Old men and women would walk by, and Jana would observe the other end of the life span, the elderly enjoying the remainder of their lives amid the greenery of the park. The day she saw the student, Jana was having a hard time getting through a melodramatic Tolstoy novel about a woman who she knew was about to throw herself into the path of an oncoming locomotive. She put the book down, looked up, and there he was.
His head was bandaged, his face still showing bruises from his beating. He was also walking with a cane, his left leg appearing to drag slightly. Jana’s breath caught. Even after the beating, with the bruises and his slightly laborious walk, Jana thought he still held himself erect, still proud. She had to talk to him.
She found herself getting off the park bench and walking across the grass to intersect the path he was taking, hesitating for a moment when she caught up with him, wondering what to say. She was thinking of going back to her bench when he turned to her, smiling a wide, crooked smile that was endearing because of its openness.
“Hello. You wanted to see me?” he asked.
Jana stared at him. His smile, if anything, became wider.
“I’m not the man you thought I was, right? Nothing unusual about my features. Although today, I admit, you have to deal with the bandages and ignore the bruises. Except, with or without them, everyone mistakes me for someone else. I’m just an everyman, even in my own mirror.”
“More than an everyman,” Jana managed, becoming upset with herself as she voiced the words. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say. She hurried ahead with an explanation. “I think that I may have caught sight of you before. No,” she corrected herself. “I know I’ve seen you.”
“Where?” he asked, an amused lilt in his voice. “You’ve seen me in the movies, right?” His voice was self-deprecating, his smile reaching his eyes. “You think I had the lead in a film about a hero who comes to the rescue of a damsel threatened by a human beast, a horrid man who wants to steal all her lands and titles for himself. I destroy the beast, and she throws herself in my arms, right?” He tilted his head forward in a mock bow. “One hero, at your service.”
“You don’t think you’re a hero.”
“Unfortunately not. I’m far from the man in the movie.”
“It wasn’t a movie; and you were a hero.”
He examined her face, trying to figure out what she was talking about. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a hero.”
“At the Slavin monument. The police were after you.”
His smile washed away, leaving just a touch at the corners of his mouth. “You were there?”
“Yes.”
The smile disappeared completely. “It was a horrible event. Not what I thought would happen.”
“Horrible,” Jana agreed.
He continued walking, Jana keeping pace with him.
“Things simply didn’t happen the way they were supposed to,” he put forward.
“And you were hurt. Hurt badly.” She indicated his bandaged head. “It must be aching.”
A faint smile returned. “It’s stopped hurting.”
“I’m glad. And your leg?”
He looked troubled. “It’s not the leg that’s hurt. It’s what happened up here.” He tapped himself on the forehead. “I saw a neurologist. A blood vessel was injured. It leaked. The damaged area controls the leg. I can’t seem to walk right just yet.” He quickened his pace as if to reassure himself that he was going to overcome his physical problem. “The doctor said time would tell. There’s nothing they can do just yet. I’m taking pills. The doctor recommended physical therapy. So, I’m out walking.” His expression was worried. “I’m seeing another nerve man tomorrow.”
Jana remembered him being dragged along the ground, his head bumping from stone to stone as the police hauled him away. “It’s good to have another opinion. My dad says that.” Jana tried to keep the dismay from her face. The student had been permanently injured by the police.
“My name is Georg. Georg Repka.”
“Jana.”
“Will you walk with me?”
“My pleasure to walk with a hero.”
His smile came back.
“I can only walk for a short time. I have things to do.”
“Me too.”
They walked toward the central fountain in the park. Georg read the title on the book Jana was carrying.
“Anna Karenina. Tolstoy. Quite tragic.”
“Very tragic,” Jana agreed.
“Yes. Anna acted without thinking clearly. She didn’t realize the consequences of her actions, what her duty was, before she did what she did.”
“Passion,” Jana explained.
“We all have passions.”
He didn’t seem to approve of Anna Karenina.
“You had passion at the Slavin Memorial,” Jana reminded him.
Georg blushed, ducking his head away. “My passion was appropriate, I hope.”
“Oh, it was!” Jana confirmed, the words coming out louder than she intended. She looked away from Georg, momentarily abashed at her own intensity.
“Thank you, Jana.”
They walked for a distance in silence until Georg signaled for her to stop, panting slightly.
“That’s the other thing that happens. I get tired easily. The doctor said it was natural, considering the injuries. I hope, in the near future, that I’ll be over it. Then I can get back to my work.”
“Good.”
“Work is important.”
“I thought you were a student.”
“I am. Except botany can’t be anyone’s life work. It’s too isolating. One can slide into becoming disconnected from people if it becomes all-consuming. Essentially, if that were the major force in my life, what use would my life be? We have to interact with people. Don’t you agree?”
Jana nodded, although she was not sure exactly what Georg meant. He was older and more mature than she was, and she desperately wanted to seem mature to such a farsighted man. So she kept on nodding whenever he made a declaration that appeared to warrant an affirmation.
They began walking again.
