Liberation Movements (13 page)

1968

He rubbed
his eyes and gazed out the dirty window at the passing countryside, rubbing the scratches on the back of his hand. Flat fields had given way to rolling hills under an overcast late-morning sky. Across from him in the compartment was a fat farmer’s wife, not unlike his own mother, her babushka tied tightly under her chin. She ate pumpkin seeds and tried not to stare at the blood soaked into the upturned collar of his army jacket.

He’d slept the whole way from Prague, then been woken in Šarišske by a Czech border guard, who, though he noticed the blood, was too intimidated by the uniform to comment. Peter handed over Stanislav Klym’s documents with a serious expression and accepted them back just as morbidly. It was in Šarišske that this woman had joined him.

He hadn’t thought about the blood when he plunged the knife into Stanislav Klym’s neck. He had simply followed what he knew was the inevitable next step. He pushed it through the skin, and when it hit resistance the neck slid back against his knee. The soldier’s eyes and mouth snapped open, but without voice. Just the wet rasping of impossible breaths. His fingers came up, clawing Peter’s hands, and his legs kicked. Then Peter let go of the knife and fell back, climbing backward up to the window. It took a minute, maybe two, for the soldier to die. He writhed on the ground as a black pool grew in front of him and dribbled down the steps.

The train slowed and pulled into Velky Saris. On the platform, the men who guarded the border of Peter’s new home gathered and approached the train.

He’d stared at the dead soldier a long time, squatting until the balls of his feet burned. He’d wanted to cry but calmed himself by putting his mind elsewhere, into an oral examination he had taken months and another life ago, where he had mistaken the structure of the sonata allegro form—the first theme, followed by a transition into the second theme in a new key. This theme is developed, and then comes the recapitulation—a repeat of the first theme. Then the second theme returns, but in the original key, and is followed by the coda.

How could he have gotten this wrong?

He’d stood when he thought he could do so without falling. Then, despite the chill, he undressed.

“Papers.”

He looked up at a young guard in a smart blue uniform with the national symbol of the hawk on its shoulder. The guard bowed his head to the woman as he took her passport. “How are the cows, Irina?”

She shrugged. “Norbert had to shoot the two best ones.”

“Oh?” The soldier stamped the passport and handed it back.

“Tuberculosis.” She shrugged again. “It happens.”

The guard nodded with sympathy, then smiled at Peter as he accepted his papers. “Coming from Prague?”

“I am.”

He flipped absently through the passport. “How’s it going up there?”

Peter wasn’t sure how to answer, and his hesitation earned a look from the guard. “It’s improving,” he said quickly, then shook his head. “Last week was hell.”

The guard pointed at Peter’s collar. “Yeah. It looks like it was.”

Peter touched the blood. “Earned this at the radio station. I’m lucky to get back with my life.”

The woman crossed herself.

“A lucky man,” said the guard. He squinted at the photograph in the passport. “You need to start eating.”

“You think so?”

“You’ve lost a lot of weight.” He showed the picture to the woman, who nodded her agreement.

“You’ll get sick,” she said as the guard stamped the passport and handed it back.

“My girlfriend will fatten me up,” said Peter. He slipped the passport into his jacket pocket, beside the stiff hunting knife marked by a hawk similar to the one on the guard’s shoulder patch.

He’d acquired so much in the past six hours that what he’d lost was barely a memory. Like a simple melody line that gains chords, a variety of keys, and counterpoint, developing into a grand piece, he had acquired a name, a knife, money, and an apartment. In the space of six hours he’d acquired a life.

The guard saluted Peter. “Welcome home, comrade.”

“A militiawoman,”
Istvan says once we’re back upstairs. He’s in the bedroom, and I’m in the bathroom, removing makeup in the mirror. “You’re not on a case, are you?”

“I’ve got no authority outside our lovely country.”

“I see,” he says, then stands in the doorway. “You’re a very beautiful woman.”

I can see him in the reflection, and my face is up close. Perhaps he’s right—I have the requisite cheekbones, blond hair, dark eyes—but age is setting in early and I’m wondering what I’ll look like at thirty, thirty-five. I’ll look fifty, I know it. “It’s a temporary beauty,” I tell him.

“Where do you want to sleep?”

“In the bed.”

His smile is huge.

“And you’ll be a gentleman and take the sofa.”

He retains the smile another few seconds, but that’s only decorum. “Of course, of course. You want another drink? There’s a minibar in the cabinet.”

“I’m really tired.”

“It’ll help you sleep.”

