Liberation Movements (14 page)

Istvan dresses
quietly, but I’m awake by the time he’s knotting his tie. He gives me a bright morning smile. “Well, hello!”

“Morning,” I say with a clotted voice, as if I smoked too many cigarettes the previous night, though I didn’t.

“Are you doing the
Sultan Ahmet Camii
today?”

“The what?”

“Blue Mosque,” he reminds me, and grins. “I have a feeling you’re not one of the world’s most fastidious tourists.”

I wipe my eyes. “When will you be back?”

“I’ve got a meeting in an hour, another one at lunchtime, and then another at four.” He shrugs. “Six or seven. You’ll be here?”

“Of course, Istvan.”

After he leaves, there’s a knock at the door. I wrap myself in a hotel robe and face a tall man in a uniform holding a box. “Your audio machine, ma’am?”

He places it on the desk and pauses at the door, clearing his throat. Only after he’s gone do I realize I was supposed to tip him.

In the Militia we sometimes use these machines, but as I thread the audiotape through the play heads into the take-up reel I fear I’m doing it wrong, that when I press
PLAY
the tape will shred and whatever lies on it will remain a mystery. But I’m not as clumsy as I suspect, and soon I’m sitting on the thick carpet in my robe, listening to a tinny conversation through the speaker. Two male voices in a hollow-sounding room. The first voice is plainly Brano Sev’s—seven years have changed little with him. The other is a voice I haven’t heard for that many years, the slow drawl taking me back to a black month that I have, for years, tried to erase from my daily memories. But here it is again, that voice, and it’s telling everything just as I remember it. He makes no excuses. He simply tells the facts as he sees them. He explains that he killed the soldier named Stanislav Klym in order to save himself, that he then moved into Stanislav’s apartment and one day opened the door to find Katja Uher, the girlfriend Stanislav had told him about. So he pretended to the girl; he made up stories of his friendship with the boy she loved, saying Stanislav had given him the keys to his apartment and would arrive in another week or so.
She had no reason to doubt it, because this was the kind of guy Stanislav was—he’d give his keys to a stranger just to be hospitable.
At one point he even laughs and says,
I couldn’t believe she believed me. Can you believe it?

People will believe most anything, Comrade Husák.

Two hours later, after listening to it twice through, I pick up the phone and dial.

“This is Sev.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

He lowers his voice. “You’re there?”

“It was you.
You.
You knew what he’d done, but you let him stay free. You’re a cretin, Brano Sev.”

For a moment there’s just the hiss of the phone line. “He was useful to us, Comrade Drdova, But now he’s served his purpose.”

“He’s served your purpose.”

“Would you like to know where he is?”

“Of course I would.”

“The Sultan Inn, in Sultanahmet. On Mustafa Pasa. Number 50.”

“Wait.” I stumble to the pencil and hotel stationery on the desk, beside the machine. “Repeat that.”

He does, and I write it down.

“Are you all right, Comrade Drdova?”

“Oh, me? I’m fine, Comrade Sev. I’m just fantastic.” I change tone. “Why are you doing this?”

“What?”

“Helping me find him. I doubt this is in the interests of socialism.”

He hums into the telephone, then takes a breath. “This is the final stage in ending something that should have never begun.”

“Does this something have to do with Zrinka and Adrian Martrich?”

“Yes.”

“With Libarid’s death?”

“Everything is connected, Comrade Drdova. And everything I do is in the interests of socialism. Trust me on that.”

“No, Brano. Everything you do is in the interests of Brano Sev.”

He ignores that. “Are you armed?”

“Armed?”

“I suppose you’re not. I want you to do something, but do it right now. It’s for your protection. Go to Istiklal Caddesi. It’s a street just two blocks from the Hotel Pera Palas, behind the Dutch consulate. Are you writing this down?”

“I am.”

“There is a Dutch chapel, the Union Church. Ask for Father Janssen.”

“A priest?”

“You’d be surprised where socialism finds its friends, Comrade Drdova. Ask Father Janssen, in these exact words, in English…you know English?”

