Victory Square

23 DECEMBER 1989
SATURDAY
SIXTEEN

Gavra woke in darkness, cold and disoriented. His head was splitting, his mouth parched. He was on a cool floor, wood by the feel of it, and the wall behind him was rough concrete. He started to stand, but the dizziness hit, and he had to settle down again.

About five feet ahead, he could make out a line of light from the bottom of a door. When his ears cleared up, he heard heavy footsteps on the other side of the door. Dozens of them, moving purposefully back and forth, and quiet murmurs.

He rubbed his eyes and forehead, but nothing could get rid of the ache. He remembered the hotel room, and the sudden, nauseating confusion when he realized the old American couple were not what they had seemed. And Romek. What connected the colonel to these old people? Then Balint, the Ministry heavy whose loyalty to Yuri Kolev was a joke. There hadn’t been much of a struggle; Balint’s brute strength easily outmatched Gavra’s. The bag was soon over his head, and then he felt a small, sharp pinch against his arm. That must have been it, an injection. Because soon afterward he blacked out.

And woke here.

He was scared, but not as scared as he had been in America when he found Lebed Putonski’s corpse in his motel room. He knew he would be dead if Romek wanted him dead. Instead, the colonel had risked exposure transporting Gavra from the Hotel Metropol to here, wherever here was.

I’m going to make you famous, he’d said.

What did that mean?

It was hard to think with the headache and cottonmouth. What he now knew for certain was that Romek’s game was tied to the revolt tearing through the country. Brano, too, was connected-why else would he, after three years’absence, have suddenly called?

Gavra also knew that he was here because of his own stupidity. He’d forgotten Brano’s rule: Act, but never react. Once you start re-acting, you’ve already lost.

To try to regain control, he went through the facts. Romek had been trying to kill off everyone associated with the 1948 criminal case against Jerzy Michalec. Gavra didn’t yet realize that Michalec was also behind the killings; he still believed Michalec was a potential victim.

By that point, he took as truth his assumption that the Americans were part of the plan. They had sent Frank Jones to kill Putonski but hadn’t given the assassin orders to kill Gavra as well. Perhaps his job had been to tail Gavra and find out how much he’d learned before killing him. That was something he would never know.

Despite the risks, Gavra was angry he hadn’t tried to get to the Ministry. One phone call, and Brano Sev might have been able to clear everything up with a few words.

But there was an elephant in the room he was missing. He’d been working along the edges of Romek’s operation. He didn’t have enough information to even guess what was at its center.

He looked up at the sound of a key fitting into the door and tried again to get up. He pressed against the wall, sliding into a standing position, fighting the nausea as the door opened and light poured in. It blinded him briefly, and he squinted. A tall, backlit form stood in the doorway. Behind it, soldiers moved in a nondescript concrete corridor. He could now see that he’d been sitting inside a small closet with shelves filled with hundreds of rolls of toilet paper.

“Gavra Noukas,” said the form. There was enough light for him to see it was an old man, very old, with just a few wispy strands of white crowning his head.

“Who’re you?”

The man smiled-he was missing several teeth. “Please,” he said, offering a hand. “Come with me.”

Gavra ignored the hand as he stepped forward, using the wall for support. Once he reached the corridor, the old man, looking strange among these soldiers in his tailored gray suit and red tie, stepped back and let Balint-now in an infantry uniform with a sidearm- help Gavra walk.

“Your head should clear soon,” said the old man.

It was an army barracks. One steel door said ARMAMENTS and another said MESS. Gavra didn’t ask anything, because there was no point. This old man had come to get him for a reason, and Balint, holding him by the waist, was guiding him slowly to that reason.

They ended up at a door marked OPERATIONS V. Through its glass, he could see a long conference table. The old man led them in. The room was windowless. Balint gently set Gavra down onto a metal folding chair, then saluted the old man and left them alone, closing the door to wait outside.

On the far wall was a blackboard that hadn’t been cleaned well, and in the center of the table was a large glass ashtray, also dirty, beside a pitcher of water and two glasses. The old man filled one and slid it close to Gavra. “Here. Drink. You need to hydrate.”

Gavra stared at the glass but didn’t move.

The old man poured a second glass and drank half of it. “See? No ill effects. Drink. You’ll feel better.”

As Gavra drank the whole glass, the man pulled the ashtray to the edge of the table and lit a scented French cigarette. “You want to know who I am, yes?”

Gavra set down the empty glass and watched the old man refill it. He didn’t want to admit to curiosity, but he had no other options. “Yes.”

“I’m Jerzy Michalec.”

That was something Gavra didn’t see coming, and it told him what I’d figured out in the misery of my empty bed. He looked again at the old man’s fine suit and the self-conscious way he brought the cigarette to his dry lips. Unlike most people those days, he was well shaven, and Gavra noticed a scar-faint but still visible-along his jawline. “And?” said Gavra.

Jerzy Michalec offered a cigarette, but Gavra shook his head. The old man sat a couple of seats down and scraped ash into the ashtray. “You’re Brano Sev’s protege, yes?”

Gavra didn’t answer.

“No need to be shy about it. In fact, you should be proud. Not everyone can claim something so prestigious.”

He spoke as if they were both in an elegant drawing room, enjoying glasses of port by a fire. It annoyed Gavra.

“That’s why you’re here, you know.”

“Because of Brano?”

Michalec nodded slowly. “It’s integral to everything.”