I stop fooling with my face and turn to look at him. “Really, Istvan. Thanks, but all I want now is a proper rest.”

When I come out, he’s lying on the sofa in the other room, and I tell him good night as I close the adjoining doors. His
Good night
sounds distinctively frustrated.

Before turning off the light, I call down to the front desk and ask in stilted, stumbling English if they have a reel-to-reel tape player in the hotel. “I believe we do,
bayan.
”

“I can use tomorrow?”

“Of course,
bayan.
What time?”

I returned to the Metropol bar an hour before my appointment with Brano Sev because I couldn’t stand the sunlight anymore. How can I explain it? The sunlight wasn’t a metaphor for anything. No. There are no metaphors in life, simply things. Things that undermine you or give you strength. The sunlight undermined me.

I drank two waters and was rude to one bearded man who tried to start a conversation. Disappointed, he returned to his dim corner table and watched from a distance.

Brano arrived at precisely five. Under his arm was a bulky envelope that he placed on the bar as he climbed onto his stool. He asked the bartender for a beer.

“Comrade Drdova.”

“Comrade Sev.”

He looked at the glass the bartender placed before him. “Comrade Drdova, this man you call Peter Husák no longer goes by that name. He was…well, he came to my attention in 1968, the year you knew him. But when I met him, he wasn’t using that name. He went by the name Stanislav Klym.”

Up until then I’d had my elbow on the table, my forehead resting in a palm. I dropped my hand slowly. “He used my Stanislav’s name?”

“This is why he came to my attention. The real Stanislav Klym had proved himself brave and steadfast during the troubles in Czechoslovakia, an intelligent young man, and I wanted to recruit him. I didn’t know, at the time, that he had died in Prague.”

“Recruit him for what?”

“For the kind of work I do.”

I waited.

“Once I learned Stanislav had returned from Prague, I visited his apartment and found this man who answered to his name. I made the offer of work, and he accepted.” Brano took a sip of his beer, then set it down. “The truth came out later, during a week-long interview session. It’s something we do to new recruits. We talk with them intensely over the space of a week to be sure they are the kind of people we can work with. This Husák was an adept liar—quite talented, you could say—but over days I began to see that elements of his story didn’t fit together. He knew nothing about Pácin, your and Stanislav’s hometown, and he could not accurately piece together his time in Czechoslovakia.” Brano shrugged. “So the truth finally came out. His real name was the one he gave you, Peter Husák, and he was a Slovak from the border region, which explained why he knew our language so well. He’d gotten into trouble during the counterrevolution and assumed your boyfriend’s identity in order to escape the country.”

“But,” I began, then paused. I looked in my bag until I found a cigarette, then stuck it in my mouth. I didn’t light it. “You mean he stole his papers off a dead man?”

Brano took a lighter from his pocket and lit my cigarette for me. He watched me suck on it. “Peter Husák killed Stanislav Klym. For his papers.”

His face, through the smoke, was so neutral, and at that moment I wanted nothing more than to press my fingernails into his eyes. But I spoke calmly. “What is his name now?”

Brano squinted. “This is something that remains between us. You understand?”

“Just tell me his name.”

“Ludvík Mas. After he joined the Ministry we gave him a new identity. We didn’t want the Czechs to know who he was.”

“Ludvík Mas,” I said.

“You’re not curious why I’m telling you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t care. Is he here? Is he in the Capital?”

“He’s in Istanbul.”

“Istanbul?”

“He left this morning.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I don’t know why I didn’t ask more. Sitting there with Brano Sev, my desire for simplicity was acute. Ludvík Mas, or Peter Husák, was in Istanbul. That was all I needed to know. Brano opened his envelope and slid a roll of audiotape to me.

“This is a record of part of my conversation with Peter Husák back in 1968. You may find it of interest.”

But all I wanted was simplicity. “I don’t need it.”

“I think you’ll find it useful for understanding.”

“Understanding what?”

“The
why
of your boyfriend’s death, Katja. And perhaps more. We are sometimes faced with inexplicable moments in our past, and they plague us over the years until we’re no longer able to function. But if we find an explanation…”

“I didn’t think Ministry officers subscribed to psychology, Comrade Sev.”

Brano actually smiled. “Not officially, Comrade Drdova. Here.”

From the envelope he also took a small bundle of koronas and a fresh maroon passport. An external passport.

“Take this,” he said.

On the front page of the passport was an old photograph of me, with my name.

“Comrade Drdova, do you have any travel plans?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. At that point I honestly didn’t know. “I might.”

