The Confession

by Steinhauer, Olen

  “You saw the body. You know what I did. With him I was an entirely different person. I don’t—” He shut his eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it. By that point I had gone to the Canal District and bought a gun. I arrived at his apartment, and when he opened the door I held the gun on him. At first we talked. He admitted to stealing the paintings, but swore he had not turned me in to Yalta Boulevard. And for a moment I did believe him. He was so earnest. He offered to split everything he had with me, he said I deserved it, but he kept swearing he hadn’t turned me in. But by then I’d already collected three opinions against him—Louis thought he had turned me in, and so did Josef and Zoia. So I was sure he was lying. Because he knew what I would do to him. But I don’t think he could have imagined it—what I did to him.” Nestor shifted on the edge of the tub. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  I got two out. The bathroom quickly filled with smoke, but I didn’t open the door.

  “I don’t know if you can understand what I did without having lived in the camps. Even having lived in the camps, I still can’t believe what I did, but I at least understand it. The things that they do to you, the power they have over you. It throws off your sense of right and wrong.” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

  “Just tell me what you did. I’ll see if I can understand.”

  He took another drag. “I gagged him, then tied his hands and feet together. Then I sat and talked to him for a while. I described my life in the camp, I told him how I’d lost my finger, how I’d gotten my limp, and the kinds of things I saw on a daily basis. I told him that what I’d do to him would not be as bad as all that. But I told him exactly what I would do to him. I said I would break his arms and legs with a hammer, drive him to the Canal District in his own car, and then drag him by his broken arms to a place where I would then set him on fire. And that’s what I did.”

  I coughed into my hand. The sound reverberated in the small room. “Why did you tell him?”

  “That’s what they did in the camp. Sometimes they would tell you in the morning that they would kill you, and by the afternoon you’d be dead. They had ways to make even death worse.”

  “But you didn’t put Zoia through all of that, did you?”

  He shook his head. “I had pity on her. I broke in over the weekend and waited in the basement for morning. I didn’t want Mathew around. So after he left I came up behind her and strangled her. Josef had told me she left Antonín because of what he’d done. But still, she—like Josef—hadn’t turned him in. That was what I could not accept. Why did they remain silent when I was stuck in hell for a decade?”

  “Because they didn’t want to join you,” I said, and he squinted at me through the smoke.

  “But I got it all wrong in the end,” he said. “Antonín stole my art, but he couldn’t have done that if this Russian hadn’t gotten rid of me. It seems like human nature that if you give someone an opportunity for easy criminality, he’ll take it. Kaminski gave Antonín the opportunity.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “What?”

  “The murders.”

  His eyes wandered into the smoke, focusing on something I could not see. “Ferenc, all I know is that I’ve failed. I used to be a human being. But now, with what I’ve done, and the mistakes I’ve made, I don’t know if I can call myself human anymore. That’s why I tried to turn myself in. Because it no longer mattered what happened to me.” He focused on my eyes then. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  My cold hands froze and my feet tingled. “I know exactly what you’re saying, Nestor.”

  85

  “Ferenc?”

  It was Emil calling. “What’s going on?”

  “Malik Woznica.”

  “What about him.”

  “He’s gone missing.”

  I opened my mouth and, after a long exhale, said, “Maybe that’s best for everyone.”

  “They’ve given me the case. He was supposed to visit a relative in Perechyn on Saturday, but didn’t, and he didn’t show up at the office yesterday. I’ve checked the apartment; it’s empty.”

  “Any sign of a struggle?”

  “None. His car is gone, but it doesn’t look like clothes are missing.”

  “Maybe he was in a hurry.”

  “We did find a store of drugs. Opiates. Pills and liquids.”

  “All for his Svetla.”

  He paused. “Ferenc, you didn’t…”

  “Didn’t what.”

  “I don’t know. Did you threaten him?”

  “He threatened me. But I never said a word to him.”

  “Okay. I just want to know why he’d leave.”

  “He left because he murdered his wife.”

  “What?”

  “He followed her to Moscow and killed her. Kliment told me last week—Sev and Moska know about it, too. But that’s all I know.”

  “Okay, Ferenc. Thanks. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

  When I hung up, I leaned against the wall and tried to measure out my breaths. It was difficult. The kitchen seemed to be underwater, and the icebox shivered, but that was because I was shivering. I made it out to the living room, where they were all sitting, looking up at me.

  “You all right?” asked Leonek.

  “Keep an eye on them. I need to lie down.”

  I got into bed with my shoes still on and pulled the blankets over me. But I couldn’t get warm. I kept seeing Malik Woznica in that well, his bloated, dead eyes staring up at me. I had felt nothing then. I had been confused, yes. I had been worried. But I had felt no guilt. And there had been no guilt when I returned to Vera tied up in her own filth and watched her rush with all that self-hatred out my door. I hadn’t known what I had done wrong.

  I twisted the blankets tighter around my legs and tried to still myself. But I couldn’t make the past go away any more than I could bring Malik back to life. I had killed him and brutalized a woman who loved me. And throughout it all, my feelings had remained just out of reach. I was an automaton.

  Nestor had an excuse. He had struggled through a decade of terror and had come out the other side a machine of vengeance. I had been through so little in comparison, but I had acted the same. Both of us had watched our humanity slip away with a cool eye, and only after it returned could we understand what we had done.

  I lay for an hour, stuck in the cycle of these thoughts. They repeated, and I turned each fact, each crime, around in my head, trying to find the justification. There was none, not even in the elegance of well-chosen words. I had always known what I was doing, and I knew that I would do it all over again.

  Only after that hour, when I heard a tap at the door and saw Leonek’s unsure face peek through—he looked so young, and so good—did I understand what I needed to do to begin to right what had been made wrong. It was the only mature decision left to me.

  86

  It was simple and complicated at the same time. If it went wrong, I would not see them again. Leonek wanted to go. “This part is my case. He killed Sergei.”

  I said, “Tell me. Do you still love Magda?”

  He paused. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “And Ágnes?”

  “I adore her, Ferenc.”

  “That’s all I want to know.”

  I drove everyone to Emil’s apartment. He answered the door, and though I had called to warn him, he was stunned by the sight of Louis and Nestor. Lena had prepared some small sandwiches. Louis and Nestor were surprised and very polite. It was a funny thing to see, in retrospect: a murderer and an informer sitting under Lena Brod’s expansive, approving gaze, eating her sandwiches. She went to the bar and began lining up drinks.

  Emil and I took the reel-to-reel recorder back to my place. Although I explained everything on the drive, the whole sequence of events, by the time we were climbing my stairs he still looked back, and said, “But I don’t get it, Ferenc. What’s going on again?” It was only the rush of too many new facts that made
his head spin.

  Emil set up the reel-to-reel under the kitchen table. We put blankets over it to muffle the sound of the motor and tested it until it was silent. Only the microphone peeked out. Then I used a tablecloth over the whole thing. We walked around the table to make sure it was hidden.

  “I’ll hide in the bedroom,” he said.

  “No. He’ll check everywhere. He won’t want to be caught like he was at Stefan’s.”

  “But you need some help.”

  “You’ve helped enough, Emil. I’ll call when it’s over.”

  He was still confused as I drove him home.

  I arrived a little after eight, as the entertainment, two brothers who called themselves the Tatra Twins, was preparing to perform. The Crocodile was half-lit so that all the attention would be on the stage, where the brothers—who were as far from twins as one could imagine—strolled on wearing self-consciously large suits with bow ties and hats with the brims turned up. The large one, Bálint, spun a wooden cane as he walked, while short, fat Boris waddled behind him, weaving in order to avoid getting hit. At the center they stopped and introduced themselves.

  I didn’t see him, and I wasn’t completely sure he would come. The round tables were filled with groups of Russians dressed in fine eveningwear. My suit was noticeably cheap among them. I took a table near the stage because I wanted light to fall on me. This was imperative. The waiter looked at me strangely when I asked for a martini, so I instead ordered a palinka. The Twins began a rapid back-and-forth debate about their poverty-stricken village childhood, Bálint sometimes shaking his head in apology to us all for his brother’s ignorance. They argued about who had less to eat, who was beaten more by their drunkard father, and which brother lost his virginity first. Each argument culminated with Boris receiving a slap and the audience convulsing in laughter.

  The palinka was gone in no time, so I waved to the waiter for another.

  Periodically, I looked back over the smiling faces raised to the stage. The women were a mix of Russian and local girls, but the men were all Russian. Their conversations mingled with the comedians’ hysterics and left me in a state of utter incomprehension.

  He arrived with a very young woman, almost a girl, who held his arm at the elbow and laughed obligingly when he whispered to her. They took a table in the middle of the club, ordered, and watched the stage. The girl leaned into him and settled her head on his shoulder.

  They both burst into laughter with everyone else.

  I could be overt—it would certainly do the trick. But I wanted to make it back home. So I turned back to the brothers’ antics—Bálint was using the cane now, bringing it down heavily as Boris skittered out of the way—but I couldn’t understand the humor at all.

  When I looked back to the audience, I lost him for a moment. Then I found him because I was looking into his eyes. He had recognized my large form from the back, and was staring, no trace of smile left on his face.

  I had been calm until then. I’d turned the plan over so many times that I knew it was the only thing to do, and in that surety there had been no fear. But looking into his eyes, the reasons for fear came back, and my hand was shaking when I raised my palinka beside my head, then nodded at him and turned back to the stage.

  I drank it quickly because I did not think I could remain there much longer without screaming. So I walked out, hunched below the lights, and did not look over at him again, though I felt his eyes following me through the dark streets all the way home.

  87

  I didn’t have to wait long. Twenty minutes passed before I heard the steady footsteps in the stairwell, rising. I ran to turn on the machine, then covered it again. It was silent. Then there were three knocks on the door. “Ferenc?” He had a sparkling, happy voice. He sounded like an old friend.

  I opened the door and saw what I hadn’t noticed before: how his left shoulder bulged beneath his jacket. The bandages over Nestor’s bullet. When he walked in he showed no sign of injury, but he took his hat off with his right hand a little awkwardly.

  “How are you, Kaminski?”

  “Mikhail, Ferenc. I think we can be on a first-name basis.”

  “All right, Mikhail. Want something to drink?”

  He shook his head. “I had one at The Crocodile. What were you drinking?”

  “I asked for a martini, but couldn’t get one.”

  He winked. “That’s because it’s an imperialist drink, Ferenc. I’m surprised at you.” Then he cocked his head. “Well, maybe I’m not. Tell me,” he said as he wandered to the kitchen and glanced around. “What is it you want?”

  “What I want?”

  “Well, you come to a regular spot of mine and wait until I see you, then you leave. You like vaudeville?”

  “My favorite.”

  “Pretty good, aren’t they?”

  “I thought so.”

  I had left both bedroom doors open, and he stood between them, glancing around. “Nice apartment,” He opened the bathroom door and sniffed. “Smoking on the crapper, huh?”

  I smiled.

  “So what did you want, Ferenc?”

  “I was going to ask the same of you. You were here last night.”

  He wandered back into the living room. “And you didn’t answer the door.”

  “I wasn’t here. But we all have our informers. What did you want?”

  He reached into a pocket for a cigarette, and when he lit it I noticed the unsteady left hand, which made the lighter flame wobble. “I came to talk to you about your case. Have you made any progress tracking this Nestor Velcea character?”

  “He’s hard to find.”

  “I expect results from you,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you that already?”

  I nodded.

  “Before Stefan was killed, I chatted with him about the case. He seemed to have some ideas.”

  “Before he died?”

  “Seemed to think he was close to finding Velcea.”

  “I wish he’d have told me. Why are you so interested, Mikhail?”

  He settled on the sofa, the trigger finger of his right hand tapping the cushion. “Me? I’m interested in the security of this country. I care about all levels of security. This Velcea character strikes me as a real threat, and I’d like to see him stopped.”

  “You were interested enough to demand answers from a friend of mine.”

  “Oh,” he said, lipping his cigarette. “Georgi Radevych. He’s a funny guy. He wanted me to think he didn’t really know you. Funny. Tell me—who’s Gregor Prakash?”

  “And then you came to my home at night, when you could talk to me in the office anytime you wanted.”

  “Well, you weren’t in the office yesterday, Ferenc.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to talk about this around other people.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  I sat across from him and looked deep into his eyes. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

  Kaminski leaned forward, tapping his knee. “I think you’re trying to scare me, Ferenc Kolyeszar. I think you believe you’re a threat to me. Did I tell you I had a talk with a certain Malik Woznica a couple weeks ago? He told me an interesting story. It includes you and a lot of bribery. Seems he learned it all from his wife in Moscow.”

  “Before he killed her.”

  He shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that part of the story, though I learned it on my own. But as for you, my friend, this is just one more thing I have on you. I’ve got you on a string. All I have to do is drop you.” He took his hat off the chair and stood up.

  This was not how it was supposed to go. I took out my pistol.

  “Now, Ferenc,” he said, smiling at it. “You’ve gone from dumb to moronic.”

  “Maybe a little stupid,” I said. “I just want to know why you killed Sergei Malevich.”

  “Where did this come from? First it’s Nestor Velcea, and now it’s Sergei Malevich? You’re all over the place. Do you have a fever?”

  “I’m w
ell enough.”

  “What about the others—Leonek and Emil? Are they suffering from similar delusions?”

  “I haven’t told them anything yet. First, I want to know why.”

  “Always a loner, right?” He looked at his cigarette. “Well, if I had killed Sergei Malevich, I suppose there could have been some good reasons. Security reasons. He was trying to cause more scandal for the liberating army. There had been enough scandals by that point, and public opinion was turning against us. Sergei, from what I’ve heard, was a little like you. He never cared about the larger picture.”

  “Public opinion was always against the Russians.”

  He raised a finger. “No, Ferenc. Private opinion was always against us. It’s public opinion that is the danger to stability. Once hating Russians becomes a public opinion, you’ve got what you had in Budapest. You’ve got busses set on fire and windows broken. You’ve got tanks in the street. No one wants that.”

  “That sounds admirable.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “But it’s not true. You killed Sergei because you were one of those four Russians who took those two girls into the synagogue. And the night you killed him, he was meeting his one witness, Nestor Velcea. You got rid of Sergei, then needed to get rid of Nestor.”

  He smiled.

  I steadied my pistol. “But it was hard to find and kill him on your own, because he went into hiding. So you used the machinery of state security and a French informer to put him away. It must have been a surprise when you were in Moscow and found out that not only had he survived ten years in a work camp, but he was going to be released. You requested a transfer so you could finally take care of him personally.”

  He brought the cigarette to his lips and took a slow drag.

  “But you won’t get him.”

  “So you do know where he is.”

  “He’s safe,” I said.

  Kaminski’s smile returned, and he shook his head. “Nestor is not safe—he’s a dead man. And you, Ferenc, you’re walking and breathing, but you’re also dead. Remember, I have plenty to use against you.”