Victory Square

THIRTY-ONE

On a rumbling metro train manufactured in a Leningrad factory a decade before, Karel told his story of leaving me to search the Metropol. “I was terrified. Some Frenchwoman told us you’d gone in the day before but didn’t come out. I didn’t know what that meant. I even let Emil take your car.” He paused. “Sorry.”

Karel had asked everyone he met, soldiers, journalists, and hotel clerks, until he ran across two broad-chested men in wrinkled suits on the third floor. “I must’ve had‘gullible’written across my forehead. Said they were Ministry, and you were somewhere safe. They’d take me to you.” He shook his head as they arrived at the Moscow Square station, on the outskirts of the Twentieth District. “What a chump I am. Stuck me in a crappy apartment and we sat around watching revolutionary TV. You know how boring that gets after eight hours?”

Gavra smiled for the first time in days and pulled Karel up to leave the train.

“Hey,” said Karel. “Where are we going?”

“We’re leaving.”

They took the escalator up to the concrete circle of Moscow Square, full of kolach shops, cigarette kiosks, and waiting buses. The square was busy at that hour, and in the setting sun they saw thin, dark faces in cheap faux-leather jackets wandering around in a daze, most of them drunk. One grabbed on to Karel, singing, “Ol’e, ol’e, the tyrant is dead!”

Karel looked scared, so Gavra shooed the man away. He’d thought he’d have more time before they broadcast the tape. “What’s he talking about?”

“Let’s just keep going.”

“Where?”

Gavra didn’t want to tell him, not yet, because he knew what Karel’s reaction would be. Instead, he gave his friend silence and led him to a rickety bus on the edge of the square, number 86. The destination sign over the windshield, luckily, hadn’t yet been changed. They took a seat among a few passengers and waited for the driver to arrive.

Up front, two teenaged boys were with a girl who sat on one’s lap, bowing her head and kissing him lustily. The friend who wasn’t being kissed stood up, grinning, and faced the passengers. He raised a finger and in a pretty good imitation said, “I’ll only speak to the Grand National Assembly!”

A few nervous titters went through the passengers. Karel whispered to Gavra, “What’s that about?”

“Wait,” said Gavra.

The boy at the front shook violently, as if he were being filled with bullets, and fell back into the stairwell as the bus driver stepped on. The driver, a big man, caught him easily and pushed him back up. He, too, had gotten the joke, and started laughing.

Once they were under way, Gavra drew Karel close and began to whisper the story of the Pankovs’demise. He didn’t reveal his own role in it, though at one point a middle-aged man two seats up began peering back at him. He tugged his wife’s sleeve and whispered something, and then she, too, turned to peer at him.

Karel didn’t notice. He was trying to comprehend the news. He didn’t know if he should be happy or not.

The man twisted fully in his seat, an arm stretched behind his wife’s head, and smiled at Gavra. “Excuse me. Are you…?”

It was hard to know how to answer. To say no was to admit he knew what the man was talking about. To ask what he meant would lead to more questions. So Gavra leaned forward and said in very slow English, “I’m sorry, but I do not understand.”

The man squinted, recognizing the language but not knowing it, then held up a hand, smiling, to show he’d made a mistake. He returned to his wife, shaking his head.

“What was that?” Karel whispered.

“When we get there, I’ll tell you.”

“Get where?”

“To the airport.”

It was dark when they reached Pankov International. By that point, someone had spray-painted over PANKOV, but no one had yet renamed it. They climbed down from the bus at the far end of the parking lot and walked the half mile to the terminal. Gavra walked quickly, so the suspicious man and his wife would be left far behind.

“We picking up someone?” said Karel, jogging to catch up.

“We’re leaving.”

“Leaving? Why?”

“We’re just going.”

Karel stopped, and Gavra had to come back to fetch him. “I’m not going anywhere. I live here, you know.”

“Come on,” Gavra urged, dragging him along. “You don’t know everything yet. You’ll understand. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Then explain it now.”

