Victory Square

FIVE

“Shell wonder, ” said Lebed Putonski.

Gavra pulled the beige Stop amp; Drop curtains shut, then parted them with a finger. He peered out at the parking lot and beyond the line of trees, to where headlights sped through the darkness. “Who?”

Putonski had trouble turning on the bed to face Gavra, because his arms were above his head, tied to the bedpost with a leather belt. “Maureen. She’ll come over and wonder why I’m not home. She’ll go to the school. She’ll worry-she’s that kind. Then she’ll call the police.”

“The school will say you’re with your cousin.”

“She’ll panic.”

“She won’t.”

It took Putonski a moment to realize this was true. “What’re you going to do with me?”

Gavra dropped the curtains. “I’m not sure.”

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in danger.”

Lebed pressed his face into the motel pillow. “It’s starting to drive me crazy, you know.”

“What?”

“You’re not telling me anything.” He raised his head. “You’ve come all this way to find me, but you don’t tell me who sent you. You tell me I’m in danger, but you won’t say why. And then you tie me up. You expect me to not go a little crazy?”

“You hungry?”

“I’m more curious than hungry.”

“Well, I’m hungry.”

“Please.”

In the bathroom, Gavra washed his face. The lack of sleep was showing in his eyes. Or perhaps it was just confusion. He’d been sent to get hold of Lebed, and he had done this, but now Kolev lay dead in a morgue, unable to tell him what to do next.

He dried himself and sat on the corner of the bed while Lebed stared at him. “Okay,” he said. “I was sent by Lieutenant General Yuri Kolev.”

Lebed’s dry lips worked a moment. “Kolev? Jesus.”

“You know him?”

“Of course. What does he want with me?”

“He’s dead. He had a heart attack earlier today.”

“Heart attack?”

“Yeah,” said Gavra.

“So it’s finished. Let me go.”

I cant.

“You think I’m the cause of his heart attack?”

“Maybe. Indirectly.”

“A man like that has enemies. He’s got hundreds.”

“How do you know him?”

Lebed shook his head, unwilling to answer.

“Listen to me,” said Gavra. “Kolev wanted me to find you and protect you. His words. And if this wasn’t simple heart failure, then the people who killed him will want you next. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Oh,” said Lebed, and Gavra looked closely at him because he’d spoken with the voice of a small child. “But I don’t know anything!”

“How do you know Kolev?”

“Long time ago. Before you were born, probably.” He paused. “Can you at least free my hands?”

“Tell me first.”

Putonski sighed loudly. “Okay. Just after the war, we were both on a Ministry tribunal. You know how it was-rooting out enemies of the state. Put them on trial, broadcast on radio, and get lots of people in as shouting, hysterical witnesses. That’s how we met. We tried lots of cases, sent a lot of men and women to their deaths. I’m not proud of it, but that’s how it was.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what about after that?”

“We saw each other now and then at Yalta. We knew each other. But we didn’t work together again. I’m surprised Kolev even cared about saving my skin. We certainly weren’t friends.”

“That’s all?”

“Look,” said Putonski. “I’m not the one who crossed the Atlantic. You’re the one who’s wasting his time.”

Gavra stood again and slipped the pistol into his belt.

“So what do we do now?”

“We eat dinner,” said Gavra. “What do you want?”

Lebed rolled his face back into the pillow. “I’d like my hands free.”

“When I get back.”

“Eggs, then. And sausage.”

“It’s dinnertime, Lebed.”

“Breakfast helps when I’m nervous. Otherwise I’ll throw up.”

“Okay. From where?”

“McDonald’s, of course.”

Gavra considered covering Lebed’s mouth before leaving, but the man seemed to understand now that he wasn’t his enemy. He locked the door and drove up the busy evening turnpike to where he’d seen a McDonald’s when he first arrived. Around the back were lit arrows pointing to a DRIVE-THRU, which he followed to an enormous menu board. A crackling female voice said, “Elcome to M’Onalds.”

“Hello,” he said, but there was no immediate answer. “Hello?”

“Uht an I it for oo?”

“Eggs and sausage, please. Two orders. And coffee.”

“Arry, sir. We ont erve ekfas ow.”

“Uh, what?”

She repeated herself, but he was just as baffled, so he drove around to a window where a girl with red, damp cheeks explained that McDonald’s didn’t serve breakfast at this hour.

“What do you suggest?”

She rubbed her cheek with her wrist, unsure. “Well, most people just get a cheeseburger and fries.”

“That sounds perfect. I’ll have two orders. With coffee.”

She took his money and gave him his food with a smile. The car soon stank of processed meat. As he drove back to the motel he ate lengths of the oily but delicious French fries. He parked in front of the room and carried the McDonald’s sack all the way to the door before noticing that the door was open, just an inch, and the wooden frame was cracked.

