The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

“Yes,” Alexandra said, “but especially if someone could prove that Kurilkov was a murderer there.”

  “As you know, his party stands on a campaign of purity,” said Neven. “The Bear—‘without corruption.’ ”

  Bobby had driven his hands into his pockets. “If Kurilkov wants to reopen the mines at Zelenets, and to run them with prison labor, it might as well be a new camp. One new camp will mean others. And he will do it all legally, starting with his purity campaign.”

  “I think the same,” said Neven. “Little by little, we could have a Bulgaria like my father’s. You and I will be the first in any new camp, my friend.”

  Alexandra put her hand into Neven’s again. She felt that her previous life had never happened; it was as if she really had fallen off a bridge into white water and been pulled under. “What would your father have wanted us to do?” she said.

  Neven glanced down at her hand and his, together.

  Bobby was checking his pockets, rapidly, as if taking inventory of what he carried there. “I’ve already looked at maps,” he said to Neven. “There is no photograph on television of this place yet—only machines that dig outside somewhere and a very general image of Bulgaria.”

  “And there is no Zelenets, not on any map I have seen,” said Neven, “but names are often changed. I found on the Internet a couple of remarks about a camp at Zelenets, in a website about the communist time in Bulgaria. There was no exact location, but I read that Zelenets was in the mountains in central Stara Planina, near Chopek and Novlievo.”

  “Let’s go,” Bobby said. “We can at least start driving.”

  “No.” Neven had dropped Alexandra’s hand and was walking toward the road; they followed him. “You have had enough trouble, because of my family. You must go back to Sofia. I will call you when I find them.”

  “Irina is our friend now, too,” she said stubbornly.

  “I could be very helpful to you,” Bobby told him.

  “No,” said Neven. “Thank you.”

  Bobby did not slow his pace.

  “Bobby,” Alexandra said. “Please don’t go out of my sight.”

  Stoycho hurried after Neven. “Chopek is four hours from here,” Neven said. “Maybe more, with the mountain roads. We can talk while we drive. But Alexandra must stay in the car, when we arrive.”

  Bobby signed to Alexandra not to protest.

  —

  CHOPEK, ON BOBBY’S MAP, was north and west, into the mountains. They left Neven’s car in a grove of trees just outside the village, where it could not be seen from any road, and crowded into the Ford. Neven sat beside Bobby in the front. Alexandra, in the back with Stoycho, watched the edge of Neven’s shoulder and profile. It was strange, she thought; Stoyan Lazarov’s blood didn’t run in his veins, through those long, quiet limbs; and yet, as much as anything in the world, he was Stoyan’s legacy. Stoyan Lazarov had made no recordings, played for no heads of state, done no world tours. He had had, instead, his violin, his Vivaldi, his love for one woman. He had also had this dignified son who could not inherit his musical genius or even learn his musical skill but had loved him unstintingly. Like Radev, Neven had been good with numbers and good with hearts. She left her hand on Stoycho’s back and fell asleep, in spite of herself, cradled by the road.

  When she woke they were in the mountains. The steepness of the road had shaken her; they were climbing a long pass into forests, up toward what looked like fog. The immense flat plain of Thrace was already behind them, stretching out to a haze that might be other mountains. The road was empty except for wisps of cloud that hung in their path or moved silently across it and into the forest. The sky was gone, as if the day—the bright morning on the sea, the vast sun over the plains—had never happened. It must be midafternoon already, but to Alexandra it felt like a void with no time to measure, no sun or even twilight to mark a normal passage. She pulled her sweater on, shivering with dread: Irina, Lenka. Zelenets. Stoycho stretched, too, stiffly, and swiveled his head to look up at her.

  At the top of the pass, Bobby said they would make a quick stop and pulled in to a parking lot just off the road. The clouds filled everything around them and wind whipped at their clothes as they climbed out. It seemed to Alexandra that this was the highest peak she’d ever been on. The wind pulled them toward the public restrooms, and she noticed a few knots of people in warm jackets and hats or scarves, looking out over the valley as it reappeared.

