Liberation Movements

Gavra

Doctor Arendt told them what little he knew: that Zrinka Martrich’s brother, Adrian, was twenty-three years old, two years younger than her; that he was unmarried, living in the Fourth District; and that he managed the state butcher’s shop on Union Street.

Gavra drove while Katja opened the doctor’s file on her lap, squinting in the failing light. Beneath the stacks of memos she found a photograph of Zrinka, taken five years ago at the hospital. “Pretty girl,” she said.

He glanced over and saw a striking brunette with eyes that in the black-and-white were a very pale gray. “Yeah.”

“Do you believe the doctor?”

“It’s an elaborate story for a lie.”

“I don’t trust him,” said Katja. “This Zrinka is just swept away to Rokosyn and vanishes? How does that happen?”

Gavra considered his answer, then just gave it. “Katja, people disappear all the time.”

On Union Street, they found the butcher’s shop where a young man was locking the front door from inside. As they got out of the car and approached, he seemed to be trying to work the key faster, but he stopped when Gavra knocked on the glass. He looked terrified.

“Adrian Martrich?” asked Gavra.

The young man shook his head and said something they couldn’t hear.

Gavra pointed at the key. “Open the door.” The young man did this.

“We’re looking for Adrian Martrich,” said Katja.

“Not me. Adrian’s in the back.”

Gavra put his hand on the door. “Well, then. Take us to him.”

He led them past the empty glass cases, in which Gavra noticed traces of blood still not wiped clean, and to a back door. He knocked.

“Yeah?” came a voice.

“Adrian,” said the young man, his voice weak, “some people to talk to you.”

“Okay,” said Adrian Martrich, and they heard papers being put away. By the time the boy had opened the door, Zrinka’s brother was at a clean desk. He stood and offered his hand, smiling congenially, as if he’d been expecting their visit.

Gavra felt a choking sensation in the back of his throat. Adrian Martrich was tall and handsome, similar to the way his dead sister was beautiful. As they sat, Gavra grew warm, looking at that well-formed face, pale blue eyes, and thin, coiffed sideburns beneath a wave of brown hair. This man took good care of himself. He looked like no butcher Gavra had ever seen.

From his smile, it appeared that Adrian Martrich wasn’t disappointed by what he saw, either.

All this, Gavra knew, should have been a warning.

“Comrade Martrich?” said Katja.

He answered her but continued to look at Gavra. “Yes?”

“We’re here to ask about your sister.”

Adrian blinked at her. “You know where Zrinka is?”

She began to shake her head but stopped short of lying. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

“Three? Yes, three years ago. When she was in the clinic.”

“Tarabon.”

He nodded.

“Did your sister have friends in Istanbul?”

“Istanbul?” Adrian snorted lightly. “Not that I know of.” Then he looked back at Gavra. “But three years is a long time.”

“It certainly is,” said Katja. “And you never wondered where she was?”

Adrian Martrich sized her up a moment. “Of course I wondered where she was. Some months ago, her old doctor, Comrade Arendt, sent me to a little town in the countryside. He said she was there. Rokosyn. But when I arrived I realized he was lying.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “there was nothing there. As far as I know, there’s never been a clinic at Rokosyn.”

Gavra leaned forward; Katja frowned. She said, “Did you talk to the doctor again after that?”

“Why should I? He obviously wasn’t interested in helping me.”

Gavra placed a hand on the desk. “Zrinka was on a plane three days ago. It was headed for Istanbul, but it was hijacked and exploded. She’s dead.”

“Dead?” said Adrian. A nervous smile crossed his face, then vanished. He placed his own hands on the desk, flat. “Zrinka?”

“We’re sorry to have to give you this news,” Katja said, and followed with words of sympathy, but it was obvious that the butcher was no longer listening. He was staring at his hands.

“You’re talking about that plane,” he said finally. “The one in the Spark. Flight 54.”

“Yes,” said Gavra, his voice now very soft. “We’re trying to find out what your sister was doing on that plane.”

Adrian breathed a few times, loudly, then looked at Gavra. “I wish I knew.”

Gavra drove again as they headed through the dim streets back to Doctor Arendt. Katja stretched, trying to get rid of the tension of a long day in the car. She said, “Okay. If we believe the brother, then the question: Why did Doctor Arendt tell him, and then us, that Zrinka had been sent to a nonexistent clinic?”

“Because he doesn’t want to say where she really went.”

The sun was low behind the doctor’s Fifth District apartment, and they had to squint to see well. The door to the building was locked, so Katja pressed Arendt’s buzzer.

Along the street, families were promenading after early dinners. Katja followed Gavra’s gaze and pressed the buzzer again. “They look satisfied, don’t they?”

Gavra didn’t answer. He was thinking of Adrian Martrich, the handsome butcher.

Then the door opened, but it wasn’t the doctor. It was an old woman with a tattered pink babushka tied around her head. When she noticed their dress uniforms, she froze in the doorway, eyes wide.

Katja gave her a smile.

“Potatoes,” the old woman said.

“I’m sorry,” said Katja. “We don’t have potatoes.”

The old woman raised a bent finger and pointed across the street to a vegetable shop, and Gavra stepped out of the way. She passed quickly. They caught the door and went inside.

As they took the stairs, they didn’t say a thing. It wasn’t worth discussing.

Gavra was the one who knocked on the doctor’s door. He was the one standing there when it opened on its own, from the pressure of his knuckle. Against the far wall, the open wardrobe spilled files all over the floor, a few covering the doctor, who lay in the middle of his living room, facedown, with a bullet hole in the back of his skull.