyes.

  With age, anythin
g can happen to a face. It can widen or narrow, showing off the skull inside; it can fatten like a plum or map out the torments of poorly lived decades. I seemed to find all those changes in Michalec’s face. I saw the deep purple creases under the eyes that pointed to heavy years, and the gauntness below the cheekbones, left over from years in a work camp. But he’d fattened along the jaw and neck, evidence of rich French food and too much influence, and his high forehead, still rimmed with white stubble, was creased like a worrier’s. He had the dark eyes of someone who’d seen more than anyone should have to.

  All this came to me very quickly, in about a second of staring, and I suppose that all my interpretations were wrong. But again, it didn’t matter. I was here, he was here, and it was time.

  Get up.

  “Oh-kay,” he said slowly, with the kind of calm you use on very stupid people who might not know what to do with the gun they’re pointing at you. He propped himself up on his elbows, then rolled facedown and got up to his knees, facing away from me. As if realizing how it looked, like the executions we’d all seen in Italian and American gangster movies, he snatched at the bathroom door handle and pulled himself to his feet.

  “The bed,” I told him and watched him move slowly toward it; just beyond, the lights of the square poured in. All my pains were coming into focus: my shoulder, knees, head, and heart. I tried to ignore them.

  “Should I sit?” asked Michalec.

  That’s when I heard it—the cocky tone I remembered from decades ago, the one that once plagued my dreams. He’d had plenty of years to cultivate his confidence. I wondered if he’d ever found himself in this situation before.

  Since I didn’t answer, he sat anyway, turning to face me again. The bed creaked beneath him; he wasn’t the kind of elderly person whose body withered away.