Liberation movements tyb-4

by Olen Steinhauer

  Brano was alone with the fat man. On a table, a reel-to-reel tape player sat inert as both men smoked. Brano said, “Anything on Mas?”

  “He cleared out of his hotel room in the Pera Palas, and now he’s waiting for a flight back home.”

  “He’s still in the airport?”

  “Flight leaves in an hour.”

  The fat man grunted and said in his heavy accent, “I can not make the sense of it.”

  “Play it for him,” said Brano.

  The fat man got up to leave. “You do it. I can not listen more.”

  Once he was gone, Brano rewound the tape and pressed STOP. Then PLAY.

  The voice that came out was staticky, speaking English. “…and this is an order, from the Armenian Diaspora across the planet, sufferers of the genocide at the hands of the Turkish imperialists, in solidarity with our freedom-loving comrades in Palestine and West Germany…”

  “He’s reading it,” Gavra said.

  “Shh.”

  “…a hundred thousand in United States dollars and the release from United States prison of the revered Gourgen Mkrtich Yanikian.”

  Then came another man’s voice, clearer: “We understand. Just give us some time. You have enough fuel to remain in the air for-”

  “I know this! We know everything. The Armenian nation has-”

  The tape squealed as Brano held down the fast-forward button. “A lot of dogma here.”

  “Who’s Gourgen Yanikian?” Gavra asked.

  “American citizen, Armenian descent. Two years ago he invited the Turkish consul general and the consul to lunch at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara, California. He shot them both with a Luger. Killed them.”

  “Right.”

  “I suspect,” said Brano, “that these people are connected to the Prisoner Gourgen Yanikian Group.”

  “I remember. Two months ago.”

  “Yes, in February they committed two acts in Beirut. They tried to bomb the Turkish Information and Tourism Bureau-it went off while police tried to defuse it. Then they set off a bomb in the Turkish Airlines offices.”

  “I thought the ASALA did that.”

  Brano shrugged. “The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia also claimed responsibility.”

  “Too many names,” said Gavra.

  “Listen to this.”

  Brano pressed PLAY.

  The hijacker was crying now, and through the sobs he spoke Turkish that Brano translated in his monotone. “She said it. She’s one of yours. Yes. Because she knows even more. She told me. How did she know?”

  A click, then the other man said in English, “What did she say to you?”

  “Just that…that…” Brano translated, then stopped because the voice had gone silent.

  “Hello?” said the other man. “Are you still there? Come in, five-four.”

  There was no reply. Brano stared hard at the machine. “That was the last transmission before the explosion. It occurred a couple of minutes later.”

  “‘She’?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gavra sank into a chair. “A suicide. Then why the demands?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “Then let’s talk to Mas.”

  Brano stood up.

  The fat Turk’s name was Captain Talip Evren, and he found a guard to walk them through the security check. Mas was at Gate 5 with thirty other travelers, reading an old copy of The Spark, a leg crossed over his knee.

  “Ludvik,” said Brano.

  Mas looked up, then smiled easily, losing the claustrophobia of before. “Brano. What are you doing in Istanbul?”

  “I’d like to ask you the same thing.”

  “It’s the nature of our business we seldom get answers.”

  “You were always philosophical, Ludvik.”

  “Who’s the kid?”

  Gavra said, “Captain Gavra Noukas.”

  “Noukas?” Mas bit his lip. “I’ve heard about you.”

  Brano sat in the chair next to him. “You were waiting for someone. Now you’re going back home. That’s correct?”

  “Well, your boy was following me, so I don’t suppose I should lie.”

  “I want to know what’s going on.”

  Mas folded the newspaper into his lap and spoke with the patient confidence of a much older man. “Brano. Each of us has our orders, and we follow them. Yes, I was waiting for someone, but that someone didn’t arrive. I called my contact and learned what happened. It’s a tragedy, but the fact is that my job is now over. I’m going home. You’ll no doubt be asked to do the same.”

  “How did your contact learn what happened?”

  “My contact keeps his ear to the ground.”