“What did you say your family name was?” he asked.
“Matin. Judge Matin is my father.” Jana was proud that she could tell Georg that she was the daughter of a judge.
“I don’t know your father.”
“You’re not a lawyer. People don’t know judges unless they’re lawyers. My father laughs about it. He says all judges are anonymous. He likes it that way.”
Georg developed a quizzical look. “I know a Matinova. She’s in the party. A woman of very substantial convictions. Is your mother in the party?”
For a moment, Jana was not sure she should answer the question, afraid of the consequences. “Yes,” she responded after a pause.
The gorgeous smile returned. “A wonderful woman. We’ve talked at party meetings. The two of us agree on many things. I’m glad to see her daughter is so much like her. Can you say hello to your mother for me when you go home?”
Jana was slightly bewildered. “I don’t think my mother recognized you when you were being beaten by the police.”
“Everything happened too quickly. Time accelerates. Or it freezes. Nothing looks right in an event like that.”
“I guess so.” Jana’s puzzlement had grown. “You were with the students protesting the Russians being here, weren’t you? Protesting the events in Prague?”
“Well, yes and no. I was there as a party representative.”
“The party sent a member to a demonstration against them?”
“I found out about the demonstration at school. I told the party; they told me to attend.”
Jana was confused. It didn’t quite make sense. “Georg, you told the party about the demonstration. Did the party tell the police?”
“Of course. It was only right that they tell the police.”
“And then the police came to break up the event.”
“Certainly. If police are responsive
agents of the proletariat, they function as extensions of the party.”
Jana’s head was whirling. Everything was askew: the scene of the police beating the students, the attack on Georg.
“Did you talk to the police about the event before you went?”
“Naturally. That was expected of me.”
“Then why did the police beat you?”
Georg sighed. “They weren’t supposed to. A mistake. You know how it is under those circumstances. It became a great stew, individuals running around, everyone excited, not seeing straight, the stress. I was carrying a protest sign, so they came after me.”
“You were carrying a protest sign?”
“How could I go to the demonstration not carrying a protest sign?”
“I see.”
“No one counted on my getting hurt.”
“No.”
“Things never go exactly as planned.”
All Jana could think of was that the person she’d thought of as a hero, a victim of a vicious attack, had turned out to be a state informant. Even her mother disliked informants. And agent provocateurs were the worst. They were Judas goats, leading people into danger. Georg had led his fellow students, his friends, into the clubs of the police.
Jana’s perceptions of Georg, and of the event she’d seen at Slavin, had been completely wrong. The whole thing was wrong, and sinister, and immoral, and frightening. Her impression of Georg Repka had completely changed. Black was now white; white was now black. And neither color could be trusted to remain as it was.
Jana couldn’t wait to get away from Repka. She kept the semblance of good will on her face, waiting for the next juncture in the path to break away from him. When they reached it, he said a smiling good-bye, reminded her to say hello to her mother for him, then walked on, his left leg continuing to create an uneven gait.
When she got home, Jana didn’t tell her mother she’d met Georg. They would have argued about what he’d done. It would have been too ugly.
It was all so odd.
Jana promised herself she would remember the event, fixing it in her mind.
Nothing is ever as it seems.
Chapter 23
Jana needed to fly to Germany on the Bogan case. Aside from trying to contact Bogan’s son, and to determine where his father was in hiding, she had to find out about the German, Balder, and his partner in crime, Akso. Colonel Trokan raised a small fuss about her going, arguing that the German police would do the work needed. It was a weak argument. Neither of them trusted another state’s agency to get the job done. They wouldn’t have Jana’s familiarity with the facts of the case. She and Trokan were really just going through the exercise that they went through every time she needed approval to spend out-of-budget departmental funds.
It was a familiar diversion for them: Jana would argue that her travel was important to the case, as she did now, and Trokan would offer unsatisfactory alternatives. As expected, in that day’s argument, the colonel blustered into his standard warning for her not to spend money by eating in expensive restaurants, nor to patronize the infamous clubs of Berlin. Both of them knew she’d never do that anyway. It was just one of the steps in their ballet.
When the “argument” was over, Jana had to deal with another issue: what to do with Em while she was in Berlin. The easiest thing would have been to turn her over to child welfare, but Jana had promised the girl, at least for the time being, not to do this. Em had urged Jana to help her stay out of the welfare people’s clutches until her father came. Two days of freedom, she said, was all she was asking for.
When Jana asked Em how her father would locate her, Em smiled. He would know, was all she would say to Jana.
Em wanted to stay by herself at Jana’s house while she was gone; but from her past experience with the girl, Jana knew that that wouldn’t be wise. Em would be out on the streets within minutes of Jana leaving her alone, and Jana might have more trouble finding her again. The only other alternative Jana could think of was to get one of her people to house the girl.
