Victory Square

SEVEN

Forty thousand feet above the Atlantic, Gavra was in the four-seat center row of a Boeing 747 headed to Frankfurt, crammed in beside a pensioner couple who, once they’d taken off, introduced themselves as Harold and Beth Atkins of Philly, Pennsylvania. He’d tried to ignore them, but Beth, an old woman who wore the bright primary colors one dressed a child in, just kept talking. When she told him their final destination, though, he gaped at them. “Don’t you know what’s going on there?”

Beth’s smile remained fixed, but her husband leaned over her lap and whispered, “We did see on the TV about Sarospatak.” (Gavra was impressed that Harold had said the city’s name properly- because it was a Hungarian name, each s was pronounced sh.) “But we’ve had this vacation planned and paid off the last four months.” He shook his head. “I’m not letting a little disturbance get in the way. We’ll just stay around the capital.”

Gavra tried not to sound irritated. “It could spread, you know.”

“From what we’re able to see,” said Beth, “it looks like your president, Mr. Pankov, he’s got a tight grip on things.”

“How long are you staying?”

“A week,” she said, then went on to explain that they’d originally planned for just three days, so they’d have time to go on to Prague, but Berta Raskovic, their travel agent back in Philly-she’d been a proud American citizen only three years-convinced them that her home country deserved more than just three days. Get to know the people, she’d told them. They’re a wonderful people.

Harold said, “You should’ve heard her. Wow! Czechs? she said. They’re the rudest people on Earth, after Yugoslavs. Can you believe it? And she sold us koronas at 2,950 to the dollar. I checked on it afterward; it’s a good deal.”

“You know the real reason we’re going?” whispered Beth.

Gavra bowed his head close. “Tell me.”

“Harold’s in love with our travel agent. She could sell him Florida swampland.”

“Not so!” Harold said with vague indignation.

In addition to everything else, Gavra found himself worrying about this idiotic couple. They were staying at the Metropol, at least, which meant that they could barricade themselves in if things became violent. But still…

Luckily, a couple of hours into the flight, they started to doze, and he could work over what had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

After escaping the Chesterfield Towne Center, he’d driven nonstop back to the Richmond airport, where he dropped his P-83 and Frank Jones’s Bren Ten into a wastebasket and bought a ticket on the next flight to JFK. He again wished he’d had an American visa in his own passport, because it was possible that by now Lebed Putonski had been discovered and an arrest warrant issued for Viktor Lukacs. So when he bought a ticket home, via New York and Frankfurt, he noticed the way the JFK Delta clerk stared at him. “Something wrong?” he said, giving a stiff smile.

The woman blushed and apologized. “Sorry, sir. You just look very tired.”

“I am,” he said, because by then it was four in the morning, and he’d been awake two full days.

He washed in the airport bathroom to make himself presentable, and despite more stares from the guards he was allowed through passport control to the international terminal without hassle. Only once he’d reached his gate did he allow himself a couple of hours’sleep on the uncomfortable chairs.

It was during his erratic nap that it occurred to him that Frank Jones and his Virginia driver’s license weren’t a lie. He was American. No one from Gavra’s country could master the accent and idiomatic phrases as well as he had.

Before dying, Kolev had told him two things. One, that Lebed Putonski’s life was in danger. Two, that he got his information from a contact in the CIA. Were those two facts linked? Had Central Intelligence ordered Putonski’s murder?

Hours later, with Beth Atkins’s head sliding dangerously close to his shoulder, Gavra went back to this slow line of reasoning.

Lebed Putonski was a defector, brought into the United States by Central Intelligence, protected for eight years, and then killed by his protectors. Why? Why now?

Beth Atkins’s head touched down on Gavra’s shoulder, but he didn’t move.

Back up. Lebed Putonski and Yuri Kolev knew each other after the war, when they shared duties on a public tribunal, sentencing prisoners to work camps and executions. Afterward, Putonski had become a Ministry bureaucrat, working his way up to Stockholm resident, passing on information from their local agents and relaying orders from home.

He unconsciously rubbed his eyes, and that movement woke Beth Atkins. She smiled and apologized for falling on him. “Can’t you sleep, dear?”

He shook his head. “I have a lot on my mind.”

She gave him a self-consciously sad expression. “You worried about your country?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

Beth patted his arm, whispering, “Me too,” as if it were a secret.

Then she closed her eyes and returned, magically, to sleep.