“Well, if you do, remember that time is of the essence. Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay in touch. Give me a call.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that.”

“A call is only a call, Katja. Over a telephone you don’t have to say anything you don’t wish to say, whereas I can be particularly helpful. I’ll be sure to remain near my desk.”

“Okay, Brano.”

With those words, something moved in me. Though it would soon return, the confusion left, and I felt like a worker receiving instructions that made my entire life a simple matter of obedience.

For that one instant, I felt good.

It took
a half hour for the Militia technicians to arrive, and Gavra waited for them by the dead American, chain-smoking. Details were accumulating—a hijacked plane, a delusional woman, and the cryptic Ludvík Mas—who, it appeared, killed a German terrorist, a doctor, and an American spy. Now Adrian Martrich was living under the threat of execution.

In the world outside the Ministry, the
why
of these murders wouldn’t be of importance. A single man had killed three men in the space of a day and was after a fourth. It didn’t matter how the killings were connected to a hijacked plane or to a sick woman who had called from the airport. In the real world, Ludvík Mas would have been picked up and locked in a cell. And Gavra would be allowed to treat him just as he’d treated Wilhelm Adler in that factory office.

But this wasn’t the real world. This place was much more elusive, and more threatening.

The men took photographs, carted away the body, and mopped the floor clean.

By the time he returned, Adrian was playing a
Smak
record and had set two cold vodkas on the coffee table. He smiled at Gavra. “How was your day, dear?”

When the momentary surprise faded, Gavra smiled as well.

They didn’t speak at first, only settled into the sofa and sipped their drinks, while over the speakers
Smak’
s progressive jam session settled Gavra’s nerves. They toasted their health; then Adrian refilled their glasses and settled next to him on the sofa, close. Gavra said, “Tell me about your sister.”

Adrian spoke of a wicked childhood in Chudlove. He described their father’s sudden, rabid fits of anger. The two times he broke his son’s arm. The day Adrian walked in on him on top of his struggling sister—Zrinka was ten.

Gavra set down his glass.

Adrian told him of the time their father tied their mother to the radiator and made the children watch what he did to her. He told Gavra that she, in turn, focused her frustration on the children. When Father was gone for days on alcoholic rages, Mother blamed them for his disappearances and locked them in the cellar. Then, when Adrian was twelve, they both killed themselves. In the backyard. With knives.

“Did you see the bodies?”

“I watched them do it.”

Gavra drank, shaking his head. “Your sister?”

“She was at school.”

“No wonder.”

“No wonder what?”

“That she believed she had made them kill themselves. She must have dreamed and hoped they would do it. Then, one day, they did.”

Adrian gazed at him a moment, then continued. “It was after that that she became hysterical. The local Militia chief—a fat, useless man—sent her to the Tarabon Clinic. I, on the other hand, lived as a ward of the state in an orphanage outside the Capital, in Zsurk. The less said about that place, the better.” He quieted, then said, “I still can’t believe she’s dead,” and laid his head on Gavra’s shoulder as “To
ak”—the Wheel—went into a speed-drunk guitar solo.

Gavra felt his muscles relax beneath Adrian’s ear, and when Adrian asked if he would sleep there with him, Gavra took a quick, loud breath and turned to look at the crown of Adrian’s head. Adrian raised his face close to Gavra’s and kissed him.

Their sex was strange for Gavra, who seldom had affairs inside his own country. He was used to single nights with Turkish boys found at dance clubs, Austrian men picked up from underground bars, and once even an American businessman he met at the airport bar in Frankfurt. During those brief encounters, each participant knew exactly what he wanted; the enjoyment was always visceral. Though in the mornings he was sometimes annoyed or disgusted by his choice the previous night, he never regretted a thing.

With Adrian, the reasons were elusive. Adrian had, in the space of a few days, lost a sister and had his own life threatened. He was looking for comfort. Because of this they acted as if they’d known each other many years. At first they only kissed, and in bed they gripped each other tightly. For the first time in his sexual life, Gavra felt as if he wanted something more than the wonderful violence of sexual organs and wasn’t sure why.

Was that love? He didn’t know, and it was beside the point—because afterward he passed out, the stress of the last days overcoming him, and slept hard, like a peasant after a long day working the land.

He woke alone in Adrian’s bed to the sound of the front door buzzer. The clock told him it was nine, and he could smell coffee.

“Who is it?” he called.

“It’s your girlfriend,” Adrian said. “Katja’s on her way up.”

Gavra sprang out of bed, scooped his crumpled clothes in an arm, and swept past Adrian on his way to the bathroom, saying only, “I slept on the couch.”