“Not much.”

“Just remember this sentence:
Has the harvest come down from the mountains?
”

“What?”

“Those exact words, Comrade Drdova.” He repeats the words as I write them. “Father Janssen will give you what you need.”

“Brano.”

“Yes?”

“How long have you known this? That I was the girl from Peter Husák’s story.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Comrade Drdova.”

“It does to me.”

He pauses. “Your name is different now. You have your husband’s name. And it’s quite surprising you never ran into each other before, but I suppose Peter Husák didn’t come to the Militia offices.”

“When?”

“I didn’t know until yesterday afternoon at the Metropol, when you told me about your relationship to Stanislav Klym.”

Then he hangs up.

For a long time I don’t move. I’m standing next to the desk with the buzzing receiver in my hand, and it’s all coming back to me. Only once I’ve replayed it again in my head, that night in all its painful detail, can I put down the phone and go to dress for the day ahead, for what I have to do.

His flabby-faced
companion drove him out to the Seventh District, to Tolar, a street of low, sooty Habsburg buildings, and parked in front of number 16, behind a white Škoda. He’d taken Gavra’s pistol at the hotel, but just inside the front door he returned it. Then he trotted up the stairs; Gavra followed.

The door was on the second floor, and the driver tapped a few times, then waited for the lock to be pulled. Brano Sev opened the door.

“Ah, Gavra. Come in.”

The driver remained in the stairwell and pulled the door closed behind them.

It was a sparse office, with empty factory shelves and a single desk. Behind the desk sat Ludvík Mas, his thin mustache, in this light, looking damp. He smiled and motioned to a chair.

Brano was already sitting down.

“Thank you for coming,” said Mas. “Comrade Sev felt that you should be made aware of what’s going on with your case.”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Gavra.

“Of course. Brano?”

The colonel turned to him with a straight face. “Gavra, what do you know of parapsychology?”

The question threw him. “Not much. I’ve heard of Special Department Number 8 in Novosibirsk, but didn’t the Russians shut that down?”

“Yes,” said Mas. “Six years ago. But research continues.”

“The KGB,” Brano explained, “controls Soviet research now. But in our country, we set up a laboratory in 1967, in Rokošyn.”

Gavra tugged his ear, worried about where this was going. “Zrinka Martrich actually was there?”

Brano shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“But she was being experimented on—wasn’t she?”

Mas slapped the table and shouted, “Yes!”

Brano chose not to raise his voice. “Comrade Mas is pleased because your supposition is exactly what he hoped others would believe. You see, the research clinic was closed because of lack of results in 1972. The building was torn down. The fact is, there is no research institute anymore.”

“Then where was Zrinka Martrich?” Gavra asked. “She’s been somewhere for the last three years.”

Ludvík Mas said, “She was living her life with us and a few other delusional patients. Elsewhere. What we needed was for her, and the others, to disappear. We plant a few rumors here and there—stories that scientists at Rokošyn have made sudden breakthroughs—and the story is complete. Zrinka Martrich, the rumors go, is at the center of a project to tame the forces of psychokinesis and use them to stomp out the Western imperialists. Beautiful!”

Gavra looked from one face to the other. “I don’t understand.”

Brano leaned forward, slipping into the familiar tone of the educator. “It’s a Ministry counterintelligence project. We plant evidence of a nonexistent psychokinetic project in order to lure Western spies into the country. The Ministry controls the flow of information to these foreign agents. The spies can then be identified by this method, tracked, and interrogated.”

“Or liquidated,” said Mas, his chin settling on his chest. “I’ve been very pleased by the results. In the last two years we’ve taken care of two British, a French, and two American agents—poor Mr. Brixton included.” Mas raised his eyebrows. “Brixton even made it as far as Rokošyn—just to be more puzzled when he found no clinic. But that didn’t stop him searching. You saw the fruits of our labor in Adrian Martrich’s stairwell.”

“Smert shpionam,”
said Gavra.

“Death to spies,” said Mas.