  Suddenly, the fog cleared itself, revealing an enormous monument. It rested on concrete platforms just beyond the parking lot—a gargantuan rocket ship, patterned in stone and bronze, poised for takeoff from the mountain. There was a door near the bottom, but it was bolted and held fast with a rusted padlock, as if no one had gone inside in many years. The tip of the rocket eight stories above them vanished into the fast-blown clouds, already traveling toward space. Someone had put a flag and a wreath, both now wilted by weather, against the door.

  “What is this?” she asked Bobby.

  Bobby was tugging on his jacket, too. “It is a memorial—TO THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTION, 1984. Schoolchildren all over Bulgaria were organized to raise the money to build it—I was too young to help, but I knew kids in our neighborhood who were collecting scrap metal and donations of stotinki. And all the workers were buying postage stamps to support it.” He adjusted the collar of his jacket. “There was a big celebration on TV, for the dedication.”

  Neven stood with his head tipped back, his throat exposed, looking up at the rocket. “I remember that day,” he said. “My father would not watch the television.” He rubbed his arms and Alexandra thought he was shivering with anger, not cold. “Now he is dead, but Kurilkov has whatever he wants.” Then he said something in Bulgarian and walked swiftly back toward the car.

  “What?” Alexandra gripped Bobby’s elbow.

  Bobby turned, too. “He said, What is the meaning of such suffering? Hurry, Bird.”

  On the other side of the mountain, they drove as steeply down as they had driven up, and then into a new range where the road curved into denser spruce forest, with few villages and only a little chalet hotel here and there. Bobby had spread a map on the dashboard and was looking at it closely; he and Neven ignored a sign for Chopek and instead turned left into a valley and up a road that became gravel, then dirt.

  “Here is the train line,” Bobby said, and they saw the rails beside the road, and the narrow river beyond. “I think this will be the back way in toward the mines—Chopek is up at the main entrance to them, behind us. I hope the road we need is still there.”

  The road and the railway left the river after a few kilometers and climbed together to the first village they had seen in half an hour. Some of the houses had fallen in, and only a few looked inhabited. In the forest beyond, out of sight of the village, they found a wooden barricade set across the road. Bobby got out by himself, glancing sharply around. Neven joined him and they managed together to move the barricade, although it was heavy. Stoycho had sat up in the back seat, snuffing the air with his black nose raised; and Alexandra had to hold his collar to keep him from jumping out after the men. Bobby drove through and stopped, and they replaced the barrier behind the car. Farther up the road, there was another, but Bobby was able to drive around it. Alexandra sent a small prayer out to her parents, to forgive her if anything happened to her.

  The road rejoined the river through dense forest that soon opened out into a scrubby flat area. Alexandra saw a pile of timber and a crushed building with a square roof lying among the trees. A bulldozer was parked beside it, and a front loader, both silent. No other sign of life. Bobby parked the car behind a stand of bushes, and they got out with Stoycho on his leash. This time nobody spoke, and when they moved, it was quietly. To Alexandra’s relief, Neven did not ask her to get back in the car. They crossed a cracked cement yard, Bobby and Neven walking ahead. Bobby stopped a couple of times to look at the ground; muddy footprints marked the open stretches of cement. Alexandra
noted that the mud was fresh.

  Coming around a curve through more trees, they saw a cluster of one- and two-story wooden buildings rotting at the edge of a large weedy square. There was still a semblance of order here: the structures faced the square at exact right angles, on three sides. A tower on weathered stilts guarded the entrance to the yard. Most of these buildings had little or no roof remaining, but the walls had been solidly made. Doorways gaped darkly open to the weather, and vines climbed into some of them from the ground and hung out of upper windows. At the far end was a mound of dirt like a landfill, caving in at the front around a low wooden frame. Alexandra felt the hair rising along her arms, and Stoycho backed away before he would go forward. She could see no one at work here, let alone Irina and Lenka or whoever had taken them.

  Neven was gazing at the buildings, hands in his pockets. “What do you think?”

  “Yes, this might be it.” But Bobby spoke doubtfully. He would need proof, Alexandra thought. He was looking around, tense, listening.

