Victory Square

EIGHTEEN

As he was led past other classrooms, Gavra peered through an open door to where two men sat opposite one another at a table, scribbling on sheets of paper. One was fat, with a black beard, while the other was thin and very erect. That second man was Andras To-descu, Tomiak Pankov’s personal advisor.

Gavra turned to Michalec. “You had Todescu all along.”

The old man glanced back at the classroom. “You can’t do this sort of thing without help.”

“Todescu convinced Pankov to call the rally and speak at it.”

Michalec shrugged.

Then Gavra’s scalp went cold, because he’d just made a second, more important connection. “Todescu would’ve left with the Pankovs on that helicopter. If he’s here, then…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. It explained the look of fear he saw in all these officers’faces. “You’ve got the Pankovs.”

They reached the end of the corridor, and Balint put his hand on a set of double doors but didn’t open it because Michalec had stopped and turned to face Gavra. He pursed his lips and crossed them with his left index finger, a gesture of silence.

They stepped out into the early morning cold. A wind raged across the barracks, where jeeps and trucks were parked in a disorderly fashion and freezing guards with Kalashnikovs paced along the high stone wall. Out here, the barracks seemed to be going through a regular, quiet day, but the guards were alert, peering often through small steel doors in the wall. The cold bore through Gavra’s paint-stained coat.

They took a covered walkway down the edge of the building and through another door to where it was again warm, and thick with moisture. “They still haven’t fixed that radiator,” said Michalec.

Balint grunted some kind of agreement.

The steel doors here were small and unlabeled, with locks on the outside and barred windows to see inside. At the far end of the narrow passageway stood two guards who stiffened as they approached. “How are they?” Michalec asked the younger of the two, a corporal.

“She’s sleeping,” said the corporal. The fear Gavra had sensed in the officers was all over this boy’s face. “He wants his insulin.”

Michalec nodded, and the two guards stepped to the opposite wall so the visitors could better reach the locked door. Michalec peered through the bars, nodded, and stepped back. “Go ahead,” he said.

Even knowing what he would see couldn’t prepare Gavra for the shock. He leaned close, blinking in the musty darkness of the cell, and found President Tomiak Pankov, the Astrakhan hat still on his head, sitting on a cot, wrapped in an officer’s greatcoat. That famous face stared back at him with angry pink eyes.

Nearly all Gavra’s life, this man had been the Great Leader. He was too young to have known the exhilaration of Pankov’s predecessor, Mihai. For him, there was only Pankov and the many names he went by, titles that by now seem ludicrous but once meant something grand: General Secretary and President

The Conductor

The First Worker of the Country

The Architect

That reliable leader and father and friend of young people

The Sweet Kiss of the Land

Our Polar Star

The Lighthouse

A man like a fir tree who is the sacred oak of our glory

The mountain that protects the country

A well of living water

Then the Great Leader spoke. “Don’t look at me like I’m a fucking animal. Cretin!”

Gavra remembered that hunting trip in the Carpathians, and the boisterous, deluded, but in the end strangely endearing man who hunted with the aid of expert sharpshooters, perhaps the same sharpshooters who now ran across rooftops, firing into crowds.

“Well?” said Pankov. His voice was sharp and dry. “I need my diabetes medicine, and both of us need real food!”

In the other cot, covered in layers of gray army blanket, Ilona Pankov stirred at the noise. Her husband lowered his voice to a high whisper. “Find my chef-I’m on a diet prescribed by my doctor.”

Gavra couldn’t take it anymore. He straightened and stepped back, involuntarily wiping his eyes. The small passageway was blurry, and he was having trouble getting air.

“You’ll get over it,” Michalec told him.

“What are you feeding him?”

“Army rations. It’s what we all eat.”

“Get me out of here.”

“Don’t have any questions for the Sweet Kiss of the Land?”

“Please,” said Gavra.

“Come on.”

Outside, he couldn’t feel the cold anymore. He leaned over a low shrub bordering the walkway, breathing heavily.

“You had to see that,” Michalec said with a tone of sympathy. “It had to be done.”

Gavra wiped his mouth but didn’t rise. “Why?” Michalec didn’t answer, so he turned to look up at him. “Why did I have to see them?”

“Because,” said Michalec, as if the question were a surprise, “you’re the one who’s going to execute them.”