Gavra turned to Brano. “Are you telling me that the plane was part of this? You killed sixty-eight passengers as part of a
hoax?
”

Mas shook his head. “Now
that
is something we had nothing to do with. We put Comrade Martrich on the plane to Istanbul, yes. We wanted to try the same ruse in Turkey—our embassy is riddled with leaks, and by having her there, by placing a few rumors, we thought we could clean the place out.” He grunted. “The fucking Armenians we never predicted.”

“Like I told you before, Gavra,” said Brano, “it was a coincidence.”

Mas lit a cigarette. “A tragic coincidence. Tragic in the obvious way, but now the Comrade Lieutenant General is closing down the operation. Zrinka Martrich was our central character in the scheme, and with her dead the operation is losing its momentum. We’ve had a good run, but now it’s over.”

“Which is why,” said Brano, “we’ve had these deaths.”

“We’re cleaning up the loose ends,” said Mas.

“Because they’re connected to the operation,” Gavra said, not sure anymore what to believe. “But what about Wilhelm Adler? You called him—you told him about the plane.”

“Not me.” Mas raised his hands. “Adler wasn’t part of the operation. But if he was working with these terrorists, he didn’t deserve to live. As for Doctor Arendt, he simply knew too much. He would begin to ask questions about his old patient.”

“What about the others?” said Gavra. “The other patients.”

Mas shrugged, clearly unwilling to answer. “The reason you’re being told all of this is that I need you to do two things.”

Gavra settled back into his chair, arms crossed over his chest.

“First, I need silence. In particular, you are not to breathe a word of this to your partner, that—what’s her name?”

“Comrade Drdova,” Brano told him.

“Yes,” said Mas. “Is that understood?”

Gavra nodded.

“Second, I want you to remain with Adrian Martrich. I’m waiting to find out what we’ll do with him. It’s possible the Comrade Lieutenant General will want to use that faggot in another way.”

Gavra opened his mouth but didn’t speak.

Mas winked—a secret communication. “Yes, comrade. He’s got the capitalist disease. Just watch out for yourself when you’re with him.”

“What if he isn’t of use?” Gavra asked.

Mas looked at Brano, who spoke quietly and, Gavra believed, reluctantly. “Then you’ll be asked to kill him, Comrade Noukas.”

Gavra eased his hand down because it had jumped to his ear.

On a
rack in the lobby of the Pera Palas I find a tourist map that I study just outside the front door, in the hot light. Hotels and restaurants are marked by childish hand-drawn icons of roofs. At the bottom, beyond the Galata Bridge that crosses the Golden Horn where it flows from the Bosphorus, and through a tangle of ancient streets, is a comical roof marked
SULTAN INN
, a block north of the Sea of Marmara, which they call
Marmara Denizi
.

This is my first time outside, under the Turkish sun. A line of dirty cars pushes by, and pedestrians wander in all directions. In other circumstances, I would be thrilled just to stand here.

As Brano told me, the Union Church is only two blocks away, straight from the hotel, up an alley, across Istiklal Caddesi, full of overpriced shops and multilingual tourists, then down another alley to where a small sign points me to a door in an ancient wall. As it also houses the Dutch consulate, a guard asks my nationality. I tell him and ask for the church. With a smile, he points me up a cobbled path inside.

It’s a small, modest place, in some ways similar to the Catholic chapel in Pácin, where I grew up. Since moving to the Capital years ago, I’ve found myself reluctant to return to see my family. Perhaps it’s just an aspect of growing up, but when I do return and walk with Mother arm in arm past that chapel, I always feel as if I’m visiting another country. I told this once to Aron, but he didn’t understand. He snorted under his breath, pulled up his sheet, and turned off the bedroom light.

The inner walls of the Union Church are rough, striped by slender bricks, and only two people sit in the pews, far from each other. I spot an old man dusting the pulpit with a feathered brush. He looks up when I approach.

“Evet?”

“Father Janssen,” I say.

He frowns, then speaks in labored English. “I do not know Janssen, a father.”

My English is just as labored. “Is priest here?”

