Victory Square

TWENTY

They brought Gavra back to the conference room and left him alone with a container of army rations. He ate it quickly-the last food he’d had was on the flight from America-but could understand why the Pankovs complained about having to eat the foul stuff. Afterward, he started to pace the length of the room and work through the immensity of what he’d been told.

But he couldn’t, because it still didn’t make sense. He’d been kidnapped from the Hotel Metropol in an elaborate scheme meant to place him here in order to execute the Pankovs-that in itself made no sense. With a building full of armed soldiers, they didn’t need a gunman. Why Gavra?

He posed the question to Michalec two hours later when the old man unlocked the door and came in looking flushed and weak, slipping a cigarette between his dry lips.

“Why me?”

Michalec lit the cigarette and waved away scented smoke. “Why not you, Gavra?”

“Because I’m nobody. You don’t even know me.”

“Sure I do,” said Michalec. He took a chair, grunting as he settled his bones. “You’re Gavra Noukas, born in a little town outside Satu Mare, but you’re estranged from your family. You don’t talk to them.

I don’t know why, I just know it’s true. You joined the Ministry in 1973, and by the next year you were picked by then-Colonel Brano Oleksy Sev to succeed him in his post as First District Militia liaison for the Ministry for State Security, focused on the homicide department. You apprenticed with him for two years before being left on your own. You share an apartment with your good friend Karel Wol-lenchak, who is a line worker at the Galicia Textile Works. Not the best worker in the world, but not bad for a socialist economy.”

Gavra stared into Michalec’s clear blue eyes, going over each word he’d just heard. Then it hit him. “It’s because you can’t find Brano.”

Michalec cocked his head. “What?”

“Brano Sev. He was on the list. You were going to kill him, but he’s eluded you.” He nodded, very sure now. “You’re more scared of him than anyone else on that list. He’s someone who could truly expose you.”

The old man tapped some ash off his cigarette. “I think I’d worry less about your old mentor and more about your present situation.”

Gavra started to see it now. “But that explains my situation, doesn’t it?”

Michalec took a drag and looked at him but didn’t answer.

“How, though?” Gavra started thinking aloud. “You can’t find Brano and kill him; you need another way to get at him. Through me. You bring me here, get me to kill the Pankovs, and… and what?” His mind was working more quickly now. “How does me killing the Pankovs silence Brano Sev?”

Gavra closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose, concentrating.

“No, it won’t silence Brano. But it will connect him to the murder. He was my mentor. And if you can prove that he was behind my trip to America, you can show that I’ve been working under his orders. That I killed Lebed Putonski for him. Then it would be simple to make it seem that I killed the Pankovs under Brano’s orders.” Gavra released his nose and looked at the old man. “You’re trying to frame Brano for their murder, so you won’t be responsible.”

“I’m impressed,” said Michalec, though he didn’t seem so. He seemed bored by the discussion. “You have a fine imagination, but you’ve worked for too long in the Militia office. You think like a cop.” He shook his head. “Why would I want to frame Brano for the murder of the Pankovs? I’d like to do it myself. I’d be a national hero.”

“Again.”

He raised his brows. “What?”

“You’d be a national hero again, just as you were for a few years after the war.”

Michalec laughed. It was an honest laugh, devoid of bitterness. He wiped his eyes. “Trust me, Gavra. Being a war hero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve had enough of public life. I just want to watch my family prosper, then I want to die easily.”

Gavra didn’t believe that, but in the end I think it was one of the few truthful things Jerzy Michalec said that week. Gavra said, “Maybe I do think like a cop. But you, Comrade Michalec, think like a Ministry official. You know that?”

Michalec seemed to find that funny. “You think so? Well, I guess it makes sense.”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long were you in the Ministry?”

Michalec considered his answer, then shrugged. “A few years in the sixties and seventies, just some minor surveillance work. But if you’re feeling ambitious, you can forget it. As of yesterday, there is no record of my brief tenure with the Ministry for State Security. Nothing.”

Gavra was feeling ambitious, but in a different way. He went back over his thoughts. “I may have gotten some details wrong, but I’m on the right track. You are trying to frame Brano. But it won’t work, because I’ll never kill the Pankovs.”

“You might,” said Michalec. “We’ve got your friend, you know. Karel.”

“You’re bluffing. He’s safe.”

Again, Michalec laughed, but quietly. “Bluffing was the plan. Honestly, it was. But I just got an interesting phone call. Some of our guys found Karel running around the Metropol, searching for you. He made no secret of it; he asked everyone he found, even our guys.” He shook his head. “That man is very attached to you.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, he’s fine. Karel thinks he’s coming to see you.” Michalec paused. “He will, won’t he? He will live to see you?”

“That’s up to you, I suppose.”

“No, Gavra. It’s up to you.”