Liberation movements tyb-4

by Olen Steinhauer

  He says, “Katja.”

  From the look on your face I’m guessing you didn’t know what I did to her. If so, you wouldn’t have called me here. But let me tell you this, Comrade Sev. I’m not random. I’m a man who knows what is required at any moment. You told me that if I was interested in working for the Ministry, I should meet you in Victory Park on Friday. I was interested. I am interested. And I knew that if I was to be of proper service to the Ministry, I had to tie up my loose ends. An agent is no good if there are others out there who wish him ill, who know too much about him. No. It’s unacceptable. So that’s what I did. I tied up my loose ends. I got rid of that girl. And now I’m here, ready to serve the Ministry with all the cunning I can muster.

  Gavra

  They got out at the same sidewalk where Libarid Terzian stood when he waved good-bye to his family for the last time, six days before. Adrian carried his little bag, but Gavra carried nothing. He opened the same door for Adrian that Libarid held open for Adrian’s sister, and, like Zrinka, Adrian smiled.

  Gavra paused before continuing to the TisAir desk. He scanned the departures lounge, trying to find familiar faces. Then he noticed the sloped gray-haired Ministry man smoking by the gift shop, but he was more interested in flirting with the young, bored girl who worked the shop than watching out for people trying to escape their country.

  Gavra crossed the faux-marble floor to the desk while Adrian took a seat in the waiting area. Gavra bought two tickets for the nine thirty flight, and as he returned his face became very red as he finally understood what he was doing. But he didn’t say anything to Adrian about it. He just handed over a ticket and explained, “It would be best if we went through passport control separately.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Gavra went through first and waited on the other side of the glassed-in desk as Adrian handed over his passport. Gavra was breaking every known rule this evening, and he couldn’t explain why. Brano had always been right-he was young and sentimental. He wasn’t cut out for this work. Anyone who would throw away his career because of a man he’d known only a few days had no respect for his career. That was logical. What did he expect to gain from this? A lifetime of happiness with a man he hardly knew?

  As Adrian joined him with a smile, Gavra knew that he could have taken care of this back at Adrian’s apartment. It would have been difficult; it would have haunted him for weeks-perhaps months-but at some unknown point in the future he would have woken to a clean conscience, settling into the comfort of knowing that what he had done was simply a part of duties. As some people grasp hold of religion, Gavra would learn to grasp hold of the ideals of the Ministry.

  But now-now he’d killed any chance for that kind of faith.

  So he continued without thinking. It was better that way. He waited silently with Adrian at the gate, then took a seat with him just over the wing. He closed his eyes as the plane ascended.

  Finally, when they were over Romania, Gavra whispered, “What else did she tell you?”

  Adrian yawned into the back of his hand. “Excuse me.” He covered Gavra’s hand with his own. “She told me about this, that you would take me to Istanbul. She said I should go, because if I stayed I would die.”

  Gavra shook his head. “I just don’t understand any of this. How can someone know these things?”

  Zrinka’s brother took a breath. “It’s hard to explain. She tried many times, when we were children, but it’s hard.” He paused. “You and I, we’ve long ago accepted that there are things we will never know. We’re like characters in a Tolstoy novel-we know things are happening to other people, but we don’t know what those things are, or why those people do what they do. Zrinka, though, she’s like the reader of our novel.”

  “But you’re not telling me how.”

  “Okay. Think of it like mathematics. Statistics. What’s the probability that if I say something to you, you’ll do something else?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I would know if I knew all the things that had happened to you up to this point in your life. And I mean everything. Then I could say with precision what you’d do next.”

  “With precision?”

  “To go along with this idea, you have to rid yourself of one concept.”

  “What?”

  “Free will.”

  Gavra began to feel a little dumb.

  “Or better yet,” said Adrian, “go ahead and believe in it, but remember that even free will is predictable.”

  “Which one is it?” said Gavra. “Does it exist or not?”