He considers this, and it’s one of those moments when I’m pleased to be a woman because I present no threat. “Come,” he says, and leads me back to the front. Above our heads, over the entrance, is a second floor filled with an old pipe organ. The cleaner leads me upstairs to the dim floor, where a black-suited priest is reading a book laid on the organ keys. He looks up.
“Evet?”

The cleaner says a few words in Dutch that I can’t make out, though I can tell that this priest’s name is Van der Berg. Then the cleaner says, “Janssen,” and the priest’s eyes light up. He nods for the old man to leave as he smiles at me. He doesn’t speak until the cleaner is visible again over the railing, headed for the altar.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?”

I close my eyes, trying to remember. “Is the harvest come down on the mountains?”

Van der Berg bites his lip, then lowers his voice and speaks in my language. “It has indeed, my child. A moment.”

Beneath a stained-glass window is a low bookshelf filled with twenty leather-bound books. He peers back down the length of the chapel, then pulls out a book called
Sygdommen til Døden
and opens it.

Just like in the movies,
I think.

It’s a hollowed-out book, containing a silk-wrapped package that he hands to me. I unwrap it and look at the small Turkish MKE pistol, .380 caliber, not unlike the Walther PPs I used for practice in the Militia Academy.

“There are seven,” he whispers, tapping the handle. “Will you need more?”

“What?”

“Cartridges. Do you need more than seven?”

I shake my head.

He holds out his hand. “Please. The scarf.”

I give him the silk scarf and put the gun into my handbag.

“Is there anything else?”

I hesitate, looking into his kindly face, trying to think. Maybe some direction, that’s something I could use, but that’s not why he’s here.

He smiles. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

I blink.

“Just remember, maintain your calm. And afterward, get rid of it.”

“Here?”

“No, silly girl. The Bosphorus. I don’t know how many guns that waterway has swallowed.”

“I see.”

The priest glances back again at the empty pews, then says in a high whisper, “For the victory of the world’s proletariat!”

“Of course,” I mutter, then turn to go.

The map helps. It takes me up Istiklal Caddesi to an underground train, the Tünel, which brings me down to the Galata Bridge. I cross on foot. Men line the railing clutching fishing poles. Then I’m making my way through hot, narrow streets, ignoring voices—
Hello pretty lady
;
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Finally, I reach Mustafa Pasa, a busy avenue choked with shops selling bronze sculptures and carpets and food.

The Sultan Inn is unassuming and run-down, not the kind of place I expect to find an officer of the Ministry for State Security. Or maybe I’m just inexperienced (which I am) and naive (which I may be). The lobby is dark, not made for the world’s tourists, but the bald desk clerk in the sweat-stained undershirt is smiling broadly at me. “Heh-
low,
” he says.

I’ve already made a mistake. Walking inside only announces my presence. So I give him a confused expression and step backward across the cracked tiles. “Sorry. Wrong address.”

He shrugs as if it’s an opportunity missed.

Across the street I buy coffee from a street vendor and sip it beside a carpet shop. Passersby bump into me, and the occasional beggar demands things with open hands. It’s five o’clock, and the low-lying sun at the end of the street makes me flush.

“Madam,” says a shriveled old man. “You are lost?”

I shake my head and turn away.

“Can I be of assistance, perhaps? Show you Istanbul?”

I give him my Militia stare. The one where you momentarily separate from your body and display the full force of your scorn. “Leave me alone.”

It works as well here as it does back home—the old man moves on—but the Militia stare is only a façade. I’m having trouble focusing on the faces in the street. What would Aron do now? We’ve traveled together to Krakow and the Black Sea, and he knows how to take care of me when I stumble like this.

He would put his arm around my shoulders and guide me to a café where the time could settle down again. Blurred faces surge toward me, and I know that if Peter Husák comes I won’t even see him.

I step into the carpet shop to catch my breath, but suddenly two salesmen are on me. “The lovely madam, so very proud we are that such a lovely madam is interested in our carpets!”

I rub my face. “No.”

“Original Turkish, handwoven. Touch!”

“A taxi,” I say. “Please. Just call a taxi for me.”