Victory Square (15 page)

I returned to the Militia steps and waited for her to drive off. I could see her hunched over the wheel, looking for where to insert the key. This always gave her trouble, but only in my car. It didn’t make sense, because we both had the same model Mercedes. I took a step down toward the sidewalk to help her out, but she got it.

I know this because the Mercedes exploded.

Katja was at her desk when the blast occurred. An instant beforehand, she looked up at a sound—a neighborhood dog let out a single worried bark. Then it happened. It was, she told me later, like two explosions. A low, bass thump she felt in her stomach, then, immediately after, a higher-toned pressure that hurt her ears and shattered the window behind her. Glass caught in her hair and covered the floor. But she didn’t move.

I was thrown back, the corners of the front steps cutting into my back, and for an instant I, too, was frozen. I heard things inside the demolished Mercedes exploding, fire crackling. But the loudest thing was my damned heart. Black smoke billowed into the sky, then sagged, heavy, and filled the street. I rolled and caught the stink of burning gasoline. It was everywhere.

Through the smoke, I saw a flaming, twisted Mercedes, but I was trying to see past it, because this couldn’t be the car that held my wife. I thought that mine was somewhere behind this one. I got up and ran toward it, limping, entering the smoke, choking and coughing. The militiamen told me later that I was shouting her name, but I don’t remember that. I only remember the thumping sound and the smoke and heat that stopped me before I could get to her.

I wasn’t alone. At the sound of the blast, and the sudden rain of broken glass in the station, the militiamen ran out, some standing stunned at the top of the steps, others running forward to wrestle me back. They shouted things I couldn’t hear because my ears were dead as they dragged me back inside the station. They put me in a chair. I could see them but couldn’t hear them. They were arguing over something. Katja broke through, bent down close to me, and said more things I couldn’t hear, but there was some comfort in just seeing her face. Then she turned and shouted something that silenced the others. Someone went to make a phone call.

I realized why I couldn’t hear anything—my ears were humming like an electrical generator. My eardrums had been kicked, and I wouldn’t hear anything for another hour, and even days later the unnerving electric hum would pop up, sometimes at inopportune times.

When Katja returned, I grabbed her coat and pulled her close to me, screaming,
“Where is Lena? Where is my wife?”

I couldn’t hear her answer, and she understood this. She just shook her head.

I thought briefly of Katja’s husband, Aron, who believed everything in the world was collapsing. He was right. The world was an entirely different place now. I felt as if someone had taken out all my internal organs but left me, inexplicably, alive. I wondered who could be that cruel.

•

TisAir Flight
38 from Frankfurt touched down at Pankov Interna-tional a little after six in winter darkness. Gavra helped Beth with her carry-on luggage and guided them to the line for passport control, waiting a few paces back. He watched her grip Harold’s arm. “You see that man?” she whispered loudly.

Harold looked up from a tourist brochure with three-toned color images of Orthodox churches and spas. “What man?” “In the corner. The uniform. Is that a machine gun?” Harold went back to the pictures. “Grow up, Beth. We’re crossing a border. They’re required to carry those things. It’s communism.” “You’re telling me it’s communist law to carry machine guns?” He turned the page. “That’s what I’m telling you.” The bored clerk with sweaty bangs glanced at their visas, stamped their passports and sent them on to the luggage carousel. When he saw Gavra’s passport—his real one, with the Ministry crest—he woke up. “Welcome home, comrade.”

Gavra continued past the waiting passengers and on through customs, where more bored men in blue uniforms—”navy” blue, he remembered—leaned on a white table discussing basketball scores. In the marble-tiled arrivals lounge he passed waiting families and crossed to a pay phone, lit a cigarette, and dialed the Militia station. On the first ring a breathless man said,
“Yes?”

“First District Militia?”

“Yes, yes.” There was a cacophony of voices in the background.

“Emil Brod there?”

“Not here.”

“Where is he?”