He set the food on the ground, taking out the pistol with his other hand. Behind him, three cars were parked by the line of pine trees. He lifted his foot, then kicked. The door bounced off the wall and hit his shoulder as he rushed in. Lebed was still tied to the bedpost. His face was in the pillow again, but the pillow, like the back of his fractured head, was the burgundy of fresh blood.

He didn’t panic. Ministry training was an exceptional thing, and he’d served his apprenticeship under the best. It all becomes mathematics, Brano Sev had explained. That’s how you deal with the fear.

Spatial relations. Protective barriers. Escape paths. Turn them all into numbers, and you can keep the panic at bay.

He checked the bathroom, then peered through the curtains at the parking lot. The three other cars appeared empty. He ignored Lebed’s body, the soft, greasy fries in his stomach mixing sickly with the stink of organic matter as he collected his things, then kept close watch on the trees as he put his bag and the McDonald’s sack into the car. Distances. Measurements. Escape paths. He hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, then pulled it as shut as it would go.

It took fifteen minutes before Gavra knew he was being followed. A cherry red Ford with Virginia plates that he felt sure he’d seen in the Stop amp; Drop parking lot. But he’d just found a dead man in his room-a scared, pitiful math teacher for whose life Gavra was responsible-and that had flung him out of the safe realm of mathematics. His hands trembled on the wheel, and his stomach convulsed. Perhaps he was just being paranoid.

So when he saw the massive cartoon Big Boy in overalls holding a plate of food aloft (for some reason reminding him of Lenin in a similar pose), he left the turnpike and parked.

The Ford pulled in after him, but the man waited behind the wheel until Gavra had tossed the now-cold McDonald’s food into a wastebasket and walked inside. Then the man got out. Through the window, Gavra watched a blond young man cross the harshly lit parking lot. Unattractive to Gavra’s eye. A little slouched, as if life so far hadn’t been entirely fair.

He kept track of his shadow while he ate half of a Caesar salad at the counter. When he got up to use the toilet, the man was in a booth, cradling a cup of coffee, as if dreaming. Five minutes later, Gavra returned, having been sick, and the shadow didn’t even glance at him-he was good at his job.

When Gavra paid and left, the man followed, and when he pulled back onto the turnpike, the lights of the Ford were visible in his rearview.

He tried some evasive maneuvers, driving through a residential area with big crabgrass yards and high houses, then reentered the turnpike heading back toward Midlothian. All his moves felt panicked and obvious, but he had no choice. By the time he took another U-turn, however, the Ford was behind him again. That’s when he spotted the Chesterfield Towne Center, a shopping mall with a vast parking lot full of cars. It was just after eight.

Gavra parked by a high flat wall with a SEARS sign, pocketed his P-83, got out, and entered quickly. He didn’t bother looking back, because he knew the man would be right behind him. The interior was cool, packed with racks of pastel women’s clothes, counters, and fat shoppers. Dry music floated through the air, and then, just before he reached the entrance to the mall itself, the air became saturated with astringent smells that brought back his nausea. The perfume section. Women in faux medical smocks and feathered haircuts stood bored behind counters, some chatting, but all ignored him. Gavra held his breath until he was clear of them.

He paused beside a tiled water fountain, peering down the mall’s length. It looked like an obscenely clean city street crowded with shoppers. Ahead, to the left, he saw a store called Fit-4-All, which advertised “Today’s styles for today’s gentlemen.”

Only after he was inside the shop, among racks of gray and blue suits, did he let himself peer through the display windows for his shadow. He wasn’t out there.

“Well, howdy, sir!”

He turned to find a broad-chested, very effeminate man with a yellow tie and a white name tag that said ROG. “Howdy, Rog,” said Gavra.

Rog’s smile didn’t change as he said, “It’s pronounced Rodj, sir. Short for Rodger.”

“Oh.”

“What can I do you for?”

“I’d like a suit.”

Rog giggled. “Well, you came to the right place! What’s your size?”

Gavra wanted a black suit, but Rog disagreed, insisting on “navy” blue. It was also more expensive. In the changing room, Gavra transferred his wallet, his money, both passports, and the P-83 to his new clothes. He left the jeans and polo shirt crumpled on the bench.

“Very handsome, sir. Manly?

Gavra looked past the salesman through the open door-still no sign. “I’ll take it.”

“Excellent!”

“And I’ll wear it now.”

“As you wish.” The salesman sank to his knees.

Gavra stepped back, disoriented, before realizing the man was using a large pair of scissors to snip off the price tags.

He paid in cash, and as he was leaving, Rog called, “Sir?”

Gavra looked back. “Yes?”

“Your clothes? The ones you came in with.”

“Keep them.”

That seemed to please Rog immensely.

