Liberation Movements

Gavra

Captain Gavra Noukas blinked a few times in the early morning darkness. Someone was banging on his door. Face in the pillow, he first saw the dirty hotel glass on the bedside table and caught the rough scent of so many crushed cigarettes. The banging continued. He raised his head, but slowly because of the hangover. “Wait!” he called.

From the other side of the door came the old man’s voice. “We’re late, Gavra. I told you before. Four o’clock.”

Beside him in the small bed, the young, handsome Turk from last night shifted, muttering in English, “What the hell is that?”

“Quiet.” Gavra held a finger to his lips and slipped into his underwear. He opened the door a couple of inches. In the bright corridor stood a short, graying old man with three moles on his cheek. “I’ll be out in a minute, Comrade Colonel.”

The old man’s expression betrayed none of his feelings. “Get some clothes on. Now. I’ll be in the car.”

He closed the door and rubbed a hand through his hair. As the young man sat up, the sheets fell from his thin, pale chest, revealing the long white scar Gavra had discovered last night while undressing him. At the time he’d hardly noticed it. “Who the fuck’s that?” the Turk insisted.

“I have to go to work,” said Gavra. “Which means you have to go as well.”

“At four o’clock in the morning?” The young man pouted with a certain effeminacy and aura of desperation that Gavra found revolting. “We can’t even have a coffee together?”

Gavra threw him his underwear.

Quietly, the young man said, “It’s a long walk home.”

So Gavra tossed some Turkish lira on the bed as well. “Come on, let’s move.”

He might have been kinder to the young man, but the fact was that Gavra couldn’t remember his name.

Colonel Brano Sev leaned against the rented blue Renault just down the narrow, cobbled street from the Hotel Erboy, smoking. When he saw Gavra step out of the lobby into the warm early dawn, he climbed in and revved the engine.

As the car lurched and trembled over stones, he said, “This isn’t the kind of behavior I expect, Gavra.”

“I should have set my alarm.”

Brano shook his head, and Gavra noticed he was looking slightly different. Over the last year of Gavra’s apprenticeship, largely at his urging, Brano had gradually acquiesced to sideburns. Gray and thick. Brano said, “I mean picking up girls, Gavra. There was someone else in your bed. I could see her moving.”

Gavra opened his mouth but then thought better of it.

“You’ve got the stupidity of youth. If you want to make it anywhere in the Ministry, you have to grow up.”

Gavra told him he understood, then looked out the window down the length of Sultanahmet Park to the domes and minarets of the Blue Mosque topped by sunlight and proved that he didn’t understand at all by saying, “But this isn’t the most sensitive of jobs. All we’re doing is picking him up from the airport.”

Brano Sev didn’t answer at first. He took a long breath, the kind he took when gathering patience. The Comrade Lieutenant General, a big man who tended to speak in fraternal shouts, once pulled Gavra aside and explained that Brano had never wanted to take on a 29-year-old pupil. But don’t worry, the head of the Ministry told him, he’s an old man who knows much more than he’s able to do, and we’ve made the decision for him.

Brano Sev exhaled, glanced in the rearview, and spoke slowly. “Just suppose that we arrived late. Libarid Terzian’s plane has let him off and he’s had a half hour to stand around in the arrivals lounge, waiting for us.”

“He can take care of himself, Comrade Sev.”

“I’m not disputing that,” said Brano. “He’s a homicide inspector; he knows how to protect himself. But let’s say he’s had a half hour to consider his options. Let’s say he decided he didn’t want to return home. Do you know how simple it is to lose yourself in Istanbul?”

“But he has a family. That’s why he was chosen for the conference. That’s why he was issued an external passport.”

“How do you know he loves his family?”

For some reason, Gavra had never considered that possibility.

“Twenty years ago,” Brano explained, “Comrade Terzian embarked on a rather reckless affair with another militiaman’s wife. Though it didn’t last, he has admitted more than once that this woman was the love of his life. But, since she was no longer available-she decided to stay with her husband-he married Zara Sasuni and has built a life he probably never really desired. It wouldn’t be so strange if he wanted to leave this life.”

Brano paused to let the story sink in.

“You see, Gavra, no matter how many electric ears we place, no matter how many feet of film we have on them, we never know what’s going on. Up here.” He tapped his temple and turned onto Kennedy Caddesi. Off to the left, the Sea of Marmara opened up, sprinkled with freighters.

Ataturk International Airport was a long, low building west of Istanbul, in a barren, burnt-grass corner of Yesilkoy. Brano parked in the middle of the lot, and as Gavra followed him inside, he noticed how the old man glanced around in an unconscious fashion, and how he didn’t even register the man with a cart of drinks who sang his price to them. In the arrivals lounge, Brano scanned the board marking planes and times. Gavra peered over his shoulder. “See? It’s late.”

The board didn’t say how late Turkish Air Flight 54 was, so Brano spoke with a girl at the information desk while Gavra lit a cigarette. Families wandered and settled heavily on chairs, waiting for the delayed plane. Brano returned, running his tongue behind his lips. “She says they don’t know how long.”

“Here, have a cigarette.”

“You see that man over there?”