  A tone sounded, and a uniformed woman at a podium called, “Flight number 603-”

  Mas stood. “Let the Turks take care of this. They have an admirable police force.” He shook Brano’s hand, then Gavra’s. His grip was sweaty. “Good to meet you, young man. And stick with Comrade Sev. He’s the best there is.”

  That afternoon, Gavra sat at the Hotel Erboy’s small rooftop cafe, looking over the city while Brano used the telephone at the front desk. His vista included the mouth of the Golden Horn and thick-settled Beyo lu; in the foreground was a pair of handsome young Germans drinking vodka tonics by the ledge. One noticed him and smiled, then leaned to whisper to his friend, who glanced over and shrugged.

  “They want us back home,” Brano said as he took the other seat. “There’s a flight at eleven in the morning.”

  “What about the hijacking?”

  “Nothing we can do here, and I suspect there won’t be much to do in the Capital. The Turks have the passenger manifest, and the Ministry’s looking into the records of four Armenians who were on the flight-we should hear something when we return.”

  “Four Armenians with the exception of Libarid?”

  “Yes.”

  Gavra pulled out a cigarette as a ship in the Bosphorus moaned. “What about Mas? He could be connected to this. Maybe he was also waiting for Libarid.”

  Brano shook his head. “It’s just a terrible coincidence. Libarid was on a plane that some Armenians wanted to use to get back at the Turks. It’s bad for us; it’s bad for Mas. It’s bad for everyone.”

  “I see.”

  “And I called the station. Gave the news to Emil. He’ll pass it on to Imre and Katja.” Brano was squinting in the light.

  “Was it hard?”

  The old man shrugged. “I’ve delivered this kind of news often enough. I think it’s going to be hard on him, though. Emil Brod does his best, but he’s not well equipped to deal with tragedy.”

  “And you are.”

  “Well, if I wasn’t, I doubt I’d still be alive.” Brano paused. “There are only two of us now.”

  “Two of whom?” Gavra noticed that the Germans were paying their bill and leaving.

  “Two veterans.” He frowned. “Stefan was killed back in the fifties, and at the same time Ferenc-Ferenc Kolyeszar, you’ve heard of that samizdat of his, The Confession — he was sent into internal exile and has been in a work camp the last three years. And now Libarid.” Brano blinked a few times, coming out of his reverie. “You’re not going out tonight, are you?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to have to kick some poor girl out of your bedroom in the morning,” Brano said, but without scorn.

  Peter

  1968

  The foreign soldier’s beers settled his frayed nerves and helped him drop into a deep, dreamless sleep for hours, until he was woken by gunshots outside. He blinked in the darkness, at first only hearing Josef snoring in the other bed. Peter crawled to the foot of his cot and peered out the window. Down on Pod Stanici, against the silhouette of another building, he saw a tiny burst of flame and heard another rat-a-tat. He couldn’t make out the figure with the gun, nor the intended victim. Boots crunched against the sidewalk, and as he waited for another gunshot he remembered that
same sound just outside eske Bud jovice. A field, a shouted order from the road, then all three of them running westward through the stumps of harvested corn. Toman ahead of him, Ivana just behind. Toman was cursing-Fucking Peter, fucking goddamned Peter — beneath the rat-a-tat. Peter looked back in time to catch Ivana’s beautiful heavy-eyed face suddenly seize up. Then she fell forward, as if she’d tripped. Toman, ahead, was no longer shouting words, only long, painful notes, and Peter realized that he’d passed Toman’s writhing body in the stalks. But he kept on running as the rat-a-tat stopped and he heard one of the men at the road shouting at another in Russian. Though he knew Russian, he couldn’t make out the words.

  “What is it?”

  He turned back to see Josef’s face emerge from the gloom. “Gunshots. Outside. But I can’t see.”

  Josef rubbed his eyes. “Took days before I could sleep through it.” He climbed back into his cot and pulled the sheets to his chin. “Peter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you get caught? I didn’t think there’d be a problem getting across.”

