Liberation Movements

Gavra

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 Ludvik 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, Ludvik 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. “Ludvik Mas.”

“Hang up now, Gavra.”

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

An American spy named Timothy Brixton telephoned Ludvik 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 Ludvik 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 Ludvik 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.”