Victory Square

NINETEEN

I don’t know if Gisele Sully believed me or if, as a good journalist, she just smelled a story, but she suddenly raised her hand, called to the bar, and asked Toman to make her a double espresso. As he worked on it, she said, “What’re you planning to do?”

“All I can do. Find Rosta Gorski and Jerzy Michalec.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not. I’m not getting you killed.”

“The snipers are few and far between now, and no one’s going to kill a foreign journalist. They need us.”

Karel made a noise, and we turned to him. “What about Gavra?” he said.

I’d forgotten.

“Gavra Noukas?” said Sully.

We stared at her. “You know him?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Yesterday, he ran in here like a madman. You saw that car by the front door? That was him. He drove up during the battle with the snipers.” She reached into her purse, pulled out an envelope filled with photographs, and started going through them. “Here.” She handed one over. “He wouldn’t talk to anyone, just ran through us, but I met a soldier who knew his name, said he was Ministry. Is that true? Is he Ministry?”

It was Gavra. He looked haggard, his eyes bruised, and he was running through journalists, toward the camera. I handed the photo to Karel. “Why was he here?”

“I don’t know. A few of us waited, but we never saw him leave. And the car’s still on the curb.”

“Oh Jesus,” muttered Karel.

“Gisele,” said Toman, raising an espresso cup.

When she went to get it, Karel gripped my wrist. “Maybe he’s still in the hotel.”

There were other exits from the Metropol, ones that the Militia and Ministry were familiar with, and that’s what I told him. I didn’t tell him my deeper worry, that Gavra was still here, in one of its three hundred rooms, dead.

From the look on his face, Karel had found that possibility on his own. “You think he’s all right?”

“He can take care of himself.”

“I need to look. He might need my help.”

“Okay,” I said. “You stay here, but I need to go. All right?”

I was pleased that he agreed to this. He handed over the car keys. I slipped them into my coat pocket, beside Gavra’s Makarov. “But take care of it,” he said. “Gavra will be pissed if it doesn’t come back in one piece.”

Sully was impressed by the Citroen. She asked about the paint on the side, but I didn’t bother answering. “We going to the Central Committee Building?” she asked.

“Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

She didn’t. As I drove, she took out a handheld tape recorder, pressed RECORD, and held it between us. “You’re a Militia chief, then?”

“Yes,” I said, then remembered the truth. “Actually, no. Yesterday was my retirement.”

“Well, congratulations,” she said. “How did you originally meet Jerzy Michalec?”

“Just after the war.” I turned onto Victory Square. “He’d killed a songwriter, and then more people, because he was covering up his war crimes.”

“War crimes?”

I sensed disbelief in her tone. “He worked for the Gestapo. Then, when the Soviets arrived, he killed the soldiers under his own command. That’s how he became a war hero. By killing his own men.” I rubbed my lip, afraid of sounding like a fanatic. “Anyway, the songwriter was blackmailing him.”

“Who was the songwriter? Would I know his name?”

“No one remembers him. Janos Crowder was my wife’s first husband.”

She lowered the recorder as I pulled up on the sidewalk and parked at the foot of the Central Committee steps. “You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was.”

We got out and mounted the steps as a soldier trotted down, his rifle bouncing off his backside. Before he reached us, I told Sully not to say a word.

“You shouldn’t park there,” he told us.

I wasn’t going to be thwarted because of illegal parking. “We’ll just be a minute.”

“Where are you going?”

“We need to see Rosta Gorski.”

“Who?”

I spelled the name for him, then showed my Militia documents, while Gisele pulled out her camera and took a few shots of freezing smokers standing between the columns.

The soldier turned out to be more helpful than I expected. He went with us up the steps and into the vast marble entrance that was full of activity. Young men and women in wrinkled clothes walked quickly from and into marble corridors holding stacks of papers, pencils lodged behind their ears. So unlike the old days, when I’d sometimes be brought in to join a large assembly of Militia chiefs and suffer through the lecture of some Interior Ministry bureaucrat who wanted to remind us of our political responsibilities.