  Peter looked out at the street. “It was my own fault. I wanted to start a fire.”

  “A fire?”

  “It was cold. We were in a field, and I was cold. Nighttime in the countryside. I hadn’t brought a good coat. They told me not to start one, but they were asleep and I was so cold. I didn’t think anyone would see.”

  “But they did.”

  “The worst luck,” said Peter. “A Russian jeep came along the road. And we were woken by the bullhorn. It was morning then. The jeep, it had…it had a machine gun on it, and when we ran they fired at us.”

  “Savages.”

  He cleared his throat. “We scattered. I can only assume they made it. I went south, and the Russians followed me. They picked me up in the town.”

  “You were incredibly stupid.”

  “I know.”

  “But at least you didn’t get anyone killed.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter. He took a breath. “I’m thankful for that.”

  Gavra

  The old man woke him earlier than expected. Six o’clock, and it was just dumb luck, Gavra later reflected, that he had decided to be a good boy the night before. He’d spoken to the Germans in the hotel bar, two Heidelberg cops in town for the Interpol conference. They were attractive and seemed to like Gavra, but after his fifth vodka, he became suspicious of his own judgment. He began hearing the old man’s voice in his head. Waking up to Colonel Brano Sev proved he’d been right not to trust himself.

  Brano was excited. “The Istanbul police have worked quickly. Last night, they raided an apartment of the Army of the Liberation of Armenia and rounded up three conspirators.” He explained this quickly, and Gavra rubbed his eyes, trying to understand.

  “One of the men talked,” Brano continued. “Turns out they have no connection to the ASALA, the Prisoner Gourgen Yanikian Group, or even the Yanikian Commandos, the ones who tried to set off a bomb in New York two years ago. But guess how they decided to hijack that particular plane, on that day.”

  “How?”

  “A telephone call.”

  “From who?”

  “From Wilhelm Adler.”

  Only then did Gavra wake fully. Wilhelm Adler, or “Tappi” to the newspapers, had famously spent years in West Germany with the proto-Marxist Red Army Faction, blowing up offices and airport terminals and kidnapping business leaders in an effort to free the older RAF generation-Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, Ulrike Meinhof-from prison. Just as West German police were about to close in on him in June 1974, he crossed into East Germany, and General Secretary Honecker, as always, welcomed the socialist warrior with open arms.

  “So East Germany’s in on this?”

  Brano shook his head. “Adler moved out of Democratic Germany not long after he arrived there. He’s been in our country for the last seven months.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Not a lot of people do. Now get your clothes on.”

  The Turkish polis station was not what Gavra expected. Perhaps he expected exotic Muslim arches or policemen sitting on velvet pillows. Instead he found himself in a dirty, gray-walled bureaucratic building not unlike home. In place of a framed portrait of General Secretary Pankov, Kemal Ataturk glared at him from under flaming eyebrows. Then the smell hit him: Turkish tobacco and sweat. It straddled the line between sensual and revolting. At least there was a familiar face: Talip Evren, the fat captain from the airport. He shook their hands with both of his and took them down an empty side corridor. He knocked on a scratched door. The small man who opened it wore a pistol in his belt.

  The room was dark, and in the center a young man with hair reaching his shoulders was tied to a chair. A desk lamp shone on his battered face, and the only sound in the room was his labored breathing. Dried blood covered most of his features, so it was hard for Gavra to make out what he looked like.

  “May I introduce to you Norair Tigran,” said Talip. “Ask as you want and I will make translation.”

  Brano pulled up a chair and sat just out of the light. “He should tell me everything about Wilhelm Adler.”

  “Wilhelm?” the young man said, gurgling as if speaking through water. “Allah belan? versin.”

  Talip shook his head. “He does not wish to repeat himself. Hasad.”

  The small man took out his pistol and swung it into the young man’s face.

  Gavra thought he heard something snap, but Tigran shifted his head, whispering, “Wilhelm?”

  “When did he call?” Brano asked.

  Talip translated the answer: “Last Wednesday.”

