Victory Square

TWENTY-NINE

Hours before it was broadcast, before the last tapes had been recorded and edited to make sure none of the judges or lawyers would be seen in the final cut, Gavra was given a set of infantry fatigues. While the court delivered its verdict, he changed in the corridor, watched by his guard and Andras Todescu, who looked haggard and scared in his expensive suit. “So you’re going to do it,” said Todescu.

Gavra buttoned his pants.

“It must be done,” said Todescu. “Yes. It must.” Then he gazed through the open doorway. The prosecutor was listing the couple’s crimes.

Gavra didn’t want to see. He buttoned the jacket and walked farther down the corridor, peering into other, empty rooms. The guard didn’t bother following.

His stomach still hurt, but it was the cold that bothered him. He couldn’t manage Brano’s mathematics in this chill. Escape paths, contingency plans, spatial relations, even past and future-they were all just beyond his reach. Then he heard the scuffle.

Todescu, pressed back against the opposite wall, stared at two soldiers dragging Ilona Pankov out of the room. Her hands were bound behind her back, but she tried to kick the soldiers, breaking the heel of her shoe. She stumbled. Tomiak Pankov followed; he didn’t fight.

He walked patiently between his guards, loudly humming a song. Gavra’s mind betrayed him by singing the words to the tune. Arise ye workers from your slumbers.

Arise ye prisoners of want.

For reason in revolt now thunders,

And at last ends the age of cant.

He tried to silence his head but couldn’t. The song refused to leave as they were led toward him.

Then Michalec appeared, confused. In his hand was a bulky video camera. He ran, gasping, past the couple, almost knocking into Ilona Pankov, and grabbed Gavra’s arm. “You’re not supposed to be here. Come on.”

He rushed Gavra to the end of the corridor, then out a steel door into a freezing stone courtyard with high walls that stank of mold. Against one wall, three soldiers with Kalashnikovs stood smoking nervously. They looked up as Michalec shouted, “Now. Now! Other side.” He waved to a corner of the courtyard; they shuffled over stiffly. “Lose the smokes.” They tossed them to the ground. He set the camera on the stones, took the Kalashnikov from one of them, and handed it to Gavra, looking him in the eyes. “You’re going to stand in that corner over there. No fanfare, okay? They’ll come in through that door and you just do it. Okay?”

Gavra nodded dumbly, hearing: Away with all your superstitions.

Servile masses arise, arise! We’ll change henceforth the old tradition,

And spurn the dust to win the prize.

“Those guys,” said Michalec, jerking his head at the other corner, where the soldiers stood rigidly. “They’ll shoot you if you try anything. So don’t. Now go.” He pointed at the empty corner, then picked up the video camera and walked to the wall, not far from the steel door. He propped the camera on his shoulder, looked through the eyepiece, and started shooting the courtyard, then focused on Gavra, who was gripping the Kalashnikov as if it were something he’d never seen before.

He was completely numb. It didn’t occur to him to just turn the gun on Michalec, and he would later hate himself for that.

The door opened, and there they were, stepping out into the cold dawn light, stunned.

Gavra couldn’t move. His hands were stuck. He couldn’t raise the gun or squeeze the trigger.

He didn’t have to.

The three soldiers in the opposite corner weren’t looking at Gavra. They were mesmerized by the Pankovs, who had started to run. Instinctively, one of them raised his Kalashnikov and pulled the trigger. That led the second one to do the same, and the third produced a pistol, stretched out his arm, and began firing, too. Loud snapping sounds filled the cold air. So comrades, come rally,

And the last fight let us face!

The Internationale unites the human race.

Gavra shivered, watching the couple run along the wall, stumbling. Ilona Pankov squealed. Bloodstains erupted on the stones as they fell, and he thought for an instant that he was killing them. Then he realized he wasn’t, and that troubled him more than even murder. He raised his rifle and squeezed, the recoil shaking through him. The scent of cordite was heavy as he filled the now-dead bodies with more bullets, so that they began to tremble, as if still alive. That only encouraged him to keep on shooting.

Once his Kalashnikov had run out of bullets, Gavra dropped it and watched as Michalec, breathing heavily, ran his camera over to the bullet-riddled bodies. More people poured into the courtyard, gaping, until all he could see was a wall of backs. He stepped over the rifle and walked past them, back inside.

In the corridor, he ran into the witnesses. Harold gripped his arm. “Is it done? Is it over?”

Gavra nodded, and Beth kissed his cheeks. As if a switch had been turned, the old people began to weep and hug and thank him, calling him their savior. Then they hurried on to get their own look.

Andras Todescu was crouched in the corridor, no farther than where he’d been minutes before. He looked up at Gavra with a pleading expression, but Gavra went on, past the now-empty courtroom and the other classrooms until he was outside in the cold again, near the stone walls surrounding the barracks. He got on his knees in the dirt, but his sickness stayed in him.

Sometime later, maybe hours, he saw a man get into a jeep clutching a medical bag filled with video cassettes. Then soldiers came out carrying stretchers with two bodies covered in gray army blankets. They put them in a truck and roared off. A while after that, he looked up to see Jerzy Michalec staring down at him, hands in his coat pockets, not smiling. “Hell of a thing,” said the old man.

That’s when Gavra noticed Michalec had blood on his coat, as if he’d hugged the corpses. “We have a deal.”

“Of course, of course,” said Michalec, but like someone who didn’t know what he was saying.

“My friend.”

He nodded. “Right. Liguria metro station. Five minutes’walk from here. He’s waiting for you.”

Michalec told the guards to let Gavra out. Once past the barracks walls, the gate closing behind him, Gavra started to run. His knees were wobbly, but he could just manage a straight line that took him past apartment blocks and people walking with shopping bags. They didn’t know. Not yet. They had no idea.

Somewhere along that brief run, Gavra became convinced that his friend was dead. It was inevitable, the only logical conclusion to this day. So when he found Karel sitting nervously on a bench in the brown-walled station, he squeezed and kissed his friend fiercely. The three other commuters waiting for the metro turned to stare. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.