Gavra followed his gaze to the corner. Beside a potted mullein stood a small man in his late twenties with a wire-thin mustache out of a comic book. “What about him?”

“His name’s Ludvik Mas. What’s he doing here?”

“Why don’t you go ask him?”

Brano gave him a look he’d seen too many times on this trip already.

Gavra bought two coffees from the singing vendor and handed one to Brano. Ludvik Mas, still in the corner, looked at his watch. “He’s waiting for the same flight,” Gavra pointed out.

Brano ignored his perceptiveness. “Come on.”

They walked back to the information desk, where a policeman had joined the clerk.

“Hello,” Brano said in English. “I’m waiting for Flight 54.”

“I told you before,” the clerk said, her face stern. “You’ll receive information on that when everyone else does.”

Brano took a red Interior Ministry certificate out of his pocket and handed it over. She squinted at the strange language, while the policeman frowned over her shoulder. “I’m a government official.”

“Not the Turkish government,” said the policeman.

As Brano stared at the smirking officer, Gavra sensed the cool, hard anger he’d felt only a few times over the last year of his apprenticeship. Brano said, “Are you interested in causing an international incident?”

The policeman didn’t answer.

“Because when I shoot you, my diplomatic immunity will allow me to walk out of here a free man.”

As the policeman lifted a telephone and began to dial, Brano returned to his native language and said to Gavra, “Keep an eye on Ludvik Mas while I find out what’s going on.”

When Brano sauntered off down the corridor with the policeman, Gavra lit another cigarette and leaned on a column. Beyond Ludvik Mas stood a young security guard with a machine gun hanging from his shoulder. Ludvik had that harried, claustrophobic look of men from their country, with his self-conscious mustache, disorganized sideburns, and too-tight suit, while the guard’s handsome face suggested-to Gavra, at least-relaxation and self-confidence: a few days’ beard, cap perched back on his head. Even his Uzi seemed a fashion accessory. As he watched the guard, Gavra felt the relaxation that Istanbul always brought him. Beautiful boys and a hot, clear sun that kept his skin tingling. The mosques appealed to his amateur aestheticism, mesmeric prayer-songs filled the city five times a day, and the expanse of the Bosphorus dividing Europe from Asia made his country’s stretch of the Tisa look like an open sewer. Istanbul was so different from life in the Capital, where clouds darkened the sky and the men were…

Gavra rubbed his nose.

Where the men were closed to new experiences.

That was when Gavra finally comprehended Brano’s words. Because, love for one’s family or not, who would not choose to shake loose of the Capital and stay, indefinitely, in this paradise?

Then Ludvik Mas left the mullein plant to use one of three pay phones along the opposite wall.

Gavra sipped his coffee as he followed, watching Mas nod into the telephone and bite his lip between words. He reached the next phone and picked it up. Mas was saying, “Of course it’s irregular. That’s what I’m telling you.”

Gavra slipped in a coin and began to dial a random number.

“Okay. But patience isn’t easy. Yes. Yes.”

Mas hung up and walked back to his corner.

“Who are you calling?” It was Brano.

“I was listening to Mas’s conversation.”

Brano, blinking rapidly, shook his head. “Forget that for now. Come with me.”

He followed the colonel down a busy corridor to a door marked GUVENLIK — security-beside which stood another handsome guard wearing a tall cap. Gavra gave him a smile he didn’t return.

The airport security office was small and dark, lit almost solely by the blue haze of video monitors and the glow of five cigarettes held by five sweating men. The scent of Turkish tobacco, which last night at the club had seemed so intoxicating, now made him want to flee.

“This is my associate, Gavra Noukas,” Brano said in English. “Nothing is to be kept from him.”

It was an introduction he appreciated. Gavra nodded at each man, but none introduced himself. A fat Turk sitting in front of the monitors, said, “What to tell? There is no more plane. It blow up over Bulgaria.”

Gavra touched the back of an empty chair to steady himself. “What?”

“The pilot, he reports they are hijacked. So we talk to the hijackers-Armenians, members of…of the what?”

“Army of the Liberation of Armenia,” said another man.

“Who are they?” Gavra asked.

The fat man shrugged. “Who knows? Just more dis…disaffected Armenians what think his empty bank account is the fault of Turkey. We talk to them, then lose contact. Then the plane, it disappear from the radar.”

“You’re sure it exploded? It didn’t go down?”

Brano explained. “The Bulgarians saw it. Sofia Airport reported the fireball.”

“Before we can answer the demands,” said the fat man.

Gavra turned the empty chair around and sank into it. “Then why did they hijack the plane?”

The fat man shook his head. “You think I know, kid?”

“You said you have a recording?” asked Brano.

The fat man nodded. “They bring the equipment right now. But it’s no help. None. Probably they just wire the bomb all wrong. Fucking Armenians.”

Brano turned to Gavra. “I want you to watch him, Ludvik Mas. Maybe he has nothing to do with this, but if he leaves, you follow. Do not make contact, only follow. Here are the car keys. You understand?”

“Okay,” Gavra said. “But Libarid, wasn’t he Ar-”

“Now,” said Brano.