“Just before everything went to hell. As if he knew.”
I wondered about that: Did Romek know beforehand how Pankov’s rally would go? Had he arranged his and his family’s safety long beforehand? I checked the date at the top of the sheet-the ticket had been bought on Monday, the day after Tomiak Pankov returned from Libya.
The computer, Katja told me after a few minutes’frustration at the keyboard, was completely erased.
We continued searching but found nothing concerning the people on the death list, or Rosta Gorski, or that 1948 case. The most interesting thing was a photocopy that had been crumpled up and simply thrown in the wastebasket-a long-winded telegram marked TOP SECRET, sent from our Moscow embassy. It concerned a conversation between V. L. Musatov, “Deputy Director of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” and our ambassador to the Soviet Union, Ignac Molovich. It had been received, decoded, and stamped by Yalta Boulevard at 7:30 A.M. yesterday. V. L.
MUSATOV RECEIVED ME AT MY REQUEST. THE DEPUTY DIRECTOR TOLD ME THAT DURING THE MEETING OF T. PANKOV WITH THE SOVIET CHARGE D’AFFAIRES IN OUR CAPITAL ON 20 DECEMBER T. PANKOV SAID THAT HE POSSESSES INFORMATION THAT THE ACTIONS IN SAROSPATAK WERE PREPARED AND ORGANIZED WITH THE CONSENT OF MEMBER COUNTRIES OF THE WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION. I AFFIRMED THIS AND MADE THE POINT THAT OUR INFORMATION SUGGESTED SOME KIND OF ACTION OF INTERFERENCE INTO OUR INTERNAL AFFAIRS UNDER PREPARATION IN THE SOVIET UNION. THE DEPUTY DIRECTOR DECLARED THAT SUCH ASSERTIONS PUZZLED HIM, AND HAD NO FOUNDATION AND DID NOT CORRESPOND WITH REALITY. FURTHER, HE STATED THAT HIS WORDS REFLECTED THE USSR OFFICIAL POSITION WHICH POSTULATES THAT THE SOVIET UNION BUILDS ITS RELATIONS WITH ALLIED SOCIALIST STATES ON THE BASIS OF EQUALITY, MUTUAL RESPECT AND STRICT NONINTERFERENCE INTO DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. I ASKED IF THIS POSITION ALSO COVERED AREAS WHEREIN SOCIALISM IN ALLIED STATES WAS UNDER THREAT. THAT IS, WOULD SOVIET ASSISTANCE BE AVAILABLE TO NORMALIZE THE SITUATION IN SAROSPATAK? HE SAID THAT THIS POSITION COVERED ALL DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF ALLIED STATES, AND THAT ASSISTANCE IN SAROSPATAK WOULD NOT BE AVAILABLE.
I had to read it a few times to work my way through the language, but it was plain enough. Pankov actually believed that this uprising had been instigated by the Warsaw Pact, and that the Russians in particular were behind it. It seemed ludicrous to me, since I knew that, for more than a decade, Ferenc and his friends had been building up their underground organization without any Russian support. But Pankov couldn’t imagine that his own people would have the will to rise up on their own.
Then I remembered Ferenc’s story. Yuri Kolev met with a Russian named Fyodor Malevich who kept an officer’s uniform in his wardrobe. Maybe Pankov wasn’t so paranoid after all.
Katja was intrigued by the final line. Our ambassador had asked if the Russians would help put down the uprising, and Musatov had flatly said no.
This made her delirious with pleasure. The world, she told me, had abandoned Tomiak Pankov completely, and now our country would finally speak with its own voice.
In a sense, you can argue that she was right.
Still, despite the revolutionary promise in what we’d found, there was nothing here for me. Romek had fled the country with his family, and I was left with no explanation as to why my wife had been murdered.
We spent a few hours going through the house, ripping open cabinets and drawers and even banging the wall in vain for hollow spots. In the backyard, the last strings of my hope snapped. Romek owned a long, rusty grill that must have been put to good use for sides of lamb at many summer garden parties. Now it was full of ashes and flakes of recently burned papers. Hundreds- thousands — of them. He’d cleaned up completely before he left.
“What now?” said Katja.
Weakened by all this, I sat on the cold dirt and tried to regulate my breaths. “Sleep,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “All I want is sleep.”
FOURTEEN
Around nine in the morning, Gavra reached Lenin Avenue. The metro had not been open, so he’d walked from the edge of town. Like me and Katja, he was able to keep moving only because of adrenaline and that other unknown substance. On the endless walk these things left him, and he felt like a soldier on a long march, only aware of placing one foot in front of the other.
In October Square, he had finally found people. They were grouped around Max and Corina’s cafe, a place popular with the Militia because of the discounts it offered. Today, though, there were no militiamen, just twenty students around a broken window, some sitting on chairs inside, others on the sidewalk looking in as a bearded young man lectured them on revolutionary organization. A few students turned to stare at Gavra, and he veered off to the other side of the square at about the moment the gunfire started.
A sniper on a residential rooftop shot slowly and deliberately into the crowd. Running for the shelter of a doorway, Gavra heard screams and saw two students fall as the others scrambled in through the broken window.
He made it out of October alive and a little more awake and found the Militia station abandoned except for two old sergeants manning the phones. “What’re you doing here?” said one.
“Going to my office,” Gavra told him. “Many calls?”
The sergeant shrugged. “Sure, but we just tell them to stay inside.”
“Yeah,” said the other.
“You’re not investigating anything?”
The second one shrugged. “Someone’s gotta hold down the fort.”
The homicide office was locked, so he broke the glass to unlock it from inside, then started through the paperwork in his desk. There wasn’t much to burn. His most sensitive case files were stored at Yalta. He took out the files that he kept on us, his coworkers, and put them in the metal wastebasket. He used lighter fluid he found in Bernard’s desk and soaked the files, then lit them.
I later asked why he did this. Why he burned the files on us. He said it was because they contained a record of our assistance to him over the years. If the revolutionaries got hold of that, it would be a simple matter to convict us of being Ministry agents.
As he poked the embers with a metal ruler, his phone rang.
He didn’t want to answer it. All he wanted was to get back and make sure Karel was all right, then go to sleep for a very long time.
But he did answer it, and that changed everything.
“Hello?”
“Gavra NOW-kass?”
He gripped the edge of his desk. “Harold.” He said in English, “Yes, it’s me.”
“Oh, Jesus, I’m glad I finally got you. Gavra, something’s gone really wrong.”
“What is it? Are you in trouble?”
“Trouble’s a good word for it. We’re at the hotel, and people… well, they’re shooting at the hotel.”
“Who’s shooting at the hotel?”
“Looks to me like army. Christ, Beth’s scared out of her wits.”
“Why are they shooting at the hotel?”
“You think I know? Oh!” He heard Beth’s scream, and movement.
“Harold? Harold?”
“We’re okay, we’re okay. Just a scare. A bullet came through our window. Right through!”
Gavra rubbed his temples. “Look, I’ll be over as soon as I can. What’s your room?”
“Three-oh-five.”
“Stay there. Sit behind the bed-no. Go into the hallway. You’ll be safe there. But wait for me in the hallway. Don’t leave. Okay?”
“We’re not going anywhere, Gavra. No worries about that.”
The Militia garage attendant was gone, so Gavra broke into his key rack and took a Militia Karpat. He sped down Lenin and over to Victory, which was empty except for the Central Committee Building. Along its steps, men and women were smoking and going in and out of the front door. From the wide balcony where he’d seen Tomiak Pankov fear for his life, two young men were tying up a banner that had been crudely painted with the words
GALICIA REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE HQ.
Through his windows, he could hear th
e gunfire from Yalta Boulevard.
He stopped at the end of the long, wide street. Up two blocks at number 20, an army truck was parked among bullet-riddled cars. Behind the cars, soldiers crouched, their Kalashnikovs aimed up high along the Metropol’s glass tower. Occasionally, he made out a form on the roof, which shot back and disappeared again. There were no pedestrians here.
Gavra approached the only way he could, by driving his Karpat up on the sidewalk that led to the Metropol and speeding the two long blocks. When he reached an intersection, his car lurched painfully and bounced, then bounced again as it jumped the next curb. From this angle, the snipers’bullets wouldn’t reach him. He hoped the soldiers on the other side of the road wouldn’t decide to take a shot.
He parked just short of the Metropol’s glass entrance, which was now shattered, and ran, crouched, inside. The lobby was full of soldiers and journalists wearing three-day beards. Everyone gaped at him, and the journalists with cameras started taking his picture. “Who are you?” a woman asked in French, followed by an Englishman asking the same thing. He pushed past them and reached the stairwell. The soldiers never thought to ask who he was.
Just before the third floor, he stopped to catch his breath. His body didn’t want to continue, so he had to grab the balustrade and pull himself the final steps. He didn’t know what he was going to do with this stupid American couple; he only hoped he wouldn’t get killed trying to help.
The third-floor corridor was empty, and the only sound was the muted thump of gunfire outside. He’d told them to stay out here. His anger flashed, then faded-perhaps they’d been hit by stray bullets before they could make it out of the room. He rushed to number 305 and knocked on the door.
“Come in!” shouted Harold.
Gavra opened the door and stepped inside. The first thing he noticed was that their window was completely intact. There were no cracks or holes in it.
Then he realized why. This side of the hotel faced the back alley, not Yalta Boulevard.
Harold and Beth were sitting on the bed beside each other, smiling at him. The gunshots were quieter here. “Gavra,” said Beth. She clapped once. “You came!”
Gavra started to say something but couldn’t. Beth hadn’t spoken in English. She’d spoken our language, with the fluency of a native. He stepped forward, past the bathroom door and into the room. “What’s going on?”
“Ask him,” said Harold, and Gavra heard movement behind himself.
He turned. The bathroom door was open, and Nikolai Romek was standing in it, holding a Beretta. “Hello, Gavra.”
As he came forward, a familiar brick of a man with a thick mustache followed him out, holding a small burlap sack. Just the right size for a head. “Balint,” said Romek.
Balint handed the bag to Gavra. He remembered now-one of Kolev’s two assistants. “You traitorous shit,” said Gavra.
“Put it on,” said Romek.
That’s when, despite his fatigue, the panic set in. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“I’m going to make you famous,” said Romek.
“You’ll be a hero,” Beth said gleefully.
Harold looked at his wristwatch, stood, and said in English, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Well?” said Romek. With the Beretta, he gestured at the bag in Gavra’s hand.
When Gavra shook his head no, Balint came over to help him with it.
FIFTEEN
We made it back to my apartment by ten without incident. Karel and Aron, now asleep on the couch and chair, had finished off my vodka and scotch, which annoyed me, but I was too exhausted to complain. Katja woke Aron, and Karel awoke on his own, rubbing his eyes and asking where Gavra was.
“Had to go to the station,” Katja told him.
“Why?”
“He thought it was important.” She didn’t know how much Karel knew of his best friend’s work. If Karel didn’t know who Brano Sev was, he might know nothing.
After a round of sullen embraces, she took Aron home in the Militia car, and Karel turned on the television. For some reason, that angered me as well. Of the two channels, one was still in government hands, playing an old Pankov biography, full of washed-out colors of his family’s peasant home. On the other channel, a young man who needed a shave reported on where in the city the rooftop snipers had been spotted but urged the entire city to spend the day in the squares and celebrate “this new era of freedom. Long live the Soft Revolution!”
I gathered the files we’d taken from the archives and brought them to bed. I undressed, considering a wash, but didn’t want to track through the living room and have to speak to Karel again. All I wanted was sleep. By then the shock of yesterday was fading, leaving me wrung out, and the depression was settling in. The same thing happened when Libarid died in 1975 and Imre ten years later. Shock, followed by depression, followed by anger.
But I persisted, because this was so much more devastating. I’d lost my wife; I’d lost everything. I couldn’t go to sleep empty-handed. I reached for the Captopril.
According to my own thick file, my career began with my second case, looking into the murders of prostitutes in the Canal District, back when prostitutes could still make a living there. There was a small photo of me, which was updated every five years. This one was from‘87, and I had the blank expression of a prisoner.
According to an inserted sheet that was thinner and whiter than the rest, I joined the First District homicide department on 23 August 1948 (which was true) but didn’t actually do any work until two months later. My documented history simply skipped over the case that started my career and nearly killed Lena. As if it were a figment of my imagination.
With Dusan Volan’s file, I began to understand. Volan was a soft-looking old man who in 1949 ruled over a variety of tribunals. Another page that was less yellowed and brittle than the rest mentioned that in August 1949 he sentenced one Jerzy Michalec to death for “counterrevolutionary activity.” That is, actions against the communist government.
The truth was that Michalec had been sentenced for being a murderer and a Nazi war criminal.
The same case was mentioned in Lebed Putonski’s file-again, “counterrevolutionary activity.”
Brano Sev’s file, which was always limited because of security considerations, was simply missing the year 1948. His photograph was older, from the seventies, a round, aging face with three moles on the left cheek. Tatiana Zoltenko’s photo, taken last year, showed a tough colonel in her late sixties with black-dyed hair pulled back tight enough to raise her colored eyebrows in surprise. Since I didn’t know her role in the prosecution of Jerzy Michalec, I didn’t know what had been doctored in her file.
The pillow behind my back had grown soft, and I was slipping deeper into it. I had to rub my eyes raw to keep from passing out as I squinted at Michalec’s file. He was born in Szekszard, Austro-Hungary, 12 January 1909. By now, if he was still alive, he’d be eighty. In 1933, he married Agnes Holler in Vienna, and ten years later Agnes died in the Mauthausen concentration camp. The rest of the story-his history with the Gestapo-was not mentioned.
I found a photograph from a 1979 visa mug shot. Years in a socialist labor camp had put weight into his haggard eyes, and he’d lost the extra fat that living well after the war had given him. Remarkably, he was smiling in the picture. I wondered why.
I set the picture aside and found this: August 1949: Sentenced to death for counterrevolutionary activity. Charges included collaboration with anticommunist forces with ties to American and British imperialists, as well as sabotage of Soviet military communication lines.
I finally closed my eyes, feeling sick. I’d been seeing it all wrong, and here was the evidence. Still, I had to go through more pages, through the rest of Jerzy Michalec’s history, to be sure.
The file told me that a month after his verdict, Michalec’s punishment was commuted to life in a labor camp. He served it until 1956, when our former leader, Mihai, bowing to the new wave
of tolerance emanating from Khrushchev’s Moscow, initiated a blanket amnesty for political prisoners. Jerzy was among those freed.
I hadn’t known this before, but it made sense, and was probably true. A lot of marginal, embittered people were suddenly put on the streets that year, making our jobs that much more difficult. It also marked the beginning of Ferenc Kolyeszar’s worst year.
Another whiter, and thus fabricated, sheet said Michalec was ar-rested by the First District Militia in 1968 for passing out leaflets supporting the Prague Spring, then again in 1976 for running a printing press from his basement. The arresting officer in 1968 was Lieutenant Libarid Terzian. In 1976, Captain Imre Papp.
Both of whom were now dead and couldn’t dispute the lie.
I shut my eyes again, trying to control my exhausted emotions. They had doctored the memory of my militiamen to protect a man who was once called the Butcher. Because that’s what Michalec was. The name had been used as a compliment, because of a single after-noon in the crumbling ruin of Berlin in 1945, when he assembled twenty-three Hitlerjugend boys under his command and killed them all. He presented their corpses to the Red Army and was cheered. Only a butcher could do that.
On the next page I found something even more striking. In June 1979, Jerzy Michalec applied for, and received, permission to emigrate to France. He left in September of that year.
September 1979.
I put the file aside and, in my underwear, stumbled through to the living room, where Karel was dozing in front of the muted television, the remote in his hand. I wondered where he had found that. On the screen, soldiers were crouched behind bullet-damaged cars, shooting up into the sky. I paused. It was Yalta Boulevard, and they were shooting up at the Hotel Metropol.
But I ignored it and went to my coat on the rack, searching the pockets until I found the few crumpled sheets from Rosta Gorski’s file. As I walked back to the bedroom, I checked them. Yes. September 1979 was the same month that Rosta Gorski, according to the Stryy Militia, “disappeared.”
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