“Later.”

“No.” Like a child, Karel dug in his heels, then dropped until he was sitting on the ground next to a rusted Trabant. He squeezed himself, partly from the cold. “I’m not moving until you tell me.”

So Gavra returned, squatted in front of his friend, and told him everything. By the time he finished, Karel was trembling. “You? You did it?”

“They were going to kill you.”

That was more responsibility than Karel could take. He swatted away Gavra’s hands. By that point the other bus passengers had reached and passed them. They all seemed interested in Karel’s behavior.

“If you’d been there,” said Gavra, “you’d understand. Now come on.”

“But why are we leaving?”

There was no way to explain it to his friend’s satisfaction. The fact was that after shooting the Pankovs, he realized there was nothing left in our country for him. His job was obsolete. His apartment was surrounded by people who had been waiting years to attack him openly. His new government was awash in murderers. He’d done something that no one he knew-myself included-would ever be able to understand, so there was only one thing left: to abandon this place. All he could manage was, “I hate this country. I can’t live here anymore.”

“But what about me?”

Gavra settled on the cold ground next to him. “We’ll go to Amsterdam. I have friends there. We’ll find work, better work, and we’ll be in the West. Don’t you want to go west?”

They’d never discussed this before, so Gavra was surprised when his friend said, “Absolutely not. I’ve never even considered it.”

“Give it a month. If it’s not working out, we’ll come back.”

“But I don’t even speak Dutch!”

Gavra’s patience ran out. He gripped Karel’s elbow and heaved him into a standing position. “Fine. I don’t give a damn. Just come in to see me off. You can stay in this shit hole.”

Despite what he’d said, after he exchanged the American dollars he still had left from Yuri Kolev, he bought two tickets to Budapest-the next international flight out-from a frazzled TisAir clerk. “It’s like a sinking ship,” she said, “but the rats are flying.”

Gavra didn’t know if the woman was trying to scold him for abandoning the ship, but it didn’t matter, because, as she was writing out a receipt, she looked up and squinted at him. “My God,” she muttered. “It’s you”

“I don’t need a receipt.” He stuffed the tickets into his pocket and walked over to Karel, who was moping by the glass doors. He glanced back to see the clerk talking with her manager, pointing in his direction.

He again grabbed Karel’s arm and led him down a corridor, past the bathrooms, to a door labeled SECURITY. It was locked, so he knocked until a fat man in a guard’s uniform opened up. The man blinked in the bright light of the corridor. “Gavra?”

“Hi, Toni. Let us in?”

Toni stepped back, and they entered a small, dark room lit by ten video monitors. Toni, who had the white skin of his job, took a seat, shaking his head. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Gavra. He searched the monitors until he found the camera outside their door, where a few people in blue TisAir uniforms came smiling down the corridor, looking for him. They kept moving past the security office.

“What’re you doing here?” said Toni.

“Hiding out until my plane leaves.” He leaned on the simple desk. Karel stood uncomfortably with his arms around himself. “This is my friend Karel. Karel, Toni.”

They shook hands. Then Toni bent under the desk and tugged out an old cardboard box. He produced plastic cups and a bottle of plum brandy. “This calls for a toast. To the man who rid us of a couple of real monsters.”

Karel glared at Gavra.

Toni handed out the shots and raised his cup. “To Gavra Noukas, who’s put us on the road to freedom!”

Toni threw back his drink, and Gavra followed suit, the rough homemade brew burning his throat. Karel took a small sip, then set it down. Gavra said, “You have to decide, Karel. Come with me.”

Toni, clutching his third brandy, looked confused but was smart enough not to interrupt.

“Someone has to stay around,” said Karel. “Someone has to vote.”

“Won’t make any difference. It’ll be rigged.”

Karel shook his head. “You don’t know that, Gavra. In fact, you don’t know anything for sure. You never have.”

Thinking back over that eventful week, Gavra could see how right his friend was.