Liberation Movements

Katja

I shoot him once in the stomach when he opens the door. A sharp explosion rings in my ears. The recoil goes through to my elbow, jerking it. He stumbles back a few feet, then falls as if he’s slipped on a banana peel.

Really, that’s how it looks.

Lying on the floor, he covers the hole in his stomach with a hand, but the blood comes out between his fingers. His face-up close it’s older than I remember; it’s been through things-is contorted, his lips loose and flapping with his quick, stunned breaths.

That’s when my head clears. Cordite burns in my nostrils as I check the empty corridor, then come inside and close the door. He tries to cry for help, but he can’t get enough breath for anything more than quiet groans and the occasional whisper.

“What?” I say, standing over him. “Did you say something?”

It’s difficult to read that twisted face. There’s pain, but it seems to be masking something. Surprise, perhaps.

He whispers, “What do you want?”

It’s just like the voice on the recording, just like the voice I remember.

But he’s asked me a question, and I’m not sure what I want. A part of me wonders if I’m done now, if seven years have led to that one bullet, and perhaps I should just leave.

He coughs, shooting pink spittle across the beige carpet.

I open his suitcase on the bed. Nothing except clothes.

“Money,” he whispers.

I come around to look at him. “Money?”

His eyes are very large. Blood drains from the corner of his lips as he says, “Wardrobe…under.” Then: “Hospital.”

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ve shot a man in the stomach, but there’s a hysterical lightness to my step as I hop over him to look beneath the wardrobe. This lightness will leave me, I know, but now I’m almost giddy. Crouching, I find a plastic bag filled with Deutschmarks and, beside it, a hunting knife.

Only when I pick it up and look at the hawk burned into its leather sheath does the adrenaline lessen. The dying man is now trying to roll onto his side.

“Hospital,” he whispers.

Time slows again as I remember this knife, the hilt that I saw coming out of my stomach. Stanislav’s knife, the one his father, weeping, presented him before he was shipped off to Prague. I was there to see the exchange. So were my mother and father. We all drank plum brandy.

“I have family,” he whispers.

I crawl over to him because my legs are not working well. He’s rolled to his side in the pool of his blood. I’m in that pool myself, my forearms sticky.

As if he can understand, I say, “Maybe it’s too simple, but yes, I blame you for everything.”

He blinks and whispers: “Who…are…you?”

I don’t understand, because it’s an impossible question. He must know me. How could I carry his face with me for seven years and he just-

I unsheathe the knife.

“No,” he whispers, his confused eyes growing again.

I climb behind him, place the point against his Adam’s apple and my knee behind his head. He tries to swat it with his hands, but his arms won’t rise that far.

Just before I push it in, he says the word that will remain with me for some time to come, in that whispered, dying tone.

He says, “Katja.”

From the look on your face I’m guessing you didn’t know what I did to her. If so, you wouldn’t have called me here. But let me tell you this, Comrade Sev. I’m not random. I’m a man who knows what is required at any moment. You told me that if I was interested in working for the Ministry, I should meet you in Victory Park on Friday. I was interested. I am interested. And I knew that if I was to be of proper service to the Ministry, I had to tie up my loose ends. An agent is no good if there are others out there who wish him ill, who know too much about him. No. It’s unacceptable. So that’s what I did. I tied up my loose ends. I got rid of that girl. And now I’m here, ready to serve the Ministry with all the cunning I can muster.