“At home. Chief Brod’s at home.”

“What’s going on?” he said, but the line went dead.

He dialed my home number as he watched families greeting and hugging arrivals. On the eighth ring Katja answered. “Uh, hello?”

“Katja?”

“That you, Gavra?”

“Where’s Emil?”

“I’ve got him lying down finally.”

“Lying down? Is he hurt?”

“No, he—” She paused. “You don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“Lena. She’s dead.”

The cigarette stuck to his suddenly dry lips. “How?”

She told him everything, and he was stunned.

The crowd of waiting families had left, and Gavra still saw no sign of Harold and Beth. He found them at the customs area. They stood, exasperated, by the long white table, their suitcase open and its contents spread down the table’s length. “What is this?” a young customs official said in heavily accented English, holding up Harold’s electric razor.

“It’s my
razor,”
said Harold, his voice slow and measured. “I
shave
with it.” He pantomimed shaving his cheeks.

When Gavra approached, Beth gave him a hopeful smile.

“What’s going on here?” he asked in our language.

The one with the razor gave him a drowsy look. “Official business, comrade. Shove off.”

Official business, in this sense, meant that they were waiting for a bribe.

Gavra took out his Ministry card and held it out for them to read.

“Oh,” said the clerk. He placed the razor back in the suitcase.

“Clean this up,” said Gavra. “And if anything’s missing I’ll have your head.”

They got to it.

He turned to the old couple and switched to English. “I apologize. Some of our customs people get a little overzealous.”

“It’s no problem,” said Beth, smiling.

Harold didn’t smile. “Well, that’s not the end of it.”

“What?”

“They left Beth’s suitcase in Frankfurt. I mean, all we did was change planes!”

“Did you talk with the TisAir people?”

He shoved a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing toward the luggage area. “She doesn’t give a damn.”

“Moment.” Gavra marched off to deal with the luggage girl, whom he found flirting with one of the border guards. When he returned, having received a written assurance that the suitcase would be sent to the Metropol, his face was red from shouting. He was embarrassed by his loss of control. It was Lena’s death, he told me later. He didn’t know how much it was affecting him until he found himself shouting at all the wrong times.

The American couple didn’t seem to notice. He carried their one suitcase out to the curb, where unofficial taxi drivers stood around smoking in the darkness. When they saw the couple, they rushed forward, saying, “Taxi, taxi?”

A few stern words from Gavra, and they backed up again. He turned to Harold. “These guys will rip you off. I’ve got a car here. Please, let me drive you to your hotel.”

“That’s too much,” said Harold warily.

Beth knocked his arm. “We’d be much obliged.”

They sped down the Ml in the beige Citroen Gavra had bought a few years before—he was proud of it. Beth sat erect in the backseat, gazing out the window at passing fields just visible by the highway’s lamps, while Harold worked up the nerve to say what was on his mind. “So, what was that back there?”

“What do you mean?”

“At customs. You showed them a card. I saw the look on their faces. They were scared.” He paused. “Really scared.”

“You think so?”

“I know it.”

Harold was staring at him now, and Beth’s voice floated up. “Don’t pry, Harry.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Atkins,” said Gavra. “It’s a fair question.” He accelerated past an apple truck with Czech plates. “Fact is, I work for the Ministry for State Security.”

“State security?” said Beth.

“He means the secret police,” said Harold.

“Those guys at customs were hoping you’d give them a bribe.”

“A bribe?” said Beth.

“That’s what I thought,” said Harold. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me,” Beth said quietly.

“You
are
taking us to the Hotel Metropol, right?”

Gavra looked over at the old man, whose face was as stern as a schoolteacher’s. “Of course I am. I’m just trying to help.”

Beth leaned forward so her face appeared between them. “Well, I, for one, thank you for it. God knows where we’d be with those Karpat taxis. Probably stuck on the side of the road.”Harold grunted. “Karpats.” “You have them in the States?” asked Gavra. Beth laughed, and Harold said, “You know what we call them in America?” “What?” “Crapats.”