“Good morning to you, too.”

While washing himself in the sink and dressing, he heard Katja being let in and offered coffee. Then, in answer to no question at all, Adrian told her, “He’s in the bathroom.”

Gavra nodded in the mirror.
Okay.
Katja didn’t reply, but Adrian felt the need to awkwardly add, “He slept on the couch.”

“Oh,” said Katja.

Shut up, Adrian.

But Adrian didn’t shut up. “Did you hear about the excitement last night?”

Gavra fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, grimacing.

“The dead man was American,” Adrian told her. “We don’t get many Americans in this neighborhood.”

“Dead man?” Katja said as Gavra flung open the door and came out in his socks. Katja, sitting on the couch where Adrian had kissed him, looked up with a confused expression. “Gavra, what the hell happened?”

“There was an incident. I’m going to look into it now.”

“Yes?
And?
”

“An American was killed,” Adrian added unhelpfully. “You didn’t know?”

Gavra glanced at him without kindness and began slipping into his shoes. “Yes, an American. He entered the building and was killed.”

“Killed by that man,” said Adrian. “What was his name?”

“Not important,” said Gavra.

The confusion in Katja’s face was shifting into anger. “What do you mean—”

“Later,” Gavra said as he reached for his hat. “We’ll talk later. See you.”

He drove through the morning traffic, trying not to worry about what Adrian might be telling Katja. He’d made a mistake, he knew, sleeping with someone involved with this case—a grieving brother, no less—and felt the unfamiliar queasiness of regret.

The Hotel Metropol was very familiar to him. He’d often come with Brano Sev for meetings in its nondescript rooms, usually to speak with foreign contacts. Gavra knew that in its lobby at any moment were at least three watchers, one of them a young woman well suited to seducing foreign businessmen. The only thing that separated Tania from most prostitutes was that she had a remarkable memory for anything her johns muttered and knew ways to make them mutter almost anything. She was smoking on a padded chair when he entered; she watched him cross directly to the elevator. Gavra spun Timothy Brixton’s key on his finger and stepped inside, turning to see Tania rise as the doors slid shut.

Timothy Brixton’s room was tidy, cleaned by a maid that morning, with a sheaf of papers on the desk. He went through them, but they were only forms from the Foreign Ministry’s Trade Council, requests for trade concessions to bring American televisions into the country. All requests had been denied.

He’d searched a lot of rooms during his apprenticeship, and Brixton’s was exceptionally clean. He very much lived his television-salesman cover. Gavra found color brochures for the new twenty-five-inch color set, with young blond women posing as if they came in the box as well.

He rang the front desk and asked for a list of telephone numbers called from this room to be prepared, and when he hung up he noticed the hotel stationery pad. It was clean, but the top page was indented from an earlier note. Using a pencil, he rubbed over it and found the words

Gavra continued through the room, but there was nothing else. So he locked up and showed his Ministry certificate to the desk clerk and asked for the list. While waiting, he noticed that Tania, the hotel’s best informer, was no longer around. The clerk handed over a list of five calls, with times and dates beside them. All the numbers were identical, except the last, placed the previous morning at ten, just before Timothy Brixton left the hotel for the last time.

Gavra pointed at the phone on the desk. “May I?”

The clerk shrugged and walked away. Gavra dialed that final number, and after two rings heard a vaguely familiar male voice. “Yes?”

“Uh, who is this?”

The man on the line sounded amused. “Please, Comrade Noukas. If you don’t know who you’re calling, then why are you dialing the number?”

Gavra choked a little, and when his voice came out it was a whisper. “Ludvík Mas.”

“Hang up now, Gavra.”

Gavra did as he was told, and held on to the counter.

An American spy named Timothy Brixton telephoned Ludvík Mas, who gave him the work address for Adrian Martrich. Brixton had no doubt been nearby as Gavra drove Adrian from the butcher shop to his apartment. The American was after Adrian, to learn something, perhaps. But Ludvík Mas had followed the both of them and killed Brixton before he could speak with Adrian.

Amid the confusion, Gavra knew one thing. Adrian Martrich had information of interest to an American spy, and perhaps of interest to Ludvík Mas as well.

There was no doubt: Last night had been a grave mistake. Adrian was hiding something, and his reticence could kill him, or Gavra.

He marched out of the lobby and pushed through the revolving doors, but before he reached his car a short man with a round, flabby face stepped up to him. He had a pistol in his hand.

“Comrade Noukas,” he said. “Please come with me.”