The soldier took us directly ahead, to where a long folding table had been set up in front of the huge marble sculpture of our national hawk, which matched the bronze hawk in the Ministry foyer.

The soldier did the talking for us, bending down to speak with a tired-looking girl in her early twenties. “These people are looking for Rosta Gorski. Any idea who that is?”

“Who are you?” she asked me.

I didn’t tell her who I was, instead motioning toward my companion. “Gisele Sully. She’s a French journalist. Gorski told her to come by for an interview.” Gisele started to open her mouth, but I cut in. “I’m her translator.”

“You know French?” She looked doubtful.

I didn’t-German was my language-but I said, “Oui,” with my best accent. Luckily, she didn’t speak it either.

She pulled over a folder and went through a stack of pages listing names and numbers. “Here it is. Room 214.” She pointed at one of the corridors. “Down there and up the steps.”

I thanked her and the soldier, then took Gisele’s elbow as we walked away.

“Why’d you say that?” she said.

“What?”

“That you were my translator.” She sounded insulted. “I’m fluent.”

“Because I need a reason to be here, and it’s better for you if they think you don’t understand.”

She’d been a foreign correspondent long enough to know this was true-she could listen in on what people didn’t want her to hear. At the end of the corridor, we took a circular staircase to the second floor, where it was quieter. At the opposite end of this corridor, I knew, was a second exit-a service stairwell that I and the other chiefs used when we wanted to make a quick, unnoticed escape from one of the Interior Ministry lectures.

“Where’s your recorder?”

She took it out of her jacket pocket.

“Just before we go inside, turn it on. Okay? But don’t take it out.”

She nodded, grinning vaguely. The intrigue appealed to her.

It didn’t appeal to me. My heart was thumping again, loudly, and I considered taking more Captopril, but held off-I only had ten left.

Room 214 was halfway down, on the left. We paused outside the door to listen but heard nothing. I pointed at her pocket, and she reached in to turn on the recorder. Then I opened the door.

Rosta Gorski had been given an exceptional office above the fray. It was large and marbled, with antique oak cabinets and a large desk where a thirty-two-year-old, clean-shaven man with a shock of very black hair sat reading papers through bifocals propped halfway down his nose. Behind him, from high windows, you could see the entirety of Victory Square.

“Yes?” he said, looking up. He removed his glasses and squinted at me, as if he knew me but couldn’t place my name.

Rather than give his memory the leisure to work up an answer, I closed the door and brought out Gavra’s Makarov.

“Merde,” said Gisele.

Gorski didn’t seem frightened by the gun. His memory caught up with events, and he raised a finger, wagging it at me. “Chief Emil Brod. You hardly look like your picture at all. It must be an old one.”

“Gisele,” I said, switching to my labored English, “sit down.”

“Who’s she?” said Gorski, as she settled stiffly in a chair. “Do I know her?”

“I used her to get in here. She’s French, doesn’t understand a word we’re saying.”

“That’s good,” said Gorski, then smiled at Gisele and said something in French about me being crazy- fou. He turned back to me. “Can I get a cigarette?” He motioned toward a shiny pine box on his desk.

I went to the edge of the desk and opened it. Inside were rows of Marlboros. I chose one at random and threw it in front of him, then tossed over a pack of Metropol matches I’d grabbed from the bar.

His hands shook when he lit it, but that was more adrenaline than fear. He waved the match, making a long ribbon of smoke, then dropped it into a crystal ashtray. “What can I do for you, Emil Brod?”

“I think you have some idea.”

“I have no idea.”

I don’t know what I expected from him-some eager admission of guilt, I suppose-but there are some people who can sense what you desire, and for that reason they give you the opposite. Rosta Gorski was one such person. I said, “Two weeks ago you went into the Ministry Archives with Nikolai Romek. You signed out six personnel files and one case file. You got rid of the case file and doctored the others so that no one would be able to prove that your father, Jerzy Michalec, had been a Gestapo agent.”