As they entered town, the streetlamps became less frequent, and the streets themselves were empty. Gavra didn’t like these indicators. Then, down Yalta Boulevard, he could just make out people in the darkness, filling the street where it ran into Victory Square. His stomach shifted when he noticed green army trucks parked at the edge of the crowd.

“That’s your HQ, isn’t it?” said Harold, pointing at the oak doors of number 36.

“How did you know?”

“Fodor’s,” he said. “They don’t talk highly of it.”

“I imagine not. Here.” Gavra pointed at the tall, cylindrical tower at number 20. “There’s the Metropol.” When he made a U-turn to park in front of the flags-of-all-nations awning, an old, mustached doorman came out, rubbing his hands against the cold. Gavra wres-tled Harold’s suitcase from the trunk and gave it to a bellboy, then took a slip of paper from his coat pocket—it was the receipt from Bob Moates Gun Shop for the P-83. On the back, he wrote his name and the phone number at his Militia desk. He gave it to Harold. “If you run into trouble, you call me here during work hours. Okay?”

“You think we’ll run into trouble?” said Harold.

Gavra shrugged. “Consider it insurance.”

“Thanks.” Harold offered a hand, and they shook. “And about before—well, I apologize. You’re obviously one of the good ones.”

Gavra winked at him. “Don’t be too sure. Just try to enjoy your stay in our country.”

Beth surprised him by giving him a hug. Then she squinted into the distance toward Victory Square. “What’s that? Is it a party?”

Gavra followed her gaze. He could now see soldiers standing along the edge of the crowd, just past the army trucks. “I suggest you both go inside.”

“Come on,” said Harold.

“What is it?” she whispered as her husband pulled her through to the glassed-in lobby, which was full of foreign journalists reporting on the country’s troubles from comfortable sofas.

Gavra watched until they made it to the check-in desk, then cornered the doorman. Voices from the square reached them, a tumult of shouts. “What’s going on?”

The doorman wiped his mustache. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Pankov called it. He told the local Party leaders to get their workers out for a rally. He wants to speak to them. I guess that’s them down there, but they’re not alone. Once the word got out, all the students started pouring out of doors along the street here and joined the rally. Go see for yourself. I’ll lay odds the workers are outnumbered two to one.”

“Pankov
called the rally?”

“Yeah. Not smart, was it?”

Gavra stared down Yalta Boulevard. “I’ll leave the car here a few minutes.”

“Do what you like.”

“Thanks.”

Gavra felt the doorman’s eyes on his back as he walked down the cracked sidewalk toward Victory Square. It was a long walk, because here the blocks stretched out to accommodate more magnificent buildings, but his pace gradually increased until he was jogging. From beyond the trucks, the voices were loud, and he could make out halfhearted chants from the crowd. The strongest was
Pankov, you’re starving your country
—which in our language rhymes.

Twenty yards from the edge of the crowd, a cluster of shivering foreign journalists with cameras and handheld tape recorders looked on. Gavra continued until an army captain told him to get back. He was a young officer, confused by the situation. Gavra showed his Ministry card. The captain squinted at him. “Are your men in place?”

“What men?” asked Gavra.

He paused, unsure. “On the rooftops. Comrade General Stapenov told us you guys would give us support from the rooftops. I just want to be sure.”

“The Ministry put gunmen on the roofs?”

“That’s what he told me.”

Gavra approached the line of soldiers’backs. Like the captain, they were all young, none older than twenty, clutching Kalashnikovs to their chests. They were scared. He didn’t need to show his Ministry papers for them to let him through; he only needed to tell them in a firm voice what he was. Between the soldiers and the crowd was an empty space five yards deep. A few students peered nervously at the soldiers, though most tried to ignore them, facing the far end of the vast square, where the lit columns of the Central Committee rose up. Gavra was tall enough to see over their heads.