In the center of the mall, Gavra stopped between another tiled fountain and an information desk where two white-capped girls chewed gum. It was busy here, loud with voices and Muzak. He considered leaving by another exit and stealing a car. But if the police caught him, they’d easily connect him to the body of Lebed Puton-ski back in the motel room registered to Viktor Lukacs. He couldn’t toss the Lukacs passport, because his real one had no American visa. So he headed back to Sears.

Halfway there, he spotted his blond shadow standing beside the dark entrance to Spencer’s Gifts, drinking from a large paper cup of Coca-Cola.

The shadow was staring back at him.

Despite the lessons that Brano Sev had hammered into him during his two-year apprenticeship a decade and a half ago, when he met those eyes, the panic hit him hard. Rationally, he knew that if this man wanted to kill him, he would have tried it back at the motel, but Gavra couldn’t hold on to the numbers anymore.

An old woman bumped into him, then went around, muttering something. The shadow lowered his drink and smiled. Then the panic became solid, because Gavra could see his position here with complete clarity. He was in a foreign, enemy country with false papers, and there was a dead man in his room.

Gavra turned and walked quickly away.

He followed bathroom signs into a white corridor and entered the door marked with an abstracted male figure. He ignored the men lined at the urinals and closed himself in a vacant stall, then squatted, feet on the toilet seat, and tried to catch his breath. He took out his pistol.

Fifteen minutes later, his knees felt like sacks of stone. He tensed when an old man came in, taking the stall beside his, then again when a father and son entered and went to pee together, but he didn’t move. He knew that, whatever orders the shadow was working under, he would inevitably have to come in here.

It was a momentary advantage, but he had trouble visualizing how to utilize it. The numbers were a mess. All he could do was wait for a sign that the man was out there. A voice, a cocked pistol, or someone opening the stalls one at a time.

What he got was water running, then the explosion of a door kicked open.

But it wasn’t his door. The old man in the next stall screamed in pain as the kicked door struck his knees.

Gavra leapt off the toilet, ripped open the door, and pressed his pistol against the base of the shadow’s neck. His hand still shook, but he could visualize it all now. “Drop the gun and kick it away,” he said in English.

The young man did so, kicking a compact Bren Ten over to the sinks, shaking his head in disgust.

When Gavra told him to step back to the vacant urinals, the old man in the stall whimpered. Gavra picked up the Bren Ten and, through the door, told the old man to stay where he was. “This will take a few minutes. Then we’ll go. Keep your door closed.”

He heard a grunt as the old man pushed on his broken door.

His shadow seemed strangely unconcerned by this turn of events. Gavra switched to his own language. “Documents.”

The blond man smiled, hands at shoulder height, and said, “I don’t speak Swahili, partner.”

It was the voice from Lebed Putonski’s telephone. Possibly CIA, or a Ministry agent who did a good impersonation of an American. Gavra repeated his demand in English and watched the man reach slowly into his blazer and take out a brown leather wallet. He handed it over.

“And you were sent by…?” Gavra asked as he used a thumb to open the wallet. “Well?”

The man shook his head.

Gavra found a Virginia driver’s license with a picture of this man, the same passivity, beside the name, FRANK JONES.

“Tell me why you killed Putonski, Frank.”

Jones blinked, as if the question were unexpected. “I’m a simple man. I follow my orders.”

“Who gives the orders?”

Jones grinned. “That’s rich, Comrade Lukacs.”

At least the man didn’t know Gavra’s real name.

The bathroom door opened, and a fat man stepped in. They looked at him as he registered the pistol in Gavra’s hand. He fled.

Gavra took Jones by the elbow and stood close behind him, the pistol in the small of the shadow’s back-the same way, earlier that day, he’d walked Lebed Putonski out of Clover Hill High School.

Lets go.

Gavra pulled open the door, and they slowly entered the white corridor. The Muzak returned, and voices from the mall rolled toward them. When they reached the packed line of stores, shoppers jostled into them. Gavra kept his pistol up under Jones’s jacket.

“It’s impossible,” said Frank Jones.

Gavra’s eyes swept the mall, watching for security guards. “It’s possible.”

But as he spoke, Jones raised his arms high above his head, and that’s when Gavra realized he was right.

“You can’t shoot me, not here. You’ll be caught before you reach the doors. They run your name, and they’ll find a dead man in your motel. Killed with the gun in your pocket.” He turned to face Gavra, hands still up. He had the ecstatic pride of youth in his smile. “Go on, Comrade Lukacs. Get the hell out of here.”

Around them, oblivious Americans cooed at shop windows.

“Look behind you,” he added.

Through the crowd, by the corridor to the bathrooms, the fat man stood with the still-trembling old man and two burly security guards. The fat man was pointing directly at Gavra. The guards started to work their way through the shoppers.

“Good luck,” said Jones.

Gavra ran.