Gavra rubbed his head. “I don’t know where Brano is, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I gave up on trying to find him long ago,” said Michalec. “But whether or not I find him, it makes no difference.”

“Would you mind making sense?”

“We have to work you into this, Gavra. That’s just how it has to be. Tell you everything, and your poor head won’t be able to take it. We’ve still got time.”

“Have a little faith in me. You’d be surprised how much I can take.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Michalec said affectionately, then winked.

Gavra nearly threw himself across the table in order to rip out the man’s eyes. Instead, he muttered, “Tell me where I am.”

The old man was suddenly serious. “You’re in the Sixteenth District Third Infantry barracks. No one knows you’re here. If we want, we can get rid of you, and no one will ask us a single question. Remember that.”

Gavra reached for his glass and started drinking again. Michalec was right; his head was clearing enough for him to start to make connections. “You and Nikolai Romek have been killing people who know about your Nazi associations. You’re erasing your past. Even in America. Why?”

Michalec set his cigarette hand against the table and scratched his scar. “Mr. Lukacs.”

Gavra nodded.

Michalec put out his cigarette. There was a studied look on his weathered face, but then the smile returned. “It’s funny. Nikolai thought you were in Yugoslavia; so did I. Kolev turned out more wily than we thought. Then the Atkinses ended up on a plane with you. Rather beautiful coincidence, don’t you think?” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you think you know about my past is beside the point. The only matter of importance is that you are here and that your country requires your help.”

A series of rebuttals came to Gavra. What do you know about my country? You have no idea what my country needs. I’d help my country best by killing you. They were all childish taunts, so he remained silent for a moment, then said, “What kind of help?”

Michalec stood. “Can you walk now?”

With Balint now following them, Gavra and Michalec continued down the corridor, passing soldiers Gavra could now see were all officers. Their faces were flushed, as if they were scared. Then he saw Nikolai Romek, also fitted out in an army uniform, walking past, but the Ministry colonel was involved in reading papers and didn’t notice him.

They turned down another corridor, which was lined with classrooms marked by numbers. Odd on the left, even on the right. They stopped at number 6, which was open, and through the doorway he saw chairs with attached desktops, the kind children used. They had once been arranged in perfect rows when recruits attended lessons but now were disordered. The desks were occupied by old people, about fifteen of them, some talking animatedly, others sitting quietly with their thoughts. Through a far window, he saw black tree branches and faint light-it was dawn.

When Michalec stepped through the doorway, the conversation stopped abruptly and they all looked up. Among them sat Harold and Beth Atkins, both breaking into huge smiles. Harold came over, grabbed Gavra’s hand, and started pumping it. “You feeling all right? Better now?”

“Don’t crowd him, Harry,” said Beth.

Harold returned to his wife, and Michalec continued to the wide lecturer’s desk at the front of the room. On the large, dirty blackboard someone had written:

AIMS END STREET FIGHTING

UNITE FACTIONS CENTRAL CONTROL OF UTILITIES

INSTALL BUREAUCRACY

SECURE DEMOCRACY

Balint urged Gavra forward until they also reached the desk at the front. Michalec said to the room, “Once again, I thank you all for traveling so far.” He patted his hands together to applaud their long journeys, and they briefly applauded themselves.

One of the old men in the back called, “Viva la revolucion!”

The others laughed, and even Michalec smiled. But Gavra didn’t. He started to understand, and the understanding frightened him more than the confusion had.

“I have to be brief,” Michalec said, then gestured toward Gavra. “You all know why this young man’s here. But he doesn’t know. Not yet. As we discussed before, we’re going to take this slowly. We’ve got…” He checked his watch. “Nearly twenty hours to bring our man to our way of thinking.”

“And if he doesn’t?” said an elderly woman at the front. Her accent was strange; Gavra couldn’t place it.

“We’ll deal with that when it comes. It won’t change our plans.”

She nodded very seriously, as did a few others.

“But I wouldn’t worry,” said Michalec. He winked at Gavra. “I have great faith in Mr. Noukas.”

That provoked another round of applause and brought on the nausea again. What he understood was that he was standing among emigres who had returned home after decades away to assist the revolution. Unlike Gavra, and unlike me, they felt it was in their power to change a foul regime; they felt it was their duty. He should have been overcome by admiration for them, but he couldn’t manage it. There was something wrong here. Their euphoria felt like hysteria, and he knew that hysterical revolutions were the bloodiest.

Then he considered the writing on the chalkboard. Practical reasons for whatever they were doing. There was nothing hysterical there-the list concerned the stabilization of the country. Rearranging the bureaucracy so that utilities would continue to work and people wouldn’t be killed in the street.

Michalec said, “I just wanted you good people to see him, and remember his face. His face is our face.”

That last line revived Gavra’s panic. “No,” he said aloud.

The crowd looked at him expectantly.

“No,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I’m not any part of this.”

“Give him time,” Michalec told them.

Involuntarily, Gavra tried to run, but Balint was prepared for that. His big hands caught Gavra’s shoulders and pulled him sharply back. He stumbled but didn’t fall.

Michalec said, “Now to our lessons,” and the people laughed.

As he was guided back out to the corridor, some came to shake his hand again, and Gavra, bewildered, let them do it. Then the old man who had shouted Viva la revolucion raised two fingers to Gavra’s forehead and muttered a blessing in Spanish as he marked the cross on Gavra’s body.