One by one, she asked all of her personnel, from clerks and secretaries to her most senior detectives, if they could take Em for a few days. All of them had reasons not to. They ranged from “I can’t stand children” to “I have too many children already,” climbing up the excuse ladder to “My wife will divorce me.” One unmarried officer even told her that his girlfriend would think that he’d lied about his marital status before going out with her. Or, even worse, that Em was an illegitimate child whom he had deliberately not mentioned before, and she’d probably break a bottle over his head.
After Jana had asked almost everyone in her department, the only person she had left who might be remotely satisfactory to care for Em was her warrant officer. When she called Seges into her office, he already had an idea from the other officers of what she was going to ask.
As soon as he walked in, Jana saw from his haunted face and jutting chin that he was going to refuse. That didn’t surprise her, but she hadn’t expected the immediate attack strategy that he employed. If he took Em to his house, Seges predicted, he would be killed by his wife. She would throw kitchen knives at him—if she didn’t shoot him first with his other service weapon, which he kept in a bedroom drawer that she had access to. If she didn’t succeed in killing him, she would put him through weeks of torture, which would be even worse than the easy death promised by the gun or the knives.
Jana cajoled, promised favors, offered to give him additional time off, promised she’d strong-arm the colonel into approving his transfer to another unit of his choice. But none of it worked.
Jana had stashed Em in a spare office one floor down; when she went there to confess her failure, the girl proffered a possible solution. She suggested that Jana take her to see Seges’s wife and let her talk to the woman. Maybe she would be able to sway her. Jana hesitated; then, telling herself she had nothing to lose, she agreed to try it. The two of them drove over to the Seges residence, a very small house on the outskirts of the Devin Castle area.
Seges’s wife was a rather harried-looking woman with frizzy hair, a big bosom, and a look on her face that said “You’re not going to fool me, so don’t even try.” When Jana haltingly explained that she was trying to find a safe place for Em to stay, Seges’s wife displayed all the indicia of pre-stroke behavior—until Em stepped in.
“I have a pair of earrings which I made especially for you, Madam Segesova.” Em’s voice had taken on the tone and mannerisms of a younger child. At some point, Em had gotten hold of some enamel paint. The pair of earrings she gave to Mrs. Seges was not aluminum-colored, but covered in bright yellow and red enamel.
“Can I do them for you?” Em asked, not waiting for an answer, but going straight to Segesova and, with a great deal of deference, putting them on her ears. She then stepped back to take a look.
“Good, but we need to fix the hair a little. And I’m sure that you have a top that matches better. If you don’t, we’ll have to go shopping. Let’s look in the closet.”
She led a pleasantly surprised Segesova into her bedroom, and the two of them began to busily go through her clothes. Once they had selected an outfit that matched the earrings, Em insisted on redoing the woman’s hair. By the time it was done, the two of them were twittering together like sparrows, Segesova insisting on Em staying at her place.
When Seges came home, he was faced with a fait accompli. There was no way he could stand up to his wife on the issue.
Em gaily waved at Jana as she drove off, Jana awed at what the girl had done. She had, very quickly, found Segesova’s weakness and taken advantage of it to woo the woman into letting her stay there. There was no mischief in what the girl had done, but there was certainly feigned innocence. Em had seen what she had to do, and had unhesitatingly courted the woman, getting what she wanted. Unusual for a girl her age, to say the least. Manipulative, at worst. The girl had a skill that could be used, under the wrong circumstances, toward very bad ends.
Jana drove home, made a flight reservation on Czech Airlines with a connection in Prague to a flight going to Berlin, packed an overnight bag, and, an hour later, was on the flight.
On the plane, there was a major surprise. Truchanova, the special prosecutor assigned to the Bogan case, was on the plane, seated just across the aisle from Jana. Sitting next to the prosecutor was Jakus, the primary investigator on the case. Truchanova eyed Jana, both of them realizing that the other must be going to Berlin to explore some aspect of the Bogan case. They exchanged awkward pleasantries, then buckled into their seats as the plane took off, each trying to determine how best to deal with the situation. Jana, as usual, decided to be direct: “We’re both going to try and locate Bogan’s son, I would think.”
“That’s a good assumption,” Truchanova said.
“You know where to find him?”
“The Berlin police have agreed to help us. They have an address which they’ve identified. According to them, they’ve passed by several times and seen no signs of activity. They’ll have a magistrate’s warrant to search the house ready when we get there. The house is in Charlottenburg. Hopefully we’ll turn up something.”
“A very nice area to live in.”
“And why are you going?”
“Also trying to locate him.”
There was a long silence. “You have anything else to go on, Commander?” Truchanova asked. “Other information on where the man can be located?”
“I have a phone number. One that wasn’t in the murder book.”
“Have you correlated it to an address?”
“Not yet.”
Jakus was leaning toward Jana, trying to hear the conversation over the noise in the plane’s cabin. “I would like the number, Commander.” His voice was raised to carry across the aisle to Jana. “May I have it?”
“Of course, Jakus.”
Jana pulled a magazine from the seat-back pocket in front of her and began browsing through it without giving Jakus the number.
“The number?” Investigator Jakus asked again, his face reflecting growing irritation.
Requiem for a Gypsy Page 13