  Adrian shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that Zrinka knew what I or our parents would do next. As she got older, she knew more.”

  “But she didn’t know everything that had happened to them up to that point. She couldn’t.”

  Adrian paused, as if this were a good point. “Well, take that idea and turn it around. You meet someone, see how he’s acting, what he looks like, how old he is, what kind of language he uses. Then you can work backward to find out what’s happened to him. Psychology does this in a rudimentary way, but so simply that all they can say are things like You had a trauma when you were a child. Well, who hasn’t?”

  Gavra nodded.

  “Put those together. If I can tell your whole past from who you are now, and then with that information predict what you’ll do next, can even influence what you do or feel or think next, then you have a picture of what my sister was capable of.”

  Adrian waited, watching Gavra absorb this, then confused him further by pushing it to its limit.

  “There’s more. If you’re very good at this, you’re able to understand people you’ve never even met. For someone you have met to act this way or that, he had to have been influenced by contact with this kind of person, because only one kind of person, or one combination of people, could have affected that person in this exact way. And you learn that person’s past, and future, just as if you had met him personally. And so it grows. Before long, there exists a vast web of people whose actions you can predict. That is, if you can keep it all straight in your head.”

  Gavra whispered, “You’re talking about omniscience.”

  “Something like that. But not omnipotence. Certainly not that.”

  Gavra still wasn’t convinced, but he had spent enough time managing interrogations to know how to follow a subject’s line of reasoning, no matter how absurd it seemed.

  “That,” said Adrian, “is why she was able to know that I would meet you. She knew Ludvik Mas, so she knew Brano Sev. And because she knew him, she also knew you.” He paused. “She knew what Brano Sev needed to know.”

  “That Ludvik Mas knew about the hijacking. But why did he need to know that?”

  “I don’t know. I just know it’s important for me, and for you, that he know.”

  Gavra rubbed his eyes. This line of reasoning was logical but impossible to digest. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t have to know. I know. My sister, as I’ve said before, was a saint. She spent her life since the age of fifteen suffering in hospitals and being studied and then manipulated. All to protect me.”

  “How was she manipulated?”

  “They gained her cooperation by threatening my life. She told me that.”

  Gavra peered over the headrests up the length of the plane. Stewardesses in blue caps were serving drinks to businessmen in first class. And here he was, listening to a story that was beyond his capacity to comprehend.

  Libarid

  “Everyone remain calm!” says Emin Kazanjian, waving his briefcase detonator at the head of the aisle. “If you stay calm, everyone will survive this trip!” The other three hijackers have taken positions throughout the plane, so they can see its length and breadth as Emin retreats, with the help of a terrified stewardess, to the cockpit.

  Zrinka sits up and whispers to Libarid, “The one closest to us-you see his arm?”

  Libarid’s not interested in what she has t
o say, not now, but he looks anyway at the small man in the aisle with shirtsleeves and an old Tokarev pistol. Down his forearm are three long, parallel scars. “Yes,” he mutters.

  He doesn’t know why Zrinka continues to speak, but she does. “His name is Jirair, and he was tortured by Turkish police in Istanbul, three years ago. They brought him in on trumped-up charges of robbery, but they in fact believed he was a terrorist. He wasn’t, but after the experience he became one. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Libarid looks at her. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “I told you,” she says. “I have a knack for suppositions. Sometimes it serves me well. For example, I knew this plane was going to be hijacked.”

  “Everyone quiet! ” says the one nearest them-Jirair.

  Libarid lowers his voice. “I saw you. You were talking with that first guy. In the airport.”

  “I needed to get to know him.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry,” she says, a vague smile playing on her lips. “It’ll all be over soon enough. You’ll be in sunny Istanbul, and free.”

  Zrinka places a hand on the armrest to get up, but Libarid grabs her elbow and pulls her back down. “You’re staying right here.”

  “Am I?” That smile again.

  “Explain to me what’s going on.”

  “A test,” she says. “I’m being tested. But I’ve had enough of tests. I’ve had years of them, and this is where it’s going to end. I could just have them take the plane somewhere else-to Egypt, maybe-but I won’t have my brother pay for my selfishness. Besides, there’s always another side that wants to use you.”

  “You’re not making things any clearer.”

  “It’s doesn’t matter, Libarid. Zara will at least be happy you’ve survived the flight. And these guys will treat you well; though you’re nothing like them, you’re Armenian.”

  “I’m not so different. I’ve hated the Turks as well.”

  Zrinka opens her mouth, a peculiar expression crossing her face. When she speaks, it’s a stunned whisper. “No, you don’t hate them.”

  “I did, ” he said. “They killed most of my family. Made refugees of my mother and me.”

  Her mouth works air again. “But I didn’t know.”

  For an instant, Libarid forgets the situation they’re in. “Christ, you’re strange.”

  “But I’m sure it’s the same,” she says, nodding as if to reassure herself. “Yes. Now let go of my arm.”

  As if it were controlled by the tone of her voice, Libarid’s hand opens up, and Zrinka stands. Jirair rushes up, swinging his pistol around. “Sit!”

  Zrinka smiles at him. “I need to speak to Emin.”

  “You don’t-”

  But she interrupts, pointing at the marks on his arm. “His name was Talip Evren. He was short and fat, and he used a ceremonial Bedouin knife he got when he was in the army. He used the knife because it reminded him of when he was young and fit and strong. And you’re here because there was something wicked about him that keeps you moving even now, three years later.”

  Jirair looks down at the marks on his forearm, then back at her.

  “Emin,” she says.

  Libarid watches as the small man deflates slightly, his shoulders drooping, his pistol hanging beside his hip. He’s very close, and for an instant Libarid believes he can reach out and snatch the gun from him. But he doesn’t. He’s thinking of the various repercussions that could follow, gunfights in this enclosed space, Zrinka getting shot, or, worse, himself being killed. The scenarios flicker through his mind slowly, retarded by fear, and Jirair and Zrinka are already walking up to the cockpit when he realizes he should have tried it-tried something.

  Then they’re at the door, and just before entering, Zrinka turns to look at him with her pale eyes. The serene smile hasn’t left her face, and then she winks at him and mouths, It’s okay.

  Jirair opens the door to the cockpit, and Libarid can hear Emin, from inside, shout in Armenian, “What is this?”

  The door closes.

  Libarid stares hard at the door, then at the deaf state security man who turns to peer back at him, confused. It’s okay, she said, but it’s not okay. As a young refugee, Libarid learned that other people have no power to help you. They may believe they can right what’s fallen apart, but they’re fooling themselves. What is good for you, only you can do.

  He turns to the hijacker across the next set of seats and calls in Armenian, “Excuse me, can I use the bathroom?”

  He’s a tall, gangly man, also with scars that mark the side of his face. One scar has split the corner of his wide mustache. He raises his gun and frowns. “What?”

  Libarid smiles. Again in Armenian: “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to wet my pants.”

  The hijacker looks across the plane to the other one at the front of Libarid’s aisle, who shrugs. The first one nods, and the second comes back to walk Libarid from his seat to the toilet. At the bathroom door, he asks Libarid, “You’re Armenian?”

  “ Aayo. Family was from Vaspurakan. We were around for the slaughter.”

  The hijacker inhales, his smooth face looking very young and innocent to Libarid. “Nineteen fifteen, April. You must have been a baby.”

  “I was young.”

  Libarid locks the door and stares into the mirror. That brief childhood in Armenia is hardly a memory to him at his age. When he was young, memories of Turkish soldiers marching the men of the village away, gathering families, drowning them in the local lake-they gave him an immature, violent courage. But over the years, after the death of his mother, his hatred of Turks was too exhausting to sustain. Then, once he’d acquired a wife and child-a family-he became more careful. Now, staring at himself, he can see this. It’s made him a less effective militiaman, one with too many worries and, at times, a crippling fear of death.

  But now the situation is different. Libarid has kept up with the stories of various Armenian acts around the world, and their perpetrators’ awkward names: the Prisoner Gourgen Yanikian Group, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and now simply the Army of the Liberation of Armenia. Bombs placed in tourist offices in New York, Paris, and Beirut. The hatred he once owned is alive in these people, and he knows from his own experience what that can lead to. It’s a suicidal urge. If he doesn’t act, his freedom from his family won’t mean a thing.

  So he looks around at the minimalist airline toilet for something to use. The cabinets are filled with paper products, and beneath the sink are extra rolls of toilet paper. The toilet itself has only a lid, but beside it, on the wall, is a two-foot-long aluminum bar to hold on to during turbulence. He tugs on it, and the plastic wall bends. The bar is held on each side by screwed-in metal brackets, but with some effort one of them pops free, and he slides the aluminum bar under his slacks, the bottom secured by the elastic of his sock, so that the bar is held loosely along the inside of his calf.

  He checks his red face in the mirror, takes a breath, and opens the door.

  His guard walks behind him back to his seat, and as they approach Zrinka’s large, deaf guard, Libarid mouths his instructions.

  Five minutes, we both take them. You stand first.

  The guard, surprised, nods and looks at his wristwatch.

  Katja

  The sunlight ruins me. It’s inescapable. Even when I find a crevice between buildings, the light clings to the shadows, and I search for a closed door to hide behind. The first door is a teashop with pillows around low tables and dark men hunched in the darkness, whispering. That is, until I enter, when they all look up from their reveries, confused.

  I tried not to run out of the hotel. I ran from the room, then stood in the empty corridor with blood on my knees and hands and blouse, the knife still in my hand. Then, in a moment of sudden fatigue, I stepped back inside and closed the door, lucky that the guests were all gone, eating late breakfasts or gazing at Istanbul’s sights. I stepped over the dead man, sat on the bed, and clo
sed my eyes.

  I don’t know how long it took me, in the darkness of my head, to decide what to do, but when I came out of it I found myself undressing.

  I tried to ignore him as I washed my hands and went through the wardrobe and put on his undershirt and then tried pants, but they wouldn’t stretch over my hips. So I put my own back on and found a long raincoat with large pockets. I dropped the pistol and the knife into a plastic trash bag from the bathroom and slipped it into one pocket. Into the other went my crumpled, bloodstained blouse. I found an inner pocket to hold the Deutschmarks. Then I looked around, at everything except the body.

  Before leaving, I admittedly squatted beside Peter Husak again, just outside the pool of blood, and gazed into that flaccid, blood-smeared face. That stupid little mustache.

  I spat on it.

  Only then was I able to walk calmly out of the hotel.

  I walked eastward. Up a narrow cobblestone street, jumping aside to avoid cars and lumbering tour buses. Up, pouring sweat under the overcoat, until my calves hurt, burning away all thoughts. In an open square I saw men washing themselves in fountains.

  Then down, almost tripping on the stones as I followed baffling curves.

  Trees covered me at some point, and then I reached the water. A perfect horizontal line. Water above; road below. In the distance, ships and Asia. I sprinted across the road to a shore of large rocks. Just at the water, feet wet, I collapsed and threw the blouse and the pistol into the Bosphorus. The knife, though-I held on to that. I looked around finally, but I’d been alone all along.

  It was walking back through these choked, confused streets that ruined my shaky calm. The heat and the weathered faces and the unsettling songs of prayer that burst from rooftops like the scorn of God. The sun.

  So I’ve stepped into this dark cavern of men over steaming cups. The last place I want to be. I find a pillow at an empty table and try to smile at the gaunt waiter with the long sideburns. “ Rak? please,” I say.

  He frowns, then shakes his head vigorously.

  “Cay,” he says, then: “ Chai. Tea.”

  “No alcohol?”

  He shakes his head again.