  “Why was he part of this? He’s not Armenian.”

  “He understand solidarity.”

  “And he told you to make this a suicide mission?”

  Norair Tigran showed his teeth a moment, trying to clear his throat. He spoke, and Talip said: “It was not suicide mission. He say he don’t know what happen.”

  “What else did Wilhelm say?”

  “Nothing. Only it must should be that day, that flight. Number five-four.”

  “Why would you listen to him?”

  Even through the mask of blood the young Armenian seemed annoyed. He spoke directly to Brano in English. “Because we’re new at this, okay? Wilhelm is a veteran. We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know when. He told me that this would be the one.”

  “But why this plane? Why did he say?”

  “He said…” Norair Tigran cocked his head. “He said it would be the best.”

  “But why?”

  “Just that he knew. But Wilhelm-” Norair grunted something like a laugh. “Wilhelm was wrong about this one.”

  During the interview, Gavra asked no questions. He wanted to, and Brano would have allowed it, but no words came to him. On the flight back home, he said, “It’s disappointing. In that room I didn’t have the presence of mind to come up with a single question.”

  Brano told him not to worry. “This case is hardly a case for us. The Turkish police are well equipped to handle the investigation of the hijacking. But since the hijackers boarded in the Capital, we should try to reconstruct what they did in our country and pass that information on to the Turks. We begin with Wilhelm Adler.”

  Gavra gazed at the seat in front of him. “There’s something more here. I’m sure of it.”

  “Let’s talk to Adler,” Brano said. “No one will expect extradition to Turkey, but he should be able to shed some light on this.”

  “Tonight?” Gavra asked as a stewardess collected their empty coffee cups.

  “Tomorrow. Our people are keeping an eye on him; he won’t get away.”

  “What about Ludvik Mas?”

  Brano scratched his ear. “Ludvik Mas is none of our concern. He works in an office no one looks into, because it’s best no one does.”

  “Do you mean Room 305?”

  Brano gave him a blank expression. “That office does not ex
ist.” He folded his tray table shut. “And what does not exist should not be thought about.”

  Brano dropped him off at his Fourth District sixth-floor walk-up a little after four in the afternoon. The pitted field surrounding his apartment block was full of out-of-commission Trabants rusting under the sun. It was Thursday, but even on a workday the familiar trio of young men by the door was sharing a plastic bottle of cheap palinka. A couple of years before, Mujo, the hairiest of the group, got hold of a smuggled record by an American rock band, the Velvet Underground. His life began sliding downhill that very day.

  “You’ve been traveling?” said Mujo. “You got some sun.”

  “Sun and water and lots of sex, Mujo.”

  The alcoholic told his friends, “Gavra here is a traveler. A man of the world. ” For some reason that made the other two laugh.

  “And don’t forget,” Gavra told them, “I also find volunteers for the state. Someone needs to dig our canals.”

  The men quieted, unsure whether this was a joke, as Gavra went inside and checked his mailbox, which was empty.

  His apartment was small and untidy. The living room was filled with stacks of records: Smak — a Yugoslav progressive rock band he was fond of-some Beatles, as well as an English singer, Elton John. A fine layer of dust covered everything, even the off-green walls. Gavra had become used to the grime over the years; he lived his life outside those walls.

  He grabbed a bottle of homemade palinka from the cabinet-a bottle, he remembered as he pulled out the cork, from Libarid’s wife’s family distillery. He found a fresh pack of cigarettes and settled in front of his little black-and-white television. That’s when he saw the story. Earlier in the day, members of the Red Army Faction and the Heidelberg Socialist Patients’ Collective took over the West German Embassy in Stockholm. In retaliation for an attempted recovery by Swedish police, they brought the West German military attache, Baron Andreas von Mirchbach, to a window and put bullets through his head, his leg, and his chest. Police, stripped down to their underwear to show they were unarmed, dragged the body away.

  The newscaster, in order to help clarify the groups’ aims, quoted Red Army Faction founder Ulrike Meinhof from a statement she had made the previous year from Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart: