Victory Square

THIRTY-EIGHT

Two hours after the carabinieri took me away, my extended family collected in the Seventh District cemetery back home. I heard about this later; it was Markus Feder’s doing. Despite a revolution in the streets, filling his body shop with corpses, Markus kept his head and made the arrangements for Lena’s funeral. He was troubled that he couldn’t track me down, but that didn’t discourage him. He made calls, pulled in a few favors, and spread the word through Katja.

Twenty-five mourners attended my wife’s funeral. Among them were Ferenc and Magda, who’d come to the Capital for the first time in thirty years, bringing along Fyodor Malevich. The three of them were on their way to a meeting with Rosta Gorski in the old Central Committee Building but took the time to say good-bye to Lena.

Gavra and Karel were also there, because, as Gavra told me later, he finally broke. It was Karel’s fault. On Sunday night, Karel’s constant pestering made him want to slap his friend. He kept saying, “Someone has to stay. Someone has to make it right.” Finally, if only to shut the man up, Gavra shouted, “Okay!” They snuck out of the airport, avoiding anyone who might recognize Gavra, and stole a decent-looking Karpat. Since I wasn’t home, and they couldn’t go back to their place, they went to Katja and Aron’s in the Seventh District, where they slept on the couch.

Katja and Aron drove Imre Papp’s widow, Dora, and ten-year-old son, Gabor, to the funeral; Bernard and Agota brought Sanja.

I wish I could have been there with them. The ceremony was run by a Catholic priest, because Markus Feder was Catholic. Though neither Lena nor I was religious, I don’t think she would have minded. They stood in the crabgrass cemetery, bundled tightly against the cold. When the ceremony was finishing, Gavra noticed a black ZIL saloon with tinted windows and government plates parked some distance away. He broke away from the mourners to check on it. As he neared, the back window rolled down. Rosta Gorski stared back at him.

“Gavra Noukas,” he said flatly.

“Yes,” said Gavra. He wore Katja’s Makarov in his belt and considered using it, but the car was also occupied by two large bodyguards.

“I’ve gotten some word about your friend.”

“Yes?” He didn’t need to hear my name to know who Gorski was talking about.

“He’s killed my father.”

That surprised Gavra. In fact, the news surprised everyone except Brano Sev and Magda Kolyeszar. “Where?”

“Italy.”

Gavra took a breath of cold air and glanced back at the mourners. “Why’re you telling me this?”

“I want you to recognize that it’s over.”

Gavra was surprised that there wasn’t any real anger in the man. His father had just been killed, but there was no sense of loss. Then Gavra realized why: Jerzy Michalec’s death actually protected the son. With a few bullets, I’d saved Rosta Gorski’s political career. No one would go digging into a dead father’s past. This was why Brano Sev had insisted the old man remain alive.

There wasn’t anything Gavra could say in reply, so he said nothing. He wandered back to the funeral as it was breaking up. The ZIL drove away.

Later, the funeral party moved to Max and Corina’s, which had just reopened. Cardboard covered the shattered windows, but the electricity still worked, and the brandy was cold. Gavra told the others what he’d learned, and shocked silence followed. Magda said she was only surprised I hadn’t ended up dead myself. “He seemed dead when I last saw him.”

Ferenc disagreed, and they argued over me.

It was then that Ferenc decided to put my case into his negotiations, which is what he did an hour later while sitting across from Rosta Gorski.