He took a drag, blinking as smoke got into his eyes, then waved the smoke away. “Go on.”

“But to ensure there were no accusations coming out of the woodwork, you proceeded to murder each person who was directly connected to that case.”

“Obviously not everyone,” said Gorski. His tone had cooled. “You’re still alive.”

“You tried but killed my wife by mistake.”

Gorski blinked a few times. “I didn’t kill anyone, Brod. And why do you think she was killed by mistake?”

I stared at him a moment, as the slow cogs of my brain refitted. I’d been staring at one thing for too long. Of course Lena was a target- Michalec had kidnapped her. She was a witness. They’d hoped we would be in the car together, or maybe hers was also wired with explosives. “But you didn’t take her file. Why?”

Gorski rubbed his nostrils, wondering how much he should say. He glanced at Gisele Sully and winked to comfort her. He said, “There was no file on Lena Brod.”

“Of course there was. It was just misplaced.”

He shook his head. “Her name’s not even in the reference lists. She’s only mentioned in your file, as your wife. Maybe you can explain that?”

I couldn’t. I’d last seen her Militia file in 1948, just after the Michalec investigation. I’d never had a reason to look for it again.

But he was trying to distract me from what I’d come to do. I raised the pistol so that it pointed at his head. He swallowed. When I spoke, my throat was choked. “You killed my wife, or you ordered her murder. You and your father.”

“If you believe that so strongly, then why haven’t you shot me yet?”

“Because I want your father. You, Rosta Gorski, are nothing.”

I’d judged correctly — my words stung him.

“Where is Jerzy?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Gorski.

“It does. Tell me.”

“Or you’ll shoot me? Come on, Brod. You shoot me, and you’ll be dead before you reach the square. Same with your journalist friend. And you’ll never know where my father is.”

Behind me, Gisele coughed.

“You can’t walk me out of here,” Gorski continued. “You can’t do anything. You may be suicidal, but you’re not going to risk this woman’s life as well.”

It was a good try, but it wasn’t true. I could put a bullet in his head, then walk out alone through the service stairwell. No matter what happened to me, Gisele would simply stay in her chair until the soldiers arrived, then explain, in French, how I’d used her to get inside.

The desire for murder was strong, but I couldn’t simply kill this man at his desk. I turned back to Gisele and said in my stiff English, “You stay here. When they come, you tell. Tell everything what I did. In French is okay.” She nodded, terrified. I added, “Don’t worry,” but that did nothing to allay her fear.

I walked around the desk to Gorski, who was finally showing a bit of fear. “You won’t,” he said, as much to convince himself as convince me.

With as much speed as my old body could muster, I moved behind him and wrapped my arm around his neck so he had trouble breathing. I, too, had trouble breathing. My pulse banged in my ears, then came that electric hum. I placed the barrel against his temple. His hands leapt up to my arm, but my grip was strong.

Close to his ear, I whispered, “I’m going to kill your father. Understand? When you see him, tell him that. Tell him that Emil Brod is going to murder him, and that’s the only reason I’ve left his worthless son alive.”

I said all this because I meant it.

Then I lowered the pistol from his temple, took aim, and shot him through the thigh.

His body convulsed. Both he and Gisele Sully screamed at the same moment. I let go of his neck, ears humming, and watched him tumble to the floor. Blood pumped from the hole in his pants and spilled over the marble.

I made sure not to step in the blood. I was levelheaded enough to remember that. I walked, shivering, over to Sully and leaned close to her. She recoiled. Her face was pale, in shock. I whispered, “I used you to get here, but you don’t know what we said. You know nothing. Remember that. It’s for your own safety.”

Her head jerked in a kind of agreement.

The corridor was empty, but I heard shouts from the stairwell. I ran the opposite way, slipping the gun into my coat. I glanced back as I reached the door to the service stairs. Soldiers were just arriving to save their revolutionary friend.