  They moved forward and stood in the yard, surrounded by the empty eyes of the barracks, or whatever they had been. Alexandra went toward one and looked in. There were no wooden bunks inside, although through the window hole she could see a couple of ancient sinks bolted to a wall. The steps up to the doorways had rotted away; she would be able to get in only if she climbed through a window. The whole place was sinking gradually into the ground. A push or two from a bulldozer would certainly finish it.

  Then she saw that Neven had wandered away from them. He was standing inside the building opposite, staring out of the empty doorway. His hands hung by his sides. He had needed to climb up there, she thought—he had wanted to be on the inside for a minute, looking out. He stood straight, still; he seemed to be looking at something as far away as vision could reach. She had the urge to hurry over to him, to be sure he still exuded warmth. But this moment belonged to a world she had no part in. She tightened Stoycho’s rope and made him sit quietly next to her.

  After a few minutes, Bobby waved them back to the car. “Your father’s story said that they marched about two kilometers to a quarry. Since no one is here in the camp, we should look up there.”

  He drove them along a wide path that might once have been a road. It led around the buildings and climbed gradually up through the woods. The face of the mountain was very close here. To their left, they saw the railroad, this spur of it abandoned and spiked with saplings of pine and birch. They went forward in silence and Bobby turned back once to glance at Alexandra, reassuring. Her heart was clenched tight and she wanted more than anything to reverse the car, to see all of them already driving back down the mountain, with Irina and Lenka safely among them. Neven was peering through the windshield; suddenly he motioned for Bobby to stop. They parked and got out, cautiously, Neven going ahead, his arm raised in a warning.

  Only twenty feet in front of them, young trees hung in air—a huge pit, open to the woods, with several square blocks still lying unclaimed around the rim of it. Alexandra remembered the Roman theater in Plovdiv, the ancient quarried stones. She looked over the edge; beneath her the abyss fell very far, lined with shrubs and rock. The floor below was filled with trees and underbrush, more giant blocks half-choked among them.

  Bobby had already begun to snap pictures with his phone; she remembered that her camera was in her sweater pocket and pulled it out. There was no sign of Irina or Lenka. A road curved around the edge of the quarry, along the overgrown rail line, and vanished climbing into the woods. In that direction, she thought, would be the mines. Her stomach tightened. Had someone taken Irina and Lenka up there?

  She was just turning to speak to Bobby when everything happened at once. From behind them she heard the sound of a vehicle she knew must have gone past or even through the camp, lurching toward the quarry. For a moment Alexandra couldn’t register this; she thought instead of some crazed movie scene, a car driving right over the edge into midair. But it stopped with a yelp of brakes—a gray sedan, only twenty feet away.

  That car was followed by a black BMW with tinted windows, grotesquely shiny above its skirt of road-dust. Two men leapt out of the first car and went around to open the back doors. From the back seat they pulled a woman with braided dark hair who struggled against them—Lenka—and then an old woman who also struggled but looked about to faint. Alexandra started forward, but Bobby caught her arm in a painfully strong grip. Neven stepped to her side, so that she felt suddenly small. Lenka had apparently seen them; blood trickled from her nose, but she called something to Irina, who looked around. One of the men supported Irina so she could stand against the car and then put a knife to her throat, a long knife with a black handle. Lenka thrashed in the grasp of the other man and he swiped at her nose, as if they had been through this routine before.

  Suddenly the driver’s door of the BMW opened and a burly man ran toward them, covering them with a gun—the term flashed through Alexandra’s head, that he was covering them, although of course he must really be threatening them. Neven and Alexandra put their hands up, but she saw Bobby reach swiftly inside his jacket, pull something out, and fire. The man running toward them jumped backward and fell, just as suddenly, and lay looking up among the trees and stones. He was large, intensely muscled, with a holster over his black shirt. Then Alexandra saw that he was alive and clutching his shoulder. How had she not known this about Bobby—that he was a perfect shot, that he would not hesitate but would never shoot to kill?

  But now the back doors of the BMW opened and two figures stepped out. Alexandra felt she had stopped breathing. She knew both these men—one was the Wizard, his head gleaming in the pewter afternoon light. The other was stiffer, more dignified, filled with composure in his well-cut clothes—Kurilkov, the Bear. She saw the shining ankle of his boot, the stiff mane of dyed hair, the unnaturally brown beard, the pale eyes. He did not glance at the wounded man on the rocks, or at Bobby’s gun.

  Instead, the Bear looked at Neven, and held out an open hand—Give it to me. Then he turned and observed Irina, white and limp, with the knife leveled across her throat. Alexandra could see the glint of the brooch below the blade. He really will do it, she thought. If Kurilkov tells him to, that man, that stranger, will kill Irina right here in front of us. She felt suddenly the nearness of the quarry, just at their backs, the long drop into trees and rock. The Bear stepped closer, so that she felt she could smell him. Alexandra wondered if Bobby would dare to fire again. Stoycho had begun to bark, not wildly, but with an elemental warning snarl she had never heard from a dog. She felt his leash slip away from her upraised hand and wondered fleetingly if she had let it go.

  The Wizard took a step toward them, too—she remembered his face at the police station, at their lunch, his secretive smile, but now he was not smiling. Now he was shouting something, and in that moment of distraction, the Bear drew a gun of his own, a neat little gun, and fired at Bobby. Alexandra screamed without feeling any sound leave her throat. There was the thud of a body in the leaves, but no answering scream, no writhing. The Bear was standing among them now and Alexandra looked up in time to see the Wizard with a gun in his hand, too, and to understand that he was aiming it at the Bear. She didn’t know whether it had gone off, because just then Stoycho gathered himself beside her and leapt toward the Bear’s throat. Brindled muscle uncoiled in midair, the throat tore open, naked red and white, and they both went over the edge of the quarry.

  There must have been a noise far below, the shattering of bodies, a human shriek or a canine one, but Alexandra heard nothing. She was faintly aware of the Wizard, who stood facing them, his gun lowered. Then she was aware only of herself lying across Bobby’s body, in time to hear him breathe and stop, breathe and not breathe again, and then of fumbling with Bobby’s shirt and mouth in some half-forgotten ritual. And then of Neven lying on the ground beside her, holding Bobby’s head.

  Suddenly Bobby drew a quick breath, just under her mouth, and she felt his chest inflate. F
resh color rushed into his face; she tore off her sweater and tied it around his thigh, clumsily but tightly, where the bleeding was. Looking up again, she realized that Neven had gotten to his feet and was running toward the gray sedan. The man guarding Irina had let go of her. Alexandra saw her sway toward the ground and saw Neven catch her up, holding her fast. The other man pushed Lenka away. The two men leapt into their car; it backed up into the woods, turned hard onto the road, and sped out of sight. The Wizard turned, fired once after them, and shook his head. Neven lifted Irina into the back seat of Bobby’s car. Alexandra left Bobby for a moment to go to them; Lenka, streaked with mud, was already bending over the old lady.

  “I am all right,” Irina said faintly. “Asparuh?”

  Alexandra ran back to Bobby. His eyes were open, alert, although he didn’t speak. From time to time he winced. She gave him her hand and watched the Wizard bind his leg with a real tourniquet, then a bandage, then give him an injection. This last made her panic, but the Wizard nodded to her. “Just a painkiller. He has not lost too much blood. I think you saved his life, young woman. But you must take him to the hospital. There is one in Novlievo. Give him a minute before we try to move him.” They stood looking down into the quarry, but there was nothing to see, only the rocks and forest on its distant floor.

  “What about the Bear?” Alexandra said to him. He seemed more like a man now, and less like a wizard, in his white undershirt with Bobby’s blood on it.

  “Perhaps it is better this way,” said the Wizard. “He would not have survived what was coming for him when you published his story.”

  “You knew,” cried Alexandra. She was surprised to hear herself shrieking. She knelt and kissed Bobby’s forehead, his face. His eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell. Neven stood beside them again, looking at the Wizard.

  “Yes,” the Wizard said. “Wait for a minute.” He went to the man Bobby had shot in the shoulder and tended to him, then returned just as quickly. “Kurilkov asked me to watch for certain names and we marked them in our system. Stoyan Lazarov’s name was marked in this way, when I searched it for you. I told Kurilkov, although I did not think it was important until he became even more interested. He told me to follow you and frighten you, but he did not want to tell me why. Then I asked myself what he was hiding even from me.”